League of Legends - F2P MOBA (like DOTA) part 2

[Firsttime]

I bought Wukong here tonight since he does damage now. Liking him quite a bit. His lane harass is very easy which is nice and his q does tons of damage. He's not as bursty as Lee Sin, but he doesn't rely on a skill shot either so it kinda balances out.

Also I think Yi is my favorite jungler right now. Farm up Wriggles->Ghostblade, pop out and proc the GB and his ulti and people just die. His ganks at level 6 with red buff are great too.

 

[Fenixgoon]

i tried out skarner for a bit and he seems pretty cool. i like the fact that you can spam his skills as you hit stuff more.

no idea how to make a good build for him though. i beat up on a soraka bot

 

[ImpulsE69]

I've been experimenting with AS/pen runes and a split ap/ad build. It's ok, not great, but the teams I've had weren't helpful at all. I played bots and rolled with him, so it's not that

I do think unless you are going all out tank, he needs gunblade and tri.

 

[HumblePie]

Pretty much everyone is underwhelmed with him. Bought him and I am of the same mindset. I'll go through the problems with him

First off his Q.
Seems kind of cool. Decent damage and fairly spammable. Especially if you are auto attacking fast enough. Problem is. The radius on this ability is SHORT. If anyone starts to run away, you absolutely can not get close enough to use this ability a SECOND time to apply the slow. It's worthless. Because the radius is ridiculously small, to be effective you HAVE to jump in the middle of the team fights. Which means painting a big target on an already bright, shiny, and fairly large frame champ that stands out like a hobo in the white house. This is his only ability based off AD as well. It also does AP for successive hits.

His W.
Decent shield although not the best. It is nice that it adds ASPD and movespeed and has a decent duration of 6 seconds. If you are attacking the CD reduction from his passive can let you possibly keep this shield going indefinitely. But here is where we run into a problem. Once the shield pops, all the buffs go away. No more move or run speed. And the CD is around 10 seconds or so. Also, the shield isn't the best and will go down FAST if any single enemy champ decides to focus you, let alone multiple enemies at once. Which in team fights that is going to happen since Skarner has to get in close to be effective.

His E.
Does almost no damage. Has a very short range. At least it has range and does penetrate for some damage. It is best off as a heal. Out of all his abilities this one is "OK" for him. Could be better but it's semi useful.

His R.
Seems really cool. But the range is small, and it only lasts 1.5 seconds. Which really isn't enough time to move whatever he has trapped up anywhere unless you pop ghost. Flash will break it so don't use it as I've already tried. The damage on this is pretty sub par. It's basically a rammus taunt except the enemy can't even auto attack back. Pretty lackluster for an ult.


The major problem with Skarner is he is an attack speed based mage character in melee. There are no real items that support a good build for him. Attack speed items work with AD better than AP. You also need to build him hybrid wise. So you are stuck to a Jax based build for him. Rageblade, Gunblade, and Tri Force. Those are what I would call his core items.

 

[Snock514]

I seem to do these full circles with champions. I first play them and I hate them, then weeks later I randomly find them super exiting to play. Shaco is my current interest. Boots of mobility = gg anyone chasing. Easily push a lane alone then pop out hauling ass back. I play him jungle AD now, people always tell me that an AP shaco is better though I am a little skeptical about how this works. Though he does gain 1:1 AP ratios on his two-shiv poison and ultimate and only 4:1 ratio on his boxes. Anyone have any experience with playing AP Shaco?

 

[ivan2]

I seem to start to get kills with the monkey king now. All he need is wiggle plus sheen as core, then build up either defense with basically anything or offense by finishing triforce then a big damage item or those 2 dmg + magic def items.

 

[crownjules]

I seem to do these full circles with champions. I first play them and I hate them, then weeks later I randomly find them super exiting to play. Shaco is my current interest. Boots of mobility = gg anyone chasing. Easily push a lane alone then pop out hauling ass back. I play him jungle AD now, people always tell me that an AP shaco is better though I am a little skeptical about how this works. Though he does gain 1:1 AP ratios on his two-shiv poison and ultimate and only 4:1 ratio on his boxes. Anyone have any experience with playing AP Shaco?

AP Shaco is terrible. The gameplay for him consists of baiting people into box ambushes. Once you get to a certain skill level, people don't fall for that stuff once they see you building AP. And you can't do the one thing that Shaco is currently good for and that's backdoor towers.

 

[Chiropteran]

AP Shaco is terrible. The gameplay for him consists of baiting people into box ambushes. Once you get to a certain skill level, people don't fall for that stuff once they see you building AP. And you can't do the one thing that Shaco is currently good for and that's backdoor towers.

I don't fully agree...

Shiv gets 100% scaling from AP, so AP shaco does some crazy ranged damage. Also, it's normal to build a lichbane, so it's not like you don't do any auto attack damage.

