League of Legends: I finally updated the player list in the OP!

[Dexie]

The enemy team is Akali, Rumble, Renekton, Tryndamere, and Kennen.

Your champ's Q is now useless. Now what?

[prophetik music]

just had an 11-0-10 game with amumu in lane with amphibious's sona. they surrendered at 34 minutes.

awesome game. had FoN and FH at level 12.

[zircon]

The enemy team is Akali, Rumble, Renekton, Tryndamere, and Kennen.

Your champ's Q is now useless. Now what?

Could make it burn Energy or Fury as well. It would be less effective, but hey, it's something.

Alternatively, it could just be a single target nuke/silence where they take immediate damage and are only silenced if they move (silence kicks in shortly after moving, based on how far you go.) The idea is to force them to choose between moving and using spells. It's soft CC which IMO is less "anti-fun" than a hard stun or knockup.

I don't think the passive is really more powerful than, say, Twisted Fate's passive. +2 gold per minion kill for your entire team? Assuming people get about 50cs per 10 minutes (pretty conservative) then by 30 minutes in, you have 5*3*50*2 = 1,500 team gold. On the other hand, there are comparatively few champ kills in a game, and it takes time to reach that max bonus. To be clear, you would only get the bonus gold if you got an actual kill or assist. If you weren't in the fight, you don't get anything. It's just a way of encouraging more aggressive gameplay.

W is definitely an early game skill in every respect, but I think that's OK. There are a lot of champions with skills that become fairly useless later. But having extra vision is never a bad thing... how many times have you been in a situation where you get ganked while farming near the base after an inhib is down?

[Mirby]

I still think they need to make a Disco Heimer skin...

[prophetik music]

Could make it burn Energy or Fury as well. It would be less effective, but hey, it's something.

Alternatively, it could just be a single target nuke/silence where they take immediate damage and are only silenced if they move (silence kicks in shortly after moving, based on how far you go.) The idea is to force them to choose between moving and using spells. It's soft CC which IMO is less "anti-fun" than a hard stun or knockup.

I don't think the passive is really more powerful than, say, Twisted Fate's passive. +2 gold per minion kill for your entire team? Assuming people get about 50cs per 10 minutes (pretty conservative) then by 30 minutes in, you have 5*3*50*2 = 1,500 team gold. On the other hand, there are comparatively few champ kills in a game, and it takes time to reach that max bonus. To be clear, you would only get the bonus gold if you got an actual kill or assist. If you weren't in the fight, you don't get anything. It's just a way of encouraging more aggressive gameplay.

W is definitely an early game skill in every respect, but I think that's OK. There are a lot of champions with skills that become fairly useless later. But having extra vision is never a bad thing... how many times have you been in a situation where you get ganked while farming near the base after an inhib is down?

i was thinking about that q earlier today. essentially you're giving the character the ability to completely negate a caster in lane, as you can be burning huge portions of their mana often with no repercussions thanks to your character being energy-based. i think that almost makes it an imperative for them to be IN a lane rather than out - max the q, shut down annie/brand/malz/orianna/sona/any primary laning mage. you'd also negate a character like cho, amumu, and galio in-lane because their mana regen already sucks, and early-game their abilities cost so much (amumu, for example, his toss takes up roughly a quarter of his mana per throw at level 1 and gets worse as you level it).

i think if they were a mana-based character, that q would be OK. make it 80 or something relatively high, to use sparingly to empty mana reserves before an attack or gank. but not energy-based or cooldown-based, because then it's simply too much mana lost. alternatively, keep it energy, but make it like 25 or 30s cooldown, flat. no scaling. that would encourage it used in ganks as opposed to in-lane because you'd only be using it once anyways, at the start of the gank, whereas in-lane you'd use it when it was up but then not have it available when an opportunity arose later. maybe give it a passive that's not available during cooldown as well?

[Dexie]

http://imgur.com/a/JAQP0

New skins in the Riven patch. Totally gonna start playing Malzahar again, holy crap.

[prophetik music]

is that singed or mundo? singed, right? the blue goop looks like something mundo would do, though.

[Vilecat]

Almost sure that it's Singed. Riven bundles are offered (almost 2k RP for the hero+ skins) too.

As for Rise of Immortal, it's like a dumber version of LoL. Not sure what to think of the lobby thing (kind of ok I guess but you gotta pick your hero first THEN queue) but the rest would just need tweaking to be decent (melee pathing, graphic quality issues when resizing, etc). Although the shop in game is completely WTF.

[prophetik music]

those bundles are standard for every new character that comes out. it's where they get a lot of their money =)

[SynthesizedStampede]

Hmm...so has anybody played Riven yet? I usually wonder about the early consensus of new heroes since I never shell out the RP/IP to buy them on release .

