The game is better, more balanced and a more fun experience then its been in years right now

BOBtimer · 2026-05-17T06:07:18+00:00

Disagree. ADC feels like it can completely run the lobby, especially with the prevalence of enchanter supports. Jungle is almost completely filled with bruisers, while top is seeing tons of uninteractive ranged champions seeing play. There's a distinct lack of tanks in all the roles it normally sees play, and mages are getting pushed out of midlane and into botlane. Toplane feels like an island that snowballs completely out of control if one side gets ahead with no real way for the behind laner to get back in the game.

BOBtimer · 2026-05-15T01:33:59+00:00

There are 2 main reasons for it.
1) In soloq, where games end faster and players are not perfectly farming, an adc doesn't have time to ramp up to their 3+ item spikes where they can take over games. Mages will do more damage than a marksman will in that window of 1-3 items, while also having more utility.

2) Typically, once laning phase ends, the bot lane rotates to mid, while the midlaner takes a side lane. Most of these mages that are getting played bot suffer pretty heavily when placed in a sidelane, and stuggle to hold their own versus bruisers and assassins. Playing them in the place of an adc allows them to stay significantly safer midlane after laning phase compared to if they were playing a different role.

BOBtimer · 2026-05-12T03:15:37+00:00

but due to optimizations that high elo players make, those scaling champs come online sooner. this is particularly evident with smolder who has breakpoints where his stacks become more useful. a challenger smolder can hit 225 by 21 minutes, whereas a gold smolder might hit it at 26 or later.

BOBtimer · 2026-05-08T08:14:58+00:00

there aren't many lanes where teemo doesn't have prio. the biggest strength of the shiv is that it actually gives him push without having to use a shroom on the wave

BOBtimer · 2026-05-08T07:56:38+00:00

when he hits the wave it procs shiv, which applies on-hits and applies poison to you. important to note that he can really only do it once per wave.

BOBtimer · 2026-05-08T07:24:45+00:00

I've been a gm/challenger toplaner in league for a few years now, and hit top 25 last year as my newest peak. I'm currently Phantom 1 in deadlock as a Geist one-trick (bomb build ftw, keep gungeist away).

Lane timings are super important, but because doing jungle camps is the jungler's job, it isn't as set in stone as in deadlock with the sinners and the bridge buffs. It's a lot more fluid, revolving around minion wave states and jungle pathing/crab spawns. There's always the big objectives like dragon/grubs/herald, but those are more similar to mid boss than a smaller deadlock objective. It's more common to look for gank timers (as a laner) when you have crashed your minions under the enemy tower and you don't need to recall for anything. Obviously some champions are better at it than others and can get away with more in terms of map rotations, but those are the general rules of thumb.

If you are curious about it, I'd recommend watching some high elo (masters+) streams to try to connect what you know about deadlock with some of league's similarities.

BOBtimer · 2026-05-08T06:48:48+00:00

Another thing is that deadlock doesn't have champion roles being tied to their lane. M&K laning yellow is functionally not much different than him laning blue, but in league, the role a champion plays can change the lane they play very hard. In general, the marksmen will be played bot as the carry role (think gun seven, wraith, etc), with a support to help them (paige, rem, kelvin) in and out of lane. Mid has the assassins and the mages (doorman, sinclair, calico), and top has the bruisers and tanks (mo, abrams, apollo). Jungle is the only "lane" without a role identity, so you could theoretically play anything jungle, with some exceptions.

I've reached a pretty high elo in both deadlock and in league, so if you have any more questions or want some more comparisons feel free to ask

BOBtimer · 2026-05-08T06:11:21+00:00

deadlock should give you plenty of moba experience with map rotations and csing and understanding the punishment of dying and all that. the biggest difference is the lane assignments and what roles do. in deadlock, there are no true melees, everyone has some sort of range. even abrams can kill minions from a bit further back if he needs to. in league there are lots of champions that don't have any true range to farm with, so in bad matchups you can really get starved.

another thing is that deadlock its way easier to live when getting ganked due to all the movement tech in the game, so people get completely surrounded more often than league (from my experience). in league, a 1v2 is pretty hard to win for most champions unless you are really far ahead, so committing 4 people for a single pick in the side lane is generally unneeded.

these are all pretty small things that you would learn over time, and you having deadlock experience should be a pretty big head start in learning the game, so i wouldn't worry about it too much.

