Windows Bit-tech League of Legends thread

Have to say, i'm liking Tiger Stance Udyr jungling more than i thought i would.

My previous opinion of it was fairly poor, however i think that's because:

- I started playing Udyr at a time when Tiger Stance was considered worthless
- A poor experience trying to jungle with Tiger in a practice game, a pull helps immensely - also something that wasn't common until recently, a jungler was expected to fend for himself.
- All the "new" players were trying to play Tiger Udyr as a full DPS carry and just failing miserably.

However, as a Tanky-DPS he performs very admirably imo, the amount of variation i can bring to a Ranked game is great as well. I've yet to learn how to play a proper lane Udyr (and i still cringe at the thought of it) however depending on what the team needs i can jungle as either a Pure Tank (Phoenix Stance) or Tanky-AD role (Tiger Stance).

Build goes:

Razor's
Boots
-> Wriggles
-> Treads
Stark's
Trinity Force (Sheen > Zeal > Phage)
Banshee's Veil
Atma's Impaler
-> Sell Wriggles for Bloodrazer

Although i've never had a game go on long enough for the very last step... got to the Atma's though and i was an absolute beast with 150+ AR and MR with 220AD and a ~2.0 Attack Speed, 501 Move Speed when in bear stance.

 

Ok, so I know that I'm going to be opening a whole can of worms with vdb by doing this, but here goes anyway.

I love Ezreal. He's an awesome character so long as you don't suck at skillshots. I've been playing an AD build, with a core of sheen, boots and a bf sword. End game i'm aiming for a trinity, BF, phantom dancer, upgrading the boots to 'zerkers. My only real issue with him in the current game is that he has no CC. This is slightly alleviated by the trinity force, and that I take flash/exhaust.

Unfortunately having dabbled with him a few times in the past I've found myself not overly effective with him. I can poke and poke all day, and it may be that I'm not aggressive enough, or just haven't spent enough hours with him to know when to jump in after someone or not, but I'm curious on your opinions/playstyles with him.

Go on, let me have it

 

Hahahahaha, am i that famous for my rants about AP Ezreal that much?

I think after swapping to Euro and not owning him for so long (sad panda ) i'm less against the whole AD build (but after free Lux week, i definitely prefer AP Ez over Lux ). Also with my recent trend of AD Carries, i've been more and more tempted to try it (again) once he becomes free again, especially now AD is placed on the bot dual lane (god i hate mid Ezreal).

Firstly i'd say that on AD Ezreal, i'd be a massive proponent of the Ghost/Flash summoner spells. This is since he has the worst MS in the game (300) and unlike Ashe, he can't permaslow or even then guarantee a slow (only when you have Phage/TriForce). With AP it's not so much an issue as i run MS Quints and spec in Utility for the extra MS (you start with 327 MS, faster than almost everyone bar Pantheon and Yi with 330). I'd also consider Boots of Swiftness since positioning and kiting are especially important for Ezreal and his Passive gives AS and is relatively easy to stack in teamfights with his W and R.

The main issue with AD Ezreal, as you've said is that he's fine for poking, but once a teamfight starts he loses a lot of his potential damage, as apart from Mystic Shot he then has to rely on his Autoattack range, which isn't terrible, but it's not a match for the current "high value picks" (Trist, Ashe, Cait). It's the same as Corki, Vayne and MF, the former two being considered OP and also top tier, however that was because their damage was also insanely high.

The other issue i have is that Mystic Shot is a projectile skill shot (as opposed to a line nuke) and the normal positioning of: "Carry -> Tanks -><- Tanks <- Carry" in a teamfight mean that more often than not, i find my Q getting blocked by the tanks. With AP Ezreal, you can poke the Carries all day with W since it travels through people and since it's your main damage dealing spell you're not losing any DPS in the poking game.

Red/Lizard Buff is a must-have on AD Ezreal moreso than any champion imo, it gives you that much needed slow and the fact that it procs on your Q means your poke game is much stronger as well.

