3581

Riot has been moving pretty strongly away from color swaps with their newer skins. I think I’d rather have the Riot art team keep making the skins and have a limited number of variations in a consistent style than open it up to the public. A personalized look isn’t really a big part of game-play, and it seems like too much variety would just make fights confusing.

3582

After three games on the trot with Leviathans, today I went back to a Force of Nature and although I still claim that maintaining cost-effective stacks on it is easy - FON is overall more useful. With FON and Atmas and the rest of my junk I am on 3900 health, 135 and 125 resists and, what surprised me the most, the 8% speed boost was quite noticeable. 8% never seems much to me, but Morde felt a good deal “perkier” with FON than without.

3583

I don’t think I realized Zhonyas also gave 30% ap. Now I hate it even more. But the invulnerability is the bigger issue, IMO.

3584

three phantom dancers on WW is hilarious!

3585

Newbie Question:

What is a carry?

And what is the standard setup/strategy on the 3v3 maps - ventured into those for the first time and they seemed to be exclusively made up of gank squads.

Had an impressive game where they really couldn’t handle my Heimer/territory control/push through towers standard playstyle.

3586

A carry is a character who, primarily through their damage output, will win the game for their team: in other words, ‘carrying’ their team to victory. They’re the character you feed kills, creep, champion and tower, until they have the level advantage and gear to kill any and everyone on the opposing team.

Any character can be a carry, some are just designed as them. League of Legends is odd in that it has mage carries (AP carry) and attacking carries (AD carries).

League of Legends is also weird in that having a hard carry on your team (a hard carry is one designed as such and normally is at their highest point on the power curve in the mid/late game) is less important than having a well-picked team of characters that synergise. Normally you pick one tank type, one support type, one AP carry, one AD carry and one jungler (normally an off-carry or off-tank type). Jungling may become less important so they will be replaced by another support,

Soft carries are characters that can carry if they build the right way and play well but aren’t designed for it. Malphite and Sion are good soft carry examples.

3587

A carry in my mind is someone who can kill their entire team if you can just protect him and keep people off of him. He will be your main source of damage mid and late game. Examples are usually attack damage ranged heroes like twitch, MF, ashe, sivir, etc.

EDIT: Also, heimer can be a carry :)

3588

MUNDO CARRY WHENEVER HE PLEASES…

P.S.

Okay okay, maybe after a warmog.

3589

How does someone reach level 20+ without some of the most basic knowledge, like:

What the oracle elixir does. Had an opposing Eve exclaim, “How can you see my when I’m stealthed!”…really?! You haven’t figured that one out by now?

What a bloodrazor is and why its pretty much required against most tanks. Conversely, Tanks should know it does magic damage and get magic resistance to counter it. I had a Malphite who would just buy more health instead, when all the opposing teams DPS had bloodrazors.

PS I’m going to be sad when Galio no longer is free, he’s a great tank, but costs a ton of IP. My personal favorite is going mid and then facing off against Veigar in several pub games in a row…

3590

For 3v3 you want characters with high mobility, good gank abilities, self sustainability (some sort of innate health regen) and who can be dangerous without a large number of items (games are shorter).

Some of the best champs in the past for 3v3 have been: Mordekaiser, Mundo, Warwick, Jax, and Zilean. I can’t really comment on the current state of 3v3, but I’m guessing its probably still fairly similar.

3591

If you have two squishies on 3v3 you’re probably going to lose. I think the usual comp is Carry + Tank / Tanky DPS + Support / Tanky DPS. Never really played organized 3v3 so I’m not sure how important a jungler is. Akali and Trynd are also really good carries in 3v3 because of their movement abilities.

3592

Yeah… a Doctor Shen… no copywrite infringement there.

3593

After a run of great games (and victories) I joined two games with Ripplez and we both got to enjoy complete and utter fail on our team. It’s never a good sign when someone says “This is my first time with XXX” as the game starts. Or when Rip has to tell Taric to heal him every time or Taric doesn’t bother. Hell, he had to tell Taric to stun the bad guys.

Oh, and then there were the people swearing at the other team and our team. Jeez.

Reported three people in two games. Joy.

3594

Man, doing a voice over for a video is hard. I need to write a damn script or I start talking nonsense. I’ll cut together a 30 second sample of my Morde “guide” once I have some stuff so you guys can tear it to bits and send me home crying.

3595

I’ll be first to say it… a few of us got our butts handed to us by a jungling Alistair tonight. He went lantern -> phantom dancer + boots of swiftness. It is my opinion that Alistair needs no tanking items when you consider his ult. He just would run at us and there was nothing we could do. Knocks ya up and hits you back into his allies, at which point you are dead :(

3596

Alistair? Doesn’t he lack a charge? Couldn’t you just stun/slow and wipe him out before he gets too close?

Unrelated Rant: If you’re jungling, and half the level of everyone else (including the duo lane), stop jungling! You’re not any good, and you’re better off just laning to catch up.

3597

Every Alistar worth a damn runs Flash/Ghost.

3598

But he was Jungling, so I’d assume a smite and just one of the other ones?

3599

The only mages I really like on TT are Ez and Zilean. Zilean for his support abilities, and Ez because he can blink through all the thin walls and cause havoc.

You don’t have to have a strict jungler on TT, but the jungle capable champs tend to shine on TT for the same reasons they can jungle, low item dependence, self sustainability, high movement speed, good gank abilities.

In other news patch notes!

http://www.leagueoflegends.com/news/release-notes-v100108

Not as drastic as I expected. No more 15 minute Barons.

3600

Alistar’s ult clears all cc effects on him when it’s used and gives him 75% damage reduction, so no, you cannot just stun and wipe him out. His headbutt is also a charge if he wants to charge into the enemy team when they’re clustered together and stun them all except the one he knocks back. I actually had some really good games playing as DPS Manamune lulz Alistar last week when he was free.

While I feel your pain on terrible junglers, if everyone else is doing ok you might almost want to leave them in the jungle and pretend it’s a 4v5 so they don’t start feeding in a lane.

Edit: Regarding the patch notes I am sad they changed the name of the new item from Bansky’s to Rabadon’s. Banksy just seems so much more LoLworthy.