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

[ArmadonRK]

As I mentioned, I haven't played AD/bruiser/toplane Nid since the rework, and I was never really partial to it before. So I'll experiment with that in the future, probably after many more AP mid games.

I do wonder how the Randuin's nerf has effected her, though. Without the movespeed slow, is Tri-Force really getting the job done? I would think IBG is more necessary on her now.

(I just gave AD runes+masteries with Doran's Blade a run on Midalee and it gave me a much more confident and safer laning phase. Mana was a huge issue, though, so I need to trap a lot less with the gutted mana regen. I was laning against a midlane Lee Sin, though, so I'll have to see how it pans out against more difficult matchups.)

I really like the PBE changes, though. The Swipe change will hopefully make it easier for her to chain kills on new targets, bringing her more in line with other reset assassins. The Javelin hitbox adjustment should also help her with engagements.

The auto-attack AP ratio and the armor/MR buffs are interesting. We'll see how they pan out, bringing her in line with both Elise and Jayce.

[BardicKnowledge]

New discussion point, since I think we've all hashed out most of what there is to say about Nidalee until the next patch...

Who should be buying Essence Reaver? Is it a viable replacement for Tear --> Manamune on mana-heavy characters like Yorick, Jayce, and Ezreal? Is it a viable replacement for a Bloodthirster and/or BotRK? Intuition tells me no for the latter, since BT and BotRK both output quite a bit more damage -- one via raw number, the other via passive.

I think it's too expensive to buy with the intention of selling off lategame, though I know prophet disagrees with me on that point, especially at most of our levels of play where we all tend to get far more income than we should (e.g. games with more than 25 kills in them).

[The Derrit]

New discussion point, since I think we've all hashed out most of what there is to say about Nidalee until the next patch...

Who should be buying Essence Reaver? Is it a viable replacement for Tear --> Manamune on mana-heavy characters like Yorick, Jayce, and Ezreal? Is it a viable replacement for a Bloodthirster and/or BotRK? Intuition tells me no for the latter, since BT and BotRK both output quite a bit more damage -- one via raw number, the other via passive.

I think it's too expensive to buy with the intention of selling off lategame, though I know prophet disagrees with me on that point, especially at most of our levels of play where we all tend to get far more income than we should (e.g. games with more than 25 kills in them).

I find it's a great buy on Sivir and Draven. For sivir, because she's so mana-heavy and can use the cooldown reduction, and for draven because the mana regen scales with damage, so using spinning axes keeps you at really high mana all game, even in fights when you're constantly using w.

I could definitely see it being good on Jayce too but I don't really play Jayce so eh.

[k-wix]

New discussion point, since I think we've all hashed out most of what there is to say about Nidalee until the next patch...

Who should be buying Essence Reaver? Is it a viable replacement for Tear --> Manamune on mana-heavy characters like Yorick, Jayce, and Ezreal? Is it a viable replacement for a Bloodthirster and/or BotRK? Intuition tells me no for the latter, since BT and BotRK both output quite a bit more damage -- one via raw number, the other via passive.

http://blog.ibuypower.com/blog/2014/06/23/doublelift-vlog-adc-itemization-patch-4-10/

Doublelift has some choice things to say about the Reaver and he summarizes my opinion nicely I'd like to see the Reaver literally STEAL mana from its target or something along those lines, would make it a lot more interesting/viable with hurricane.

[prophetik music]

i love it on yorick. the ability to use your muramasa to boost damage dramatically then get back all your mana on the next wave by turning it off and letting reaver drain it for you is awesome mid-late game when yorick can be really hampered by low mana after big fights. also cd is always welcome on him since the only cd items i usually get on him is spirit visage and frozen fist.

[Seven]

Essence Reaver is an interesting item but it felt kinda underwhelming the few times I built it. It seems to synergize well with Muramana, but I feel like these items sort of overlap in strange ways. It reminds me of the weird interaction/synergy between Nashor's Tooth and Malady (before it was fused with Nashor's essentially). You want both items, but one of them (Malady or Essence Reaver) isn't exactly cost or slot efficient and is only strong with the other (Nashor's or Muramana). I'd like to see a similar tweaking/combination of Essence and Muramana but that may not be viable realistically.

