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TEST REPORT: 01/25/13
The primary conclusion of our testing for today is that Thresh is an overpowered champion. His incredible amount of utility, scalability, and versatility make him absolutely frightening in the right hands. Whether support, jungle, or pseudo-AD carry, Thresh is an absolute monster, winning every game he took part in. Even when pitted against an oppressive trilane Thresh still excelled, collected souls, and farmed. Expect to see the AD scaling on his Q passive nerfed before long.
Carry Jungle, the name of which has fallen into dispute due to misconceptions, testing had mixed success. Most attempts failed due to poor champion picks, lopsided lane performances, or executions issues. Bladeorade did successfully execute a carry jungle on Shaco, farming as much or more than almost all lanes. Still, more research needs to be given to this topic as it was overshadowed by others.
AP Duo Lanes were seen a number of times, though often against each other. It's difficult to come to any conclusions regarding this, but there seems to be value in it when an AD champion is mid. Especially with long range, speedy casters like Xerath or Malzahar, the threat to short range ADs is very high. Tests need to be run involving longer range ADs such as Caitlyn or Ezreal.
Both Nocturne and Shyvana were used as lane champions during tests, to significant success. Nocturne absolutely demolished Kha'zix middle, paving the way to a one sided victory. Shyvana managed to win top lane versus Corki, which is notable in that range is a considerable advantage against a melee champion. Her build was unusual, but there may be merit to putting the jungle behind her and using her top.
Double/Triple Hook was featured in a couple games, in fact we had Quadruple Hook. Quintuple Hook failed because red8D did not have Diana. The hook pressure from a Thresh/Blitz bottom lane combined with Nautilus jungle and Darius top was immense. While Team 2 dodged many, many hooks, eventually the sheer volume was unavoidable. However, with a strong teamfighting composition it might have been possible to turn things around. Sadly, one player needed to go suddenly and the test was compromised.
Clairvoyance only made an appearance in one game. Unfortunately, it was used in Inschato on Lux 1v2 against a Thresh/Blitz lane. Inshato made a great effort, even getting a kill 2v2 during a jungle gank, but the strength of double hooks was too much. I'll let him share his thoughts on the usefulness of CV.
All tests were inhouses, and were very fun. Hopefully we'll be able to continue to field full groups, though perhaps we'll be a little more focused in future weeks (a little :3).
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I think I would have done a bit better in that 1v2 lane if I had actually known it was going to be a 1v2 lane going into it (I was runed/masteried/item-started for supporting). Only a little though, the punishment for getting hooked at all was basically death or at least a flash and I was heavily zoned most of the time.
CV is still fairly useful for chasing kills through bushes, checking buffs/dragons, and making ganks safer, you just have to wager if that's worth losing an exhaust or whatever you're replacing (if you put CV on your mid for instance, which I used to do when my support wouldn't take CV in season 1 when it was so much more useful with the predictable jungle paths.)
Also think the nocturne mid was a little spoiled from Kha'zix starting machete by accident, and I also really want to see how he does against say a ranged AP mid, or scarier jungler ganks. I feel like there are probably some mids that can kite him too strongly. Ryze should probably wreck him, Mordekaiser would be an interesting one..
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My notes:
I beat a Caitlyn mid as Nocturne pretty handily too (surprisingly). Stayed even on farm and escaped Cho ganks with spell shield, and if I ever got on top of her, she was dead. He plays pretty similarly to Kha'zix, except he's a lot more ult reliant. In the game where a Nocturne beat Kha'zix, Nocturne was level 6 extremely early, which led to an early gank at bottom (for Malzahar/Thresh against Sivir/Leona), which resulted in two deaths. This gave Malz/Thresh level 6 first, at which point it was pretty much impossible to do anything at all against them, and farming was extremely risky.
I tried a Hybrid build as Shyvana against Corki. My reasoning was as follows: I felt like Triforce/Frozen Mallet would be insufficient to be able to stick to Corki, but Gunblade's slow would be enough to stay on him even after he used valkyrie (which is largely how it worked out). My build ended up being: Gunblade/Rageblade/Warmogs/Warden's Mail/Iceborn Gauntlet. I felt like it takes an extremely long time before you reach a payoff point, but it's about as good as a more standard Shyvana build.