Typical midgame with 250 AP is Q, backstab crit for 600~ w/ lichbane proc, shiv for 400, autoattack for 300, drop jack in the box, autoattack for 300, etc. Pure sustained damage is higher with an AD build, but AP has plenty of burst and it certainly isn't only about abusing jack-in-the-box nests. Lategame if you reach 600+ AP the burst is sickening.

Also, ever since the AP turrent damage change AP shaco has been fine for pushing down turrets. It takes a little longer to push the lane to reach the turret, but he can still shred the turret pretty damage fast AP or AD doesn't really matter.

edit: although the comment that AP shaco is better than AD shaco, I don't agree with. I think both builds are equally viable, which is, not very viable.

That said, I still think shaco is a little underpar regardless of build, and I wouldn't play him either way in ranked, unless I had a team built to maximize his strengths. (everyone w/ teleport to jack in the box abuses, a shen, maybe another trapping champion for ultimate map control)

 

[Snock514]

The forums seem to be saying he is a bit under powered. He's still has a pretty fun play-style regardless.

 

[crownjules]

The forums seem to be saying he is a bit under powered. He's still has a pretty fun play-style regardless.

Not only is he UP (purposefully while they figure out how the hell to remake stealth, same with Eve and Twitch), he has a lot of bugs that plague him.

 

[Chiropteran]

Not only is he UP (purposefully while they figure out how the hell to remake stealth, same with Eve and Twitch), he has a lot of bugs that plague him.

It bugs me, because they already have stealth "counters", they just aren't efficient enough.

It's a pretty simply slider- ADJUST THE COST OF ORACLES.

Step 1- buff stealthers to be on par or very close to other champion strength disregarding stealth.

Step 2a- reduce cost of oracle by 50%, goto 3

Step 2b- increase cost of oracle by 25%

Step 3- playtest. if stealther=overpowered, goto 2a. if stealther=underpowered, goto 2b.

Step 4- balance!

 

[crownjules]

It bugs me, because they already have stealth "counters", they just aren't efficient enough.

It's more than that. First of all, stealth characters are binary in nature. Either the enemy team never buys oracles and stealthers have a field day or the enemy team buys oracles all the time and then it takes a very skilled player to overcome it. There's very little middle ground.

Also, stealth characters are extremely unbalanced when it comes to scouting. They can trek through the enemy jungle without very much risk at all, finding the jungler or just shadowing movements of enemies to setup easy ambushes.

 

[Chiropteran]

It's more than that. First of all, stealth characters are binary in nature. Either the enemy team never buys oracles and stealthers have a field day or the enemy team buys oracles all the time and then it takes a very skilled player to overcome it. There's very little middle ground.

Also, stealth characters are extremely unbalanced when it comes to scouting. They can trek through the enemy jungle without very much risk at all, finding the jungler or just shadowing movements of enemies to setup easy ambushes.

It's really not that easy. Rank 1 stealth lasts 10 seconds. Given the time required to stealth and move into a useful location (assuming you want to stealth out of sight), you really can't do anything except immediately initiate with rank 1 stealth.

Rank 2 stealth, 20 seconds, is a lot more usable, but you still can't chase someone forever.

A related issue is move speed. I played twitch main, and let me tell you he is SLOW. Even with rank 3 or higher stealth you couldn't follow a jungler around simply because you moved way too slow. If you went with a zeal + zeal + boots build you were fast enough, but it was something of a trade off and you lost a lot of potential damage by focusing on your move speed so much.

Then there are the numerous semi-counters for stealth. Nidalee/caitlin/teemo traps. AoE champions. Pink wards. The hated TF ultimate.

There are plenty of partial counters without buying an oracle. Still, I say oracle cost is the only thing they need to adjust to balance stealthers. If oracle cost 0, stealth would be useless. If they cost 10000, stealth would be too strong. Somewhere in-between stealth is fairly balanced, they just need to figure out what that number is.

 

[nanobreath]

It's really not that easy. Rank 1 stealth lasts 10 seconds. Given the time required to stealth and move into a useful location (assuming you want to stealth out of sight), you really can't do anything except immediately initiate with rank 1 stealth.

Rank 2 stealth, 20 seconds, is a lot more usable, but you still can't chase someone forever.

A related issue is move speed. I played twitch main, and let me tell you he is SLOW. Even with rank 3 or higher stealth you couldn't follow a jungler around simply because you moved way too slow. If you went with a zeal + zeal + boots build you were fast enough, but it was something of a trade off and you lost a lot of potential damage by focusing on your move speed so much.

Then there are the numerous semi-counters for stealth. Nidalee/caitlin/teemo traps. AoE champions. Pink wards. The hated TF ultimate.

