|
Heed these two simple warnings. It will help make our GD a better place. Consider this fair notice to all users. Warning will be dished out this patch. Thanks. Neo, 31.01.12 |
Alright, this is going to be a really long one, so I hope it doesn't get lost in the usual General Discussion stuff. I didn't want to make a new thread though becuase I'm not sure it deserves one. I would put it in blogs but I really want TL's opinion on this and I'm worried no one will read it.
My friends and I were having a discussion last night on our skills and recent events. Lately we've noticed we've been losing a lot more in normals than we used to. We've also noticed that whereas a couple months ago we were playing against unranked people (sometiems people under level 30) or fairly low ranked people in normals (who were still decently skilled, probably smurfing) now we are getting matched up with people considerably higher than us as a group, 14-1600 or so.
I figure the two are somehow related, except my W/L ratio in normals has remained stagnant forever (like over half a year probably?) Is the general populace improving? Do we just suck that much?
Related to this was a discussion on how to improve. We were watching Salce tear shit up on Orianna again last night and discussing the cs issue similar to the one discussed above (ie what is a good cs by 20 min) and were discussing how in pro/high elo games 200 by 20 min is more or less expected. And we have never really reached such a level, indicating that obviously there is much room for us to improve in that area. But upon analyzing Salce's play and our own we noticed something interesting.
The game we watched had a Morde laning mid against him. Whereas Morde is an excellent harasser very little harassment was taking palce. We noticed that in top lane as well. I always wondered why in my own games, it seems I have to choose between harassing and cs, and can't seem to do both at the same time to any effective degree. I was wondering, is this because I am bad? Probably. But I'm wondering if there is an elo factor involved as well. At my level, there is no such thing as a free-farm lane. Every laner is aggressive and harasses; they are not content to sit back and free-farm. In high elo games, it seems they play insanely passively, and just sit back and cs instead of whittling down their opponent to make a jungle gank easy; they'd rather attempt to 100-0% and dive when the jungler comes to gank.
Now hopefully people can follow my train of thought here. Obviously a player like Salce could play however he wants (either passive farming or super aggressive) and still win his lane/game at my elo, but to those of us who are less skilled, if we don't adapt to how the enemy chooses to play his lane, we will fall behind. All the discussion of matchups seems to somehow fall short in the face of this. If you play the matchup the way it is 'supposed' to be played according to high elo players at low elo, you may or may not win it, or at the very least it may not go the way you want it to because low elo players don't play the same way high elo players do.
I remember a little ways back I was having issues with Panth v Morde lane and everyone here told me Panth wins hands down, ezpz. But I couldn't do it for the life of me, against my friend who is considerable worse than me. I asked Smashgizmo, the resident expert to show me how to do it; he did and smashed my friend into the ground at level 1. I was never able to replicate this. (There are details behind this, but for the purposes of this discussion they're sort of irrelevant. I'll elaborate in another post if necessary.) I am wondering if this matchup had continued beyond the first 3 minutes of the game would Smash have easily have been able to farm up on Morde as well as cs? Probably....but it seems I'm missing something fundamental.
I don't think I'm an idiot, and I think by now I have a pretty good idea of how the game works. If you can wade your way through this jumbled mess of incoherent thoughts, please help.
I really want to improve myself and my laning (csing, when to leave mid to help other lanes without losing your mid tower, dragon timings, harassing...etc) but I have hit a major wall and am seeing a few problems in both my play as well as how the (meta)game works at my elo that appear to be contributing factors.
Is there something obvious I am missing? (I hope not.) Help me, oh wise subforum members!
|
On February 03 2012 00:25 mr_tolkien wrote:Show nested quote +On February 03 2012 00:21 Requizen wrote:
Ziggs is very strong, probably the strongest out-of-the-box release in a while. Xerath, Riven, Fizz, Talon, Yorick, and Orianna would like to have a word with you :p Zigg seems pretty balanced once you get used to his mechanics and skillshots animations.
Well, like I said, he's the most intuitive, easily. Many of those were considered bad for a while (except maybe Talon) until people got used to them. Ziggs feels like he's the first in a while to come out and just wreck things from day 1.
I don't think he's imba or OP, but he's definitely a strong pick, probably viable for competitive play right as he is.
|
On February 03 2012 00:25 mr_tolkien wrote:Show nested quote +On February 03 2012 00:21 Requizen wrote:
Ziggs is very strong, probably the strongest out-of-the-box release in a while. Xerath, Riven, Fizz, Talon, Yorick, and Orianna would like to have a word with you :p Zigg seems pretty balanced once you get used to his mechanics and skillshots animations.
Jeez, you must have forgotten the massive hotfix buffs both yorick and riven recieved about a week after their release >.>
|
On February 02 2012 23:52 Shiv. wrote:Show nested quote +On February 02 2012 23:47 RogerX wrote:On February 02 2012 23:29 qanik wrote:
omg where is the new Yi skin, can't wait to buy it <.< New Yi skin? Best skin is chosen! I love the color changes. new Yi skin!
Iron stylus special project revealed, I wonder if he also did the slash art.
|
On February 03 2012 00:27 Xedat wrote:
Yorick was super weak on release, you should watch the video where a guy analyzes Phreaks spotlight, he basically did zero damage. When he was released some poeple joked that the best way to play him his feed the enemies to get your carry gold for ending their killing spree and then ult him. With the rest I agree.
Indeed, I arrived just for the patch he was buffed in. My bad >.> I still have nightmares about full buffed Yorick.
|
On February 03 2012 00:21 Requizen wrote:
Ziggs is very strong, probably the strongest out-of-the-box release in a while.
