I have only been playing League and Dota for just over 2 months. I am not very good. This is the story of me trying to get better with the help of two friends. We decided to produce a blog and podcast about that and many other things. Please cringe and applaud at the appropriate times. Be prepared for salt and whining about secret shops and Blitzcrank. Don't take things too seriously and enjoy watching me squirm.
Welcome once again to 32Play - no cabaret this week as Adam had to run off somewhere at a minutes notice, but we'll be back on the podcast tip soon.
Remember to email us at cabcast@mail.com
Learning League
Well..boy, there's been a ton of news this week. Patches dropped, Azir was named (as Chris rightly said 'Stargate called and wants it's helmet back') and previewed as well as Sugar Rush...if you could dodge the DDOS and massive lag. Soraka/Cassie/Viktor reworks are in the pipeline (as well as that ever elusive Sion rework apparently) and new skins..we'll probably deal with those next cabcast.
From my point of view the most interesting thing this week was watching CRS vs CLG on Monday/Tuesday. I've never actually spent the time to watch a 3 match set and it was really interesting. Completely different to soloQ naturally but..interesting nevertheless. The aggressive beginning and the fact that..thank god..EVERYONE warded was the most interesting thing. The power of Syndra in mid (IF you are quick enough to hit your E..thus Chris talks me out of buying her) and Zilean (powpow) cannot be mistaken. I'm sure I probably missed the big plays so if you want to bring stuff up - please do at the bottom.
I picked up Sona in the early week sale and have pretty much just been playing her in Team Builder. My win rate had gone up pretty hard (it was 5/1 at one point..now not so much) since I started with her.
I find that she has so many little tricks be it with her Q aura or W..or geeze even E has saved me more times than I can count.
Flash R is something I would do more often IF I played in a steady group but it's too much 'all eggs in one basket' when there's typical soloq stuff going on.
Speaking of which today I had the great pleasure of laning with a very angry Vayne who blamed me for her suicidal tendencies against a Tristana and Braum...but what can you do eh?
I try to get as many aura based items on her as well as CD boots. Now I know many people swear by mobility boots these days but CD for Sona seems to me a bit more helpful as E can get you away fast enough.
SOOO many non ADCs playing the ADC role this week..I mean..Gnar gtfo.
Best lane I've had is with Sivir..mass murder all over the place.
If I'm having a bad game or two I'll go into a bot match..or what has become known as my 'Therapy session' with beginner bots and play top Evelynn running a dual build of AP and AD. Yeah its just bots but the massacre that follows always makes me feel better...she really needs a better skin, or at least to show less of it..also that dance is yuuuuck.
Chris has been hitting for six in the Summoner School over in reddit land. Apparently his mid Diana snowballed hard and it shouldn't have..or something. I'm sure he will elaborate.
Do you even Dota2?
Nope..this week I don't. Chris however did and had a bit of jolly co-operation with a Russian in a co-op game. I'll let him expand upon that in the comments if he wishes. Techies is coming out soon?? I guess...
Path of the Tenno
Again a ton of stuff happened in Warframe land..most of which I ignored because there's only so much time I have in my life for gaming at the moment. Update 14.5.1 dropped a revamp of the mod system (confusing) some new loot (eh) and a new tileset and mission to go with it.
Chris and I boldly venture forth into the snow with more Russians, this time wearing gold codpieces..t'was the season of their discontent. I won't say this took a ridiculously long time to upload but..thanks Chris for sticking it out. We also only made one video..honest.
Extra credit
All 3 of us, with only Chris and I remaining, took a good long look at the FTP MMO Neverwinter on Steam. Here I look at the first 45 mins or so in the life of a rogue halfling in Neverwinter.
For some reason obs decided to only film the middle of the screen, so apologies for that. Following this recording my account disappeared into the ether so I had to restart. It may not sound like it during the video but I actually enjoyed playing as a rogue and restarted..Chris and I are currently around level 17 and we may do a video looking at the user generated content, the major draw of the game. Also turns out that my new Drow rogue is kinda OP....
In other news I've been playing Of Orcs and Men and rather like it. I had an interview on Tuesday for some work..so fingers crossed.
Adam has gone down the Diablo 3 rabbit hole again and we should probably send out a search party.
Chris has been....working?
Etc
Steam ID is Jazz and my LoL ID is JazzGB or Ahriman Efreet
I have only been playing League and Dota for just over a month. I am not very good. This is the story of me trying to get better with the help of two friends. We decided to produce a blog and podcast about that and many other things. Please cringe and applaud at the appropriate times. Be prepared for salt and whining about secret shops and Blitzcrank. Don't take things too seriously and enjoy watching me squirm.
Following on from my previous blog series 'Learning by Comparison' this series will be about free to play games - League, Dota2 and Warframe in particular. We will discuss other games..probably..but those will be our focus. At the moment there is a heavy focus on League mostly because of patch/new champion and we all play it but I'm hoping to slowly introduce more Dota, eventually.
Cabcast 3 - A Tangential Salt Mountain..and fries.
You can download the MP3 here (with added Trombe!). If you want to send us an email drop us a line at cabcast@mail.com
In this week's episode:
Adam, Chris and I rattle through some of the games we've been playing this past week including Amazing World, Endless Space, Pillars of Eternity and Sword Art Online...oh and P.T.
We then move on to League, discussing the Gnar changes coming up and throwing the spotlight on Chris' choice of Diana and Ryze..with some Karma love thrown in for good measure.
Dota is Dazzle all the time, with some talk of our favourite champions.
Warframe is discussion of the Gamescom announcements and possible burnout.
We end with a conversation that goes everywhere and in the end says nothing..especially about FFXIII.
32Play Video section...porn's in the back.
Our weekly dose of videos that tie into the above podcast..follow our journey into the heart of darkness each week.
Learning League:
My first Karma game didn't go to plan..at all. There was a lot of argument before the game started about positions and..well it speaks for itself. I should probably apologise to Olaf as he was right about the fact that nobody was bottom lane so obviously they would come mid but...some wards would have been nice. Never mind eh?
Do you even Dota..2?
vs
These two videos probably say EVERYTHING you need to know about low level Dota play. I don't claim to be any good at anything but..damn son. Also weird thing that while I was playing the first game I didn't see Gyro AA ever..it just didn't register on my screen which is why I was so baffled. Video recorded it but I never saw it.
Path of the Tenno
Adam continues his journey into the land of the Space Ninja Simulator. This time he looks at his choice of Warframe and load out.
Extra Vidisoity
Once again Adam goes where no one else would to take a look at Amazing World on Steam..an FTP MMO where you...walk into things and they go 'Poof'?
Adam takes a look at Secret Ponchos and finds much to like.
After playing PT I got that itch to go back and play what many consider to be the best Silent Hill game.
and finally what happens when Revengeance and Dark Souls get together have some tequilas and take the piss out of Resident Evil? Ninja Blade...that's what.
Etc
Steam ID is Jazz and my LoL ID is JazzGB or Ahriman Efreet
I have only been playing League and Dota for just over a month. I am not very good. This is the story of me trying to get better with the help of two friends. Please cringe and applaud at the appropriate times. Be prepared for salt and whining about secret shops and Blitzcrank. Don't take things too seriously and enjoy watching me squirm.
Steam ID is Jazz and my LoL ID is JazzGB or Ahriman Efreet
Following on from my previous blog series 'Learning by Comparison' this series will be about free to play games - League, Dota2 and Warframe in particular. We will discuss other games..probably..but those will be our focus. At the moment there is a heavy focus on League mostly because of patch/new champion and we all play it but I'm hoping to slowly introduce more Dota, eventually.
So what's the set up this time? Well every week or so we will be recording a podcast followed by a couple of group videos. It takes me a while to upload given my 150kbs up speed and the videos are roughly 4 gigs each after encoding them. So I'll try my best but we may lose a couple here and there.
Cabcast Episode 2: Salt, Salt everywhere
Cabcast is filmed in front of a live studio audience...of cats...and dogs.
You can download the mp3 version here (with added theme!!!). I've ordered a new mic (as the last new mic didn't help) so hopefully that will be a massive improvement next time, sorry about that. Again, first world problems.
If you want to send us emails the address is cabcast@mail.com and we'll try and answer your questions in the next podcast.
In this episode:
Chris breaks down the new League 4.14 patch and Gnar discussion (with cats)
Chris goes through my Lissandra game on the stream and points out where I went wrong..I probably get a bit salty.
Dota talk is limited. I talk about Crystal Maiden and my first Dota game for a while.
Warframe patch and NEW USER EXPERIENCE talk..what is Warframe anyway?
Somehow wrestling slips its way in to the conversation as well as some vita discussion.
32Play Videos
Following on from our podcast we jumped online and recorded some games...fair warning I'm not a good player and I will make tons of mistakes but I try to learn from them.
Do you even Dota..2?
That was hardly our defining moment. None of us really play Dota a lot and it shows..but you asked for Dota so we tried..for you. Viper didn't appreciate that though...and Wraith King has the misfortune of being caught in the middle.
Learning League
After my love of Lissandra and Morgana, I'm rather fond of ol' Fishyface Nami. I think this was the 5th time I've played her and as such I still have a LOT to learn. Muscle memory on her E before bubbling so I could actually hit the damn thing would be good..but you live (or die) and you learn. Also Nunu does not like Gnar. Must be jealous of his boomerang.
Path of the Tenno
Adam kindly agreed to cover the Warframe part of this blog. I do have a group video but it doesn't seem to want to upload at the moment. Here Adam goes over his first week (and a bit) of Warframe and gives an overview of what Warframe is all about.
So..here we are. The end of a month (ish) of me trying to learn what the hell I'm doing in both Dota and League. I'm going to use this final blog, in the current series, as a retrospective. So let's get started:
Starting either of these games without any background was probably not the best idea. It's probably unsurprising that League became my defacto game due to it's relative simplicity. I emphasise 'relative' as it's still kicking my arse just trying to learn the little quirks it has.
Thinking back on it now I reckon it was probably a bad idea to call this blog League vs Dota as it's kind of a false equivalence and ever so mildly clickbaity...which was not really my intention. This blog has always been about trying to learn these games with the help of the local GB community while also laughing at my inability to click properly.
I cannot thank you guys enough for making it such a joy to write these blogs and generally messing around on League or Dota with a couple of you. Audience participation, as it were, makes or breaks these kinds of things..so, cheers.
So here's probably the first Podcast of the tentatively titled series 'Learning League': Episode 1 - League of Space Puppies.
Joining me are Adam (Gunslingerpanda) and Chris (TBK) for a rather all over the place discussion of League, Dota, Warframe? and how much my animals hate me. I apologise for the audio - hopefully it will be fixed soon. edit: Embed fail.
You can download the mp3 here if you would wish. Any criticism must start with 'It doesn't sound like Feline Coitus but....' I'll also look into setting up an account for emails.
On to my very general thoughts about both games so far:
Starting with Dota2 - damn this is an intimidating game. I've been vocal about the fact that I'm not a fan of the hero design in the game and that hasn't changed.
I also really don't like multiple shops and the fact you have to buy teleport scrolls. I guess B has spoiled me.
However I do like that due to it's rts roots Dota has a lot more in the way of lane mechanics than League. Denying via direct attacks on your own minions/towers is a far more interesting than just zoning the other team.
I'm currently ambivalent about the items in Dota. Adam (Panda) made a very valid point in the podcast about items in Dota taking on the properties of runes and summoner spells in League. He may very well be right about how this gives a greater amount of customisation in Dota rather than being locked in once you start a game in League. I don't think I've played enough games in either to make my own mind up about that.
Minor things but I really dislike the range of the towers and the fact you can miss attacks on an incline against a stationary object. Minor things but annoying to me.
As far as playing heroes goes - in Dota I'm fond of Huskar, Crystal Maiden and Windrunner..and that's about it. In time I'll probably find more but as I've said they generally just don't appeal to me.
Speaking of which Luna and Bane..especially Bane..are on the troll list. There was a point where I thought a valve employee had taken control of the Bane bot just to troll Panda. It was uncanny.
I really like the UI design and the general 'Valve Polish' of Dota compared to League..but then again I think even Riot prefer it as well. Also replays.
The fact that Steam absolutely refused to work for two weeks on my laptop did rather put a massive bullet in the head of me trying to play Dota for these blogs, but I think it probably worked out well in the end and to be honest there's more than enough Dota love on this website as it is..Don't get me wrong, I like Dota quite a bit..just not as much as I like League.
Let's start with what I don't like about League. Ignoring the general public that play the game..I really don't like how the meta works. What I mean by that is due to the way the game has been tweaked I HAVE to take Flash apparently. Yes, I know..this is me beating a dead horse..but it's a symptom of a wider problem which has only really just become apparent to me (I'm slow like that). I don't like having the choice taken away from me - especially when I'm given a choice of spells that look like they'd actually have more utility than just escape or initiation. I don't mind being taught how to play a game but I don't like being told I HAVE to do something just because everyone else does. Childish..probably. This is where Dota's itemisation seems to give more choice and thus more options to play where you want and how you want. Eh, I probably didn't explain that very well but I hope you get the drift.
MID TOP MID I'M FIRST - seriously EUW? Sort that shit out please.
I've mentioned that I prefer denying to zoning, but I'm relatively happy with the lane phase (laning? Laneing? I dunno) in League.
I suppose the rest of my issues stem from the people who play League rather than the game itself. People barely ever ping (ss without saying which lane as well) and nearly nobody wards..ever. Playing support I do my best to try both but the frustration levels..ergh. It's worse of course when I'm not support - then there's nobody to do it.
Blaming other people for being shit and then wanting to surrender while everyone is in the middle of a team fight, so that bloody popup obscures what's going on and you die...happens all the time.
Surrendering is another thing I'm rather dubious of..learning to lose properly is generally as important as learning to win. Sure it saves time but..stop being a pussy and learn to lose.
I think my hatred for Blitzcrank..especially when he's on my team..is legendary by now. Yi is pretty close up there but I swear to god, if you play Blitzu on the team I'm on I will mute you and actively let you die because 9/10 you will be the one fucking us over. I apologise greatly to 1/10 who can actually play him.
Again it's widely recorded that I adore Lissandra, Lux, Morgana and I'm fond of Fiddlesticks. I'm not sure if it's the skillshots of these characters..it's certainly not the dumbass designs of the women..that leads me to enjoy playing them as much as I do. I think they all have decent CC abilities and when item'd up they can wreck all sorts of hell on the other team..Liss, especially, because generally people have no idea how to handle her at my level. I've never seen anyone play her apart from me.
I'm actually a big fan of the drip feed of Champions and the rotation aspect. I feel more attached to the champions I have purely because I earned them..sure I bought one and grind..grounded? the rest but it's given me the opportunity to become more familiar with my small circle available to me. Sometimes, at least in my opinion, too much choice can be a bad thing. Rengar should come up on sale tomorrow...hype.
Though I probably should have mentioned this earlier..having a new computer (thus not running at 29fps all the time) was made possible by my desire to play League (and Dragon Age 3) and to get better at it. It's lead me to actually become part of the 'PC Master Race' that Kieron Gillen kept waffling on about.
