This game is really all about shopping
Not what he means. Lemme find the link (aka ask this guy again when he’s back from a game cause I forgot to bookmark) - somebody remade the LoL client (they have to redo it each patch) and along with just running better (god this game runs terribly) you can customize the recommended items!
Except now it doesn’t work, I guess?
I’ll look into League Craft for planning out builds. Once I started getting some other items, I started doing much much better in some situations.
I’d like to be able to modify the suggested items, though, because that would be very convenient. As it is, I can sort of start looking through the shop while my blue pill is starting up, and usually be ready to buy by the time I teleport, but it’s still just not ideal. I don’t really want to have that window up so I can’t see anything if I don’t have to.
Also, liars. I’ve had a whole bunch of games that went, like, over 50 minutes. And then there’s shit like a 2v2 match that goes badly, and then it’s level 7 vs. level 13, and all you can do is die for 10 more minutes because the game won’t even fucking let you surrender. Bullshit.
Seriously, though, enjoying it. It’s fun.
He’s learnin’ quick too. We played a handful of matches and unfortunately ran into nothing but derp. It was like… unimaginably derp-tastic but it figures this would happen while I’m trying to help someone learn the game. It’s funny in retrospect.
Also we need PRESETS FOR MASTERIES! I’m not at the point where I can appreciate rune pages but I am at the point where sometimes I have to choose between getting my summoner spells chosen or doing my masteries.
Although sometimes it works out strangely like defensively spec’d on a character you’d usually go into the offense tree for, and then surviving some shit with like 9 hp and you’re like oh. Hahahah like yesterday I was playing and I got nasty lag during a clutch moment of a late game 1v1 engagement and all I heard was “slain!” and a female death cry (both female characters though haha) and I was like “FUCK i just had to fucking lag” and he’s like “dude shut up” and I’m like “…” and then ohhhhhh I did kill him.
It was gross because I obviously had him, I’d pounced on mf with nida after she’d spent the last of her mana not killing me… and then it just lagged for like 2 seconds straight and I was like NO and mashed Q & E and probably W too because it was that intense and came out on top. :karate: Been havin’ some latency issues. D:
Tip of the Day: More Fun Reading for Beginners (Including Yours Truly)
I figure that today I’ll just pass on more links I found entertaining for myself. No particular order except I will try to keep the more dry stuff lower on the list.
Tomorrow, I will probably post a lot of WCG related links since there should be some coverage from the community and the matches begin on Friday 
Effectively Countering Sona (by Grafik from Team Epik Gaming)
One of my favorite posts of the past two weeks. On the LoL Boards the past couple of weeks, too many people have been QQing over Sona being so powerful. Grafik puts out his take on it and makes the case that Sona’s ability to babysit multiple characters makes her a big factor in less-coordinated team fights, but that advantage at least gets neutralized by coordinated teams because she’s not particularly great at babysitting individual members of a teamfight. This doesn’t change how well she assists other players, but it’s good food for thought for most players.
[media=youtube]0kxGQ3gWdrM[/media]
You’ll have to get used to Shurelia’s “babyish” voice (this will be difficult for some people). That said, this is a great tutorial and a visual guide to zoning themes in LoL–pretty much specific for the laning phase. I still fail at this too often in my games… That said, much of the SRK crowd should have a natural sense of this already because of fighting game experience.
Solo Queue Advice (by Elementz - another top player)
Some people might think the tone in this post is a bit much, but it’s great solid advice (at least I think so) and drives certain points home–especially regarding wards. I consider it a MUST READ. Also, Solo Queue articles seem to be the flavor of the week from the pro players side of things.
@ Ezreal (Q&A Game Designer Thread)
I’ll give the same advice I gave for the @Morello thread. Just read the red posts. On your first read, start from the beginning. Later on if you go back to this thread, start from the back and work your way towards your last post. Again, I recommend reading only the Red Posts in these. Some more great insight in character design in this game
Runeterra Livestreams
Roku provides some great high level livestreams. Particularly from the perspective of Roku and Shurelia. The livestreams are also archived and organized by Champion (scroll down to “Video Library”). Runeterra is not the only place for Livestreams but I think it’s a great starting place and I’m sure links to other great livestreams will be posted up soon (Solo Mid, CLG, etc…).