I've been meaning to try out Blue Ezreal with Reaver/Iceborn/CD boots for a relatively fast powerspike and 35% CDR, sounds good in theory now that BT takes longer to build.

[Bleck]

no seriously what's with the fucking Twitch nerfs

[prophetik music]

because it was just him and lucian in upper level play?

[Wiesty]

If anyone wants to add me I am on occasionally! User name is Wiestyo

[ArmadonRK]

I find it's a great buy on Sivir and Draven. For sivir, because she's so mana-heavy and can use the cooldown reduction, and for draven because the mana regen scales with damage, so using spinning axes keeps you at really high mana all game, even in fights when you're constantly using w.

I could definitely see it being good on Jayce too but I don't really play Jayce so eh.

I would never build it on Sivir or Draven because it's so slot inefficient. 50 damage and 10 CDR on on of them is cool for about 5 minutes after you can afford it, then it becomes a wasted slot real fast.

Both Sivir and Draven are only mana hungry early on, where they're not big spammy casters. Draven is basically an early game farm machine to build his passive, and Sivir's mana-hungry laning can be tempered by good spell shields.

The problem with Essence Reaver is that you absolutely have to sell it, which is a lot of gold down the drain. A BF Sword and a Vamp Scepter are about 150 gold more and give you more total damage and build into useful lategame items.

http://blog.ibuypower.com/blog/2014/06/23/doublelift-vlog-adc-itemization-patch-4-10/

Doublelift has some choice things to say about the Reaver and he summarizes my opinion nicely I'd like to see the Reaver literally STEAL mana from its target or something along those lines, would make it a lot more interesting/viable with hurricane.

It's not a good ADC item for sure. I've had success on it in the mid-game with Jayce, but I have the same issue as with ADCs. It's slot inefficient, you're going to have to sell it for something more powerful, like an Infinity Edge, if you don't close out the game in 25 minutes.

I don't even know that it's worth it on Ezreal at the moment.

i love it on yorick. the ability to use your muramasa to boost damage dramatically then get back all your mana on the next wave by turning it off and letting reaver drain it for you is awesome mid-late game when yorick can be really hampered by low mana after big fights. also cd is always welcome on him since the only cd items i usually get on him is spirit visage and frozen fist.

I think it's a strong mid-game item on any Manamune/Muramana champion, they tend to be mana-hungry, auto-attacking, AD casters for whom the item was designed.

Essence Reaver is an interesting item but it felt kinda underwhelming the few times I built it. It seems to synergize well with Muramana, but I feel like these items sort of overlap in strange ways. It reminds me of the weird interaction/synergy between Nashor's Tooth and Malady (before it was fused with Nashor's essentially). You want both items, but one of them (Malady or Essence Reaver) isn't exactly cost or slot efficient and is only strong with the other (Nashor's or Muramana). I'd like to see a similar tweaking/combination of Essence and Muramana but that may not be viable realistically.

I would disagree that Muramana isn't strong on its own, it's very strong on the champions it synergizes with, but those champions are few. What Muramana isn't is a general AD item, for sure.

Essence Reaver needs to be at least 1000 gold more expensive, with the stats to show for it. It needs to not fall off so hard as the game goes on. Maybe make it build out of BF Sword, and turn it into another 80 damage lifesteal item? Though this might make it too appealing to ADCs.

I'm thinking, reduce the cost of Bloodthirster back to 3200, then make Essence Reaver a 3400 or 3500 gold item with 70ish AD on it. Add a Forbidden Idol to the recipe, or swap Pickaxe for Brutalizer.