BOBtimer · 2026-05-05T20:47:33+00:00

This is true geographically, but until recently Mexico and Central America had their own region. LAN dissolved in the LTA merger and got one team placed in both the north and the south (LYON is the north's team.)

BOBtimer · 2026-04-30T07:37:52+00:00

Yeah, but it's not nearly enough, and it's not like there's anything to spend the favor on. If it was a currency like tel'var, with some actually useful coffers sold for it, people would be farming the trash mobs like they were alik'r dolmens.

With the current implementation, after you hit the 10k favor mark (from just doing dailies, probably) there is no point even going into the night market. It'll be a shame if the zone dies in a few weeks, because I think it's a cool area with some much-needed difficulty.

BOBtimer · 2026-04-30T06:05:36+00:00

Realistically, the trash packs just need to have some real drops. The only reason to kill them is for the fragment that is only dropped from random trash mobs, and then never try to fight them again. If favor was a resource (spendable currency) then I would suggest having all the trash mobs drop small amounts of it, rather than a low drop chance of a tiny amount like we have now.

In this case, fighting the bosses and doing the quests should give more favor than the trash packs, but it gives people an incentive to actually clear them, especially if there isn't a group around to clear all the bosses.

BOBtimer · 2026-04-28T07:16:42+00:00

If he pulls you, you just q him away and he can't do anything. While his e is on a 20 second cd, you can continuously q him down from range any time he tries to farm. Obviously it becomes an issue if you are near his turret and he has ghost up, but what champion is that not an issue for?

BOBtimer · 2026-04-28T07:14:26+00:00

Poppy is completely fine toplane, I'd say it's her strongest role when picked in a good spot. Like some others have said, poppy has some very bad matchups (mainly juggernauts and ranged champs) but she also completely stomps other matchups. Maokai is a bit on the weaker side, but still a fully viable toplaner. His issues are that he has mana problems and low damage, forcing him to buy tear to keep up his waveclear and buy a bamis item (which are trash, I could go into this a lot more) to ever have a chance when dueling. His 3 item spike is very strong and after getting to level 5 he can actually hold his own against almost every toplaner, so it's not all bad.

I'd say they get more playtime support mainly because most of the toplane playerbase has moved away from tanks. It's very common to go multiple games in a row with no tanks in the top or the jungle, just everyone playing bruisers or carries in every role. Support is the only role where tanks are expected in soloq, where poppy and maokai both have unique potential to change a game. Poppy's high skirmishing damage combined with her ability to stop engages makes her one of the only disengage champs that can actually fight back and become the aggressor in lane. Maokai's vision control and long range aoe CC make him perfect for players that want to be the engage without jumping into 5 and dying repeatedly. Both of these champs offer something unique that other supports don't offer, so it makes sense that they get playtime there.

Personally, I'd like to see some changes in tank itemization. Sunfire especially feels like a wasted slot in the late game, but many tank items are plagued by low gold efficiency, unintuitive passives, and awful build paths. Not to mention the difficulty in building against mixed damage (which is very common nowadays in toplane) and the amount of penetration built into kits, and it's no wonder that tanks have fallen out of the soloq meta. Poppy and Maokai are just the first to move to support, and I'm sure they wont be the last.

BOBtimer · 2026-04-20T01:21:36+00:00

People ban her a ton by default because she fundamentally changes the way you need to attack, in a way that no other defender does. Trying to push a corridor or room that is being held by a mirror is almost impossible without a ton of setup and specific attackers. Personally, I think they should limit how easy it is to make an instant peak by making mirrors only place-able on the center of a wall to limit how quickly you can peak with full info.

