ChaosHatHop, hop, hop, HA!Trick of the lightRegistered Userregular
edited April 2012
Some responses to other people:
Singed initiation isn't that great, it's one person and he just has to run in there, anyone with a slow or snare could stop him.
Urgot has a similar problem but it's worse since the swap takes a while, and it takes a member of your team and puts it in the middle of theirs, which is not necessarily the optimal place for Urgot to be.
Nocturne is probably tier 2 by my definition at least. Good range but all he can do is apply a soft CC to one target (granted, it might be a very GOOD target).
The top tier should be something that heavily disrupts a lot of people on the other team reliably (ie, Morgana, Leona's ult stun can be walked out of to get just a slow instead), is fast (so the enemy team doesn't have time to react or move), isn't positioning reliant (this generally means has a big range so you can just grab anyone and go, Amumu for example, Leona has to target the AD carry and get the stun off to work best), and ideally is someone on the team that can allow a dive (Malphite can tank tower very strongly, for example).
Working with that definition, hard single target lockdown can be fantastic tier 2 but usually that kind of stuff is best applied to the carries which can be the hardest people to initiate on.
Honestly initiation can be many things and it's hard to codify. If you're trying to initiate on a team that is fleeing, Singed works amazing. If you're trying to dive an inhibitor turret, not really.
Edit: Regarding Blitz, undeniability/targetability is probably super important too. Blitzcrank works really well if you can grab someone, unfortunately they can just stand behind the minion wave or space themselves well. Compared to Amumu (sorry to keep going back to him, but his initiation is amazing) he can grab a minion as long as it's in the general area and then ult. He can flash up, bandage toss and ult effectively (this is not as effective on Blitz).
I think Morgana is so high because of bind, not her ulti. If you catch an out of position squishy with a binding, it starts the fight on a really favorable ground for you.
ChaosHatHop, hop, hop, HA!Trick of the lightRegistered Userregular
The bind is not tier 1 initiation at all. I brought up the bind. It can be blocked, dodged, and isn't necessarily a reason to dive a tower. It really doesn't even stop the person you hit from casting or autoattacking. Definitely not top tier. Solid 2 though.
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AriviaI Like A ChallengeEarth-1Registered Userregular
@schuss yeah, no idea where my headset is. I'm out for this week again, bleh.
So I'm sitting on 13000 IP......what do? Akali and another runepage just for her? (If so what runes usually?) Nothing really jumps out at me...I blame DoTA2.
More champs. Once you have your rune basis, always more champs.
Akali works well enough with a standard runepage, frankly, and I don't think she suits your play style enough to deserve her own rune page.
Singed initiation isn't that great, it's one person and he just has to run in there, anyone with a slow or snare could stop him.
Urgot has a similar problem but it's worse since the swap takes a while, and it takes a member of your team and puts it in the middle of theirs, which is not necessarily the optimal place for Urgot to be.
Nocturne is probably tier 2 by my definition at least. Good range but all he can do is apply a soft CC to one target (granted, it might be a very GOOD target).
The top tier should be something that heavily disrupts a lot of people on the other team reliably (ie, Morgana, Leona's ult stun can be walked out of to get just a slow instead), is fast (so the enemy team doesn't have time to react or move), isn't positioning reliant (this generally means has a big range so you can just grab anyone and go, Amumu for example, Leona has to target the AD carry and get the stun off to work best), and ideally is someone on the team that can allow a dive (Malphite can tank tower very strongly, for example).
Working with that definition, hard single target lockdown can be fantastic tier 2 but usually that kind of stuff is best applied to the carries which can be the hardest people to initiate on.
Honestly initiation can be many things and it's hard to codify. If you're trying to initiate on a team that is fleeing, Singed works amazing. If you're trying to dive an inhibitor turret, not really.
Edit: Regarding Blitz, undeniability/targetability is probably super important too. Blitzcrank works really well if you can grab someone, unfortunately they can just stand behind the minion wave or space themselves well. Compared to Amumu (sorry to keep going back to him, but his initiation is amazing) he can grab a minion as long as it's in the general area and then ult. He can flash up, bandage toss and ult effectively (this is not as effective on Blitz).
Everything in Singed's kit makes him better at initiation. Gas on the way in means anyone trying to get past him to the squishies has damage already (and I probably have Rylais to slow them). Goop keeps people where you want them, and can be used to prevent a charge or an escape. Fling gets someone out of position, or gets someone off your carry. And ult lets him eat that CC, as well as all the damage heading his way. Turret? Run in, fling whoever is guarding the turret into my team, goop past the turret to slow reinforcements, then run around with ult gas hitting shift 4 while my armor and regen let me ignore the turret for a while. It's one of the stronger places to initiate, since Singed is weaker to kiting, but if they fall back, we just eat the turret.
I guess if we're talking "who has one move that fucks the whole other team", sure he isn't top tier (though goop approaches Leona ult in that regard). But in terms of who can say "we're fighting now" and be the first in the fight, Singed es #1.
Goum ive punched and crunched on bs vs lw, bs beats lw until you are talking about 250ish armor when you have 2.0 as.
Black cleaver is amazingly good on ashe, after IE and PD. Her autocrit is not that statistically significant. Black cleaver is pretty much not good on any champ that depends on abilities to push damage, like Riven.
Also vs tanks, or things with lots of armor, what matters for a carry is that you just outlifesteal their damage, not kill them faster. Often being able to kill the things that can kill you is much more important. amumu has 350 armor? Big deal, as long as the enemy ap carry, ad carry and bruiser all have less than 250 you should get a bc over lw.
As have I and the reasonable break even is around 100 armor.[in fact I did it in "this" thread]
If you're calculating straight DPS you're doing it wrong. What you want to be calculating is actual damage/time. As in figuring out when attacks will hit and how much expected damage each will be doing. Then calculating the break even.
