LoL
Latest
The Summoner's Guidebook: Cutting your losses in League of Legends
When a team loses a teamfight in League of Legends, it's fairly common for the losing team to have a chance to back out, frequently with near-empty health bars and several dead teammates. Sometimes a fight can't be won, and it's important to identify when a fight is won or lost as soon as possible and take the appropriate actions to minimize loss or maximize gain. Additionally, it's important to know how to confirm on a play a team member has made. It's easy to see a Lux binding land and want to go all-in. However, sometimes that's not a good play, especially if the enemy has counter-initiation available.
The Summoner's Guidebook: Avoiding LoL's wombo combos
If you've played League of Legends for while, you've probably been on both ends of a wombo combo. This amusing term describes what happens when two characters combine their simultaneous murdering efforts. You know you've hit with a wombo combo if your opponent dies to your combined assault without ever getting a chance to do anything except die. In LoL, wombo combos require quite a bit of setup. All participants need to be within striking distance of the enemy, or one of the attackers needs to pull the victim into his friends. Because of the limitations on positioning, most wombo combos are avoidable.
The Summoner's Guidebook: A beginner's guide to League of Legends' runes
Runes are one of the easiest ways for a beginning player to waste IP in League of Legends. A lot of players spend a lot of IP on wasted runes. The truth is, you can get away with a relatively small number of useful runes and still be effective. We've gone a long, long time in the Summoner's Guidebook without a discussion of runes and rune pages, so we should fix that. A bit of a disclaimer, though: Runes are costly, and you'll have to put several new champions on hold no matter what you do. At level 20, you will want around 5,000 IP for runes, and you'll want another 10,000 or so more over the course of your career. On top of that, there is easily more you can blow on runes if you want some real diversity. I'm not here to explain that, though -- we can leave that one to the pros.
The Summoner's Guidebook: Bringing power from one LoL lane to another
In most of the League of Legends games that I win by a landslide, I win because my mid lane takes an early lead and uses it to help win our other lanes. Lately, my main role in League of Legends has been the jungler, and while it's nice to be fed as a jungler, I often can't win the game for my team even if I'm 6/0. However, my mid lane can simply by making things happen elsewhere. If you're ahead in your lane, you have to make your presence known, and sooner is better than later. It's nice to be 2/0 in mid lane or be up several kills as the support. However, if all you do from there is push the enemy team members to their turret and let them farm safely, you're not doing much to win the game as a whole.
League of Legends' Harrowing adds spooky skins and mystery gifting
Once again it's time for The Harrowing in League of Legends, and this Halloween-themed update contains spooky champion skins, a new mystery gifting system, and exclusive summoner's icons. There are two new champion skins that can be tried out during the event and purchased to keep afterward: a Haunted Zyra and Officer Vi. Riot Games is also bringing back legacy Harrowing skins for a limited time for those who missed them in previous years. Players can choose to spend their RP to send a mystery gift in the form of a random skin to a friend. This mystery gifting will result in a skin that's worth more RP than what it cost to buy, perhaps to encourage friends to gift to each other. The team's also added five summoner's icons that can be earned during the event. The Harrowing will continue through November 12th.
World of Tanks named online game of the year at Golden Joysticks
World of Tanks, the ever-popular tank-based MMO from Wargaming.net, is 2013's online game of the year according to the Golden Joysticks. The title beat out heavy hitters like League of Legends and Dota 2 to take the crown. Here's Al King on the victory: You have to play together as a team. We're rolling out increasingly aggressively across the world -- we have 70 million active users. It's truly democratic, we have a tremendously loyal community. They just did everything we asked of them, they're phenomenal, and we love them. Other big winners? Assassin's Creed: Liberation (best handheld game, The Last of Us (best storytelling), and Grand Theft Auto V (game of the year).
The Summoner's Guidebook: Working with your LoL lane partner
The duo lane is the most strategically interesting lane in League of Legends, but that also makes it complex to play. In a solo lane, you have to think about only your abilities and your opponent's. In a duo lane, the interplay between ADC/marksman and support makes every situation different. I've talked about playing ADC and support already. Both roles are vital, but whether you're the guy with the gun or you're putting the enemy on lockdown, working with your teammate is the most important thing you can do to win the game.
The Summoner's Guidebook: How to get through a LoL teamfight alive
It feels good to be back to writing strategy articles about League of Legends. When I play a lot, I want to punch out words about what I'm thinking about, and while covering a tournament is exciting, I really enjoy teaching fundamentals a lot more. This week we're going to cover teamfighting again. You guys might remember some things about teamfighting from me a while back, including a basic primer and a guide on positioning. I feel that my understanding of teamfighting -- and perhaps more importantly, my ability to communicate it -- has improved a lot since then. Some of that is from watching tournament matches and listening to others talk about teamfighting, but a lot of it is from watching pro streams and hearing what is going on in a top player's head too. This edition of The Summoner's Guidebook is a continuation of both of the previous teamfighting articles, and I suggest reading them too as the information there is still useful. I definitely recommend going back and reading them after you've finished reading this if you haven't already.
