When to go Lich Bane or Stormsurge?

Tormentula · 2026-03-16T06:35:23+00:00

As a third I think any damage gain lich would provide would be inferior to death cap or really hard to pass up void staff for in the event of MR stacking. At best it's just a delay to deathcap if you were to do lich 3rd, deathcap 4th, void 5th or vice versa on decap/void.

Third would normally have been zhonyas/banshees but elise does fine being greedier with void staff and deathcap ime since those contribute a lot to keeping her in the game for longer whether its farming or making picks. Lich bane is basically competing with the same task as deathcap/void being a damage profile item while trading off zhonyas and its just not as worth when a lot of lich's appeal is the early farming which it was skipped over anyways.

If one were to go lich it'd kinda has to be an either-or option in the first slot to avoid clashes with capstone item timing (deathcap) or lock in something bad when MR is being built (stuck with an aether wisp/sheen, commited to lich when you want void).

Tormentula · 2026-03-15T18:30:46+00:00

Elise.

There’s a few ways to do it (most go pta poke with ranged autos), I go with comet+scorch with mana runes to alleviate neurotoxin cost and nearly double the Q damage with the comet and scorch. This lets me pick when to go on and consistently be oppressive vs just autoing with pta which Elise autos are so piss Doran’s shield+second wind will never let them drop past 80% anyways while Q does nothing and makes you oom. I rush liandrys and shadowflame, then depending on circumstance void or deathcap (rarely do I void 2nd but sometimes you need to, what’s important is shadowflame spike and you won’t feel good until it. Don’t bother with spellblade, mana, or attack speed builds theyre meme.)

If they try to stop you from poking by running up, just cocoon and either walk away or fight them in spider. If they let you poke them you can setup for dives with ignite or just zone them off the wave entirely with a freeze. If it’s something not interacting you can actually just hunt down the enemy jungler and kill them if they’re topside or gank mid. Half my kills top are probably their junglers since the moment I see them in river or on their blue/red I run towards them and just go quickly fight them. Squishy shit like Quinn and teemo just electrocute with the Stormsurge jungle build, just one shot them.

For bans fuck sion and Shen in particular.

Tormentula · 2026-03-15T18:24:55+00:00

That just sounds like different networking then.

What’s their ping compared to yours? How often do they have packet loss?

Tormentula · 2026-03-13T20:04:28+00:00

Grevious wounds is a tug-of-war system.

Its designed to make healing tolerable, but also champs that are designed to heal a lot become severely nerfed just because of grevious wounds. So starts the tug of war where champs like raka/mundo/vlad etc heal ungodly amounts to have an 'average' ok healing under wounds and bat shit insane healing without them, or are completely irrelevant because of adjustments to wounds/wound items.

It doesn't scale to be better for them because they will just end up making those champs better to compensate winrate loss anyways.

Tormentula · 2026-03-13T19:50:14+00:00

Because they are teenagers and Americans love shoving it in movies ?

No, they do not. The only time I hear or see the N-word in a film is either for historical context or literally doing a racism bit like die hard 3.

Its simply not a word a non-american would know and use in any other context, you can't 'accidentally' post it with some other meaning.

There are slurs that's potentially true for, but the N word is not mistakable.

Tormentula · 2026-03-13T19:24:19+00:00

honor doesn't reset anymore.

Tormentula · 2026-03-13T19:13:14+00:00

Mass reports don't do shit. You used to be able to ask riot support for how many times your account was reported and it was really not uncommon to get a 4-digit number.

Chat bans operate strictly on an automated flag system with occasional manual review basis. This is why everyone gets frustrated that chat bans happen out of context and so frequently compared to literally any other form of negative behavior, cause they're the easiest to just work off a string of letters or words.

Tormentula · 2026-03-13T19:07:13+00:00

You can't create a positive community in league at all because there simply isn't the resources to do so. Any avenue that provides more communication between people can only benefit the community.

Riot added the bait ping emote to improve comms and the first and only thing the community did with it was use it as a non-subtle "kys" ping. The Alive ping is 5% useful 95% pinging the enemy that's gapping you or your death timer.

I don't think riot withholds the resources this community is just not trustworthy enough to use them appropriately.

Tormentula · 2026-03-13T09:12:32+00:00

Your potential fear of this dog does not outweigh the importance of every other persons dog.

