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On January 25 2012 06:01 Terranasaur wrote: I dunno. I've always kind of liked that feature. It keeps them from being severely gimped after you kill them a bunch of times in lane. Bot games are basically a race to see if you can rack up enough kills before Annie-Bot gets stonk enough to one shot you and Cho Gath bot becomes unkillable.
lol. You'd think that with 20-40 kills worth of gold you could kill anything.
just like in the real game, kills stop giving lots of gold after a while, but i still say Annie bot OP.
These guys on odd one's stream today are like 50x better than the people I play with in normals. NA vs EU or is he just low enough to be getting all the good smurfs. I mean they're keeping track of where the enemy places wards... wards... the people in my normals never even buy them lol.
On January 25 2012 05:40 Cloud9157 wrote: So apparently they're buffing bots in the next patch. They use items, and are better about when to retreat/attack and know how to use skill shots much better.
Really need to have a bot jungling in co-op vs. AI. I know that it'd be hard to implement but new players use co-op vs. AI to figure the game out and not having a jungler in it is pretty deceptive to new players. Regardless, even if they put a jungler in, I'd probably still tell new people to just play Normals no matter how difficult the bots get. AI can never behave as people do so playing vs. bots is only gonna teach you bad habits.
On January 25 2012 06:27 Shiv. wrote: What strikes me as odd is that they are investing resources into their bot AI while stuff like replays still hasn't been released yet.
I'm going to guess the player base that plays vs. bots is larger than the group that analyzes replays
No, that makes perfect sense. Bot Games appeal to the casual crowd, Replays appeal to the much smaller competitive crowd. Dudes in bot games still but Teemo skins.
On January 25 2012 06:27 Shiv. wrote: What strikes me as odd is that they are investing resources into their bot AI while stuff like replays still hasn't been released yet.
Not really odd, as others have pointed out, but still somewhat disappointing.
On January 25 2012 06:27 Shiv. wrote: What strikes me as odd is that they are investing resources into their bot AI while stuff like replays still hasn't been released yet.
I'm going to guess the player base that plays vs. bots is larger than the group that analyzes replays
You'd think new features would make me excited or at least say 'Hmm....interesting.' or something, but it reality it just makes me sad because it means just another feature in the long list of things that are 'more important' than the stealth rework.
On January 25 2012 06:27 Shiv. wrote: What strikes me as odd is that they are investing resources into their bot AI while stuff like replays still hasn't been released yet.
I agree. They did say that the majority of players who play often play against bots every week though. This is where stats might be extremely deceptive? I go into bots every now and then to try new jungle routes and new champions. I'm sure many do too?
But I guess, like any company, they are in a position where they have to allocate resources to pleasing current customers or trying to get more customers.
I would, however, like to see more features implemented like replays (where you can rewind) and better spectating (more than 2 and spectate while matchmaking). I don't want Magma Chamber, moar champions, nerfs/buffs -_-
We might never see replays because of difficulty implementing with the game engine though. And spectating options are probably going to be a server nightmare. AFAIK, Riot only has one US server location on the west coast, which is why us east coast brethren have like ~80 ping minimum.
there are pretty sure dev teams that work on replays and bots seperatly, so one thing has nothing to do with the other. and like mentioned above there are probably more players who play vs bots than would use replays.
@jacosajh: if I'm not mistaken, there was drop-in spectating on the PBE server. So that will be implemented eventually.
So I was thinking about this as I spent 5 hours in a car today: who are the actual S class players in LoL ATM?
Luckily, 5 hours was enough to actually answer this question. I limited it to NA simply because I dont know enough about EU to make an adequate determination. My list is also completely subjective, but also completely accurate because I said so.