League of Legends aims for harmony with new Team Builder feature
MOBA golden child League of Legends has long been renowned for its incredibly hardcore community, which can make matters unpleasant for newer players and for those looking to learn a new character or try a new strategy. The folks at Riot Games are aware of this and are looking to do something about it. That "something" just happens to be making its way to LoL's PBE (Public Beta Environment) in the near future, and it's called the Team Builder. Riot's Lead Social Systems Designer, Jeffrey "Riot Lyte" Lin, stopped by the forums today to drop some knowledge on this upcoming feature. Essentially, the Team Builder allows players to designate their preferred playstyle and strategy, and then the system attempts to match up those with similar mindsets. This saves players the trouble of wondering who's going to play which role, who will be in which lane, and what the team's overall strategy will be, hopefully resulting in a much more harmonious gameplay experience. On top of that, the Team Builder will also include a "smarter matchmaking system that can dynamically account for your experience with a given role, position or champion," so players looking to change up their playstyle need not be afraid of invoking the ire of their teammates as they learn. For all the nitty gritty details on the Team Builder, check out the full post over at the League of Legends forums.
Hacker reveals League of Legends collectible card game
Things got a bit weird in the League of Legends community last night when a hacker took over Riot Games president Marc Merrill's Twitter account. The intruder, working under the sinister alias, "Jason," used the opportunity to out League of Legends: Supremacy, a collectible card game built from the League of Legends universe. In a series of tweets from Merrill's account, the hacker posted images and files related to the project including card art and the main sign-in page for the game. According to "Jason," Supremacy was fully completed but never announced or revealed to the League community. Riot did trademark the Supremacy name last year, lending credence to the hacker's claims. Marc Merrill eventually recovered control of his account, noting, "We're always working on a variety of new ideas for League and beyond. Lots of experimentation that may never see the light of day." Make of that what you will. [Thanks to Dengar for the tip]
The Summoner's Guidebook: The real hero of the LoL World Championships
If you watched or heard anything about the League of Legends World Championships, it's almost certain that you heard about Faker. Perhaps the best mid-laner in the world, Faker was the star of the show at the World Championships. With his incredible midgame plays, he distinguished himself as "Faker the playmaker" early in the tournament. But in most of the games where he dominated, Faker didn't do it alone. In fact, a good many of the other world-class mid-laners gave Faker a run for his money. He often did poorly in the laning phase, largely due to counter-picks and targeted bans. But even with the picks and bans against him, SK Telecom T1 had a secret weapon -- their jungler bengi. Before Faker would get the ball rolling, bengi would arrive from the most unexpected locations and often with perfect timing, giving Faker the early game advantage. Throughout the mid and late games, bengi would be everywhere, always at the right moment to win the match for his team. While Faker had an impressive highlight reel, it was really bengi's constant coverage that pushed the team to the top.
On the ground at the League of Legends World Championships
It was about 1 p.m. at the Staples Center on Friday, and there was already a crowd. Five hours later, the mass of people would swell to many times the size, as security officers struggled to cram people into the building. At first glance, one could confuse the fans flooding the street as normal sports fans, but then you notice the cosplayers, the Intel-sponsored jerseys and an enormous Tryndamere statue. The Staples Center was packed to the gills with fans all eager to watch one thing: the final matches to determine who would walk away with the Summoner's Cup and the title of League of Legends World Champions.
The Summoner's Guidebook: Learning how to not lose from the League of Legends pros
The League of Legends World Championship semifinals are over, and unfortunately the two teams I was hoping would advance ended up losing. The matches were good, especially the SKT1 versus NJBS matches. Definitely watch them! However, this week I'm going to get back to basics, and by that I mean guides on improving your game. I've been talking about Worlds for weeks and I'll be at the finals in LA around the time you're reading this, which would make for four weeks of straight coverage about the LoL World Championships. That feels lazy to me. I have been watching a lot of pro matches lately, both the tournament matches and just random streams and casual matches. One thing that came to mind for me was improving our losing games. We all have them, and of all the games that we should improve upon, those are the games that are the most important. Pro players take bad lanes or feeding teammates and make wins instead. How do they do it?
