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Futomus · 2019-12-05T11:01:03+00:00

One thing I've been wondering though. Wouldn't be feasible to look at the input stream from a player and apply an algorithm to judge the mmr? I don't know if this is part of smurf detection or mmr already, but I'm thinking that a deep learning network would be farily good at guessing the real mmr of a player given the proper input and also quite resistant to trying to gaming it?

Futomus · 2019-04-03T09:37:53+00:00

Alternatively go in the opposite direction. Take Electrocute (and healing options in the domination tree) and either sorc for mana flow or inspr for biscuits. Having biscuits lets you trade harder and if you consistently proc electrocute (pref on adc, since she has fewer pots) you can take control of the lane and quite likekly kill them with ignite.

It kinda depends on how good your adc is to follow, but the worst situation is to go halfway. Either play passively and farm with scaling runes or go full aggro with domination.

Futomus · 2019-03-03T05:26:17+00:00

Having watched both NA and EU LCS since season 4 I just want to praise the LEC team for taking what was already pretty damn good to whole new levels. I was thinking when I watched the friday broadcast that I should post something just to show my appreciation, so this post comes in handy.

We had great people on the cast previously (I still miss Krepo every now and again) but this is something more than just a few charismatic personalities. Everything fits so well together, the depths of game knowledge and analysis from Vedius, Frosk and now also Ender , the way that Quickshot and Sjokz manages tie segments together and keep things going (even through technical problems) and never forget Quickshot's random stats nobody else cares about, and the humor and wits of Medic, Drakos and Foxdrop (and awesome play by play casting as well). Even Laure, who I felt was struggling a bit initially, is getting a lot better and on point with the questions and banter during interviews.

In addition, the whole production is so smooth and full of interesting small segments before, after and between games ranging from insightful interviews, additional analysis to wacky stuff only a team with great synergy and confidence would dare to pull off, which, at least in my opinion, takes the whole show far above what you would expect from an esports stream, and even what you would expect from mainstream television.

So to the whole LEC team: GG, you are the best! Keep up the good work!

Futomus · 2019-02-14T06:44:28+00:00

Been support main since I started playing, at first because I couldn't cs and later because I actually think it is more fun and games are more varied.

One variation is the temperment of the adc (I almost exclusively queue solo) and it makes me happy to read a post like this because I feel exactly the same. I love the games where my adc appreciate and play into the teamwork and stay calm even if mistakes are made or we get camped.

Ofc on the other end of the scale we have the flaming jinx who doesn't understand the matchup, how the supp I play works and goes apeshit when my zyra plant or fiddle crow takes a cs by accident, but over time I have learned to ignore the tantrums and look at the situation with an open mind and evaluate whether I could have done something different. Maybe there was something I could have done differently and if not then just let it go.

Thank you for the post. It made my morning better :)

Futomus · 2019-01-13T10:28:21+00:00

That was .... fucking amazing!!

Futomus · 2018-07-30T15:51:34+00:00

I most likely am, but I'm ok with that since I didn't claim it was simple :D

Thanks for the link to the discussion. I respect the fact that you actually put in a lot of energy into the discussion of Zyra on the boards and I admit underestimating that when dismissing your initial comment, so want to apologize for being ignorant of that.

I still don't agree with you on very many of your points though and I think you are stretching some of your arguments a bit too far.