There's probably more I could say - but I think we cover quite a bit in that podcast.
Finally Adam and I had an..interesting game of League after we finished the podcast. Unfortunately (for us) Chris had to dash so Adam and I braved the world of unranked blind pick with Liss top and Zac jungling..things didn't go to plan. It's currently being uploaded so hopefully by the time you get here it should be up.
So all that's left now is to say thanks to all of you that have stuck with me through this madness. As I've said we'll be trying something new in the coming week so please take a look once that's up.
Welcome back to another week of profanity laced laning nonsense. I have my podcast host voice on and I don't know why.
aka - 'So if I push R everyone dies right?' me.
Quick notes:
There be great peril...my computer may have been delayed by the lack of parts. I swapped out the optical drive for an ssd so I can theoretically record stuff. This may have been foolish on my behalf but I wasn't really willing to wait extra time for them to get a cd drive in when I have a couple of external ones hanging around anyway.
There be great torment...I have an interview coming up in, sigh, 20 days or so for the possibility of finding a job. An interview for an interview...
Phantasy Star 4 needs an overworld map..in fact it may have one I just don't know how to find it.
Humble Bundle book thingy is Transformers. The recent More than Meets the Eye series is some of the best comic book writing around...it's hilarious. I know people will roll their eyes but it's far better than anything the big two are putting out. Also this:
And you thought Thor being a woman was a big thing...
First up I totally caved in to my own personal lack of monetary accumen and bought the ghost bride skin for Morgana. As I've mentioned I probably main Morgie most of the time due to not playing team builder..and even when I do I tend to play support because it gets you in game quicker.
The only thing I don't like about the skin is the teleport..she flies up and starts screaming in pain..it's fucking freaky..the new spell effects are cool though.
To commemorate my impulse buying skills I played a Team Builder match with an Ezreal in bot. I..'accidentally' KS'd him twice due to him having very poor damage output while I was totally a support build. He then went on to KS everyone else and..seriously..essentially got called out to have a one vs one against mid kassadin afterwards 'Do you think you're better than me, eh Ezreal?'..very Russian. Much Hilarity.
Second game that day was with a Jinx who liked to dive..dive and die..dive..hmm there's a connection there. As always it was me trying to save her but we had Darius and I think Malphite in bot so my shield did little to help the AD.
I, then, with some creative trading/refunding, picked up Nidalee. If the spear hits, you are a goddess of whirling destruction, if it misses..you run away and try again. I really like Nidalee and I think Rengar (I never get his name right) is on my list to pick up after Fizz and Lucian.
For those interested my list currently is - Fizz, Lucian, Rengar, Leblanc, Katarina, Yasuo and Jayce..probably a Fiddle in there as well for the Lols.
Which leads me to today. I played some Janna after seeing how fun that whirlwind thing was. Playing a bot game they just kept on walking right into it. She doesn't scale well especially when the Yi bot was..just unbelievably bad. Worse than actual Yi players..who knew?
And then I played Katarina. I think she was one of the first champions I played when I knew only a little less than I do now. I was against Darius in mid and after looking at her tooltips I went AP.
Nothing survived. Not even the trees.
At one point I had 789 ap...I think I heard the bots screaming at one point but I couldn't be sure. Again it was a bot game but 37/5/9 is just silly.
Do not under any circumstances feed Katarina after midnight or pour water on her. Ludicrous gibs.
It was a long weekend of family stuff so I didn't really manage to play much.
Who knows when my new computer will arrive now..hopefully it will arrive. gulp.
tbc.
aka - 'It was a shac attack' - or 'Report Karthus bot for feeding in top lane'
Salutations all...
Another complication in the building of this bloody computer has arrived. Apparently they couldn't fit the new hd in so I'm having to go for a smaller 2.5 hd. If they had bothered to look into it last week instead of leaving it 7 days we might not have had to do this all at the last minute but..whatever.
It's a new week so it's a new rotation in League:
I picked up Nami in the sale. Still waiting for Fizz..
I've been trying to get into team builder games but we just generally sit there for extended periods of time until we get a top lane Yi support...and then everyone leaves.
I got one game as supp Morgana again but was saddled with a super whiney Riven and a Shaco wandering around. Being ganked by a clown is a horrible feeling. Riven decided that he was dying because we were all feeding..even though he was at the same k/d ratio as me..the support.
Next came a Morgana supp with Yi in bottom lane...who died..constantly..despite my best attempts. I may be wrong here but ADCs are generally ranged weapon specialist with burst and some form of minor cc..ie Ashe or Cait? Not Yi of the pubhole.
Today began with a Nami bot game just to test her out in top. She's a tough cookie. Her W and E make early game pretty interesting. I assume an AP build is the thing to do with emphasis on armour. Karthus bot super fed in top lane with me..he just kept diving and dying as well..it was hilarious. One thing I do miss, and this might be my mistaken remembering, was that dota allowed double taps to self cast rather than holding Alt. Should note that even after 60 hours I'm still learning the keybindings. Upgrading without the mouse is next..uhmhhm.
Zed was dead baby. I didn't like playing as him. I just let mid Soraka kill me...hipster Zed should be a thing.
Shyvana - her debuff is interesting with the E. Very easy to push with her but not a fan of close range champions..as you probably know.
I spent this afternoon playing Supp Nami in two games. One began with 'name, rank, serial number...yay we're all smurfs' which made me what to throw up. 0/7/24 in that match. Got ganked a couple of times and lagged at the end but dat R is pretty good at catching people.
Last game went 2/10/21 and we lost due to complete stupidity by everyone, especially us on bot lane, in our team. Had an Ashe who just loved to fire her R off randomly as if she was Lezreial...and then it descended into the usual 'i blame you for not doing as I told you' crap. Happy times.
Short one today. Not much going on just messing around with new rotation champions and nami..forever hoping to play Liss mid or Nid top but not getting a chance due to the constant instacalling of top and mid and team builder just being...bleh. Probably jus the time of day that I use it. Nobody would play Jungle..and hopefully I'll be picking up Fiddle-me-sticks later on today for just that purpose.
Thanks for reading
tbc.
aka - 'Caw Caw mothertrucker' or simply 'I suck so bad' - me.
Yup..that looks about right.
So..news..
It's..happening. Email was received and was literally just shipped for arrival tomorrow.
"ForceBox Gamer" Intel Core i3 i5 i7 Nvidia GTX LAN Gaming PC 1
FG-028-BX BitFenix Spectre PRO 120mm Fan Green LED - Black
CB-069-AK Akasa Slimline Optical SATA Cable, 40cm (AK-CB050-40)
HD-351-WD Western Digital Scorpio Blue 2.5" 750GB 5400RPM SATA 6Gbs
8MB Cache - OEM (WD7500BPVX) HDD
If you actually wanted the information...
I attempted to copy my audio files onto a shitty WD hard drive I have so I can transfer them over. Turns out I have 80gbs of Audiobooks (bad eyes) and that was going to take roughly 9 hours to transfer.
I did however manage to transfer my steam and rito folders. I have no intention of redoing my VTM and Sith Lords patching again. Urgh. Copy and paste hopefully will be enough. If not well...blergh.
Might even be able to play..gasp..Dota2 tomorrow.
I also redid my desk and room to move my tv down (to be my screen) and reorganise my gaming library. I have about 100 orginal xbox games..whew. They take up a lot of room. If only I didn't have a ridiculous amount of books in my bookshelves huh?
Today (6th) marks exactly a month since I started playing League. I haven't played every day of that month so I'll wait till 30 days to actually do anything about that but..whew. Long way huh?
To mark that anniversary I had the worst 3 games of League I have ever personally played. Now this was all me. My fault. Me being crap. Not my team's fault..though ADC Yi makes my eyes twitch. Both involved playing as Supp Nami - I even had to displace a supp Lux (which made me really twitch my eyes) to be shitty as NO ONE wants to play a Jungler. Joungler? Wheel of Time..I don't know.
So yeah, just 3 games of me sucking. Actually one of them consisted of 20 mins of being stuck in lagsville, nowhere. I ended up exiting only to be warned that I could be temp banned for waiting around for 15 mins. They do that in bot games too. Dumb.
I eventually had made enough money to pick up..dun dun durrr
oooh boy. This guy was well named.
I'm guessing his combo is mostly Q to make them run followed by W..E and then kill them all outta nowhere with R. AP seems to be his thing. Notice..still ranged. Fizz is Melee I think..better get used to the idea.
Jungling is probably easier with him due to W and smite.
Have I mentioned that along with my love of Ice I love birds? Ravens and crows especially. I look at Swain and think..there's a guy I can support if he ran for Parliment.
Oddly enough Avi..that Ice bird does nothing for me..trying too hard Rito.
So tell me about Fiddlesticks. Who, what, why and mostly..how?
Another thing..maximising my levelling build. I tend to play supp so first I go spell dagger and ward, then sightstone before going AP. Is there a better way to do it? Generally if I'm up against a heavy spell user I may pick up some resist and boots along the way.
So..levels of hype increasing. I haven't had much time today to do anything but rejigger my room and clean the COPIOUS amounts of dust off stuff. Oh and here's a picture of my floor..enjoy:
tbc in the possible 30+ fps future.
aka: 'I see..so there's an hdmi output on the graphics card as well? No wonder I'm getting no video' - me
hmm..In the future English grammar is dying.
Salutations all and welcome to a brand new computer day...that's right, Mephistopheles sent me this new PC after I promised I would forget my marriage to Mary Jane. I think I came out on top of that deal...<-< >->
Full warning..I'm not a computer person. I do my best but IT is my brother's speciality and I tend to just leave him to it. I'm better with non-silicone objects. *Groucho Marx Eyebrows Lift*
It took me forever to find the lead, but they'd put it in the motherboard box for some reason. Why would I look there for it and the Windoze dvd (remember I have no dvd drive)
I plugged the hdmi into the motherboard as the socket on the graphics card was hidden under a lip of metal..luckily support did actually know what they were doing...and HDMI was quickly moved. Should I be using DVI instead? No speakers at the moment but..well, we'll get to that.
That's not withstanding all the nonsense of getting used to a new keyboard (with a tiny delete key..keep hitting the hash button..tres annoying) and setting the thing up but it's done.
The audio in jacks are fucking terrible. They're..ergh. My mic sounds awful.
I'm having to use my tv with the hdmi and it looks ghastly. At 1080p everything is blurry and gives me a headache so I've knocked it down to 720p and it's okayish. Ps4 and ps3 look fine on the tv but the audio has always been piss poor.
Tried out some recording using Shadowplay. My mic sounds like it's underwater so I may just put some clean recordings up at some point. Shadowplay works really well.
I didn't manage to transfer a lot of my stuff over due to issues with my usb so new pictures and stuff for some things.
I managed a couple of games last night. I had a great supp Morgana game with some crazy 7/4/22 or something ratio followed by a 0/7/5 ratio. You win some and you lose some.
Pessh kindly invited me into a draft game. First one I'd seen. Banning of Blitzcrank did not happen but surprisingly someone else wanted to play support...and was terrible at it...while playing Morgana..no, I'm not bitter.
Quick note - I ended up dying as the ADC (as noted in comments we got out played by a large margin) Tristana - but I was asked why I didn't originally take Flash. I did eventually take it but here's my reasons for why I generally never take flash:
Keep in mind this is my own take on it - just because everyone else does something doesn't mean I have to but it also means that you can do whatever you feel like.
I don't like it and I don't trust myself enough not to waste it. Obvious first answer.
Mostly I play support - If you aren't taking heal and teleport/drain? I would argue in my opinion you're aren't doing it right. The Morgana supp I played with took drain and flash...great help that was. You gonna flash into that ice arrow to save me? didn't think so.
Morgana has a root and a slow, Liss has a root, slow and a teleport, Nami has a speed buff, stun and heal. Fiddle can generally heal his way through, drop a fear and he also has a flash with his ult anyway. In these cases I'd always take teleport because it allows you to jump around the map faster..get to lanes when needed and appear behind everyone in a push situation.
Everyone expects you to Flash, thus they drop an ignite on you anyway.
In the case of ADCs, like Tristana I can see why it's important - to get out of trouble or get into trouble..but that's not how I play. I'm not an ADC...unless Liss counts but she has a flash move anyway.
Flash, Ult, Zonya Morgana is just too many moving parts imo to get right at my level, also a waste of 3 things if it goes wrong. I'd argue getting back into lane to provide supp is far more important..especially in the early game.
As I said, totally my opinion on this and I'm probably wrong - but those are my reasons for not choosing flash instantly and always. I usually go teleport/heal, Smite/Ignite or Teleport/Ignite.
On another note I have zero runes..bar 3 low level things. I was advised to wait until level 30 to get any runes..does this still hold? Pessh's lack of champions mirrors my lack of runes. I probably have too many champions now...but...Fizz has a shark! A SHARK!
STEAM WORKS..again. I played a bot match with my favourite flaming troll. Wasn't paying much attention and we stomped the bots in 14 mins. Absolutely nothing to do with me as I had a tiny kill ratio..so what happened there huh?
Yeah, so..sorry..not much to report as setting up my PC took most of the day. Recording works really well...though it will probably take a night to upload these 10 gig files on my bandwidth. Tempted to see if Twitch to youtube would work ok.
Oh and in case you were wondering. On max graphics levels I'm averaging about 170fps in League. So...no more excuses, ne?
We're coming up on the end of the first month of this madness..and beyond all reason I'm still doing this. I should see a therapist.
Quick Notes:
I've made some back room deals and talked to odd little people with lots of rolexs in their coats and I might..just might..be getting a new PC in the very near future - my plan is to be able to run things above 20fps and actually be able to stream once in a while. Fingers crossed.
It's not until I'd played a bit of these games that I realised, but the size of my screen also causes issues - it's 15" I think and having to scroll with the mouse has lead to my death a couple of times..not as much as me being an idiot though.
I said I'd make a decision as to which game to concentrate on (I'll still play the other, just not as regularly) at the end of this week. I think it's safe to say that unless things change greatly (and there's an upsurge of related content on the site) it's probably going to be League. That may change though.
On a totally unrelated note - I saw the BBC4 documentary about Prince yesterday. When Doves Cry still continues to blow my mind every time I hear it. IT HAS NO BASS.
aka - 'god, I'm a terrible terrible person..and I fucking hate this game' - me
First off I want to straight up apologise to Panda for having to listen to me rage at a Crystal Maiden player yesterday - which brings me to my first point.
Starting with Dota2 I played a match with Panda while I was dealing with a ton of issues in the house at the same time (3 hours of chasing cats followed). I've mentioned this before but Mobas are not stress relieving games and if you're already having a bad day solo queue is probably going to make it worse.
In all fairness to the CM player, I was playing poorly and making bad decisions - I just assumed they would play the same way I did as CM(freeze the intitated bad guy and let the carry wail before retreating) but no..no it was aa all the way and I didn't adapt to that..leading to me giving the other team first blood by being careless and screaming at the screen. I didn't trust myself to type anything...which was lucky.
