Why am I seeing all these Alistars top? Also, why is he building triforce?
He got some minor buffs and people realized that Alistar top can be very strong. With triforce he does great damage, with statikk shiv he clears waves like a boss, then you just build tank. Also, as soon as you get a sheen(first item) you can outtrade a ton of people by just headbutting them and AAing them right as the headbutt lands. You get a sheen procced AA plus the headbutt damage. Especially squishy champs can't handle it at all. They can't even retaliate because they're knocked back after the damage lands.
Not so minor buffs- significant mana cost reductions on Q/W. The most important one is that his ult is now a flat 70% damage reduction at all ranks. This lets him dive right in teamfights even at level 6.
They weren't super huge buffs. They were enough to get him back in bot lane(and now top lane) and kill his jungle simultaneously with the nerf to his passive. Honestly, jungle is the only place they need to make sure he doesn't work so it's fine.
I could see them reverting the mana cost reduction on his headbutt since it's the key to him being able to top lane as effectively as he is, but we'll see. I don't think the damage reduction at early levels is really part of what's making him so problematic right now.
It was my experience in bronze that you absolutely do. Relying on the rest of your team to follow up on CC is incredibly unreliable, as is relying on your AD carry to press a lane advantage.
Amumu is capable of throwing out far more damage than either Nami or Sona so the comparison between them isn't perfect.
I have watched both Saint and Brokenshard play jungle heroes to get to Diamond. One thing I found absolutely telling is that if they lost a couple of games in a row at gold, they would immediately switch to "champions I can carry with."
The common experience over and over again I see from high ranked players is that if they ever get momentarily stuck, they just say "fuck it, I'm carrying, doesn't matter where."
It is absolutely possible to get stuck at an Elo, and you may need to find a different champ that you can carry with. That's precisely what I did with Sej last season. It wasn't like I was magically better at the game, I just found a hero that I could play well and whose impact was game deciding.
i think the important takeaway is that while you can carry with almost every champion, you may not be able to carry with every champion or even your favourite ones
my favorite part of support velkoz is when their jungler tries to blue and you're the bottom team and you just wiggle on up there and poke them forever
Is how support vel koz feels. Oh did you think we were going to bother with positioning? Nope.
With all the Vi games, had to check: Nope, Udyr is still a monster
Well, okay, this game Quinn decided to harass out Wu at his level 1 blue start so he was super behind, then I went top and got her the kill up there on Shyvana to make up for the lost experience
What is your secret? I can never seem to get Tiger/FF Udyr to work out.
i think the important takeaway is that while you can carry with almost every champion, you may not be able to carry with every champion or even your favourite ones
Yep this. 100X this. I love Vi. Cannot win the lane game with her, even when fed. However, I can absolutely win games on Liss. Even games where I'm monstrously behind.
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SpectrumArcher of InfernoChaldea Rec RoomRegistered Userregular
With all the Vi games, had to check: Nope, Udyr is still a monster
Well, okay, this game Quinn decided to harass out Wu at his level 1 blue start so he was super behind, then I went top and got her the kill up there on Shyvana to make up for the lost experience
What is your secret? I can never seem to get Tiger/FF Udyr to work out.
For one thing, if you're building FF, you should in Phoenix or Godyr, not Tiger main. I had this discussion half a thread ago or so, but basically Tiger scales hardest off pure AD and gets free AS. FF is a magic damage and AS focused item and though it has a little AD, I maintain that you're better off going Lizard if you were doing Tiger jungle. (And hell, if you're doing Tiger jungle, at that point you consider going Doran's Blade out of the jungle instead)
Beyond that, if you're Tiger, you need to abuse his early game and smash someone to get ahead, you can't afford to try and powerfarm (which he's worse at than Phoenix) and stack your Flare up.
These days if I'm on Udyr, I generally do a modified Godyr and go R, W, E, R, Q. R > W > E > Q. (Instead of Trick's R Q E, because I want the safety at 3 instead of the damage)
edit: Also if we're getting dumpstered pre-4, I abort out of Godyr and potentially abort even out of Flare and do pure Phoenix and potentially even Golem and just go pure tank and cause problems in lanes constantly
With all the Vi games, had to check: Nope, Udyr is still a monster
Well, okay, this game Quinn decided to harass out Wu at his level 1 blue start so he was super behind, then I went top and got her the kill up there on Shyvana to make up for the lost experience
What is your secret? I can never seem to get Tiger/FF Udyr to work out.
