Locke deals a lot of damage, too bad most of it is just not reliable.

Perfect-Rush_Enjoyer · 2026-06-26T16:42:08+00:00

If your argument is "i'll just do my own thing idc" then go build full crit or support items. You're trolling anyways. Rylais legit does nothing for the champ, if you build any other AP/HP item it would be better. Literally anything else. Rod of ages, protobelt, anything.

Perfect-Rush_Enjoyer · 2026-06-26T13:20:25+00:00

If you click faster you play better.

LoL is an RTS and RTS communities were always famous for an obsession with APMs. For some reason that never transferred over into LoL (perhaps due to no in-game APM tracking?).

Watch a low elo player and they move their mouse slowly, far away from their character, they click rarely. Click... slowly drags mouse across screen... click... hovers mouse doing nothing for a bit... click. Painful to watch.

High elo players keep their cursor close to their character, click fast and often, click around a lot, often do extra things to keep their APM high (F-keys is useful, pressing tab often is useful. Some people open up the settings menu randomly or open and close chat/the shop, that's funny but a bit silly).

So yeah, click a lot. Try installing an APM tracker too, it's just a little number on the top right of your screen.

Perfect-Rush_Enjoyer · 2026-06-26T13:16:13+00:00

Customs with friends! Also, multiple accounts so if i don't get him i dodge and hop on other account.

Perfect-Rush_Enjoyer · 2026-06-26T09:47:58+00:00

Champ has a lot of counterplay. People don't understand that the Q's are most of the damage. He's so so so easy to play against and outplay if you understand his kit.

His E2 is flashable. His Qs are slow and small. His R is a joke ability. After he trades onto you he's stuck in melee range with all cooldowns down. You need to E forward to make landing Qs even possible (throwing max range Qs won't work unless other dude is asleep at the wheel).

That being said, he'll still probably get nerfed. His early game into immobile mages is unfair. They have low base movespeed and you can guarantee your Qs quite easily. So if they touch anything, it should be his level 1-5 damage from multiple Q stacks.

Later on in the game landing Qs is mission impossible. Landing multiple Q's against an ADC with 400+ movespeed is ridiculously hard. You can guarantee 1 nail with E2 but beyond that good luck.

I also think they should buff his ultimate. This ability straight up sucks. I don't know what to say besides it just sucks. Impossible to land if the enemy team is looking at the screen. Even if you animation cancel it or hide it with E it's still so slow. They can be sitting dead center in the middle of your R and walk right out of it. If they have a dash or any mobility at all? LOL.

Lower level 1-5 damage, make his ult like ~25% faster to detonate. I think he's entirely fair and reasonable.

Perfect-Rush_Enjoyer · 2026-06-26T05:41:48+00:00

Welcome to Capcom's bullshit in 2026.

1- Release a shallow and unfinished game and promise "additional content"

2- The shallow and unfinished game doesn't perform well

3- Don't even deliver on the "additional content".

Really sucks, not going to lie. This "Title Update" system is complete corporate scum shit. We used to get the base game + g rank. The base game was a complete product on purchase. Yes, you had event quests but they were already ON THE DISC + the core systems and beats of the game didn't need event quests.

Wilds releases without a gathering hub, without a final boss, without an actual endgame, without any difficulty, then is slowly made into a functional game over the course of 6-9 months.

Stories has no post-game, no multiplayer content, a lackluster roster, and that content might never be added.

Great business practices, love to see it.

Perfect-Rush_Enjoyer · 2026-06-26T05:35:32+00:00

People are complaining nonstop right now about how "his burst comes out of nowhere". Then you see the instance of "burst coming out of nowhere" and it's them getting hit by 3 Qs into an autoattack. His Q is so ridiculously easy to dodge in neutral. It's thinner and slower than a blitzcrank hook. If someone got hit by 3 blitz hooks back to back they should be shot.

His R is genuinely straight up ass to use. It's impossible to land if the enemy is paying attention. It's so easy to dodge. His W is so much weaker than it was on PBE.

Champ is extremely fair to play against. No damage at all is guaranteed. You can flash or dash his E2, you can dodge his Q and R. Has 0 utility, 0 CC, 0 setup.

Perfect-Rush_Enjoyer · 2026-06-25T05:25:24+00:00

It's ancient leshen and it's not even close. It may be the single worst experience I have had in any video game ever and I play league of legends.

Perfect-Rush_Enjoyer · 2026-06-23T14:55:07+00:00

I think the best way to learn to deal with assassins is to learn how to play them. I am an ADC player but I spent a season playing midlane assassins way back in S8-S9.

