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

[The Derrit]

usage numbers are weird. i mean, zil is used more than singed?

zil doesn't get played much because he has no sustain, and he's either a support character that can't offtank, heal, or easily set up kills easily (nunu, shen, blitz, etc) or an ap burst mage with one spell. i think his character concept is super cool, but i think he has zero place on a normal team until dual top comes back (and even they he's mostly worthless). he can be decent late game but invariably he's got nothing built by then and either evaporates or uses his speed boost to run away.

there are a lot of champs that used to be great but aren't anymore. sivir is a trainwreck now, nerfed to oblivion. eve is always mentioned as a terrible champ now that she has no stun. corki's a decent player but never gets played anymore. same with malphite (whose numbers aren't bad, so i don't know why he's here) and alistar (some of the best tank CC in the game if you can afford CDR).

i see alistar and malphite all the time. and i think zilean does fine bottom you have to be careful but its about putting bombs either directly on people or on minions about to die so it will instasplode. his slow is enough to get you a kill in most ganks or if someone overextends. you just can't play janna 'i get 0 cs' with him you need some to get you started up, which despite conventional wisdom is TOTALLY FINE

[Nabeel Ansari]

Veigar: Range. :'(

[eternal Zero]

Corki gets played all the time especially in competitive play. He's what Ezreal wishes he could be. High mobility, high burst, and high dps due to armor shred. Also the ability to solo top 100% effectively against any other top is impressive. He's very hard to counter and very hard to gank.

Veigar gets decent play because he's a solid counter to guys like Ahri or Lulu who are highly annoying and mobile and squishy (well at least Ahri will be squishier...probably not cause it's a baby nerf also Lulu is squishy if she can't cast). It's mainly a risk though because it goes into layers of who can outplay who. A fed Veigar dominates everybody. That's not easy to get to though.

Also the concept of mid Zilean is very similar to mid Lulu but he just doesn't do it nearly as well. That's probably why you see him get played.

[zircon]

Zilean as a hard support is reasonably effective. He has good utility and is similar to Nunu in that he is very aggressive. I think he's underplayed for no real reason.

[prophetik music]

Zilean as a hard support is reasonably effective. He has good utility and is similar to Nunu in that he is very aggressive. I think he's underplayed for no real reason.

but nunu's ult does 750 damage base at level 3 with no ap. zil has one offensive spell. utility is only effective if you can do something with it.

sona has her ult and various buffs for the entire team.

soraka has mr boost, amazing heals, shreds enemy defenses, and space bananas!

janna has tons of cc, a great shield/dps buff, and her ult which if used correctly can win teamfights almost singlehandedly.

nunu has almost infinite sustain in-lane, the longest slow in the game, an as/movespeed boost, and a crazy ult.

blitz has three forms of cc, hidden tankiness with his passive, and is a game-changer if played well.

taric has great heals, easy mana regen, armor boost, and (imo) a fantastic ult that is basically a short baron buff.

shen has that dash that always gets kills, a dagger that heals his carry, and an awesome ult.

jarvan...well, don't botlane jarvan, but his ult basically makes it impossible to towerdive him.

naut has tons of cc, gap-closing abilities, and crazy innate tankiness with almost no items.

kayle has the best heal in the game pound for pound, a better ult than zil, excessive ranged dps, and a great slow. plus almost no one can 1v1 her at early levels if you have a brain.

i don't think zil matches up with any of them. he has a movespeed buff/debuff, his bombs, and his ult - but kayle has the same stuff and can do it better. nunu does the speed/slow thing better because of his sustain and better damage. shen has a better ult as well, and gives you that huge taunt and healing in-lane.

zil may be effective to a point, but so are a lot of better options.

Edited June 4, 2012 by prophetik music

[BardicKnowledge]

but nunu's ult does 750 damage base at level 3 with no ap. zil has one offensive spell. utility is only effective if you can do something with it.

kayle has the best heal in the game pound for pound, a better ult than zil, excessive ranged dps, and a great slow. plus almost no one can 1v1 her at early levels if you have a brain.

i don't think zil matches up with any of them. he has a movespeed buff/debuff, his bombs, and his ult - but kayle has the same stuff and can do it better. nunu does the speed/slow thing better because of his sustain and better damage. shen has a better ult as well, and gives you that huge taunt and healing in-lane.

zil may be effective to a point, but so are a lot of better options.