I'm not him, but as a fellow Godyr player, I'm pretty sure he's running Godyr(1 point early in tiger but you still max phoenix). You go madred's and spirit stone and just farm your ass off to get flare, then you keep farming, you farm all game, you become an impossible to stop and kill split pusher, and when it comes time to clean up fights, you're stronger than the enemy team solo laners ideally.
The best thing you could possibly do if you want to get better at Udyr is go watch Trick2G's youtube videos called "Godyr my way," etc. He's the only jungle Udyr main in D1, at least that has a twitch/youtube following, and he's pretty much a master at the champion.
I wouldn't be gold right now if it wasn't for watching his stream and picking up Udyr, and even mechanics and knowledge that have served me equally well with Skarner, Yi, etc.
@DasUberEdward a mutual respect for both achewood and support vel'koz makes me feel like im not alone in this world
@TeknoXI has been spamming Vel'koz support and loving it also
Suppprt Vel'koz is OP as fuck. But, you need to ban Morg. Zyra can be a problem because of those damned plants of her. Be wary of dashers, they make life hard.
League of Legends: TeknoXI
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imdointhisI should actually stop doin' this.Registered Userregular
dont bother banning morg, just destroy her with lazers. I guess at my balsa wood bracket people cant dodge Q, and you use way less mana than morg will.
Yeah, I feel somewhat stuck at my elo, partially because I don't play champs that typically can hard carry. Bit my play style is more of the "Be in the back doing damage, and not dying". On the rare times I get adc, I feel much more impactful.
Of course, the main reasons are drunk ranked, I don't roam enough, and I'm awful at keeping my eye on the mini map.
Morg's binding kills vel, though you shouldn't be in range. Leo is a much stronger vel killer.
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imdointhisI should actually stop doin' this.Registered Userregular
I max Q then E, one point early in w cause its really easy to proc your dagger.
I start tickle knife, 1 biscuit, 3 mana pots, and ward trink
if i back with 800+, i grab the eyeball and turn my yellow trink into a red one
sub 800 i upgrade my knifey.
before i do frost queen's claim, i grab a haunting guise, then nab some boots sometime then finish the guise whatever its called that does the burny thing
then boots 2 then usually some sorta mpen and just destroy them all with your ult once you see a good shot, typically try to melt their adc if you can
Yeah, I feel somewhat stuck at my elo, partially because I don't play champs that typically can hard carry. Bit my play style is more of the "Be in the back doing damage, and not dying". On the rare times I get adc, I feel much more impactful.
Of course, the main reasons are drunk ranked, I don't roam enough, and I'm awful at keeping my eye on the mini map.
I feel stuck because of all of the random nonsense that happens, between smurfs, AFKs, ragequitters, etc.
People seem to forget how prevalent that is at Bronze / Silver.
Games at that elo are decided most often by coin toss - after that, they are decided by the players with the lowest skill cap, because those players create a gold distribution that so heavily favors the opposing team that no amount of talent can overcome it (especially in solo queue, where people give up & rage the moment anything goes wrong).
Man team builder is hilarious. I just wanted to try out the Arcade MF skin(it's rad btw). My team is Gnar top, then blitz, nautilus, mundo all with smite. The blitz went jungle and built feral flare, triforce and wit's end, the mundo and naut just went mid and shared farm against TF. I actually traded 1 for 1 kills against Cait/Sona when I hit 6 before they had ults and then i just farmed and rotated mid to pressure the tower whenever they'd try to zone me off CS bot and not take my outer turret.
Ended up winning the game and I ended up carrying. Seeing blitz attack with all that attack speed was just too funny to watch.
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SpectrumArcher of InfernoChaldea Rec RoomRegistered Userregular
With all the Vi games, had to check: Nope, Udyr is still a monster
Well, okay, this game Quinn decided to harass out Wu at his level 1 blue start so he was super behind, then I went top and got her the kill up there on Shyvana to make up for the lost experience
What is your secret? I can never seem to get Tiger/FF Udyr to work out.
