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

[Tensei]

But I LIKE the game. Geez, do you really think I'd be that petty? It's possible to like something without liking every single fucking aspect of it and praising it like the second coming. There are plenty things I dislike about HoN/DotA that I'm vocal about as well.

As far as I'm concerned, the purpose of a spotlight should be to give an indepth look of the new champions role, as well as skills, playstyle and possible item builds, not re-enacting Phreaks masturbatory fantasy towerdives that make any new champ look as overpowered as possible. Riot does more things right than S2, but spotlights are not one of them.

[Dexie]

SO I just tried Xerath out. He's pretty fun (And absolutely NOTHING like Kog'maw), he's just got a pretty high skill cap, I think. My main problem was trying to figure out when to pop Locus of Power and when not to. Do it too early and you're a giant target, do it too late and it's not worth it.

Hourglass is absolutely core on him. It works great with his passive and the active is vital for when you mess up and pop Locus at the wrong time. Gonna practice more with him later and see if I can do better.

[The Derrit]

As far as I'm concerned, the purpose of a spotlight should be to give an indepth look of the new champions role, as well as skills, playstyle and possible item builds, not re-enacting Phreaks masturbatory fantasy towerdives that make any new champ look as overpowered as possible. Riot does more things right than S2, but spotlights are not one of them.

i'll agree with that but i mean lets be real here if we all know that its overblown then take it with a grain of salt. it still shows how the skills work even if it is him being like 'i'm uber-leet' kind of ridiculously

[The Author]

So, last week, I saw the "follow us on youtube and get a free alistar skin" deal, and I figured: why the hell not, free stuff is good. But his week, I still have access to Alistar because I own one skin, should I report this bug or just shut the hell up?

[Brycepops]

So, last week, I saw the "follow us on youtube and get a free alistar skin" deal, and I figured: why the hell not, free stuff is good. But his week, I still have access to Alistar because I own one skin, should I report this bug or just shut the hell up?

That's not a bug. They did the same thing with Tristana.

[Dexie]

So, last week, I saw the "follow us on youtube and get a free alistar skin" deal, and I figured: why the hell not, free stuff is good. But his week, I still have access to Alistar because I own one skin, should I report this bug or just shut the hell up?

It's not a bug.

Any time there's an offer to get a free skin, you get the champion too if you don't have them.

If you do the Facebook thing for Trist's skin, you'll get her. Everyone that did ten games during season one and got the Kayle skin unlocked her, everyone who got the PC Gamer for Cait's skin unlocked her, and so on.

On another note, I hate queue dodgers. :/ Just started a ranked game, everyone on my team had their champions picked, we were just waiting for the game to start. I run to the bathroom real quick, and by the time I get back someone had queue dodged and another game started...and I was second pick. Since I wasn't there, it autolocked me as Shen, who I have NO IDEA who to play. Had to queue dodge myself and take the elo hit to keep my team from being punished. Oh well. It was *only* 10 elo, but still.

[prophetik music]

It's not a bug.

Any time there's an offer to get a free skin, you get the champion too if you don't have them.

If you do the Facebook thing for Trist's skin, you'll get her. Everyone that did ten games during season one and got the Kayle skin unlocked her, everyone who got the PC Gamer for Cait's skin unlocked her, and so on.

On another note, I hate queue dodgers. :/ Just started a ranked game, everyone on my team had their champions picked, we were just waiting for the game to start. I run to the bathroom real quick, and by the time I get back someone had queue dodged and another game started...and I was second pick. Since I wasn't there, it autolocked me as Shen, who I have NO IDEA who to play. Had to queue dodge myself and take the elo hit to keep my team from being punished. Oh well. It was *only* 10 elo, but still.

that's not supposed to happen, for what it's worth. if you never connect and are assigned a random champ, you auto-dodge when the timer runs out. you didn't need to dodge =)

tensai, if you like the game, why do you never play? ever? i leave my client open quite a bit and i haven't seen you in at least a month. every time we DO play with you, you act like you know everything, and whatever we do that's not exactly in line with what you'd have done is automatically wrong. i have a lot of fun playing, and i'm to a point where i win roughly 60% of my games. i feel good about that. i don't feel good when we play together, even when we win, because all you do is quietly bitch about "oh, i wouldn't have done that". it's so. incredibly. annoying.

[Tensei]

For like the fifth time, I don't play because Dominion. I like Summoners Rift, I hate Dominion and lately all everyone has been wanting to play is Dominion so I might as well play DotA AI maps instead.

Also, way to exaggerate. I know for a fact that usually I'll say something along the lines of "Aw, you could have gotten him if you had turned around.", but I guess that qualifies as 'quiet bitching' and acting like I know everything in your book. Geez.

For the record, I enjoyed playing with you.

Edited October 5, 2011 by Tensei

[prophetik music]

For like the fifth time, I don't play because Dominion. I like Summoners Rift, I hate Dominion and lately all everyone has been wanting to play is Dominion so I might as well play DotA AI maps instead.