The cleaver does start doing more damage after the second or third attack [one to two stacks of the debuff] and starts landing attacks faster. But the damage advantage gained from
A: the first attack coming at time zero
b: the absolute damage advantage on the first attacks
makes the break even point much higher than the raw dps difference would suggest. At the end you may have the black cleaver doing 100 more DPS to targets, but by the time it gets to that DPS advantage the Last Whisper will have dealt 4-500 more raw damage. Which is 5 seconds of auto attacks at +100 dps to recover from.
5 seconds is an eternity a team fight, so much so that your target will be long dead before the black cleaver makes up the damage.
Now this doesn't hold as true for characters that get AS buffs[that don't get them to 2.5 AS without BC] but it does hold true for Ashe.
Edit: The short answer was that you needed targets with lots of [3000+] hit points and little armor for the BC to be worth it on ashe, because the low hit point characters would be dead[only counting attacks from Ashe and no one else] long before the black cleaver made up the burst damage disadvantage.
Except it isnt entirely true. If your talking about low hp low armor targets, BC is better because you attack faster, 40% armor pen against a target with little armor, matters VERY LITTLE in terms of TTK when comparing the penetration amounts.
In raw numbers against a low armor low hp target like a carry, the BC significantly outperforms the LW on every level starting at the second hit. The second hit will come sooner, it will also hit harder.
Then you have high HP, medium armor targets like bruisers and well built ap carries, again the BC comes out significantly ahead starting at the second hit, just because of the increased attack speed, and higher base ad advantage the BC gives you. The BC also gives secondary advantages allowing you to kite while shooting better, by shortening your attack animation time.
Then you have the High HP, High armor, low DPS tank types. These you just need enough DPS to outheal, not enough DPS to kill quickly. LW does better here, but as a carry this is not an important attribute. The TTK values against these targets are also much more insignificant.
BC wins in every category that matters when I play carry, I havent purchased a LW in ages on ashe, frankly I would rather have another PD than a LW.
Also you cannot discount the important secondary benifit of the BC, it shreds armor on the target, so your entire team is doing more damage, leading to faster ttk's on focused targets than the lw can even dream to achieve.
LW is inefficient for any ad carry that has to rely on autoattacks as a primary source of damage.
I'll often get Last Whisper just because it is cheaper than a Black Cleaver. I'm often at the 35 minute mark trying to farm 500 gold as fast possible to get my last whisper before the next team fight.
Edit - But that doesn't change the fact that BC is a more efficient item than LW and I will always take it over the LW if I can afford it at the time. BC also applies armor reduction, which the rest of your team can take advantage of.
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SaldonasSee you space cowboy...Registered Userregular
Ah, it's funny how the same arguments pop up every thread.
So i was thinking after reading the item tear list by Elements that what he really should be doing is a tier list for initiates and pokes since i notice most teams forget to even take one when they are setting up their teams. I took a crack at it below on what I think is the best initiates but I'm wondering what you guys think.
Is this solely how strong they initiate or also what they offer to a team? I'd say Fizz's initiation alone is probably top tier, it has great range, damage, and is an aoe cc. It is at the very least better than Chogath who is a crap shoot.
Morgana is rated WAY too high, her initiation is very soft (does not instantaneously do CC or all of it's damage, can be broken beforehand), and relies on flash. If you're trying to rate COUNTER initiation, I guess you could put Morgana in that tier. She's also really squishy and needs Zhonya's to have T1 initiation. Catching someone with a Q is a good poke and can be something you initiate on, but only if the enemy team is really out of place (ie, they cannot fight with the rooted person where they are, it is less useful under their tower). Compare Morgana to Sejuani, who can charge forward and punish people with a 70% slow, and has a long range, instant stun AoE ultimate. Yet Sejuani is much lower.
Conversely, why is Kennen so low? Unlike Morgana, Kennen has innate tools to thrust himself forward into an enemy team and with his combo he can stun people MUCH faster. It's also harder for people to run out of, and it will grab people who wander into the aoe (as opposed to Morgana who won't catch someone who enters the range later).
Initiation should be ranked higher based on: the reliability and consistency of initiation, prioritizing range and CC (Ashe ult, Sejuani ult) or the ability to jump into the enemy team and perform your initiation (Malphite, Amumu, Kennen, etc). Then you can consider how often they can do it, and what their initiation skills beyond their ult are.
My tier 1 initiators are probably (in rough order): Amumu, Sejuani, Malphite, Nautilus, Maokai, Alistar, Hecarim, Kennen. Gragas I'm kind of on the fence on. It has really good range and can be very powerful but it can be inconsistent. The inconsistency is probably what shunts it into a tier 2 area with Morgana.
Just my opinion though, I'd be interested in seeing what other people think.
I was basing it on the strength of the initiate and if it leaves the player in a good position to help with the team fight afterwards. I also assumed that the initiate worked and thus why i put morg so high.
My morg assumption is by late game she has hourglass and flash up. but your right I may have put her to high. She also has her stunlock initiate though its not as good.
Kennen is so low because i think if he inits rather than saving it till after the init it puts him at a disadvantage because he doesn't build tanky enough. but you could be right.
Agreed though I think reliability and consistency should have been a factor and that would majorly change the list but i didn't want to bring the players skill into the mix to much.
Your list seems good but I'm surprised you ignored wukong. his init is very good even though the kit kinda sucks right now.
Mux
n. 1. Dirt; filth; muck.
v. t. 1. To mix in an untidy and offensive way; to make a mess of.
So I'm sitting on 13000 IP......what do? Akali and another runepage just for her? (If so what runes usually?) Nothing really jumps out at me...I blame DoTA2.
More champs. Once you have your rune basis, always more champs.
Akali works well enough with a standard runepage, frankly, and I don't think she suits your play style enough to deserve her own rune page.
My problem right now is that I look at the champs available and I say "So what?" There are so few that are drastically different that interest me. Unless I'm playing with you and the Mainers (in which case I'm Soraka) I don't actually -feel- like playing anyone. I log in and do a botmatch with someone who can make sure that 4 morons don't lose to the bots, and then I go play DoTA 2. I don't even recall what I spent my IP on last time.
