3421

Spell vamp is awesome when she’s solo lane. 3 levels in W and 15 AP explodes the missle creeps, and if the melee creeps get little low fighting (or you auto attacking them) they die too. Morgana is great when she does this push - you can drop a puddle, then walk back to your tower in perfect safety and get the gold + xp, while they are forced to last hit @tower.

3422

For sure. But we were playing a “kill everyone all the time” duo lane.

3423

Hmm, played 4 games today, seen 8 kog maws with soraka’s on bottom lane so far.
Would’ve been fun except they always chose bottom :/

3424

Is Kog’Maw free this week? I never see anyone but me ever play him, other than Inigima once or twice.

3425

Nah Kog’Maw isn’t free, but Janna is /facepalm.
Seen some ap Janna’s aswell.

3426

“AP”?

My handle thingy is Huginmunin, by the way. So if you ever see me ruining things for your team, I apologize in advance.

3427

Kog IS free this week…

3428

AP is shorthand for Ability Power, one of the things you can itemize for and off of which certain abilities scale, with varying ratios.

We had a Kog’maw in one of our Morgaren games today, he was great. We pinged the tower because all 5 had come down there since we were stomping them so badly. Kog’maw came down and the three of us aced their team.

3429

Sadly, I’m just super terrible with Kayle. :(

3430

I think my biggest problem with League of Legends is that I’m too used to HoN’s pacing. Playing even one or two games of HoN resets my expectations about how bursty damage is and how the ebb and flow of the laning phase works.

Clearly I should just stop playing HoN, because I don’t think I enjoy it anymore. :)

3431

I’m interested to hear from someone who played a lot of HoN: Why do you like LoL more?

3432

I don’t, actually. I just hate the HoN community more than I hate the LoL community.

I mean, there are some things that LoL does better, but there are also things that HoN does better. Summoner spells are cool, but Flash is too good to not take, which makes it a little pointless. TPs versus free recall, the sustainability of the healers with massive mana pools and high mana regen, the lack of denies, all combine to make League of Legends even more of snorefest in lane in comparison to HoN’s, but the presence of a good jungler can reverse that and make it actually interesting.

The UI is a series of tossups too; League of Legends shop is less laggy, HoN’s is more usable. LoL’s portraits are nice, but they lack HoN’s ability indicators. It’s nice to be able to tab and see your enemies’ items, but it’d be nice to have HoN’s quick-view thing on the upper right. HoN’s pathing is better, but brush is saner than the tree-jukes. Wards are more powerful in HoN when placed well, but they get placed in larger numbers in League. Tower aggro and creep aggro feel saner in League of Legends, but the big shiny line that is tower aggro is a bit hand-holdy.

I could go on, but what’s the point… I think HoN is a more fun, better game, but the combination of S2 giving up on balance in favor of just more shitty skins (and the rest of their business decisions) and the worse community of HoN (plus more Qt3ers who play LoL) means that I’m going to drop HoN entirely and get better at League.

(Edit) Also, Heroes of Newerth has a vastly superior item selection and a huge variety of heroes with more interesting and powerful skills than League of Legend’s champions. Everything is more deadly; stuns do more damage, have wider AoEs, longer range, and faster projectile speeds, for example.

Take Hammerstorm (a HoN hero) as an example. In HoN, he’s a mediocre hero because of being a melee semicarry. However, his skillset would make him one of the best champs in League of Legends, with a stun second only to Amumu’s ultimate. Flint Beastwood is Caitlyn’s closest equivalent - they’re both ranged AD carries with an equivalent ultimate - but instead of her skills he has a massive sight-granting persistent snare-nuke which does huge damage against towers, a passive which, when levels, grants him higher attack range than a hero’s daytime sight range, and a passive which, when leveled, grants him a chance to proc a stun on his autoattacks, which stacks with Savage Mace.

It’s not just heroes who are more capable and more lethal. Items are more powerful as well, and there are far more of them.

3433

I played a game this weekend with Janna vs Taric mid.

3434

But you probably know how to farm and stay defensive enough so you don’t get ganked every 3 mins.
Remember I’m still playing pre lvl 30 :)

3435

Tried ali first time. Helped that I was duo with Aaron, so everyone on their team was horribad, but he’s fucking funny. “No, you can’t last hit. This is my head, this is your face. Together, they make you hurt.”

The combo is easy as hell, and there is absolutely no reason to ever choose malphite.

3436

Oh I didn’t mid as either of those champions, I rarely if ever play mid any more.

3437

Of course…I just purchased Malphite. :(

3438

Kayle takes too much effort to play well, and is too easily countered by plenty of other champions. Her heal only holds off mild harassment from enemies, it costs a lot of mana, and taking it means you do crap damage on Q and E.

Don’t be afraid to use E to extend your attack range in order to kill creeps for gold while being far away enough not to get harassed. If you do harass with E, it’s almost always after hitting them with Q first since it increases your damage on them and slows them down.

I loved Kayle when I first started playing this game, but then found other champions with more fun mechanics that are easier to lane with and survive (like Cho’Gath).

Also, someone mentioned not using the recommended items list and instead looking up a guide… meh. Play a bunch of characters first, then ask here for guidance. Lots of guides are awful. Until then recommended items are fine for a lot of characters, even if you don’t understand why you’re getting physical damage items on characters that have abilities based on magic damage (ability power or AP) (like Miss Fortune, Ezreal).

3439

It’s not that Malphite is bad, it’s that he’s outclassed. Alistar’s combo is essentially the same as Malphite’s ult, except Alistair can do it every 15 seconds at level two, rather than every two minutes at level six. Oh, and Alistair can’t miss (although he can fuck up the combo). Malphite’s ult has three advantages: it can be used to escape, it can be used on an area in the fog of war, and has a longer range.

OTOH, Malph is probably a lot safer for a noob, as q harass doesn’t expose him nearly as much as an ali combo does.

3440

Malphite’s ultimate is pretty satisfying though. Just don’t be afraid to use it to secure a kill, even if it’s only on one person. If it’s on a very important person, then that can win the upcoming teamfight as much or more than saving it for the middle of the teamfight.