Zilean is good on a fast hitting team designed to win early -- to replace Nunu on a team, said team needs to be able to make use of the experience advantage Zil brings to the table. Incidentally, Zilean eventually out-performs Nunu in terms of slowing (Zil can keep it up forever)...it's just that Zil's slow does no damage.

Conversely, I feel that Karma is an amazing long-game support char, since her heal (by far the best in the game, not Kayle) becomes insane on tanks that stack health since it heals a percentage of max, not a flat number.

People need to stop thinking in terms of "this is a good AP" or "this is a good support" and instead be more specific, saying "this is a good AP for a team designed to do X and Y, but not Z." I feel larger-scale team composition is far more important than most of us give it credit for.

[zircon]

Yeah, that's very true. Thinking of overall team comp is what enables M5 to dominate so hard with weird picks.

Anyway, Zilean's bomb is one of the most damaging, high-range and guaranteed-hit harass skills in the game. No other support comes close in terms of harass potential. Rewind 2x Bomb is THE strongest harass in the game. His ult also enables extreme mindgames and ultimately allows one of your carries to have a free, enhanced guardian angel.

In a teamfight, Zilean can speed up and slow down multiple people in a very short period. He has very high (for a support) damage output with bombs, and his ult is always useful. Nunu's ult is a wildcard that might never land, so without it he has basically two skills on longish cooldown: single target buff and single target nuke. That's not a whole lot of utility. Giving your AD carry another few seconds of domination, on the other hand, can easily end a teamfight.

[prophetik music]

if you're building zil for early-game harass, he's severely limited by his mana costs and can't harass too effectively because of it. i understand that he does have utility and can work with certain team comps, i just feel that almost always a different support is a better pick. shen gets you just as many kills in bot lane, and is way more innately tanky, and also has one of the best ults in the game.

while karma's percentage heal is great for certain characters, kayle's is by far the best in terms of the hp it can give your carries (which are all that matter, honestly, anyways). i understand her heal isn't as good for a 2x mogs tank just from those items, but a 2x mog's tank also has over a hundred hp regen per five (and probably another 60 or 70 from other items and base regen) and shouldn't necessarily be receiving those heals. also, they're a 2x mogs tank...if they need heals they're doing something wrong =) and kayle's harass is lower mana cost and almost as good as zil's, between the smite and her ranged auto-attack. with no damage built she can still go to town on someone easily.

heals on a support are there to support the carry, and kayle's is the best (although soraka's super close). like, if you look at the course of a game, who needs that heal more - a low-hp carry, or a heavy, heavy tank? a percentage heal isn't much worth at all in that case.

[BardicKnowledge]

if you're building zil for early-game harass, he's severely limited by his mana costs and can't harass too effectively because of it. i understand that he does have utility and can work with certain team comps, i just feel that almost always a different support is a better pick. shen gets you just as many kills in bot lane, and is way more innately tanky, and also has one of the best ults in the game.

while karma's percentage heal is great for certain characters, kayle's is by far the best in terms of the hp it can give your carries (which are all that matter, honestly, anyways). i understand her heal isn't as good for a 2x mogs tank just from those items, but a 2x mog's tank also has over a hundred hp regen per five (and probably another 60 or 70 from other items and base regen) and shouldn't necessarily be receiving those heals. also, they're a 2x mogs tank...if they need heals they're doing something wrong =) and kayle's harass is lower mana cost and almost as good as zil's, between the smite and her ranged auto-attack. with no damage built she can still go to town on someone easily.

heals on a support are there to support the carry, and kayle's is the best (although soraka's super close). like, if you look at the course of a game, who needs that heal more - a low-hp carry, or a heavy, heavy tank? a percentage heal isn't much worth at all in that case.

Karma's heal is AOE and hits your whole team, making much of what you just said invalid.

[relyanCe]

Draven's kit makes me want to puke.

Enjoying your RP purchases, Riot?

[Tensei]

Draven's kit makes me want to puke.

Enjoying your RP purchases, Riot?

Passive damage or armor boost, Active on-hit skill, gap closer/movement speed boost, random nuke with maybe some light CC, Ult cribbed from Dota but nerfed to fit the game.

Contact me for my resume, Riot.

