So, anyone playing League of Legends?

It's official - RIOT killed Karma. I'm not playing this second rate Lux clone, fuck you and fuck the horse you rode in on.

 

I feel inclined to agree. While she's sorta fun to play, given how it's basically another lux/orianna/morgana lookalike and I like playing those, it ain't muh Karma. Also, she's been completely invalidated as a support. Also2, it's retarded how she essentially has only 1 minion-killing skill - have fun wasting half an hour getting each goddamned blue buff.

 

She isn't Karma. Not at all. Doesn't play remotely in any similar way.


The improvements? 100 more attack range, a much smoother animation, and her spell numbers are ridiculously high. But I like how they removed her wave-clearing capability completely and the passive that was fun and required skill and risk to use competantly. They simplified her kit and cut out so many of the cool things she could do that it's just unbelievable.

I know how to play her optimally from a single bot game - she's just like any other mage now, except with flavour traded out for higher power. Wave clear is the single key characteristic that all mid-laners need to have, and they've gutted hers - she has no answer to being pushed in and roaming from the opposition.

And don't get me started on her new lore, her new voiceover, her new looks and her new jokes and taunt

 

The microtransactions are mostly cosmetic (skins) or pure time savers that don't translate into a clear advantage over those that don't pay (being able to buy champions now without farming IP all week, getting more IP per match). It's not like World of Tanks where you have "lol gold ammo" which gives an obvious advantage to a paying player. The closest thing to buying power are runes and rune pages but those can only be bought with IP and you can't buy IP directly with cash (you need to earn it by playing matches, IP boosts you can buy with cash speed up the process). Either way as you play you get mostly matched with people who have more or less as much stuff as you until level 30 regardless if they are paying or not, apart from obvious alts or some low level guy with higher level friends if a bunch of people queue together.

At the end of the day though the microtransaction part is irrelevant and overall League of Legends is pretty much the only f2p game with microtransactions that isn't really pay2win AFAIK. That and if there's anything that may annoy you about the game it is either the community or the gameplay itself.

 

I tried that fotm nasus jungle shit, seems pretty good, hopefully he won't get nerfed because it's funny how sad he makes these douchebags who main Jax. I'm actually suprised how well he clears with his E.

I bought the new snot man, I can say he's very fun and his ganks are glorious, good range on his slingshot skill, the passive helps towerdiving, 3 different CC effects. Solid.

 

I wonder what are they going to do with him...

 

At least they had the decency to have Traditional Karma use the old VA. But she still looks wonky, especially the running animation is strange. Also, no fans

 

If anything the nu-Karma is boring. I get a feeling she might be strong, like her numbers are pretty high but meh. Why doesn't she have an ally heal anymore anyways, too many healers in this game? Pfft.

Guys I recommend Zac for any main jungler, and I can predict he's going to be popular, if there's a dark spot somewhere he can do devastating ganks with the slingshot, just try it and you'll see. I'm pretty pleased because I can always use more ganking junglers. He's kinda on the squishy side since he has no tankiness steroids but even still I found he fits in a dive comp like a brofist in the ass.

 

I played with Lulu for a long time but I finally realized that so far I used completely wrong tactic with her. In my last game I tried a new plan involving "Psychological Warfare", basically what I did was come as close as possible to enemy players and then constantly spam Ctrl+4. Result, line won easily and opponent carry begging me to stop on multiple occasions and him even dying two times trying to make me shut up.

 

Congratulations, you've come closer to master the power of laughter. You are soon ready to start playing Lux.

 

Next you want to bind laugh to more accessible key or mouse button. I got mine bound to "x" for example. Now I'm waiting for patch which would make champions stop cancelling their walk command while I spam emotes. Then it will be time to play some Singed. Actually it will be time to play only Singed. Maybe Lux and Singed. And Lulu. Yeah.

 

VEIGAR

Edit: and Rammus, of course, the king of laugh spamming

 

"At the end of the day though the microtransaction part is irrelevant and overall League of Legends is pretty much the only f2p game with microtransactions that isn't really pay2win AFAIK"

Dota 2 is more fair, they are 100% cosmetic.

 

Define fair, because the competitive aspect is not influenced by how much cash you spend on the game period. It saves you time allowing you to accumulate champions or runes/runepages faster, but that's the only thing it does. Your access to champions or runes is not limited, you can eventually have as many and the same ones as the guy who pays for everything, it just takes longer. By the time you can play ranked you should have everything you need to win based solely on your and your team's skill anyway even if you didn't spend a dime. The outcome of the match is decided by who makes more mistakes (or more serious mistakes), not by who spent more cash.

 

It is more fair to the player as you don't have to spend hundreds (thousands?) of matches to play all heroes and abide to the meta of the month. I for example have only 30 or so heroes and two now-kind-of-obsolete rune pages (armour penetration for example). I know I don't play much, but ffs I can't be arsed to grind all that shit.

