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The Summoner's Guidebook: Time as a resource in Dominion
I feel that time is the least understood concept in all of gaming. People in World of Warcraft or other MMORPGs talk about how they "farmed something for free" all the time. Obviously, this is a fallacy, as a gamer's time is worth something. In League of Legends, time is a very important factor. I'm not talking about the time you have to play the game, although we could talk about it on a macro scale and do time-to-IP graphs for their silliness value. Instead, I'm talking about the actual time in-game that you spend accomplishing goals in a given match. In Summoner's Rift, the goal for the first 10 or 15 minutes is to get as much gold and XP as possible. If you can directly deny the enemy time by harassing him out of lane, you're taking away his time, which effectively takes away his gold and XP. As the game progresses, time is still traded for gold, but it's also traded for the other team's time (via teamfights). If your team manages to win a teamfight, the enemy cannot affect the battlefield and your team is free to take objectives. This week, we're going to talk about time in Dominion. While time is a fairly complicated thing in SR, it is even more complex in Dominion. There are many different things to do with it, and there are no easy decisions about how to spend it. If you're interested in learning more about how to better make those choices, read on!
The Summoner's Guidebook: Dealing with Heimerdinger
When I was a League of Legends nooblet, I latched onto Heimerdinger during a free week and found him really fun. He was my first taste of bottom lane Dominion play, and he contributed a lot to my early wins. I felt pretty invincible as bottom lane Heimerdinger, and while he was highly gankable, I used it as a way to practice flashing to escape. A lot of my mid-levels were gained by playing Heimerdinger. In Dominion, he's a strong bottom pick, though he has a lot of weaknesses that can be exploited. On Summoner's Rift, he's a strange pick that nobody knows where to place. We'll talk about either case this week and some things you can do to handle them.
The Summoner's Guidebook: Improving your game through spectator mode
I love spectator mode. Since the patch introducing it to League of Legends, I've had the opportunity to observe top-level players and even my own friends. If you ever wanted to learn how to play like a pro, you now have your chance. High-level games of Summoner's Rift are just a few mouse clicks away, and if you're a little mentally fatigued from playing the game, you can sit back and enjoy some high-level play. It was one of the best updates thus far for League. Watching high-level streams or spectating high-level games can dramatically improve your game if you know what to look for. This week, we're going to cover some of the ways you can improve your game by stealing strategies and techniques from top players.
The Lawbringer: Blizzard and Valve settle on DOTA
Pop law abounds in The Lawbringer, your weekly dose of WoW, the law, video games and the MMO genre. Mathew McCurley takes you through the world running parallel to the games we love and enjoy, full of rules, regulations, and esoteroic topics that slip through the cracks. One of the highest-profile disputes in the gaming industry has come to a settlement agreement. Blizzard has agreed that it will back off from Valve's use of the DOTA trademark for commercial use, while Blizzard retains noncommercial use of the term for modders, map creators, and the community revolving around the game. In addition to the commercial/non-commercial separation, Blizzard has officially changed the name of its upcoming Blizzard DOTA to Blizzard All-Stars, so expect a new branding push soon. At the end of the day, I am still bewildered as to why we're fighting over DOTA, an acronym and phrase that comes packed with baggage and various connotations. Back in 2010, Rob Pardo told Eurogamer essentially that trademarking DOTA was a slap in the face to the community that created the genre, and for a company that built a great deal of its success on mods, it seemed genuinely out of place for Valve. While everything is always about money, sometimes things are about money just a little less. With its own products announced using the DOTA name and former-DOTA developers having joined S2 Games and Riot Games to create Heroes of Newerth and League of Legends respectively, the MOBA genre is healthy.
The Summoner's Guidebook: Putting together a good team composition
Although it would be nice to win all our games on the merits of skill alone, a lot of matches of League of Legends are won or lost at the character select screen. While individual champion balance is always in flux, the synergies between champions matters far more. This week in the Summoner's Guidebook, I'll give you some advice on picking characters that complement your team's strengths. Remember that a champion is only as good as you can play him or her, and a better champion doesn't ensure victory -- it just makes victory more likely. This is League of Legends, though, and we should take every advantage we can get.