[Tensei]

Just wait until free week. She seems like another boring champion with a dash, a shield and an AoE stun.

[k-wix]

Hmm...so has anybody played Riven yet? I usually wonder about the early consensus of new heroes since I never shell out the RP/IP to buy them on release .

I haven't tried Riven yet, but I did lane against her a few times. Shes at her best when dealing with Champions who have a limited range. Ive gone up against her as Gragus, Nidalee, and Annie. I had the most trouble with Gragus - her dash made harass difficult, and i had a hard time dealing with her jumping in on me, she forced me out of the lane a few times, but I also killed her once when she got greedy, so eh. With Nidalee her spear was kinda useless, so i focused on healing, and as a ranged character, it was very easy to predict her dash-ins and plan accordingly and heal what harass she did get. With Annie, i blew her out of the water, I just kept my stun up for the entire laning phase, and the instant she thought it would be cool to dash in on me, i would blow her up and retreat. I felt like i had complete control of the lane by like.. level 4?

[prophetik music]

Just wait until free week. She seems like another boring champion with a dash, a shield and an AoE stun.

LOL.

my five-man got cremated against riven twice in a row last night. she has FIVE DASHES, a shield that lets her towerdive with impunity, and puts out comical damage. she is SO broken at this point. simply comical how impossible it is to get away from her, no matter what you do.

[Tensei]

Overpowered doesn't mean not-boring though. Ever notice how every recent champion has some kind of blink/dash, an attack modifier and something like a shield/invis type escape mechanism?

[BardicKnowledge]

Overpowered doesn't mean not-boring though. Ever notice how every recent champion has some kind of blink/dash, an attack modifier and something like a shield/invis type escape mechanism?

Very true. The game mechanics limit how varied heroes can be though, since roaming and ganking is not really viable. I'd like to see a hero with a long 4-5 second channeled disable e.g. Electrician or Polly -- I think it would add a lot.

[prophetik music]

Very true. The game mechanics limit how varied heroes can be though, since roaming and ganking is not really viable. I'd like to see a hero with a long 4-5 second channeled disable e.g. Electrician or Polly -- I think it would add a lot.

like malz?

tensai, i agree. talon, wukong, vayne, and riven seem similar to me. however, you go into the rest of the heroes and there isn't anyone with a close-the-gap, escape mechanism, and stun/hard CC (that i can think of) - that is, a true assassin character that can get in quick, slaughter the enemy fast, and get out quick 1v1. the closest is xin but he's a hardcore glass cannon and has no escape. that said, talon, wukong, vayne, and riven are built totally different since one's mana-based melee, one's tanky dps, one's ranged dps, and one's CDR assassin.

[Tensei]

Malzahars ult only lasts 2.5 seconds. WEAK!

It does do a lot of damage though.

Also, it's not so much that the new champions all have different builds, but they basically bring no new concepts to the table. If you compare a champion like Talon to champions like Karthus (global damage ult and casting after death are both really cool concepts that hadn't been used before) and Orianna, you'll see how Talon basically just mix and matches a few old abilities with a very very slight twist. The problem is also that none of the new champions have any truly unique roles on a team, and in most cases get outperformed by older champions that fulfill the exact same role.

Edited September 15, 2011 by Tensei

[zircon]

Yep, agree 100%. Overall their champion design is pretty weak. Skarner, Leona, Wukong, Talon... all very forgettable. Riven seems marginally more interesting but not by much. Less champs like that, more like Blitzcrank, Orianna, Twisted Fate, etc.

[Theory of N]

I'm not on the front page yet? Lame.

[prophetik music]

Malzahars ult only lasts 2.5 seconds. WEAK!

It does do a lot of damage though.

Also, it's not so much that the new champions all have different builds, but they basically bring no new concepts to the table. If you compare a champion like Talon to champions like Karthus (global damage ult and casting after death are both really cool concepts that hadn't been used before) and Orianna, you'll see how Talon basically just mix and matches a few old abilities with a very very slight twist. The problem is also that none of the new champions have any truly unique roles on a team, and in most cases get outperformed by older champions that fulfill the exact same role.

i can agree there. it's a creativity thing, though - with Rise of Immortals, LoL, DotA, HoN, and all the other MOBA-style games out there, how much creativity can really go around, you know? there's only so many unique concepts that can be designed before you're really scraping the bottom of the barrel.

i'd love to see new techniques, but i think they're running out of ideas at least, ideas that fit within the framework of their specific game (a la why zircon's character's Q wouldn't appear in LoL).

[Tensei]

i can agree there. it's a creativity thing, though - with Rise of Immortals, LoL, DotA, HoN, and all the other MOBA-style games out there, how much creativity can really go around, you know? there's only so many unique concepts that can be designed before you're really scraping the bottom of the barrel.