Well, maybe not (looking at you Xerath and release Graves), but his kit works together so well and is so intuitive that he's easy to pick up and wreck with even the first few times. I think a lot of it has to do with the AoE nature of his spells. Since everything is AoE (and big at that), they're pretty easy to land and get a lot of damage unless the opponent is actively trying to dodge everything. All 3 standard abilities are great for farming, harassing, and/or zoning, so he just feels very, very strong.
He's strong, but I find him pretty balanced for a release champ. I mean his dps is really strong, but it is balanced by his lacks of CC/escape. Maybe they could increase the cooldown or manacost of his Q a tiny little bit, but he's fine as he is now imo.
Incredibly fun to play that said :D
|
On February 03 2012 00:29 Hakker wrote:Show nested quote +On February 03 2012 00:25 mr_tolkien wrote:On February 03 2012 00:21 Requizen wrote:
Ziggs is very strong, probably the strongest out-of-the-box release in a while. Xerath, Riven, Fizz, Talon, Yorick, and Orianna would like to have a word with you :p Zigg seems pretty balanced once you get used to his mechanics and skillshots animations. Jeez, you must have forgotten the massive hotfix buffs both yorick and riven recieved about a week after their release >.>
Yorick was broke before the hotfixes. Its just only Blazeraid actually figured out how to play him while everyone else was still whining. Then they made him MORE op before they realized they needed to start cutting him apart.
But ya- release yorick was REALLY good, especially since his E healed for 10% more.
Riven was same story- Westrice hadnt developed her yet so she was still op, its just no one knew it at the time.
Stacking buffs on op champs doesnt make them UP at release, it makes the people who whine complete idiots.
|
On February 03 2012 00:33 BobMcJohnson wrote:Show nested quote +On February 03 2012 00:21 Requizen wrote:
Ziggs is very strong, probably the strongest out-of-the-box release in a while.
Well, maybe not (looking at you Xerath and release Graves), but his kit works together so well and is so intuitive that he's easy to pick up and wreck with even the first few times. I think a lot of it has to do with the AoE nature of his spells. Since everything is AoE (and big at that), they're pretty easy to land and get a lot of damage unless the opponent is actively trying to dodge everything. All 3 standard abilities are great for farming, harassing, and/or zoning, so he just feels very, very strong. He's strong, but I find him pretty balanced for a release champ. I mean his dps is really strong, but it is balanced by his lacks of CC/escape. Maybe they could increase the cooldown or manacost of his Q a tiny little bit, but he's fine as he is now imo. Incredibly fun to play that said :D
Agreed, pretty balanced. I don't agree about lack of escape, though, his Satchel thing is really strong. I have trouble ganking him on any jungle champ without hard CC, since a well placed Satchel is "free" escape and damage for him.
Oh, and slowing mine field. That thing is hella strong.
|
On February 03 2012 00:28 WaveofShadow wrote:
Alright, this is going to be a really long one, so I hope it doesn't get lost in the usual General Discussion stuff. I didn't want to make a new thread though becuase I'm not sure it deserves one. I would put it in blogs but I really want TL's opinion on this and I'm worried no one will read it.
My friends and I were having a discussion last night on our skills and recent events. Lately we've noticed we've been losing a lot more in normals than we used to. We've also noticed that whereas a couple months ago we were playing against unranked people (sometiems people under level 30) or fairly low ranked people in normals (who were still decently skilled, probably smurfing) now we are getting matched up with people considerably higher than us as a group, 14-1600 or so.
I figure the two are somehow related, except my W/L ratio in normals has remained stagnant forever (like over half a year probably?) Is the general populace improving? Do we just suck that much?
Related to this was a discussion on how to improve. We were watching Salce tear shit up on Orianna again last night and discussing the cs issue similar to the one discussed above (ie what is a good cs by 20 min) and were discussing how in pro/high elo games 200 by 20 min is more or less expected. And we have never really reached such a level, indicating that obviously there is much room for us to improve in that area. But upon analyzing Salce's play and our own we noticed something interesting.
The game we watched had a Morde laning mid against him. Whereas Morde is an excellent harasser very little harassment was taking palce. We noticed that in top lane as well. I always wondered why in my own games, it seems I have to choose between harassing and cs, and can't seem to do both at the same time to any effective degree. I was wondering, is this because I am bad? Probably. But I'm wondering if there is an elo factor involved as well. At my level, there is no such thing as a free-farm lane. Every laner is aggressive and harasses; they are not content to sit back and free-farm. In high elo games, it seems they play insanely passively, and just sit back and cs instead of whittling down their opponent to make a jungle gank easy; they'd rather attempt to 100-0% and dive when the jungler comes to gank.
Now hopefully people can follow my train of thought here. Obviously a player like Salce could play however he wants (either passive farming or super aggressive) and still win his lane/game at my elo, but to those of us who are less skilled, if we don't adapt to how the enemy chooses to play his lane, we will fall behind. All the discussion of matchups seems to somehow fall short in the face of this. If you play the matchup the way it is 'supposed' to be played according to high elo players at low elo, you may or may not win it, or at the very least it may not go the way you want it to because low elo players don't play the same way high elo players do.
I remember a little ways back I was having issues with Panth v Morde lane and everyone here told me Panth wins hands down, ezpz. But I couldn't do it for the life of me, against my friend who is considerable worse than me. I asked Smashgizmo, the resident expert to show me how to do it; he did and smashed my friend into the ground at level 1. I was never able to replicate this. (There are details behind this, but for the purposes of this discussion they're sort of irrelevant. I'll elaborate in another post if necessary.) I am wondering if this matchup had continued beyond the first 3 minutes of the game would Smash have easily have been able to farm up on Morde as well as cs? Probably....but it seems I'm missing something fundamental.
I don't think I'm an idiot, and I think by now I have a pretty good idea of how the game works. If you can wade your way through this jumbled mess of incoherent thoughts, please help.