The Summoner's Guidebook: Getting out of Elo hell
"Elo hell" is a term that gets thrown around a lot in League of Legends. If you're actively working to improve your skill at the game, either you've been in Elo hell or you are still there. The term comes from the Elo rating system that League of Legends uses for its matchmaking. Because matchmaking has to deal with three or five players on each side, there's a lot of potential for a bad match. In Elo hell, this is exacerbated by players who have inflated ratings due to wins they probably didn't deserve. At the higher ratings, matches tend to improve in overall quality despite the smaller pool of players. It is virtually impossible to maintain 1600 Elo or above (top 10%) without being somewhat decent at the game. While weaker players can occur in any matchmaking level, they are still two advanced players who know the game. At 1300 Elo (top 50%), there's a very large chance that a matchup inequality is an intermediate player battling an opponent who has no clue what he is doing. Elo hell is extremely frustrating because nothing worse is having your chance at winning taken out of your hands and put in the hands of a terrible player.
League of Legends mastery point exploit fixed, banhammer incoming
We all know that League of Legends breeds a fairly competitive community, but unfortunately there are players out there who don't let little things like rules and common decency get in the way of their desire to win. A number of such players were recently found to be taking advantage of an exploit that allowed them to place more mastery points in a given talent than they would legally be able to, thereby giving them an incredibly unfair advantage. Riot Games' Lead Community Manager, Tamat, stopped by the forums today to let everyone know that "that's bull****" and that it's not going to be tolerated. The post goes on to state that a fix for the exploit has been implemented, and the studio is about to lay the smack down on the guilty parties. Tamat says that the studio has "comprehensive logs and data" that have been used to identify the players who used the exploit. Riot is "going to be taking firm action against their accounts." May all the exploiters meet a swift and terrible demise at the hands of Riot's banhammer. For the full details on the matter, head on over to the official post on the League of Legends forums.
League of Legends runs Make-A-Wish charity campaign
The Make-A-Wish foundation is a charity that helps make seriously ill children's dreams come true. Several months ago, Riot Games worked with the foundation to bring 17-year-old League of Legends fan and cancer sufferer Joe up to the studio where his favourite game is made. Riot was so inspired by Joe's visit that developers decided to give back to the Make-A-Wish in any way they could to make more children's dreams come true. Following on from the success of community donations to the Red Cross during Japan's earthquake and tsunami, this week Riot announced a new donation drive in support of the Make-A-Wish foundation. "From now, May 4, until 10:30 a.m. PT on May 18, 2012, Riot Games will donate 100 percent of the RP sale price for Joe's favorite champion, Jax, and his Jaximus skin to Make-A-Wish. To make it easier to help, we'll also be lowering the price of both the champion and skin by 50% during this period."
The Summoner's Guidebook: Dealing with rage and bad players
Like any competitive multiplayer game, League of Legends induces its fair share of rage. People hate to lose. When your team is only three to five people, each contributor has a distinct identity, making it very easy to single out that feeding Ezreal. Compared to a game like Global Agenda, where teams are very large and individual contribution is harder to measure, League of Legends makes blame very easy to assign. This week in the Summoner's Guidebook, we're going to talk about the effects of nerdrage on your team and how to deal with those violent emotions in a more productive manner.
Red 5 Studios CEO denounces consoles and publishers
"Who needs publishers any more? I certainly don't. I couldn't care less about them at this stage," said Red 5 Studios CEO Mark Kern. In a candid interview with Eurogamer, Kern ripped into both consoles and publisher-led models as relics on their way out the door. Kern said that the pressure that publishers put on studios are death to the industry, resulting in either "an indie game or... a massive AAA, IP-backed sequel with derivative gameplay." He thinks that there's no middle ground, and it disturbs him how many studios fire staff right after a game launches. Instead, the man behind Firefall believes that the free-to-play model puts the power back in the hands of the developers who then can concentrate on making games without having to kowtow to the publishers and distributors. "Look at Riot Games and League of Legends. They have more users than World of Warcraft does. That's crazy. And they don't have a publisher," Kern said. Citing the expense and sluggish reaction of console development, Kern also predicts that mobile and PC gaming are on their way to take over the field. "Something has to change," he concludes. "Consoles, I believe, are dead."