So I'm sitting on 13000 IP......what do? Akali and another runepage just for her? (If so what runes usually?) Nothing really jumps out at me...I blame DoTA2.
More champs. Once you have your rune basis, always more champs.
Akali works well enough with a standard runepage, frankly, and I don't think she suits your play style enough to deserve her own rune page.
My problem right now is that I look at the champs available and I say "So what?" There are so few that are drastically different that interest me. Unless I'm playing with you and the Mainers (in which case I'm Soraka) I don't actually -feel- like playing anyone. I log in and do a botmatch with someone who can make sure that 4 morons don't lose to the bots, and then I go play DoTA 2. I don't even recall what I spent my IP on last time.
If you are only playing bot games then it doesn't matter, just hold on to it until a champ comes along that interests you.
If you are just logging in to play a bot match to get your ip each day before leaving to play Dota 2 though.....just play Dota 2 I guess.
I mean, are you having fun playing LoL, or are you just logging in out of habit?
NNID: delphinidaes Official PA Forums FFXIV:ARR Free Company <GHOST> gitl.enjin.com Join us on Sargatanas!
The bind is not tier 1 initiation at all. I brought up the bind. It can be blocked, dodged, and isn't necessarily a reason to dive a tower. It really doesn't even stop the person you hit from casting or autoattacking. Definitely not top tier. Solid 2 though.
She has a 2 inits and a zone control spell though I think that puts are at the top of the t1 list IMO but i don't know if i would put her in a god tear.
Mux
n. 1. Dirt; filth; muck.
v. t. 1. To mix in an untidy and offensive way; to make a mess of.
Ah, it's funny how the same arguments pop up every thread.
It is almost as if we play a game with a lot of complex variables in it prior to human beings acting in unpredictable ways to complicate the scenario through their varying styles of execution.
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Custom SpecialI know I am, I'm sure I am,I'm Sounders 'til I die!Registered Userregular
So I'm sitting on 13000 IP......what do? Akali and another runepage just for her? (If so what runes usually?) Nothing really jumps out at me...I blame DoTA2.
More champs. Once you have your rune basis, always more champs.
Akali works well enough with a standard runepage, frankly, and I don't think she suits your play style enough to deserve her own rune page.
My problem right now is that I look at the champs available and I say "So what?" There are so few that are drastically different that interest me. Unless I'm playing with you and the Mainers (in which case I'm Soraka) I don't actually -feel- like playing anyone. I log in and do a botmatch with someone who can make sure that 4 morons don't lose to the bots, and then I go play DoTA 2. I don't even recall what I spent my IP on last time.
If you are only playing bot games then it doesn't matter, just hold on to it until a champ comes along that interests you.
If you are just logging in to play a bot match to get your ip each day before leaving to play Dota 2 though.....just play Dota 2 I guess.
I mean, are you having fun playing LoL, or are you just logging in out of habit?
I try to just get a bot game in every day for the IP myself, but that's because with my new(ish) job I don't have time for full games.
As a matter of fact, last night I had the best bot game EVER. During champ select I said all push. all mid. all game. And they were actually on board with it! Took first tower after we killed the mid twice, which (due to the AI) turned the game into an All Mid match of us vs bots. It was so much fun. We took base tower at like 8:40 or something, finished the game a couple minutes later. Seriously, best bot game ever.
So I'm sitting on 13000 IP......what do? Akali and another runepage just for her? (If so what runes usually?) Nothing really jumps out at me...I blame DoTA2.
More champs. Once you have your rune basis, always more champs.
Akali works well enough with a standard runepage, frankly, and I don't think she suits your play style enough to deserve her own rune page.
My problem right now is that I look at the champs available and I say "So what?" There are so few that are drastically different that interest me. Unless I'm playing with you and the Mainers (in which case I'm Soraka) I don't actually -feel- like playing anyone. I log in and do a botmatch with someone who can make sure that 4 morons don't lose to the bots, and then I go play DoTA 2. I don't even recall what I spent my IP on last time.
If you are only playing bot games then it doesn't matter, just hold on to it until a champ comes along that interests you.
If you are just logging in to play a bot match to get your ip each day before leaving to play Dota 2 though.....just play Dota 2 I guess.
I mean, are you having fun playing LoL, or are you just logging in out of habit?
I try to just get a bot game in every day for the IP myself, but that's because with my new(ish) job I don't have time for full games.
As a matter of fact, last night I had the best bot game EVER. During champ select I said all push. all mid. all game. And they were actually on board with it! Took first tower after we killed the mid twice, which (due to the AI) turned the game into an All Mid match of us vs bots. It was so much fun. We took base tower at like 8:40 or something, finished the game a couple minutes later. Seriously, best bot game ever.
I'm not trying to say bot games are bad I play a fair amount of them myself. It just seems like he logs in to play 1 bot game then goes and plays Dota2. He also isn't interested in any of the champs which makes me think he may just not be interested in the game.
I personally don't get it as I find Dota 2 to be vastly inferior in every way to LoL but to each their own.
NNID: delphinidaes Official PA Forums FFXIV:ARR Free Company <GHOST> gitl.enjin.com Join us on Sargatanas!
Hooks/dives move a member of your team to their team
Peels move a member of their team to your team
Initiation is an ability that gives your team the advantage immediately as the fight starts
Roots stop an enemy from moving[so allowing your team to converge]
Poke deals damage at range and generally defines a zone in which an enemy must either engage or retreat.