Also, way to exaggerate. I know for a fact that usually I'll say something along the lines of "Aw, you could have gotten him if you had turned around.", but I guess that qualifies as 'quiet bitching' and acting like I know everything in your book. Geez.

For the record, I enjoyed playing with you.

so the comments about my cs being low (as a tank) or having 'too many deaths' are because you liked playing with me? maybe i missed something.

also, dominion...i can count the number of dominion games i've played with ocr people since it came out without taking off my shoes. so, yeah. summoners rift is still by far my most-played gametype, as well as most other ocr people.

[Tensei]

so the comments about my cs being low (as a tank) or having 'too many deaths' are because you liked playing with me? maybe i missed something.

I don't check CS or even the KDA of other players ingame, so I don't know what you're talking about.

[BardicKnowledge]

For what it's worth, Dominion is my most played gametime easily since it came out, and I prefer it for a variety of reasons. One of the major ones that hasn't been discussed much is that I prefer to do my online gaming in 20 minute chunks instead of 50 minute ones.

[Dexie]

Here's a bit of random trivia I didn't know:

"There's an interesting link between Cassiopeia and summer version of Summoner's Rift - whenever Cassiopeia is present on it, the snakes (normally randomly appearing doodad-creatures in the bushes) don't appear on the map. It means also that Cassiopeia is the first champion to actually affect the appearance of a map during the whole match. "

That kind of neat.

[prophetik music]

that's kind of cool.

i was able to play a few matches both laning with and against xerath today. despite an annoying glitch that refuses to tell you what spells did all that damage to you in the death screen, i think his range is ridiculous, and would make him one of the better AP summoners in 1v2 and 1v1 (solo top, not mid) lanes very quickly. in mid, he's outclassed by characters like morgana and fiddles, who can do devastating amounts of damage in a short amount of time while he's immobile in Locus of Power while healing or resisting his attacks. characters like veigar and brand can also just punch him in the nose when he sets up to cast, although they pay for it. casters like cass and malz don't seem to do as well against him because their DoT doesn't do enough or isn't big enough to risk coming in close enough, and AD ranged carries or AP melee carries like akali or kass just get annihilated against him. i saw a match where xerath sat in the middle of the map in locus of power from level two to level nine, and didn't move once (with proper ward support, of course). he just punched the snot out of the other mid (ashe) and they couldn't do jack about it. even when ganked, he was able to stun enemies and our jungler would just eat the ganker alive. obviously that's not a normal situation, but it was awesome watching a character basically turn into a turret for ten minutes.

[Dexie]

He seems like he has a lot of potential, but like I said, I think his skill cap is kind of high. I was laning mid against Kog'maw when I tried him, and I got ate up for most of the laning phase. Not the best matchup, at all.

On another note, I got really bored and counted up how many skins each champion has. I think it's funny that Kog'maw of all champions has seven skins. Riot claims skins are based on popularity, but I really don't see that many Kog players.

It's probably because Nikasaur plays him.

[BardicKnowledge]

Dominion global balance changes!

Ambient gold gain reduced by 7%

Reduced the time range of the respawns to help early winning teams finish games

Hopefully this addresses some of Tensei's complaints; at the least, it shows that they are continuing to balance the gametype.

[prophetik music]

well i doubt they were planning on just leaving it be once they introduced it =)

i like the respawn time range adjustment - it prevents the 200pt comebacks (to an extent) that seem to happen every game. the gold reduction is nice too because it doesn't reward bad players as much as it used to.

[Bleck]

For like the fifth time, I don't play because Dominion. I like Summoners Rift, I hate Dominion and lately all everyone has been wanting to play is Dominion

that's because there are gamers out there who actually want to have fun

[The Derrit]

that's kind of cool.

i was able to play a few matches both laning with and against xerath today. despite an annoying glitch that refuses to tell you what spells did all that damage to you in the death screen, i think his range is ridiculous, and would make him one of the better AP summoners in 1v2 and 1v1 (solo top, not mid) lanes very quickly. in mid, he's outclassed by characters like morgana and fiddles, who can do devastating amounts of damage in a short amount of time while he's immobile in Locus of Power while healing or resisting his attacks. characters like veigar and brand can also just punch him in the nose when he sets up to cast, although they pay for it. casters like cass and malz don't seem to do as well against him because their DoT doesn't do enough or isn't big enough to risk coming in close enough, and AD ranged carries or AP melee carries like akali or kass just get annihilated against him. i saw a match where xerath sat in the middle of the map in locus of power from level two to level nine, and didn't move once (with proper ward support, of course). he just punched the snot out of the other mid (ashe) and they couldn't do jack about it. even when ganked, he was able to stun enemies and our jungler would just eat the ganker alive. obviously that's not a normal situation, but it was awesome watching a character basically turn into a turret for ten minutes.

well here's the thing you can get in stance, blast and then immediately get back out of stance, so it you want to harass with stun combo plus ult you can pretty safely. and then if they chase disengage and run with your speed boost you get.

