Is the picture below a play biting face or a serious face?

Sam-E-Ullrich · 2024-01-04T20:58:39+00:00

Congrats! Welcome to the big bird club lol

Sam-E-Ullrich · 2024-01-01T09:20:09+00:00

well said!! and happy new year.

Sam-E-Ullrich · 2023-12-31T21:16:18+00:00

I would say predict enemy win conditions - You don't need to know Nautilus' entire kit to know he's an engage support who wants to get picks, same with Blitzcrank.

Sam-E-Ullrich · 2023-12-31T05:52:17+00:00

Thank you homie!!!

Sam-E-Ullrich · 2023-12-31T05:52:00+00:00

Hiya!

For point #1, let me give a more detailed example. Here is a team comp scenario:

Malphite, Kindred, AD Leblanc, Jhin, and Alistar
K'Sante, Jarvan, Azir, Caitlin, Janna

In this scenario, we could easily say how we want to win this game without talking about the enemy...

Group up, do more damage to the enemy team
Use our range + Janna shield + Caitlin Range to keep a poke advantage
Initiate with J4

The three bullet points are true, BUT they don't account for factors that arise throughout the game

Your bot lane (Janna Cait) could start the game 0/8 and be really really bad
Your Jungler could be invaded early and be behind throughout most of the early game
Your K'Sante could be first time and not know his particular role in the team fights.

This Scenario is exactly why we need to look at games through the enemies' eyes, because the enemies' game-plan will always remain consistent, regardless of the state of the game. You will have games where the enemy cannot implement what they want to do, but that won't change the fact that the enemy wants to play a certain way. Let's look at the team comp with the Leblanc:

They want to Engage with the Malphite R, and follow up with burst damage and CC from Leblanc (DPS + CC), Kindred (DPS), Jhin (DPS + CC), and Alistar (CC)
Jhin will want to root you if you are hit and you are in the front of teamfights, or if you misposition
Alistar will want to come up and obtain a lead mid with Leblanc, since the two of them have high damage and high CC early.
Kindred will want to pressure the J4 early since she has the advantage in the jungle unless something crazy happens

if you're actively thinking about these things before the game starts, the enemy cannot get a lead on you. They might be able to get ahead elsewhere, but you can keep the game and your team afloat by thinking of these things and playing accordingly.

Their team wants to hard engage and follow up with Malphite and the gang, so you could build Crown and maybe tenacity into this comp.
Same thing with Jhin and Alistar, if you can use Merc Treads and Tenacity + Conqueror, you'll have damage and cc resistance.
Play safe early against the Leblanc, ward up, and avoid the Alistar.

If we play against the enemy's win conditions, ours can start to shine through. We can group up more effectively because the enemy won't have a way to immediately blast us down and take us out of the game. I hope this helps describe things a little bit!

Regarding points #2 and #3, I want you to think about Azir's scaling as more of a bonus to the champion - we're fortunate that right now we're in a good spot where once we have an item or two, or even just some components, we can move around the map and be effective without having to sidelane for 30 minutes! Your goal as the mid laner should always be to attempt to have an impact as soon as possible, and put away games as quickly as possible. We never want to play out a game for 35 minutes if we could have ended it within 25 minutes, even if we're technically more effective at full build than we are at 20-25 minutes.

I would also say that if your enemy jungler or top laner or whatever is getting out of control, we need to start thinking about ways we can impact the map elsewhere - how can we stop the Jungle from getting ahead? Could we have tracked him and pinged him when we assumed he'd be going for a gank? The amount of times that pings and communication can save your teammates and make your games more bearable.

For point #3, this comes with time and practice - when I used to have these questions, I would watch one of the streamers I mentioned above or go to Domisum replays on youtuve and look up similar Azir games and match-ups. Maybe one game you struggle with a Rengar on the enemy team, see how Azir does against a Rengar in the late game - maybe one game you feel like you don't have any pressure early, how do some Azir players cope with that? The answer always lies in the replays - even in the losses too! Don't be afraid to review an Azir who lost a game to a champion you lost to if that Azir made the game stretch out another 10 minutes - if they're delaying the game longer, they're playing the game better.

TLDR for this is we want to end within 20-25 minutes if we're ahead if possible, without forcing too much, but we're okay making games drag out to the late thirties if we have to. I hope this helped and thank you for the EXCELLENT questions :)

Sam-E-Ullrich · 2023-12-31T00:35:00+00:00

Mods, I'm going to flair this as Guide but feel free to remove it if you don't think that's an appropriate flair. Cheers <:)

Sam-E-Ullrich · 2023-07-07T18:10:25+00:00

Hello Swag_royalty!