In general characters with dives are necessary for suppressing the enemy carries. Characters with hooks good for getting in range for an initiation. Roots are good for setting up poke/peel/initiation. Peels for separating out their team to create 5v4's and initiation for starting and ending a fight. If we were to rate pure team fight value we would probably put root/initiation on top, followed by peels, followed by poke, followed by hooks. All of these subject to specifics of the ability. The reason we list like this is because:
Roots give you the option of engaging and so pose the least risk of all factors. They allow your entire team to converge and so act as a delayed hook by not letting the enemy retreat as you advance. while initiation will change the course of the fight
Peel gives you the most advantage out of everything, but is more difficult to pull off and is riskier because you might miss and pull their initiator who probably wanted to hook you anyway.
Poke lets your team dictate where the engagement will be. It forces enemies to make snap decisions about when and where they're going to be engaging and eliminates the ability to linger in positions where they can land peels/hooks/roots until they get the right one.
Hooks are risky in that your team has to be ready to back you up and if they're not then you die However, they are still great in that they secure the distance gap you wanted to close.
Characters with good initiation have a smattering of all those aspects and ideally good range on them. This is why we like Kennen/Morgana[root/hard initiation/poke] as top tier initiators. Not only can they lay down CC on the entire other team, but if they land their root they create an opportunity that their team can exploit to converge without the threat of missing and that is what is really brutal. Due to their range they can also deny zones to the enemy team to reduce the enemies ability to get the initiation they want
This is why i would rate Amumu worse than Kennen/Morgana because a hook is generally less useful than a root and why its not really right to compare Amumu or Leona[hooks] to someone like Blitzcrank[Peel]. Amumu can move himself so that he can AoE stun the entire team but your team has to be in range for that to be valuable. Blitzcrank can make 5v4's.
Because of this, a tier list for "initiators" doesn't really make sense. You need a mix of these things [or a whole bunch together which you're unlikely to be able to get due to laning restrictions] and its the combination that makes them useful.
Re: Singed: I would not say he was that valuable because he has to get big in order to be a threat and the enemy team has to have no roots of almost any range. You can use him to push the enemy team off a location by consistently pushing towards them but that requires that you're more farmed than them[I.E. they can't just root you then kill you].
Except it isnt entirely true. If your talking about low hp low armor targets, BC is better because you attack faster, 40% armor pen against a target with little armor, matters VERY LITTLE in terms of TTK when comparing the penetration amounts.
Except it is true because i took all of that into account when doing my evaluations as i was explicitly calculating "time to kill targets" and the Last Whisper is better starting at like 2000 HP and 100 armor assuming no one else on your team does any damage at all which is to say that LW actually starts to be more valuable much earlier in the fight than its explicit DPS values show. It doesn't matter if after the second hit the BC starts doing more damage because it still has to make up the damage advantage from the first two hits. And the first two hits, [one an auto crit] provide a very large buffer for which the black cleaver has to eat through before it starts to come out ahead even on low armor targets.
I came into my calculations with an understanding like yours, that the Black Cleaver would be stronger. Its what I assumed because i figured that it would be very easy to overcome the initial damage advantage[because in raw DPS the break point is like 200 armor] and it just turns out that its not and its especially not with Ashe.
And just to get an idea of what "low armor" means. At level 18 the champion with the lowest armor is Heimerdinger. He has 61 armor. Assuming he has zero armor items but armor yellows he will have 75 armor. The lowest value for an AD carry is 69 [Trist/MF] and this goes up to graves boosted 102.6 armor and this is not including the armor yellows they are sure to be using.
If we assume there is an Aegis on the other team and the enemy carry has built zero armor then the lowest armor value you will be shooting at for an AD carry that buys zero armor is about 95[83 if no Aegis]. Scaling all the way up to 128 for a Stacked Graves
What this means is that the AD carry, if they buy a chain vest, is going to have ~150 armor at the end of the game and they're likely to be the least armored character in the game since AP's get items that have AP and armor on them often times in core builds.
Note that Last Whisper + Chain Vest = only 125 Gold more than a Black Cleaver.
BC is better on some characters, but not on Ashe. And even on other characters it can be a tossup.
I built a Chalice on Sona in my last game because I had nothing else to spend moneys on, but meh. Had so high mp5 from all my other stuff anyway, so I sold it so I could get wards.
Might change my mind when that new item it builds to is out.
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ChaosHatHop, hop, hop, HA!Trick of the lightRegistered Userregular
First of all "God tier" or "S tier" is a stupid thing. It's tier 1.
re Singed: I hadn't really thought of that (I can't honestly say I've ever played with a really good Singed) but it's still pretty soft since cc can counter his initiation. Plus, Rylai's does make it better of course, but almost EVERYONE gets better at initiation with items. I mean, any of the initiators who rush in become even more phenomenal with Randuins or Frozen Heart. I'd be willing to consider Singed high tier 2 but I'd really have to see it in action and compare it to the characters I consider tier 1 to call it.
@mux: The initiate working is something that's really subjective and it needs to be considered in the ranking. If it goes really well for Morgana, of course it's amazing initiation. The problem is, even if you hit all five with your ult, you might end up getting just one or two depending on how they scatter and their abilities to gtfo. Can the "enemies scatter" part be really good for an initiation? Sure, but it's really variable and it's hard to actually measure. If they all scatter behind their inhibitor turret, it's much harder to follow up on than if they scatter in three random directions in the jungle.
Reliability is absolutely something that needs to be factored in, otherwise Lee Sin is the BEST initiatior. I mean he could jump over the wall behind their tower, and then he could just KICK someone out and damage their entire team and knock up everyone in the path of the one guy. The problem is that will never happen. Reliability isn't necessarily purely a skill thing since players will EVENTUALLY get hit by a Morgana Q if you shoot them enough. It's something that I think evens out even at high skill since players will get better at leading/predicting and players will get better at juking at roughly the same skill level. It's not like nobody ever hits a Q at high elo.
As described before also, items shouldn't be factored in either (I'd argue that they really don't matter since they make everyone better at initiating probably to an equal amount). The fact that you have to qualify it with "by the late game she'll have Zhonyas" describes flaws in her initiation. You know when Amumu can start initiating team fights without qualifiers? Level six. Same with Malphite.