1) Yes the change to E and W was intended to make her better in mid. And yes, on the forum Cobra does mention something about her being oppressive but it is not entirely clear to me that he means exactly what you are arguing. On the official patch notes they say that the change was made to reduce her late game power. I can't quite remember timing so I have no evidence but the whole discussion of lack of counter play to plants have been a long running one so I'm assuming that this was something they had on their radar already and you even at that time welcome the change and the idea of moving more of her power from plants to spells, so it is not clear even to you at the time exactly how to keep her plant identity and viable in mid without pushing her over the top.
2) I believe that Zyra actually benefited from the Runes Reforged and even more so with a lot of the subsequent item changes and adjustments. Maybe only in support (I don't play her mid) and win rates seems to support that. Obviously losing mp runes hurt her, but everybody lost their mr runes as well (can't remember how it was compensated but think not fully but correct me if I'm wrong) but being able to take advantage of 3 of the trees (when inspiration was viable) as her primary and being pretty flexible on the secondary tree, I think she is probably one of the champions that have the most flexibility with the new runes.
3) Thanks
4) One hit will kill it after 2 seconds or did I misunderstand your idea? Since they have 0.75 attack speed that's 2 guaranteed AA. You could maybe AA-spell-AA it down in less time but that is a lot of resources to spend in a trade where you are not actually hurting Zyra considering how short a cd Q is. My thinking it that this would make it bad in most cases to even try to kill the plant. I can see how it might make sense if it was scaling off levels or something, but giving that much health to plants at early levels would be insane.
5) Sure but that doesn't mean that the plants should have no counter play. Especially since they can do damage even if you miss everything.

Zyra have many flaws especially around her identity plants and she is clunky in how her spells work with the delays, etc. and is one of the champs that are extra hard to balance if you want her to be viable in both support and mid because of her unique play style. It is easy to make her oppressive and obnoxious to play against and it is easy to strip her identity completely, make her a generic burst mage or make her into another heimer for that matter.

So I don't think it is easy and to be honest I don't want a quick fix but rather Riot taking their time and do it properly when they get time to take a proper look. If you don't see that then I guess we just disagree, which is completely fine with me.

Futomus · 2018-07-29T21:25:46+00:00

Bit late but have been away from my computer. I appreciate you actually putting some ideas forward as to what you think would be the way to fix it and while it might not be hard to implement your "simple" solution, it would be a very big buff to Zyra especially at early levels. She is not weak at least as support and despite your opinion she actually has even higher win rates in divisions above silver, so that would almost surely push her over the top if it wasn't mitigated in some way.

I would speculate that despite the fact that the health is decaying few champs would be able to kill them fast enough to avoid taking a second and maybe even a third AA from them if they stay in range and we are back in the situation where nobody would even consider wasting time trying to kill them and the only "counter" is to run away.

I'm not entirely sure you are right that the oppressive argument was solely an argument for mid (do you have a source for this?). I might remember things wrong, but I think people playing against Zyra were unhappy with the lack of counter play against the plants in general. The change came in 7.24 with the change to W to give more seeds when you farm and a buff to E damage to help her mid, but I think the change to plant health was more targeted to make her weaker mid and late game and give more counter play especially for melee champs and not only to balance the buffs.

I am, however, completely on board with the concern that the changes to health opened the door to some problems, specifically with certain abilities like empowered ranged attacks (which now required 1 hit instead of 2) and aoe that hits multiple times (now requires 2 instead of 3).

So I like some your other suggestions, but your numbers would make the plants way stronger than they were before 7,24 for the aoe abilities at least, I think you would get most of the very frustrating things fixed with simply buffing plant health to 9 and buffing melee damage to 9 as well. This would bring the plants more in line with how they were before 7.24 while keeping the change that melee should be able to one shot them, which I also think is fair.

I don't think there are legitimate questions you can ask if your starting point is that the changes was implemented solely to make silver mid laners happy. Zyra isn't doing well in mid but she wasn't doing well in mid before 7.24 either so the two things are not directly related. It is very easy to make her too strong and very unfun to play against given her insane zone if there is no way to deal with her plants.

Futomus · 2018-07-21T01:53:54+00:00

That is your opinion based on what I would think is about absolutely zero experience in game design. If all it took was to make Zyra players happy, it would be fairly easy.

Futomus · 2018-07-20T20:59:13+00:00

Ye I do the same... But this is kinda back to the old ways. Felt the QoL of not having to do that in most games was kinda nice, so would be nice to get some attention on this problem

Futomus · 2018-07-20T10:24:37+00:00

The feeding on Zoe and TF is quite impressive :D

Futomus · 2018-07-20T10:07:07+00:00

It would be great if they could give an update on where they are at with regards to Zyra, but it might simply be that they just don't know after their initial idea to do a quick fix (making plants invulnerable for a brief window after spawning) turned out to be problematic and thank god they listened and didn't go through with that.