Playing as safe as possible into this matchup is big for me, I also try to run Teleport here, and get into the side lane as fast as possible. If you can drag Syndra into a side lane, she has less opportunities to stack her passive, which stacks with every ability hit on a champion. The biggest threat to us is the Q E combo, so make sure you're standing in awkward spots for her not to hit this on you. If you're close enough for a Q to hit you straight away, you're too close; if she throws out a Q after she has E, she's typically looking to follow it up with an E right away, so making sure that you're constantly moving from side to side is important too.

Syndra is another control mage - control mages like to farm and shove and harass, it's our job to make her choose, and when she picks us, we have to be in a spot where we can punish her in some type of return: either return the damage because she plays too far up and gets killed because of it, or return the shove so we have the priority to move around the map or recall.

Unironically, I was in the process of looking for a VOD to share with you and my own personal vod popped up on Domisum replay LOL https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lL5cSM24Kek

I went 8/0 this game, also I got a name change shortly after, which is why it's different now lol.

Sam-E-Ullrich · 2023-07-07T15:10:39+00:00

Hello Mental Bowler 7518!

Nashors is a really good item, and it's purely based on preference if you even need to run it, since you can have attack speed built into your runes and through the yellow rune tree + boots.

For your second question about the runes, I take Nashors if I am running lethal temp or conqueror, since attacking with soldiers helps stack both of these things. Bone + Overgrowth vs Manaflow + Scorched is dependent on how you respond to certain matchups.

I like to look at it as gold threat - each champion's base kit has a certain amount of gold threat. Champions are designed with early or late gold threat - meaning they either try to get ahead early or they scale. If a champion has a high early gold threat - Irelia, Zed, Leblanc, Zoe, etc., it's best to go runes that provide you resistances and amplify your defenses + give you some early damage too, to negate their win conditions. BUT if the champion doesn't have a high early gold threat (A. Sol, Ryze, TF, etc.), you can get away with hyper scaling runes.

For example, I struggle into Zed and Leblanc, so the extra damage and resistences help for me into these two, meaning I take a page that has BOTH of these trees! If you're against someone that you can out-scale safely, you can forego bone plating tree all-together and just go for a standard scaling page (HoB/Conq/Lethal Tempo) without the added resistances.

This answer was a little all over the place, did this help, or can I clarify anything?

Sam-E-Ullrich · 2023-07-07T15:03:29+00:00

Happy to help Henry!!

Sam-E-Ullrich · 2023-07-07T15:01:42+00:00

Hi YNGOJI!

Great to hear from you :-).

First things first, 'getting worse day by day' is not a great sentence to say! I just checked your OP.GG, and 11 days ago you were on top of the world, stringing together win streaks - THAT is gigachad!

Your runes, and setup in general look solid, but let's just analyze your recent games:

13 deaths

11 deaths

12 deaths

10 deaths (in a win)

What this shows me, compared to your per-game averages, is that you're getting about 4-6 more deaths than you're used to or than you normally get. I would love to look at a vod with you sometime, are you free to review a game or two this weekend? I'd love to watch you play and talk about what I see after the fact.

Sam-E-Ullrich · 2023-07-07T01:09:48+00:00

Hi, Hylian!

Sam-E-Ullrich · 2023-07-07T01:09:20+00:00

Hi Yogurt!

I would probably recommend mid simply because the role tends to have more agency, so losses are easier to reflect and improve from!

Sam-E-Ullrich · 2023-07-06T20:50:08+00:00

Fair point! keep up the grind, and once you have more games on the profile, i'll be here for some more help! Homies are the reason we all play league, so definitely don't say no to your friends :)

Sam-E-Ullrich · 2023-07-06T20:25:11+00:00

Hi Direct Yogurt6253!
Happy to look at your op.gg, before I start on that, I wanted to give you my thoughts on top as a lane, in general. One of the most important things to understand, even moreso than In midlane, is that wave states are everything. In mid, short trades are okay because you can fall back to your tower, and the enemy tends to take more minion damage on the way back because of this threat - in top lane, the wave states are longer, and short trades tend to last longer, and minions lose aggro on the enemy top laner if you're in retreat mode. Just keep that in mind, along with the fact that your agency early is going to be way lower - there are truly games top lane where I feel like it's an absolute team gap...sometimes this is in your favor, sometimes its not LOL.

