They were super tilted and just trying to take me out. These new Valla talents are interesting. I probably should have gone Creed of the Hunter (and obviously would have if I'd have known it'd be such a blowout), but I opted out of the Gambit stuff in exchange for a more consistent Multishot build. It seemed pretty strong. I had upwards of 200 bonus damage toward the end, at least the last time I checked.
They were super tilted and just trying to take me out. These new Valla talents are interesting. I probably should have gone Creed of the Hunter (and obviously would have if I'd have known it'd be such a blowout), but I opted out of the Gambit stuff in exchange for a more consistent Multishot build. It seemed pretty strong. I had upwards of 200 bonus damage toward the end, at least the last time I checked.
When they first changed her talents w build was even stronger, been nerfed twice since.
14 deaths on a tank in under 13.5 minutes is impressive. Like, I think it's legitimately difficult to manage that even if you were just running straight into towers to suicide.
14 deaths on a tank in under 13.5 minutes is impressive. Like, I think it's legitimately difficult to manage that even if you were just running straight into towers to suicide.
Someone do the math.
On average it’s a death around every ~53 seconds or so, but since death timers get longer the farther in you are, I’d say they probably were dead more time than alive.
Dibby is going to see all the activity in this thread today and get excited because he forgot half of the posts were him talking about maybe playing the game.
When your sweaty 4stack with all matching portraits gets dismantled by a guy who hasn't played in 8 months and didn't even realize Valla had new talents until the match started:
Just because you queue up together doesn't mean you're good!
We doing this, guys? I've been on for 11 hours and haven't seen one person lol.
Ugh sorry dude, apparently I was misinformed on just how long this lil family outing was going to be. Was not 1 hour! It was in fact 5 hours. And then I immediately had to launch into making dinner for everyone else when we got home.
Uther's great at burst healing, but typically poor on sustain. In this particular instance, I'm just shredding them any time they step up. He can't do anything about it, particularly once I have movement speed and can just chase their frontline down when they try to disengage.
Last match of the night was great. I had been playing Mei in QM with some friends, and decided to switch it up a bit and play Anub'arak. One of the guys I was with was on Naz, so I wanted to give him more of an opportunity to stack since I basically auto-pilot to waves and fast-clear. Figured I'd have some fun on Beetle Boy. Kind of regretted the decision at first, because we ended up being shorter on waveclear than I would have liked. On Tomb of the Spider Queen, and I felt like Mei would have brought a lot more of what I wanted to the table. But we made it work. Enemy team beat us to 20 by a few levels, but I was able to shut down their plays with Cocoon pretty consistently, and they weren't able to finish us off. It was awesome --
Genji jumps in with Dragon Blade, Cocooned.
Yrel gets low and pops Ardent Defender to try and heal up, Cocooned.
Our Abathur timed out, but at least the bot had the wherewithal to sit in the Fountain and keep me hatted. Ended up scoring a few picks at 20 with Rewind quad-stun combo (plus the double burst from Urticating Spines does work), and suddenly we had them on the ropes. We turned in, pushed, kept their deaths staggered, and I galaxy brained the enemy Lunara's location in the fog and took her out when she was trying to flank around us. Big pickoff led to the win.
What's your anub setup? I've been getting some good use out of full beetles but I also enjoy the quest at 1 and then shield talents to get the aoe spike burst.
Level 1: Nerubian Armor - This gives your Hardened Carapace an additional 20 Spell Armor, granting him a total of 60% damage reduction from spells and abilities. You're typically looking to play Anub'arak against Mage carries, or versus ability-heavy lineups, so this allows you to play into them with a lot more confidence. Great for shaking off those big hits they're saving to use against you when you dive.
Level 4: Shed Exoskeleton - This one's a game changer. I had been running Underking for a long time, but Shed Exoskeleton is just too good. It grants you 30% bonus movespeed (that's mount speed), which gives you the ability to get back out safely after you've blown all of your mobility diving in to stun for potential pick offs. It also lets you chase people down. Anub'arak isn't super threatening at this level, but he can be later on, and this talent gives him the movement speed he needs to make that possible.
Level 7: Chitinous Plating - If you're using your shield appropriately, congrats; its a 4-second cooldown now. That means more shielding, more spell resistance, more movement (and later on, more AoE damage).