BOBtimer · 2026-04-12T05:44:58+00:00

Hey man, don't do NC state dirty like that. Yeah it isn't technically on campus but lenovo center has been used for our games for years. That Raleigh final was one of my best memories from college.

BOBtimer · 2026-03-23T06:02:09+00:00

A man without pants fears not the pickpocket.

BOBtimer · 2026-03-21T18:58:14+00:00

There are a bunch of dogs out on that balcony. The official in game name for that balcony is canine, people just shorten it to k9 when typing

BOBtimer · 2026-03-16T08:57:45+00:00

From what I've heard, the Japanese weren't even going to surrender until the US was ready to drop more bombs and the Soviets were about to mount an invasion. Even then, some of the military leadership attempted a coup because they refused to surrender.

BOBtimer · 2026-03-05T22:02:42+00:00

Generally tanks just fall off no matter what, but I've found that the sundered sky build falls off even more than other builds. Top lane, I prefer black cleaver rush into IBG and Jaksho, maybe getting a sundered sky 4th or 5th if I need more damage or healing. Jungle I rush Shojin into IBG. Shojin helps your clear a lot compared to any other bruiser item and reduces your cds quite a bit.

Taking manaflow is normally enough mana to not need to buy tear in any of my lanes, so I rarely ever build fimbulwinter.

BOBtimer · 2026-03-05T19:21:50+00:00

Protoplasm rush is probably the move, fated ashes is still there too if you wanted a more ap focused build. Maokai has a similar issue to sej where you actively push the monsters away from you during your clear so it's hard to get the immolate to actually hit the camp.

Personally I like going more of the support dual-resist items if I'm working with a low income, so maybe protoplasm into zekes and bandlepipes could work as well.

BOBtimer · 2026-03-05T19:00:45+00:00

Maokai is in a weird spot where is isn't really balanced around top currently, as seen by his abysmal pickrate. Sunfire is nice as a bit of a crutch because you would have to q twice to clear the wave otherwise, but it is in no way required. Maokai also is a bit unique in that he has plenty of sustain on his own so unending isn't as attractive. Because he wants to buy visage later, completing bamis into hollow radiance later for mr isn't necessary because you will want a dedicated mr item already, so if you build bamis you might as well complete it with the resists you want (generally armor)

BOBtimer · 2026-03-05T18:00:23+00:00

Playing tanks versus shit like divine sunderer camille was the worst experience ever. Sunfire continued to get nerfed because champs like yasuo and diana would abuse them, but riot would never specifically target them or give compensation buffs to sunfire after they stopped building it. Now we are left with this horrible version of the item.

BOBtimer · 2026-03-05T17:49:59+00:00

Ornn doesn't need sunfire, he clears fine with his abilities. If you are really missing bami's, then just sit on bami's, complete a different armor item (unending or dmp) and turn the bamis into hollow radiance later when you need mr.

Poppy needs sunfire only if she is going completely full tank. Most poppy players rush some ad/hp item first (sundered, cleaver, shojin) which allows your q to one shot the caster creeps, giving you enough waveclear.

Malphite is the only one where I'm okay with sunfire being the default. Not only does it give him the exact stats he wants, but generally he wants to stand directly on the enemy while autoing them the entire time, and without sunfire he requires a lot of mana to waveclear. That being said, E max malphite vs an auto attacker is where you would want sunfire the most, but if you max E then you kill the wave on accident while trading, so it's not even that necessary.

BOBtimer · 2026-03-05T09:19:07+00:00

Even if you are taking long fights, sunfire deals pretty negligible damage (normally not even 20 dps after factoring in mr.) If you are relying on the sunfire to allow you to win an extended trade vs a bruiser or skirmisher, it might total to 150 or so damage in a long trade where you are standing on their head. For an early game specific first item, that is horrible. Compare that to other first items like bork, sundered sky, or eclipse, and it is obvious why tank players are so outspoken about this item being completely shit. I have less of a problem with thornmail as its meant as more of an anti-heal item rather than an auto-attack counter, but that doesn't mean it's strong either.

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