If there is a "default scenario" that we are comparing initiation to, it should probably be two teams fully present either at baron or trying to initiate under an opponent's tower. I think you could argue other jobs are either counter initiation or chasing, which are not QUITE the same thing (Udyr is a good chaser, not so much initiator).
I didn't list Wukong because the area isn't that big and his methods of getting in on an opposing team aren't that good. And before you say flash, consider that Amumu or Malphite probably get the same relative power multiplier by also taking flash.
Morgana has two initiations but they're pretty soft. Qing the AP carry won't stop the AP carry from blowing whatever combo they have, and it's going to be real hard to catch an AD carry behind all the bruisers. And the ult is really soft for all kinds of reasons I've already listed.
Tier 2 isn't a bad place for Morgana to be considering the competition. It's probably very high in tier 2, but I think it's tier 2 initiation none the less.
Goum, did you factor windup in your TTK values? Attack speed means your first shot hits sooner, did you know that? Reading your posts I get the impression your formula is flawed when computing raw ttk, which is affecting your result and breakpoints.
Also ashe doesnt aways have autocrit first shot in most real scenerios, its a bit tricky to figure out. And higher critrate chance later on negates the advantage of autocritting first hit.
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BethrynUnhappiness is MandatoryRegistered Userregular
Singed's initiation is his slow.
...and of course, as always, Kill Hitler.
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SpectrumArcher of InfernoChaldea Rec RoomRegistered Userregular
Hooks/dives move a member of your team to their team
Peels move a member of their team to your team
Initiation is an ability that gives your team the advantage immediately as the fight starts
Roots stop an enemy from moving[so allowing your team to converge]
Poke deals damage at range and generally defines a zone in which an enemy must either engage or retreat.
I dislike this. Utility would be categories like:
Initiation - The ability to start a teamfight
Counter initiation - The ability to prevent your opponent from initiating a teamfight.
Poke - Affecting your enemies at long range from safety (ie, Nocturne ult is not a poke)
Steroids - Improves team damage by improving stats or debuffing enemies.
CC - Slowing, snaring, stunning, silencing, displacing, knocking up, or suppression.
Defense - Healing, shielding, granting defensive stats, lowering enemy offensive stats, or granting immunity.
Mobility - The character's ability to chase (as a team or solo) or help the team escape.
Damage - Damage is important. This could be further subdivided into burst damage and sustained damage.
I think these are all the benefits a given character can bring to the table. I initially had AoE as a category but I think it's better as a sub category for pretty much all of the categories.
A "hook or dive" as you've described it isn't anything besides really shitty initiation. Or it's a complicated term for chasing or gap closing (which is under mobility).
Kennen has no root (a snare in your description). He has hard stuns which Amumu also delivers. I don't understand how "your team has to be in range" is a bad point against Amumu specifically. Your team also has to be in range of Blitzcrank!
Goum, did you factor windup in your TTK values? Attack speed means your first shot hits sooner, did you know that? Reading your posts I get the impression your formula is flawed when computing raw ttk, which is affecting your result and breakpoints.
Also ashe doesnt aways have autocrit first shot in most real scenerios, its a bit tricky to figure out.
Not materially faster. It might make a tenth of a second difference, but LW would still be ahead for ashe until most targets were dead.
I calculated Ashe with and without the Auto crit[and Tristana with rank 5 q] and even without the auto crit it took a good while for the BC to catch up[Tristana of course a lot faster]
Edit: I calculated with IE/PD/BT at level 18 and was using expected values so while it doesn't account for variance it does account for higher crit chances.
Edit: This was also before the change to the crit chance mastery, but that should not materially change things.
Kennen has no root (a snare in your description). He has hard stuns which Amumu also delivers.
Kennen has a ranged stun. A ranged stun stop an enemy from moving for the duration.
That is the definition of a snare/root. Amumu has a stun, but his stun puts him next to you. That is the definition of a hook.
Is it really that hard?
Edit: I mean blitzcrank stuns with his pull, but we aren't going to classify Blitz' pull and Amumu's Bandage Toss as the same type of skill.
edit2: You have too many categories that we don't care about with respect to starting a team fight on your grounds.
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ChaosHatHop, hop, hop, HA!Trick of the lightRegistered Userregular
edited April 2012
The issue is you never said it was a "stun." The description was "stops your opponent from moving" which sounds like a snare in this game (Rune Prison, Morgana Q, Lux Q), etc since those things literally just stop your opponent from moving and nothing else.
I'm sorry if I can't memorize the definitions of five terms that you just invented off the top of your head moments ago that have nothing to do with any of the terminology present in the game already.
The ranged quality of it doesn't matter that much as long as it IS ranged. Bandage toss has range which allows Amumu to initiate. It's not like Amumu being in the middle of the enemy team is bad for him (at least, as bad as it is for Morgana) and it allows him to perform the rest of his initiation. And let's assume that the initiators we're grading want to actually initiate. I don't know the phantom world where Amumu bandage tosses into the enemy team and goes "Oh noes I didn't actually want to be in the middle of the enemy team why did I fire this bandage toss why god why?!"
You made a list of things that are "team fight utility" without respect to that it was JUST the ability to initiate. I'm sorry I added the other categories of other things that are necessary in a team fight. And I would classify them as the same kinds of skill. They both can initiate, provide cc, and at range. They do it differently, but it's the same metrics.
finally had a chance to retry jungle jax with ewwq instead of focusing on e. initial clear was so much better. about 65% health left with no leash in a bot game and i went out of order because i killed wraiths with so much health that i decided to take red before golems so i dipped slightly lower than i would have if smite had been up after golems.
holy hell though. it'll probably be even better when i get ad quints instead of armpen.
wasn't really sure how to build though.
finished wriggles got boots sheen gunblade phage and game ended. the bots didn't know what hit them.
when i have time to play more I'll take him into a real game.
cutting their team in half basically wins every team fight
The terms aren't mutually exclusive. Amumu, Maokai, Malphite, etc also prevent teamfights from happening. Things can be both, but those things can also be better at one than they are the other.
