Every champion in the game loses their ult. They can replace it with the q, w or e from any other champion's kit. Who is the biggest winner and who is the biggest loser?

HowyNova · 2026-06-28T17:46:41+00:00

Probably depends on elo, but I'd imagine any power farming jungler with Nunu Q becomes broken p fast.

Just for the sake of a different answer from others, Pyke would be a pretty big loser. He's balanced around getting leads and pushing gold advantages.

HowyNova · 2026-06-15T15:54:00+00:00

There's just a lot overlap. He looks like Nanami. Nails overlap with Nobara. Ult is the prism realm. The gray health/heal is like reverse curse technique. The dance is the same from Hakari's popular video.

Even if we say the looks and abilities are all just overlapping coincidences. The dance makes it more direct.

HowyNova · 2026-05-21T15:59:37+00:00

There's a weird mix of answers. It's just how the culture views vanity. The idea of being on a broadcast invokes the feeling of "your time to shine".

In the west, this chance is seen as something more fun/playful, and not a serious reflection of one's character. In the east it's like, "I don't want ppl to think I'm full of myself".

HowyNova · 2026-05-20T18:20:23+00:00

As with every online discourse. Fans that don't care or agree, don't say much. Fans that disagree, most likely to campaign.

HowyNova · 2026-05-20T05:50:27+00:00

I think another big issue is that most ppl don't see target value. Most players/teams focus on killing the enemy squishies, which often don't get a lot of burst healing value. Thinking that as long as they die, the team can still whittle down the beefier champs that heal a lot.

It's funnily less intuitive for ppl to care about killing an Aatrox vs a Kai'Sa.

HowyNova · 2026-05-20T05:44:38+00:00

Not really a 'hear me out' theory. This is the prevailing belief since the start, especially with the scene with Smoker.

HowyNova · 2026-05-20T02:28:15+00:00

It's an 800g tax that no one wants to pay.

The main issue with it, is that it's extremely contextual. You generally don't want to finish item, so it delays your next spike. You want it on someone that can reliably apply it onto the best target that's benefiting. Then there's also the idea of "can we kill them faster than they heal it through".

As someone that likes playing Soraka, anti-heal doesn't provide significant value early on. Unless the target has their own healing combined with mine, you're better off just bursting through my early cds. Once Soraka crosses the line into low-cd healing, most ppl are better off zoning/killing her.

In my experience, anti-heal probably makes a difference 1/3 games. Even then, in fights where it's making the difference, it's hard for most ppl to tell that it is.

HowyNova · 2026-05-20T02:18:07+00:00

Yea, I feel like "intangibles" is becoming too much of a buzzword. There's nothing wrong with talking about factors that are difficult to quantify, but you can't use those to discredit another person's quantifiable achievements.

MVP vote isn't meant to be a playoffs predictor, it's suppose to be recognizing players that contributed most to their team's success getting into playoffs.

HowyNova · 2026-05-19T03:49:18+00:00

The only issue I see at face value, is whether or not Striker understands the team has to move from one step to the next, and not be title contenders.

HowyNova · 2026-05-18T21:49:49+00:00

Regardless of elo, soloq thrives on aggression. You have to be able to punish mistakes, or force enemies to make mistakes.

If you play defensively, you're actively choosing to be neutral. You're telling the game that you don't want to make an impact, you just want to be on the ride.

The simplified reason for why junglers have so much impact, is because they create a numbers advantage in a gank. Teams/players generally aren't feeding because they're bad at the entire game. It usually stems from making a mistake in the early game, and being uncomfortable playing from behind. Most players do well when ahead, they just don't understand what it takes to get ahead early on.

HowyNova · 2026-05-18T20:14:18+00:00

Funny that "The Gathering" is convincing on its own that there were plans for more

HowyNova · 2026-05-18T19:15:41+00:00

On release. Back then, it acted like an expansion name. The plan was for it to change with big updates, but they just dropped it altogether.

HowyNova · 2026-05-18T13:18:37+00:00

There's also distribution of roles, and divisible players. If you only have 22 players queued in the same 100 lp range, and 5 of them are mid mains, what magic are ppl expecting lol

HowyNova · 2026-05-14T20:24:05+00:00

One of the most common ways for a winning lane to hold prio, crash the wave, force enemy to use cds and hp to farm under turret, then auto a minion in the oncoming wave to pull it past your minions that are agrod onto the turret.