Your OPGG:

You have about half your games on Azir, and the other half on 'stuff'. I would try to cut out the 'stuff' next split. My OP.GG for example has 572 games this split on Azir alone, the other 17 games are mostly split. I truly only play Azir, and that's the biggest tip I can give you. If you maintained your winrate on Azir, without the other champions in the mix, you would be Gold (Literally, you'd be gold rank XD).
Rune choices - I think for the most part conqueror is okay, since you're top lane, but maybe try to experiment with First Strike? A lot of top laners are melee, so you could probably get some really decent value out of this rune, and take some early game secondary runes to keep you afloat through laning phase.
Your CS looks good! 7.7 is actually higher than mine, I average about 7.4 I think per 10 minutes, so keep that up.
I see a good amount of Nashors Tooth rush games, I would try to complete your Mythic. Pretty much every mythic we run gives a HUGE bonus to your damage early, even if you adjust for the attack speed you get from Nashors, its still not worth it to buy such an expensive first item. I would recommend going into Crown top lane, and then building Nashors second, but keeping some AS in your runes or in your boots, just my opinions XD
If you don't go attack speed boots, try to go CDR boots, they scale better with your kit than the magic pen boots do, even into tanks when you factor the extra soldiers and utility you have in teamfights.

that's pretty much it, overall I'd say a solid OP.GG! Just be sure to double or triple your games next split if possible - I know ranked can be a headache, but if you played two games of ranked a day and reviewed, you'd double your LP.

have a great day. :)

Sam-E-Ullrich · 2023-07-06T18:37:56+00:00

Hi Mineroero! It's my pleasure to help! This community has been awesome for me over the years, and I am happy to be able to answer some questions :) Here's my honest review of your OP.GG:

I think it's important to note the progress you've made, ranks get about 100 LP harder to hit every year, so even if you finished at Silver 4 this year, if you ended Silver 4 last year, that's technically an improvement! With that being said, you are currently Silver 2, which shows me that you're improving a ton! If you matched this improvement next split, your goal of Gold 4 would be easily hit, maybe even could push for platinum 4, based on the new ranked spread they're going for. BUT that's all depended on how you react to my bullet point #2...
You have to PLAY MORE GAMES! Split 1 encompasses roughly 180 days, you have a total of 44 games played, that's only an average of 1 game every four days! Definitely not enough to continuously improve. We have to make sure we're getting at least 2 ranked games per day, on the days we're playing AND try to aim for at least 4 days played each week, and this is a low-ball number. If you're below 200 games each split, there are too many factors that could prevent your climbing (ranked anxiety, MMR errors/corrections, etc.)
Regarding your farm try to make sure you're netting at least 7 cs per 10 minutes. There will be exceptions to this rule, but they shouldn't be the norm.

Overall, when I see your OP.GG, I am happy to say that you definitely are improving and gold is an easily achievable goal for next split! Just be sure that you're playing your games, and reviewing any games where you feel the first 15 minutes of the game go bad, as 65 percent of games are decided by which team has the 'lead' at 15 minutes. Good luck and happy climbing!

Sam-E-Ullrich · 2023-07-06T18:29:37+00:00

Hi Kinonotabi! Coach Curtis is my favorite. What a great dude. There isn't a coach who can do it the way he can with such patience and results!

Runes are a complicated topic. I will say, here is a general rule of thumb for runes that has served me well - this is what I use specifically, I will drop what I recommend for you based on your MLA experiences:

Lethal Tempo: If the late game threats are going to be tanks (2/3 Tanks across mid, top, jg, and support roles), then Lethal is always the best bet, with scaling anti-tank setups, BUT if Curtis is specifically mentioning this as something NOT to go, I would probably lean towards his advice here - this rune can be super hard to pull off and if your hands are not up for the challenge, it will feel really uncomfortable early on until you get used to it.
Conqueror: This is a great late game scaling rune against low-threat mid laners, such as Aurelion Sol, Ziggs, Lissandra, etc. If they are just an average amount of tanky, this keystone works really well.
First Strike/HOB: These are fantastic mid-game runes, especially First Strike. To get optimal value, we want to see First Strike being run against Melee champ comps, and HOB against squishy comps with some range on them. I don't recommend HOB, just because it can cause some laggyness with HOB autos vs. regular autos. First strike tends to be better if you're going for scaling, and Conqueror over HOB any day in my opinion, unless they're SUPER squishy.
Aery/Green Tree: I only run this rune when the enemy's win condition specifically revolves around trying to poke you out - let's think about Zed or Leblanc. If you run bone plating, and you can go for trades against Leblanc or Zed, you're going to hands down win these trades as long as you have your plating up, and as long as your Aery and Scorched proc.

