League Of Legends Catch All

I am still Silver V, so I am seeing this strange deja vu of all AD carry, limited defense, so bear with me. I had to quit a lobby because the last player, who called mid, picked Jarvan mid, we had an Fiora up top, Udyr Jungle, Cait Bot, with a support of Ali. I had the gall to suggest that the mid caller pick an AP, he said AP is useless we did not need it. I just went buh by.

The grief I see for picking Gragas top is interesting. As is the grief I get for using Explosive Cask to save trapped characters, it may make Lee miss his Dragon Kick.

I have been ignoring a lot of players, come to think of it. Silver V is kind of filled with ass hats.

KingGorilla wrote:

I am still Silver V, so I am seeing this strange deja vu of all AD carry, limited defense, so bear with me. I had to quit a lobby because the last player, who called mid, picked Jarvan mid, we had an Fiora up top, Udyr Jungle, Cait Bot, with a support of Ali. I had the gall to suggest that the mid caller pick an AP, he said AP is useless we did not need it. I just went buh by.

An all AD team is a thing now. With the amount of armor shred you can buy, you don't necessarily need an AP. Jarven mid is also a thing, just like Lee, Zed and Talon (though assassins) and the rarer Monkey. Bruisers tend to dunk on squishy ap mids early and snowball from there.

Support stuff:

I don't played ranked and I'm guessing my eloish rating for normals is somewhere in silver. I very rarely see opponents pinking, maybe to the tune of one or two a game on average. With the Oracles timer, the counterwarding game feels more dynamic now, but like warding in general people have to buy into it.

I would like to note that I agree pinks have always been valuable in a game. The change is that with a ward stone your supports are warding more often and sometimes even doubling up (like warding with sight stone and then coming back and warding with pink, or jungler pinking dragon to ensure doing it later). I have seen a game where the enemy taric bought nothing but pink wards, probably went through about 7-15 by end of the game, which is a huge chunk of cash! I believe fuzz was the support on our side who was constantly annoyed by it. I have a few times bought two pink wards and pinked both the bot river bush and at dragon to clear enemy vision for our jungler and for a possible dragon later in the game. And the change to sightstone wards giving the full amount of gold instead of only 10 is also nice. My concern is the feeling alot of people are having towards support, the

KingGorilla wrote:

I cannot afford to counter pink if I am mid or top, and buy the necessary items.

While I understand that, saying that support can afford it isnt really correct (not saying that KingGorilla is saying this, just that it is a common claim and his quote made me shoot to it). Personally I think that if your lane is going really well then having the extra piece of mind of not only warding but clearing out their ward could really help. If you are doing horribly and missing all CS then yeah I can understand why you might not pink and really wouldn't expect it of you. Its the times where mid, top, or whoever is doing well and they refuse to buy any wards and then complain about map vision that urk me. Not saying our friendly gorilla would do anything like that. Support is the only lane that gets little to no cs. Combine this with most supports are unable to farm successfully late game do to our builds and masteries. Taric and leona can somewhat clear lanes decently near late game to try to get some much needed XP or gold, but some of the other supports are not so lucky. And while a sightstone might save us money, 3 wards are not enough to cover all the parts you might want vision. Many times I deploy 2 pinks and my 3 sightstone wards, pinks for baron and dragon and sightstone wards for key choke points near mid or bot since that is normally where you see the most team fights mid to late game.

All of this is my opinion so take it with a grain of salt. I love the support role and love to talk about the builds and strategies for it. But I have started to play support less because others in GWJ I queue with enjoy playing that role and because as a support it really depends on who you are supporting. We could voip to each other our every move but in many cases its best if we just work and play with the same idea. I like supporting a few specific GWJers because most of the times we have the same idea. Most of the time i see how they are moving their character and can guess what they want to try and then set myself up for it. This makes it so we are not clogging the voip down with us talking and not working against the small lag skype has. As an example of when relying on the moment of with a voip, there was one time where one of the GWJers said "and turn" in skype to go back in but by the time we all heard him he had already engaged and we missed our window to engage with him. And before the mumble and ventrillo lovers pipe in, yes those services have just as much if not more lag. usually when I am running both I hear skype come in first before vent so I am good with it (and yes you can tell the difference with most people's mics). Anyways if before that he had said "ok, lets turn soon and go back in on them" and then "and turn" we might of been more prepared and the hearing him say "and turn" would of came after we already reacted to seeing his character leeroy back in. problem is most of us and probably me chief among them think this stuff in our heads and forget to say it until its too late.