I don't want to be that guy, Panda didn't want to listen to that guy so..yeah, sorry.
I think we won that match eventually with Panda PL'ing them to kingdom come.
On the flipside the three following matches I solo queued were relaxing, even at one point my team were like 'oh we're all noobs and make mistakes, lets just do our best.' Now that's the right frame of mind.
Suiciding Pudge is the best kind of Pudge.
Mass disconnects by the opposing team - doesn't that put you in the long queue? Never really understood the point. Just take your beating.
Riki lol.
So the moral of the story - don't be that guy. It's not worth it.
On the other side of the universe - I'm completely different in League. I find it hilarious when stuff in League goes completely batshit insane wrong. It doesn't annoy me at all.
Case in point - of the 3 matches I played, we only won one and surrendered the rest (I really hate the idea of surrendering...it may save time but learning how to deal with overwhelming odds is helpful).
Blitzcrank is a dick of the highest magnitude. Last hitting and yanking people..dude come on now.
We had a Garren building ranged weapons.
We had a Katarina stacking attack speed.
We had me not stacking AD..until I got told off by tbk.
I had a tri lane against my Tris and I held them all..even with the odd Garren jumping out of the bush. A WILD GARREN APPEARS!
Russians are everywhere..EVERYWHERE.
Fizz makes everything better.
I really like Tristana - she has moxie and can just rocket jump to safety. Her damage output with the infinity edge is ridonculous. I was able to stand my ground against a Malphite and a werewolf dude.
So the start of another week. I should play some more Smite at some point. Really excited about playing League and Dota at..gasp..30fps potentially more..perhaps..50? No, that's pushing it.
tbc
aka: 'Wait...where's Teemo?'- me
Quick notes:
back on the 'Fuck Steam' brigade. It won't even start up now so...probably not going to bother much till the..
New computer has been ordered - £650 GTX 750ti 2048, 8gb ram, i5-4440 3.10ghz, 2tb seagate barrabarrabarracuda. It's being pre-built because I just don't need that hassle at the moment - I'm a wuss, I know. Should be here on 7th. 30+ FPS confirmed. woooo.
I haven't posted a single youtube video in two weeks..this has completely taken over.
As with most game I had some good games and had some bad games. I had a really good game playing support Morgana, kept my carry (Tris) alive and we pushed Fiddlesticks and Garen back like a goddamn railroad.
That was followed by one of the worst Blitzcranks I have ever seen and everybody whining about the usual..while not warding or pinging.
Then Teemo arrived...there's a reason everyone hates that guy..those invisible shrooms and his attack speed..that shit is insane.
Next game was the dance of death between two Morganas. The rest of the team (Dr Mundo 'Ugh I should have been carry - I don't know what you're doing..*looks at cs - 95 and I have 256 while trading with my exact opposite build in mid who had 134 and getting ganked because..well the usual* I'm sorry, what now?) were completely all over the place and Urgot just d/c'd.
Played another game with Tris and had Avinia? decide to bottom lane with me 'You know you're support right Avi? 'No' 'I'm...I'm Tris..and I called ADC...I don't....what?'
Forumite tbk joined me for a normal game to help me with my last hitting under turrets while he kept me alive as Nami. My framerate just..really makes shit difficult and there was quite a bit of a step up from the other team..not so much on ours but eh..
We then spent some time doing an overview of assassins in the game and ended up deciding to pick Akali to learn how to play assassins.
She has some nice abilities and the shroud/q/r abilities were cool. I need to put more time into her.
Totally want to play some Soraka top now. She's been nerfed but the trollin at low levels...priceless.
Final notes:
all the help recieved from Panda and tbk has probably sped my learning on beyond most people at my level, and that is great and also super frustrating.
team games need teams. Normal is great to try stuff out and mess around but the pace of a well oiled team machine is far more exciting.
It's probably due to them being behind paywalls and thus I rarely see them, but there are so many League characters that interest me. You just don't see Jayce or Lissandra or Elise..ever. Could be because they aren't viable but when playing normal games who gives a fuck about that? ADC Soraka..do it.
fuck the shrooms..seriously.
So the countdown to 30+fps begins..oh the excitement. I won't have any excuses left..oo err..Thanks for joining me as always.
tbc
aka 'But that Baron, amirite? Let's just remember that' - me or 'that last 30 mins was one of the saddest things I've ever seen' - tbk or 'You sound like you've been playing this for 3 years already...we've spoiled you' -tbk
quick notes:
I'm beginning to think my pets are trolling me..waking me up 3 times a night.
New rotation of champions for this week in League
Super excited about Lucian, MF, Orianna and Elise.
I'll be picking up Lissandra in the sale..can never say no to Ice people.
Still steam does not wish to work so no Dota..sorry.
Previews of new League champion 'Gnar' are surficing..it's a wereteemo..I'm calling it.
In a recent red post Lyte discussed toxicity and how they are meaning to deal with it - in my personal expereince I haven't had too much of a problem on my end but see it occassionally (mostly in french oddly enough) happen to other. I rather worry that by trying to organise a team to actually do something together I may come off a bit sharp, which brings me to:
I was very tempted to just put the date, time played and a message saying 'I don't want to talk about it' but thinking it over there's a lot I learned from my 4 hour journey to low elo hell and I think I will share a bit.
First off - it's become obvious that low level games are not about teamwork as there generally is bugger all. If you concentrate on your own lane while keeping an eye for ganking ops, you'll probably be less frustrated in the end..that's assuming you're not the only one pinging and warding. If you are then you're fucked.
Secondly people will generally not listen to whatever you have to say - probably because they a) don't understand, b) think they know what they're doing, c) have turned off chat or d) are just trolling. I spent a large amount of time trying to co-ordinate teams to only have Blitzcrank (if I ever get the chance I'm banning Blitzcrank from MY team let alone the other one) decide to just do his own thing at the end of a push..on a different lane.
Sidenote - tbk asked me why I stood around so much doing nothing..well I was typing, a lot.
I'll give you the cliff notes on my afternoon and evening:
Tris adc - Morgana with me, she ks'd and cs'd like a pro even after I asked her not to.
Again Tris adc with the same top lane - Nasus decided he liked my creeps and aa'd them for 20 mins without using Q.
Morgana support with..Skarner adc? Skarner thinks it's team deathmatch and ignores the creeps to attack the other team over and over again.
The amount of times our team wanted to surrender but we ended up winning? 80%
Morgana again (no one but Blitz plays support and I refuse to play with a blitz ever again) with Ashe adc. She can't last hit..at all. Ziggs and Katarina argue over mid and I had to watch Katarina suicide a bunch of times while whining about other people.
Then came the worst game I have ever been a part of - I played Ahri mid..badly by the way, against a Brand who luckily couldn't stun. We had jungling Yi who..didn't know what he was doing really. Jinx and..Blitz bottom lane and someone top lane. Oh wait no we didn't he d/c'd.
60 minutes of pain. Complete inability to co-ordinate despite my attempts..and that's all they were really..attempts. No real team organisation and just..it was depressing rather than funny.
What was funny was the other team wailing at Baron for about 2 minutes before we came in,stole it and killed them all but two...before everyone else decided pushing the lanes wasn't necessary and then running back to base, leaving me to be ganked at the last minute. *cue me banging my head against the table*.
I finally got them to push bottom as we had taken the inhibitor down there between myself and Yi and the two inner towers...Blitz decided to push top where it was still tower before the inhibitor and they all rushed up there to help..it was mind boggling.
The fact that I was in the winning team 80% of the time despite the complete and utter chaos of my team says a lot about the people we were playing. If they had any co-ordination they would have kicked us to death within 15 mins.
So what did I learn:
tbk put it best when he said 'Panda and I have spoiled you' they really had.
Concentrate on impoving yourself rather than worrying about the other members of the team - winning/losing in normal doesn't matter as long as you get better.
or to put it another way, 'don't fuckin bother..it's a lost cause'
In my own time I played some botmatches with Soraka and Akali. Soraka top is almost possibly viable - the nerfs hit it hard I think but it's hilarious whiping out creep waves and silencing the other side then tanking them. Akali..well..I need to work on her, I was up against a Sivir bot who wrecked me..leading me to pick up Sivir and having some fun. Low IP champions are great impulse purchases...especially when you make enough in a day to buy them.
New patch on 30th - apparently it's changing 40ish champions. Sion confirmed as top tier with Yorrick. This will be my first patch - It'll be interesting to see if I recognise the changes and if I'm as negative about them as most people will inevitably be.
Despite all the above, I still want to play the game..I still want to get better. I think that says a lot.
So the storm continues..the days are counting down till 30+ fps and the ability to actually type this thing without key lag. I'm going to try and do something special for the end of the first month..just some *waves hands around* plans but we'll see.
Thanks for sticking with me.
tbc
aka: 'No..not again..let me out...LET ME OUT' me on seeing the same Blitzu player 3 times in a row in solo queue.
Quick notes:
Patch is up for 4.13 - link to patch notes. I'll come back to those in a bit.
A week and a day till 30+fps..woot. Wifi dongle thing arrived..excitement growing.
Dominion is a really weird TV show. Who knew they'd do a sequel to the movie Legion..and what is it with Angels and Romans? Watching Anthony 'Giles' Head chew through scenery like butter is rather entertaining though.
Deception IV is a weird puzzle game...like tower defence but you're the tower. It's been a while since I played the PSX games.
BREAKING NEWS - SMT4 coming out on 3ds download only in Sept for..gasp..£17.99 or 20 Euros. Holy shit. Finally...and that price.
Trying to get that free Alistair skin and champion but it seems that youtube promo is borked. Sent off a ticket and they're on it...which is nice.
So as I metioned yesterday I was excited to play some Lucian and pick up Lissandra..both of which I ended up doing.
I really liked (notice tentative past tense) Lucian. Once I realised that his E resets his auto attack (you see where I'm going here?) and that you can stack AD like no one's business on him he just turned into a position based monster flying around the place like a Platinum games character....and then I read the patch notes this morning. Now, I'm okay with them removing the slow escape mechanism but pumping up the cooldown is not something I'd have done..it seriously effects his damage output. An extra 4 seconds cd is a massive nerf. It's not like he's a tank either..so I'm not too happy about that change. Guess that answers my question of yesterday as to whether I would see the changes in a particular light.
I also played around (heh) with Lissandra and first up I love her movement animation with the iceflow on the ground. She's another one that's all about positioning and seems to be a very powerful character if you choose your shots for best effect. She even got some minor buffs in the patch with a Q cd reduction and R slow boost. Her W took an AP hit but that's mostly for trapping and clearing minion waves afaik. Anyway she's fun and I'm glad I picked her up.
As for my actual games I played yesterday..if I told you they were pretty much the same as yesterday down to the same fucking Blitzu (tbk- 'He's helping' me - 'Yeah the other fucking team') 3 times in a row..then you'd probably get the idea. Highlights include:
A Spanish Fiora who decided split pushing was 2-2 and bitched about me feeding Yi as TF (again..no support is no support)
Out of interest has anyone seen Bane and Blitzu in the same room..is it actually Bane underneath all that metal?
A team of level 10s decides to try and take Baron despite being told that it's not going to happen..especially with their builds.
Morgana support turning into Morgana AP because nobody knows how to play ADC properly..let alone last hit minions.
Master Yi continues to pub stomp purely because everyone runs away from him and they don't bother to stun and converge..too busy running, leaving me to die..again.
Maybe I should start running.
Spent some time in a co-op vs with tbk. I just wanted to play Akali and work on last hitting while he jungled with Elise. Alas I had Susan AND Shen join me in top lane for some top bot trolling. At the very least (despite my framerate issues and weird ping going up from 40 to 400 for no reason) I finally understood last hitting under towers with melee minions (two tower hits and then hit) and starting to grasp the others. So not wasted time.
Final thoughts:
sorry..super hype for SMT4 and that price. I still have to finish DDS2.
I'm going to completely stop worrying about other players and actually winning any of these low level games and just concentrate on my lane..I know I said that before but it's kind of difficult to do in a team game but I think I'm going to have to stick with it.
I swear to god..if I see that fucking Blitz player again I'm going to hack League and delete the character for good. It'll take years of me learning how to hack but it'll be worth it. It'll probably turn out to be a 12 year old girl from Versailles or something but I DON'T CARE.
I did actually ask the question at one point that if I kept being matched with this lunatic does that mean I'm seen as being as crap as they are..which depressed me immensely.
I didn't mention it above but..LUX BUFF YAY. Have I mentioned that I'm intentionally leaving Lux till I've got every other champion as a reward for my ridiculous amounts of grinding?
If you have any thoughts on the patch notes that I, in my meagre play time, would not notice or understand..please leave below. Oh and the item nerfs suck too..just putting that out there.
Called it on the Gnarl reveal.
Thanks for reading
tbc
aka - 'Are all Master Yi players as whiney as him?' - me
Quick notes:
It's my Father's 75th Birthday today..
A week to go till the new computer arrives. Thinking I should have got an ssd to record onto but couldn't afford it at the moment. Upgrading is great.
Steam really doesn't like me..I'm beginning to think it's personal.
So I spent a large part of yesterday afternoon (still no job, sigh) just trying out the free rotation champions and Alistair, who League were kind enough to put on my account after the youtube thing didn't work. TLDR:
Miss Fortune: Weird Weird Werid AA..love her movement speed buff but I wasn't really feeling it. I tried quick cast (switched in the options) with her and I both love it and hate it..I wish it would allow me to set Space + Q or whatever as my quick cast buttons, I broke my left wrist as a kid and I've had problems using my little finger for some reason ever since..screwed up my guitar playing no end. Anyway I like her abilities but she's just..I dunno..boring to me.
Elise - I hate spiders.
Orianna - At first I didn't think I'd like her. Her Glados voice and clockwerk jerkiness is offputing, but once I got the hang of her ball of doom and understood her passive buffs her AA she was kinda fun.
I've mentioned that post patch Lucian is a minor disappointment to me but I'll adapt..he's still a beast once he gets going. Gotta hit those passives to drop the cooldown.
Alistair - Well..he can take a punch, a rocket and a nuke can't he? I've mentioned that I'm not a fan of melee characters..I'm a wuss remember? But his stun is..fun and the heal when AP stacked is just..silly. The Stun bomp (Q,W) is hilarious.
I'll quickly mention my first game of the night - I played support Morgana to a Master Yi who demanded to be adc..usual nonsense. The kid (and he certainly was one) complained that I didn't attack after he got taken out by three guys at once, despite the fact that I'd stunned one, shielded him and then Ult'd in the space of 2 seconds after he decided to dive. After that he wanted to know why I didn't pop my heal when he dived 3 v 1..to which I replied I don't support assisted suicide. He then went on to complain about how no one else was getting kills but him (all of which I essentially gave him..and I told him so, which probably didn't help but fuck Master Yi players) and then he went on to whine..leading to everyone to tell him to shut up and please try and learn from his mistakes. Why is this important? Well apart from complaining about Master Yi players it also happened to be the first time I managed ye olde Ult-Zonya Kill with about 20hp left against a Fiora. It was also the most toxic game I've played in - the team just wouldn't work together and bickered mostly due to this Master Yi player..which was a shame.