You'd be surprised by how much creativity there is even in DotA, despite being on an outdated engine. One of my favorite DotA heroes, Tinker, has two high damage nukes and a powerful AoE push skill, but his ultimate completely changes his playing style, because it resets all his cooldowns, including those of most items.

This, among other perks, gives him the ability to use the Dota equivalent of Teleport nonstop, which makes him an amazing pusher and lets him farm superfast to the point where he can actually carry. Each of his abilities is extremely simple conceptually, having no CC whatsoever, but his playstyle is completely unique and deceptively deep.

There was actually a 20 page long thread on the LoL forums (it eventually got locked, but there's a newspost about it) where people started complaining about the blandness of LoL champion designs after watching a HoN hero spotlight (

) Edited September 15, 2011 by Tensei

[BardicKnowledge]

I don't think the items do enough. The only extremely interesting active ability on an item that I can think of atm is Shurelya's, which gives a big speed burst to the team.

Where are activated effects -- Stormspirit, Tablet, Hex, Kuldra's, Astrolabe, etc.? They are on summoner spells kinda (Heal, Ignite fill these types of roles) but more things like them would be great. Tablet (the ability to push characters around the map) seems like an especially big gap...there's nothing more fun than jumping the river.

[prophetik music]

You'd be surprised by how much creativity there is even in DotA, despite being on an outdated engine. One of my favorite DotA heroes, Tinker, has two high damage nukes and a powerful AoE push skill, but his ultimate completely changes his playing style, because it resets all his cooldowns, including those of most items.

This, among other perks, gives him the ability to use the Dota equivalent of Teleport nonstop, which makes him an amazing pusher and lets him farm superfast to the point where he can actually carry. Each of his abilities is extremely simple conceptually, having no CC whatsoever, but his playstyle is completely unique and deceptively deep.

There was actually a 20 page long thread on the LoL forums (it eventually got locked, but there's a newspost about it) where people started complaining about the blandness of LoL champion designs after watching a HoN hero spotlight (

)

not what i meant. what i'm saying is, if LoL got a Tinker knockoff, you'd complain that it was a ripoff. and it'd likely be a bad ripoff since the things that make HoN fun don't work in LoL, making his character design a bit off from what it could be.

there's only so much originality that can go around, and it's spread thin on lots of different games in this genre.

[Tensei]

Well I'm not saying LoL should have a Tinker knockoff (it already has it btw, namely Heimerdinger, so you were right about it being lame ), but I meant that both HoN and Dota are still releasing heroes that bring entirely new concepts to the table instead of rehashing older abilities like Riot does.

One of Dota's newer heroes can copy spells from enemy heroes with his ultimate, and another one can turn into a snowball that grows as it keeps rolling and drags allies along with him. Considering that they're achieving all of this on a 10 year old engine, I believe there's still plenty of room for creativity in the genre as long as you think outside of the box.

Edited September 15, 2011 by Tensei

[zircon]

Nobody would say LoL is ripping off DotA or HoN for using mechanics that existed on heroes in those games. I mean, basically 99% of the LoL cast already does that. But more importantly I think anyone could come up with at least 5 new, interesting Champion abilities or mechanics. HoN is doing that every two weeks. Here are some things I came up with just off the top of my head:

* A skillshot "Reflect" ability that, if timed properly, would repel projectile attacks in a random direction.

* A Champion that is constantly followed by a small train or group of creatures. These would have some very basic uncontrollable attacks and low HP, but are immune to AOE. The champ's abilities would depend on sacrificing the creatures for various effects (throwing them, planting them on to objects, batting them at the enemy, etc.) New creatures would be regrown periodically or perhaps faster if you pick up old ones.

* A champ themed something like Heimerdinger, but focusing on generally defensive rather than offensive structures, and with more control. For example, dropping a TF2 Engineer-style supply 'orb' that allies can stand around to regenerate, planting a ward that does not itself give vision but creates an orbiting object that spirals out and gives vision over that area (and can collide with enemy champs.)

* A champion with high-risk, high-reward feint-type abilities. For example, one ability might be used on a target enemy hero and will stun them after 3 seconds IF you are able to fulfill a condition (for example, depleting 15% of their health bar.) Perhaps the ability to feign death or manipulate your own health bar to make it harder for the opponents to gauge your status.

* A new kind of "resource" (like Energy, Fury) that increases based on distance traveled, or something to that effect. Maybe a champ themed around speed, running or even dancing, encouraging them to weave in and out of battles, gank more, and so forth. Call it Rhythm, Adrenaline, I don't know. Would create some interesting gameplay though.