League of Legends - Season 1

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Jozrael
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League of Legends - Season 1

Post by Jozrael »

The first competitive season for League of Legends is beginning today! Servers will be up in about 10 hours.

A sick vid to kickoff the festivities!

Does anyone else here compete in the League?

EDIT:
A list of all of our summoners!

Jozrael - Skystriker.
cretin - ShadyGrave
Pentarctagon - Pentarctagon
ParadiseCity - Lunar Tune
Malkor - The 7th Keeper
Valinor - Ethereon
Daravel - Daravel or Sinnie, both on EU
PetertheGreat - PeterTG
Thrawn - St Viers
Joram - RJJ7
JW - johnnyw4life
Huumy - Rasvapallo, EU
chaoticwanderer - Drediviros

Don't know if they are playing:
Sapient

DotA player only: Tshemmp

That should be everyone who's posted so far in the thread; please poke me if I missed you!
Last edited by Jozrael on September 8th, 2010, 5:52 pm, edited 6 times in total.
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Tshemmp
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Re: League of Legends - Season 1

Post by Tshemmp »

I wondered to buy League of Legends, but then i decided: I have DotA, so what do i need more?
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cretin
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Re: League of Legends - Season 1

Post by cretin »

well LoL is free, you can pay for more content and such but you get like 7 heroes that rotate each week or something like that.
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ParadiseCity
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Re: League of Legends - Season 1

Post by ParadiseCity »

It looks interesting, I might download it. But I'm confused about the payment/lack thereof. It seems to be totally free, except if you buy the collectors edition in stores. But then cretin posted about only having 7 rotating champions, and now I'm confused again.

So how exactly do you buy/download/pay for the game, and how much would it cost?
"The harder I work, the more luck I seem to have." -Thomas Jefferson
Jozrael
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Re: League of Legends - Season 1

Post by Jozrael »

The game is 100%, totally free. As proof, I have not paid a dime and have not pirated a thing (though that would be impossible).

IMO, one of the most fantastic parts about LoL is its pricing scheme. It's the first massively successful microtransaction model in the western world. Unlike it's eastern counterparts, which are infamous for their 'pay2pwn' schemes (i.e. the more you pay, the stronger you are), paying for LoL is more about flexibility, breadth of experience, cosmetics, and customizability.

There are two types of currency ingame. Influence Points (IP), earned by playing the game (average of about 100 per game), or Riot Points, earned by paying $$. EVERYTHING that influences the ingame experience is purchasable with IP, and some things are exclusively IP. RP can purchase some ingame things, and is the only way to unlock skins - alternate models of the champions you play as, as well as Boosts (which double your rate of IP/XP gain for a short period of time).

The level cap for you, the summoner, is level 30. The road to level 30 is more about learning the game, and you are matched with people with similar Elo and level as yourself. Once you hit level 30, you have attained max power - any further IP/RP spent only serves to increase your options, which are at equivalent power levels to each other.

There are well over 50 champions in the game, with 10 (not 7) free ones that rotate every week to let you 'try before you buy', as well as give everyone some extra options, especially starting players. Unlocking more of these champions obviously gives you more options to choose from when beginning a game, but they are exceedingly well balanced among themselves. In Wesnothian terms, I'd say the current state of LoL is somewhere around the balance of between 1.0 and 2.0.

The most amazing thing about LoL is the amount of continuous content that is made for the game. This has slowed somewhat as of late as they prepped for season 1, but will resume full force. Champions, skins, new game modes, new maps, etc. and MANY more features are coming. The reason the microtransaction model is so successful for Riot is many people who can afford to and have the will to pay MUCH more for LoL than they do for traditional games, unlocking every piece of content that Riot releases right away by purchasing it outright. This adds up to several hundred dollars - and they don't regret a cent of it, since they choose what to buy or not.

As a final note...the purse for the end of season tournament is 6 digits.