For one thing, if you're building FF, you should in Phoenix or Godyr, not Tiger main. I had this discussion half a thread ago or so, but basically Tiger scales hardest off pure AD and gets free AS. FF is a magic damage and AS focused item and though it has a little AD, I maintain that you're better off going Lizard if you were doing Tiger jungle. (And hell, if you're doing Tiger jungle, at that point you consider going Doran's Blade out of the jungle instead)
Beyond that, if you're Tiger, you need to abuse his early game and smash someone to get ahead, you can't afford to try and powerfarm (which he's worse at than Phoenix) and stack your Flare up.
These days if I'm on Udyr, I generally do a modified Godyr and go R, W, E, R, Q. R > W > E > Q. (Instead of Trick's R Q E, because I want the safety at 3 instead of the damage)
edit: Also if we're getting dumpstered pre-4, I abort out of Godyr and potentially abort even out of Flare and do pure Phoenix and potentially even Golem and just go pure tank and cause problems in lanes constantly
@PrjctD_Captain
I uploaded that game here: http://www.leaguereplays.com/replays/match/4055496/
Just if you wanted to watch and see if there's anything you can learn. But Josh is also correct, you should probably just watch Trick2G. If you can put up with his personality, you can learn some things, but also take some things with a grain of salt. For example, he duos a lot and duos with Sirchez, who mains Nasus, so they can win a lot of games by just taking it late, manipulating waves, and letting either Udyr or Nasus backdoor and murder turrets. If you don't have a backpocket Nasus, you do have a little less security taking it late, so just keep that in mind.
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imdointhisI should actually stop doin' this.Registered Userregular
never not be destroying them with lazers basically.
It pleases me greatly that Vel'Koz support is getting so much respect. I saw it in a few games just a couple days after he was released and was very impressed. I even posted my observations here. I'd really like him to become a staple support, because I do love his kit.
It pleases me greatly that Vel'Koz support is getting so much respect. I saw it in a few games just a couple days after he was released and was very impressed. I even posted my observations here. I'd really like him to become a staple support, because I do love his kit.
I've also been impressed whenever I go up against a Vel support. His Q's are *so annoying* to dodge. I'm pretty sure you can make ADC's miss lots of CS just by the threat of Vel's weirdo skillshot.
And then he hits 6 and his burst is super dangerous and he can use it from really far away.
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SpectrumArcher of InfernoChaldea Rec RoomRegistered Userregular
The only time I've seen Vel'Koz support not be impactful was when @BillGates was the ADC
At first it was not bad, he wasn't impactful. After dodging out basically every Q I finally got hit by one after a handful of levels and it was straight up nightmarish from then on.
I would've thought Vel'koz would be really good against Morg?
He is more of a skill match up than say Zyra because he can't harass through creeps. His lack of mobility means that a good root can end his day. If Morg is set for damage velkoz will wreck her. But if Morg is set for tank Morg will have a good laning phase. Because she can punish him every time he gets out from creeps unless the enemy ad is very good. This is especially true post 6 where Morg can easily all in from pretty much anywhere (she is faster than him and her ult slows) so you can just walk up to him and ult.
But for the most part it's a skill matchup that favors Velkoz just because of his damage. Morg has to win the matchup or Velkoz wins by default. It is worth noting that post lane phase Morg has an advantage in an engage/pick comp while Velkoz wants to be in a poke comp/AOE comp. This makes the matchup more dependent on the rest of your teams synergy. Vel is not like Zyra whose disengage is so strong that it beats morg out of laning phase too.
Yeah, I feel somewhat stuck at my elo, partially because I don't play champs that typically can hard carry. Bit my play style is more of the "Be in the back doing damage, and not dying". On the rare times I get adc, I feel much more impactful.
Of course, the main reasons are drunk ranked, I don't roam enough, and I'm awful at keeping my eye on the mini map.
I feel stuck because of all of the random nonsense that happens, between smurfs, AFKs, ragequitters, etc.
People seem to forget how prevalent that is at Bronze / Silver.
Games at that elo are decided most often by coin toss - after that, they are decided by the players with the lowest skill cap, because those players create a gold distribution that so heavily favors the opposing team that no amount of talent can overcome it (especially in solo queue, where people give up & rage the moment anything goes wrong).
What?
- No.