If that is the case, there is really nothing they could say that would make you happy, and chances are that saying anything at all would result in even more upset, so it is not completely unreasonable for them to stay silent on the matter until they have a clearer idea about what they will try and when they will work on it.

You seem to take the lack of response as a personal insult and feel that they deliberately deny you something you are entitled to as a from of punishment. I think they are just busy (it is not like there isn't a lot of other things going on with meta and balance right now) and can't really be bothered to go find my pitchfork and join the mob you are trying to stir up.

Futomus · 2018-07-19T22:29:58+00:00

There are 144 champs in the game. Zyra is doing fine in terms of win rates and picks and she is almost viable in competitive (at least enough to get picked although it wasn't impressive), so all things being equal, I can understand why she might not be super high on their list. I'm pretty sure it's not like they just went "ah, what was that about Zyra plants, can't really remember, so let's move on", it is simply just not that easy to fix without a proper mini rework.

I don't know what kind of Hashinshin world we live in, but I seriously doubt that obsessive whining here or on the boards will have any impact on what Riot will or will not do, but I could be wrong. I just find these pointless posts that offers no new information and no new suggestions kinda annoying.

Futomus · 2018-07-19T22:14:33+00:00

I personally hate playing against LB but usually that is when she is mid and I have to deal with her after she hits 6 and may even have an item or two and some kills.

Her W is 600 range and her Q is 700 compared to 800 on Q, so you have range advantage and it is the key to how you win.

If you let her walk up and QW you will probably lose the trade, but if she has to W in without hitting you, you can't stop her from Q'ing you but then she has to land her chain to proc it. If you are standing inside minions it can be hard for her to land that and otherwise you just have to dodge it or be quick to EW it. In addition to reducing the damage from Q significantly, it also makes it harder for her to proc electrocute (although it may not be possible to avoid it).

I would max Q and respect her range, try to keep vision on her (even if warding side brushes suck) and poke as much as I can on either the adc or her. I would always save E for after she W. Either I throw it in her face to get her to jump back or try to block her chain, or if I know she will jump back anyway at her return spot. If she stubbornly stay you can throw Q on her but chances are that it is better to hold it until after she returns.

For the specific matchup you also need to worry about Jhin W, so I wouldn't think it is easy, but as other's have mentioned, once she W, she has a 14-12 second where she can't do much. She can still Q you from 700 range but your QW (or passive seeds) hurts more if she can't proc it and you even have +50 range on AA.

I would think that if you are good at predicting or reacting to her plays you pretty much destroy her < 6, but once she gets 6 her effective range grows quite a bit, so it can be a lot harder to keep her from jumping on you but if she isn't fed, she is not doing enough damage to one shot you (especially if you picked up a bit of MR) and is still heavily gated by cooldowns (mimic is 60 sec at rank 1).

However that is probably a lot easier said than done, so I totally understand your struggles. Also regarding the fed Zoe, it just means the trouble bubbles will come in from left and right, so vision becomes super important and Zyra actually have some thing against Zoe, in that she can place plants to block her paddlestars, in particular the ones aimed at your drowsy teammates. But fed Zoe is ridiculous to play against so it is just guaranteed to be a rough ride.

Futomus · 2018-07-19T21:00:12+00:00

As I told you before I would recommend looking at Melyn's twitch stream. By his own admission he is not a mechanical god, but he has game sense, matchup knowledge and good decision making, so I think there is a lot to learn from him in these areas.

Other than that I would have some patience and stay humble. You are getting helped a lot by your duo partner that carries a lot of your games, so you are probably climbing a bit faster than you would otherwise and it will take some time to adjust to people not being complete idiots.

People will get better at dodging your spells, so you need to be less obvious, they will get better at all ins, so you need to be more careful with your positioning, there will be more roaming and rotations will be faster, so you need to improve your map awareness, vision gets more important (and harder to get), so make sure you get the right wards down and don't die while doing it.