Now let's talk about Lissandra:
I chose this because it's not only impressive cosplay but hilarious..how does she move, a trolley? Alas the guy behind her was not impressed in the slightest. He's more of a Taric fan.
I am completely enamoured with Lissandra. This became clear to me during the last two games yesterday evening.
Her poke game with Q is ridiculous - not only does it slow the first hit but the shatter effect deals the same amount of damage in a small cone behind the first and nobody in the low elo expects that at first..bwhahahaha.
Her W not only clears waves when it's buffed a bit, it's a great initiator or escape mechanism. Team fights become so much easier when you've got the W.
Her E is the most beautiful, sublime, exquisite thing in the game..need to close the distance, deal damage to creeps and then gank someone? I can do that in one press of E. Low on life and running from 3 people who are gaining? I'll just E over this wall thank you sir. E all day and every day..thank you. E's are good E's are good she's Ebenezer Good. *get's out glow sticks*
Her passive gives you a free cast every 18 seconds. If you time it right you can clear a wave without using any mana.
Her R...oh lord. Gonna die and your team are just out of range? Self cast - damage and slow the other team while having your own free Zonya, then pop your actual Zonya, they all die to your team. Team fight and the adc is hurting your side - drop and R on them, clear any creeps - slow the rest of their team and wipe out their ADC. Tis a beautiful thing.
The amount of times in those two games where I dropped in like the wrath of god on the other team during a team fight..or when things went bad and I managed to get away with 20 hp due to my E..that's why I play League..right there.
Even in support it was great fun poking - sure it wouldn't work at high level play but low elo it was super effective.
It also helped that in those last games I was playing with people who knew what they were doing and were good at it..they would ping (occasionally) mark targets (most of the time)...but not ward so much. I spend a vast amount of time warding my lanes and it's saved me more than once.
So until they inevitably ruin Lissandra by nerfing everything and taking away her Q poke...she bitch slaps Lux to the ground and becomes my favourite champion. Time will tell if she scales into higher level games as I play her though.
Oh and did I mention she's pretty darn tanky too? Shit was just bouncing off me. Lux's Ult barely scratched after level 8.
So final thoughts:
I really have a thing for women who chuck ice around, huh?
It's nice to have something positive to say about team mates for once, it really makes the whole game so much more fun whether you win or not.
I would put a David Caruso meme in here but..I'm classier than that.
Thanks for reading.
tbc
aka 'Who didn't surrender?' Random guy 'Me! cause I has much pew pew' - me.
Quick notes:
Rain and lag are the order of the last two days..muchos of both.
Less than a week to go...now I'm nervous it won't live up to the hype but 30+fps is a pretty big leap.
Lowest FPS today? 12.
I played only one game yesterday...but it was a glorious game. Of heroes and villians, of seiges and despair, of mid or I feed.
Our team had me as Liss in mid, Nunu and Ryze bot, Yi top and a DC.
Other sider were Katarina mid, Yi jungle, Darius, Janna and Caitlyn in their respective places.
Katarina did a good job zoning me..alas I overpowered her with the pokes eventually.
Ryze just went all in..he was something like 30/4/10 at the end of the match.
T'was a great game.
This afternoon I played solo q to get enough IP to pick up Evelyn for later interest in the jungling sector..I hear prices have risen and so investment may be a bit behind but they've made through the depression and house prices as stable.
I have no idea what I just wrote
I then played a couple of games with Panda..like in the old days eh? We had some really weird games. First one we just rolled right over them, second game we got run over and third we nearly got curb stomped and then they surrendered.
Weird games my friends...also someone fed Sivir..and it wasn't me. Honest.
I'm getting more comfortable playing support Morgana, though it would be nice if people didn't dive for no goddamn reason and then expect me to save them with my magic laser powers...which I don't have by the way.
Last game was embarrasing because I didn't have a warding trinket and varus kept telling me to put wards down..kind of left him to it for the lols.
Level 30s are just as bad as level 10s in some regards..they have no idea what they're doing nor do they ping when they should.
Tempted to ranked solo q once I get my upgrade.
aaaand that's all for this week folks. 8 more days till the end of the first actual month of playing is up. Crazy.
Thanks for sticking with me and see you in the comments/next blog.
Apologies for the delay - thunderstorms and Destiny (or is that density?) got in the way a little.
Quick notes:
Destiny is a game. If you like Halo, mmos, kill stealing and some relatively fun boss encounters..look into it. Otherwise it's very meh
Finally (!) was able to install Strife. It runs poorly on my laptop (League barely runs - often have dips to 20fps) and by god does it look fugly. Things of interest to note are: Last hits count for everyone in the area..so they all get the gold. Out of combat regen is insane and can trigger during a fight if you aren't hit for 3 seconds or something. Free personal couriers. Pets come with you and have upgradable abilities. Boss neutral mobs can be claimed for your side. Oh and it has integrated voice chat.
Panda and I played a game of Strife.....we uninstalled afterwards and promised to never speak of it again.
AKA - 'Dota hates us all' - Gunslingerpanda
So after picking myself up and getting back in the saddle (and once the electricity was back on) I played a hell of a lot of DOTA over the weekend - including my first couple of solo pubs. I've played 3 and actually managed to be on the winning team for one of them - playing Crystal Maiden support as NO ONE PLAYS SUPPORT in these games. Everyone always wants to play mid or ADC..so generally it looks like Im going to work on my support game in DOTA..difficult to do with AI as they're so dumb (pushing mid..runs off to top..BAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAANNNEEEE)
So I spent some time working on my mid pushing, warding and generally learning how to play better in early game when you're so squishy.
Have I mentioned I love Huskar? The lead image was almost going to be him say HURT ME MORE...I wonder if this says something about me?
One of the pubs I played in had Riki as mid..he spent the whole time bitching about how shit we were (even though we won) until I pointed out that he should try playing a character that wasn't invisible and against people who know to buy dust...that shut him up.
I then botted with Tusk and Ogre Magi.
Tusk is tough..I don't have a handle on how to use him, especially his punch as that seems to take forever to wind up.
Ogre Magi is just...wow. Super weak early with only his stun and meager mana pool but..that ult..whew. Lots of fun playing support on him.
Panda joined in on some bot games in the afternoon - we had an almost hour long botgame where I got stuck playing QoP. Never again..it was so damn painful. We actually got steamrolled by bots in that one..embarrassing.
Which leads me to Bane. Bane was trolling Panda as much as Luna usually trolls me...and he was on our side. Bane couldn't decide if he was top or bot...he hid in the side shop..he farmed mid even though Panda was there..Bane was BAAAAANNNNEE (doesn't help that I can't stop the batman bane vo when he's there)
Kunkka is now called Kenickie..or Konker depending on the Lauren Laverne levels of love.
We took a break and came back for another couple of botgames.
If you feed Huskar, Huskar will kill all of you.
I'm worried Huskar is OP. I was tanking 3 bots at once and killed them all before Bane had decided to stop running away...again. Goddamnit Bane.
We then switched to League, essentially in order to feel better about how shit we are at DOTA2..turns out that it works.
First game was ye olde TF/Karma combo of mayhem and destruction. Didn't take long and I'm getting better at last hits and general farming. Need to work on his ult/ganking techniques and general early play. I've got card picking down though.
Our second game was..wow. Things didn't start well with Heimerdinger not telling us where he was going, Panda deciding he was going to play support..then not, and mistaking my reply for Donger's (I was going to play support Morgana for whoever was bot)..so we ended up with a support Zac and me ADC which was less than ideal.
Communication people..communication.
Donger then proceeded to 'mid or i feed' which lead to much hilarity.
We managed to tag team the bottom lane - Panda was determined to go Kaiju on every bot he could with hp stacking items.
We played on intermediate for the first time - the League bots are nothing compared to the DOTA ones...DOTA bots of doooooooom...baaaaane.
Final thoughts:
I really need to work on my efficiency in the early game. Last hitting to get more gold to get the right items while staying in lane and harassing the other team..so not much to work on really.
Warding and map awareness.
Still haven't even bought a blink dagger.
So the start of another week of painful truths and wasted hours. It's scary to think I've probably put more time into these two games so far than I have the whole Mass Effect trilogy..which I have completed with all the DLC. Haven't spent any money either. Anyway thanks for staying with my descent (3) into madness...I expect to hit a shoggoth any day now.
TBC
aka: 'After everything else even my WiiU crashed today' - me..this morning..in a very bad mood.
So..lets start off with the good news..good-ish news.
I played some Smite yesterday. Another game which doesn't install properly on my machine. I had to go into the .ini files of the game and redo the resolution for it to actually launch. Totally a 3rd person League of Legends game..ignoring the background/lore it's a totally fine product but with the lore it's right up my ally. I grew up on classical mythology (and rock n roll oddly enough) so running around as Mercury or Bast is great fun for me on a personal level. A gaming session was veto'd by Panda as he doesn't like it so YMMV. Ra's beam of death is sweet sweet Lux.
I also played some Dawngate - which thankfully has a small download size compared to some 9gig behemoths I could mention. The roles in that game are interesting - it looks like the 'Shapers' (heroes to you and me) can play multiple...roles I guess, and can select between Gladiator (farming carry?) Tactician (CC?) Hunter (Jungler) and Predator (Assassin) each of which have buffs and passives which aid that role (ie Gladiator gets extra farm for last hits). It didn't have a training mode so I had to set up a custom mode with just me in it. Only two lanes and a MASSIVE jungle..also there are bots that mine extra gold and you can cut down the other teams supply if you want..also its an EA game. It was meh I guess.
Riot are using the ban hammer on people who are racist or just super jerks in League according to a reddit thread and then if they complain about it they're have to deal with it all being made public..so..there goes at least 40% of League players I guess.
In other news my laptop hates me. First skype had a bad memory error (so i reinstalled) and then Steam refused to open after logging in - it would just silently close without giving a reason. It wouldn't even appear in the task manager. I did the whole 'delete everything but the exe and apps folder' but that didn't help either. Oddly enough after rebooting for the 5th time or so it randomly started working so..yay? Oh and my graphics card decided to Blue Screen on me during it's update. It was 10pm by this point so my patience with Mr Newell's platform of digital delights was not great. So fuck Steam and by extension fuck DOTA for today. I didn't even watch the blink and you miss it final so..yeah.
Managed one game of League before apathy set in on all side last night - it was too hot and I was in a poor mood. Went for TF mid and played appallingly - though I got uprated by some very kinda person..so yeah. I just could not get my cards to work properly, my screen was scrolling too slowly for me and i was just getting annoyed (and dead). My main issue was that I had no idea what some of the bots would do to me. Veigar? Dropped this massive wall of stun on me and I had no idea that was going to happen as I've played with him on my team once and never even saw that happen. It was frustrating at the time not knowing what to expect and how to counter that. I think it's worse in League as DOTA has designs that you can kind of 'read' to know what to expect to a degree and people can play any of them so you see a much wider range in the game itself rather than Lee Sin....Lee Sin..and Annie followed by whatevers on rotation. I have never seen anyone else play Morgana or Twisted Fate in a pub.
It pays to remember that these games aren't going to relax you after a bad day..sometimes it's better just to walk away till tomorrow.
Which brings me to today. Beyond my WiiU crashing earlier (Zhou Tai OP confirmed) everything seems (touch chrome) stable enough. I played a game of League today as Nassus with Xerath on bottom lane. It's frustrating when everyone goes for last hits even though you're blatantly the ADC but it was fun to play a melee character as opposed to not-lux. Speaking of which the Lux-bot was on a total rampage..it was great. Anyway Nassus' Q ability is really cool - raising in power the more you last hit with it..if you can last hit with it <narrows eyes at Xerath>. And he has the whole Anubis thing going on which ties well into Smite. Oh and end game R..got my first Quad kill..yay.
Man these have been downbeat recently..I'm going to try and make them a bit more optimistic despite the heat and other issues. Thanks for reading as always.
TBC
I can't stop this feeding, killing two or three - game you just don't realise..what you do to me.
Shtay a while a listen:
If you haven't bought Transistor yet, I strongly recommend it. I listened to Greg Kasavin giving a quasi-interview on DOTA Today (from last year..not today) talking about how DOTA played a major part in the design of the combat in that game..and it shows. Here's an old article from Dtoid about the background and design of Transistor. I've only played a small part of it and not only is it fun but the OST is phenomenal and it's just gorgeous. The main character is apparently animated with Blink video .gifs? I don't know..its..just buy it. Oh and if in Europe/UK set up an dummy address on Amazon.com and buy it there..it's like £4 cheaper. Every little helps.
Played some more Smite - after the gimmick wears off it's still a fun game, just not that great with bots.
We're still in 'fuck steam' mode.
Which brings me to last nights hijinx:
I would love to say that I was accousted in the street by forumite TBK and dragged into some back alley to play some shady game of League as the decoy..but he just kindly asked if I'd like to make the 5th in their PvP game.
I was up against a gold level Lux as TF and after commenting upon how much I love Lux (have I mentioned that?) and swooning a wee bit the game was afoot.
TBK attempted to get me help him pick up some early jungle buffs but I wasn't quick enough to jump on that.
I died alot.
I went to go pick on a level 3 Ryse at the top..which was probably the other team's plan as I got ganked a hell of a lot up there. Knowing where the safest places to stand in that game (or more importantly run around like a headless chicken to avoid stuff) is super important.
I was totally carried on the coat tails of the rest of the team and they managed to pull a victory out of it...the ending battle was massive swathes of techinicolour madness exploding (very slowly) across my screen like someone throwing up skittles.
Afterwards tbk lay down the rules on jungling - when to help your jungler (at the very beginning to get first buffs) When red and blue spawn (1:55) and just generally how to help the team as a whole. Very helpful.
Which brings me to the next section of the evening. tbk was kind enough to suggest a customn 1v1 game where he could help me with my mid game as TF.
First up - Summoners Rift is fucked. We spent the whole time in mid and tbk's minions pushed the bottom lane all the way to the top without any interference. That cannot be right. Top lane was balanced but..oy vay bottom lane was madness.
Second - as you may have surmised given my recent issues, my laptop is fucked. Its roughly 4 years old, has a Radeon HD 1gb card and 2gb of ram (fair play though..it's a dell inspiron, but you get what you can afford) and I can't get 60fps when there's more than just me on the screen. More interestingly it makes little different lowering the settings or resolution. 4fps difference between high and low settings with lowering the resolution doing not even that. I think DOTA was more stable(when it fucking works) but..well I'm not one to bitch about 60fps in console games but...ergh. I generally get between 30-40fps with dips to 20 during the technicolour extravanganza.
oh and regarding TF's pick a card - welcome to the twilight zone of League players. Gods that keyboard idea is golden.
Anyway back to the custom match - tbk helped me realise where the serious weaknesses were in my game - essentially a) I don't move around enough, thus become predictable for skill shots, b) don't control my creep waves enough - leading to poor clearance and the occasional hit, c) don't know the proper damage rotation for most heroes and d) itemisation and countering is obviously lacking.