Level 10: Cocoon - I don't find Locust Swarm to be very effective. They either need to crank the healing up tremendously, or lower the cooldown by about half (100 seconds for a fairly ineffectual self-heal is pretty trash). There's also just not much of a reason to need that kind of self-healing; Anub'arak doesn't jump into the thick of combat and stay there - he dives in to get a stun, follows up with a second stun, uses his shield to hold the line temporarily and then get back out to safety. He's not Johanna. He's just there to score the pick and then get back out. So I don't even feel its necessary to have a talent that lets him stay in the middle of a teamfight with a bunch of self-healing. What's he even going to do? He already blew his stuns, lol.
Thankfully, Cocoon is fucking fantastic, and pretty universally applicable. When is it a bad thing to take someone out of a fight? Here are two the best times to use this ultimate --
Enemy player needs a priority interrupt (Genji using Dragon Blade, Li Li using Cups, Nazeebo using Ravenous Spirit, ETC Moshing, Illidan Metas into your backline, etc). You have a low enough cooldown at 70 seconds to be able to reliably utilize Cocoon for this purpose. In many cases, Cocoon has a lower cooldown than the big nasty ultimate it shuts down. So you can effectively prevent certain targets from ever using their ults. And unlike a lot of other interrupts, Anub'arak can use Cocoon at range with a point-and-click. There's no aiming, no line of sight issues to worry about. Just click on the guy doing the bad thing and they stop.
Secure a takedown when the enemy tries to disengage. This one's great. You can force the fights you're looking for when you see the opposing team try to disengage. Just drop the Cocoon on someone as they're trying to get away, and the other team either has to stop and get them out, or leave them to get picked. If they stop, great; now you get to fight them with whatever advantage you were hoping to utilize. If they leave anyway, you follow up the Cocoon with a double-stun, and your team helps score the pick. Now you have map advantage for however long their respawn timer is.
Level 13: Urticating Spines - Here's where it starts to get really fun. This talent adds AoE damage to your Hardened Carapace, increasing your pick potential by increasing the amount of damage you personally do when you dive. This also gives you some halfway decent waveclear, so you're not completely useless in that regard. And it gives you something to do with all of that bonus movespeed we get from Shed Exoskeleton. Now, Anub's actually threatening, because he can jump onto you, pulsing AoE (which does double-damage against enemy players) every 4-7 seconds, and chase you down wherever you go with built-in mount speed.
Level 16: Epicenter - Increases the radius of your Burrow Charge by 60%, meaning you're more likely to hit your target in the event that your aim was a little off, they tried to sidestep, etc. It also increases the likelihood that you'll stun multiple enemies when you dive in, which is never a bad thing. Finally, it lowers the cooldown of Burrow Charge depending on the targets you hit, bringing its cooldown (14 second base) more in-line with Impale (12 second base), so you can use them both together more frequently.
Level 20: Rewind - There's also a case to be made for the Traitor King, but I find that its a much more niche pickup, and Rewind single-handedly wins teamfights. Rewind resets all of your basic ability cooldowns, meaning you can dive in with Burrow Charge for a stun, pop Hardened Carapace to burst AoE damage, Impale for a second stun, Rewind to reset, then do it all again. That's four stuns, two Urticating Spine bursts, and however many auto-attacks you can weave in-between. If your team can't score a pick off the back of that kind of single-target control, you weren't going to win the match anyway, lol. For obvious reasons, try to keep track of enemy Cleanse cooldowns.
Yeah locust swarm is a bit garbage for sure. Rewind is my default 20 as well. There may be a place for traitor king but there 100% always a place for rewind. It's a late game winner for sure.
Yeah that looks really good, I just QM so whether I need extra spell armor is up in the air until I load in so I don't pick it at 1 as much as I would if I was drafting but when it do pick it does its job so well.