I really want to improve myself and my laning (csing, when to leave mid to help other lanes without losing your mid tower, dragon timings, harassing...etc) but I have hit a major wall and am seeing a few problems in both my play as well as how the (meta)game works at my elo that appear to be contributing factors.
Is there something obvious I am missing? (I hope not.) Help me, oh wise subforum members!
Without any actual visual evidence of what you did wrong, there is nothing to tell. You can only give theorycraft like reasons, as to what you are not doing correctly.
|
On February 03 2012 00:28 WaveofShadow wrote:
Alright, this is going to be a really long one, so I hope it doesn't get lost in the usual General Discussion stuff. I didn't want to make a new thread though becuase I'm not sure it deserves one. I would put it in blogs but I really want TL's opinion on this and I'm worried no one will read it.
My friends and I were having a discussion last night on our skills and recent events. Lately we've noticed we've been losing a lot more in normals than we used to. We've also noticed that whereas a couple months ago we were playing against unranked people (sometiems people under level 30) or fairly low ranked people in normals (who were still decently skilled, probably smurfing) now we are getting matched up with people considerably higher than us as a group, 14-1600 or so.
I figure the two are somehow related, except my W/L ratio in normals has remained stagnant forever (like over half a year probably?) Is the general populace improving? Do we just suck that much?
Related to this was a discussion on how to improve. We were watching Salce tear shit up on Orianna again last night and discussing the cs issue similar to the one discussed above (ie what is a good cs by 20 min) and were discussing how in pro/high elo games 200 by 20 min is more or less expected. And we have never really reached such a level, indicating that obviously there is much room for us to improve in that area. But upon analyzing Salce's play and our own we noticed something interesting.
The game we watched had a Morde laning mid against him. Whereas Morde is an excellent harasser very little harassment was taking palce. We noticed that in top lane as well. I always wondered why in my own games, it seems I have to choose between harassing and cs, and can't seem to do both at the same time to any effective degree. I was wondering, is this because I am bad? Probably. But I'm wondering if there is an elo factor involved as well. At my level, there is no such thing as a free-farm lane. Every laner is aggressive and harasses; they are not content to sit back and free-farm. In high elo games, it seems they play insanely passively, and just sit back and cs instead of whittling down their opponent to make a jungle gank easy; they'd rather attempt to 100-0% and dive when the jungler comes to gank.
Now hopefully people can follow my train of thought here. Obviously a player like Salce could play however he wants (either passive farming or super aggressive) and still win his lane/game at my elo, but to those of us who are less skilled, if we don't adapt to how the enemy chooses to play his lane, we will fall behind. All the discussion of matchups seems to somehow fall short in the face of this. If you play the matchup the way it is 'supposed' to be played according to high elo players at low elo, you may or may not win it, or at the very least it may not go the way you want it to because low elo players don't play the same way high elo players do.
I remember a little ways back I was having issues with Panth v Morde lane and everyone here told me Panth wins hands down, ezpz. But I couldn't do it for the life of me, against my friend who is considerable worse than me. I asked Smashgizmo, the resident expert to show me how to do it; he did and smashed my friend into the ground at level 1. I was never able to replicate this. (There are details behind this, but for the purposes of this discussion they're sort of irrelevant. I'll elaborate in another post if necessary.) I am wondering if this matchup had continued beyond the first 3 minutes of the game would Smash have easily have been able to farm up on Morde as well as cs? Probably....but it seems I'm missing something fundamental.
I don't think I'm an idiot, and I think by now I have a pretty good idea of how the game works. If you can wade your way through this jumbled mess of incoherent thoughts, please help.
I really want to improve myself and my laning (csing, when to leave mid to help other lanes without losing your mid tower, dragon timings, harassing...etc) but I have hit a major wall and am seeing a few problems in both my play as well as how the (meta)game works at my elo that appear to be contributing factors.
Is there something obvious I am missing? (I hope not.) Help me, oh wise subforum members!
It all comes down to game sense, mechanics, and knowledge. What makes good players good is really so broad that its hard to define, but really the difference between a high elo player and you is that a high elo player knows exactly how they can make their trades in lane count, they rarely miss cs, and they know when they can play aggressive or when they need to play passive deducing from jungle patterns, the position of their team and map objectives, and map awareness. Thats just for the laning phase.
|
On February 03 2012 00:38 0123456789 wrote:Show nested quote +On February 03 2012 00:28 WaveofShadow wrote:
Alright, this is going to be a really long one, so I hope it doesn't get lost in the usual General Discussion stuff. I didn't want to make a new thread though becuase I'm not sure it deserves one. I would put it in blogs but I really want TL's opinion on this and I'm worried no one will read it.
My friends and I were having a discussion last night on our skills and recent events. Lately we've noticed we've been losing a lot more in normals than we used to. We've also noticed that whereas a couple months ago we were playing against unranked people (sometiems people under level 30) or fairly low ranked people in normals (who were still decently skilled, probably smurfing) now we are getting matched up with people considerably higher than us as a group, 14-1600 or so.
I figure the two are somehow related, except my W/L ratio in normals has remained stagnant forever (like over half a year probably?) Is the general populace improving? Do we just suck that much?
Related to this was a discussion on how to improve. We were watching Salce tear shit up on Orianna again last night and discussing the cs issue similar to the one discussed above (ie what is a good cs by 20 min) and were discussing how in pro/high elo games 200 by 20 min is more or less expected. And we have never really reached such a level, indicating that obviously there is much room for us to improve in that area. But upon analyzing Salce's play and our own we noticed something interesting.