Here's how you win bronze. Go top or mid or jungle. IF top or mid win your lane, go to the other lane and win that too. you should win your lane because the enemy doesn't understand threat ranges or when to go b. You should have a massive advantage because when you kill them you quickly push your minions to their tower to deny them exp before going b. You win because you are last hitting better than your opponent. You win the match because even though your bot lane have fed 4 kills by 10 minutes you've pushed your tower down, got three kills top and ganked mid twice causing your team to have two winning lanes. You win because you are pushing lanes instead of standing uselessly in mid for 5 minutes with the rest of your team.
There are games that are impossible to win but they are a lot rarer than you imagine at b5.
I'm at gold 3 and I played a bronze 5 match a while back and won a 2v1 lane as Vlad. You can always win.
In this moment, I am euphoric. Not because of any phony god’s blessing. But because, I am enlightened by my intelligence.
Max Q > W > E in terms of skill order. The E (stun/knockup) doesn't always land, but W can queue up twice. So I like the damage more. People don't expect it.
I personally like Rylai's as a first major item. The insane about of CC (slow) you can dish out is ridiculous. Kite for days. Followed by a Twin Shadows (Spooky ghosts) for more movespeed and slows. Rest of the items is flexible.
3) carry the shit out of the game because you're not bronze.
Ok it's true that some games you will lose but all things equal if you are not bronze then you will get out. You can do it from any role but it's probably easiest from jungle or support(there is a reason that support density rises as you increase in skill level) though they will take the longest time to do it
Ok but seriously here are the things you can do for freelo.
1) buy potions. Mana potions, hp potions. Buy them when you go back. Fucking buy lots of them and then use them and shove the enemy laner to hell because you have 750 extra hp and 500 extra MP for 300 gold.
2) buy sweeper and sight trinket. Second back every time change to sweeper as a solo laner or support, but blue trinket as adc as soon as laning is over. Buy a green ward to go with your sweeper. Upgrade your sweeper at level 9-11 it's super effective.
3) buy pink wards. No seriously buy them. One in your jungle one, hold one in your inventory if against Rengar, khazix, alkali, or vayne.
4) put wards in lane so you can see enemy rotations.
5) end laning phase and force your team to group. I can't tel you how many games are won by the mid laner alone because they decided to follow the jungler who was going bottom which turns into a 4 man gank into double kill, tower, and dragon.
6) get side lanes pushing in your favor before grouping. That doesn't mean push, it means getting a 1-2 creep advantage. The strongest wave you can make is caused by auto attacking a single melee minion once (so your creeps kill it first but only slightly) then leaving. The easiest way to do it is to clear the ranged minions. Remember to pressure after this.
Is queue time on team builder still crazy? I was wanting to get some mid/adc practice tonight.
Pretty dependent on your team builder/normal MMR and requested role. It's not obvious but sometimes you can get into a full group faster if you try finding other groups instead of just sitting in the first one that the queue places you in. They are working on fixes to that which should alleviate that, though -- making it so that groups that are closer to full are prioritized when the queue adds people to groups.
I can get into a team builder game less quickly than if I just did a blind pick normal, but I'm guaranteed to play the role that I want so I think it's a pretty fair trade.
With all the Vi games, had to check: Nope, Udyr is still a monster
Well, okay, this game Quinn decided to harass out Wu at his level 1 blue start so he was super behind, then I went top and got her the kill up there on Shyvana to make up for the lost experience
What is your secret? I can never seem to get Tiger/FF Udyr to work out.
For one thing, if you're building FF, you should in Phoenix or Godyr, not Tiger main. I had this discussion half a thread ago or so, but basically Tiger scales hardest off pure AD and gets free AS. FF is a magic damage and AS focused item and though it has a little AD, I maintain that you're better off going Lizard if you were doing Tiger jungle. (And hell, if you're doing Tiger jungle, at that point you consider going Doran's Blade out of the jungle instead)
Beyond that, if you're Tiger, you need to abuse his early game and smash someone to get ahead, you can't afford to try and powerfarm (which he's worse at than Phoenix) and stack your Flare up.