There are plenty of partial counters without buying an oracle. Still, I say oracle cost is the only thing they need to adjust to balance stealthers. If oracle cost 0, stealth would be useless. If they cost 10000, stealth would be too strong. Somewhere in-between stealth is fairly balanced, they just need to figure out what that number is.

There is one part of oracles you are forgetting. Oracles is also a counter to wards. If you greatly lower the cost of oracles, then you also lower the effectiveness of wards. At the same time, you have several characters in the game that don't rely on permanent stealth like twitch/eve/shaco, but use it as a momentary detarget etc. There are alot of characters that use multiple images, stationary steath etc that would countered by a cheap oracles. It isn't currently worth it to buy oracles for these characters, but it would be with a reduced cost.

Just wanna point out it isn't a simple sliding scale fix. Changing one area can have many different effects on other areas you wouldn't expect.

 

[TheUnk]

Ahh I love Oracles on a tank. Especially when the 1 enemy champ feels they are so very vital to their victory to go stealth freely that they somehow convince their team to focus on the tank that purchased the Oracles, and in doing so they get destroyed while still failing to kill said tank.

Hahaha I get such a kick out of killing them, mainly when it's Akali.

 

[Angelo Cameo]

New champion sneak peek, Talon, The Shadow's Blade:
http://na.leagueoflegends.com/board/showthread.php?t=1091526

 

[Firsttime]

Stealth isn't op. It's just annoying when people don't play properly against it. Oracles are fine price wise, they are still way cheaper then Gems were in Dota and pink wards are way cheaper too. Give a few more champs stealth reveal mechanics instead of taking it away. Stealth is just a mechanic that punishes noob players. Then again since I play Lee Sin alot when I see stealth champs on the other team I'm pretty happy.

 

[crownjules]

Stealth isn't op. It's just annoying when people don't play properly against it. Oracles are fine price wise, they are still way cheaper then Gems were in Dota and pink wards are way cheaper too. Give a few more champs stealth reveal mechanics instead of taking it away. Stealth is just a mechanic that punishes noob players. Then again since I play Lee Sin alot when I see stealth champs on the other team I'm pretty happy.

You just basically stated the problem that I mentioned above. And that's stealth characters are binary - either they crush noob teams who never buy stealth detection or they're almost entirely marginalized by good players who do.

There was no stopping an Eve jungle gank before she got dropped off the cliff. Knowing the typical jungle routes, she could just stealth in while they were doing wraiths/golems, stun, ignite, and HS to death. The only way to stop it is either not jungle or babysit your jungler. That's a huge shift and why she was universally banned at that time from mid-high ELO.

 

[Firsttime]

Eve's level 1 stealth though is 10 seconds. Not long at all. Throw a ward at the entrance to blue and you're fine, doesn't even have to be a pink one.

 

[Chiropteran]

You just basically stated the problem that I mentioned above. And that's stealth characters are binary - either they crush noob teams who never buy stealth detection or they're almost entirely marginalized by good players who do.

Again, I gotta disagree. I've seen smart players avoid being ganked without ever buying oracles, and I've seen premade tryhard teams repeatedly buy and lose oracles and lose because of it. It's not so binary. Sometimes the correct choice is an oracle, but not always.

 

[Fallengod]

There is something you are overlooking though. Riot has spoke about this a few times.

This is the problem. Stealth, by nature, is game changing. The mentality of the game is changed just from having a stealth on the other team. Riot has stated it is an "unfun" mechanic and thats why eve and twitch have to be on the weaker side(eve is still super powerful though).

1) When there is a stealth on the other team, you are forced to play differently. People extend themselves less, people play more cautiously. Seems like a huge advantage to have just for "picking" a champ.

2) Stealth passively forces the opposing team to waste their gold buying wards and oracles just to counter that 1 champ. This is a fairly LARGE advantage. Make the opposing team waste all their gold trying to counter one champ makes it easier for the others on your team to get the equipment advantage over the enemies enabling them to win. People always overlook this fact with the stealth argument. This is a huge advantage to have.

3) People always make the argument of oracles and wards to counter eve. A good player however, will tell you this is not necessarily even that effective vs a good eve. One aspect people forget is, oracles have a very limited range. The range, some might say, is even borderline laughable. A good eve player knows what this range is and can stay out of it. The only way it saves teammates is if everyone on the other side sits together in a circle at all times....(that doesnt happen). So an item they just spent a lot of gold on, which hindered their game build, is not even that effective. Wards can be helpful, but again, limited range and its not like eve stays in the same area for long.

In the end, stealth is overpowered. This is the exact reason riot has had trouble with them, they are essentially game changing just by being in the game. On top of this, I dont think you will find too many good skilled players who suggest stealth champs like eve take much skill. It takes little skill to be able to run around stealth and pop people then run away. This is the main problem with eve. A champ that takes almost no skill to play but is fun and changes the game fairly greatly. I wish they would just remove all stealth champs from the game personally. And this is coming from someone who loves and dominates with eve.