So, without further ado:
Top Lane: No one. Literally. There is not a single S class top laner in NA. Every single one is SEVERELY flawed. HSGG has a champ pool that consists of Cho at this point, and goes derp mode every 10 seconds. TRM, is, well, TRM. Voyboy is solid but not nearly over the top enough to actually consider putting him up there. Dyrus is probably the most complete of any of them, but his early game is just not strong enough (even though he is the best late game out of all of them)
Mid: Salce. Hands down most consistent AP in NA, not to mention the fact that he is also the only player who can and does consistently win mid against the other top players. Regi is close, but his cass ults singlehandedly knocked him from contention. Jiji still needs to work on his mobility in the laning phase, and Scarra and NyJackie are both solid, but not on the same level as Salce.
Jungle: Saintvicious. Put CDE on his back in Korea. Has the best champion pool of anyone. Can instantly shift between carry and support jungles, can counterjungle the best of anyone in NA, and also deals with counterjunging the best. For reference, I think that Jatt when Dignitas was in form was probably S class as well, but he is retired. TOO proved that he struggles with invasion, knock him off his game and he dissapears. Dan Dinh, IWillDominate, and Lapakaa all not on that level.
Bot lane: No splitting ad and support. Its nearly impossible to separate where the ad leaves off and the support picks up, and vise versa. That being said, Chaox and Xpecial are the only S class in NA (and also IMO the best bot lane in the world). Xpecial is the best support in the scene atm, and Chaox meshes extremely well with him, and most importantly, can snowball very hard off of a lane Xpecial sets up for him to win. Double and Chauster suffer from the fact that Double is a strategic moron and Chauster is new to support. West and Nyat havent played enough together recently. Qtpie and L0cust probably the next most solid bot lane in NA behind the TSM bot both in terms of overall level of play and consistency.
So ya. Your S class players are Salce, Saintvicious, Chaox and Xpecial.
On January 25 2012 06:27 Shiv. wrote: What strikes me as odd is that they are investing resources into their bot AI while stuff like replays still hasn't been released yet.
Resource allocation is complicated. The choice isn't as simple as releasing new bots in a few weeks or releasing a replay system. It's possible that some useful resources are shared between the two efforts and thus replays will be released later than they otherwise would have, but it isn't a 1 to 1 conversion.
On January 25 2012 06:48 Two_DoWn wrote: So ya. Your S class players are Salce, Saintvicious, Chaox and Xpecial.
I think that list is pretty accurate for the NA scene at least. I'm trying to think of someone who could compare to those guys and I really can't. There's lots of players who are really close to being "S class" but you listed them. Although you didn't mention Pobelter for top. I think his top lane is actually pretty fun 'cause of how many AP tops he plays and the fact that he consistently gets his farm top (although he doesn't necessarily "win lane"). Sadly, Curse has so many role swaps and switch ups that I dunno if their team will ever have any players who are just head and shoulders above the rest.
literally every single time i hear riot criticized for resource allocation, if they respond, it's with "well those resources aren't really compatible, we couldn't just shift production from x to y, and anyway adding on more people wouldn't help, we would just dump resources on it if we could." at the same time it's being implied that each project is at the maximum useful investment cap there's this excuse constantly coming up that, well, riot is a very young company and resource strapped and they just don't have many people to devote to features. Very odd disconnect.
On January 25 2012 06:01 Terranasaur wrote: I dunno. I've always kind of liked that feature. It keeps them from being severely gimped after you kill them a bunch of times in lane. Bot games are basically a race to see if you can rack up enough kills before Annie-Bot gets stonk enough to one shot you and Cho Gath bot becomes unkillable.
lol. You'd think that with 20-40 kills worth of gold you could kill anything.
My bot games are approaching my normal wins fairly quickly now (evidently I'd rather herp a derp than play serious) but the only way Annie bot can kill you after 20-40 kills is really if you go glass cannon like everyone does. Like if you go Sejuana instead and stack warmogs it's hilarious how you can 1v5 the bots repeatedly and kill them with few/no damage items because of your enormous level advantage. Or you can play Kayle and shield yourself every single time.
Edit: Offhand, click the gears in the upper right of the pvp.net client and you can turn off the lobby music.