The game we watched had a Morde laning mid against him. Whereas Morde is an excellent harasser very little harassment was taking palce. We noticed that in top lane as well. I always wondered why in my own games, it seems I have to choose between harassing and cs, and can't seem to do both at the same time to any effective degree. I was wondering, is this because I am bad? Probably. But I'm wondering if there is an elo factor involved as well. At my level, there is no such thing as a free-farm lane. Every laner is aggressive and harasses; they are not content to sit back and free-farm. In high elo games, it seems they play insanely passively, and just sit back and cs instead of whittling down their opponent to make a jungle gank easy; they'd rather attempt to 100-0% and dive when the jungler comes to gank.
Now hopefully people can follow my train of thought here. Obviously a player like Salce could play however he wants (either passive farming or super aggressive) and still win his lane/game at my elo, but to those of us who are less skilled, if we don't adapt to how the enemy chooses to play his lane, we will fall behind. All the discussion of matchups seems to somehow fall short in the face of this. If you play the matchup the way it is 'supposed' to be played according to high elo players at low elo, you may or may not win it, or at the very least it may not go the way you want it to because low elo players don't play the same way high elo players do.
I remember a little ways back I was having issues with Panth v Morde lane and everyone here told me Panth wins hands down, ezpz. But I couldn't do it for the life of me, against my friend who is considerable worse than me. I asked Smashgizmo, the resident expert to show me how to do it; he did and smashed my friend into the ground at level 1. I was never able to replicate this. (There are details behind this, but for the purposes of this discussion they're sort of irrelevant. I'll elaborate in another post if necessary.) I am wondering if this matchup had continued beyond the first 3 minutes of the game would Smash have easily have been able to farm up on Morde as well as cs? Probably....but it seems I'm missing something fundamental.
I don't think I'm an idiot, and I think by now I have a pretty good idea of how the game works. If you can wade your way through this jumbled mess of incoherent thoughts, please help.
I really want to improve myself and my laning (csing, when to leave mid to help other lanes without losing your mid tower, dragon timings, harassing...etc) but I have hit a major wall and am seeing a few problems in both my play as well as how the (meta)game works at my elo that appear to be contributing factors.
Is there something obvious I am missing? (I hope not.) Help me, oh wise subforum members! Without any actual visual evidence of what you did wrong, there is nothing to tell. You can only give theorycraft like reasons, as to what you are not doing correctly.
I'm not just asking what I'm doing wrong, I'm also wondering if there's any merit to my thoughts discussion the differences between low/high elo games and csing vs harrassing or if there really is a very good way to balance the two at any elo. People's personal experiences are welcome here.
Edit:
It all comes down to game sense, mechanics, and knowledge. What makes good players good is really so broad that its hard to define, but really the difference between a high elo player and you is that a high elo player knows exactly how they can make their trades in lane count, they rarely miss cs, and they know when they can play aggressive or when they need to play passive deducing from jungle patterns, the position of their team and map objectives, and map awareness. Thats just for the laning phase.
This is something I've heard before; if this is true, it's so subtle I don't see how I could possibly learn it. How can you learn exactly when to harass on and against every champ and when to cs while doing both nearly perfectly? How does one acquire that skill? If it's through practice I don't see how that's possible either because as you climb through the elo ranks, the same matchup can get played in very different ways.
|
On February 03 2012 00:37 Requizen wrote:Show nested quote +On February 03 2012 00:33 BobMcJohnson wrote:On February 03 2012 00:21 Requizen wrote:
Ziggs is very strong, probably the strongest out-of-the-box release in a while.
Well, maybe not (looking at you Xerath and release Graves), but his kit works together so well and is so intuitive that he's easy to pick up and wreck with even the first few times. I think a lot of it has to do with the AoE nature of his spells. Since everything is AoE (and big at that), they're pretty easy to land and get a lot of damage unless the opponent is actively trying to dodge everything. All 3 standard abilities are great for farming, harassing, and/or zoning, so he just feels very, very strong. He's strong, but I find him pretty balanced for a release champ. I mean his dps is really strong, but it is balanced by his lacks of CC/escape. Maybe they could increase the cooldown or manacost of his Q a tiny little bit, but he's fine as he is now imo. Incredibly fun to play that said :D Agreed, pretty balanced. I don't agree about lack of escape, though, his Satchel thing is really strong. I have trouble ganking him on any jungle champ without hard CC, since a well placed Satchel is "free" escape and damage for him. Oh, and slowing mine field. That thing is hella strong.
Yeah, maybe it's me sucking at using Satchel Charge also 
|
On February 03 2012 00:28 WaveofShadow wrote:
Alright, this is going to be a really long one, so I hope it doesn't get lost in the usual General Discussion stuff. I didn't want to make a new thread though becuase I'm not sure it deserves one. I would put it in blogs but I really want TL's opinion on this and I'm worried no one will read it.
My friends and I were having a discussion last night on our skills and recent events. Lately we've noticed we've been losing a lot more in normals than we used to. We've also noticed that whereas a couple months ago we were playing against unranked people (sometiems people under level 30) or fairly low ranked people in normals (who were still decently skilled, probably smurfing) now we are getting matched up with people considerably higher than us as a group, 14-1600 or so.
I figure the two are somehow related, except my W/L ratio in normals has remained stagnant forever (like over half a year probably?) Is the general populace improving? Do we just suck that much?
Related to this was a discussion on how to improve. We were watching Salce tear shit up on Orianna again last night and discussing the cs issue similar to the one discussed above (ie what is a good cs by 20 min) and were discussing how in pro/high elo games 200 by 20 min is more or less expected. And we have never really reached such a level, indicating that obviously there is much room for us to improve in that area. But upon analyzing Salce's play and our own we noticed something interesting.
The game we watched had a Morde laning mid against him. Whereas Morde is an excellent harasser very little harassment was taking palce. We noticed that in top lane as well. I always wondered why in my own games, it seems I have to choose between harassing and cs, and can't seem to do both at the same time to any effective degree. I was wondering, is this because I am bad? Probably. But I'm wondering if there is an elo factor involved as well. At my level, there is no such thing as a free-farm lane. Every laner is aggressive and harasses; they are not content to sit back and free-farm. In high elo games, it seems they play insanely passively, and just sit back and cs instead of whittling down their opponent to make a jungle gank easy; they'd rather attempt to 100-0% and dive when the jungler comes to gank.