These days if I'm on Udyr, I generally do a modified Godyr and go R, W, E, R, Q. R > W > E > Q. (Instead of Trick's R Q E, because I want the safety at 3 instead of the damage)
edit: Also if we're getting dumpstered pre-4, I abort out of Godyr and potentially abort even out of Flare and do pure Phoenix and potentially even Golem and just go pure tank and cause problems in lanes constantly
Don't get me wrong, I need a lot of work. I didn't get FF till about 14 minutes, and dragon was a little scary to just run in and do it at 6, but damn if this isn't fun. Farm all day, go back so you can outright buy full items. I was also afraid that FF > Triforce would leave me lacking in the defenses, but with leveled turtle you deal so much damage it barley matters.
tl;dr: Thanks a ton for all the advice, it really helped.
There are some heroes that are very good at carrying games that changes a bit as you move up the ratings ladder, probably due to a number of effects.
That said, here are some that I think are very powerful in their respective brackets:
Bronze:
Amumu
Volibear
Sejuani
Annie
Any character with a hard initiate and good AoE damage is incredibly effective in bronze as people tend to position terribly, and panic when they are low. Thus being able to initiate and put damage on people will win most teamfights.
Silver:
Amumu is still strong, others fall off a bit.
Leona
Morgana
Braum
Silver is where supports really start to shine and the pick potential of these champs is huge, and will often lead to victories. Plus this is still the land of "most tank wins" as ADCs and APCs can't position correctly, and having a beefy frontline will help them do damage.
Gold:
Akali
Katarina
Fiddlesticks
Fizz
Gold is like the uncanny valley of LoL. The mechanics are better, the positioning is better, but the map awareness and objective focus are still incredibly poor. It's also, for some reason, difficult for Gold players to stop these heroes once they start to snowball. In plat, people would buy pink wards, stack their CCs correctly, and save their flashes for their ults. Effectively shutting down these heroes. But in Gold, the players are good enough to initiate and kill with these heroes, but defensively, thy aren't seemingly good enough to protect themselves from them.
Plat:
Not sure as I haven't climbed out of it ever, but if I were to hazzard a guess, anyone who can control the map so:
Posts
They weren't super huge buffs. They were enough to get him back in bot lane(and now top lane) and kill his jungle simultaneously with the nerf to his passive. Honestly, jungle is the only place they need to make sure he doesn't work so it's fine.
I could see them reverting the mana cost reduction on his headbutt since it's the key to him being able to top lane as effectively as he is, but we'll see. I don't think the damage reduction at early levels is really part of what's making him so problematic right now.
I guess if they get a good teamfight they're terrifying though
Fun to watch, though!
I have watched both Saint and Brokenshard play jungle heroes to get to Diamond. One thing I found absolutely telling is that if they lost a couple of games in a row at gold, they would immediately switch to "champions I can carry with."
The common experience over and over again I see from high ranked players is that if they ever get momentarily stuck, they just say "fuck it, I'm carrying, doesn't matter where."
It is absolutely possible to get stuck at an Elo, and you may need to find a different champ that you can carry with. That's precisely what I did with Sej last season. It wasn't like I was magically better at the game, I just found a hero that I could play well and whose impact was game deciding.
Is how support vel koz feels. Oh did you think we were going to bother with positioning? Nope.
What is your secret? I can never seem to get Tiger/FF Udyr to work out.
PSN: BrightWing13 FFX|V:ARR Bright Asuna
Yep this. 100X this. I love Vi. Cannot win the lane game with her, even when fed. However, I can absolutely win games on Liss. Even games where I'm monstrously behind.
Beyond that, if you're Tiger, you need to abuse his early game and smash someone to get ahead, you can't afford to try and powerfarm (which he's worse at than Phoenix) and stack your Flare up.
These days if I'm on Udyr, I generally do a modified Godyr and go R, W, E, R, Q. R > W > E > Q. (Instead of Trick's R Q E, because I want the safety at 3 instead of the damage)
edit: Also if we're getting dumpstered pre-4, I abort out of Godyr and potentially abort even out of Flare and do pure Phoenix and potentially even Golem and just go pure tank and cause problems in lanes constantly
I'm not him, but as a fellow Godyr player, I'm pretty sure he's running Godyr(1 point early in tiger but you still max phoenix). You go madred's and spirit stone and just farm your ass off to get flare, then you keep farming, you farm all game, you become an impossible to stop and kill split pusher, and when it comes time to clean up fights, you're stronger than the enemy team solo laners ideally.
