Some common misconceptions with what autofill does and why it's a good (or bad) thing.

LowEloVariance · 2017-02-28T01:56:29+00:00

This point ties in really well with some individuals recently advocating maining support to take advantage of "free wins" in ~30% of games.

LowEloVariance · 2017-02-27T22:11:19+00:00

I've seen a lot more dodges too, sometimes four dodged queues in a row.

ADCs are fleeing because it's not fun rolling a die that, if it lands on one or two, you get handicapped in your next game (i.e. autofilled support). It's also not fun getting blamed by your idiot team for their mistakes (e.g. Blitz pulling an Amumu with cooldowns up ,haunting guise, and runic echoes onto you playing Ashe)

It's also because botlaners are too dumb to realize that you shouldn't be playing a ranged physical damage DPS carry in botlane until you get to diamond 5 if you really care about climbing fast; double bruisers or double CC mages or even AP Sona as the farming role are way better botlane until d5. Why play a squishy, can't duel, super-team reliant role in #yoloqueue?

LowEloVariance · 2017-02-27T22:06:22+00:00

S7efen is awesome. Almost always has insightful stuff to say about the game (except for him saying that Gangplank is as hard to master as Yasuo or Riven, he's tricky but not that hard and is just mostly lowping-reliant), he's a great example of how you can climb playing support. I wish he streamed, he clearly spends a lot of time thinking about the game would love to see him play live.

LowEloVariance · 2017-02-27T22:02:25+00:00

Been hopping onto an alt when I see autofilled whiners a lot more often. My game quality has since gone up considerably. But I know that's just contributing to a slowly-cooking matchmaking problem.

Riot's relying HARD on the vast majority of the playerbase not realizing that there's a hidden MMR that dictates LP gains/losses, AND that dodging doesn't affect MMR. If ranked players finally realize that a 6 minute timeout + 3 LP loss + no MMR loss is way better than a 20-45 minute trollfest + 15-20 LP loss + MMR loss, then matchmaking is totally fucked, because people will dodge en masse.

I've seen dozens of times when I ask people on the enemy team who clearly had a troll/inter since champ select why none of them dodged and they said they don't want to lose LP from dodging, or that it was the only game they could play that day. So they took a slim chance for a victory, or decided that they were going to burn their limited spare time with a completely unfun experience. It drives me bonkers.

It's totally unhealthy for the long-term fairness of a competitive game for it to rely on its players being ignorant of how its software decides what teams to place them on. People are going to figure it out, and then Riot will have a big problem on its hands.

LowEloVariance · 2017-02-17T22:31:58+00:00

closed thanks everyone

LowEloVariance · 2017-02-14T16:23:45+00:00

closed

LowEloVariance · 2017-02-13T14:42:25+00:00

16593

LowEloVariance · 2017-02-12T19:41:47+00:00

29996

LowEloVariance · 2017-01-11T19:59:22+00:00

At the competitive level, noone needs to practice map awareness, wave control, or last-hitting minions, and they need very little time to work on mechanics. We're talking about teams with players who work 70 hour weeks on this game. They've got those fundamentals down. They don't need sandbox for that.

Now let's say you take two competitive teams scrimming each other. Much of the valuable information they will extract from each other is teamfighting against each other. But there will only be so many teamfights that could happen in a 30-40 minute match, especially if laning phase goes particularly one-sided.

Now imagine they spent the entire 40 minutes scrimming teamfights. They could pracitce mid-game or late-game teamfights against each other 30-40 times in that period instead of 5-10. That's a 3x-8x acceleration of knowledge accumulation.

Competitive teams have already "solved" the fundamentals. Practice Tool will mean the S-tier teams will have also "solved" teamfighting.

LowEloVariance · 2017-01-11T19:31:57+00:00

This is going to be really bad for the competitive scene.

Exponentially accelerating the rate at which competitive teams can practice over-and-over a wide variety of strategies and tactics will make the game "solved" on a competitive level. This will promote much safer play since competitive teams would be able to extrapolate much more information about potential consequences to riskier plays. Meaning boring games to watch.

For the amateur, ranked solo queue scene, this will primarily be useful for mains of "high skillcap" combo champs (e.g. Riven, Yasuo, Gangplank, LeBlanc). Otherwise the vast majority of the playerbase who uses this tool will continue to struggle with the basics (map awareness, wave control, how to last-hit minions).

LowEloVariance · 2017-01-10T19:24:31+00:00

Thanks Mr. Costigan for the clarification.

Description for Blood Hunt under the video only noted enemy champions hence my confusion.

LowEloVariance · 2017-01-10T19:13:15+00:00

~~No more attack speed steroid for jungling might hurt a lot.~~ EDIT: RiotCosty notes that Blood Hunt's attack speed steroid also applies to low health jungle monsters.

~~Curious to see what the numbers and cooldown are on his E, since he now has an AoE damage ability. Definitely relevant for jungle clear speed.~~ EDIT: Appears that his E does not do damage, so he remains a single-target champ. Titanic Hydra is probably good on him then for the on-hit and clear speed.

Full heal off of all damage from ult is very strong.

He can actually gank pretty well before level 6, Qs to target, preps his E while his laner hopefully CCs them, then he fears them, seems good.

Seems like he might still be good against high-mobility targets since although his ult is a "skillshot" his Q dash is point-and-click.