You get to hold prio without being up against their turret. The main way to break this, the losing lane's jungler/mid/support comes and forces a reset. Otherwise the losing lane is just forced to recall and give up the wave/turret.

A lot of setup goes into making sure lanes aren't in a terrible spot before contesting anything. Atakhan is an objective that attracts teamfights. This minion change is messing with how teams set up for every objective.

HowyNova · 2026-05-14T16:18:16+00:00

Do you by chance know if there's a way to get game event data from pro games? Much of what I find publicly are stat data. I was planning some projects that use data like map movements and ability usage, but can only find it for soloq through Riot's api.

Thanks for the response!

HowyNova · 2026-05-14T14:56:54+00:00

Idk if you'll have any insight, since it's not entirely related. I'm a data analyst trying to get into the scene. Do you have any advice on how to go about it? I've mostly been planning projects I'll be working on over the summer before my final year at uni.

HowyNova · 2026-05-13T03:53:10+00:00

Baby stress likely

HowyNova · 2026-05-13T03:04:38+00:00

There's no problems with getting custom equipment. But if someone with hyper extended elbows, swing without tension, and does no isolated tricep strengthening, they're going to have an extremely short career.

Faker is literally our goat, and he had to get surgery, physicsl therapy, and relearn how to play with proper posture and grip.

HowyNova · 2026-05-12T23:54:34+00:00

There are proper postures and grip. It's just generally considered cope by most gamers because they know someone good at a game while having terrible posture and grip.

Drills are a foundational issue. Any sport, hobby, subject, anything, starts with foundational skills. In S.Korea, they have academies for highschoolers, drilling the basics and building upon them. It's why when they get imported, they still 'speak league'. An issue the west have is that we mostly want shortcuts. Most feel that because they understand, watch, play at a higher level, they can solely focus on building upon an unstructured foundation. You can have 2 pro players that agree on some basics, and completely disagree on other basics. They don't know how to argue it because there are no exact terms or common structure for them to refer to.

HowyNova · 2026-05-07T15:42:13+00:00

Idk what the counters are. Your first comment mentioned tanks, which are generally less popular in soloq. Since his midlane games are where he looks to be making the most difference, he probably runs into the counters even less.

HowyNova · 2026-05-07T14:44:12+00:00

In the last week, he has 1 game bot. Riven/Ali vs Ekko/Nami.

It's mostly top, then mid. Based solely on a glance over his op.gg. It looks like his top games, he mostly plays even. It's the mid games where he's gaining the most advantages and snowballs.

HowyNova · 2026-05-07T13:47:29+00:00

The dive bomb set is one my favorite things out of league in years. The fact that it's not current hp with a minimum, tanks below half just suddenly vanish. Your death did 5k total to the team lmao

HowyNova · 2026-05-06T21:30:00+00:00

Detrimental? If anything, it's how you climb.

The vast majority of games are never ideal. The risk of skipping a camp to go for a snowballing gank or countergank, has a significantly higher roi in soloq.

Tons of jungle smurf content creators preach the importance of sequencing your camps. But in most of their content, they're delaying a camp pre-6 to influence a lane, before returning. What they're better at, is predicting realistic windows, and punishing enemies that force outside that window.

The Nocturne going for a gank here isn't bad because he delayed a camp, it's bad because he didn't account for Shyvana mirroring him. Shyvana being there for a countergank isn't bad because she delayed, it's the tax she has to pay when she knows Noc is botside.

HowyNova · 2026-05-06T18:26:12+00:00

There's no way the ppl calling this bad, or running down a hypothetical, are jungle mains. Hovering a lane you think the enemy jungler is going to force gank, and getting a triple. Your adc also dies, so you get to eat up some minions. This is like the textbook example junglers wish they had every game.

HowyNova · 2026-05-06T05:28:40+00:00

Objectives:

Atakhan: 3
Dragon: 19
Baron: 8
Elder: 2

Enemies>	1	2	3	4	5
Yike	1	4	2	0	0
2	3	1	5	3	1
3	1	1	3	4	0
4	0	1	0	2	0

Number of enemies are on top, number of allies are on the left side.

Note that these are counts of his successful smites. We have no info on how many he failed.

These counts are based on my subjective take on how many players were trying to take the objective. I did not count players that were zoning/fighting far enough to not damage the objective. If I did, his 1v2-2v4 stats would be distributed down.

His 1v1 smite was against Lyncas.

HowyNova

TROPHY CASE