League of Legends' World Championship is worth a cool three million bucks
League of Legends' hold on the e-sports community appears to be going strong, especially if we're judging based on the sheer size of the prize pool up for grabs in this season's World Championships. How much money will players be competing for this time around? Something to the tune of three million bucks. The folks over at PC Gamer got the opportunity to sit down with Riot Games' Vice President of e-sports, Dustin Beck, to have a chat about the upcoming League of Legends World Championships and the competitive gaming scene as a whole. The interview includes some insight into the game's success in the e-sports circuit as well as some discussion on the various teams and strategies we can expect to see on the tournament level at this year's championships. For all of the sweet, juicy information, just head on over and check out the full article.
League of Legends adds spectator mode, tweaks champions
Riot has released a couple of new videos detailing some changes incoming with League of Legends' next patch. First up is a five-minute clip that walks through the thought process behind changes like magic resists per level, adjustments to the Master Yi and Ryze champions, and tweaks to various ability power items. The second video is all about spectator mode. There are a number of ways to spectate on both your friends' matches and those of high-skill featured players. There's also a three-minute delay on the proceedings, so would-be cheaters are out of luck. Jump past the break to see all of spectator mode's features as well as more on the Varus patch changes. [Source: Riot Games press release]
League of Legends announces full release of Spectator Mode
League of Legends players, go make some popcorn and grab a drink because the game's spectator mode is almost ready to go into full release. After the game's next patch, players will be able to spectate League of Legends games in a variety of ways, and they can enhance the experience using a number of nifty features. If you just wanna watch your friend's game and see how he does, no problem. All friends' games will be watchable just by right-clicking their names on your friends list. There's a three-minute delay on the playback, though, so don't try any tricky business. If you're jonesin' for some high-level play, the featured games menu will let you watch the games being played by top-ranked League players around the world. If you wanna analyze their matches, you can rewind, slow down, and fast forward previous footage, allowing you to scrutinize every gank in excruciating detail. Riot Games was nice enough to put together some footage of the new feature in action, as well, so you can check that out right here for the full details. [Source: Riot Games press release]
The Summoner's Guidebook: Improving our skillshot dodging skills
Although the term "skillshot" was a new word for me when I started playing League of Legends, the concept of avoidable attacks is something that is very intuitive for even novice gamers. Skillshot is just a fancy term that roughly means "dodgable attack" in MOBA games. Although the official terminology sometimes differentiates between ground-targeted AoE and true skillshots (which are generally projectiles or groups of projectiles), that distinction is not really necessary for us. If it can be evaded, we'll call it a skillshot. Dodging skillshots is something that is fairly easy to develop skill for. It takes only a little bit of mental effort to dramatically improve your ability to evade them. It's also a skill that can always be improved with practice. We can always react to them faster or predict them more reliably. This makes it a good area to improve on because we can always get better.
The Summoner's Guidebook: Yes, I've seen your bear Tibbers
Annie is a very popular champion in the lower skill ranks of League of Legends. This is especially true of the Classic gametypes, where she is one of the more common choices for the solo mid lane. Additionally, she is a fearsome enemy even when played by the AI. Horror stories of Annie Bot wrecking whole teams have been going on since the dawn of the game. Because Annie is so popular and deadly, she's an ideal character to spotlight on the Guidebook. She's fun, easy to play, and oh-so-very cute. When you go up against her, it's good to know exactly what to expect.