E: The LoL forums are a perpetual source of hilarity:

I really hope Riot doesn't unlock all champions like DotA

The only reason I keep playing is because I'm perpetually saving up for new characters. I don't care about ranking and stuff, I just want to catch 'em all per say. It's pretty rewarding when you save enough IP for a 6300 champion. For my play style it's about a two or three week endeavor to save for that but it's definitely rewarding in the end when you can play that awesome character.

"W-well, I don't even WANT every champion unlocked from the start ;_;"

Edited June 5, 2012 by Tensei

[BardicKnowledge]

Did anyone else catch the Team Marn vs. Team Solomid series at MLG Anaheim?

Easily the most entertaining set I've seen in a long time despite the fact that MRN got facerolled. There was a guy in the crowd that unfurled a "Should have picked Heimer" banner after game 1...

...and Team Marn instalocks him. Fuck yeah! Also, the cheering for them was like 10x as loud as for any other team there, largely because a few people in the crowd (Kara and others) showed up with vuvuzelas.

VUVUZELAS.

The fighting game community is the best, even in genres that aren't their own. We need to see more fun in the competitive circuit for other games.

[The Derrit]

Did anyone else catch the Team Marn vs. Team Solomid series at MLG Anaheim?

Easily the most entertaining set I've seen in a long time despite the fact that MRN got facerolled. There was a guy in the crowd that unfurled a "Should have picked Heimer" banner after game 1...

...and Team Marn instalocks him. Fuck yeah! Also, the cheering for them was like 10x as loud as for any other team there, largely because a few people in the crowd (Kara and others) showed up with vuvuzelas.

VUVUZELAS.

The fighting game community is the best, even in genres that aren't their own. We need to see more fun in the competitive circuit for other games.

now this i want to see is there a link somewhere

[eternal Zero]

Yeah I was watching the stream when that happened. So good.

[k-wix]

Anyway, Zilean's bomb is one of the most damaging, high-range and guaranteed-hit harass skills in the game. No other support comes close in terms of harass potential. Rewind 2x Bomb is THE strongest harass in the game. His ult also enables extreme mindgames and ultimately allows one of your carries to have a free, enhanced guardian angel.

In a teamfight, Zilean can speed up and slow down multiple people in a very short period. He has very high (for a support) damage output with bombs, and his ult is always useful. Nunu's ult is a wildcard that might never land, so without it he has basically two skills on longish cooldown: single target buff and single target nuke. That's not a whole lot of utility. Giving your AD carry another few seconds of domination, on the other hand, can easily end a teamfight.

As someone who plays mainly support champions - and plays them in a very wide variety of ways and trys to synergize with the team, Zilean just comes up short no matter what your trying to do. He's decent, and in the right hands he can perform well - but it's a case of where other champions are just doing it better.

Anyway - here's why I think Zilean is underpowered. Having a spell that shortens the cooldown of th rest of his spells is just bad design. I get the concept, and I think it's neat.. but he's loosing an entire ability just to make his other abilities more spammable. Look at someone like Lulu, she also has a really good speed up spell, also has some nuke, but then also has a hard CC ability, a shield, an 80% slow on the enemy? He needs to loose rewind in favor of something better, something that affects the game more.

His ultimate, arguably the only reason you take him is also extremely underpowered. You can get its effect on an item. It can be difficult to even land the ult due to CC and the enemy team can counter its effects by simply switching targets. Conversely, in the early levels the buff doesn't last very long and in MANY cases the enemy team (or ganker?) can just 'wait it out' then murder the teammate. It used to be longer, but they changed it to scale with the level of the ability in a patch awhile back. The great part is if you DO land it, and they DO kill the target, there is a bit of a delay where the target 'ressurects'. I hate this because that player has to spend precious seconds waiting to get back in the fight. Many times, the teamfight will have already passed, and they will wakeup only to be killed again by a number of enemies.

[Tensei]

Anyway - here's why I think Zilean is underpowered. Having a spell that shortens the cooldown of th rest of his spells is just bad design. I get the concept, and I think it's neat.. but he's loosing an entire ability just to make his other abilities more spammable.

This line of thinking can be applied to a lot of skills though: If a champion deals bonus damage on every third hit as a passive, why not just up their stats accordingly and replace it with something more interesting? Really though, the worst thing are passives that pretend they're actually actives like Gangplanks friggin' Raise Morale.