It's a fine line, making it viable for AD casters in the lategame without making it OP on ADCs.

no seriously what's with the fucking Twitch nerfs

He was already a top-tier ADC, and he was almost unaffected by the ADC item changes. With the new BotRK reigning supreme over ADC items, he was gonna wreck even harder.

because it was just him and lucian in upper level play?

I've been really happy to see so much Corki play in NA this season. To that end, the ADC itemization changes have been a disappointment. :/

[Bleck]

re: Twitch

like everybody keeps saying that he was top-tier but nobody ever gives me any reasons as to why or how

also I don't understand why "twitch nerfs" means that one of his skills and his passive are now close-to-worthless and "lucian nerfs" means a slightly smaller AD ratio on one of his skills that isn't even used primarily for damage

[ArmadonRK]

Q - Ambush: Stealth is extremely powerful, it allows Twitch to ambush targets easily, and is part of the reason Twitch is an assassin as well as an ADC. This is completely unique to ADCs, and few ADCs are so unique. His Q has a built in attack speed steroid, too, greatly increasing his assassination power, and helping him scale into the lategame. Attack speed steroids are often indicative of 'hyper-carries'. It scales multiplicatively with AD, and helps them max out their attack speed more easily.

E - Venom Cask: He has a good slow. Starting at 25% and going up from there, Twitch has powerful catch potential. Few other ADCs can make picks like Twitch, because while some have similar or better CC, they don't have the burst to follow it up.

E - Contaminate: A little bit of added burst that a lot of heavy auto-attack ADCs don't have. Most importantly, other ADCs take significant interruptions to their auto-attacking if they want to weave their spells into a fight.

R - Spray and Pray: A range steroid, damage steroid and area of effect with which to wreck teamfights? When you add this to the rest of Twitch's kit, he becomes a lategame teamfighting, assassinating monster, capable of playing from extreme safety.

Deadly Venom: The true damage DoT is just icing on the cake, often with red buff and/or Ignite ticking alongside it, it becomes very hard to escape from or survive a Twitch gank.

But equally important is that Twitch has the fifth highest attack speed at level 18 of all 119 champions. The only proper ADCs higher than him are Tristana and Ashe, with Trist typically considered the ultimate hyper-carry herself. Unlike Twitch, though, she has a less cohesive kit, without the same assassination power or mid-game strength. Tristana's only job is to scale into the lategame, and following the recent trend of balance changes, she may see a rise in popularity in the near future.

As for the nerfs making his Q and passive "close-to-worthless" that's far from the case. The passive change makes it a little easier for blindsided enemies to escape those devastating Twitch ganks, and they shifted more power from his Q as an escape tool to an engage tool. Removing some of Twitch's safety and confidence is not, in my opinion, a bad thing.

He's still a top-tier ADC, especially with the power shift from AD items to AS items. BotRK now being decisively stronger than BT is only good for Twitch.

Edited June 26, 2014 by ArmadonRK

[Bleck]

Q - Ambush: Stealth is extremely powerful, it allows Twitch to ambush targets easily, and is part of the reason Twitch is an assassin as well as an ADC. This is completely unique to ADCs, and few ADCs are so unique. His Q has a built in attack speed steroid, too, greatly increasing his assassination power, and helping him scale into the lategame. Attack speed steroids are often indicative of 'hyper-carries'. It scales multiplicatively with AD, and helps them max out their attack speed more easily.

twitch is also one of two marksmen with an attack speed buff linked to his movement ability, making him incapable of using his full damage in team fights in a way that doesn't disable his ability to escape from a failing team fight

also, twitch's stealth being focused as an engagement tool rather than disengagement means that all you need to do is have a pink ward down and now twitch's stealth is completely useless against you; by forcing it to be only useful on offense, they've also made it far simpler for opponents who play well to completely shut it down

E - Venom Cask: He has a good slow. Starting at 25% and going up from there, Twitch has powerful catch potential. Few other ADCs can make picks like Twitch, because while some have similar or better CC, they don't have the burst to follow it up.

twitch doesn't have burst

E - Contaminate: A little bit of added burst that a lot of heavy auto-attack ADCs don't have. Most importantly, other ADCs take significant interruptions to their auto-attacking if they want to weave their spells into a fight.

