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On July 10 2014 16:40 obesechicken13 wrote:
LoL tournaments have a lot of champion variety too. I recall one reddit thread saying like 70 of them were used but many were only used once and by some minor teams in the group stages.
Well I looked, last worlds had 69 champs used over 63 games, and I think the number of viable picks has only dropped.
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On July 10 2014 17:59 krndandaman wrote:
yeah I don't really get quillcoat. I've seen it several times in my games and never have I really though "oh wow this item is good". only jungler I liked it on was maokai. well he got buffed in general too so maybe that's another reason I was kinda impressed by it.
feel like quill coat is just a worse version of spirit stone
i get alot lower than before if id had golem stone with the 20% damage increase + the mana/life steal id be doing fine.
think you can start cloth armor + 5 now if youre going golem stone though, the extra pot and armor should help out alot imo
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NA LCS-Summer: 59 champs in 72 games
EU LCS-Summer: 53 champs in 72 games
Champion's Summer: 40 champs in 36 games
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On July 10 2014 18:41 Gahlo wrote:
NA LCS-Summer: 59 champs in 72 games
EU LCS-Summer: 53 champs in 72 games
Champion's Summer: 40 champs in 36 games
That isn't very good considering there's even patches in between to add a bit of variety.
Not going to put it on the difference in draft phase only.
Riot also has a nasty habit of nerfing anything that is strong into oblivion, and immediately removing anything that is appearing somewhere they don't want it to be(see top lane soraka). Not only did they nerf it in such a way that top lane soraka was no longer viable, but even the occasional soraka support pick you saw was simply gone.
+ Show Spoiler [list of unviable champs atm] +
akali: soloq issues, therefore must stay weak
alistar - viable, but a host of issues stemming from his jungle days.
amumu - tanky jungler, may be resolved
anivia - nerf enough initiators/strong gankers/laners and she might see play. Too easy to abuse with good coordination.
Ashe - see above
blitz - very one dimensional, thresh does almost the same with much less risk.
Brand - various
cass - damage is fine, but mobility creep
Cho - no good place to put him atm, having a big hitbox is no longer good enough to protect squishies.
darius
diana - kit is good, just needs a bit of help
fid - effectiveness drastically reduced by good warding/teams
fiora - many issues
galio, GP garen graves hec heimer all have some issues relating to nerfs and stuff
janna - S4 has not been kind to her
kat - s4 supports are much less squishy, junglers as well. Also mid laners have generally only gotten stronger in lane
kennen(+khazix/LB) - nerfs OP
liss - kit bugs, needs a buff as well
lux - nerfs, meta
malph - mostly a meta issue
malz - kit
maokai tanky jungler
yi
MF - rise of tanky junglers may see a return
morde - pushes all day, viable if farmed.
nasus - nerfed
naut -Tanky jung.
nid - reworked
olaf - failed rework
panth - nerfs
poppy -
quinn - no good place to put her
rammus - nerfs, soloq centric kit
riven - nerfs, soloq centric
rumble nerfs
sej - tanky jungl
shaco - soloq issues. Even pro play if he was buffed back to his terror days
Shen - Ult bug. Lol.
singed -nerfs
Sion - nerfs(AP was viable)
sivir - nerfs, kit
skarner - reworked
sona - nerfed
soraka- nerfed
swain - kit not good for competitive play
talon - soloq assassin
taric - rework/nerfs
teemo - nerfs, soloq
trundle - nerfs
tryn - soloq issues
udyr - nerfs, playstyle doesn't fit meta
urgot - nerfed
varus - non-meta
veigar - gets destroyed by a lot of common pro picks, hard to protect.
velkoz - dunno what he needs?
vi - nerfed
viktor -kit issues
vlad - nerfed
voli - nerfed
ww - kit issues
wukong -nerfed
xerath - rework>fail
xin - nerfed
yorick - time has not been good to him
zac - nerfed(buffed recently)
zed - nerfed
zilean - kit issues
That list was a lot bigger than I expected. Some of the listed champs may be somewhat common, but recent nerfs may catch up to them and kick them out of the meta.
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TL;DR there are too many Lina amongst old LoL champs (and by old I don't mean "original 40" but more like "pre-mid-3").
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I think that list is a bit sloppy, there are a few champs on there which are optimal or top two (in case the optimal is banned due to meta etc) in a specific niche but simply out of "meta".
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On July 10 2014 19:49 Duvon wrote:
I think that list is a bit sloppy, there are a few champs on there which are optimal or top two (in case the optimal is banned due to meta etc) in a specific niche but simply out of "meta".