Build-wise i'd probably go something like:

Doran's Blade
Boots
Sheen
Brutaliser
-> Boots of Swiftness
B.F. Sword
-> Black Cleaver or Inf. Edge (depends on how you think the game is going)
-> Trinity Force
Last Whisper
- Survivability (Mallet, Guardian, Banshee's etc.)

Anything else i'd say would be standard Ezreal stuff...

- Always open your teamfight with your Ult, don't just leave it for "sniping" (too many Ezreal players do this). The damage is massive and usually if you land it on a Carry/Squishy at the very start of a teamfight, the sudden burst often makes them think twice about committing to the engagement. It also has the benefit of proc'ing up your passive at the start of the teamfight, you should hit around 3 people minimum and then you're one W away from a full stack. Also, with a bit of CDR and constant Mystic Shot spam, sometimes you can get your Ult to be up at the end of the teamfight to kill any stragglers.

- Use Arcane Shift like you would Corki's Valkyrie or Tristana's Rocket Jump, aka save it for escaping or when you know you'll get the kill and you'll get out safely. Blinking over walls is great, Flash + E usually means you're uncatchable.

That's all i can pretty much say after not touching Ezreal for so long... one last thing that i used to do was get a stacking item if i had a competent team. It's not hard for Ezreal to get assists at all between the range of his Q, buff/debuff on W and opening with his Ult. Early game i tend to feed on assists and slowly collecting stacks and then lategame you become quite a monster.

From a more "current" point of view, i'd say that Hybrid doesn't look like too bad an option on him now, especially that his Ult takes both AD and AP (as opposed to the higher of the two). I personally haven't tested it out, so can't comment accurately.

EDIT: On a side note, another 2 games won as Jungle Tiger Stance Udyr, most recent one was 20/3/21... was singing the entire mid-late game whilst consecutively 1v1'ing every champion they had.

 

Thanks vdb. Not THAT famous for the rants, though there was a comment about not getting into the discussion of Ez that I remember. After playing some more games with him I have the same opinion of him that I've always had. He can be awesome, but only if you are very good at skillshots, and the enemy doesn't have too much hard CC. Even then you have to be mega aggressive, and hope not to get caught out by the enemy jungler or other champions waiting in the wings to leap out at you. There are simply better choices for his role. I'll still pick him every now and then for the sheer fun of an all out skillshot champion, but not with the expectation of winning.

I've never played Udyr, his skillset doesn't really appeal to me that much. He is a significant pain to deal with though. For a character with no ranged abilities he is a pain to get away from, his movement speed can be ridiculous.

I played a few games with Cait last night as she is free, and I'm enjoying her quite a lot. I also picked up a new skill that I didn't realise you could do, which is stacking skillshots. I'm sure that this is probably known to everyone, but I wasn't aware. Because the channel time on piltover peacemaker is longer then the channel time on 90 Caliber net, you can quickly cast one after the other, and they will activate at around the same time. This is really good for two things, either shooting both skills at the same champion, giving quite a large spike of damage, or shooting the peacemaker at an enemy and the net behind you, propelling you toward the enemy if they are fleeing. Good fun.

Before you ask; yes, my decision to play Cait was entirely influenced by the final yesterday. I want to get 400+ cs!

 

Firstly, congrats to aB as i believe he is now managing the SK LoL team . Also congrats to SK for winning the ESL Major Series.

You're right in that Ez shines best when the enemy team has as little CC as possible (although the same can be said of almost every Carry ) however i believe he's naturally one of the squishiest, with maybe only Vayne being more so. As for being good with skill shots, it's another reason i like playing AP Ez, as his W's width is much greater than Q's and you can generally tag someone quite easily with it.

The IEM games were rather decent, i caught the finals and was fairly surprised at the result. This was generally to do with the picks, as in each case, the winning team was the one with the more... unconventional picks IMO, whereas the losing team had the typical drafts you'd see at high ELO.