The best thing you could possibly do if you want to get better at Udyr is go watch Trick2G's youtube videos called "Godyr my way," etc. He's the only jungle Udyr main in D1, at least that has a twitch/youtube following, and he's pretty much a master at the champion.
I wouldn't be gold right now if it wasn't for watching his stream and picking up Udyr, and even mechanics and knowledge that have served me equally well with Skarner, Yi, etc.
Suppprt Vel'koz is OP as fuck. But, you need to ban Morg. Zyra can be a problem because of those damned plants of her. Be wary of dashers, they make life hard.
If it's anything like Zyra support I might be interested in playing it.
Of course, the main reasons are drunk ranked, I don't roam enough, and I'm awful at keeping my eye on the mini map.
3ds friend code: 2981-6032-4118
FFXIV: Tchel Fay
Nintendo ID: Tortalius
Steam: Tortalius
Stream: twitch.tv/tortalius
I start tickle knife, 1 biscuit, 3 mana pots, and ward trink
if i back with 800+, i grab the eyeball and turn my yellow trink into a red one
sub 800 i upgrade my knifey.
before i do frost queen's claim, i grab a haunting guise, then nab some boots sometime then finish the guise whatever its called that does the burny thing
then boots 2 then usually some sorta mpen and just destroy them all with your ult once you see a good shot, typically try to melt their adc if you can
I feel stuck because of all of the random nonsense that happens, between smurfs, AFKs, ragequitters, etc.
People seem to forget how prevalent that is at Bronze / Silver.
Games at that elo are decided most often by coin toss - after that, they are decided by the players with the lowest skill cap, because those players create a gold distribution that so heavily favors the opposing team that no amount of talent can overcome it (especially in solo queue, where people give up & rage the moment anything goes wrong).
Ended up winning the game and I ended up carrying. Seeing blitz attack with all that attack speed was just too funny to watch.
@PrjctD_Captain
I uploaded that game here: http://www.leaguereplays.com/replays/match/4055496/
Just if you wanted to watch and see if there's anything you can learn. But Josh is also correct, you should probably just watch Trick2G. If you can put up with his personality, you can learn some things, but also take some things with a grain of salt. For example, he duos a lot and duos with Sirchez, who mains Nasus, so they can win a lot of games by just taking it late, manipulating waves, and letting either Udyr or Nasus backdoor and murder turrets. If you don't have a backpocket Nasus, you do have a little less security taking it late, so just keep that in mind.
I've also been impressed whenever I go up against a Vel support. His Q's are *so annoying* to dodge. I'm pretty sure you can make ADC's miss lots of CS just by the threat of Vel's weirdo skillshot.
And then he hits 6 and his burst is super dangerous and he can use it from really far away.
o snap
At first it was not bad, he wasn't impactful. After dodging out basically every Q I finally got hit by one after a handful of levels and it was straight up nightmarish from then on.
He is more of a skill match up than say Zyra because he can't harass through creeps. His lack of mobility means that a good root can end his day. If Morg is set for damage velkoz will wreck her. But if Morg is set for tank Morg will have a good laning phase. Because she can punish him every time he gets out from creeps unless the enemy ad is very good. This is especially true post 6 where Morg can easily all in from pretty much anywhere (she is faster than him and her ult slows) so you can just walk up to him and ult.
But for the most part it's a skill matchup that favors Velkoz just because of his damage. Morg has to win the matchup or Velkoz wins by default. It is worth noting that post lane phase Morg has an advantage in an engage/pick comp while Velkoz wants to be in a poke comp/AOE comp. This makes the matchup more dependent on the rest of your teams synergy. Vel is not like Zyra whose disengage is so strong that it beats morg out of laning phase too.
- No.
Here's how you win bronze. Go top or mid or jungle. IF top or mid win your lane, go to the other lane and win that too. you should win your lane because the enemy doesn't understand threat ranges or when to go b. You should have a massive advantage because when you kill them you quickly push your minions to their tower to deny them exp before going b. You win because you are last hitting better than your opponent. You win the match because even though your bot lane have fed 4 kills by 10 minutes you've pushed your tower down, got three kills top and ganked mid twice causing your team to have two winning lanes. You win because you are pushing lanes instead of standing uselessly in mid for 5 minutes with the rest of your team.