Complex wrote:

Lots of Stuff.

I have been buying pinks and playing the counter warding game alot more. It is just frustrating when the jungle doesn't take advantage of it. But it helps alot to get people into lane, and to counter aggression just by taking away vision. If i get the 25g from at least 1 of their wards then I really am only spending 25g to take away their vision. I run double gp5 and pinks now instead of one gp5 and a sightstone. Alot of times it will just keep the enemy jungler away, "well they pinked so I don't know if I'm going to get counter jungled, eff it i will just go mid and top." I won't go boots early because I know I will have vision and can adjust my positioning accordingly, then have boots for when they are needed. I play support alot differently then I used to.

I know exactly what you are saying when you only like supporting certain people, I can support Raven and Squee and never really have an issue of us thinking different things, I can see their positioning and play off of them. Read that they are going for trades and support lightly, then read that they are going for kills and drop all abilities to set it up. Push lanes and go back at similar times, make sure wards are up, can wonder off and not worry about it. Then I can play with friends that I learned to play the game with and we still can't get on the same page. Most of the time with Raven all he has to do is say "I want to kill that Draven" and I know that he is looking to go all in and drop everything so I can do the same and know that he will play off of it. Where as sometimes I think people are just farming so I will try to just deny/harass and then they will go all in and blow cooldowns in bad situations.

IntangibleFate wrote:
Complex wrote:

Lots of Stuff.

More Stuff

Frate, my brother in my eternal struggle of supporting.

Well said.

I was tempted to call black raven out as being a great example of AD Carries that are easy to get behind and easy to communicate with without actually needing to speak, but thought it would just inflate he ego, and then you go and do it. Now there is no stopping him. And Squee? he still plays this game? Seriously though, he is also ready to pounce on opportunities, though he is one you need to know one important thing compared to black raven. If Squee goes in, he is going in hard. Someone is going to die, try to make sure he isn't the one that dies.

Example of bad AD Carries? Me.

Complex wrote:
IntangibleFate wrote:
Complex wrote:

Lots of Stuff.

More Stuff

Even More Stuff

I only brought up Raven because me and him have had this exact conversation. He also brought up you as a good support, but I didn't say it >_>

And true with Squee it's less play off of and follow blindly into carnage and help him come out on top, which he usually does, even if I am not there. I just take Squee's philosophy of playing Blitz and apply that to all of his characters. He is going to do some crazy stuff, but by the time they figure out what he is doing it is usually too late and he wins.

I am a passive AD carry and fail at trades most of the time, And don't capitalize on leads most of the time. I go back at bad times, I don't all in when I should, I target the wrong people, then switch targets way to late or way to early. Come back in when I shouldn't, leave when I should have stayed. But occasionally I get all of the calls in my head right and can carry. I usually just need a good support to drag me along, or an even worse ADC on the other side that I can outplay. I very rarely win lanes completely and destroy, but I also very rarely completely lose lanes that spiral out of control to end games.

You describe the very reason why I have such difficulty playing bottom lane. I am so accustomed to solo laning that I instantly act on the slightest perceived advantage, and I always feel out of sync with the other person. They have no way of knowing whether I'm going in just to fire one shot, if I want to trade and back off, or if I want to all-in. I tend to lane very aggressively, and those decisions change from moment to moment. Without having a good mind-meld with the other person, I have to wait for larger advantages so I can unequivocally state "okay, at the next opportunity ult their kog and we are going all-in to kill him." And then that doesn't change unless a jungler shows up or someone eats a big Nidalee spear. I don't like having to wait for big advantages, because the other guys can see them just as easily.

Also I am a lousy eyeball judge of what will happen in a fight once Exhaust comes in to play. It's just not something I have to worry about in other lanes. So many failed dives due to that silly spell.

I think the simplest way to counter a pink ward is to ward where that pink is not, that is simple lane awareness. Bot lane can ward near the tri-bush, further up river, ward near golem, ward near dragon. If you had a sight ward up in the first place, you should see where the pink ward went, so you can place your subsequent wards accordingly.