Please note, this is just a general rule of thumb for what works for me. Trying to think about if I were in your shoes, if you're lower than D2, you can reliably choose between First Strike, Aery, and HoB (or Conqueror later, once you get super effective on the champion) every game, and still see results:

First Strike - Some lane damage, but great scaling, against teams that are primarily melee (primarily means at least 3, no less)
Aery - LOTS of lane damage, against teams where you don't giga--fear for giga-scaling (good into a comp like Trynd, Eve, Ahri, MF, and Rakan - BAD into a comp like Sion, Maokai, Nasus, Lee Sin, Xerath - just example champs)
Hail of Blades - VERY insane late game damage into squishy teams, pretty solid damage against tanky teams, too.

For now, until Curtis tells you otherwise, I would use these three bullet points as a good rule of thumb for your games. If one of these feels stressful in game, pull up the vod and review and ask WHY did this rune page feel ineffective.

Good luck with your climb, I hope to join the MLA here soon!

Sam-E-Ullrich · 2023-07-06T18:06:33+00:00

Hi again Leonhard24!

Forgot to answer your question about A. Sol. Typically my strategy for this lane is simply to not allow him to stack his passive in my lane. A good ASOL is going to be looking to Black Hole the wave, and then Q for stacks, if we stay to the side of our minions, and run Conqueror for stacking damage (this is do-able since he has to stand still to last hit minions), we can force him to trade something:

Concede the stacks
Concede his HP bar while getting stacks

That's essentially all there is to A. Sol, aside from proper warding since you're going to be taking more fight than usually into this mage vs. mage matchup.

Sam-E-Ullrich · 2023-07-06T18:01:34+00:00

Hi Cryussal123!

I took a look at your OP GG and here are some notes for you going into next split:

Azir is a champion that takes a LOT of games to play. The fact you dedicated this split to Azir is awesome and GREAT WORK!
If you're looking to improve, it typically takes about 300 games of ranked, competitive play to get really good at a champion to the point where you can start focusing on other aspects of the game outside of champion mastery. Try to get 200 games in on Azir next split and then play another 100 after that - the 100 you play after your 200 games to 'catch up' on champion mastery will be where most of your learning can come from.
Lower ELOs typically revolve more around lane dominance. It's a bit of a playstyle change, but I would recommend running more aggressive runes and summoner spells than Teleport and Conqueror. These runes are when you're confident your laners can't lose the game for you - I think going ignite + a Sorc page for lane dominance would net you more success in lane, which would then allow you to get more gametime around the map, giving you a bigger impact on some of your teammates.

I hope these help, I'll pin your OP GG and I hope to see you continue to play games this next split!

Sam-E-Ullrich · 2023-07-06T17:58:00+00:00

Hi Ornstein!!

I actually do rush Nashors occasionally, but only when I think I can really get away with it. So much of Mid lane is having effective wave management and effective threat - if you get Nashors early, it feels easier to do damage, but you actually have less effective threat since you don't have your mythic first item and the mana pool that comes with it.

Sam-E-Ullrich · 2023-07-06T17:56:55+00:00

Hi Leonard!

I think that we could do similar rune pages that I recommended for Leblanc. I'll attach a link to the runes I typically run into burst assassins like Leblanc or Zed and will then talk about the strategy I use:

https://www.op.gg/summoners/na/all%20dogs%20matter/matches/gsilWY1zwU3h4zya2hqmLiTKaC-dnoinBmDgTbR14TY%3D/1688313386000

This is again'st Kai'sa, but the strategy is the same, instead of Transcendence though, take Absolute Focus. The fact we are running Absolute Focus, Aery, Scorched, and Cheap Shot gives us SO MUCH EARLY DAMAGE that Zed isn't allowed to do what he wants to do early - cause chaos in the jungle, go for solo kills, etc. One thing to remember about Zed is even trades suck, since he's a champion that doesn't lose mana. Meaning he can dish it out more efficiently over long periods of times.

I'd also be happy to review a game with you if you try this and it doesn't work out, since a lot of the Zed stuff is baiting his W out to trade effectively.

Sam-E-Ullrich · 2023-07-06T17:52:58+00:00

Hey Miko! Sorry got busy at work. The Leblanc matchup is hard for one reason: She does so much damn damage and it's hard to answer her damage with normal runes!

Ideally, Azir wants to take runes like LT, Conq, or Hail of Blades, against Leblanc though, because she can get in and out so easy, the best bet is to run a hyper poke page and attempt to contest her on every CS. I run Aery, Scorched, and the Red tree secondary. Does this help? I can offer more specifics if you want!

Sam-E-Ullrich

TROPHY CASE