Please enlighten me as to which ones they are.
While I realize that a number of those picks as far as junglers go are picked because the best ones are banned out, that doesn't mean they are in a good place. Basically no pro players would take a xin or wukong over the top 3, and maybe even J4/vi. They are picked out of necessity rather than because they are good, which is not a good place to be.
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On July 10 2014 16:51 sob3k wrote:
I dont understand quillcoat.....
-Riot wants to buff tanky utility junglers.
-The reason tanky utility junglers arent played is because enemy duelist jungles waltz into your jungle and teabag you early game.
-Riot releases quillcoat and updates golem. An item with absolutely awful early (<65%) gold efficiency which only becomes decent lategame when combined with several other defensive items.
- wat
Am i missing something here?
-Riot wants to buff tanky utility junglers
-The reason tanky utility junglers aren't played is because they farm slowly and don't do that much damage during ganks and early fights
-Riot releases quill coat which is actually worse than spirit stone for farming jungle and nerfs ancient golem's farm speed by doing so
"Counterjungling" is a word used a lot by bad players who think it's something that happens a lot. Most of the time your team can collapse and it ends up terribly OR you just walk away and lose nothing. The worst thing that can happen is dying at red buff when he goes red-->red but that can easily be stopped by either doing wolves and wraiths and let them either start red themselves and risk dying or wait and do nothing (you can ward it) or just going blue-->red directly and if you're not really slow you can easily do it.
Other than that you just have buff steals which are caused mainly by arriving at your buff too late by sometimes they can 2v2 if they are way ahead.
(I guess they can m5 it by pushing lanes early and steal it but even then the worst case is you lose your red buff if you don't manage to steal theirs)
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To answer your question about Vel'Koz, he just doesn't fit into current strategies. I actually think he is one of Riot's best designed champs and really enjoy playing him, but he needs other champs with him to shine in a pro setting. Maybe if Amumu/Sej/wombo combo styles come back he'll see play. His kit is coherent and his strengths and weaknesses are clear. He also has potential in both mid and support roles.
That said though, Orianna is the gate keeper on the wombo combo mid, and she's seemingly immune from nerfs (not that I necessarily think they are needed). Well, she keeps 85% of mid champs out of pro play, but still.
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Almost anything Orianna bullies, Syndra bullies harder, save for what she beats due to her passive (namely melee mids). You can then add the match-ups where Orianna doesn't lose thanks to her shield, they become harder (if she can salvage them with Scatter the Weak) or losing for Syndra.
That list of "unviable" champs doesn't make a distinction between "weak" and "unviable", and lobs together the "non-meta" and "nerfed" champions, which I deem a bad idea because the difference in how to treat them is huge.
Basically, the current state (strong towers, Heal, Exhaust, absurdly safe champions like Ziggs) means that lane bullies reliant on an early advantage to keep relevance, and the assassins, don't have a good environment to strive in.
The state of the jungle (early game presence, good clear, high damage) precludes tanks, who are often initiator, from being good picks. This in turn means that unless you're willing to run a "no-frontline" comp (often double AP, the burst variant of it is shut down hard by popular picks like Shyvana; the "utility/sustained damage" variant (putting Kayle, Lulu, etc. in the off-lane) works better atm), you need a tanky champion in the off lane. Sometimes you get away with a lightweight built tanky (the way Irelia is played/built atm when she doesn't snowball), but champions won can't really afford it are phased out (Teemo, Quinn, Jayce, etc.).
The lane swaps and "jungle couples" also makes "laning" champions (like Pantheon) who prefer early fighting to passive farming weaker in the off lane.
Mobility creep screws several champions (Cassiopeia, compare to Ryze who can build tanky to afford it and has steadier dps/no skillshot reliance; Olaf, Viktor, Nasus post-range nerf, Malzahar, etc.) over.
Power creep means that kits rifed with utility still compete with others in damage, especially the burst ones. This makes low utility champions and those whose shtick was "tons of damage" obsolete as they don't deal enough to stay relevant (and they'd need to be buffed to much higher burst than Riot would ever accept to make up for the lack of utility). This include champions like Mordekaiser and especially Brand (he came out as a "high damage mage" "based on skillshots", now there are skillshots everywhere and his damage is only average so he brings nothing to the table, even in terms of AoE where Ziggs has more burst than him... ).
How slow and forgiving the game currently is also makes all early and/or midgame oriented champions non-desirable because they may become a liability without any guarantee that you'll come out ahead of "their" phases of the game anymore (Sion, Taric, Pantheon, Darius, any pick in a context of early roaming like Alistar).