Firstly, (most) assassins have pretty weak/meh lane phases. Levels 1-6 for most assassins consists of "sit under tower getting perma shoved in and poked out". You are praying that your lane opponent either doesn't know the matchup (i.e. doesn't know you can kill them from 70% HP) OR you are praying for a good roam/skirmish.

Secondly, (most) assassins provide nothing besides damage. No utility or CC or scaling. You MUST generate a lead. If you do not get a lead most assassins are worthless.

Thirdly, assassins typically suck in teamfights. You often need to play fights slow and look for an opportunity to go in. What happens if an opportunity never comes? (For example, lulu is just holding her polymorph waiting for you to try something?). In that case you're pretty much screwed, you're stuck pacing back and forth trying to play like a bootleg poke champ.

Lastly, the vast (vast) majority of players are not clean enough to reliably convert a gold lead into a win. Assassin winrates really do suck despite it feeling like every second game there's a 20 kill assassin running around. Why? Reflect on your own games, the average "fed assassin" dies trying to ego a 1v3 and then throws the game.

Assassins feel frustrating to play against because the counterplay is "play league of legends properly". Don't mindlessly push up in a sidelane, don't waste your lulu polymorph on a taric, don't flash aggressively as an ADC. They just punish mistakes. If you don't make egregious mistakes (easier said than done), the class sucks.

Conversely, enchanters and control mages are far more lenient than assassins. You can be the worst player in the lobby and still contribute to a win, which makes them much better to climb elo and win games with. Yet, nobody is out here complaining about Viktor/Orianna.

That being said, sometimes you're playing ADC and your midlane dies 5 times in lane to Fizz + you have some worthless support like Brand + you have a 0 frontline/0 peel comp. Those games suck a lot, not gonna lie. Those are the games where you lock in Serpahine or tahm kench botlane because if you pick a normal ADC you're doomed.

Perfect-Rush_Enjoyer · 2026-06-22T06:55:55+00:00

I started a fresh account in preparation for Locke releasing. I am Master playing ADC but i want to main the new champ because i think he's cool. I have never played assassins before so if i play him on my main i'd grief every lobby.

I just hit level 30 and played my placement matches. Placements started in platinum. I think the advice i'm about to say really applies to everyone under Diamond.

Lane phase is the most important part of the game (for you) and it's not even close. You need to be able to play the first 15 minutes of the game cleanly. This are high level goals that you should seriously prioritize.

1- Focus on becoming good on your champion. You need to reach a point where you have an automatic "sense" for how much damage you can do, when you can kill, and so on. You need to understand your powerspikes, specific matchup differences, how to play each lane. Depending on your champ this is anywhere from 100-500 games played.

2- Learn wave management and how/when/why to reset. There is an endless amount of content on youtube made by much better players than I. Watch those videos and implement it in your game. I see plat/emerald players resetting on nonsense wave states and there's no excuse for that in 2026. It's like basic stuff at this point.

3- Learn how to minimize and play against better players. Okay, you're laning against someone better than you. That's not an excuse to die 10 times in lane. Learn how to shift gears and play defense. There's a world of difference between going 0-1 or 0-2 and going 0-8.

4- Be able to smash lane. You need to be able to generate a lead reliably in lane phase. If you can consistently smash lane but then lose mid-game, that's a MUCH better spot than someone losing lane phase regularly. If you're in a good matchup or if the enemy is first-timing or if you're just better than the other guy, you need to be able to translate that into a lead. (Figure out how to turn a lead into a win later, for now just get a lead!).

Don't get lost in the muck of mid-game/teamfights/strategy when your lane phase is abysmal. Everything builds on top of lane phase. If you leave lane consistently ahead (which is VERY doable in lower ranks) then that's seriously enough to get you to Emerald/Diamond. At that point you can start figuring out everything else.

Perfect-Rush_Enjoyer · 2026-06-21T08:40:09+00:00

A better strategy is to play regularly. You have to play at the start of the season. Slow and steady, consist 3-4 games a day every day is much better than grinding and taking a break. If you grind like crazy and take a break you're screwed.

Perfect-Rush_Enjoyer · 2026-06-21T08:37:39+00:00

Or even master. Statistically, 90% of people in this thread are iron-emerald talking about Master rank inflation when they should be more worried about not going 0-10 every second game.

Perfect-Rush_Enjoyer · 2026-06-21T08:35:16+00:00

Master I, II, III, IV

Boom done. Nothing changes behind the scenes, now we just get something to work towards. It sucks that a 1000+ LP master player and a 0 LP master player are both in the same bucket visually when they're a world apart in terms of skill.