1) contaminate isn't a burst ability, it's an execute

2) contaminate's damage is relatively high but only at max stacks, otherwise it doesn't do much

3) other AD's would have to stop auto-attacking to use their damage abilities, but the damage on their abilities is frontloaded, whereas contaminate's damage is based on the stacks; lucian can tag you with his Q and do a chunk of damage, whereas contaminate only does the "huge" damage it's famous for if you're letting twitch auto-attack you six times, in which case you're pretty much asking to die anyway?

R - Spray and Pray: A range steroid, damage steroid and area of effect with which to wreck teamfights? When you add this to the rest of Twitch's kit, he becomes a lategame teamfighting, assassinating monster, capable of playing from extreme safety.

he also needs to be in a very specific position to abuse rat-a-tat-tat's AOE capabilities; if you're moving around a lot defensively, you're not gonna be doing as much damage as you could, and if you have the perfect line to fire down and hit everybody, you're probably making yourself a pretty prime target to be locked down and nuked

also I guess not many people seem to realize this but twitch's autoattacks turn into straight-line projectiles when his ult is on; if you move properly while he's trying to shoot you with it, he'll actually miss with most of the attacks

like I don't know guys maybe I'm just the only twitch player who consistently gets matched up against people who know how to take advantage of twitch's obvious and consistent weakness but I don't think he's ever been as overpowered or irritating as marksmen like lucian or caitlyn or vayne have been/currently are

[Seven]

I would disagree that Muramana isn't strong on its own, it's very strong on the champions it synergizes with, but those champions are few. What Muramana isn't is a general AD item, for sure.

I think Muramana is a great situational item, I meant that Essence Reaver seems really weak without it. The items seek to do some of the same things, but Essence Reaver is just a waste of a slot as the game progresses as you mentioned. And buying both just makes it take forever to scale up, as well as delaying Brutalizer/LW among other things for AD casters (Jayce).

On a related note, I believe they added 10 AD to Essence on PBE. BT also gives 10% bonus AD, kinda like a mini Zed passive.

They are also redesigning Ancient Golem, there are some really interesting changes that might help bring tank junglers up to speed.

[prophetik music]

i see bleck and armadon making the same arguments, in different places: they liked a champ before they were brought into balance with a lot of other stuff. snatch has always been strong simply because by not being visible in one place he could easily be a huge number of other places, and you literally wouldn't know until he popped up out of nowhere in generally good position to screw you up. the force projection he gets from that far outweighs his (roughly equivalent in quality) skills.

of course he has counters. these counters don't completely shut him down any more than other adcs get shut down by counters.

twitch was one of two marksmen in every high-level game. do the math. stop being ornery because rito plz.

[Bleck]

stop being ornery because rito plz.

fuck off seriously

[prophetik music]

fuck off seriously

i come to this thread to hear actual discussion about the game, not constant whining from literally every post you write. sorry if that doesn't fit in your world view.

[ArmadonRK]

twitch is also one of two marksmen with an attack speed buff linked to his movement ability, making him incapable of using his full damage in team fights in a way that doesn't disable his ability to escape from a failing team fight

This isn't something unique to Twitch, and is a calculated weakness because of his strong engage. Twitch should be played with strong peel and disengage supports, like Thresh or Braum, if you want to mitigate that weakness. If you're playing Twitch with something like an Annie or Soraka support, well, that's just poor planning.

Strong crowd control from the rest of your team also helps.

Any champion is weaker in the wrong team composition.

also, twitch's stealth being focused as an engagement tool rather than disengagement means that all you need to do is have a pink ward down and now twitch's stealth is completely useless against you; by forcing it to be only useful on offense, they've also made it far simpler for opponents who play well to completely shut it down

Pink wards do seriously impede Twitch, but this applies to any stealth champion. Good positioning and good vision control are required in these situations.

twitch doesn't have burst

I see you're not building Ghostblade.