When I see people stymied by a pink ward, likely it is that they think Wards will only ever go into the small bush at either river mouth, and that is it. You can also chill out for 2 minutes and a half, re-ward and push. The rise in pink warding also has me rethinking clairvoyance.

You could also buy a sight stone, and just spam wards. The thing is, you need to place a lot of wards for Sightstone or Ruby Sight Stone to make economic sense. It is not giving much health, and the math I saw was 7 Wards for Sightstone, another 8 or 9 for Ruby before it is more worth it than buying a Health Gem, and just ala-carte wards. So in the course of a 40 minute game, you are talking a new ward every 2 minutes. And this can be tough to do, and it can be tough to do while placing wards in useful places. Especially early on, leaving the lane to ward unnecessarily is very risky.

IntangibleFate wrote:

...Read that they are going for trades and support lightly, then read that they are going for kills and drop all abilities to set it up. Push lanes and go back at similar times, make sure wards are up, can wonder off and not worry about it. Then I can play with friends that I learned to play the game with and we still can't get on the same page.

:nod:

But sometimes even our regular groups can't get on the same page and we go for 4 games in a row where we utterly fail at responding to coordinated play and somehow struggle to decisively win a single lane over the entire evening. Just gotta learn from the mistakes as best I can and hope for better luck another evening.

Riot has a sense of humor... nerf Jarvan in today's patch, and then put him on sale.

KingGorilla wrote:

The rise in pink warding also has me rethinking clairvoyance.

I don't really play LoL these days but I enjoy watching competitive play and hearing the discussion. I loved Clairvoyance when I played support. I seem to remember that it was upgraded at some point such that something happened to revealed enemies -- they couldn't stealth, or you still had sight on them for a little while after the main AOE vision dissipated, or something? Am I remembering that correctly? I bet the spell would be taken more often if the enemy team didn't see the beacon indicating its use, or if the indicator was tied to the casting champion (e.g. small floating-eye effect) instead of the cast location.

psoplayer wrote:
IntangibleFate wrote:

...Read that they are going for trades and support lightly, then read that they are going for kills and drop all abilities to set it up. Push lanes and go back at similar times, make sure wards are up, can wonder off and not worry about it. Then I can play with friends that I learned to play the game with and we still can't get on the same page.

:nod:

But sometimes even our regular groups can't get on the same page and we go for 4 games in a row where we utterly fail at responding to coordinated play and somehow struggle to decisively win a single lane over the entire evening. Just gotta learn from the mistakes as best I can and hope for better luck another evening. :o

I think we get on the same page a fair amount when we have 5. When we have 4 that 1 person not being on voice really messes us up.

Cyranix wrote:
KingGorilla wrote:

The rise in pink warding also has me rethinking clairvoyance.

I don't really play LoL these days but I enjoy watching competitive play and hearing the discussion. I loved Clairvoyance when I played support. I seem to remember that it was upgraded at some point such that something happened to revealed enemies -- they couldn't stealth, or you still had sight on them for a little while after the main AOE vision dissipated, or something? Am I remembering that correctly? I bet the spell would be taken more often if the enemy team didn't see the beacon indicating its use, or if the indicator was tied to the casting champion (e.g. small floating-eye effect) instead of the cast location.

It gives vision for a few seconds if they leave the circle. I think there is an indicator when you use it, kind of like smite (which i think also has it, a small glow on body).

Reason why people dont use it now days? Flash Exhaust. Only person I have seen use it much is black raven on lulu because he does exhaust CV. Exhaust is too important bot lane to give it up, and flash is a needed escape for most supports. Even if u want to claim that your tanky and dont need, flash is great for engages as well. and exhaust is really good for jungle ganks.

I miss CV, it was a fun spell to use to keep constant track of the jungler.

I love CV as a concept but the problem with playing solo pubs is I don't think anyone pays attention unless you ping frantically after each CV. I used to take it almost exclusively, but in this crazy gap-closing bruiser meta I don't dare take anything but Flash and Exhaust on ANY support.