Now hopefully people can follow my train of thought here. Obviously a player like Salce could play however he wants (either passive farming or super aggressive) and still win his lane/game at my elo, but to those of us who are less skilled, if we don't adapt to how the enemy chooses to play his lane, we will fall behind. All the discussion of matchups seems to somehow fall short in the face of this. If you play the matchup the way it is 'supposed' to be played according to high elo players at low elo, you may or may not win it, or at the very least it may not go the way you want it to because low elo players don't play the same way high elo players do.
I remember a little ways back I was having issues with Panth v Morde lane and everyone here told me Panth wins hands down, ezpz. But I couldn't do it for the life of me, against my friend who is considerable worse than me. I asked Smashgizmo, the resident expert to show me how to do it; he did and smashed my friend into the ground at level 1. I was never able to replicate this. (There are details behind this, but for the purposes of this discussion they're sort of irrelevant. I'll elaborate in another post if necessary.) I am wondering if this matchup had continued beyond the first 3 minutes of the game would Smash have easily have been able to farm up on Morde as well as cs? Probably....but it seems I'm missing something fundamental.
I don't think I'm an idiot, and I think by now I have a pretty good idea of how the game works. If you can wade your way through this jumbled mess of incoherent thoughts, please help.
I really want to improve myself and my laning (csing, when to leave mid to help other lanes without losing your mid tower, dragon timings, harassing...etc) but I have hit a major wall and am seeing a few problems in both my play as well as how the (meta)game works at my elo that appear to be contributing factors.
Is there something obvious I am missing? (I hope not.) Help me, oh wise subforum members!
If you're asking about why people play more passive when they don't have to - jungler ganks. A lot of people around 1600-1700 seem to think they're the shit and harass every time the dude tries to cs but later on they figure out they make themselves vulnerable to jungle ganks. For example a top laners that play agressive early levels generally don't get played as much as laners who can sustain after they get some farm and levels, because it's really, really easy for a jungler to gank top and get a kill even with flash. It's slightly harder in mid and hardest in bottom because of the support wards and supports CC. (and or carries escapes)
|
Ziggs benefits heavily from being very straightforward to play decently. His passive, Q and R are pure damage. The only finesse is in E and W. If he had to get nerfs I´d probably reduce the skillbonus on his passive by 2 secs and moved a bit more of his damage to satchels to make the a bit less utility/defense.
|
On February 03 2012 00:59 Slayer91 wrote:Show nested quote +On February 03 2012 00:28 WaveofShadow wrote:
Alright, this is going to be a really long one, so I hope it doesn't get lost in the usual General Discussion stuff. I didn't want to make a new thread though becuase I'm not sure it deserves one. I would put it in blogs but I really want TL's opinion on this and I'm worried no one will read it.
My friends and I were having a discussion last night on our skills and recent events. Lately we've noticed we've been losing a lot more in normals than we used to. We've also noticed that whereas a couple months ago we were playing against unranked people (sometiems people under level 30) or fairly low ranked people in normals (who were still decently skilled, probably smurfing) now we are getting matched up with people considerably higher than us as a group, 14-1600 or so.
I figure the two are somehow related, except my W/L ratio in normals has remained stagnant forever (like over half a year probably?) Is the general populace improving? Do we just suck that much?
Related to this was a discussion on how to improve. We were watching Salce tear shit up on Orianna again last night and discussing the cs issue similar to the one discussed above (ie what is a good cs by 20 min) and were discussing how in pro/high elo games 200 by 20 min is more or less expected. And we have never really reached such a level, indicating that obviously there is much room for us to improve in that area. But upon analyzing Salce's play and our own we noticed something interesting.
The game we watched had a Morde laning mid against him. Whereas Morde is an excellent harasser very little harassment was taking palce. We noticed that in top lane as well. I always wondered why in my own games, it seems I have to choose between harassing and cs, and can't seem to do both at the same time to any effective degree. I was wondering, is this because I am bad? Probably. But I'm wondering if there is an elo factor involved as well. At my level, there is no such thing as a free-farm lane. Every laner is aggressive and harasses; they are not content to sit back and free-farm. In high elo games, it seems they play insanely passively, and just sit back and cs instead of whittling down their opponent to make a jungle gank easy; they'd rather attempt to 100-0% and dive when the jungler comes to gank.
Now hopefully people can follow my train of thought here. Obviously a player like Salce could play however he wants (either passive farming or super aggressive) and still win his lane/game at my elo, but to those of us who are less skilled, if we don't adapt to how the enemy chooses to play his lane, we will fall behind. All the discussion of matchups seems to somehow fall short in the face of this. If you play the matchup the way it is 'supposed' to be played according to high elo players at low elo, you may or may not win it, or at the very least it may not go the way you want it to because low elo players don't play the same way high elo players do.
I remember a little ways back I was having issues with Panth v Morde lane and everyone here told me Panth wins hands down, ezpz. But I couldn't do it for the life of me, against my friend who is considerable worse than me. I asked Smashgizmo, the resident expert to show me how to do it; he did and smashed my friend into the ground at level 1. I was never able to replicate this. (There are details behind this, but for the purposes of this discussion they're sort of irrelevant. I'll elaborate in another post if necessary.) I am wondering if this matchup had continued beyond the first 3 minutes of the game would Smash have easily have been able to farm up on Morde as well as cs? Probably....but it seems I'm missing something fundamental.
I don't think I'm an idiot, and I think by now I have a pretty good idea of how the game works. If you can wade your way through this jumbled mess of incoherent thoughts, please help.