Like you, i played a few games as Cait just now (in fact, i closed down Firefox to play LoL with the previous version of this reply all typed up ) and won both games . I can see why double Phantom Dancers after Inf. Edge is the way forward. 470 Movespeed with 87% Crit Chance makes you hit hard, fast AND be near uncatchable without a stun.

With regards to Udyr, he's probably now my favourite character since i don't play Ez as much anymore. He's just so unique and i'm rather disappointed that he's gaining popularity, since he used to be one of those that flew "under the radar". He's also one of my best characters and now that Annie's been in the limelight so much people are countering her better, Udyr's now also the one who i depend on to win a game.

And on a side note, last game i played Alistar with my friend as Blitzcrank, we interrupted their Amumu at Golem and for some reason they chased us back to tower (we went via sidebrush, not into lane). I then told my friend to grab, i then headbutted into tower and it sealed us first blood. We then ganked Amumu a few more times at Golem and he had to lane at Level 2 whilst we were 5/6. It carried on through the game and we got our entire team comfortably fed and we won rather easily... felt rather sorry for the Amumu because it was apparently his first time .

 

I didn't catch much of the IEM games unfortunately. One of the semi final matches and the final match of the final. I thoroughly enjoy watching the tournaments, just didn't have the time to really.

I love BF sword on Cait, her sustain goes through the roof with it. Your net generally allows you go get away from 2 enemies if they get aggressive, and the lifesteal is more than enough to keep you going.

I've not tested it, but it looks like you can crit on her passive shot, so I could see why having dual dancers would work very, very well with her. I managed to crit one of the Golems for over 1200 damage with her last night, with a Bloodthirster and IE, so I figure that must be what happened. Maybe in our next game I'll just grab the Vampiric Scepter and then get IE+PD*2, and see how I do.

One of my teammates went Udyr solo top last night against an Ez and a Heimer. We figured he was going to have a really hard time with that combo, and he was making noises to that extent during the first 10 mins. Fortunately our Jungler had a pretty good game and they didn't manage to get too much of an advantage on him. He ended the game on 5-0-8. Beast.

Blitz is just an awesome character, so long as people aren't expecting him to Tank. I consider him a semi-beefy ad utility character. If you can land his grabs, and have someone paired with him who can snare/stun them under the tower, you're golden. We used to do a combination of Blitz/Morgana all the time when we were levelling up, it was a lot of fun.

As you say, poor Amumu. Welcome to LoL. Though I imagine you guys weren't trolling him during the process at least.

 

I guess they must be patching now.

 

Yep, they went to patch yesterday, and then pulled it, leaving some players with a newer version than the launcher wass willing to accept, meaning they couldn't play.

I'm not sure how i feel about the new patch. On one hand it is infuriating when you knock someone down to 30% health just for them to be healed back up the moment you back off, but simultaneously you now have to wonder what role there is in the game for support characters. In a patch that was intended to remove sustain teams from pushing constantly, there are still a lot of characters untouched by the patch. Why reduce Udyr's sustain when it is arguably the most important part of him as a character, but leave Cho', Morgana, Xin, Trundle and others I can't think of off the top of my head with theirs?

I think there are two big winners out of this patch:

1. Janna is arguably the best support in the game now.

2. Karthus is going to do some serious damage to teams. About to start a team fight? Ult. Watch how reluctant a team are to fight when they have all lost 1/3 of their health or more, with no easy way to replenish it.

I was talking to Loftie about it earlier, and he thinks that Starks is now the best support item in the game, which I think I agree with.

Following on from which, you have to think that they are going to nerf lifesteal/spell vamp to bring everything in to line. If they don't then Carries are going to have more sustain than anyone else. Caitlyn rocking IE, PD and BT will be able to regen over 100hp per second, without even taking crits and her passive into consideration.