There are games that are impossible to win but they are a lot rarer than you imagine at b5.
I'm at gold 3 and I played a bronze 5 match a while back and won a 2v1 lane as Vlad. You can always win.
Dagger start > Dagger upgrade + ward > Sightstone > Codex > Final Dagger upgrade > Mobi boots
I personally like Rylai's as a first major item. The insane about of CC (slow) you can dish out is ridiculous. Kite for days. Followed by a Twin Shadows (Spooky ghosts) for more movespeed and slows. Rest of the items is flexible.
1) pick anything
2) play anything
3) carry the shit out of the game because you're not bronze.
Ok it's true that some games you will lose but all things equal if you are not bronze then you will get out. You can do it from any role but it's probably easiest from jungle or support(there is a reason that support density rises as you increase in skill level) though they will take the longest time to do it
Ok but seriously here are the things you can do for freelo.
1) buy potions. Mana potions, hp potions. Buy them when you go back. Fucking buy lots of them and then use them and shove the enemy laner to hell because you have 750 extra hp and 500 extra MP for 300 gold.
2) buy sweeper and sight trinket. Second back every time change to sweeper as a solo laner or support, but blue trinket as adc as soon as laning is over. Buy a green ward to go with your sweeper. Upgrade your sweeper at level 9-11 it's super effective.
3) buy pink wards. No seriously buy them. One in your jungle one, hold one in your inventory if against Rengar, khazix, alkali, or vayne.
4) put wards in lane so you can see enemy rotations.
5) end laning phase and force your team to group. I can't tel you how many games are won by the mid laner alone because they decided to follow the jungler who was going bottom which turns into a 4 man gank into double kill, tower, and dragon.
6) get side lanes pushing in your favor before grouping. That doesn't mean push, it means getting a 1-2 creep advantage. The strongest wave you can make is caused by auto attacking a single melee minion once (so your creeps kill it first but only slightly) then leaving. The easiest way to do it is to clear the ranged minions. Remember to pressure after this.
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Pretty dependent on your team builder/normal MMR and requested role. It's not obvious but sometimes you can get into a full group faster if you try finding other groups instead of just sitting in the first one that the queue places you in. They are working on fixes to that which should alleviate that, though -- making it so that groups that are closer to full are prioritized when the queue adds people to groups.
I can get into a team builder game less quickly than if I just did a blind pick normal, but I'm guaranteed to play the role that I want so I think it's a pretty fair trade.
Don't get me wrong, I need a lot of work. I didn't get FF till about 14 minutes, and dragon was a little scary to just run in and do it at 6, but damn if this isn't fun. Farm all day, go back so you can outright buy full items. I was also afraid that FF > Triforce would leave me lacking in the defenses, but with leveled turtle you deal so much damage it barley matters.
tl;dr: Thanks a ton for all the advice, it really helped.
PSN: BrightWing13 FFX|V:ARR Bright Asuna
That said, here are some that I think are very powerful in their respective brackets:
Bronze:
Amumu
Volibear
Sejuani
Annie
Any character with a hard initiate and good AoE damage is incredibly effective in bronze as people tend to position terribly, and panic when they are low. Thus being able to initiate and put damage on people will win most teamfights.
Silver:
Amumu is still strong, others fall off a bit.
Leona
Morgana
Braum
Silver is where supports really start to shine and the pick potential of these champs is huge, and will often lead to victories. Plus this is still the land of "most tank wins" as ADCs and APCs can't position correctly, and having a beefy frontline will help them do damage.
Gold:
Akali
Katarina
Fiddlesticks
Fizz
Gold is like the uncanny valley of LoL. The mechanics are better, the positioning is better, but the map awareness and objective focus are still incredibly poor. It's also, for some reason, difficult for Gold players to stop these heroes once they start to snowball. In plat, people would buy pink wards, stack their CCs correctly, and save their flashes for their ults. Effectively shutting down these heroes. But in Gold, the players are good enough to initiate and kill with these heroes, but defensively, thy aren't seemingly good enough to protect themselves from them.
Plat:
Not sure as I haven't climbed out of it ever, but if I were to hazzard a guess, anyone who can control the map so:
Pantheon
TF
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