 

Arpen is hardly obsolete, especially when all your lane opponents start with flat armor runes probably. If you actually bother to play ranked and thus have to abide by the (not really) ever changing meta you play enough to get that IP anyway. That and if you want to get better at the game you need to play it a lot anyway. For blind pick having more champions and runepages is irrelevant since you can get fucked by a lucky counterpick on the enemy team.

 

People have been banned for spamming laugh though.

 

I run full armor penetration whenever I figure I can probably win with a Long Sword and potions, say most Zed mid match-ups. So they bought a Cloth Armor and 5, well luckily I have a bunch of armor penetration and still +10 attack damage from the sword, if I get an early Brutalizer I'll have a pretty high flat penetration so I should be dealing mostly true damage. It's probably my highest win chance setup and champion but you know how it is, I MID I MID so I'll mostly ask for jungle.

What's the point of playing Lulu/Lux/Nunu Bot/Zed other than to spam the laugh, banning for that is just gay.

 

Darth Roxor enters champ select! Forsooth, he's last pick!

Says about four times that he's a downright horrible jungler and it's in everyone's best interest to not let him jungle.

His team decides it's never too late to improve! Especially in a ranked queue! Have fun jungling, Darth Roxor!

And when he finally picks rammus, quite possibly the only jungler with whom he doesn't suck horribry, guy #4 ("I PLAY MID AND NOTHING ELSE FUCK OFF") responds with the tactical insight of "MAYBE JARVAN INSTEAD????"

+++teamwork for everyone, would brofist again.

 

TBH I don't understand the obsession with jungle Jarvan. Sure, he's got decent ganks, an annoying gap-closer/escape and is fairly bulky. But vi, mao, amumu and even ramus just seem better even if he has a clear time advantage over some of them. Their ganks are as good if not better, their gap-closers aren't a nearly built-in flash maybe but they're solid and their ults can't fuck up teamfights like jarvan's more often than not does. He doesn't really seem to be worthy of being in the top tier junglers like people say he is.

 

Well he has double gap closer which is pretty good these days, he has 3 CC effects but is not as easily fucked over as say Nautilus and also he can gank from weird locations, the armor/life shred is the shit these days apparently and his team buffing powers were pretty strong before the nerfs. He can be built multiple ways and his kit is well-rounded, he's a generalist without critical weaknesses. The most important thing though is his ability to split teams with his ultimate. I think his advantages are pretty clear. For example Rammus is just completely unlike J4, instead of double gap closer he has his Powerball which altough great for ganks isn't a super flashy initiation tool, also Rammus is not very resistant to being harassed since he's so reliant on levels and items, having to level his taunt before it does anything makes his clears suffer. I love Rammus of course but he has pretty clear flaws.

Zac seems too amazing to be true, you can gank in ways nobody can prepare for, it's pretty crazy. Gonna get nerfed.

 

His kit allows him to be very effective at early towerdiving and destroying towers. This makes him a very solid pick in tournament meta so obviously people take him into soloqueue believing that if someone is popular among the pros, he must be OP.

 

Bought Zed last week and I've been having fun learning him to hopefully become a better top laner, 2 matchups in particular stand out. The first game is against a Bronze I think, that picked Malphite with Teleport. I knew it's not exactly going to be easy but I decide to try the red pot + 4 + ward start, gg. I was ahead up to the first back but the Malphite eventually outraded me pure and simple, that passive of his and him maxing Q was just too much, not to mention every item he built was just a direct counter to what Zed does, I couldn't lane against him starting from level 5. Lesson learned, you really have to be very flexible in playing Zed and I probably should've maxed Q, not gotten a red pot and just tried to maximize my farm and lane sustain, if played well I think it's only a boring farm lane unfortunately.

Second matchup and oh boy, the other guy is Gold II and tryharding from the start, he counterpicks Riven, which he also happens to main, and then camps my tribush at lvl 1 and calls his friend to force me to back and lose some early cs. I thought much harder about this matchup and was ready for it, I had cloth + 5 pots while he only had red pot + 4 + ward. And since he was in lane early he can't help but push, so I just farmed under tower most of the time while he got ganked. Despite the ganks we both had 2 kills and I was smart enough to max Q this time, the poke was annoying him he had to back a few times early and generally never be able to bully me and I turned it into a farm lane. Eventually he gets bored and start roaming while I split push. Then we win team fights and it's over. I ulted him every time and I feel like I outscaled him, Zed is interesting.

I hate when people roam against me, it automatically feels like I lost the lane. They usually have like a 10 second advantage no matter what they do because face checking a Riven is dangerous. Still it feels pretty good given the matchup and that he mains top and Riven in Gold II.

Are there any pro meta strats in top? Or do people just act like they lost at champ select.