I really want to improve myself and my laning (csing, when to leave mid to help other lanes without losing your mid tower, dragon timings, harassing...etc) but I have hit a major wall and am seeing a few problems in both my play as well as how the (meta)game works at my elo that appear to be contributing factors.
Is there something obvious I am missing? (I hope not.) Help me, oh wise subforum members! If you're asking about why people play more passive when they don't have to - jungler ganks. A lot of people around 1600-1700 seem to think they're the shit and harass every time the dude tries to cs but later on they figure out they make themselves vulnerable to jungle ganks. For example a top laners that play agressive early levels generally don't get played as much as laners who can sustain after they get some farm and levels, because it's really, really easy for a jungler to gank top and get a kill even with flash. It's slightly harder in mid and hardest in bottom because of the support wards and supports CC. (and or carries escapes)
True, however at high elo junglers also know exactly when to take advantage of overaggressive laning. I know the reasons for passivity, and a large part of that doesn't exist in the same way at lower elo. I got my shit stomped yesterday by a Sion as gp when all I was trying to was keep up with him in farm. Even though he was pushed at my turret the whole time and didn't ward, my jungler didn't help, and the one time he did he came in at 1/3 health, with me at 1/2. We both died when their jungler came to countergank. As far as farming/sustaining goes I can play Nasus all damn day and farm up a storm, but that farm and winning my lane may or may not win me the game, especially since Nasus's presence doesn't kick in until mid-late game and his early game is weak.
I know there's no easy answer to this, I'm just hoping we can discuss until something comes up that will resonate and just click with me.
|
United States47024 Posts
On February 03 2012 00:41 WaveofShadow wrote:
This is something I've heard before; if this is true, it's so subtle I don't see how I could possibly learn it. How can you learn exactly when to harass on and against every champ and when to cs while doing both nearly perfectly? How does one acquire that skill? If it's through practice I don't see how that's possible either because as you climb through the elo ranks, the same matchup can get played in very different ways.
How the matchup resolves itself is a lot less dependent on how your opponent chooses to play than you're making it out to be. Regardless of whether your opponent is playing blindly aggressive, in a given game-state either it is favorable for you to make an exchange or it's not. If you can recognize when you can trade, and when you can't, you make very little sacrifice to do so--you trade when you can, and you avoid trades when you can't. If your low Elo lane opponent is playing blindly aggressive, then take all the trades you know you can win that he doesn't know he can't.
A high Elo player with a deep understanding of a given matchup will be looking to force engagements that are advantageous to them, and avoid engagements that are disadvantageous to them. That's pretty straightforward. A low Elo player that's got a poorer understanding of the matchup and is blindly playing aggressive will in many cases simply be attempting to exchanges which are disadvantageous to them. This doesn't require some enormous paradigm shift from a high Elo player to respond to--so long as he recognizes that in an engagement that he is at the advantage, he'll fight back. Is he going to miss some CS for it sometimes? Sure. But I'm sure Salce would be willing to give up 2-3 CS in order to let a low Elo lane opponent basically suicide to him.
|
I'm seriously considering buying Ziggs for his death animation alone.
"No no no no NO N- *boom*"
|
On February 03 2012 00:41 WaveofShadow wrote:Show nested quote +On February 03 2012 00:38 0123456789 wrote:On February 03 2012 00:28 WaveofShadow wrote:
Alright, this is going to be a really long one, so I hope it doesn't get lost in the usual General Discussion stuff. I didn't want to make a new thread though becuase I'm not sure it deserves one. I would put it in blogs but I really want TL's opinion on this and I'm worried no one will read it.
My friends and I were having a discussion last night on our skills and recent events. Lately we've noticed we've been losing a lot more in normals than we used to. We've also noticed that whereas a couple months ago we were playing against unranked people (sometiems people under level 30) or fairly low ranked people in normals (who were still decently skilled, probably smurfing) now we are getting matched up with people considerably higher than us as a group, 14-1600 or so.
I figure the two are somehow related, except my W/L ratio in normals has remained stagnant forever (like over half a year probably?) Is the general populace improving? Do we just suck that much?
Related to this was a discussion on how to improve. We were watching Salce tear shit up on Orianna again last night and discussing the cs issue similar to the one discussed above (ie what is a good cs by 20 min) and were discussing how in pro/high elo games 200 by 20 min is more or less expected. And we have never really reached such a level, indicating that obviously there is much room for us to improve in that area. But upon analyzing Salce's play and our own we noticed something interesting.
The game we watched had a Morde laning mid against him. Whereas Morde is an excellent harasser very little harassment was taking palce. We noticed that in top lane as well. I always wondered why in my own games, it seems I have to choose between harassing and cs, and can't seem to do both at the same time to any effective degree. I was wondering, is this because I am bad? Probably. But I'm wondering if there is an elo factor involved as well. At my level, there is no such thing as a free-farm lane. Every laner is aggressive and harasses; they are not content to sit back and free-farm. In high elo games, it seems they play insanely passively, and just sit back and cs instead of whittling down their opponent to make a jungle gank easy; they'd rather attempt to 100-0% and dive when the jungler comes to gank.
Now hopefully people can follow my train of thought here. Obviously a player like Salce could play however he wants (either passive farming or super aggressive) and still win his lane/game at my elo, but to those of us who are less skilled, if we don't adapt to how the enemy chooses to play his lane, we will fall behind. All the discussion of matchups seems to somehow fall short in the face of this. If you play the matchup the way it is 'supposed' to be played according to high elo players at low elo, you may or may not win it, or at the very least it may not go the way you want it to because low elo players don't play the same way high elo players do.