1) contaminate isn't a burst ability, it's an execute

"Burst" is the act of synergizing your abilities, autos and items to deal a large amount of damage in a very short period of time. Contaminate isn't a "burst" ability on its own, but it helps Twitch achieve burst damage.

2) contaminate's damage is relatively high but only at max stacks, otherwise it doesn't do much

With his AS steroid on Q and a Ghostblade, he can get those stacks very, very quickly.

3) other AD's would have to stop auto-attacking to use their damage abilities, but the damage on their abilities is frontloaded, whereas contaminate's damage is based on the stacks; lucian can tag you with his Q and do a chunk of damage, whereas contaminate only does the "huge" damage it's famous for if you're letting twitch auto-attack you six times, in which case you're pretty much asking to die anyway?

Seriously: Ghostblade.

he also needs to be in a very specific position to abuse rat-a-tat-tat's AOE capabilities; if you're moving around a lot defensively, you're not gonna be doing as much damage as you could, and if you have the perfect line to fire down and hit everybody, you're probably making yourself a pretty prime target to be locked down and nuked

I don't understand your point. Good positioning is how you do well in teamfights as any ADC. You engage when you have a good teamfight, when you have good peel, when you have good positioning.

If you blow your ult when you don't have an advantageous position, that's a player mistake and not a weakness of the champion.

also I guess not many people seem to realize this but twitch's autoattacks turn into straight-line projectiles when his ult is on; if you move properly while he's trying to shoot you with it, he'll actually miss with most of the attacks

Yes, it can be played around, which is why you need a team with peel and crowd control to help you in team fights.

like I don't know guys maybe I'm just the only twitch player who consistently gets matched up against people who know how to take advantage of twitch's obvious and consistent weakness but I don't think he's ever been as overpowered or irritating as marksmen like lucian or caitlyn or vayne have been/currently are

With a coordinated team, Twitch can be amazing. It's all about a good team composition. This is why Twitch is more successful in coordinated play than solo queue.

Twitch goes well with champs like Jarvan, Braum, Kayle, Rumble, Thresh, etc.

He's not going to perform as well on a team with less AoE, less peel, less CC.

Cait, Lucian, and Vayne are safer picks that don't care as much about team composition.

[Bleck]

i come to this thread to hearblah blah blah blah

fuck off

This isn't something unique to Twitch, and is a calculated weakness because of his strong engage. Twitch should be played with strong peel and disengage supports, like Thresh or Braum, if you want to mitigate that weakness. If you're playing Twitch with something like an Annie or Soraka support, well, that's just poor planning.

like I see what you're saying here but the fact is that a lot of adcs don't actually need their supports to disengage for them, they just help them do it

twitch is currently the only adc with a disengage that now relies on a skillshot cc (that, note, does no damage) instead of a dash in the other direction/over a wall

Pink wards do seriously impede Twitch, but this applies to any stealth champion. Good positioning and good vision control are required in these situations.

but twitch is also the only stealth champ who doesn't have an ability that immediately gives him a movement speed buff and/or a dash or blink - a pink ward in the middle of a fight disables twitch's engage and further diminishes his capability to disengage, which is not the case for any other stealth champ (evelynn's movement speed buff isn't linked to her stealth, shaco's stealth is a blink, kha'zix still has his jump and can stealth several times, rengar and talon get large movement speed buffs)

I see you're not building Ghostblade.