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United Kingdom50293 Posts
I think vel'koz has seen some decent play in NLB tournaments, yet to see him in anything major though (Not counting the technically didn't exist SK vs gambit match)
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I don't think velkoz has potential as a mid laner.No mobility on mid and no instant clear just doesn't work together.He is ok as a support but zyra just outclasses him as a teamfighting damage based support and karma is a better lane bully.
Also something that is often overlooked is his model is really fat and it is easier to hit him with skillshots.
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Vel'Koz actually has stronger peeling outside of her ult (his E is much more powerful than hers as well as easier to hit, he has a slow) and his ult has relly high base damage. Zyra's base damage is loaded in her plans, which while indeed stupidly high, can be dealt with and are harder to "direct" to a target.
If you're not looking at teamwide disengage, he doesn't do that bad. I'd like to see Annie some more, but because she's burst oriented she's bad too in the current state (too many heals, and shields, and Satchel Charges that you can't get a 100% kill or more from a good Tibbers, which I believe should be the case as long as your team is behind you).
Edit: his model also floats, which should make him harder to hit if Kayle and Galio are any indication. 
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Vel'Koz got played in Masters but I'm not positive if that means the koreans think he's good or not because there were some pretty clowny picks in masters from time to time.
to add to the conversation though, as much as I feel like competitive lol could benefit from interwoven bans, I think the bigger problem is things riot deems "toxic", because auras, front loaded power curves, and hard lockdown are all TOXIC, the pick phase almost always comes down to "most op still available"
if riot would allow more hard lockdown, and possibly a forcestaff type item, I think it would really cut down on how much mobility basically trumps everything else about a champion.
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All that talk of jungle Darius in the past couple of pages wants me to bust out the D-man in the jungle again. I'll (hopefully) play some games of jungle Darius tonight and then I'll post here later with my impressions. I don't think he's anything special in the jungle due to his lack of mobility, but I can maybe work around that.
I wonder if he can duel an Evelyn...
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United States47024 Posts
On July 10 2014 15:52 wei2coolman wrote:Show nested quote +On July 10 2014 15:35 Amui wrote:
For anybody who's not watching TI4/checking the dota forum, so far there have been 76 different picks in 36 games. I don't think we've seen 76 picks across NA EU and OGN, which has more than 5x the games played.
Please Riot, tell me more about how a more complex ban phase reduces variety. Well, you'd have to compare it to 5 upfront bans vs 5 interwoven bans, not 3 upfront bans vs 5 interwoven bans. Also, it would also help if they'd stop making champions fill the same niche.
For me, the bothersome thing about it is that all arguments Riot puts out against more bans are purely philosophical.
Riot's put far more ridiculous things on PBE that never made it to live, but they've never given more bans/interwoven bans that consideration. All arguments against it have been speculative guesses at what would happen. If they had a live gameplay test of a new banning format, it would be one thing, but the idea's simply never gotten that far.
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They've been entrenched so far on the subject they probably don't want to be shown to be just BSing by testing it and having to deal with being wrong.
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On July 11 2014 00:22 TheYango wrote:Show nested quote +On July 10 2014 15:52 wei2coolman wrote:On July 10 2014 15:35 Amui wrote:
For anybody who's not watching TI4/checking the dota forum, so far there have been 76 different picks in 36 games. I don't think we've seen 76 picks across NA EU and OGN, which has more than 5x the games played.
Please Riot, tell me more about how a more complex ban phase reduces variety. Well, you'd have to compare it to 5 upfront bans vs 5 interwoven bans, not 3 upfront bans vs 5 interwoven bans. Also, it would also help if they'd stop making champions fill the same niche. For me, the bothersome thing about it is that all arguments Riot puts out against more bans are purely philosophical. Riot's put far more ridiculous things on PBE that never made it to live, but they've never given more bans/interwoven bans that consideration. All arguments against it have been speculative guesses at what would happen. If they had a live gameplay test of a new banning format, it would be one thing, but the idea's simply never gotten that far.
Honestly most of the reasoning riot ever gives is just a big wall of text that doesn't really say anything.
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As with so many game companies Riot believes they know better then their players because "reasons" despite other games in the same genre being just fine with the situation being proposed.
Its not like they couldn't add a ban and if it really did screw over the system take that ban away again explaining why. Its the benefit of an online only game. You can try stuff like that out. Heck try it out in normal if your afraid you will somehow destroy Ranked, which btw it wont.
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login servers keep timing out for me, is anyone else able to get in?
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EPT