If you were doing a more normal build, you'd likely go BT/Wit's End (or maybe hydra). If you go my hybrid route, you lose some AD/MR/and the magic damage from Wit's End, but you gain a lot of AP and spell vamp. The AP basically offsets the damage from Wit's End (spread out over her e and r), so you get a lot of extra spell vamp and gunblade's active, at the cost of some MR and AD. Early on you feel the loses of both the MR and AD, but later on with the vamp/spell vamp and regeneration, you're essentially unkillable. Also Gunblade synergizes with her really well, since the active part of it comes back very quickly when you have a lot of attack speed.
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I was actually pretty even or even ahead on farm in the noct vs kha matchup. Lvl 1 before spellshield i could do more damage with less mana, the main thing is kha can't really push lane while trading like noct can, so he not only clears the wave faster pre 6 but can out trade with his spellshield. I had to either wait for it to pop, or pop with q to hit with w and back up to not take auto damage with his incrased AS. Obviously I'm a janitor for a reason because I couldn't wrap my mind around the idea that I was not jungling until 20 seconds into the game...lol
However, other than that, if noct did push like that and we didn't do the "carry jungler" thing that would make noct extremely susceptible to ganks (i mean ganks when I'm not pre6 with a machete and no mana due to trying to push back the wave for 5 minutes)
I could pop spellshield with q and then kha + jarvan combo burst could nearly kill noct basically on will when his flash is down. After I grabbed tear and had ult I nearly could kill but I misplayed a lot and darius came as well. The noct gank bot was my bad though, because I knew he backed and I pushed back and bought, but right when I got back to lane noct ulted in bot. Should have given a heads up in chat, since can't call mia when the person mia is in the same TS as you lololol. But after 6 I was still ahead on farm (but down the kill) but bot and top lost really hard. Sivir's range is way too short vs malz, although I think they could have possibly won lane if noct didn't gank. Yorick is an asshole so that's completely understandable though.
I think one thing we could have done was have jarv hold mid while I ganked bot, so he could still get his farm, keep noct at bay, and I could help other lanes. Like when we did go bot we got a double when you were at the tier 2 turret. But at that point we were just way too far behind anyway for that to matter.
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Noct has been a good laner since he came out. Why no one ask me if he was any good?
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I think most people are aware that Nocturne and Shyvana are quite capable laners, but the excuse you always hear for Nocturne is "He can't control when he pushes lane." Top lane that's a bit of an issue, but mid lane, who cares when the wave resets 10 seconds later anyways?
I think Nocturne probably would have issues against sustained damage casters, but I imagine avoiding that sort of matchup would be pretty easy.
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The shyana top vs. Corki game was the game I play carry shaco and for the first like four minutes I was top making sure shyvana would win lane and she did actually end up behind a level when I focused on other lanes and farming.so I'm not sure that's the best game for study.
Also I really liked carry jungle shaco with thresh. Shaco has a great way in good sticking power and can dodge a lot while assassinating. Thresh has the CC tools and utility to get him out in between Q cooldowns. This lets Shaco Q back in as opposed to having to use it to get out. I also just really like playing Shaco lol.
Just wanted to apologize for the game I left. Had a personal emergency where my girlfriend would prolly kick my ass if I kept playing lol. So sorry for leaving.
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I was pretty sure that Lux was coming with me for the duo mid and Fiddles was going to be the sacrificial lamb vs Tresh Blitz.
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Most important thing we learned: Nunu drops 2 souls on death.
omgomg
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On January 26 2013 21:41 Dandel Ion wrote:
Most important thing we learned: Nunu drops 2 souls on death.
omgomg
Wait... really? Because I wondered jokingly about that earlier.
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no mention of my jungle draven ;(. I thought it was a fantastic test of what a ranged ad carry jungler can do.
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The Draven+Lux duo ganks were pretty spectacular.
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I was spectating a few games yesterday too, and I saw a LOT of people surviving and then for some reason turning around and going right back in to die. Generally it was against non standard champ picks (for example, nunu vs soraka mid, soraka did this twice for reasons unknown). Just saying that's one thing to work on (getting a feel for damage potentials) because that's often why people are losing lane rather than "X is so op against Y."