Support is probably my second most frequently played role after mid, and I really enjoy it... mostly. My problem with playing support is that the experiences are often highly polarized: we either win the lane solidly (which of course is always fun) or get completely run over. There is scarcely any middle ground. With the latter, getting completely run over bot lane tends to result in lost games and, as a support that does little damage, I often feel pretty helpless to turn things around.

I think a lot of that has to do with support itemization, which while mostly better than it was in Season 2 I think is still inferior to itemization for any other role. I tend to play Soraka and Sona particularly as AP support, 9/0/21 with AP quints to get some extra poke in the laning phase, but with S3 itemization that pins me to a very stringent build order... p. stone, wards, boots, wards, sightstone perhaps, kage's pick for a little more poke and G/5, etc. If lane goes badly or I just don't get a lot of assists during the laning phase, it takes a LONG time to get to the point where I'm moving beyond the "gotta have" items. I'd love to see more ways for support to make coin besides p. stone/kage's pick and G/5 quints, but remember all too well what happened with p. stone and heart of gold when those items became too appealing to bruisers/junglers.

I've toyed with the idea of taking CV on Lux, one to piss off the jungler, and two to snipe kills better. I'd rather not be in range to ignite with her anyway.

IntangibleFate wrote:

I've toyed with the idea of taking CV on Lux, one to piss off the jungler, and two to snipe kills better. I'd rather not be in range to ignite with her anyway.

yeah, only problem with that is keeping tract of the jungler in your mind, while doing cs, while moving to advoid harass, while harassing enemy. Unless you save it just for your ults, then it looses half its value.

Complex wrote:
IntangibleFate wrote:

Lots of text.

Even more text.

Ego successfully increased :3 . But seriously, this is why I like running bot lane with our premades and not in solo queue. I'm sure I've been on skype with complex when I'm doing solo ranked support, just yelling at my adc for stupid things. Bot is probably my favorite lane, but every once in awhile I need to step away and pew pew some things mid. Though I will not subject you guys to my mid Nocturne anymore. Those games were pretty bad...

Complex wrote:

Reason why people dont use it now days? Flash Exhaust. Only person I have seen use it much is black raven on lulu because he does exhaust CV. Exhaust is too important bot lane to give it up, and flash is a needed escape for most supports. Even if u want to claim that your tanky and dont need, flash is great for engages as well. and exhaust is really good for jungle ganks.

I miss CV, it was a fun spell to use to keep constant track of the jungler.

I love CV. I've annoyed a few junglers with it pretty badly, particularly one Udyr who I CV'd every time it was off CD. God he was so pissed for the first 15 minutes of that game. I do run CV/Exhaust on Lulu a lot. Her and maybe Janna are two champs that could get away with it. Sure I've flash ulted a few people as Lulu, but the amount of built in escape on Lulu I can get away without flash. Exhaust is too strong a spell to not bring bot, and with CV/Flash, the enemy duo could take advantage of the fact you don't have the summoner for trades.

I have been tempted to play more Jana games so that I could bring back clairvoyance, but a lot of times I am forced to be tank support due to our lack of tank. Or forced to do a character with hard cc since Jana has a slow and skill shot knock up but no stun. Maybe next time we play keep the ad carry alive I will Jana and just ult when enemy team dives in.

Complex wrote:

I have been tempted to play more Jana games so that I could bring back clairvoyance, but a lot of times I am forced to be tank support due to our lack of tank. Or forced to do a character with hard cc since Jana has a slow and skill shot knock up but no stun. Maybe next time we play keep the ad carry alive I will Jana and just ult when enemy team dives in.

And shield the rat to 1v1 the Olaf. Cause about half the games I play Twitch, they have an Olaf...

There is such a thing as over pinking in the days of sightstones. The winner just comes back and sightstone wards nearby but out of range of the pink.

And if you do that to a guy that buy's 15 pinks, you're gonna end up a hell of a lot better at whatever your fighting or support role is than the guy pinking so much. 3-4 pinks a game really should do it for a 45 minute game. If you want to clear craploads of wards, buy an oracles for 5 minutes when baron is starting to get thought about, it's only the price of having 3 of your pinks cleared in the net result.

I've actually gotten more excited, not annoyed, when i get super pinked against bot lane. My first thought is, boy he's gonna suck mid game when i have items and he doesn't.

Then you just ward where you can, maybe it's further up behind your tri bush, etc.