Another Avid Player’s Perspective (Experience and Tips from Caddy of Solo Mid)
Warning: This article is very much a blog post–which is to say it’s rambling a little bit. But I found it to be at least a bit insightful and interesting, it just has a slow start. Ultimately it was worth reading so I’m recommending it.
Quick Tip: Halting the Inferno (dealing with Ignire)
Super simple tip for beginners with a little bit of perspective. I will say that I have to deal with ignite a lot more around Level 20 (lol, I’m still not there…) than I’ve had to deal with at any other time so far.
Interview with Riot’s E-Sports Manager
A Solo Mid video interview from PAX 2010. BTW, Matt Marcou seems like a cool guy
Personal thoughts/ramble (not particularly related to the interview): I know Riot has not done the best of jobs establishing this game as an e-sport so far, but I think they’re treading it lightly right now (aside from the giant cash prize at the end of Season 1) and we’ll be seeing them step it up pretty hard in the future–particularly when things probably get really rebalanced around Season 2 or so. That’s just a guess from me, but they seem to be a self-conscious developer and know that because they’ve altered many rules with the MOBA/ARENA style genre, balance was gonna be an issue for a good while as they experiment with character designs and rollout strategies. I think competition is their longterm plan, but they are still in the early phases of putting this game out there and tweaking with experimental design ideas. But hey… DotA has had years of refinement and before that, Starcraft didn’t even get replays for years and Battle.Net wasn’t the best way to coordinate a competitive scene either… Hopefully with LoL, it just takes one more year to establish itself more for competitive players, but for now I’m just having lots of fun with the game and I’m nowhere near competitive yet anyways.
Statikk’s Take on Sona
An early impressions/pseudo-guide from a top player on Sona.
Hope some of you enjoy the links!
Next stop, WCG Grand Finals!
-Chanchai
WCG International has begun!
Today the teams are playing round robin which will determine the seeding for the elimination bracket. And Riot’s LoL Page is providing streams!
Official League of Legends WCG Page
As of this writing, CLG (North America) has won their game against Another Story (Southeast Asia). China Hero (China) takes their first win by defeating Team SK (Europe).
It’s also worth checking out the League of Legends Community - WCG 2010 Boards. You’ll get a lot of discussion and updates live here.
Again, this is only the Round Robin stage and teams are developing their strategies for the finals tomorrow.
Runeterra has some coverage and updates of what’s going on via the following links:
Discussion and Detailed Coverage via Forums
Twitter
Runeterra’s WCG Starting Point (where you can find the above links)
Things are pretty interesting so far, though I hope someone is recording all of these matches for later viewing. Next two matches will be up at Noon Pacific Time!
-Chanchai
USA vs. Europe right now, it’s a close one with an edge to Europe at the moment…
Here’s a livestream of the livestream, since I’ve been having issues getting into Own3D’s feed:
All or Nothing League of Legends Stream - live streaming video powered by Livestream
All of today’s matches (Round Robin matches + Semifinals) have been recorded. The match of the day was CLG vs. SK.
The World Cybergames Finals are still going and it’s been awesome!
Europe dominated the first match (with Twisted Fate), but USA (with a strong early game and awesome Anivia play by JiJi) evens the score by dominating the second match!
Third and final match is about to begin. You can watch it at the WCG site or at WCG 2010 | League of Legends
GREAT FINAL MATCH FOR THE WORLD CYBER GAMES CHAMPIONSHIP!