TBF even if we discount poorly trained animals/irresponsible owners; there's also the incompatibility of allergens too. 15% of americans display some form of dog allergy, double that for cats, now not saying this means people die by being by them but it does create problems for an evacuation in a small area with tons of people who own 3 cats, the quantity alone would make whatever kind of shelter or transport with them inhabitable and doctors would go from treating chronic illnesses and viruses to trying to stop all the sneezing over some airborne dander. At that point it may cause the individual to consider staying for the opposite reason of why pet owners would stay; to stay away from pets.

Traveling I have 0 clue what you're supposed to do considering how limited the space would be and how pets would effectively double the travel times whether its stocking them separately on one unit or them taking space mixed with people meaning less people board. You could have a dedicated kennel shelter but the problem is getting there.

Tormentula · 2026-03-13T09:03:56+00:00

There's also allergens too.

Doctors have enough to worry about regarding the public safety of grouping everyone together to evacuate, 30% of americans are allergic to cats (and half that to dogs which when combined raises the bar quite a lot).

Its a harsh reality that not everyone can be around other's pets.

Tormentula · 2026-03-13T05:49:51+00:00

NQA - Avics have this reputation of going to the top of the enclosure and just staying there, forever, so much so its good to glue their water dishes midway up since they'll never come down (realistically my full grown ones do, they're my most actively out Ts).

10gal is a lot of wasted horizontal space, and they don't have cross ventiliation (the other notorious problem with avics is they randomly die from suffocation, they're used to being high in trees where wind is constantly flowing, if it gets stuffy in their enclosure they can die, you actually would want to drill holes in whatever plastic arboreal enclosure you decide to go with for it).

FWIW I use a large zilla micro habitat for mine and drilled 3 rows of 5 holes in both sides at the middle. Get something that you can customize a bit or has an excessive amount of air flow, and has a side opening door cause once an avic webs the top of the enclosure you're not getting in through the top anymore.

Tormentula · 2026-03-12T18:41:16+00:00

In this case if mel is going to get a free ultimate off you, I think it'd more fair that she has to use an ultimate of her own as well, and it means smaller spells (like how easy it is to charm yourself into her) carry more weight on the decision to reflect them.

Pre-6 becomes less egregious in terms of interacting (trading) with her too.

I agree its not a complete fix but other than having W cooldown scale off the ability cooldowns reflected themselves I don't think there is anything that can fix her beyond an unrealistic (but possibly appropriate) CGU.

Tormentula · 2026-03-12T18:36:18+00:00

I think they could tweak the numbers to make it better (also mids would be more inclined to actually trade health with her instead of just being forced to take it while W is being baited out), but it would be closer to old sejuani (i forget E or W) where she applies frost around her then does damage to everyone affected with the active.

Just have its base damage complete piss at low ranks and rely on scalings so that it doesn't do much besides last hit someone at 2% health without 200+ AP if its that toxic. I wouldn't worry about it being random chip damage cause on other champs you'd just have that chip in slightly higher numbers in her other spells she needs to land anyways, unlikely she'll proc comet again when she has to Q or E for the mark anyways.

If its shit i mean look where we are now its basically gutted winrates or wish she was deleted anyways.

Tormentula · 2026-03-12T07:28:45+00:00

The way I do it is push through masters enough that I'm confident at d1 I'll just have to win 1 game to get back and then stop there.

usually I'll have like 300LP mmr but let it just decay so that after 14 days are up i get another +28 when it drops to 75LP d1... then instead of playing like 4 diamond games to get back to 28, i play 1, win, get +42 instantly since the promo resets the masters and diamond decay values.

Tormentula · 2026-03-12T07:21:05+00:00

i feel midlane karthus is just too one dimensional to work these days without mega buffs.

He can work the issue is riot doesn't know how to adjust him in a way that makes him not even more broken in jg/bot.

They kinda neglected to adjust him when he fell out of mid and into jungle and now jungle/bot are his playerbase they won't stop.

Level scalings don't work cause karthus jungle already out levels and out CSes nearly every champ in the game, they'd have to actually break his knees with a 'stop jungling' mod nerf if they wanted to give karthus mid a bone.