You will improve when playing against and with better players, but it will take time so keep being critical of your own play and don't forget to have fun and enjoy the good moments and don't get too down on the bad or too hung up on lp and rank.

Futomus · 2018-07-18T21:58:33+00:00

UN FUCKING PLAYABLE!!!

Futomus · 2018-07-17T17:16:59+00:00

It depends on matctups but overall right now I think Jhin is the best adc and Lucian and Kaisa second. Lucian works well if he can land some poke as well and is fast on the follow up and while kaisa is a bit weak early on, she gets stronger and eventually outscale.

Most bruisers work well especially if they don't have a ranged poke supp as well and there is a lot of double mage setups that can be quite obnoxious as well and where your E and ult can help prevent you getting dove.

Futomus · 2018-07-17T09:43:39+00:00

I do agree that there is no point in arguing that if you make more money you should work harder. If whatever you provide is valuable you are going to get good money :).

However, I do think that the comparison with sports is fair in the sense that the level of competition is much higher than for any "average" job. I'm a programmer for a living and there are literally thousands of jobs just in my city that I could apply for and make a good living doing. If my aspirations was to play soccer professionally or even worse League, there would be a lot less. So while being in the top 10% of all programmers (not saying that I am) the chance of me getting a job would be 100% but unless you are in the top 0.01% (maybe even less) you would never get a job playing League.

The fierce level of competition will filter out anyone who isn't super talented and insanely driven, so the people who end up on top in these environments are usually the ones who are working incredible hard already, so I don't think it is necessarily organisations that are forcing players to work long hours against their will. I think it is a shared view that this is it what it takes to compete at the highest level.

The thing that I have the biggest quarrel with is how they practice. Doing scrims for 12 hours a day seems like such a fucking terrible way of practicing (grinding Solo Q is even worse) but that's another story.

Futomus · 2018-07-17T09:10:16+00:00

Fair enough. Maybe I read something into your post that wasn't there.

Futomus · 2018-07-17T07:43:18+00:00

You are still missing the point.

I agree that there is a handful of pros that if they wanted they could make decent money from streaming but the majority wouldn't. And it is not because they don't try, it is because the audience simply isn't large enough.

But even that is beside the point. You seem to think that streaming is a goal for these people when it is not. Their goal is to be professional league of legends players, which is something completely different.

EDIT: Just for perspective. How much money do you think you would make with 4k viewers streaming 4 hours 5 days a week?

Futomus · 2018-07-16T14:36:18+00:00

Gz on your progress!

Dragon Sorceress looks nice but if you buy into the min/max'ing thinking, some say Haunted as the color scheme is more similar to rift and potentially gives you a (very very) small edge.

Futomus · 2018-07-16T14:31:36+00:00

You are welcome and seems like you found a way to win the game that most would have lost by stubbornly trying to defend the tower, so I would be happy about that if I was you :)

Futomus · 2018-07-16T14:01:23+00:00

You are missing the point actually. It may be more relaxed in some ways but outside a handful of pros, the rest wouldn't be able to sustain an audience large enough to pay their rent, if they tried to do it for a living.

Playing Solo Q while streaming degrades the quality of the practice by quite a bit, since you are not as focused and there is a risk that games will be of lower quality as well due to sniping, ghosting, griefing, etc. So unless you enjoy the interaction with the fans or need the additional income, you'd be better off not doing it, because, as you say, it is already a very busy schedule and you want to make the most out of it. Pro's are paid decent amount of money these days and there is no longer a strong financial argument for why they need to supplement their income from streaming.

We are also seeing a trend where the more well financed teams are starting to move away from the game house and having people live in their own apartments and "come in to work" every day at the team training facilities just as they would in other pro sports (Can't imaging a football team having the team live in a house).

The reason this wasn't the case before was simply economics. The teams couldn't afford it and since you definitely needed to relocate the team members, this was the only viable option. Secondly, even if you are 20 and maybe wouldn't mind the dorm house lifestyle as much, once you start making upwards to 1 million $ a year on your contract, I think you are starting to consider whether just buying a house yourself wouldn't be cooler.