EDIT: Right, the collector's version. It comes with $10 of RP, 20 permanently unlocked champions off the bat, as well as an exclusive skin and a smattering of runes. The champions bundle contains the other 20 champions the game released with back in October. There is speculation that once the total champions reaches 60 Riot may release another bundle with the latest champions so that newer players have a chance to unlock everything more easily.
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Re: League of Legends - Season 1

Post by cretin »

eeeh you beat me to it. yeah facts were off i was gestimating anyways.
Jozrael
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Re: League of Legends - Season 1

Post by Jozrael »

If you want to give this game a fair shake, I recommend waiting a day or two. The load on the servers is IMMENSE right now, and it's actually poking through to the actual game instead of just the lobby interface, which has only happened once before.

I think they said concurrency this past day has been triple the normal peaks :P
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Re: League of Legends - Season 1

Post by Sapient »

I looked at some of the character artwork and backstory and it seemed interesting. Which is your favorite Champion for gameplay style and/or coolness/fun factor?
http://www.wesnoth.org/wiki/User:Sapient... "Looks like your skills saved us again. Uh, well at least, they saved Soarin's apple pie."
cretin
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Re: League of Legends - Season 1

Post by cretin »

Well I havnt played too much so Ive only tested a few. Ive had the most success with Heimerdinger though. He's like an engineer has grenades, missiles, and turrets; good for creep control. Ive played a few rounds where I could dominate 3 or 4 heroes alone with him (5v5 games), cant vouch on their skill though.
I actually hate how Heim looks though.

Fiddlesticks is awesome though, he's kinda a glass cannon. Special ability teleports him a short distance and unleashes a powerful aoe its pretty cool (and effective). Has a drain and a bouncing bat attack.

And Tarik is a powerful tanking char with the right items. Has an ice shield ability which doubles as a bomb (getting rid of the armor bonus), and a stun hammer. Also has a supercharge attack/regen ability, drains mana insanely fast, though he can tank defense structures this way. Can get some nifty strategies with his abilities.

To maximize the char's effectiveness you really have to look at the in-battle items, because I was often steamrolled by char's who seriously spec out their heroes. Not in the beginning, or if you are having fun, but if you are someone who likes to compete.

Its a fun game from what Ive seen. My only big complaint at the moment would be there are only 2 maps playable, a 3v3 and 5v5.
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Re: League of Legends - Season 1

Post by Jozrael »

The backstory has been fairly light so far, but with the release of season 1 they have the man who developed all of Blizzard's IP fully unleashed, and he's doing tons of cool things. There's weekly lore release now, among other things.

As for Champion, I love Ryze (the mage in the video, though that has nothing to do with my pick). When he was first designed I abhorred him. I found him boring and detrimental to good gameplay. Then they revamped him, and I fell in love. He's kind of a mage assassin, but I build him a bit differently than most pubs. I can get indepth on his meta, but I'm not sure how familiar you are with the game so I'm not sure what level of complexity to phrase it.

Other favorites:

If I want to carry - Gangplank. He farms SO WELL, and I love farm.
If I want to tank, amumu. When I was starring on the first eSports team for LoL back in October just as it exited beta, he was my main. I still have a soft spot for the poor guy. I've had a lot of people astonished at how much punishment the poor guy can take.
If I want to support, probably Janna at the moment though I don't even own her, I just had a lot of fun with her this last week as she was free.

Over the past year I've played probably about 1/2 of the champions somewhat frequently, with probably 10-15 of them being my main at any one point in time. There are still some champions that I've only played a handful of times to test them out and fully understand their capabilities so that I can play against them better.


As for coolness, I think there's too many to list. Singed is pretty much a bamf.

@cretin: Heimerdinger is actually S-tier right now, and banned in pretty much every draft game. (Tiers go S for overly strong and need a nerf, A for strong, B for viable, C for viable as a counterpick, D as bad, F as absolutely inviable). He has the best farm in the game as well as synergizes with the current meta way, way too well. At normal level games it's great that you can play him well, he can take a bit of skill to learn properly.

Fiddlesticks IS awesome, and I contend that you're 'doing it wrong' if he's a glass cannon (unless you're not dying :P). I build my mages with plenty of beef to them, even if it lowers their burst.

Taric is minimum A tier right now. I don't feel he's S tier but several players better than I (I haven't been competitive since '09 :P) disagree, so take that for what it's worth.