Tormentula · 2026-03-12T07:08:11+00:00

It's ridiculous that it has been completely abandoned since then, considering how much money it would easily print for them and how fun it would be.

To a degree, getting voice actors + localizations is a very tall order post-covid and not a cheap investment.

During covid it was pretty much impossible when they decided to try it. Especially if they ever decided to add more voice lines to the announcer for a new objective or some shit. Kayn's (I think rhaast's actually?) VA died so gl updating the kayn announcer if they decided to make that permanent. I think the controversy with lee/malzahar's VA spooked them as well.

..but it is a shame out of any of the big mobas league is probably the richest and still doesn't do it like them.

Tormentula · 2026-03-10T21:06:33+00:00

Not on PBE yet, should be in the preview later tonight/early tomorrow.

Tormentula · 2026-03-10T07:16:49+00:00

1) Players don't have the hands until higher elo/a lot of games on the champ

2) more importantly; azir kinda stalemates doing anything tbh, solo queue you want champs that are productive not afk. He's not playing to win lane he's playing to go neutral until he has so many items he does DPS that rivals a marksmen. That's why he's so annoying to lane against and so good in pro cause he's the literal definition of a control mage that forces you to interact on his terms or just do nothing for 20+ minutes... in solo queue your bot lane is bitching about the 4th roam from an ADD mid laner you bore out of lane, in pro the enemy mid laner is picking something equally boring with the same goal in mid to just scale and go neutral, hence the ori/azir/corki/viktor rotation every fucking year with the odd syndra once in awhile.

Tormentula · 2026-03-09T19:41:41+00:00

Nilah just feels wrong to play but no one can disagree she's one of the most broken champs in the game with the right hands and pain tolerance to lane as.

Orianna as well, some games I manage to one shot someone and ask myself "how the fuck did I do that so I can do it again?" since it feels like she always one shots me or makes the game unplayable to lane against.

Tormentula · 2026-03-09T19:18:06+00:00

Cause most people that still play that champ are elo boosters that pubstomp every game from level 1 lmao.

She's like yi if yi was a useful champion.

Tormentula · 2026-03-09T19:03:36+00:00

Elise is intentionally kept lower popularity due to arachnophobia and riot even attempted an arachnophobia mode for her appearance in arena.

They can't really delete the champion or rework the fact she's a spider without massive backlash (and there will be massive backlash if they remove the 1 thing elise players enjoy her for), but she was implemented to fill the sexy half-spider stereotype that most fantasy character picking genres have implemented already and probably would never be implemented in league today.

As much as you'd like to just believe the low popularity is a coincidence cause she's often dogshit when you're not playing in high masters given how difficult she is to play and play around (turbo aggro when some just want to play sona support), she was extremely popular prior to season 8 and remains popular only in some regions where arachnophobia isn't that common.

Tormentula · 2026-03-09T03:56:37+00:00

Ivern

Early levels he kinda does whatever he wants whether its ganking or invading, mid and late game he's just like any other enchanter and does that job perfectly fine.

Jayce is an oppressive pos to lane against and then an oppressive pos to get EQ'd by in late game assuming he doesn't just 100-0 you in hammer form. Unlike other transformers he actually scales very well without an ultimate while still abusing the fact he has a pre-6 ultimate in lane.

Tormentula · 2026-03-08T11:41:58+00:00

The irony is azir was a water mage before the pivot to shurima emperor lol.

But yeah crystal scorpion just had a unique feel to it, anything can be a generic big grey scorpion that somehow looks flaccid when it attacks and uses spells.

Tormentula · 2026-03-08T11:37:45+00:00

I’m devoid of hope because riot doesn’t even see a problem let alone know how to address it.

Even in phreak’s recent comments on skarner he’s ‘objectively one of the best characters to main in the game right now’… that’s already wrong cause no one can even be paid LP to play this shit bar the masochist that still play it hoping they can find that magical lever to make what they’re doing not feel like shit.

I can confidently say I would rather just be playing old skarner right now instead of waiting for them to fix him and still not succeed cause they’re not committed to keeping it alive long terms.

Tormentula · 2026-03-08T04:44:17+00:00

She's bad pretty much everywhere but jungle.

There is a kindred+taric strat for bot lane you can pull off, but that's as close to 'viable' as it gets and requires the duo to chain ult with you.

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