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I think tiering should be less of "optimal situations"
and more "how can this possibly go horribly fucking wrong" (aka the TaliosFalcon way)
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I love League of Legends, but seriously...screw you, Teemo.
Singed initiation isn't that great, it's one person and he just has to run in there, anyone with a slow or snare could stop him.
Urgot has a similar problem but it's worse since the swap takes a while, and it takes a member of your team and puts it in the middle of theirs, which is not necessarily the optimal place for Urgot to be.
Nocturne is probably tier 2 by my definition at least. Good range but all he can do is apply a soft CC to one target (granted, it might be a very GOOD target).
The top tier should be something that heavily disrupts a lot of people on the other team reliably (ie, Morgana, Leona's ult stun can be walked out of to get just a slow instead), is fast (so the enemy team doesn't have time to react or move), isn't positioning reliant (this generally means has a big range so you can just grab anyone and go, Amumu for example, Leona has to target the AD carry and get the stun off to work best), and ideally is someone on the team that can allow a dive (Malphite can tank tower very strongly, for example).
Working with that definition, hard single target lockdown can be fantastic tier 2 but usually that kind of stuff is best applied to the carries which can be the hardest people to initiate on.
Honestly initiation can be many things and it's hard to codify. If you're trying to initiate on a team that is fleeing, Singed works amazing. If you're trying to dive an inhibitor turret, not really.
Edit: Regarding Blitz, undeniability/targetability is probably super important too. Blitzcrank works really well if you can grab someone, unfortunately they can just stand behind the minion wave or space themselves well. Compared to Amumu (sorry to keep going back to him, but his initiation is amazing) he can grab a minion as long as it's in the general area and then ult. He can flash up, bandage toss and ult effectively (this is not as effective on Blitz).
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More champs. Once you have your rune basis, always more champs.
Akali works well enough with a standard runepage, frankly, and I don't think she suits your play style enough to deserve her own rune page.
Everything in Singed's kit makes him better at initiation. Gas on the way in means anyone trying to get past him to the squishies has damage already (and I probably have Rylais to slow them). Goop keeps people where you want them, and can be used to prevent a charge or an escape. Fling gets someone out of position, or gets someone off your carry. And ult lets him eat that CC, as well as all the damage heading his way. Turret? Run in, fling whoever is guarding the turret into my team, goop past the turret to slow reinforcements, then run around with ult gas hitting shift 4 while my armor and regen let me ignore the turret for a while. It's one of the stronger places to initiate, since Singed is weaker to kiting, but if they fall back, we just eat the turret.
I guess if we're talking "who has one move that fucks the whole other team", sure he isn't top tier (though goop approaches Leona ult in that regard). But in terms of who can say "we're fighting now" and be the first in the fight, Singed es #1.
Except it isnt entirely true. If your talking about low hp low armor targets, BC is better because you attack faster, 40% armor pen against a target with little armor, matters VERY LITTLE in terms of TTK when comparing the penetration amounts.
In raw numbers against a low armor low hp target like a carry, the BC significantly outperforms the LW on every level starting at the second hit. The second hit will come sooner, it will also hit harder.
Then you have high HP, medium armor targets like bruisers and well built ap carries, again the BC comes out significantly ahead starting at the second hit, just because of the increased attack speed, and higher base ad advantage the BC gives you. The BC also gives secondary advantages allowing you to kite while shooting better, by shortening your attack animation time.
Then you have the High HP, High armor, low DPS tank types. These you just need enough DPS to outheal, not enough DPS to kill quickly. LW does better here, but as a carry this is not an important attribute. The TTK values against these targets are also much more insignificant.
BC wins in every category that matters when I play carry, I havent purchased a LW in ages on ashe, frankly I would rather have another PD than a LW.
Also you cannot discount the important secondary benifit of the BC, it shreds armor on the target, so your entire team is doing more damage, leading to faster ttk's on focused targets than the lw can even dream to achieve.
LW is inefficient for any ad carry that has to rely on autoattacks as a primary source of damage.
Edit - But that doesn't change the fact that BC is a more efficient item than LW and I will always take it over the LW if I can afford it at the time. BC also applies armor reduction, which the rest of your team can take advantage of.
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I was basing it on the strength of the initiate and if it leaves the player in a good position to help with the team fight afterwards. I also assumed that the initiate worked and thus why i put morg so high.
My morg assumption is by late game she has hourglass and flash up. but your right I may have put her to high. She also has her stunlock initiate though its not as good.
Kennen is so low because i think if he inits rather than saving it till after the init it puts him at a disadvantage because he doesn't build tanky enough. but you could be right.
Agreed though I think reliability and consistency should have been a factor and that would majorly change the list but i didn't want to bring the players skill into the mix to much.
Your list seems good but I'm surprised you ignored wukong. his init is very good even though the kit kinda sucks right now.
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Constant poke with Q + Crescendo'd AA.
And for some reason their jungling Lee Sin thought he'd facecheck my bush when he was at 20%. Crescendo!
My problem right now is that I look at the champs available and I say "So what?" There are so few that are drastically different that interest me. Unless I'm playing with you and the Mainers (in which case I'm Soraka) I don't actually -feel- like playing anyone. I log in and do a botmatch with someone who can make sure that 4 morons don't lose to the bots, and then I go play DoTA 2. I don't even recall what I spent my IP on last time.
Same people making the argument too.
I almost feel compelled to start talking about Lux....
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Am I allowed to threaten physical violence in this thread? I think it would be appropriate!
:P
If you are only playing bot games then it doesn't matter, just hold on to it until a champ comes along that interests you.
If you are just logging in to play a bot match to get your ip each day before leaving to play Dota 2 though.....just play Dota 2 I guess.
I mean, are you having fun playing LoL, or are you just logging in out of habit?