I remember a little ways back I was having issues with Panth v Morde lane and everyone here told me Panth wins hands down, ezpz. But I couldn't do it for the life of me, against my friend who is considerable worse than me. I asked Smashgizmo, the resident expert to show me how to do it; he did and smashed my friend into the ground at level 1. I was never able to replicate this. (There are details behind this, but for the purposes of this discussion they're sort of irrelevant. I'll elaborate in another post if necessary.) I am wondering if this matchup had continued beyond the first 3 minutes of the game would Smash have easily have been able to farm up on Morde as well as cs? Probably....but it seems I'm missing something fundamental.
I don't think I'm an idiot, and I think by now I have a pretty good idea of how the game works. If you can wade your way through this jumbled mess of incoherent thoughts, please help.
I really want to improve myself and my laning (csing, when to leave mid to help other lanes without losing your mid tower, dragon timings, harassing...etc) but I have hit a major wall and am seeing a few problems in both my play as well as how the (meta)game works at my elo that appear to be contributing factors.
Is there something obvious I am missing? (I hope not.) Help me, oh wise subforum members! Without any actual visual evidence of what you did wrong, there is nothing to tell. You can only give theorycraft like reasons, as to what you are not doing correctly. I'm not just asking what I'm doing wrong, I'm also wondering if there's any merit to my thoughts discussion the differences between low/high elo games and csing vs harrassing or if there really is a very good way to balance the two at any elo. People's personal experiences are welcome here. Edit: Show nested quote +It all comes down to game sense, mechanics, and knowledge. What makes good players good is really so broad that its hard to define, but really the difference between a high elo player and you is that a high elo player knows exactly how they can make their trades in lane count, they rarely miss cs, and they know when they can play aggressive or when they need to play passive deducing from jungle patterns, the position of their team and map objectives, and map awareness. Thats just for the laning phase. This is something I've heard before; if this is true, it's so subtle I don't see how I could possibly learn it. How can you learn exactly when to harass on and against every champ and when to cs while doing both nearly perfectly? How does one acquire that skill? If it's through practice I don't see how that's possible either because as you climb through the elo ranks, the same matchup can get played in very different ways.
There is no secret to getting better other than playing thousands of games and thinking critically about every action you make, and using that information to never repeat those mistakes again. You dont need to know how to harass on and against every champion, most high elo players will move up the ranks by mastering one champion until they know exactly when they are strong in lane, when they are weak, and how they can win or atleast stay even in every matchup specific to that one champion.
For example, I have a friend who, in season 1, got to 2k by playing ~400 games with katarina. Hotshotgg probably has close to 1000 games played with nidalee alone. Focus on mastering a small set of champions, adding more to your playbook when it becomes necessary.
|
On February 03 2012 01:08 WaveofShadow wrote:Show nested quote +On February 03 2012 00:59 Slayer91 wrote:On February 03 2012 00:28 WaveofShadow wrote:
Alright, this is going to be a really long one, so I hope it doesn't get lost in the usual General Discussion stuff. I didn't want to make a new thread though becuase I'm not sure it deserves one. I would put it in blogs but I really want TL's opinion on this and I'm worried no one will read it.
My friends and I were having a discussion last night on our skills and recent events. Lately we've noticed we've been losing a lot more in normals than we used to. We've also noticed that whereas a couple months ago we were playing against unranked people (sometiems people under level 30) or fairly low ranked people in normals (who were still decently skilled, probably smurfing) now we are getting matched up with people considerably higher than us as a group, 14-1600 or so.
I figure the two are somehow related, except my W/L ratio in normals has remained stagnant forever (like over half a year probably?) Is the general populace improving? Do we just suck that much?
Related to this was a discussion on how to improve. We were watching Salce tear shit up on Orianna again last night and discussing the cs issue similar to the one discussed above (ie what is a good cs by 20 min) and were discussing how in pro/high elo games 200 by 20 min is more or less expected. And we have never really reached such a level, indicating that obviously there is much room for us to improve in that area. But upon analyzing Salce's play and our own we noticed something interesting.
The game we watched had a Morde laning mid against him. Whereas Morde is an excellent harasser very little harassment was taking palce. We noticed that in top lane as well. I always wondered why in my own games, it seems I have to choose between harassing and cs, and can't seem to do both at the same time to any effective degree. I was wondering, is this because I am bad? Probably. But I'm wondering if there is an elo factor involved as well. At my level, there is no such thing as a free-farm lane. Every laner is aggressive and harasses; they are not content to sit back and free-farm. In high elo games, it seems they play insanely passively, and just sit back and cs instead of whittling down their opponent to make a jungle gank easy; they'd rather attempt to 100-0% and dive when the jungler comes to gank.
Now hopefully people can follow my train of thought here. Obviously a player like Salce could play however he wants (either passive farming or super aggressive) and still win his lane/game at my elo, but to those of us who are less skilled, if we don't adapt to how the enemy chooses to play his lane, we will fall behind. All the discussion of matchups seems to somehow fall short in the face of this. If you play the matchup the way it is 'supposed' to be played according to high elo players at low elo, you may or may not win it, or at the very least it may not go the way you want it to because low elo players don't play the same way high elo players do.
I remember a little ways back I was having issues with Panth v Morde lane and everyone here told me Panth wins hands down, ezpz. But I couldn't do it for the life of me, against my friend who is considerable worse than me. I asked Smashgizmo, the resident expert to show me how to do it; he did and smashed my friend into the ground at level 1. I was never able to replicate this. (There are details behind this, but for the purposes of this discussion they're sort of irrelevant. I'll elaborate in another post if necessary.) I am wondering if this matchup had continued beyond the first 3 minutes of the game would Smash have easily have been able to farm up on Morde as well as cs? Probably....but it seems I'm missing something fundamental.
I don't think I'm an idiot, and I think by now I have a pretty good idea of how the game works. If you can wade your way through this jumbled mess of incoherent thoughts, please help.