Trying to quit this crack-like game. There’s no point playing it when it can’t run right. It doesn’t make any fucking sense. I’ll have a mere 40ms, a minimum of 55fps upwards of 80-90, and yet I can’t fucking do shit. Minions teleport, people engage me and I have this weird not-quite-latency/not-quite-framerate lag for a full second or two fiving me a 45% life deficit in all team battles (or gank attempts going either way); I try to click somewhere and then change my mind and want to turn around but oh no, I tried to do 2 actions in the span of a second and a half? Better lag and run about 4 steps further than I want to, right into my enemy’s attacks! It’s just fucking stupid and a waste of time. I don’t get it. My comptuer’s great. Fucking Riot.
My ports are forwarded, my graphic settings are low (which is unnecessary on this computer imo), I have nothing running in the background, I have no viruses, I have recently defragged… like what the fuck else can I even try?
And now that I talked about it, I have to go play it! Noooooo! It’s the worst because sometimes - JUST SOMETIMES - it runs fine. And I have a great time, because the concept of this game is great fun (minus the whole team game part because I usually have to team with retards)… Then I’m like yeah! I’m actually having fun! So I play another and it’s laggy. Then I’m stuck in the game for at least 25 minutes because I ain’t tryna ragequit. A laggy teammate is better than no teammate… but nonetheless it’s frustrating.
Awesome finals! North America dominated the last game though, Europe played good but North America controlled the whole map.
I do think that Europe’s lineup was “interesting” but over-focused on taking out individual targets whereas the North American team was much more “attack the group” oriented. Basically a lot of stuns and support and one carry (Kog). North America ended up winning all teamfights in the final match of the Grand Finals.
Stars Champions of Each Match (imo):
Match 1 - Twisted Fate
Match 2 - Anivia (Garren did put fear in Europe though, so he was banned along with Anivia in Game 3)
Match 3 - Ashe (but Amumu had the truly epic finish!)
“OK USA!”
Any videos?
Yeah, I can’t get a single game without droppers and retards. Three people head mid, I’m like, ‘really?’ They’re like, “… I’m high…” “… me, too …” :C
I wonder if it’s just low-ELO hell, or what. Won a 4v5 match just now, shit takes forever. 56 minutes.
I’ll post vids when i find out about some archived ones. Good matches! Though the last two games might not be too exciting because it’s great gameplay, but one team clearly figures out the other or controls the map with authority over the other.
I don’t think people here care much about the game.
Although if it doesn’t run well for them, it’s hard to blame them.
It’s pretty fantastic for a free game, though.
Kinda bummed about the two rune pages for free players.
Even three pages would be a big step up.
Thinking about picking up a tank at some point - Jax? Sion? Taric? I dunno.
I was using Rammus a little, he’s fun.
But getting zoned the fuck out early game because you’re up against Kogmaw and Teemo, and your lane partner is a retard, is very frustrating. So I’ve been sticking with ranged champions for the most part.
Jax is a trap, at one point he was godly then got nerfed down to good status, then people overreacted and he went straight down to trash tier. The best tanks are Amummu, Ammumu, Taric, & ammumu.
Cool.
I tried Taric, and he seems good. Stuns are GDLK in this game.
Amumu sounded kinda cool, too, but I want to try him for free first, if I can.
Here are videos of the WCG International Grand Finals:
[media=youtube]_KRmyWJ3A2g[/media]
[media=youtube]q4POEhpHCtw&feature=related[/media]
[media=youtube]mUNrCd7HCCU&feature=related[/media]
Note: The reason the quality of the video isn’t good is because WCG chose to stream the events in low quality (and their High Quality wasn’t so high quality despite people having to pay for the feed). The rest of the tournament that was streamed (Round Robin matches and Semifinals) were of much higher quality because Riot Games used Own3d on those matches and posted to the CL Gaming channel there. The finals stream was WCG’s territory…
Thanks for the links. Also hell yes Karthus is free this week. And it sucks that Eve is free & has a new skin but…that patch still hasn’t come out for her yet.
Karthus does indeed seem pretty powerful.
He can be a beast to lane against.
But it also turned me on to just how great Sivir’s spell shield is.
Aura items for the win. Team fight = get the fuck out.