its absolutely necessary to build lots of ap though without it he does minimal damage. he makes 'tower diving' free though, if someone on your team has CV you can pretty much just cv someone low under a tower from the trees and gg. unless something that just pwns him comes up i could see myself taking him pretty seriously he's a great damager (not as much killer) that chips from outside teamfights to give a comparative advantage/long range stun initiate

[prophetik music]

i played some malphite tonight for the first time in a while. i forgot just how good he is as an all-around character. he can tank, he can tanky dps both AP and AD, he can go glass-cannon AP and do tons of damage, and he's got one of the best initiations in the game in his ult (which does a surprisingly high amount of damage early and mid-game, even without ap). his q is awesome for chasing and for allowing getaways, and his passive shield makes him even more tanky depending on how you build him. having an extra 300hp stacked on top of what you have can easily make the difference between losing a teamfight and acing them, and his skills cool down fast enough that he's always ready to start chucking around rocks again.

i like him, and want to play him more. he's easier than amumu (ult is a 'skillshot', but it's AoE...all other abilities are targeted), and builds similarly, and his ult can't be shortened by tenacity like amumu's is, and he does more burst damage than the mummy does.

[eternal Zero]

Malphite's problem is that he gets too many kills and does not have any kind of steady dps. You just can't replace crying and tantrum for awesome aoe damage.

Also Xerath is a blast. If you've got the skills to make sure all your shots connect he just eats teams alive. It's really hard to push onto him at towers because he 2 shots entire creep waves and if you get your spell timing down right similar to knowing max range on bio-arcane barrage into ult as Kog'Maw you will get so many kills from W->E->R Q R R Q as your assaulting towers or going for ganks. Other main thing is to not be afraid to flash up to a team and then activate turret mode. Most people don't expect it.

[Tensei]

that's because there are gamers out there who actually want to have fun

Yes, I hate fun, that's why I don't play Dominion. It certainly has nothing to do with the fact that the gametype has the depth of a half-dried rain puddle. Or the fact that games that are actually centered around the concept (Dawn of War II, Battlefield) pull it off way better in terms of balance and depth.

[kitty]

I'd play with you Tensei but I hardly see you on.

Anyway, I play Summoner's Rift more often because Dominion stresses me out a little too much.

As far as Dominion goes, I think it's fun to an extent. I also think that comparing it to Battlefield is like comparing apples and oranges. MOBA mechanics on a capture points game setting is a lot different than FPS capture points.

And finally, Tensei, your response here is a perfect example of why people think you troll. You're overly sarcastic and present your opiniona as "fact" when in reality they're not.

[Tensei]

Well, for one, I think it's perfectly clear that it's an opinion so it would be redundant to have to add 'IMO' and 'I think that' to every sentence.

Secondly, I was being sarcastic in response to Bleck making a borderline provocative post ("You prefer Summoners Rift, therefore you don't want to have fun"), as well as doing the same thing you're calling me out on, namely the whole 'phrasing an opinion as fact'. If people make a reasonable post, I'll be reasonable in return.

Third, the phrase 'trolling' has lost all meaning. Apparently criticizing Riot for faking spotlight footage is trolling. Apparently thinking certain champions are bad (or at least worse than others) is trolling.

Edited October 6, 2011 by Tensei

[The Author]

i played some malphite tonight for the first time in a while. i forgot just how good he is as an all-around character. he can tank, he can tanky dps both AP and AD, he can go glass-cannon AP and do tons of damage, and he's got one of the best initiations in the game in his ult (which does a surprisingly high amount of damage early and mid-game, even without ap). his q is awesome for chasing and for allowing getaways, and his passive shield makes him even more tanky depending on how you build him. having an extra 300hp stacked on top of what you have can easily make the difference between losing a teamfight and acing them, and his skills cool down fast enough that he's always ready to start chucking around rocks again.

i like him, and want to play him more. he's easier than amumu (ult is a 'skillshot', but it's AoE...all other abilities are targeted), and builds similarly, and his ult can't be shortened by tenacity like amumu's is, and he does more burst damage than the mummy does.

One bit of warning though, he's a liability when you want to finish off a tower and an adversary moves in closer because of the risk of splash damage. (Although I think attacks on the tower don't splash, but if you're like me and go for a quick minion kill to help your minions, you may draw the tower's attention. I run in similar issues with Alistar.)

[prophetik music]

One bit of warning though, he's a liability when you want to finish off a tower and an adversary moves in closer because of the risk of splash damage. (Although I think attacks on the tower don't splash, but if you're like me and go for a quick minion kill to help your minions, you may draw the tower's attention. I run in similar issues with Alistar.)

oh, i know. i build sunfire's cape on a lot of tanks, so i know to stay out of aggro range because of that =) tower attacks don't splash, and minion kills don't matter about tower aggro, but making sure i don't accidentally attack the other player is something i am careful about =)