I would never build ghostblade on twitch until lategame

"Burst" is the act of synergizing your abilities, autos and items to deal a large amount of damage in a very short period of time. Contaminate isn't a "burst" ability on its own, but it helps Twitch achieve burst damage.

if twitch had max attack speed it would still take him two-and-some seconds to get someone to max stacks if none of his attacks were interrupted, which compared to every other champ in the game with burst damage is a really long time

none of the adcs, especially the currently popular ones, have what I would call burst damage

With his AS steroid on Q and a Ghostblade, he can get those stacks very, very quickly.

see above

I don't understand your point. Good positioning is how you do well in teamfights as any ADC.

my point is that unlike other adcs good positioning isn't a mix of offensive potential and defensive potential; with twitch you can't maximize your offensive potential without basically removing any options you have to escape

most team comps can afford individual players some autonomy but when you're playing as twitch you literally have to have your whole team stand around you while you ult and hope that they stop anything that's gonna prevent you from shooting for the next couple seconds, and if they don't, you're screwed

Yes, it can be played around, which is why you need a team with peel and crowd control to help you in team fights.

if you need your team to hold people in place so your ult can hit them something tells me that that ult isn't nearly as strong as everyone thinks it is

With a coordinated team, Twitch can be amazing. It's all about a good team composition.

yes, but my point is that

Cait, Lucian, and Vayne are safer picks that don't care as much about team composition.

it's not so much these champs in particular so much as basically every other adc is safe and doesn't care about team comp

I feel like twitch has consistently been in the same boat as say, ashe and varus (good if they have a good team supporting them) but oh some pros played him so he must be too good (which apparently isn't enough reason to nerf lucian, though)

at this point I'd rather they just take the stealth (and his ult) out of twitch's kit entirely than see him continuously gutted like this

[Seven]

I would never build ghostblade on twitch until lategame

Huge mistake here. Ghostblade should be built as your second item after BotRK for a massive mid-game powerspike (further accentuated by stealth and Spray and Pray during mid-game map movements), or passed up for Shiv. His laning got hit, but as you pass into the early-mid game you have the potential to build up a huge advantage because BotRK is cheaper than BT (which got nerfed anyway) and IE (which requires a PD/SS to scale up). This can give you a pretty big window where you're sitting on a finished BotRK and they might only have 2 or 3 components of IE, or a BT which is weaker in straight-up fights.

[ArmadonRK]

like I see what you're saying here but the fact is that a lot of adcs don't actually need their supports to disengage for them, they just help them do it

Twitch isn't one of those ADCs. Neither are Kog'maw or Miss Fortune. Sivir, Ashe and Varus have only their ults to keep themselves safe. Jinx has unreliable disengage with her W, so I'd put her in the first camp as well.

That doesn't make them bad. And the reason Twitch has no disengage, is because if he did he'd be too strong.

twitch is currently the only adc with a disengage that now relies on a skillshot cc (that, note, does no damage) instead of a dash in the other direction/over a wall

An assassin ADC with self-peel would be too strong.

but twitch is also the only stealth champ who doesn't have an ability that immediately gives him a movement speed buff and/or a dash or blink - a pink ward in the middle of a fight disables twitch's engage and further diminishes his capability to disengage, which is not the case for any other stealth champ (evelynn's movement speed buff isn't linked to her stealth, shaco's stealth is a blink, kha'zix still has his jump and can stealth several times, rengar and talon get large movement speed buffs)

See above.

I would never build ghostblade on twitch until lategame

This is your problem. It has attack damage, attack speed, flat armor pen, and an active you cannot afford to pass on. It's a tremendous mid-game item you should build immediately after or alongside Blade of the Ruined King.

if twitch had max attack speed it would still take him two-and-some seconds to get someone to max stacks if none of his attacks were interrupted, which compared to every other champ in the game with burst damage is a really long time

You're really overestimating assassins in the mid-game.

none of the adcs, especially the currently popular ones, have what I would call burst damage

Twitch does, this is what made him unique and popular.

see above

See above.

my point is that unlike other adcs good positioning isn't a mix of offensive potential and defensive potential; with twitch you can't maximize your offensive potential without basically removing any options you have to escape

See above.

most team comps can afford individual players some autonomy but when you're playing as twitch you literally have to have your whole team stand around you while you ult and hope that they stop anything that's gonna prevent you from shooting for the next couple seconds, and if they don't, you're screwed