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Yeah, champ-specific pages are for "I play a crapton of this dude and want to optimize".
That said, I follow this guide for Akali. I don't have a runepage (using my generic AP one), but I have an Akali mastery page.
She has a 2 inits and a zone control spell though I think that puts are at the top of the t1 list IMO but i don't know if i would put her in a god tear.
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v. t. 1. To mix in an untidy and offensive way; to make a mess of.
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It is almost as if we play a game with a lot of complex variables in it prior to human beings acting in unpredictable ways to complicate the scenario through their varying styles of execution.
I try to just get a bot game in every day for the IP myself, but that's because with my new(ish) job I don't have time for full games.
As a matter of fact, last night I had the best bot game EVER. During champ select I said all push. all mid. all game. And they were actually on board with it! Took first tower after we killed the mid twice, which (due to the AI) turned the game into an All Mid match of us vs bots. It was so much fun. We took base tower at like 8:40 or something, finished the game a couple minutes later. Seriously, best bot game ever.
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I'm not trying to say bot games are bad I play a fair amount of them myself. It just seems like he logs in to play 1 bot game then goes and plays Dota2. He also isn't interested in any of the champs which makes me think he may just not be interested in the game.
I personally don't get it as I find Dota 2 to be vastly inferior in every way to LoL but to each their own.
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Swap is a bad initiate. Its a good hook or counter though.
Generally we can think of team fight utility as three different kinds
Hooks/dives
Peels
Roots
Initiation(hard/soft)
Poke
Hooks/dives move a member of your team to their team
Peels move a member of their team to your team
Initiation is an ability that gives your team the advantage immediately as the fight starts
Roots stop an enemy from moving[so allowing your team to converge]
Poke deals damage at range and generally defines a zone in which an enemy must either engage or retreat.
In general characters with dives are necessary for suppressing the enemy carries. Characters with hooks good for getting in range for an initiation. Roots are good for setting up poke/peel/initiation. Peels for separating out their team to create 5v4's and initiation for starting and ending a fight. If we were to rate pure team fight value we would probably put root/initiation on top, followed by peels, followed by poke, followed by hooks. All of these subject to specifics of the ability. The reason we list like this is because:
Roots give you the option of engaging and so pose the least risk of all factors. They allow your entire team to converge and so act as a delayed hook by not letting the enemy retreat as you advance. while initiation will change the course of the fight
Peel gives you the most advantage out of everything, but is more difficult to pull off and is riskier because you might miss and pull their initiator who probably wanted to hook you anyway.
Poke lets your team dictate where the engagement will be. It forces enemies to make snap decisions about when and where they're going to be engaging and eliminates the ability to linger in positions where they can land peels/hooks/roots until they get the right one.
Hooks are risky in that your team has to be ready to back you up and if they're not then you die However, they are still great in that they secure the distance gap you wanted to close.
Characters with good initiation have a smattering of all those aspects and ideally good range on them. This is why we like Kennen/Morgana[root/hard initiation/poke] as top tier initiators. Not only can they lay down CC on the entire other team, but if they land their root they create an opportunity that their team can exploit to converge without the threat of missing and that is what is really brutal. Due to their range they can also deny zones to the enemy team to reduce the enemies ability to get the initiation they want
This is why i would rate Amumu worse than Kennen/Morgana because a hook is generally less useful than a root and why its not really right to compare Amumu or Leona[hooks] to someone like Blitzcrank[Peel]. Amumu can move himself so that he can AoE stun the entire team but your team has to be in range for that to be valuable. Blitzcrank can make 5v4's.
Because of this, a tier list for "initiators" doesn't really make sense. You need a mix of these things [or a whole bunch together which you're unlikely to be able to get due to laning restrictions] and its the combination that makes them useful.
Re: Singed: I would not say he was that valuable because he has to get big in order to be a threat and the enemy team has to have no roots of almost any range. You can use him to push the enemy team off a location by consistently pushing towards them but that requires that you're more farmed than them[I.E. they can't just root you then kill you].
Except it is true because i took all of that into account when doing my evaluations as i was explicitly calculating "time to kill targets" and the Last Whisper is better starting at like 2000 HP and 100 armor assuming no one else on your team does any damage at all which is to say that LW actually starts to be more valuable much earlier in the fight than its explicit DPS values show. It doesn't matter if after the second hit the BC starts doing more damage because it still has to make up the damage advantage from the first two hits. And the first two hits, [one an auto crit] provide a very large buffer for which the black cleaver has to eat through before it starts to come out ahead even on low armor targets.
I came into my calculations with an understanding like yours, that the Black Cleaver would be stronger. Its what I assumed because i figured that it would be very easy to overcome the initial damage advantage[because in raw DPS the break point is like 200 armor] and it just turns out that its not and its especially not with Ashe.
And just to get an idea of what "low armor" means. At level 18 the champion with the lowest armor is Heimerdinger. He has 61 armor. Assuming he has zero armor items but armor yellows he will have 75 armor. The lowest value for an AD carry is 69 [Trist/MF] and this goes up to graves boosted 102.6 armor and this is not including the armor yellows they are sure to be using.
If we assume there is an Aegis on the other team and the enemy carry has built zero armor then the lowest armor value you will be shooting at for an AD carry that buys zero armor is about 95[83 if no Aegis]. Scaling all the way up to 128 for a Stacked Graves
What this means is that the AD carry, if they buy a chain vest, is going to have ~150 armor at the end of the game and they're likely to be the least armored character in the game since AP's get items that have AP and armor on them often times in core builds.
Note that Last Whisper + Chain Vest = only 125 Gold more than a Black Cleaver.
BC is better on some characters, but not on Ashe. And even on other characters it can be a tossup.
Might change my mind when that new item it builds to is out.
re Singed: I hadn't really thought of that (I can't honestly say I've ever played with a really good Singed) but it's still pretty soft since cc can counter his initiation. Plus, Rylai's does make it better of course, but almost EVERYONE gets better at initiation with items. I mean, any of the initiators who rush in become even more phenomenal with Randuins or Frozen Heart. I'd be willing to consider Singed high tier 2 but I'd really have to see it in action and compare it to the characters I consider tier 1 to call it.