That's after nearly 30 hours in the game..I still have essentially no idea what I'm doing and don't even get me started on wards.
Between DOTA and League I've spent nearly 60 hours of my recent life on learning MOBAs and I've only scratched the surface.
Oh and I played some bot games with Ziggs and Skarner this afternoon. I like Ziggs and I got the idea down on jungling with Skarner I think..though if you aren't effecient you really do get left behind.
Still saving my IP for Lux but Lissandra looks tempting too...oh these temptresses of League.
Final thoughts:
There's a lot for me to work on there but at least I have a better idea of what to focus on now.
It's damn difficult to focus on it when you're trying to survive..muscle memory is a wonderful thing.
I have now been on the winning team in both DOTA and League PvP...once. Yay.
I have not seen Bane or Luna for two days now and it has been glorious.
It would be nice to have enough money to get a new laptop..or more reasonable a desktop but that..isn't going to happen for a while unfortunately. Sigh.
Anyway..more upbeat today I think..things to think about, things to do, ignoring DOTA is good for now at least..yes, positivity. Proably need to construct additional pylons too.
tbc
When you gank me in the jungle at night, before getting into a team fight..Iiiii'm hooked on my feeding..but high on believing that I'm of some useeeee.
So:
Steam works again..yay! I found my DOTABuff profile..double yay! Don't look at it because I suck! y..oh.
Sniper Elite is $30 cheaper on US PSN than in the UK on the PS4..I'd hate to think what the Aus $ discrepency would be but that's fucking ridiculous.
I looked through my ps+ stuff and found I had two 'console' mobas on there. Guardians of Middleblerth and Awesomenauts..so for my continuing record on here I thought I'd give them a go.
Guardians of Mi..look the Lord of the Rings moba is dead on the PS3 due to the Gamespy shutdown and they won't give me a steam key but I played a bot match with GANDALF THE whatever..sorry I'm not a fan of LOTR. Anyway first off I was surprised to find that the controls were fine, kinda like console diablo apart from R2 being a cone shaped AA to hit multiple creeps. Other things of note are that you can upgrade towers and creep upon hitting level 6. There shoot faster, run harder..kinda like a tower defence mechanic. Apart from that and the lackluster bots I was surprised to find that it worked well and I would have thought that League (especially given it's skill shots etc) would be a reasonable fit for console - there would need to be concessions but I'm surprised it hasn't happened. Think of how many xbones that would sell..
Awesome, Awesome, Awesomenauts is Bucky O'Hare the Moba..essentially a saturday morning cartoon made into a moba on a 2d plane. I'm still not convinced it works..it felt far more confined and..well linear obviously, than other mobas and it came across as more of a deathmatch game than anything else..also the abilities kinda sucked. Great presentation though. I think both games are available on steam.
What I tell myself every time I play these games...also an excuse to have one of my favourite cartoon themes from my childhood. Oh and..totally not Mass Effect..
Played a small amout of League last night. Tried out Xerath and found him to be okay..I guess. Didn't really feel him with the bots on my side getting hammered because..erm..League?
Went on to a co-op match where I ended up playing support Annie in top lane. First time I'd played her and I enjoyed it..well when the ani..ninja girl stopped running away all the time whenever she borked her initation and I had just got a stun in..and then complained about kill stealing..sigh. Anyway it was good once she started to get her cs down and levelled a bit. Annie has a lot of potential I think and tibbers is great. Warding was also done by me so yay?
Which leads me to today. I spent a fair bit of time trying out characters with bots but got fed up with them either a) not supporting, b) tri-laning because they thought i was mid when I was trying to jungle, c) being ridiculously dumb..bounty hunter would not go for the stuns..at all..he just ran away. Oh AI...
Fed up with that I solo queued. Now..oooh boy. Let me tell you a story of pain and suffering.
I suggest that if you want to either a) laugh your head off or b)cry with desperation you should watch that match.
I was Crystal Maiden in top lane..pretty much by myself as Pudge in mid DEMANDED that Clinkz stay with him.
Drow was the only capable player there and was harrassed by the Russians on the other side.
It became highly amusing when Riki kept trying to gank me and couldn't understand why I could see him with all the wards I had (WARDING FTW..I was the only support, only warder, only person who bought a courier..it was an experience)
I got steamrolled a couple of times as I can only freeze one at a time and run.
at about 30min everyone but Brewmaster on the opposing team d/cs..easy win huh?
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
Complete lack of co-operation by everyone but myself and Drow taking top lane and Brewmasters RIDICULOUS ult lead to him stopping all 5 of us by himself as nobody but the two squishiest of us would co-ordinate. Juggernaut was jungling or something and Pudge..well he tried, I'll give him that.
wait..was juggernaut building two BKBs?
Madness.
Really if you have 40mins to spare and need a laugh look it up if you can (i assume you can at least).
Final Thoughts:
oh pubs..oh pubs..oh dear.
Never rely on anyone but youself..never go support when it's a mess.Or always go support when it's a mess. Or Balrog, rather.
Ward everything
Riki lol.
More seriously though, nobody pinged but me..nobody called MIA but me. It was a mess and sad to see. It might be worth laying some sort of basic rules out before a match but I doubt anyone would listen.
Luckily frustration falls to hilarity eventually..and we still won.
That Brewmaster player must have been pissing himself laughing, and I dont blame him.
After that hilarity I think I'm happy to play pubs..I don't think I'm going to be the worst player there any more.
aka: 'Blitzcrank is the best..around and nothing's ever gonna keep him down' - me
This blog post is bought to you, in part, by Sigue Sigue Sputnik
Quick notes:
Everything is better with 80s movie soundtracks...everything
I finally succumbed to the temptation to spend money on free to play games..I bought some riot points so I could afford Ahri (only actually needed 84 more points but..you know how it goes) thus that pact has been broken and the seals of Flava Flav will be next - Wu Tang shall return and it's all my fault.
You should check out my gravel pit some time...that is totally not a euphemism.
So only League the past day with tbk and Gunslingerpanda:
Here's the archived Stream if you're interested in 3 hours of madness and it's 3am and you need something to help you sleep - http://www.twitch.tv/bm_panda/b/550812838
First game was a Morgana (so want to write Morrigan there..where's my new Darkstalkers Capcom?) that started being a support in top..yes I know..and ended up being a mess. Forumite tbk gave me a good dressing down for my shoddy item choice, quite rightly by the way and gave me some tips as to what to start with and build towards.
Blitzcrank was the troll of the evening, in two different games. With Morgana he dragged out someone from my Ult...it was something let me tell's ya.
Second game with tbk and Panda I went with Nasus (tempted to call him Susan now as well) in top trying to get my last hits down. I was trading with a Darius up there until he d/c - tbk was playing and telling me what to do at the same time, which is a hell of a feat in and of itself. Again tab wins games people...tab wins games.
The following..hour? tbk gave a symposium on League and the meta. It's all archieved on the stream and it's a hell of a thing that he knows all those juicy, meaty meta. I'm going to have to watch the stream again because it mostly went over my head but we all agreed that Jinx is manky as hell...ewww.
tbk went off to Dominion with some friends so Panda and I got into a dual queue. He played Zac I went with Annie. We also had another Blitzcrank and a Fizz as well as..erm..Ashe that's right.
Alright there guv', have you seen my mate Mr Tibbers? He's a laugh 'e is.
Annie is soo much fun..cackling like a pyromaniac and a demonic bear nuke (from orbit).
Watching the Fizz player was hilarious..dodge, shark, dodge, poke, shark bubai.
Blitzcrank had no idea what was going on and typically they just did their own thing.
learnt through playing that you can stack the stun by just randomly using W not sure if E still triggers it though.
Mr Tibbers needs a BA Baracus skin.
We won the last two games, lost the first.
Casual league is the best league - anything goes..and boy does it ever.
This afternoon I spent in botmatches trying out Ahri and Tristiana so I had a handle on their abilities. I..can't play with bots anymore. It's more than time as many have stated but it's just so frustrating with them feeding. In the Tristiana game I had 27/4/10 and we still got steamrolled..
Ahri is great..just awesome. Charm, Q, W, R...great..love it.
Tristiana is also great, once I worked out that W was her mobility and to hammer Q whenever it came up I had a jolly old time. She kills things fast in the jungle too..Ahri not so much it seems.
I love the fact that a new champion nearly turns LoL into a completely new game. The difference between Nassus and Ahri is..great.
Everything is broken so everything works...apparently?
And so we reach the end of Week 3. We're coming up on the month and I reckon i'll do a retrospective at the end of that week - it's been a hell of a ride and we've only just scratched the surface. Thanks again to tbk and especially Panda for putting up with me whining about framerates and internet connectivity.
Here I go again..on my own..going down the only road I've ever known...
GET OUT OF MY LANE TARIC
So the news In brief:
During Sunday I tired Heroes of Newerth, DOTA and Infinite Crisis. Well I downloaded the installer of infinite crisis looked at a video and went 'nope'. HoN was just...boring and ran like jank on my janky laptop (more on that later) and DOTA..well..those creeps sure do move, amirite?
My Lee Chaolan is ready. So very ready.
Fantastic Four is really about seeing Jessica Alba's knickers as many times as possible. Like Twilight is about the story of the missing Armadillo in the lab scene..where did it go? Why did it leave? Why was it there in the first place then not? What's it's background? Question going to the heart of Twilight.
Oh and HoN has a monkey courier. Just..if that makes any difference to you. It does to some.
So over the weekend I had a look as to what the roles are in a moba. Having played WoW for enough time to question my life choices I get the 'holy' trinity of Tank/DPS/Healer..but it gets more complicated in mobas. A major part of the game is farming and last hitting - it makes you feel like you're actually doing something (gaining money to get better weapons) overcoming the need to take someone's farm when you're a support - or just learn what a support role is in a moba in my case - kinda goes against our nature as gamers. Click to kill, click to loot - instant gratification.
Which leads me to today's happy happy happy joy joy joy times.
Life kinda went a bit screwy for me today. I had plans to go teach in Korea - but that seems to have fallen through so now I'm trying to secure a PGCE course before the end of the summer..had to apply through UCAS this morning (If you're not from the UK just think..forms, pain, forms..anger, forms) so not much time to play anything but LoL this afternoon.
To warm up I thought I'd play a game with Morgana as a mid. Farm started well, was having fun and then - connection error. So I tried to reconnect..no dice. It was complaining about my firewall. No problem before - checked firewall, fine. Decided to quit out. It threatened me with a timeout ban..seriously? It's not my fault your servers have gone wackadoo. We were all kicked out. It eventually sorted itself out, but that was half an hour of wasted time.
Next game..whew..okay take a look here. I called mid and was greeted by 'Germany???' and then 'French???' An auspicious start.
I went my merry way to mid...followed by Taric (luckyyluc). I asked him to politely get out of my lane to which I get no response. The others started pinging like crazy to try and get him to move to no avail. Concluded he was a newbie with no language skills and decided to leave him.
Naturally my farm was rather depleted as he would rush in and take some of it - luckily Taric isn't that effective at farming at that level compared to me.
After a while other lanes started having problems, I was underlevelled and having a hard time - so when I went to support those lanes we'd get stomped.
Had a great moment of being chased by 4 gankers, only to lose them in the grass..oh AI you so dumb.
We lost Zac first - he just gave up. Tryn followed close behind. It just left me, Taric and Gator boy.
Around the 30 min mark Taric suddenly said 'GO BOT!' to which I nearly covered my computer with lemonade. Turns out he does know something. Though my favourite was 'Last Level :)' as if it was Super Meat Boy or something.
We eventually rallied and won - but it took a long time and it was painful.
Game 2 with Twisted Fate crashed out once we won, but I think i'm getting the hang of his cards. It's a hell of a lot of fun to bait the AI, yellow card, run then blue card them for the kill. TF is probably my second favourite after Morgana. I had attack speed through the roof and was just burning through everything - well I went top and Master Yi decided that he was the carry so I just tried to support who I could and gank the AI when I could.
I need to get rid of my habit of running straight. Abilities tend to hit in straight lines (Miss Fortune's ridiculous ult)
So final thoughts
Positioning still needs to be worked on, need to drop the running straight habit. Zigzagging is probably best. Ganking works at 45 degree angles apparently.
Need to work on my understanding of the roles and how best to adapt to the situation. Teams don't play around you - you need to integrate and work with the team.
Against the AI i'm beginning to work out who will be mid (as I tend to play there) against me as they just keep shoving out Ryze or Annie. So spell blocking is a must.
Punishing people for leaving once is dumb - should be 3 times and your out in pub games.
I found out today that the other side can see what card TF has lined up. That's...I can understand that you need to see there's a card coming but the colour? That's broken right there - but I suppose you can use it to play mind games. Everyone runs from gold when it's blue they should be scared of.
mwhahahahahahaha - cough - blue cards.
It's inevitable but I'm going to have to find a team to play with eventually of about the same skill level as me in order to continue with this blog. Playing alone probably won't cut it beyond another week or so - so if there's anyone wanting to start playing or are just as crap as I am please get in contact.
Hope this is as popular as the last post - let's keep it rolling people.
TBC
Like a drifter I was born to play aloooneeee
So our usual news round up:
...nope, no news today (oh boy) about an unlucky guy who didn't make the grade..the news was rather sad, but you had to laugh...I saw the photograph..
I spent a fair amount of time (in my news feed) checking out the Red Posts on LoL. As someone who is interested in how the mechanics of these games work I find them fascinating, not least in how the..cough..'fans' react to an almost impossible situation. I just picked up on the following but there's tons more in the posts:
For instance - balancing Lee Sin. Ghostcrawler (is this WoW Ghostcrawler? As in 'where's my pony?') gave this reply in answer to why haven't they nerfed Lee Sin?
Champions are coolest, in our opinion, when they have distinct strengths and weaknesses. (This is why we describe champs that are just balls of stats as a bad thing and try to update them.) Moreover, when balancing champs, we achieve the best results when we buff things a champ is good at and nerf things a champ is weak at. This opens up opportunities for cool moments when a champ leverages their strengths, but still leaves clear opportunities for counterplay.
The problem with Lee Sin is that while he has some really cool things he does well, he doesn't have obvious weaknesses that we can enhance in order to open up windows to try and shut him down. This means we have to invent a weakness, which is a dicey prospect, because it means having to redefine a champion's role. "Oh, you only thought Lee was great at mobility and that's why you played him, but we just decided that should be something he's bad at instead. So sorry." (Just an example obviously.) That doesn't absolve us of the responsibility to balance him, but it means it takes more exploration than just nerfing his Q or whatever.
Xenalth went on to say:
Look, I get it. You're upset, you're frustrated. You feel like the diversity of champions that should exist is being crushed by Lee Sin. You are sick of seeing the same thing over and over again. It sucks.
I hate when I want to jungle it up and see yet-another-lee-sin-invade steal my buffs and being unable to punish the **** out of him for it. (Cuz he just ward hops away, woo hoo!) At the same time - look at what happened last year when we got close to worlds and made some tweaks to Tri-Force. The result was that it distorted the entire competitive scene for worlds, potentially invalidating months of build-up and expertise.