Fuzzballx wrote:

There is such a thing as over pinking in the days of sightstones. The winner just comes back and sightstone wards nearby but out of range of the pink.

And if you do that to a guy that buy's 15 pinks, you're gonna end up a hell of a lot better at whatever your fighting or support role is than the guy pinking so much. 3-4 pinks a game really should do it for a 45 minute game. If you want to clear craploads of wards, buy an oracles for 5 minutes when baron is starting to get thought about, it's only the price of having 3 of your pinks cleared in the net result.

I've actually gotten more excited, not annoyed, when i get super pinked against bot lane. My first thought is, boy he's gonna suck mid game when i have items and he doesn't.

Then you just ward where you can, maybe it's further up behind your tri bush, etc.

just make sure your new ward placement still give ample time to for warn a jungle advance. Getting creative with ward placement is good to off balance pink users, but placing a ward to avoid the pink that gives hindered vision can hurt you and give their team an easier time ganking you. and of course the battle of the pinks can be situational. If the other team has an evelynn, teemo, shaco, akali, or twitch, then as a support you might need to buy pinks more often then you might normally to counter the invisibility during team fights. and oracles is great if they are pinking or warding alot, but if you are non tanky support then you just made yourself a huge target. Could end well with the focus on you instead of your ad carry allowing them to clean up, though if you get instant killed and ad carry still dies afterwards then it could be bad (ie mid and jungler comes down for a 4 man tower dive of doom!) I know you are one of the people that likes to play support alot (a lulu fan like lenthan if I recall). I remember season 2 had a ward placement map, i dont know if anyone updated that for the s3 changes (river had some slight changes which effects ward's vision). I think I have seen you do the common ward placement of the corner outside of bottom bush. its a single ward that can handle both tri bush and river entrance if your are playing on the blue buff side when not pushed to tower, though it is commonly used for both sides. I know when I play jungle its sometimes a mistake of mine to come down river when i am on the blue buff bot side instead of using their jungle side to come bot avoiding that river ward. The placement of that ward is sometimes tricky, if its too close to the wall you loose valuable down river vision, so for all supports out there, maybe try a custom game to see which ward placement gives the best vision. another fun trick is instead of warding dragon ward near blue entrance. sure you wont have vision of dragon but its great for seeing when their jungler comes for a gank or when blue buff is up and such. and it isnt pinked too often.

Yes, complex, dying could be bad. I had no idea.

You guys think too much.

and how.

It's fascinating to hear what my GWJ supports are saying about me. Apparently I'm an aggressive player! On the reg though, don't be afraid to tear me apart because I'm loud, assertive, and/or played more games of LoL than you. In fact I encourage it, it's interesting to read. Also, garunteed I've played fewer games as a support than you.

I lane as though my support will play perfectly. I expect my support to do nothing but keep me alive and ensure I farm and kill as much as possible. During team fights, I expect my support will do nothing in team fights but do their best to peel for me, or disable the enemy carry

In return for all their service, my teammates should be able to count on me to pump out the damage, and/or be such a big threat that the enemy team must spend everything they got to dive me (then get cleaned up by Crinkle). Those late game team fights are where I'm supposed to be a beast. In close games agaisnt people we hate (see last night, GREAT GAMES) I've got my pride to uphold, and I've got that comrade pressure on me because I like you guys and don't want to let you down

Hey, baby. I don't think you're too aggressive.

Fuzzballx wrote:

Yes, complex, dying could be bad. I had no idea.

I noticed!

Jow wrote:

looked up a couple of other GWJers to compare - none of em run Apen marks for AD either... did this shift happen about the time they nerfed Pen runes in general?

When the Season 3 changes rolled in and ArPen runes got nerfed a bit, straight AD runes became the standard. Even before S3, you had several pro AD carries taking AD runes over ArPen as last hitting was that much easier. With the changes, the damage gained from AD runes out performs ArPen runes without any items taken into account for pure auto attack damage.

In fact, I have not tried it myself, but heard of AP mids taking AD marks instead of MPen or AP marks as the AD makes early trading a last hitting much easier as well. An interesting thought.

Just played one with a Leona whom took the fog of war as a personal insult. We saw everything. It was awesome.

There's nothing better than beating someone who runs his mouth mid-game and whines at the end.