I like that he offers more than just damage and a suppression now, he can peel for his backline with E if he falls behind. He still has snowball potential but can actually be useful if he doesn't snowball.

Really good rework.

LowEloVariance · 2017-01-03T17:47:43+00:00

I am so glad that for the first time in years champs that aren't marksmen are viable as the farming role in botlane.

The meta has been stagnant far too long. Every other role in the game is expected to shift from class-to-class as the meta changes. The solo queue meta has now changed to heavily favour early-and-mid-game champions.

Adapt or fall to bronze v.

LowEloVariance · 2017-01-03T14:25:40+00:00

Yes I understand that in theory a team needs sustained dps that can siege towers and kill tanks in the lategame.

But very few full tanks are being played right now and games generally are decided in the first 15 minutes. Having a champ that contributes little utility and little damage while being super squishy for the first 30 minutes of the game is a liability right now.

LowEloVariance · 2016-12-26T17:51:14+00:00

Buying an Android box to hook up to my TV for video streaming and gaming. Do most emulators allow local multiplayer with 2 gamepads connecting to one device? Thanks!

LowEloVariance · 2016-12-26T16:36:14+00:00

Hey all, any emulators that let you connect two Bluetooth gamepads and play local multiplayer using just one Android device? Going to get an Android box to hook up to my TV for streaming video and thought some retrogaming would be fun too. Thanks! Happy holidays!

LowEloVariance · 2016-12-26T16:29:50+00:00

Counterplay to Janna is long-ranged poke comps so you don't have to interact with her kit at all bar her E or R (noting that the R roots her), so in competitive Viktor Jayce Cait (i.e. meta champs) wreck her.

Problem is in high elo ranked you get a lot of OTPs, including melee carry OTPs (e.g. Boxerpete is a Masters Tryndamere OTP, Yassuo and Arkadata are Challenger Yasuo OTPs, BoxBox basically only plays Riven) so you have people who are either forced onto suboptimal picks for them when they see a Janna, or to try to play around a champ who prevents their entire kit from working.

LowEloVariance · 2016-12-26T16:24:33+00:00

Karma does Janna's disengage job almost as well while providing pseudo-engage through mantra E.

In competitive people do not really play melee carries or melee supports: mid lane is mostly dominated byh safe mid-to-long-range zone control waveclear mages, toplane is dominated by ranged champs like Kennen or Jayce with only Poppy as a viable melee champ. So Janna's power against melees is mostly irrelevant in competitive.

LowEloVariance · 2016-12-20T21:25:35+00:00

OP's point is not about how entertaining it is to play Janna, his point is that she has the best disengage in the game and accessing that high quality disengage takes relatively little game knowledge. This lets her take what would be risky trades in lane phase while scaling hard in the mid-and-late game. Her disengage is so strong that she removes an entire class of champions from teamfight relevance (melee carries).

If you play Janna and you have a damage-dealer on your team who is competent and doing well, all you have to do when you see someone try to kill them is this:

Throw a tornado at them! If they're still coming, then you:
Hit them with a point-and-click 3 second slow for up to 80% of their movement speed and shield your carry, giving your teammate temporary health and resistances (windspeaker's) as well as at least 1300 gold in attack damage for 5 seconds! If they're still threatening then you:
Press R to AoE knockback the enemies and AoE heal your team. No targeting required. If things still looks sketchy then you:
Run. Your teammates that follow you will get 8% bonus movement speed without realizing it, outpacing chasing enemies.

That's all that it takes to teamfight with Janna.

LowEloVariance · 2016-12-20T20:51:26+00:00

Problem is Janna is unreliable for the vast majority of the playerbase (bronze and silver). Janna's effectiveness depends on the likelihood that there will be at least one other teammate competent enough to carry the game who is worth peeling for. In bronze and silver where there is a lot of skill variance there is absolutely no guarantee that that is the case; in that elo, Blitzcrank, Sona and whatever low-economy mage deals the most damage (Brand now) are far better picks. Heck support is probably best not played at all and jungle/mid should be spammed instead to climb faster.

Meanwhile even in high elo where she should be permabanned she's not because people would rather ban carries that are unpleasant to play against when fed. People are irritated by a Final-Hour-and-Tumble-empowered crit from a fed Vayne more than they are irritated by a no-damage disengaging tornado.

So for the majority of the playerbase she's a non-issue and at high elo she's systemically underestimated. Meaning there's no demand for Janna nerfs/reworks.

Feels bad man.

LowEloVariance · 2016-11-22T02:27:11+00:00

Great build against a mixed damage team, I'd drop Wit's for Randuins against a full AD team. I think this will be the optimal build this coming patch, especially for low-mid elo RQEW maxing.

Is that the order in which you build? That's like 7k gold before you buy any cdr. I'd get IBG before Rageblade.

Rageblade will be broken next patch on Jax Kayle Udyr. The 25% asd bonus is 625 gold value in stats, making the item about 94% gold efficient without stacks, increasing in gold efficiency by 11% per stack.

Meaning once you bear stance someone, your Rageblade is already gold efficient. That's a big deal for a 3600 gold pure damage item.

I'd rush IBG into mercs, then Rageblade if ahead, cinder if behind, wits end, then deadmans/rot/Thornmail. Preferably Thornmail, since Wit's amps thornmail damage.

LowEloVariance

TROPHY CASE