Now, I am not saying there aren't tweaks to Lee Sin that would push him out of Worlds. The perfect solution might even be in this thread. What I am saying is that to find, evaluate and iterate on that solution takes time and causes ripple effects on the rest of the game.
Lee Sin has become a jungle-defining staple because he has no weaknesses. This is why the long-term solution Ghostcrawler described is the right one - and will probably cause some pain along the way. Once Lee's out of the way, who are the next three champs to surge to the front? They could make the game just as bad, if not worse.
When we hit a champ like Lee, we want to do our jobs and do our jobs right. Thank you for holding us to that standard. We'd also be doing you a disservice if we didn't tell you that the right solution isn't easy"
This is obviously a big issue with some champions in League and rebalancing them means rebalancing the whole game. I have yet to find anything like these posts in relation to DOTA2 which is a shame - as they do show the mindset of these guys. Balancing a fighter with 12 characters is hard enough - imagine 100+.
Anyway on we go:
I had a really tough time with DOTA2 today - I think I put in about 2 1/2 hours or something but didn't really enjoy myself at all. Again it was the 'try a bunch of characters' out and see what fit. I actually went random a couple of times for that lovely random gold.
Venomancer - with Viper taking the top on venom..things I'm not sure why this guy exists, is he a support? Not really my scene.
Ursa - nope.
Weaver - interesting mechanics and the invisibility is cool. Not a pick but not disliked.
Axe: oh hell no.
Spirit Breaker - nope
Clinkz - ye...no.
Magnus - interesting buff but no
Queen of Pain - Really? Really Valve?...but fun to play.
Phantom Assassin - cool, evasion is neat and the passive ult is pretty damn strong.
Nature's Prophet - I'm over here, nope over here, nope over here..nope.
Lich - his ult is insane in an enclosed space with a bunch of heroes but nah.
Back to Phantom Lancer - I watched Dendi (never trust a guy who could have named himself after a DBZ character) and he went gloves of haste first buuut he kinda got stomped. Anyway interesting to note that dopplewalk (or whatever itself called) last 20 seconds as opposed to spear's 8 seconds. More procs are never a bad thing. I played a game that was tough going.
I know it's probably noobish to complain but the tower in mid makes no fucking sense (not that I play Lancer in mid..i don't but I've just thought about it) It can hit you from MILES away even if there are creep ahead of you and you haven't attacked the turret. Ergh. I hate mid in DOTA.
One game of League after my lackluster DOTA game. I mainly wanted the IP boost for first win, and I'll be honest - I wanted to play TF again.
I bought some runes (attack speed, AP and Damage - 3 bronze) and redid my masteries - attack speed and mana with one in movement.
League quits on me as soon as the match finishes, just started doing it and I have no idea why.
Anyway went top by myself - had a Warwick jungler, Black orb woman, sivar? and Master Yi.
Super super aggressive shen and large ice troll dude tried to shut me down quiet a bit..I was surprised how aggressive they were as they tended to go after me rather than farm.
I was doing okay farming and pressuring the AI till everyone else decided my lane was fair game to farm - most were 3 levels behind me at that point - thus I started to lose my farm.
Much feeding was done by pretty much everyone but myself and Warwick.
Ashe just destroys everyone, even I, with levels on her, had a hard time due to her range.
I went ring - sheen - boots - lich (we we're taking a pounding and I couldn't farm or gank at the time) - cap - whatever.
Started pushing back and we eventually won - again late game TF is just...stupid powerful if kitted properly. Those cards demolish creeps and keep going - though I would question the hit detection at the very end of their range. Pretty sure I hit a guy twice and would have killed him.
Final Thoughts of the Day:
Today's Dota2 and LoL made me realise that I'm going to eventually have to pick one of these to learn otherwise my head will explode. I'm tentatively going to say that I will consider my options around the month mark. That doesn't mean I'll stop playing both - it just means I'll put more of my energy into one than the other.
Pubs are hard work - especially when you're not the greatest thing ever yourself.
I would pay to put TF into DOTA2.
I would also pay to put Phantom Lancer into LoL.
I think I'm finally coming to a decision as to my prefered playstyle in each game
What the hell is equilibrium (and no not that Bale movie)
I think it's time to work out what exactly I need to learn. I think I've probably got a handle on most of the basics.
Warding is something I need to learn -
last hitting I'm okay with - but could be better
Efficient money spending/item selection probably needs work
Positioning, right angles still need work.
Ganking - timing..a lot of this is down to working with a team.
Pinging - i never do it. Probably should.
Thats all for today - thanks for the comments and I'll be back tomorrow..probably.
tbc
but I made up my mind..I ain't wastin' no more time
The news in brief:
There's been a massive clamp down on posts recently - some of it necessary, some of it not. I've been here since beta and some of the recent behaviour by both mods and users has really let this site down. I sympathise with the mods, but you can overdo it. Hopefully this is just another transitional phase but...internet drama is just so pathetic.
Thanks to CorruptedEvil (Flame Please hihihihiii) I got into the Strife beta as suggested by Tunaburn. Unfortunately the installer is kinda broken. It tried to install directx silently and gets nowhere. Even going through with admin privilages and installing the DX package that comes with it doesn't work. I'll have to download and reinstall - it does seem to be doing some interesting things with the formula.
Of course Lady Thor has to have a midriff..Odin's beard if she has full armour or something.
http://www.twitch.tv/exilic is a new stream on Twitch that features our own Gunslingerpanda. Check it out when you have a chance.
On my day off I found I had an almost perfect model for the Drow so:
So I should probably state that I haven't really played anything today. I tried making a video of the stuff from last night (which some of you probably saw) but that went wrong too. So lets start off with what happened last night and move on from there:
Unfortunately I was suffering from severe super lag due to someone watching netflix downstairs (without me knowing) so...that would partially explain that. I enjoy playing Phantom Lancer but I feel that I have no idea how to make him threatening until late game.
We then were joined by TobbRobb (the artist formerly known as TR) who was trolling me through most of the botmatch pretending he was Luna.
My first PvP match and the MMR was out of whack, there were Russians everywhere and an angry American. It was perfect. As much as I like Viper I did not feel that I really knew how to maximise his? potential and once Tobb went off up top to help NP and I got cornered by two characters I had never even seen before..well..the Russians won. NP was not best pleased.
I'm not entirely sure what NP was up to has he didn't seem to be much interested in pushing or jungling.
Enigma black hole...jesus.
Now it's a real shame that most of you didn't get to see our League match cause..well..oh my it was hilarious. I flew my TF flag again in mid..probably having a better idea of what I was doing than in DOTA2. I was up against a level 30 player Diana. Tobb was all like 'oh you can zone her out'...3 mins in I was having real issues. Masteries and Runes make all the difference and the MMR was jacked as I was with 2 level 30s. Once she hit level 6 though...ooooooh boy.
It was a massacre. I think throughout the game (which I think we acquitted ourselves well in, especially Panda and his gelatinous zak of doom) she alone got 25 kills while the rest of the team had 1-3 each. It was madness.
It seemed we all spent our game in mid ganking each other...every 5 seconds it was 'DIANA'S BACK..RUN!' to 'EVERYONE ON DIANA'...even a random Vayne stepped up and took hits for us so we could kill Diana.
I only made one Lady Di joke...and that was bad enough.
We actually managed to push them back to their base a couple of times but once they got Baron...it was MDK.
So a great great thanks to Tobb and Panda (having watched the stream Panda's grimacing at some of my jokes is priceless) for putting up with my idiocy once again. I had great fun running around like a maniac but it's probably time to start taking it a wee bit more seriously....ah who am I kidding?
Final Thoughts:
As it stands League is miles ahead in the fun stakes at the moment - probably due to me finding characters that suit my playstyle and the more 'actiony' method of playing.
Playing against higher level players is tough..especially when they actually co-ordinate. We didn't co-ordinate at all and it was hilarious.
My first two proper pvp games ended in defeat..not that I'm surprised but things can only get better, ne?
I was really rather nervous of playing pvp in league cause I didn't want to let the team down.
The video that Southern Dandy posted in the comments was a great help and I will be looking at the rest of them.
So thanks again for all the comments - I'll try and integrate your suggestions a bit more thoroughly as I feel I've been a little lax recently, more interested in 'goofing off than winning' as Americans might say.
tbc
Playing in a smokey room, the smell of wine and cheap perfume..it goes on and on and on and on.
aka - 'Jungling Karma is legit' - Gunslingerpanda
Quick news:
Serious Sam 3 looks like shit on the ps3 but plays great - at only 800+megs and the wide open spaces you can understand..but god the textures are awful. It's just when you hear that sound...that's when you know you're playing a Serious Sam game.
Still can't get Strife to work..odd.
Kingdom Under Fire: Crusaders still stands up today and remains one of my favourite games of all time.
Alrighty then. Once again I was joined by Gunslingerpanda for some hijinks..and shenanigans.
We started off in DOTA in a bot match. I think Panda played Bloodseeker and really got into it. I was playing, I'm going to say PL again but I honestly don't remember. My connection kept cutting out all the time - pro tip BT Internet sucks, and if I had any choice in that matter I would use someone else but living in the countryside you don't get that much of an option.
We then transitioned to a random pick pvp game with..you guessed it..a bunch of mumbly russians.
Best. Game. Ever.
We lost by the way but that's not the point.
I went Windrunner, Panda went Dazzle for the lols.
Our opposing team had no invisibility using people..none.
I was asked to buy some wards..which I did (yellow) and got told I needed to buy blue.
Neither Panda nor myself understood wtf..but we went along with it.
This guy (who was playing Templar Assassin btw..really really badly, even I could tell that) proceeded to cover the top left area of the map in blue wards. It..was...hilarious.
All of the wards..all of them. Never thinking to just use his ult to save time and money
Oh and Legion Commander proceeded to feed the other team like a...kamikaze pilot? Does that simile even work? And Zeus was all like 'fuck this I'ma go see Leda' and he..swanned off.
Cough
Operation 'Courier' then commenced..unfortunately they were not able to win us the match, but they tried really hard..especially that bird one.
On the more serious side I enjoyed windrunner as she reminded me of Lux in many ways..I'm going to try more with her.
We then went into League where I played Morgana and Panda played (and was determined to do so) a jungler Karma. I have no idea if this is a thing or not but he was cackling to himself for a while there...
We only played a botmatch so it was easy enough to stomp them. I think I'm getting a better handle on Morgana and her shield ability. Saved me (and others) a couple of times from nasty spells.
I then spent most of today checking out some more heroes in DOTA2 - just so that I can have a idea of what I could be playing and what I could be up against: Again I realise that playing them in botmatches is not exactly how they would be played in actual PvP matches and a lot of stuff I get away with would not fly..
On the suggestion of one of you guys (forgive me I don't have the comments here right now) I tried Slardar. I'm really not that kind of player, odd as it may sound after going on about PL so much (Cancer Lancer? Seriously..what did he ever do to you? Shit in your water?) It's difficult to articulate but he just didn't work for me. Thanks for the suggestion.
Doom: Or Vic as I call him.. I really enjoyed playing this guy. Going jungling, taking abilities, throwing down a regen/burn and then dooming everyone. He's just fun.
Anti-Mage: I feel that you need a decent support/player around you to be take advantages of the openings..you ain't gonna get that with bots.
Enchantress - It's great taking a levl 6 mob with you at level 1 but..ehh too skippy.
Riki: OMF..no I'm kidding. He's fun but I can see that he would be shut down asap by any proper team.
Spectre: This was an interesting one - I liked a lot of her abilities and the passives are cool. Get a hero by themselves and thats a quick kill if they don't stun you.
Sniper - Dat Ult...ooh boy.
Templar Assassin. I need more experience to understand her role. She seems to be a semi-carry assassin and of all the characters I've played so far I like her the most - I just wish I was better with her.
Final Thoughts:
I'm getting there. I'm beyond the point where I take damage from creeps, spam mana, stand in dumb places, get in front of the creep wave, refuse to buy wards/tp scrolls.
I'm coming up on 30 hours for DOTA and I've only played (and lost) two games against people.
Need to learn more about Wind and Templar..might also look into Doom and Spectre more.
Must remember to play more Crystal Maiden.
Last hits without being attacked by creeps probably needs work.
Map awareness.
More Wards..all the wards. ALL OF THEM.
Jungle Karma is legit yo.
Thanks for the comments and bearing with me through the long learning process.
tbc.
Don't stop feeding..hold on to that feeling..team fights, heroes oohohooohooohooo
aka 'I can't type /dance into a console MMO' - Gunslingerpanda
Quick thoughts:
Having a 3mb line sucks - it takes nearly a day and a half to download the Destiny Beta.
I'm not even buying Destiny.
Thunderstorms last night cut the power - luckily I wasn't downloading.
Why the fuck haven't sony patched in the ability to pause downloads on the ps4? It's not difficult to understand why it's necessary. You can do it on the ps3.
DO NOT FEED LU BU.
So I've been hitting DOTA2 pretty hard, and it's hit me pretty hard back. One of my scores in a botmatch yesterday was 0/11/4. A bot match. That's not to say I was entirely alone in my inability to accurately play the game yesterday but..yeah, no one sucked THAT hard but me. I'll spare you guys the details beyond the fact that I took a long hard look at myself in the mirror afterwards (figuratively speaking). I play games to have fun, not really to win, but despite the great company..that wasn't really much fun at the end there.
As a result my gaming was rather subdued today (that and the heat is oppressive). I had planned just to play Drakengard 3 till Destiny was done but..haha nope. Right back into DOTA2.
I played some more bot matches with some guys I haven't tried..as much as I love Templar Assassin that just hurt too much yesterday.
Disrupter/or? I didn't really enjoy playing as this guy...can't give you an exact reason beyond 'gallic shrug' meh.
Silencer - cool. I liked his abilites, the fact he's ranged (I'm not a melee guy with PL being the exception) and his ability to silence everyone at once.
Skywrath - noo, no no no no no no.
Morphling: Too complicated
Illi..I mean Shadowblade: Again, fun. I do seem to like illusions don't I? His megasuperbuff pew pew mode is fun too.
Huskar - I loved this guy. I like Trolls as par of the course, but attack speed up when damaged? Flame Spears that damage you? Jumps and healing? Great fun.
Bounty Hunter - I tried again but goddamn bots won't follow my lead..they drove me mad today, running off halfway through a fight when the other side were low health and then they ganked me..happen 3 times.
Tusk - I like his Ice wall thing, didn't have a chance to use his snowball due to shitty AI again.
Final Thoughts:
Apologies for the brevity but it's been tough going this past day.
Wards, blinking and probably just playing with people now and ruining their games instead of getting pissed with the bots is the way to go.
League will return soon, I just want to get better at DOTA first..or at least win one game goddamnit.
I got nothing else - hit the bottom of the DOTA barrel. But the only way now is up.
I'm taking tomorrow off so I'll be back on Sunday night.
Stick with me..I'll get through this whiney part and get back to the headsmacking nonsense.