Poke champs could become more important to the game now if these changes are permanent. Having someone like Nid or Ez constantly knocking peoples health down will be far more effective if they can't insta-heal it back.

 

Ah right I didn't realise that, odd that they've left the server live then. Really they should've taken the servers off for the patching period, if they failed patching it yesterday.

Plus I agree with you on the patch notes. It is kind of annoying to hammer someone like Sona...etc down to no health only to have them escape and heal up totally and/or heal the rest of the team BUT that is surely the point of those champs?

Making them less sustained and more aggressive in fights just seems like taking the point out of playing a support. If you want to fight more aggressively then taking a melee/AD champ!? I guess we'll see just how much of a difference it'll make.

But yeah someone like Alistair, even though his unbreakable will is being nerfed a bit, is going to epic at pushing having none of his sustain reduced at all. Seems odd to miss him out, though I suppose they're not trying to reduce all sustain in the champs, just trying to make more supports beef themselves up and jump into fights more with increased damage. But as I said before is that such a good thing? Does everyone want to play that way with Sona or Soraka? Maybe they do..

 

The games were rather decent... on the recent topic of Ezreal, you should check out the ESL Major Series Final between SK and TSM, where in the second game SK's CandyPanda picked Ezreal because the other AD Carries were "banned" (still could have taken MF, Corki or Trist though).

They didn't fail patch, they just pulled the patch, however others had already patched up.

The servers did go live (again) after they announced the pull, but they're down now for patching. I think they said they're having some issues with updating the Server Status page however, which is why it looks like it's Live, but actually isn't.

I think that most people (not you, but the forums) are overreacting with the Support changes... although i'm generally rather objective with most changes.

The main push seems to make Support revolve around "Utility" rather than simply being "Healers". Janna was pretty much bottom tier in the new meta since during the laning phase she can't heal her Carry. Soraka will now be more about zoning, silencing and shredding MR, whereas Taric will still remain the Stun bot that he normally is.

I do think that since the AP ratios and CDs of the heals got nerfed so much, they needed to buff the base values a bit more. Riot were trying to still retain those "clutch" heal moments and it certainly will reduce the whole "there's no point harassing" that i seem to find when there's a Sona/Soraka opposite me in lane.

I disagree.

Alistar's sustain already took a massive nerf about 2 patches ago when they reduced his AP ratio down to 0.2. Considering that he shouldn't even be building pure AP anymore and that his heal is only half that to allies, he's not really the sustain bot that he used to be.

In a sense i do agree with the nerfs to him, especially with regards to Unbreakable Will, i think i'll have to play him to see how much it affects him.

I don't think that the aim of the patch was to reduce "sustain" comps from pushing, but more to reduce the "farming" meta that's currently in whereby there's no point harassing simply because they heal up any harass.

I've personally never played Lane Udyr (i retch at the thought of it >.>) but i've seen some rather untouchable ones and i can see why they've nerfed him. However i do think that since Udyr's such an unconventional champion with no Ultimate, he almost needs to be strong with each stance so he doesn't simply become a "Jack of all Trades" and have 4 "average" skills yet no Ultimate (similar to how Karma has 6 Ranks).

Surprisingly they've not touched Irelia who's classed as the Queen of this meta, although she does get hard countered by Jax of all people (and yet another nerf to him -.-').

Could you elaborate on that? I still personally don't care much for Janna since early game laning she doesn't provide much. If you have Sona/Soraka/Taric you just push for harass or ask for a Level 2/4 Jungle gank (has to be before she gets Lvl6) and then that lane is practically gimped unless they go back to heal.

IMO the issue there is:

- Ideally you want to force a teamfight, rather than force them not to teamfight. Thus, you're better off waiting until they've (been) engaged.

- Since it's a channel, it can be easily interrupted.

- You could arguably do more DPS by not Ult'ing and using Defile and Lay Waste.

I do see your point, but IMO it's a job more suited to someone like Ezreal who's AoE Ult does massive damage and isn't channeled (well it is, but it can't be interrupted unless you die during it).