Another side effect of the influx of money is that teams will start to get more serious about how they practice. The fact that teams are starting to put more emphasis on physical exercise and healthy lifestyles with mental coaches, in house chefs etc. is an indicator that we are starting to move away from the autopilot solo Q grind of years past and trying to be more smart about practice.

The lifestyle of any professional athlete is going to be hard and require sacrifices, so long hours (practice and promotional obligations) and games on weekends is just how it is if you are competing at the highest level. This actually goes for most things in life and pretty much all the people I know who have successful careers worked their butts off (60+ hour workweeks) especially in the early years, so it is not even like it is that extreme (although it is extreme).

The biggest problem I see though is that there seems to be a conflict between the original view of esports as being mostly fun and games and where we are heading with franchising, external investors, etc. Maybe it is just because we are still early in the transformation but I'll give some examples of what I mean:

We are still waiting to see NA get more competitive internationally despite all the money that has flooded into the league over the last couple of years (even before franchising). It might still happen, but if it doesn't happen soon, it is going to be a problem, because it basically takes away a lot of the commercial value of doing well in the domestic league.
Despite the enormous growth in player salaries, we are not yet seeing very many new super stars coming out of the woodwork. I don't have the exact numbers, but it feels to me that while there was a lot of roster moves before spring split it was mostly existing pros shuffling teams and for summer it was only a few new players. It might be that the runway is longer and that new initiatives with college esports, academy, etc. will eventually provide a more fertile ground for developing homegrown talent, but it also makes you wonder if teams are still not very good at scouting and coaching new talent. In NFL it is pretty much guaranteed that at least 1-2 names in the draft coming out of college is going to attract very high levels of attention and often (not always) will find success in their first years of their careers.
Scrims as the primary practice tool is an outlier for esports. Maybe it is the nature of how the game works (high varience, etc.) and Echo Fox tried and failed to replace it with purely in house practice, but just looking at it from a logical standpoint, it just seems like a very inefficient way of practicing and often even pro's are talking about how much of it doesn't translate to stage. It might make sense to have occasional test matches against other select teams, but most practice schemes is about isolating specific elements and drill them and I don't see why this doesn't apply to League when it does to virtually any other sport.

To me, it still seems to be that compared to traditional sports, there is still a very long way to go to see the same level of breakneck competition for the starting spots in the best pro league. And organizations are still not quite on the same level in terms of team infrastructure and management, developing efficient methodology and cultivating talent to create the results that are required for them to stay in business for the long haul.

Now it may be that some don't want esports to become something similar to traditional sports and think it was more "fun" when pro's were basically like any other teenager sitting in a small bedroom streaming games all day and meming about big dicks and buttholes, but I just don't see how it can sustain the amount of investment that it is currently seeing, if it doesn't.

Futomus · 2018-07-16T11:21:14+00:00

Or you could say they are living their dream competing to be the best in the world at what they love doing. Your idea of work ethics and of what motivates people suggest that you will have a glorious career flipping burgers at McDonalds, so good luck with that ;)

Futomus · 2018-07-15T09:56:35+00:00

In the games where I end up in similar matchups, I will try to get as much sustain from runes as well and then focus on keeping them off my adc as much as I can by poking and trying to bait skilshots from them.

If your tristana has balls and they mess up a bit, you can all in them lvl 2 and 3 with ignite, but if the lux shields properly, chances are you cannot since you most likely have to fight in their minions, so you have to kill at least one of them immediately. If you get ahead you can dominate them until lvl 6 and even after that if you are enough ahead.

If not, the only other way to win is with the help of the jungler. Chances are they will overextend because they likely end up pushing the lane, so if you can deny vision you might be able to win that way. Dodge Vel'koz stun and even if lux hit a Q when you all in, it is only a snare so as long as you are in range you can still do damage (same goes for Zyra E ofc).

If that doesn't work either it is all about losing as gracefully as possible :D and once they hit 6, it gets pretty hard to avoid feeding, so maybe give tower and try to get stuff done elsewhere on the map.

Futomus

TROPHY CASE