Thanks for all the comments on the earlier blog. Honestly I will limit this to one a day so not to appear spammy.
For Day 2 I thought I'd switch around stuff and take DOTA2 first. I made notes during my dead times - so lots of notes. DOTA I play by myself with bots.
Tried Windranger - she seems fun and mostly an assist kill character. Item selections seems very important.
Big thing to note. Tower projectiles. Having played LoL first I was used to the green circle showing its range and whether you aggro it. Perhaps it's the noob in me, but the random aggro I got sometimes, even with pulls infront of me and the INSANE tracking distance annoyed the hell out of me..but you die, you learn.
Tried Luna next - that is not a Scots accent.
Stayed in the middle lane, upgraded her glaive and pew pew...ult and got 3 kills. Thats fun. Again I see the WoW Dark Elf thing here..but gods that accent.
Tried bounty hunter after listening to Brad talk about him on Idle Thumbs DOTA podcast..nope. Not for me.
In summary - learning characters against the AI before deciding who to main at the beginning seems like a good idea. Time to read up on lanes and who needs to be where. Thank the gods for all that time playing CC or Kite in MMOs. Good stuff with DOTA2 today.
LoL
Co-Op with players against AI.
Start with Katriana? Looks like an assassin to me..decide to play that way. Lie in wait in the grass and gank champions as they go by.
chat = top top bottom bottom bottom...errrrr, wait a sec.
Starts off well, we at the bottom do a good job UNTIL random guy who doesn't play the first 5 mins starts telling everyone what to do and going off at some guys build. Ignore and move on.
Probably not the way to play Katriana, die a lot but eh...continued moaning.
Next game with Ashe - call bottom again. Looks to be fine.
Some guy decides he wants to go mid with another guy...guy already there starts calling him noob and asks him to be reported. Roll eyes.
Goes well..apart from NOOB NOOB NOOB every so often. I love ice arrows.
Final game - Lux. ooooooooooooooooooooooooh baby yes.
Go bottom again with a very competent Jinx, we clean up the bottom lane damn fast..CC is fun with someone sniping.
Accidently kill Golem instead of Jinx..Jinx pissed and rightly so as I get ganked by the whole other team rolling by..oops.
PEW PEW PEW PEW.........PEEEEEWWWWWW
Apart from me not really understanding the jungling thing (sorry Jinx person) that went well.
TLDR- lots of home work to do.
EDIT: Have added above to original blog so not to fill up the general discussion with unnecessary updates.
Yesterday there was a post about how League of Legends (LoL) wasn't really covered here, and that there was a DOTA2 bias - due to Brad and Co. It spurred me to try LoL as I had the time to spare.Anyway having played LoL I thought it would be interesting to compare it with DOTA2 from a completely new player perspective. I've played a ton of RTS games but never a MOBA. I've got some time on my hands and not very much money so it'll give me something to do in the down time.
I will be updating this over the course of the summer as I learn the in's and outs of both games. I cannot stress enough that this is based upon my personal experience with the two games.
DL'd LoL first - takes up less space and Steam does not like my computer. First thing, the presentation could use some work - menus are kinda bland but the artwork is okay. Naturally very Warcraft-esque given it's roots.
Paywalls..well, okay. Looks like they give you stuff for playing..like most FTP games it's probably takes a whole lot of grinding (or money)
I like the character designs, lore and the names a pretty cool.
Tutorial: Easy to follow - I prefer ranged elves in my RPGs anyway so Ashe? is probably the way i'd go to begin with..ohh ice, even better. Bit dry of a tutorial but got the job done. Also she looks like Noel Vermillion.
Graphically bright and not over done - s'alright.
Co-op vs AI - this is fun. Don't play Ryze as I have no idea what I'm doing but Ashe locks down the middle lane in the second game. No screaming was done by anyone which was nice.
I seem to have made enough IP/RP to get 3 starter characters, and the rotation is weekly. It appears to be a nice progression at the moment but i'm sure the grind will kick in soon. Got's to make that dollar bill 'yo.
Result: LoL is fun..fun enough to make me try DOTA2.
(5 hours downloading and a restart later)
I fucking hate Steam sometimes...well most of the time to be honest.
Dota2 has great UI and just general design but boy is there a lot going on here.
Picked 'beginner' as my level. Turns out that was a mistake.
Character designs: I prefer LoL, at least they have names rather than 'Dragon Knight'..seriously? Does he henshin? I bet he does.
He does. Should have called him Ryuki.
I really shouldn't have picked 'beginner'. Not designed for people who have played anything like an RTS before. I know how to click a mouse..thank you.
Oh this tree heal thing is pretty cool.
Courier's for items? That's a great idea.
Graphically it's what I would call a smoother version of Warcraft mixed with Pixar. I don't like Pixar. Yes I have no soul.
Okay..do you need to speak every time I click where to tell you to go. I know this is based on Warcraft but seriously? I wonder if there's an option to turn this off.
Not going well..lets finish off this tutorial and get into a botmatch..
So all characters are unlocked? To me that's a good thing and a bad thing. More player choice is always great but...no sense of progression through the master of unlocking? Probably just a personal thing..geeze these guys all look the same.
Drow..always bet on the Drow with a bow.
Right Botmatch..I'm going mid. I don't know which role I should be playing but archers are usually DPS..I should probably read up about this.
Err..shouldn't I have someone in this lane with me? Bots..anyone?
Abilities are similar to Ashe which is cool..but she doesn't seem to be an all out DPS character. Wind push thing is odd...is this a major component? Pushing the other team off weaker supports? Ice arrows are great for picking off other Champions or whatever they're called.
two towers by myself and the bots finally turn up..this is pretty cool too. Way more to take into consideration that LoL - I mean, wards? WTF. Accessibility is helped by the guides but..more work needs to be done here on my part.
Oh I got some drops. A cape and shoulders for someone I don't play...great.
money money money money money....I wonder how much Brad has spent.
I know there was a lot more negativity towards DOTA2, but that's purely because I played it second..it's not an overall commentary on the game itself. As HS said to me - DOTA2 is better but it takes longer to appreciate than LoL.
Showtime da!
Thanks for all the comments earlier. Honestly I will limit this to one a day so not to appear spammy.
For Day 2 I thought I'd switch around stuff and take DOTA2 first. I made notes during my dead times - so lots of notes. DOTA I play by myself with bots.
Tried Windranger - she seems fun and mostly an assist kill character. Item selections seems very important.
Big thing to note. Tower projectiles. Having played LoL first I was used to the green circle showing its range and whether you aggro it. Perhaps it's the noob in me, but the random aggro I got sometimes, even with pulls infront of me and the INSANE tracking distance annoyed the hell out of me..but you die, you learn.
Tried Luna next - that is not a Scots accent.
Stayed in the middle lane, upgraded her glaive and pew pew...ult and got 3 kills. Thats fun. Again I see the WoW Dark Elf thing here..but gods that accent.
Tried bounty hunter after listening to Brad talk about him on Idle Thumbs DOTA podcast..nope. Not for me.
In summary - learning characters against the AI before deciding who to main at the beginning seems like a good idea. Time to read up on lanes and who needs to be where. Thank the gods for all that time playing CC or Kite in MMOs. Good stuff with DOTA2 today.
Co-Op with players against AI.
Start with Katriana? Looks like an assassin to me..decide to play that way. Lie in wait in the grass and gank champions as they go by.
chat = top top bottom bottom bottom...errrrr, wait a sec.
Starts off well, we at the bottom do a good job UNTIL random guy who doesn't play the first 5 mins starts telling everyone what to do and going off at some guys build. Ignore and move on.
Probably not the way to play Katriana, die a lot but eh...continued moaning.
Next game with Ashe - call bottom again. Looks to be fine.
Some guy decides he wants to go mid with another guy...guy already there starts calling him noob and asks him to be reported. Roll eyes.
Goes well..apart from NOOB NOOB NOOB every so often. I love ice arrows.
Final game - Lux. ooooooooooooooooooooooooh baby yes.
Go bottom again with a very competent Jinx, we clean up the bottom lane damn fast..CC is fun with someone sniping.
Accidently kill Golem instead of Jinx..Jinx pissed and rightly so as I get ganked by the whole other team rolling by..oops.
PEW PEW PEW PEW.........PEEEEEWWWWWW
Apart from me not really understanding the jungling thing (sorry Jinx person) that went well.
TLDR- lots of home work to do.
aka 'Carry on my wayward bot'
Again thanks for all the helpful comments - today was a doozy.
Before starting I should mention that I currently play to the sounds of Motown...fyi.
Today I was joined by our own TobbRobb to guide (read troll) our way through Co-Op.
Team LoL started off today:
Having loved (and I mean LOVED) playing as Lux yesterday and as today was rotation day in LoL I just played her while I could in the two matches we played. TobbRobb(TR) went Yusuno then err Sin Lee?
First Co-Op match and TR just wanted to watch me rather than tell me what I should be doing..probably rolled his eyes a fair bit.
Lane Arguments FTW
Random person 'Can I go top?' Me 'Sorry, Nope' 'Them 'Awww'
Procing..this was something I didn't notice yesterday. Lux's E ball thing places a proc when it explodes. Autoattacking sets it off doing extra damage..cool.
Yusuno kills things..fast.
PENTAKILL!!!
Random mid lane dude 'Stop taking my kills' TR 'But I'm bored...'
Lux is skillshot based, so aiming is key...her ult straight down a line of heroes is super satisfying.
Easy win..just messing around.
2nd Match
comboing - TR kicks a hero into my CC for the kill...yesssss
Mayhem ensues, we wipe the floor with everyone just in our top lane.
12 min match before kill? I know it's just AI but we were laughing our heads off.
Things to take away - boots/speed are hyper important, as is positioning when playing a support role.
TLDR - Trolling AI is amusing.
After a lunch break, cat break, gym break and hoovering break we returned for:
DOTA2 Team:
I'll own up to a little DOTA2 time last night, random selected Warlock. In my notebook I have written the following:
Cool looking guy
Chains are sweet
OMFG O_O
Upon telling TR this he said that he had actually being nerfed recently and you can get 4 golems.
4
Golems.
Which brings me to my next side point before we get started. Macroing. I can imagine that macroing multiple characters in DOTA can get complex..and I wonder if LoL has a comparison?
We talked about the compendium and how it's not necessary but it can help you watch the league competition and you get free stuff. I said that the buying of the compendium would be the signal that DOTA had won me over. Not there yet.
TR went on to describe DOTA as being more complex but not necessarily deeper - there's just more going on. LoL is more straight forward but fun for it. I'd agree with that statement at the moment.
Looking at my picks (going into a botmatch with just the two of us) I went with Rubrik.
Fun stuff..especially nicking other peoples spells.
Again learning to play support..TR picked Tiny, threw everyone all over the place.
Flying goblins ftw
Denying - this was interesting. You take out your own creeps so that the other team can't gain the exp/gold. Not easy to do given I don't A-Click much and if you're not careful you'll end up helping the other team.
Holy shit the bots are steam rolling without us.
Gaaah 5 man gank squad are chasing me..ruuuuun.
Wow those bots be crazy.
I hate Luna..I really really hate Luna.
Match 2: Crystal Maiden and ? I didn't note it..Zeus?
I HATE LUNA - 'Bottom missing - bottom missing'
She's totally trolling me.
Support role, let the carry get all the last kills. Don't get any money can't buy items. Sucks but it's a team game for a reason.
positioning!
These bots are so OP - goddamnit Luna.
I like CC and allowing Carry to take stuff out effectively..Crystal Maiden seems pretty..erm..cool.
Okay, I think we've done every line from Mr Freeze now in the chat.
Win
Match 3 - AI up to medium, Death Prophet and Zeus
'Not a good lane synergy, oh well' - famous last words of TR
Hmm CC is kinda cool.
God damn Luna is in this AGAIN? 100+ characters and they be trolling me.
These bots are tough.
Waiting behind the lines, picking stuff for mana regen when I can afford it, and yes boots.
'TR, Where are you?' 'THEY'RE CHASING ME..AHHHHHHHH'
GHOST SPAM FT...oh crap how come there are 4 chaos knights? Khorne doesn't do magic, wtf!
'Err..I've got to go' = me being steamrolled by AI.
Ghost spa..oh screw it.
loss
So what did I learn, dear readers?
Speed, positioning, denying and knowing your role are SUPER important. No different from an MMO in that respect but just in micro here.
I like CC and direct damage Int users at the moment. Will be trying Agility and Strength tomorrow I think.
Warlock is OP
Bots are OP
Warlockbots are seriously OP.
Great thanks to TR for putting up with my craziness and the swedish heat. I think we genuinely had a good time just messing about..cause you know, this is a game, played for fun. Easy to forget that with all the hullabaloo surrounding it.
aka 'Work on your micro GEEZ' - Dudeglove
I know I said Strength and Agility for today but..today was a day of research. Of watching streams, reading and generally resting my poor aching hand. I don't have the greatest set-up in the world with a crappy dell inspiron laptop, wrist-rest mousemat and tecknet mouse on my painting table but you live with what you have.
See what I mean?
Anyway here's today's write up:
Watching some of the Noob stream last night (Liquid vs CIS) was a great help in explaining the importance of magic stick, Rochan, force staff and wards.
Never knew about melee and ranged creeps.
You can deny towers? oh shit son..
Denying really is the coolest thing ever.
Score isn't that important - it's exp and gold difference. farm farm farm.
As mentioned in comments tried recording so DOTA and LoL. Dota was juttery (expected due to writing to disk thats being used and cpu stuff) and LoL just decided not to record..oh well.
Now I'm gonna detour a bit as most of this is theorycraft - or learning what to theorycraft and just random thoughts I've had:
First up is the new ebook from Shoryuken regarding fighting games. It's been in my feed for a couple of days (I'm a KOF/Arc fan) and I thought I'd have a read of the first couple of chapters. A couple things stood out to me as being relevant to my current situation and common in many online games:
Proof reading in books is important, in blog posts..not so much.
The psychology of thinking one step ahead of your opponent - knowing what he will do and how to effectively counter it while also having an escape route. I know it's important in every competitive game from chess to American Football but it's not something you tend to consider without thinking about it.
Frametraps, footsies...momentum. It's all in DOTA and LoL.
I'm not a good fighting game player - I tend to play by instinct and get killed by Tager a lot.
Fighting games aren't team sports and they have a limited roster. Mind boggling variations available.
Combos. Engage, stunlock, FADC/Slow, Ult - kill. Same concept but now with Co-Op.
Execution of combos and timing, placement -all the same ideas.
Learning your side: Radiant/Dire have different lane advantages vs Seth Killian only being able to throw a Dragon Punch 40% time on the left hand side and still being a threat (according to the ebook).
Would pay to have Iori/Geese/Terry in DOTA/LoL (they are making a KOF moba..hmm)
GEESE *shakes fist*
It was only a quick read through but there's a lot for me to think about there and how I can apply it to my understanding of the genre.