@mux: The initiate working is something that's really subjective and it needs to be considered in the ranking. If it goes really well for Morgana, of course it's amazing initiation. The problem is, even if you hit all five with your ult, you might end up getting just one or two depending on how they scatter and their abilities to gtfo. Can the "enemies scatter" part be really good for an initiation? Sure, but it's really variable and it's hard to actually measure. If they all scatter behind their inhibitor turret, it's much harder to follow up on than if they scatter in three random directions in the jungle.
Reliability is absolutely something that needs to be factored in, otherwise Lee Sin is the BEST initiatior. I mean he could jump over the wall behind their tower, and then he could just KICK someone out and damage their entire team and knock up everyone in the path of the one guy. The problem is that will never happen. Reliability isn't necessarily purely a skill thing since players will EVENTUALLY get hit by a Morgana Q if you shoot them enough. It's something that I think evens out even at high skill since players will get better at leading/predicting and players will get better at juking at roughly the same skill level. It's not like nobody ever hits a Q at high elo.
As described before also, items shouldn't be factored in either (I'd argue that they really don't matter since they make everyone better at initiating probably to an equal amount). The fact that you have to qualify it with "by the late game she'll have Zhonyas" describes flaws in her initiation. You know when Amumu can start initiating team fights without qualifiers? Level six. Same with Malphite.
If there is a "default scenario" that we are comparing initiation to, it should probably be two teams fully present either at baron or trying to initiate under an opponent's tower. I think you could argue other jobs are either counter initiation or chasing, which are not QUITE the same thing (Udyr is a good chaser, not so much initiator).
I didn't list Wukong because the area isn't that big and his methods of getting in on an opposing team aren't that good. And before you say flash, consider that Amumu or Malphite probably get the same relative power multiplier by also taking flash.
Morgana has two initiations but they're pretty soft. Qing the AP carry won't stop the AP carry from blowing whatever combo they have, and it's going to be real hard to catch an AD carry behind all the bruisers. And the ult is really soft for all kinds of reasons I've already listed.
Tier 2 isn't a bad place for Morgana to be considering the competition. It's probably very high in tier 2, but I think it's tier 2 initiation none the less.
Also ashe doesnt aways have autocrit first shot in most real scenerios, its a bit tricky to figure out. And higher critrate chance later on negates the advantage of autocritting first hit.
I dislike this. Utility would be categories like:
Initiation - The ability to start a teamfight
Counter initiation - The ability to prevent your opponent from initiating a teamfight.
Poke - Affecting your enemies at long range from safety (ie, Nocturne ult is not a poke)
Steroids - Improves team damage by improving stats or debuffing enemies.
CC - Slowing, snaring, stunning, silencing, displacing, knocking up, or suppression.
Defense - Healing, shielding, granting defensive stats, lowering enemy offensive stats, or granting immunity.
Mobility - The character's ability to chase (as a team or solo) or help the team escape.
Damage - Damage is important. This could be further subdivided into burst damage and sustained damage.
I think these are all the benefits a given character can bring to the table. I initially had AoE as a category but I think it's better as a sub category for pretty much all of the categories.
A "hook or dive" as you've described it isn't anything besides really shitty initiation. Or it's a complicated term for chasing or gap closing (which is under mobility).
Kennen has no root (a snare in your description). He has hard stuns which Amumu also delivers. I don't understand how "your team has to be in range" is a bad point against Amumu specifically. Your team also has to be in range of Blitzcrank!
Not materially faster. It might make a tenth of a second difference, but LW would still be ahead for ashe until most targets were dead.
I calculated Ashe with and without the Auto crit[and Tristana with rank 5 q] and even without the auto crit it took a good while for the BC to catch up[Tristana of course a lot faster]
Edit: I calculated with IE/PD/BT at level 18 and was using expected values so while it doesn't account for variance it does account for higher crit chances.
Edit: This was also before the change to the crit chance mastery, but that should not materially change things.
Kennen has a ranged stun. A ranged stun stop an enemy from moving for the duration.
That is the definition of a snare/root. Amumu has a stun, but his stun puts him next to you. That is the definition of a hook.
Is it really that hard?
Edit: I mean blitzcrank stuns with his pull, but we aren't going to classify Blitz' pull and Amumu's Bandage Toss as the same type of skill.
edit2: You have too many categories that we don't care about with respect to starting a team fight on your grounds.
I'm sorry if I can't memorize the definitions of five terms that you just invented off the top of your head moments ago that have nothing to do with any of the terminology present in the game already.
The ranged quality of it doesn't matter that much as long as it IS ranged. Bandage toss has range which allows Amumu to initiate. It's not like Amumu being in the middle of the enemy team is bad for him (at least, as bad as it is for Morgana) and it allows him to perform the rest of his initiation. And let's assume that the initiators we're grading want to actually initiate. I don't know the phantom world where Amumu bandage tosses into the enemy team and goes "Oh noes I didn't actually want to be in the middle of the enemy team why did I fire this bandage toss why god why?!"
You made a list of things that are "team fight utility" without respect to that it was JUST the ability to initiate. I'm sorry I added the other categories of other things that are necessary in a team fight. And I would classify them as the same kinds of skill. They both can initiate, provide cc, and at range. They do it differently, but it's the same metrics.
holy hell though. it'll probably be even better when i get ad quints instead of armpen.
wasn't really sure how to build though.
finished wriggles got boots sheen gunblade phage and game ended. the bots didn't know what hit them.
when i have time to play more I'll take him into a real game.
The terms aren't mutually exclusive. Amumu, Maokai, Malphite, etc also prevent teamfights from happening. Things can be both, but those things can also be better at one than they are the other.
cutting their team in half basically wins every team fight
Very possible.