I really want to improve myself and my laning (csing, when to leave mid to help other lanes without losing your mid tower, dragon timings, harassing...etc) but I have hit a major wall and am seeing a few problems in both my play as well as how the (meta)game works at my elo that appear to be contributing factors.
Is there something obvious I am missing? (I hope not.) Help me, oh wise subforum members! If you're asking about why people play more passive when they don't have to - jungler ganks. A lot of people around 1600-1700 seem to think they're the shit and harass every time the dude tries to cs but later on they figure out they make themselves vulnerable to jungle ganks. For example a top laners that play agressive early levels generally don't get played as much as laners who can sustain after they get some farm and levels, because it's really, really easy for a jungler to gank top and get a kill even with flash. It's slightly harder in mid and hardest in bottom because of the support wards and supports CC. (and or carries escapes) True, however at high elo junglers also know exactly when to take advantage of overaggressive laning. I know the reasons for passivity, and a large part of that doesn't exist in the same way at lower elo. I got my shit stomped yesterday by a Sion as gp when all I was trying to was keep up with him in farm. Even though he was pushed at my turret the whole time and didn't ward, my jungler didn't help, and the one time he did he came in at 1/3 health, with me at 1/2. We both died when their jungler came to countergank. As far as farming/sustaining goes I can play Nasus all damn day and farm up a storm, but that farm and winning my lane may or may not win me the game, especially since Nasus's presence doesn't kick in until mid-late game and his early game is weak. I know there's no easy answer to this, I'm just hoping we can discuss until something comes up that will resonate and just click with me.
I'm aware high elo junglers know how to exploit overagressive laners. That's why Salce and the opposing morde were playing passively. Where's the contradiction, here?
I've never had a problem with Nasus not being a presence at any point in the game. TP can make or break games. You're always naturally tanky (and your base damage without farmed Q is still very high since nobody has levels or defense). You just need to get tank items first so you can engage without getting raped by AP's with really high damage early on. (all of them).
If anything, Nasus gets a lot weaker late game when AD carries are a huge threat. Midgame is Nasus' main power point, AD carries can't 5 shot everyone and AP's burst has been outscaled by your defense and they are forced to focus on other targets.
As for how to play with a poor jungler, you just need to play smart. You can push your lane at the start and be very agressive against a jungler you predict isn't going to gank level 2, which means he won't be ganking until at the earliest level 3, and probably needs 4 and red to kill you. You push hard, play agressive, go back to base, lane will push back and you can continue to play agressive. This is a pattern that has nothing to do with jungle play. If you're scared of level two ganks, you just play passive early and come back with a ward when it starts pushing out. Ganking people who have been pushed all game and then the tower pushes out so they didn't even have a chance to ward is one of my favourite "evil" things to do.
A "low elo jungler" and a "jungler who can't afford to spend time top lane" is essentially the same thing so you need to learn to play when their jungler can come when you push but yours doesn't if you want to be a top class laner. Normally the only champs who can do this is (surprise surprise) the sustainy bruisers/ap bruisers like vlad, rumble, kennen. Gp is a master at both passively farming and playing agressive. Very versatile choice.
If their jungler commits a lot of time to top but you DONT die or let it hurt you significantly, usually you will be ahead in other lanes. Not all the time, but in general. If the jungler spends time top and kills you, he probably will be ahead because mid and top are harder to gank anyway.
|
On February 03 2012 01:09 TheYango wrote:Show nested quote +On February 03 2012 00:41 WaveofShadow wrote:
This is something I've heard before; if this is true, it's so subtle I don't see how I could possibly learn it. How can you learn exactly when to harass on and against every champ and when to cs while doing both nearly perfectly? How does one acquire that skill? If it's through practice I don't see how that's possible either because as you climb through the elo ranks, the same matchup can get played in very different ways. How the matchup resolves itself is a lot less dependent on how your opponent chooses to play than you're making it out to be. Regardless of whether your opponent is playing blindly aggressive, in a given game-state either it is favorable for you to make an exchange or it's not. If you can recognize when you can trade, and when you can't, you make very little sacrifice to do so--you trade when you can, and you avoid trades when you can't. If your low Elo lane opponent is playing blindly aggressive, then take all the trades you know you can win that he doesn't know he can't. A high Elo player with a deep understanding of a given matchup will be looking to force engagements that are advantageous to them, and avoid engagements that are disadvantageous to them. That's pretty straightforward. A low Elo player that's got a poorer understanding of the matchup and is blindly playing aggressive will in many cases simply be attempting to exchanges which are disadvantageous to them. This doesn't require some enormous paradigm shift from a high Elo player to respond to--so long as he recognizes that in an engagement that he is at the advantage, he'll fight back. Is he going to miss some CS for it sometimes? Sure. But I'm sure Salce would be willing to give up 2-3 CS in order to let a low Elo lane opponent basically suicide to him.
Jesus Yango, you are always so damn insightful. This is a good one to think about for me, I think. As far as WHEN exchanges are advantageous or not is another story entirely, and that's probably something concrete I can work on. If I can work on my csing and said exchanges, next step will be to work on refining when to go help out other lanes when I have a lead (ie on Leblanc) in order to snowball the game into a victory, as I know I am not always capable of doing so.
I'm aware high elo junglers know how to exploit overagressive laners. That's why Salce and the opposing morde were playing passively. Where's the contradiction, here?
I was trying to get across that overaggressive laners are more of an issue because I have to deal with them myself as opposed to hoping for a jungler gank. Playing passively while I get harrassed to death is not an option at my elo much of the time because it is very difficult to depend on team-mates, unlike for Salce and said Morde.
And Numbers, I won't be able to check your post out for a few hours but this seems really useful, thanks a lot.
|
|
|
|
|
|
EPT