My second bit of research is more to do with the mechanics and design of the games. I listened to Brad Muir on DOTA Today and he mentioned an article where one of the designers of LoL set out some of their design choices vs old DOTA. Remember this is from 2010 and from their perspective so don't..freak out or anything. I'm really interested in why certain mechanics are the way they are and why the devs choose to do things differently so:
The Dev 'Zileas' talks about 'Game Design Anti-Patterns' or just..convoluted design choices I guess which can either enhance gameplay or effect it negatively. He separates them out into categories of which I'll take some as well, giving my opinions:
'Power without Gameplay' - he talks about how passive auras don't have the same player satisfaction as direct action abilities like 'click to blow shit up' thus they've tried to mix active and passive buffs together so they're more useful/appreciated. As a guy who plays RPGs that's just...urgh. A buff is a buff. If you're team suddenly gets lifesteal or whatever because you picked a buff in your tree thats MASSIVE. It could change the whole flow of the game. Crystal Maiden is a favourite of mine due to the mana regen buff..oh and freezing people.
'Burden of Knowledge': using Bloodseeker's rupture as an example he talks about how high the threshold is for new players to get into these games. If you didn't know not to move with rupture on you, you'd never understand why you keep dying. This is a major difference between LoL and DOTA2 I feel - and why many new players prefer LoL as a gateway drug. It's more straightforward and easier to understand how things fit together. Once you get it though..you get it.
'Unclear optimisation': How to use your abilities and what items synergise with them is a probably both games suffer with for new players and something I haven't even begun to learn beyond 'boots, bloody boots'. (Sepultura ftw) The player guides in DOTA are great..it would be nice if more of them included the reasoning behind the choices in their mouse-over boxes.
'Fun fails to exceed anti-fun': Getting repeatedly smashed by the other, more experienced team is never fun. Mana burn for the burned is never fun..especially as it stops most characters from being able to interact with what's on the screen effectively. Balancing these problems is something both games need to do more with. LoL's 'oh shit' B button helps in some cases, as does a TP scroll but..if all you do is lose, you'll either get better or not come back. You've got to have the desire to get better and a game that fosters that will always be more popular.
There's more stuff in that post than I actually understand at the moment (or I may not understand any of it) so please do have a look. From a design perspective it's interesting.
Some quick final notes for today:
Denying is awesome - LoL does not have denying. Thats..sucks.
When I described denying to someone his reply was 'UGH THAT'S ALREADY TOO MUCH TO TAKE INTO ACCOUNT' Cap locks was obviously necessary.
Going back into League was kind of tough after so much DOTA yesterday and the towers hit like a goddamn brickhouse...but no Luna.
Riven in League is fun to play. Not used to having characters that only use cooldowns rather than mana. Do they balance the damage output accordingly?
I'm now coming around on the whole 'choice' thing between League and DOTA. Seeing other characters who are interesting to play as and being stuck to a couple is kinda sucky.
Did not play as Lux..probably coloured my experience.
They needed to sort out the commentary on those DOTA streams..couldn't hear half of what they said at the beginning with the picks and the banning stuff..so meta.
Apologies again for no real gameplay notes on Str/Agl. It's taken me a while to type this out to be fair. Tomorrow I'll get into strength (time willing) and have some more thoughts about the game design.
Oh and my Steam ID is Jazz and my LoL ID is JazzGB or Ahriman Efreet (long story).
Thanks for getting this far with me.
To be continued:
aka: 'This could turn Hare Krishna into a bad boy'
Me..earlier
Quick bits to get out the way:
My pc was running like crap last night, so I tried switching over to my 2007 MBP. After downloading everything it turns out you need 10.7. Grrr.
Thought it might be interesting to look at the original DOTA sometime..looked for my WC3 and FT dvds..couldn't find them, went on battle.net £10 each? Are you fucking kidding me? - two resellers later got the set for the price of one. Goddamn it Blizzard.
I did find my original Diablo/Starcraft and Warcraft CDs for my Power Mac...which is nice
This article from PC Gamer is a great look at early DOTA2 play by someone who can actually write 'Dota 2 has an absurd learning curve, but it’s the personal side that attracts me to it and that reminds me of improv. It’s not a one-to-one match: the aftermath of a bad improv show looks like a soul-searching pint in an Edinburgh beer garden, while a catastrophic Dota 2 game ends in a collective withdrawal from the process. Silence over Skype, muttered deadpan truths about feeding and failure. But there’s a common process of analysis and consolation that produces a technical solution by starting with each player’s implicit flaws and tendencies. The crusty mechanical layer fractures and reveals human working parts. Sometimes, the human working parts swear at you in Russian and abandon the match.'
But it's not as good as this related 3 part article by Quentin (Quinns) Smith.
'Tonight, after three bot games played with some of my Cool Runnings-like noob superteam, something clicked. I took my headphones off. I closed our Skype channel and gazed at the metropolis of dirty mugs beside the keyboard.
I get it now.
Here's your reason to play Dota 2, a reason Dota 2 players don't articulate because they're too busy playing Dota 2 and, frankly, the last thing you want on your team is more noobs.
Dota 2 is fencing.
That's the skill, and the appeal. I finally see it. You're fighting back and forth down these lanes, looking for an opening in the other heroes' defense. The other guy's too close to your tower, or too far from his friend, his ultimate skill's on cooldown, his health is low. Fights in other games last seconds. Fights in Dota 2 are dramatic; entire minutes of feints and narrow escapes. Duels that can span forests, roads and rivers without coming to an end.'
I need to learn more about what each specific role in the game is - ie carry, support, jungler, initiator? and nukes. I can guess what their basic requirements are but..when exactly do you go jungling? Is there a exact time during the game - say when you hit level 3 you pull back from the front line and go into the trenches as it were?
Aaaaanyway. Today was all DOTA2 all day. No League due to the above messing around taking up my morning.
Team DOTA2:
As promised it was mostly Strength characters today.
Fiyenyaa was kind enough to lend me some tips as to how Wraith Knight should work for a newb like me. I...didn't really feel it. I don't like playing physical 'smash their face in' type heroes..even if they do have a stun. Also the bots just left me high and dry.
Tidehunter - yeah, I can get behind this guy. I see why he needs the blink dagger to really be aggressive and his ult is awesome for combos..he just mows people down.
Bigb..i mean Lycan- YES..yes yes yes yes. Junglist massif, wolves..mass hysteria, cats and dogs living together, soloing Rashon, people dying left right and centre, sorted out my macros..god that was fun.
Sven - like Wraight Knight, just not my cup of tea.
Pudge - I can see the utility of the hook, but killing yourself with the cloud thing? Really have to be careful with that. Not bad, but...tricky. Oh and health bars covered each other so I died due to a creep blocking it..not cool.
Abaddon - nope...no despoiling was done today.
Kunkka - Yeah, cool. Passive is great but need to keep an eye on the cooldown..ghost ship is a laugh and the teleport would be good from ganking.
Beastmaster - nope.
Treant - Yup. Awesome. Healing and just taking everything they send at you. It took 4 of them to gank me, and only because I had no mana. Awesome.
I then had a look at the agility heroes for 2 matches:
Ember Spirit - I like his design and I can see there's something there I just...have an issue with it. I dunno.
Viper - I was sick and tired of seeing him (only had to deal with Luna twice thank god) so I thought i'd try him myself. Forget Warlock..holy crap this guy is terrible/awesome. Terrisome. Must be the simplest character I've played so far - once you have decent regen it's game over for the other team. 17 kills or something silly. Yeah it's bots but it feels good.
Final Thoughts:
Re: Jungling
Bots are beginning to piss me off, purely due to them stealing kills due to them picking dumbass heroes to go with my pick. Or it could be that I just suck.
I've pretty much come around on DOTA2 now...I'm going to need to put more time into LoL as I tend to start up DOTA2 instead and I'm still just playing botgames.
If anyone knows of any good articles/posts regarding the development or ideas behind either games I would appreciate you passing them on if possible. Might also be worth suggesting other mobas just to have a quick compare. I have Demigod somewhere and that Transformers one is browser based (even if they use those godawful movie designs..Drift is crying..somewhere on the Lost Light).
Once again thank you for all your comments.
aka: 'Fuck you Morgana'- Some whiney git.
Before I begin some quick notes:
Tried Transformers Universe - thats not a moba, nor is it any good. Ran like crap on my laptop but it is only in open beta. Made by the guys who brought you Runescape and...erm..
Surprised that there isn't a Warhammer 40k Moba. The setting is made for it and it's not like GW isn't being a complete licence whore at the moment. Also Pacific Rim.
Finally uninstalled Guild Wars 2..I don't know what that means, but it means something.
Bottles and Runes..bottles and runes.
Okay so, as promised it was all LoL all day:
I managed to play as Lux just before the switch over to the new champions..I'll admit I cried a little when she was no longer available. Will be grinding Lux - that sounds so dirty.
On the wonderful suggestions of you guys I picked up Morgana. Kayle..and I got Twisted Fate cause he looked cool.
Started with Morgana and I have to say I really like her. Puddle is great to farm with and the stun saved me more times than you can imagine.
Taric is the Luna of LoL. He never goes away, he never dies..gods I hate him.
I was trying to play support but Master Yi player decided to just do his own thing and ignore the stunned AI heroes. (still playing vs AI) Annoying.
Spell Vamp is great. Health of AOE even if it is nerfed is great.
Mana issues - look at your build.
Eventually won, zero co-ordination but eh, what do you expect.
Kayle next - Don't like her move animation.
Stun sucks. Die in seconds.
Hmm this flame sword thing procs on swing..need to up attack speed.
Why does everyone have xx_xx or 666 in their names? Sakura666? xxsoraiskingxx? is this the fucking twilight zone?
Eh, she's okay..too squishy to be a melee person from my experience.
Back to Morgana. Riven comes lane with me.
Loads of bitching from some guy about bot feeding
Stuns work well
more bitching - called out on it 'huurr look at my score compared to yours' - 'hurrr it's a team game dipshit and I'm playing support - if I had more kills than you I'd be doing it wrong..also it's an AI game..seriously?'
Eventually get through that...urgh.
Morgana again. Crocodile dude comes with on top.
Croc decides not to move past the 3rd tower, miles away from the xp.
'Fuck you Morgana' - reply 'Fuck you for being a pussy - get out here and earn that xp. Difficult to support someone who runs away' This game is making me evil.
Forumite tbk turned up to lay down some tips and play some games with me.
Tried Twisted Fate, had a hell of a fun time (we wiped the floor with the AI it 19 mins) but as tbk pointed out I had no idea how to play him. Card mechanic is awesome though. Teleported with his ult just before I got ganked by 3 of the AI..s'cool.
Back to Morgana. Had a really fun time just messing around and farming as support. Later informed that I should have just gone mid due to the puddle to farm it up. Flash, Hourglass and Rod of Ages are the way to go..but before 15mins (have to be honest..didn't really follow any of that but it's good to know)
So thanks to tbk for coming and riding the newbie train with me.
Final thoughts:
LoL is still pretty cool. I prefer being able to deny, but I made an effort to harass the AI so they wouldn't be within the XP area, thus we would out level them. I think it worked well.
So much more to learn - I'm not sure I like the invisibility in the grass but it helps de-aggro.
Whining about killstealing seems pointless unless you're the carry - and nobody knows if they're the carry in a beginners botmatch.
urgh those names and ugh Taric.
Thanks for keeping with me and the comments. I'll probably do another blog for week two otherwise this will probably crash the system or something.
TBC
aka 'Well that's clear as mud then.' - me
Well, gosh. It's a week today since I began this journey. I'd like to thank all of you who have commented or spent some time attempting to knock some sense into my brain, it's very much appreciated. Without you guys I don't think I would have ended up this far.
So the quick notes:
RIP Tommy Ramone. I grew up on the Clash, Ramones and it's sad to lose another.
Ancient Thai saying : 'Tiger balm is great for aching hands, not great for eyes.'
I've spent over 24 hours between the two of these games this week. I need a job.
You know what's a great palette cleanser for MOBAs? Brutal Doom.
I spent this morning with a couple of games of LoL - to be honest I spent most of this morning wanting to jump right back in with Morgana and Twisted Fate. Nearly pulled a Brad of 7am start..but my cat put an end to that by waking me up at 4am. Evil evil cat.
I had no idea there were skill trees in this game. Runes, Skill trees...this is madness. How do you get points in the skill trees? I dumped most of Morgana's into mana regen and movement speed..seemed like the right thing to do?
Played mid as suggested yesterday by tbk - farmed and rolled them right up. I didn't pick up the hourglass as I don't have flash yet due to levelling needed (again..wtf) Anyway lots of fun.
I broke for lunch and had a look at some Fiora builds. Oh dear...bad idea.
I played..no wait..I TRIED to play a jungling Fiora build. I had no idea what I was doing which lead to the guy playing vivi (FFIX)-esque character to keep saying 'go adc' I asked him to elaborate to which he replied 'go adc' - Attack Damage Carry? well considering he was supposed to be playing mid but moaning about how I wasn't helping him against Ryze..he actually surrendered. A bot match...as if it matters. However I accept that was probably my fault and he wasn't mean about it...it was just, frustrating...on both sides I would think.
That rather soured me on Fiora and jungling at length. Stick to what I understand before screwing up other people's enjoyment.
After a wee bit I went into DOTA2 with the idea of picking up where I left off with the Agility heroes.
Funny to note, it's been a week but I still haven't played against people yet...don't think it would be fair to the rest of the team. Nor have I played all the heroes.
Started with Medusa. I liked some of her stuff - her mana snake thing is cool but too tanky for my liking. Slow I guess.
Naga Siren: A beautiful model and great fun to play..if I knew what I was doing. I can imagine her scream would set up well with Tide.
Mirana: Meh...giant meh.
Lone Druid: Items on the bear? What madness is this? He's cool..I seem to like playing characters that have extra..erm...characters? Which brings us to:
Phantom Lancer - I enjoyed myself so much with this guy I played him 3 times in a row. Once you have all your abilities up and attack speed up..good luck stopping this guy. By the end my illusions were killing the bots by themselves. Oh and then there's the vanish....
Necrophos - kinda cool I guess. His aura slows/stops regen which is nice and he has heals..pretty tanky but slow. The hook stun is great.
Razor - Boring but effective. Press Q to farm with not much movement needed.
Final Thoughts:
It's been both a really long and yet really short week. If I didn't have my pull list coming in I wouldn't have spent money on anything but food...so I guess I'm saving money?
I last turned on my PS4 a week ago to play Wolfenstein. I..don't really like that game much. My ps2, ps3 and original xbox still get a load of play. Playing through the Drakengard and Kingdom Under Fire series.
I don't remember when I last turned on my WiiU. My gamepad is all dusty.
LoL has way more going on outside of the game itself than I knew. Masteries, runes..it's like World of Warcraft and must give a massive boost to those with a higher level - matchmaking must be tough.
I used bottles a lot more today - allowing you to stay in lane longer is always a good thing.
How do you level items? Diffusal blade (apparently a must have for PL) could be levelled..no idea how.
I'll be taking tomorrow off - thoughts on staying on this blogpost or making a new 'Week 2' post would be appreciated. Not sure which people would prefer.
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