The Summoner's Guidebook: Upping my kill-death ratio
Those of you who have been reading WRUP know that I've been playing a lot of Kassadin lately. He's an assassin with a very high skill cap, and he's ridiculously powerful in Dominion. Kassadin is also kind of hard to play. He has a lot of strange mechanics, and his powerful tricks are somewhat unintuitive. Recently, I had a small epiphany that dramatically improved my skill. This improvement improved more than just my Kassadin game; it boosted my overall skill level with every champion in League of Legends. Before I made this development, I was performing terribly. I ended up playing a lot of bot matches because I felt my execution with Kassadin was really awful, and every time I went back to PvP games, I felt more and more behind. Suddenly, after a string of bad decisions cost me a match, I realized something I was doing wrong and went on to begin dominating. I went from getting focused down early every fight to utterly demolishing teams and causing enemy players to second-guess fighting me 1v1 even with both of us full on life. What's the secret, you ask? I'd like to tell you, so read on!
Buffs coming for League of Legends' Kayle, Teemo and more
It's been a long time coming, but a major buff patch is about to hit League of Legends. The patch that will introduce new champion Hecarim comes with a whole host of balance changes to other champions and gameplay mechanics. Kayle's Divine Blessing is being improved to provide a much bigger heal and haste buff at the cost of more mana, making her more a effective support or carry without imbalancing lane sustainability. Teemo is getting some much-needed buffs along with a major bug fix that should increase his damage output significantly. The bug was responsible for Teemo's damage output's dropping after level 6 or so and not scaling properly with attack speed. After talking to players and running some numbers, Riot Games discovered that offensive rune pages were always inferior to just stacking magic resistance. Flat magic resistance runes are being nerfed, while flat magic penetration and ability power runes are getting buffed. The biggest change coming in the patch is a tweak to the experience given out for killing enemy champions. To prevent games from quickly snowballing out of control, Riot is increasing the experience gained by killing players who out-level you and is decreasing the reward earned by killing lowbies. This should let losing teams get back in the game if they can win several teamfights. Skip past the cut to watch the full Hecarim patch preview video!
League of Legends IPL swings into Sin City
Las Vegas is welcoming League of Legends players with open arms as the best of the best compete in the next step of the Challenger Circuit: IPL 4. With $5 million on the line for the season, you can bet that League of Legends players are doing anything and everything they can to get a piece of that action. IPL 4 is taking place from today through Sunday at the Cosmopolitan Hotel in Sin City. Over the weekend, eight teams will compete for rankings and a $50,000 pot. The challengers are Team Dignitas, EpikGamer, Counter Logic Gaming, Team Solomid, v8 eSports, Against All Authority, Monomatic eSports, and Curse Gaming. Riot Games says there are still IPL 4 tickets available for those who want to attend in person. For those who can't, there's always the official IPL YouTube channel for long-distance spectating.
The Summoner's Guidebook: Practice makes perfect
If you haven't noticed from previous editions of The Summoner's Guidebook, I emphasize practicing new techniques a lot. Practice is the only thing separating novice League of Legends players from experts. Talent can help speed up the process, but the best summoners are those who work hard to improve their skills. No pro player got to where he is today by playing only one or two games a day. However, merely playing a lot of games doesn't make you a good player. In fact, the wrong kind of practice builds bad habits that are hard to break. When I first got into League of Legends, I knew quite a few people who also played the game. Although a few (who are semi-pro players) are still much better than I am, I became vastly better than the rest of my peers in a very short amount of time. Want to know my secrets? Read on!
The Summoner's Guidebook: I hate Jack-in-the-boxes
Out of all of the characters in League of Legends, Shaco is probably the least fun character to fight against. His traps are highly annoying, fearing you and poking you with damage. He is extremely slippery and hard to kill, striking out of nowhere and disappearing just as quickly. Just when you think you have him, it turns out that was actually his clone and it explodes, netting Shaco yet another kill. "Annoying" is the first word I'd use to describe him, and this is what Shaco wants you to think. He doesn't want you to know his weaknesses, so he keeps you on your toes, constantly afraid of jack-in-the-box traps and invisible backstabs. However, he has weaknesses, and this week, we're going to talk about how to put the killer clown back in his toybox.