Also Soraka's wish will still negate out a lot of Karth's Ult.

I think Stark's has always been a very strong item, especially before with the Malady/Stark's debate. However i'm surprised that it's not been used in the sustain comps more, since as you've pointed out, the stats seem to synergise very well.

And thus the meta comes back full circle, as it should really do.

Poke comps were apparently rather common back around Alpha and the "Heal comp" was designed to counter that.

To be fair, healing took a massive nerf after the heal comps and they've been buffed ever so slowly and consistently over time before now being regarded as OP again.

 

Yeah, I do understand why they're doing it; rather than having support champs being solely based around 1 or sometimes 2 abilities, they want them to be more well-rounded, rather than just as you say 'healers.' So that makes a lot of sense.

I can strongly imagine people overreacting to it, much more than me or Edwards, previously.

yes perhaps you're right about that, I had forgotten he was nerfed a bit eariler; making him build AP a bit redundant.

 

I'm loving that Chibi Swain btw.

It reminds me of:

 

Haha thanks, I only found it yesterday.
Those pictures are brilliant.

 

To me, Sona's heal was never much of an issue. It cost a lot of mana early, it doesn't heal much, doesn't scale well, and it untargetable. Soraka's was more powerful, agreed only single target but targetable, gave an armour buff, and had I think a 10 second CD. Plus Infuse gave her no mana issues if she did just want to be a heal machine. So I can see why she needed a nerf.

Taric's I'm not sure about, I think the main issue was that it could have a short CD if he kept smacking stuff, but then he burns through mana if he spams heals. His passive helps slightly, but doesn't give too much mana back. I am now thinking I'll change taric build slightly to include manamune + triforce. With one of my friends taking starks.

It'd be nice to know what they're final goal with the support is though.

I feel sorry for Udyr. I can understand the nerf to the heal, but does the mana nerf not hurt jungle Udyr?

 

I agree with Soraka being a complete Sustain bot, however i found Sona similar since in the laning phase she could always keep a Carry topped up. Not effective in teamfights where Burst is key, but she was useful to counter poking and lane harass.

Mana nerf doesn't really touch jungle Udyr that much i think.

The buffs to his Mana costs a few patches ago (reduced from 75->555) meant that Turtle was more viable in the jungle, but it had been done previously before the buffs.

Udyr can also take Blue at Level 1 easily which then sorts out all his Mana needs anyways.

 

Just started playing LOL 2 days ago out of sheer boredom. I'm having A blast and wish I started playing sooner.

Tempted to buy some points already, Like the look of Nocturne but playing Ashe atm.

My username is k4ned

 

Welcome to LoL Kanester

I'd keep going with the free champs for the mo, just to get a feel for the game. Though one of my friends still insists Nocturne is overpowered, as he plays him and normally stomps on a lot of people. You're joining at an interesting time, with Dominion coming out soon(TM), and the changes they've just done to support characters.

GL and HF, and remember one thing, /ignore enemy , you'll probably need it at some point unfortunately.

 

Welcome as well =].

Don't hesitate to post with any issues/questions you have.

Nocturne's still rather strong, hence why he was picked quite a bit at IEM and Dreamhack, i personally think he belongs in the Jungle and as such, early summoners don't make the most of him. That's not to say you can't play him in lane however, it'd still give you a feel for the champion and how they play.

I agree with loftie though and use the free champions for now... i think Nocturne's due to come on rotation as well since i can't remember the last time i saw him free. Also, the free champion rotation is a great way to get a feel for what type of characters you like and to slowly introduce you to the ever increasing pool of champions.

And on a side note... new Annie skin is boss/epic/mindblown:

 

Yea that Annie skin made me lol ^^

 

Make sure you guys get your free quints =)
http://www.razerzone.com/pax/league-of-legends

Can enter 3 times, MS quints are expensive (2k ip each) so get em while they're free!