Twitch is high risk, high reward. If it's not working for you, play a different champion, but it doesn't mean Twitch is weak.

if you need your team to hold people in place so your ult can hit them something tells me that that ult isn't nearly as strong as everyone thinks it is

You're just flat out wrong, though. Watch some Twitch gameplay on YouTube. He's been played a lot in LCS this split, so there are plenty of games you can check out. At 49:30 of this game you see how devastating he can be with some team synergy:

yes, but my point is that

it's not so much these champs in particular so much as basically every other adc is safe and doesn't care about team comp

The reason this seems to be the case is that the safer ADCs are more popular. But risky hyper-carries like Twitch and Kog are still good, they're just riskier to play. Twitch isn't, by any means, the only one.

I feel like twitch has consistently been in the same boat as say, ashe and varus (good if they have a good team supporting them) but oh some pros played him so he must be too good (which apparently isn't enough reason to nerf lucian, though)

Ashe and Varus are similar to Twitch, as I stated above, in that they have limited self-peel, but Twitch has a much more valuable niche.

I do agree that Lucian needs some nerfs. He was indirectly nerfed by the BT change, and he needs a little more direct tuning to make him less dominant. Hopefully we'll see that soon.

at this point I'd rather they just take the stealth (and his ult) out of twitch's kit entirely than see him continuously gutted like this

You'd remove his niche, and do what? Turn him into a generic ADC?

It just seems you don't like the way Twitch is supposed to be played, or you don't want to play him that way. I can't help you with that. I can only insist that Twitch is stronger than you keep saying. He's just a more difficult ADC to play, and it's hard to see that because his difficulty doesn't lie in his mechanics.

[k-wix]

The reason this seems to be the case is that the safer ADCs are more popular. But risky hyper-carries like Twitch and Kog are still good, they're just riskier to play. Twitch isn't, by any means, the only one.

I feel like 'Safer' ADCS are just plain better in competitive play. I never see Kog or Ashe in ranked play and there's this big negative stereotype that your bad if you pick them. They happen to be two of my favorite ADCs and When I get the chance to play one, people will immediately jump down my throat for picking them, Kog especially. Its not just ADCs either, safety in this game tends to boil down to raw stats, mobility, and cc. Most of the go-to popular champions have some combination of all three. The champions that have none of them are quickly discarded. Vel'koz seems like a prime example of this - I never ever see him.

[Seven]

Kog is a common pick in OGN, and I've seen a handful of Velkoz supports in OGN as well (not sure if they've done that recently though.)

Ashe is just outdated. She has one damage spell pre-6 and you spend the rest of the game as an ult-bot. Her attack animation is also horrendously slow - even when you have a range advantage it seems like you spend so much time winding up your auto-attack they can move into range and out-trade you. Her passive is also one of the worst in the game.

I remember around the time Heartseeker Ashe came out, on a whim WildTurtle decided to play Ashe and titled his stream "Ashe Only" or something, only to get destroyed and change his mind about playing her. "It's too hard."

Edited June 28, 2014 by Seven

[Bleck]

I feel like 'Safer' ADCS are just plain better in competitive play. I never see Kog or Ashe in ranked play and there's this big negative stereotype that your bad if you pick them.

there's a reason people complain about mobility creep

[Ryan Jobson]

I've been having a blast lately with Vel'Koz mid. I tend to play on the safer side and farm and only go "all-in" when I'm 100% sure I can get a kill. It's been working well for me and I seem to only have trouble with a few champions with a lot of movement, such as Yasuo or Akali (ok, I freaking hate being matched against Akali!).

I also bide time before a big team fight by poking with Q and W before we decide to go all in, and when we do they've usually taken enough damage for the fight to go in our favour. Fun times with the face-melter.

OH, and I just want to say it's ridiculously satisfying laying waste to 5 champions with my ult when they clumsily stack themselves in a line.

Does anyone else play Vel'koz? If so, I'd like to hear about your play style and item choices. And what are your thoughts on Vel'koz support?