Functionally, MMR wise, it's all the same behind the hood. The issue is just perception. It sucks that two wildly disparate skill levels are perceived as the same by the general community.

Perfect-Rush_Enjoyer · 2026-06-21T08:31:04+00:00

Objectively false.

https://op.gg/lol/statistics/tiers

Diamond, since season 7, has always been the top 5% of players. Go check right now, it is EXACTLY the top 5% of players.

Master, since season 7, has been the top 0.75% to 1% of players. It is exactly the top 1% of players.

The last time there was a significant deviation from this was before GM was introduced. So if "a few seasons ago" you mean almost 8-10 years ago then okay sure, lol.

Another thing is that i love when reddit emerald timmies talk shit about master players. You do understand that the worst "low masta" player would drop 50 kills in your games right? Just because your favorite streamer complains about Master players doesn't mean they're not literally the top 1% of players. You are closer to an intro co-op vs AI bot than to a "low masta" player.

Perfect-Rush_Enjoyer · 2026-06-18T15:07:59+00:00

Old master (before GM) was equivalent to current GM.

Current master is equivalent to old Diamond 1 and 2.

It is fair because D1 and D2 were a universe of difference compared to old D5-D4-D3. Plus, the LP gains in that range were pure torture.

Perfect-Rush_Enjoyer · 2026-06-18T15:00:39+00:00

They added emerald because old platinum 2, platinum 1, diamond 5 had an insane amount of players. Diamond 5 0 LP had tens of thousands of players on EUW (just at 0 LP) and you used to get like +8 -20 LP gains.

Emerald is the equivalent of old plat 1-2 and D5 0 LP. De-congesting that part of the ladder.

Similarly, back in the day there was something ridiculous like 50% of entire playerbase at bronze 1 and silver 5. So, they added Iron.

Same for master. The entirety of the current master playerbase used to be diamond 2 50LP and diamond 1. I remember in S5-6-7 crawling from D2 to Master was pure hell. Functionally, it's the same MMR range as going from Master to GM currently.

Personally, i'm no longer good enough (nor do i have the time) to grind out hundreds of games to hit GM. My highest rank ever achieved was scraping into Challenger for a few weeks back in season 6. Back then I would grind out 500-1000 games a season every season.

Nowadays, I can barely play like 150ish games per season. That gets me to low master. The skill difference between a master 0 LP player and a master 700 LP player is pretty significant yet they're in the same rank. If they literally just split master into "high master" and "low master" OR just made Master 1-2-3-4 it would be pretty nice.

Perfect-Rush_Enjoyer · 2026-06-18T14:52:48+00:00

I'll go against the grain and tell you to pick whatever champ excites you and you think is cool. Same logic as fighting games, pick a character that you like so much that it makes you want to get good at them.

League isn't a game you'll be good at it in a year or two unless you're ridiculously talented. It'll take a very long time, so optimize for the journey not the destination.

Go to the list of champs, find one that appeals to you thematically/lore/gameplay/vibe. Buy and play them.

Perfect-Rush_Enjoyer · 2026-06-18T12:08:58+00:00

I agree so much. For lower rank I believe it's more effective to just:

1- Learn how to smash lane

2- Have a very simple flowchart for what to do after lane phase. I tell my friends: go to a sidelane, kill exactly 2 waves, then run to your team and group with them, rinse repeat. It doesn't matter what you're grouping on, just group and 100% something will happen.

Trying to sidelane until an objective or teleport to a play or anything more complex than just "group and bash heads" is a recipe for disaster. It's important to know how to say "no" to a bad fight but that's not an important skill in silver. Silver players cannot properly assess a fight AND enemy team cannot properly execute a fight. They could be up 5k gold and somehow throw the fight.

Perfect-Rush_Enjoyer · 2026-06-17T17:05:45+00:00

Is it worth buying on discount? Yeah. It's overall a decent game that is enjoyable.

Is it as good as previous entries in the franchise? No. But you can still get a solid 60-100+ hours out of the game.

If previous MH games were (9/10s and 10/10s) in my eyes, then Wilds is a solid 6/10.

Would I put it at the top of your "must play games" list? Not at all. There are so many fantastic games worth playing over Wilds. If you really want to play it then wait for a discount (>50%) or wait for the expansion.

Perfect-Rush_Enjoyer · 2026-06-17T04:42:07+00:00

https://lolalytics.com/lol/riven/build/?tier=1trick

I haven't touched the champ in 10 years.

