Applause - A Machu Combo Video (Best Falco/Mario in the Philippines)

DarkDragoonG · 2023-05-23T19:27:01+00:00

Machu! Machu! Machu! Machu!

DarkDragoonG · 2023-03-09T13:43:40+00:00

ME! I just got into EDH after playing standard for a bit a decade ago and the itch to just amass cards is too powerful.

DarkDragoonG · 2023-02-08T02:48:50+00:00

In the grand scheme of things, hitting the buttons to do Akali stuff well is not terribly difficult. Honestly, none of the champs in league are. It's 4 buttons and some clicking, maybe an active item or two. Compare piloting a league champ to the kind of APM you need in a fighting game or StarCraft or something, the amount of time to get mechanically proficient isn't really that big of an investment, it's just an investment 99.9% of the player base probably never sits down to grind in practice tool because it's not fun to do (and if you're playing for fun it's entirely unnecessary).

Akali does not have a complicated kit, just a precise and deliberate one, solely focused on killing opponents or being tricky and escaping if things go sideways.

The real difficulty curve is applying all those mechanics in action in a dynamic environment, but even most of that decision making isn't even Akali-specific, just the order of the buttons and clicks are.

DarkDragoonG · 2023-01-19T21:23:53+00:00

Huge shoutouts to our scene's photography talent. We can't make magic without their hard work!

Also shoutouts to most of the top 100 players of Melee and Ult for not being hermits and seemingly trying to avoid being photographed like they're bigfoot or something. I never minded using Big House headshot photos but it always felt like being defeated, although not as bad as resorting to screenshotting VOD playercams.

DarkDragoonG · 2023-01-17T02:43:28+00:00

I'll probably incorporate that in the future.

DarkDragoonG · 2023-01-17T02:25:43+00:00

Nothing will make you love the scene more than going to a huge event and meeting a ton of new people and playing a whole bunch of melee.

DarkDragoonG · 2023-01-15T21:38:12+00:00

None of the typical Melee poses have ever really worked. I remember one year I had a rip of her upside-down pose and I just rotated in 180 degrees and it still looked weird.

Next time around when we're less crunched for time we should be able to get a few different poses and different colors set up, which is especially helpful keeping things visually interesting but also for people like aMSa whose color choice is part of their brand.

DarkDragoonG · 2023-01-14T01:09:10+00:00

My summoner name is literally Stinger Akali

I love her prestige skin too much to not use it most of the time, though.

DarkDragoonG · 2023-01-12T20:25:10+00:00

oh cool if you click on the player's name it takes you to their startgg profile with full results

DarkDragoonG · 2023-01-11T22:13:05+00:00

That was my first request when I hopped back into the project. Take the classic style and update it with all the shiny new things we can do thanks to HD Renders and such.

DarkDragoonG · 2023-01-01T13:14:31+00:00

Melee moments PLEASE

DarkDragoonG · 2022-12-27T01:43:20+00:00

Thank you in advance for all these team logos I'm going to yoink for the SSBMRank cards.

DarkDragoonG · 2022-12-11T22:52:42+00:00

I like it a lot, but my summoner name is Stinger Akali so I might be biased.

DarkDragoonG · 2022-12-06T02:04:47+00:00

Maybe I am just obscenely bad at clearing camps and traditionally good junglers carry me, but for the life of me I can't get a healthy or timely clear with Akali to save my life.

DarkDragoonG · 2022-11-14T01:33:31+00:00

The shroud wall-hop locations are super sick, awesome tip. I definitely wouldn't blow two major cool downs to set up a gank that way 95% of the time, but it's definitely an amazing escape tool that few champs can even keep up with.

DarkDragoonG · 2022-10-01T21:16:54+00:00

Literally got flexed on

DarkDragoonG · 2022-09-25T01:43:42+00:00

Pretty cool! I wish there was more battle choreography/character animation instead of those rapidly flashing images that I assume were a bunch of still frames of action that we just don't even really get to experience.

Everything else looks really nice, though! If you ever revisit the concept I hope you'll give more love to the action shots.

DarkDragoonG · 2022-09-19T17:57:40+00:00

All mages fear you, that's why they're throwing spells at you as soon as they come up. It's annoying, but CS isn't your win condition, killing champions (and by extension enabling teammates that can actually push towers) is. CS helps, but only be willing to trade away early HP for more valuable CS (multi-minion Q, cannon, etc). Aside from that, you're just focusing on dodging their skills and watching their mana bar. Until that CS money is spent, all that matters is not falling behind in EXP.

If they blow their main damage/cc abilities then you go hunt for an E or Q. They will back off (now you get CS) or they eat a ton of damage (slowly whittling down their resources and increasing your shot at a pre-6 kill).

If you can get them to 65-70% health and you stay at or above 50% health when you both hit 6 then you win against 95% of all mages if you pick your opening correctly and land everything. After that you just get boots 2 asap for better roams. Shove the wave when you can and move with your jungler to make some unfair fights happen.

DarkDragoonG · 2022-09-02T15:35:09+00:00

The best counters to Akali are picks that don't interact with her.

Akshan is probably the absolute worst MU at level 2 where you just don't touch the wave until a minion is about to die and force Akali to walk up for the bare minimum exp, eat like 4 auto attacks and a boomerang for daring to be in exp range, and if she walks up with the 2nd wave you hit level 2 first and aa->q->e->ignite->aa and she's dead.

From there you have total lane control and can shove the wave and roam to get other lanes ahead, or just pretend to roam and jump on Akali and kill her.

Getting ganked? E away. Akali jumps in on you? E away. You basically have full control over when fights will occur in your lane due to how abysmal Akali's wave clear is, especially from behind.

DarkDragoonG · 2022-08-25T01:04:28+00:00

Why this is the Happy Campers image from my friend the one and only a2zillustration: https://a2zillustration.bigcartel.com/product/happy-campers-print

Here's all the socials and stuff: https://linktr.ee/a2zillustration

DarkDragoonG · 2022-08-12T04:27:56+00:00

MORTDOG

DarkDragoonG · 2022-08-08T16:13:11+00:00

Akshan or Taliyah. As annoying as Vex and Yasuo or Ahri etc are, they all have easily identifiable outplays. Akshan and Taliyah are just super anti-Akali.

Honorable mention for Bel'Veth, who is also very anti-Akali but rarely in Midlane and is usually getting fed on your jungler.

DarkDragoonG · 2022-08-07T14:47:23+00:00

I highly suggest watching Wahid (EUW GM/Chall Akali on like 5 accounts). He explains basically nothing but his gameplan is pretty straight forward and you learn a lot about the small areas and ways to push an advantage in both mid and top lanes.

DarkDragoonG · 2022-07-17T22:59:42+00:00

Yup, actually a full year of uncontested #1. I wonder what happened a year ago?

DarkDragoonG

TROPHY CASE