 

[videogames101]

There is something you are overlooking though. Riot has spoke about this a few times.

This is the problem. Stealth, by nature, is game changing. The mentality of the game is changed just from having a stealth on the other team. Riot has stated it is an "unfun" mechanic and thats why eve and twitch have to be on the weaker side(eve is still super powerful though).

1) When there is a stealth on the other team, you are forced to play differently. People extend themselves less, people play more cautiously. Seems like a huge advantage to have just for "picking" a champ.

2) Stealth passively forces the opposing team to waste their gold buying wards and oracles just to counter that 1 champ. This is a fairly LARGE advantage. Make the opposing team waste all their gold trying to counter one champ makes it easier for the others on your team to get the equipment advantage over the enemies enabling them to win. People always overlook this fact with the stealth argument. This is a huge advantage to have.

3) People always make the argument of oracles and wards to counter eve. A good player however, will tell you this is not necessarily even that effective vs a good eve. One aspect people forget is, oracles have a very limited range. The range, some might say, is even borderline laughable. A good eve player knows what this range is and can stay out of it. The only way it saves teammates is if everyone on the other side sits together in a circle at all times....(that doesnt happen). So an item they just spent a lot of gold on, which hindered their game build, is not even that effective. Wards can be helpful, but again, limited range and its not like eve stays in the same area for long.

In the end, stealth is overpowered. This is the exact reason riot has had trouble with them, they are essentially game changing just by being in the game. On top of this, I dont think you will find too many good skilled players who suggest stealth champs like eve take much skill. It takes little skill to be able to run around stealth and pop people then run away. This is the main problem with eve. A champ that takes almost no skill to play but is fun and changes the game fairly greatly. I wish they would just remove all stealth champs from the game personally. And this is coming from someone who loves and dominates with eve.

No. Stealth is a major component of these characters play styles, and the simple, cheap, and effective countermeasures available against this stealth component are what make stealth heroes almost completely useless in any competitive DotA style game, including LoL.

For a couple hundred gold you completely massacre the utility of the one or more of the enemy heroes. Stealth sucks, end of story. This is why stealth heroes aren't widely used competitively.

 

[Fallengod]

Either way, everything I stated is true and has been stated by lead designers at riot.

Competitive play is different. You cant lump everyone into competitive play. Non-competitive play plays out significantly different.

And the "simple and cheap" counter measures are not that effective. Read my above post why this is...

 

[zebano]

Either way, everything I stated is true and has been stated by lead designers at riot.

Competitive play is different. You cant lump everyone into competitive play. Non-competitive play plays out significantly different.

And the "simple and cheap" counter measures are not that effective. Read my above post why this is...

I gotta second FallenGod here. Good eve's will avoid an oracled tank and some are even effective against a dual oracle team by playing like a Master Yi, wait for stuns to be blown, dash in, kill, kill again or dash out, repeat.

 

[ImpulsE69]

This is the problem with turning a video game into a "competitive sport". These arguments really shouldn't even be happening for various reasons. These characters are there to add diversity to gameplay.

Ultimately what the competitive side wants is no diversity. If you compare it to a true life sport, all sports start with exact even teams. The only difference is the people playing (or in our case Humans).You can't have complete balanced gameplay the way LoL is set up. It just CANNOT happen. Certain characters are counters to others, while others are simply based on themes or to expand gameplay options. The only way a true balanced team would occur is if they eliminate the random first pick and banning, and require both teams to be the same characters.

By following the top 2% of players, you will eventually eliminate any diversity and fun in the game, because if they get rid of stealth (there is no way to fix it, face it), you also will need to get rid of tanks, because they are looked at in the same way. Then get rid of all global ults because it's just too unfair to the team w/o global ults. Then you need to get rid of the bursty ranged, because they are too OP for melee characters who need to get close, etc etc. Eventually all you will have is tanky dps (that's the way it's going already).

My suggestion. Leave it alone. It's not broke in such a manner that it isn't fun. Some people forget that first and formost it's a game. They won't though, and eventually will ruin it.

If you want to change it then make it simple. Characters that are 1 class rather than split classes:

Tank - NO DPS(none of this both crap) They do only 1 thing and one thing well. Tank. They have stuns, snares, slows, taunts, whatever, but do no damage.
DPS - They are not tanky. They do damage. ONLY. No slows, stuns etc.
Ranged (DPS or Mage) They do damage. ONLY. No slows, stuns etc.
Support - (NO DPS..stealth char could go here). This is only heals, armor, buffs of that nature.
Mages - They do damage. ONLY. No slows, stuns etc.

Of all complaints here are mine:
*Too many self healing characters.
*Too many tanks that dish out way too much dps (or vice versa)

But in the end, it's about having fun and diversity. Everyone is going to complain about one type of char being OP especially if that character directly counters the character they like to play most.