League of Legends' next champion is Jinx, you owe her a soda
Jinx, the Loose Cannon, will be the next addition to the League of Legends roster, developer Riot Games announced on Thursday. The Joker-like criminal loves mayhem, as evidenced by a wanted poster on the League of Legends site which lists some of her crimes: "murder," "making fun of the peace," "murder again" and "forging of official wanted posters." Jinx is a marksman champion, meaning she uses long-range weaponry to deal physical damage to her enemies. Her "Switcheroo!" ability swaps between her two equipable weapons, Fishbones the rocket launcher and Pow-Pow the minigun. Her "Zap!" ability damages and slows the first enemy it hits, and her "Flame Chompers!" ability lays down incendiary grenades which root champions who walk over them to the ground. Jinx's ultimate ability, "Super Mega Death Rocket!," can travel across the map and deals damage to the first champion it hits, as well as all nearby enemies based on a percentage of their missing health. Jinx is currently in beta, with no set date as to when her mischievous hi-jinx will go live.
The Summoner's Guidebook: LoL World Championships finally enter the quarter finals
I will be completely honest. I was really getting sick of the group stage of the League of Legends Season 3 World Championships. It was dragging on for too long, especially when the advancing teams had been virtually locked in well in advance. Only Gambit and Ozone were in a position to actually fight for a top spot. OMG, SKT1 and Fnatic had locked in their spots and we were subjected to matches where pros ran goofy compositions and stopped trying to win. Now we're in the actual tournament portion of the event, and the eight teams in the top spots all really deserved their places. With the exception of one matchup, all of the quarter final matches were extremely close, nail-biting games. It is easier for for me to point out which matches are not worth watching than it is to point out the really incredible matches because the majority of the games were utterly fantastic. I was on the edge of my seat constantly.
Neverwinter's Velasquez on lockboxes, Foundry, and Module 2
Here's an interesting thought we've all had from time to time: What if that stranger you've grouped with is actually a developer in disguise? If you've played Neverwinter, you might have already had this encounter and not even known it. Cryptic Studios Lead Producer Andy Velasquez confessed that he plays his main character -- a Tiefling Devoted Cleric -- on a separate, unknown account so that he can enjoy the game like everyone else. "I'm not special there," he said, "I'm just another player." Now that Neverwinter's had a season to launch, settle down, and add its first major update, we wanted to touch base with Cryptic about the progress of the title. We called Velasquez to chat about the ups and downs of development, the ever-present lockboxes, and a few tantalizing teases regarding Module 2.
The Summoner's Guidebook: LoL Season 3 World Championships' group stage
I am at a bit of a disadvantage here. At the time I'm writing this, the group stage isn't over, but you guys will be watching the last of it around the time you read this. Regardless of the time delay, there have been some great matches at the League of Legends Season 3 World Championships. The matches haven't been the only thing good about the tournament. Riot has added a lot of presentation quality, including pro interviews and an analysis desk. In spite of some minor technical issues, this has been a very solid tournament thus far.
The Summoner's Guidebook: Quick League of Legends advice
I can't play League of Legends right now. In the most dire of circumstances, I had to send my gaming laptop back to the manufacturer to be repaired. While I frustratingly pined over not being able to play, I looked over the shoulder of my roommate while he played. He's usually pretty good; he's a better mid player than I am, and he sometimes makes genius plays. On the other hand, he makes lots of little mistakes and is not very good at certain things. While I sat around backseat driving, I made a lot of little advice points, most of which he just whined about sucking at. He came back to me later claiming he was getting better, and of course, like the wise mentor I am, I told him that he wasn't actually trying to improve at any of the things he was performing poorly at. "You have to make an effort to improve," I said. "You can't just play and get better; you have to focus on getting better."
Raging League of Legends players win 35% fewer matches than average
Riot Games recently pushed live an interesting, stats-driven look at the way players in League of Legends win games, and the conclusion is simple: Teams that work together tend to do better than those that do not. According to the video, "sportsman-like players" win over 1.7 million more games each day than average players. The video also explains that "rage doesn't win games," noting that the win rate for zero-rage teams is 54%, while teams with three keyboard-smashing players sink to 46%. The numbers get worse from there. Players who avoid flaming in chat and instead work to refocus their team see higher win rates overall. Riot also tracked the way individual players rank based on behavior. Players with a positive record of behavior win 10% more games than average players, while players with a history of community reports win 35% fewer. The decline generally starts with one loss, which starts the raging, which in turn causes more losses. Check out the video after the break to see the stats in action.
League of Legends poaches EVE Online lead designer
It's EVE Online's loss and League of Legends' gain as Kristoffer Touborg said that he's moving from CCP to Riot Games. The former EVE Online lead designer announced the news on his Facebook page, praising his former job while anticipating "something new" with League of Legends. "It's been an incredible five years, working for a company I love, on a game I love. Not a lot of people get that opportunity, but I did and I'll always be grateful that CCP let me work at a place where I'd get up every morning and be happy to go to work," Touborg said. "You can't do the same thing forever though and I feel like after more than five years, it's time to try something new." Touborg has nothing but excitement for his new position: "A few years ago, my overwhelming interest was the EVE universe; now it's League of Legends and the competitive scene there. To everyone at CCP, it's been wonderful and I would happily do it all over again. To everyone at Riot, I'll see you soon."