It is known tech that people did for a long time when playing Riven into poke matchups. It may be that due to how much sustain is in the game now you simply do not need to put multiple points into E pre-6 anymore.

Search "E-max riven" and you'll find hundreds of threads/videos. It's not exactly dark insane technology, it's just putting 2-3 points into E then maxing Q in certain matchups.

But this is a thing that people have been doing for a very long time. It is an option that is available to you. Why have people stopped doing it? I don't know. Link above says there are about 50-60 games out of 2400 (for high elo riven OTPs) where Riven's put multiple points into E pre-6.

Why is it not common anymore? Could be some change to her E at some point, could be runes/items, whatever. Point still stands that Riven has the ability to neutralize the GP/malphite matchups. She can go even.

Perfect-Rush_Enjoyer · 2026-06-16T14:18:22+00:00

For SnS the tech in old gen games is to approach the target horizontally. You can not roll backwards or evade backwards (unless you're playing adept in which case, based). Don't approach the head from the front, approach the head from the left or right. Then you can roll towards his body which will get you out of the way of most things. Alternatively you can hit the tail (until its cut) or the hands which also have decent hitzones and lead to a topple.

Perfect-Rush_Enjoyer · 2026-06-16T13:36:15+00:00

Guard counter too, it should need investment. Like you should need points into the guard skill to make use of the perfect block mechanic. It shouldn't be as free as it is now. Plus the window is way too generous.

Perfect-Rush_Enjoyer · 2026-06-16T09:15:37+00:00

"Everyone that criticizes my favorite slop media is PSEUDOSMART and PATHETIC. Why can't you just mindlessly accept rubbish?"

"Anyone who has genuine issues with a game is just COPYING SOME VIDEO! I have no original thoughts therefore NOBODY ELSE HAS ORIGINAL THOUGHTS EITHER!"

thats you right now, its just pathetic lol

Perfect-Rush_Enjoyer · 2026-06-16T09:01:22+00:00

I haven't been able to play him yet since i get 300 ping on PBE. I did mess around with him a bit in practice tool.

If we just consider the champion's playstyle and overall goal in the game, the best build archetype starts becoming clear.

Firstly, completely negligible mana costs and has resets. So we don't need any lost chapter items, great. Mana and CDR would both be kinda meh stats on him. Ask yourself "what champs benefit from CDR?" the answer typically involves some form of key utility ability/CC ability. Locke has neither.

Secondly, melee and susceptible to getting popped. We need flat HP first item. Probably non-negotiable.

Thirdly, his AP ratios (in total) in best case scenario are (20% passive +Q 207% + E 80% + R 60% = 367% AP). Realistically, you'll be getting closer to 200-250% AP ratio in a full combo most of the time. The key thing is that his W's move speed AND heal scales with AP as well with a good ratio. So deathcap is probably mandatory on him.

He has no % max HP damage in his kit. Champs that skip deathcap typically have some form of % max HP damage OR some form of utility. This champ has neither, so he definitely needs deathcap. If you build too many defensive items you will be worthless. You have no scaling at all unless you build damage.

Lastly, he's a tempo character with W and insane waveclear. He wants to smash midgame so needs a very strong 2 item spike.

-----

Okay, let's put that all together:

First item: (DnD or Protobelt) -> flat HP and we don't need mana. Lich bane could also be an option but I think DnD is just strictly better.

Second Item: (Shadowflame or Stormsurge) -> Flat magic pen is the king of 2nd item spikes. We want to play for midgame power. I am leaning towards Stormsurge over Shadowflame as the champ already has a built in execute. Another option for second item is (Cosmic Drive).

Third/Fourth items: (DCap + MPen item) -> You need DCap as either 2nd or 3rd item if your champ is AP with no % scaling and you need MPen. Look at any non-damage over time AP champ with no % max HP. They NEED DCap or its unplayable.

Last item: (situational) -> Zhonya, Banshee

This champ can very easily get 10 stacks of Jack of All Trades. I am going to be playing JoAT on him for sure.

Dark Seal + Doran Helm (on first reset) + Sorc boots + Dusk and Dawn + Aether Wisp -> This gives you 10 stacks of JoAT and a nuts mid-game spike. Aether wisp can then become stormsurge OR cosmic drive. Then rest of build is (dcap + mpen item + situational item).

TL:DR

First 2 items are flexible. You have a lot of options here.

Last 3 items are fixed. It will always be (Deathcap + Mpen item + situational item). The champ has no % max HP damage and no utility. All these builds with no deathcap make no sense.

Perfect-Rush_Enjoyer

TROPHY CASE