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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: Tiers don't belong in League of Legends
One of the things that really bother me is when players make tier lists of characters in League of Legends. Tier lists are an often subjective measurement of how good a character is when matched up against other characters, and players like to voice their opinions on who is strong and who is weak. Unfortunately, even tier lists that are fairly accurate are fundamentally flawed in any competitive game, and they're especially flawed in League. At their best, tier lists show characters who do well in many situations or who are very difficult to counter. At their worst, tier lists are flawed and show a lack of understanding on the part of the author. This doesn't mean that there aren't strong or weak champions, but a tier list doesn't even tell part of the story. It just gives an arbitrary rating that says very little about a character's true strengths or how to leverage them.
The Summoner's Guidebook: Our favorite League of Legends bottom lane teams
Although building a team composition in League of Legends is all about synergy, the bottom lane in Summoner's Rift is the most critical. In Dominion, players may split up as the needs demand, and the other characters in Summoner's Rift spend around 15 minutes of each game on their own against a lone enemy. The bottom lane has two characters that are essentially joined at the hip for most of the game. While the support will eventually roam free and the carry may engage in some solo pushing or farming, those two characters spend much of the game together. It makes sense then that these two characters should mesh well. Here's a list of my favorite teams. If you're stumped on whom to pick for carry or support, you should try some of these out.
League of Legends reveals Nautilus, announces Sona nerf
Riot Games adds a new champion to League of Legends' growing roster every few weeks to keep the game fresh, and this week Riot revealed the game's next champion Nautilus, the Titan of the Depths. Nautilus is a tank with a unique initiation ability: He throws his massive anchor toward a target, and then drags himself toward the anchor. His abilities encourage spreading damage around during team fights, with his passive adding bonus damage to his first attack against a champion every twelve seconds and immobilising them slightly. A shield ability and area-effect damage spells make Nautilus a dangerous tank to be near during team fights. A number of gameplay and balance changes will be coming in the Nautilus patch. Shen is getting a complete ability set retuning to make him scale better to late game, and let him function better as as tank. It's been a long time coming, but unsurprisingly LoL's dominant support champion Sona is due for a few nerfs in the upcoming patch. The mana regenerated by Soraka's Infuse will be increased but she'll no longer be able to cast it on herself to essentially have limitless mana. Nerfs are also on the way for Vladimir, aimed at decreasing his early game presence without disrupting his fun gameplay. Check out the full patch preview video after the cut for more details.
League of Legends pops the cork for Lunar Revel
Feeling the doldrums of winter settling into your bones? Missing the colorful lights and excessive sugar dosages of last month? The good news is that there's still a great holiday to celebrate this month -- the Chinese New Year -- and League of Legends is totally on board with any excuse to party. Coming to the game is the brand-new Lunar Revel holiday, which is "a time to celebrate the possibilities of the future with the coming of the new moon." Not only will the game be decorated with cheery lanterns, but Riot Games is adding some new goodies to enjoy, including special consumables in the store and unique skins for Talon, Sona, Wukong, and Lee Sin. The devs say that this marks the beginning of many cultural-themed holidays as they go on a "world tour" to highlight the many countries that play League of Legends. You can get an advance sneak peek at the new Lunar Revel costumes in the gallery below. [Source: Riot Games press release] %Gallery-126155%
Brookstone kicks out anti-snoring Sona pillow
While companies have been prying your hard earned dollars away from you for years promising snore-free nights, Brookstone is just now readying its own rendition for spouses on the brink of insanity. The anti-snoring Sona pillow "promotes a comfortable side-sleeping position" based on the belief that "people who sleep on their sides are less likely to snore." Of course, we're in no position to judge the truthfulness of such a claim, but its patented shape has reportedly helped a myriad of users snore less often, inhale more oxygen, and become less loathed by their easily annoyed SOs. Per usual with Brookstone goods, don't expect this miracle device to come cheap, as you'll be forced to pony up $99 for a pillow that only feels comfortable when laying sideways.
Sona's video player for BlackBerry powers "bbTV"
Last time we checked in with SonaMobile, their video player was in beta and it was looking a bit, well, beta-like -- download times were hurting, video quality left a lot to be desired, and content selection was limited at best. Well, times are a-changin', and it looks like these guys are just about ready to flip the switch for Canadian BlackBerry users on Rogers, Bell, and Telus. So what's changed? For starters, Sona's claiming faster download times and reduced storage requirements thanks to an improved compression scheme, though you're still looking at a 3-5 minute download for a 1-2 minute clip. The commercial launch has also been renamed "bbTV," offering news, sports, and financial content from Canada's Global National, and they've added an archive feature for reminiscing about last week's... uh, news, sports, and finances. No word on launch plans outside Canada, though users are claiming it's easy enough to fool Sona's site into letting anyone download the goods; the only question is whether you want to put up with some pretty painful download times to watch exclusively Canadian content.
First look at Sona's BlackBerry Media Player
With every successive iteration, BlackBerrys move closer to the consumer mainstream, but they still lack a handful of features that would be considered common in a consumer-class device. On that ever-shortening list is support for streaming video, and as we told you a couple months back, Sona Mobile is looking to do something about that. Their Media Player appears to presently support the 7130 and 8700 series; it's still in beta form, and this user's first look verifies that, claiming it takes over four minutes to download a 1:30 video, slowing down the device significantly in the process. Reports on picture quality are mixed, but even if the videos crystal clear, download times are going to have to improve for the product to be anything but a novelty.
Sona BlackBerry Media Player will enable streaming video
RIM's effort to position certain BlackBerries as more consumer-oriented products received a big shot in the arm today, as Sona Mobile Holdings -- which may or may not be the same company that's supposedly developing a Star Trek-themed cellphone -- announced the first-ever dedicated multimedia player for the company's "latest generation of devices." Although very little will be known about the software until it's unveiled at the Wireless Enterprise Symposium in Orlando next month, we do know that the so-called Sona BlackBerry Media Player will be able to handle streaming video, and that the first content provider will be CanWest Media Works. CanWest's offering will come in the form of a daily Sona Mobile BerryCast (their term for a wirelessly-updated podcast), which will deliver downloadable news clips to a user's device. Not even a screenshot is available yet to show you, unfortunately, but rest assured that we'll be all over this come May 16th.[Via BBHUB]