[k-wix]

This line of thinking can be applied to a lot of skills though: If a champion deals bonus damage on every third hit as a passive, why not just up their stats accordingly and replace it with something more interesting? Really though, the worst thing are passives that pretend they're actually actives like Gangplanks friggin' Raise Morale.

Because bonus damage on every third hit is more interesting than increasing stats accordingly, and honestly - Zileans time reduction IS a really interesting and fun ability, I just think it falls short. It needs a buff, or needs to do something else.

[The Derrit]

Because bonus damage on every third hit is more interesting than increasing stats accordingly, and honestly - Zileans time reduction IS a really interesting and fun ability, I just think it falls short. It needs a buff, or needs to do something else.

i don't think it falls short at all

i just played a game where i played full support and by endgame through kage's pick-> morello's i had high cdr, and then right before we won i finished a chalice.

my w was on a 3.6 second cooldown. what this means is that the cooldown of my bomb was effectively two seconds, i could infinitely slow someone while also speeding someone else, and use my ult every 45 seconds or so.

that is DEVASTATING. anyone who gets caught can't get away, i constantly do damage, and keep my team moving faster than theirs. if someone gets low, i can ult them pretty much all the time. i single handedly give our team a crushing advantage just by being near the fight. getting there? sure not the easiest thing. but a full cdr zilean can win a game for a losing team

[k-wix]

i don't think it falls short at all

i just played a game where i played full support and by endgame through kage's pick-> morello's i had high cdr, and then right before we won i finished a chalice.

my w was on a 3.6 second cooldown. what this means is that the cooldown of my bomb was effectively two seconds, i could infinitely slow someone while also speeding someone else, and use my ult every 45 seconds or so.

that is DEVASTATING. anyone who gets caught can't get away, i constantly do damage, and keep my team moving faster than theirs. if someone gets low, i can ult them pretty much all the time. i single handedly give our team a crushing advantage just by being near the fight. getting there? sure not the easiest thing. but a full cdr zilean can win a game for a losing team

CDR is definitely the way to go when building him, and I do think the new chalice is super good on him but with your build (unless you skipped some items?) you had very little in the way of HP, Armor/MR - and if that's the case, the enemy team should have focused you from the beginning, nullifying most of your advantages. In order to really fulfill his goal as a 'nukey support' Zilean needs lots of AP and CDR to capitalize on the use of his abilities, which means he needs to ditch the 'defensive' components of his build, since supports don't usually make a ton of money - this makes him extremely squishy.

As for his ultimate, I'd personally rather have Lulus. It's virtually the same mechanic, but takes effect immediately - and has the bonus of mini-bouncing and slowing everyone near her target. It's the perfect turn around tool, saves allies, and can't be mitigated by the enemy team changing targets until the 'effect' wears off. The *only* advantage I see to Zileans ultimate is that it's way more spammable. I think most fights would be decided long before he gets to use it twice, though.

Also, not to keep the thread locked onto the discussion of my 'meh' feelings on Zilean - lets talk about dat new Ezreal skin!! Totally reminds me of megaman! Love how the skin changes as you level up. Really neat ideas. Hope we get more skins like this.

[Tensei]

So about that downtime...

[prophetik music]

is the server still down? i know it was out last night.

[Jamphibious]

Looks like it is back up for the time being, with a short login queue. I imagine it may get longer though, like it was a few days ago.

[The Derrit]

got over 1150 elo again

YOU KNOW WHAT THAT MEANS TIME FOR A 12 GAME LOSING STREAK WITH 8 20 MIN SURRENDERS

[Tensei]

Oh boy.

We’ve enhanced Eve’s mobility: instead of just having a movement speed steroid on a long-cooldown ult, one of Eve’s new base abilities passively grants her stacking movement speed on spell hits, as well as an active sprint on a short cooldown. These effects can stack.

Hate Spike is getting a significantly longer range and the ability to hit more targets.

Eve’s getting a new ultimate -- a ranged AoE that damages and slows enemies while granting her some increased durability based on how successful she is at landing it.

Gap closer, check. AoE ult, check. She's just missing an on-hit effect skill now.

[Dissidia]

I JUST WANT TO SAY.

I <3 JayC