As for maps, this is true. Many casual players REALLY want more maps. Riot knows this, and a third map is in the works (and perhaps a fourth). For competitive play, some players actually dislike even having two since it makes balancing effectively much, much more difficult.
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Pentarctagon
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Re: League of Legends - Season 1

Post by Pentarctagon »

too bad the practice games are disabled though :(
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cretin
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Re: League of Legends - Season 1

Post by cretin »

yeah actually thats frustrating me. I hadnt played in a few months came back, chose one of the heroes. Couldnt practice so went ingame without knowing how to use him. Ended up buying mana items when he has no mana. sigh... learned the hard way.
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Re: League of Legends - Season 1

Post by Jozrael »

Yea, I'll be honest: the genre has the most brutal learning curve of any in gaming. To ameliorate this slightly, LoL has the lowest learning curve of any of the bunch (they're very focused about adding in new features to make learning the game easier; they want people to stay!)

It's unfortunate, but temporary, that the practice games are disabled. Since there was an initial slowdown of the servers with the triple load experienced at the beginning of season one, a handful of features were disabled to streamline the service (and it shows, 98% of all the problems are gone by now. Twice a game maybe I have a quarter second server spike.) They will be re-enabling all of the disabled features shortly!

If you have any questions on any champion I can give an exhaustive review of them.
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Re: League of Legends - Season 1

Post by Pentarctagon »

Me, my brother, and a friend played several the 3v3 online games today, and I am a bit curious as to how you defeat an extremely defensive Cho'Gath player.

For the record, I was Tristana, my brother was Karthus, and my friend was Blitzcrank.

What happened was that the Cho'Gath player would just sit back and eat minions while buying lots of hp/health regen, and in the beginning would run away and hide behind his minions/turrets at the slightest sign of actual danger, which made it virtually impossible to kill him. Then when he finally started to attack, he had so much hp/regen that even with two heroes and the minions we couldn't deal enough damage to kill him, often one or both of us dying in the attack. By the end of the match, he could literally take on a turret, all 3 heroes, and our minions, win and still have about 25% of his hp left. The regen by itself healed him faster (and by faster I mean that I could actually see the health bar increasing without having to click on him) than I could deal damage with a rapid-fire special fire special that had been upgrade at least 4 times, maybe more.

So my question is: What should we have done differently? And before you suggest it, yes, we were attacking on both sides of the map frequently. We had gotten the first bottom turret to under half hp and destroyed the first top turrent and damaged the second top turret.

edit - one quick question: How much farther would I be able to shoot with +1 range? Tristana's ability gives +9 per level, but I can't see too much of a difference regardless of level.
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Jozrael
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Re: League of Legends - Season 1

Post by Jozrael »

What are your names ingame? I'd play some normals with you guys. My account is Skystriker.

As for your question: assuming competitive play from everyone, tanks (ones who soak lots of damage, initiate team fights, and disrupt the enemy team, especially the enemy carry) shine most in midgame to early late. Carries (those who do lots of sustained or burst damage, either physical or magical), especially physical, generally become the most powerful single champions lategame. They are supposed to 'carry' their team to victory.

In that situation, Blitz should've been your tank, you should've been the dps carry (ideally), and Karthus your caster. Depending on your itemization, you should've been able to deal massive damage to Cho'Gath (or, if he was stacking tons of armor, perhaps Karthus would have an easier time of it).

Some fantastic DPS items:
Infinity Edge (IE). Probably the single best DPS item. Unfortunately, also the most expensive.
Last Whisper: Used against very high armor targets.
Madred's Bloodrazer: Great against high hp targets like Cho'Gath. Each hit does a % of their max health in damage as well, although this is reduced by MR (magic resistance). If Cho'Gath had not gotten much MR a bloodrazer would be the easiest way to chunk him down.

There's a lot of great items in the game, but you have to intelligently adapt your build ingame to get the most out of them.


Cho'Gath is an interesting tank, but far from OP. If his rupture was a bit harder to dodge he would become much, much stronger. I know that you had difficulty with this all game, but if you're able to coordinate ganks throughout the game you can keep his feast stacks low, keeping his hp from getting to ridiculous levels. Also, keep in mind you played on TT which has very different balance than I am used to on SR (twisted treeline and summoner's rift, respectively), so Cho might be a very strong pick there.
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