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On January 27 2013 00:13 Sermokala wrote:
no mention of my jungle draven ;(. I thought it was a fantastic test of what a ranged ad carry jungler can do.
Sorry about that, if you'd like to share your thoughts I'd appreciate it.
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On January 27 2013 04:03 Seuss wrote:Show nested quote +On January 27 2013 00:13 Sermokala wrote:
no mention of my jungle draven ;(. I thought it was a fantastic test of what a ranged ad carry jungler can do. Sorry about that, if you'd like to share your thoughts I'd appreciate it.
I'll make a post when I get home. I only got to be in one game beacuse we had so many people but it was a lot of fun.
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Well about jungle draven His ganks are very strong at any point of the game. Just ask gandisauce (who totally bailed as soon as the game was over) how frustrating and effective they were even on a mid jayce. If you have jungle draven you don't need a ranged adc bot and that frees up a lot for you. He can build into a second rate adc (much like how madlife would build a second rate apc out of the support role with zyra or lux) very effectively and backup the main adc a ton if you chose to get a ranged adc or not.
After playing a bit around with the build I think I can forgo the early vamp and just go stright cloth 5 pot into a pickaxe before finishing the tabi and getting a vamp. building a whisper first after this is important. The vamp is enough for sustain for now and because your in the jungle you don't really have the gold or need really for a thirster and a wisper will do more damage much in the same way that a void will do more damage then a hat. a pickaxe before vamp is needed a lot as just having 10 ad for you to do stuff out of after 2k gold is very very lacking. You don't need defensive items that much because of the range of your attacks and kit.. sotd ga is what I prefer late game after thirster whisper warmogs tabi. sotd works pretty well with draven as his axes can critically strike with their bonus physical damage effect (ie a +85% axe spinning axe will crit for 200% meaning a total of 370% of your physical damage per axe when your sotd effect is up) it will be very important to have 2 axe strikes at least for late game for your sotd effect so I would suggest that you save it for when you grab an axe twice in a team fight.
Now the bad parts that I found. The way his passive works makes farming really really frustrating and may feel very slow. The way that it works is that if you proc his passive it will deal say 40 damage. that damage is delt over 4 second which means that it only procs the dot at the next second. The axe will lane on the ground after 2 seconds so that means that the passive will deal 20 damage over those 2 second. the next time you attack there are 2 stacks of the passive still waiting to go into effect so when you proc another one of his passive's with your axes it will roll over the damage making it 60 damage over 4 seconds for 15 damage per second. replace axes with critting late game and you get the same result. This is entirely unhelpful really when farming as you'll be either smiting away a lot of dots or you'll be overkilling small creeps. Another huge downside to draven is that he takes a lot of skill and his axe juggling can be very akward in the jungle especially when you are in a stressful situation like getting ganked at your wraiths and made to look like a newb when your trying to get over to where the axe will be caught instead of looking out for dieing.
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According to the wiki, it would stack to 285% instead:
Spinning Axe-enhanced attacks can critically strike. However, the bonus damage from the ability itself is not multiplied by the critical strike modifier.
Can you confirm what you said about the 185% crit-ing for 370?
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I didn't belive you at first but then I went to ability details and I guess your right.
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The 2nd set of the first Bo3 of the EU LCS qualifier earlier today had interesting early plays wrt to the "carry jungle" setup:
VoD
+ Show Spoiler +Tabzz's Fizz gets an early catch on Zyra so she has to take a roundabout way to lane, ImSoFresh on jungle Kayle immediatly comes after her buff to help shove the lane to turret, taking some farm from Tabzz but also sharing exp for them and making Zyra miss 1-2 cs to tower.
Later, as Zyra backs ImSoFresh immediatly shows up, shoves mid to tower and invades with Tabzz to steal the enemy red (they had the tower, Lee started at their red, so they started at his); Kayle was overleveled at every fight because of the shared exp, and he got some early farm from the lane, and enemy jungle thanks to that.
It was probably opportunistic after Fizz made Zyra go roundabout, but the effect of sharing farm to have a level 4 jungler while the solo laners are still only 3 allowed him to have a very threatening gank. Had it succeeded he could probably have taken still some farm (and furthered his level advantage) from shoving yet another lane.
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EPT