Locust Swarm is the pick when your spud teammates are so far deep in the ground that Cocoon will do Actually Nothing
Which I mean most of the time you still go Cocoon just because of the versatility, but lmao there's been times where the tank had engaged, I Cocooned immediately, dived the enemy cause HEY FREE ENGAGE AND THEY HAVE NO TANK
and my idaho spuds are just huddled around the Cocoon instead thinking that they'll kill the tank when it pops, in the middle of a teamfight
gang this isn't a pick out in the open on a straggler this is the play that wins us the goddamn fight
Cocoon was still the right pick, just because HEY WOW THAT WOULD'VE WON US THE GAME, so tl;dr I only go Locust Swarm when I know we're fuckin' super losing and not even RNGesus can save us
Or if by some weird twist of fate the game puts another pick/isolation tool on our team or if we're too CC heavy or something. Fringe cases at best.
I just QM so whether I need extra spell armor is up in the air until I load in so I don't pick it at 1 as much as I would if I was drafting but when it do not does it matter.
That's fair. I would say that, at level 1, the only real choice for me is between Nerubian Armor and Regeneration Master. People love Legion of Beetles, but unless you're going full beetle build (which I think is pretty jank, personally, because it kind of incentivizes folks to play into Anub's weaknesses, rather than to his strengths), I'd totally ignore it. Regen Master isn't bad; 30 HP/sec and 500 bonus health is always helpful. Kind of depends on how quickly you can get it online. I can get a shit-load of orbs quickly, but that's just my playstyle. Little harder to do with Anub'arak just because he lacks early-game waveclear. But if you can get it active by level 10 or so, awesome; that sounds about right.
I would argue that Nerubian Armor has value even against AA-heavy matchups. Like knocking 60% off of Valla's Multi-Shot is definitely appealing, lol. And if we're looking at Quick Match, the most popular characters according to Hotslogs are Nazeebo, Valla, Abathur, Li-Ming, Nova, and Azmodan. Of those, Valla's the only AA hero; the rest are all ability-focused. So even if you end up just rolling the dice against the QM matchmaker, Nerubian Armor's probably your best bet in most cases.
Also christ assuming I don't have to deal with more Thanksgiving Family Bullshit I should be free today to HotS it up. Gimme a tag if you wanna play @milk ducks or anyone else~
edit: Or if you see me online on battle.net, even, just idling or w/e feel free to hmu. Btag is in sig in case I'm not on anyone's list
I can be around for the next hour or so, @Dibby , but then I have to drive up north to pick my kids up. My dad let them stay at his house after Thanksgiving, so we have to drive back up there today. It'll take a few hours to get up there and back. But yeah, I've got some time now, and I've got some time much later today (bordering on "tonight", lol), but I can play some matches.
I just realized how incredibly fucked up my phone typing grammar was up there so I'm glad you understood it. Lol
And dibby. Holy shit, yes. The amount of times that's happened is amazing. But I will see that and raise you my last anub game where I cocooned lili mid skirmish. We killed the other 2 before it ended and then my 2 teammates walked away and hearthed as it ended.
QM is such a joke, lol. Even when you're winning, it just feels like trash.
I'm telling you, Dibby ; ARAM is the place to be.
lmao dude honestly you might be right I'll be willing to give that a shot next time
god, fuckin' 4 dead on the enemy team, core exposed and what does team do, FUCKIN' BACK AND CLEAR WAVES LMAO
sonya goes in last minute barely any health just stands there and facetanks the li-ming disintegrate the entire time while sylv keeps waffling on whether or not to go in hmmm
An uncomfortable number of ARAM matches are decided in the draft. It's fun when neither team gets to pick one of the oppressive ARAM heroes (Azmodan, Mephisto, Zagara, Zul'jin, etc.). But because everyone gets three choices, the majority of games include at least one of the problematic heroes. That's the boring part. The mode would be more fun on average without the draft.
Ducks and I had this amazing game where I was Leo and I believeeee he was Naz? And we had this fuckin GOD TIER Fenix who landed the most amazing Planet Crackers, even outside of my Entomb setups.
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Steam - Talon Valdez :Blizz - Talonious#1860 : Xbox Live & LoL - Talonious Monk @TaloniousMonk Hail Satan
When they first changed her talents w build was even stronger, been nerfed twice since.
3DS Friend Code: 3110-5393-4113
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Someone do the math.
On average it’s a death around every ~53 seconds or so, but since death timers get longer the farther in you are, I’d say they probably were dead more time than alive.
I had a Runeterra tournament today and am playing some Robotech RPG with my friends right now.
Legends of Runeterra: MNCdover #moc
Switch ID: MNC Dover SW-1154-3107-1051
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Ugh sorry dude, apparently I was misinformed on just how long this lil family outing was going to be. Was not 1 hour! It was in fact 5 hours. And then I immediately had to launch into making dinner for everyone else when we got home.
Battle.net Tag: Dibby#1582
Weekends/holidays mean the kid's home, so gaming time is limited. I didn't commit to it for that reason
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Steam - Talon Valdez :Blizz - Talonious#1860 : Xbox Live & LoL - Talonious Monk @TaloniousMonk Hail Satan
Genji jumps in with Dragon Blade, Cocooned.
Yrel gets low and pops Ardent Defender to try and heal up, Cocooned.
Our Abathur timed out, but at least the bot had the wherewithal to sit in the Fountain and keep me hatted. Ended up scoring a few picks at 20 with Rewind quad-stun combo (plus the double burst from Urticating Spines does work), and suddenly we had them on the ropes. We turned in, pushed, kept their deaths staggered, and I galaxy brained the enemy Lunara's location in the fog and took her out when she was trying to flank around us. Big pickoff led to the win.
Hots is fun.
Legends of Runeterra: MNCdover #moc
Switch ID: MNC Dover SW-1154-3107-1051
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Steam - Talon Valdez :Blizz - Talonious#1860 : Xbox Live & LoL - Talonious Monk @TaloniousMonk Hail Satan
Witty signature comment goes here...
wra
Level 1: Nerubian Armor - This gives your Hardened Carapace an additional 20 Spell Armor, granting him a total of 60% damage reduction from spells and abilities. You're typically looking to play Anub'arak against Mage carries, or versus ability-heavy lineups, so this allows you to play into them with a lot more confidence. Great for shaking off those big hits they're saving to use against you when you dive.
Level 4: Shed Exoskeleton - This one's a game changer. I had been running Underking for a long time, but Shed Exoskeleton is just too good. It grants you 30% bonus movespeed (that's mount speed), which gives you the ability to get back out safely after you've blown all of your mobility diving in to stun for potential pick offs. It also lets you chase people down. Anub'arak isn't super threatening at this level, but he can be later on, and this talent gives him the movement speed he needs to make that possible.
Level 7: Chitinous Plating - If you're using your shield appropriately, congrats; its a 4-second cooldown now. That means more shielding, more spell resistance, more movement (and later on, more AoE damage).
Level 10: Cocoon - I don't find Locust Swarm to be very effective. They either need to crank the healing up tremendously, or lower the cooldown by about half (100 seconds for a fairly ineffectual self-heal is pretty trash). There's also just not much of a reason to need that kind of self-healing; Anub'arak doesn't jump into the thick of combat and stay there - he dives in to get a stun, follows up with a second stun, uses his shield to hold the line temporarily and then get back out to safety. He's not Johanna. He's just there to score the pick and then get back out. So I don't even feel its necessary to have a talent that lets him stay in the middle of a teamfight with a bunch of self-healing. What's he even going to do? He already blew his stuns, lol.
Thankfully, Cocoon is fucking fantastic, and pretty universally applicable. When is it a bad thing to take someone out of a fight? Here are two the best times to use this ultimate --
Level 13: Urticating Spines - Here's where it starts to get really fun. This talent adds AoE damage to your Hardened Carapace, increasing your pick potential by increasing the amount of damage you personally do when you dive. This also gives you some halfway decent waveclear, so you're not completely useless in that regard. And it gives you something to do with all of that bonus movespeed we get from Shed Exoskeleton. Now, Anub's actually threatening, because he can jump onto you, pulsing AoE (which does double-damage against enemy players) every 4-7 seconds, and chase you down wherever you go with built-in mount speed.
Level 16: Epicenter - Increases the radius of your Burrow Charge by 60%, meaning you're more likely to hit your target in the event that your aim was a little off, they tried to sidestep, etc. It also increases the likelihood that you'll stun multiple enemies when you dive in, which is never a bad thing. Finally, it lowers the cooldown of Burrow Charge depending on the targets you hit, bringing its cooldown (14 second base) more in-line with Impale (12 second base), so you can use them both together more frequently.
Level 20: Rewind - There's also a case to be made for the Traitor King, but I find that its a much more niche pickup, and Rewind single-handedly wins teamfights. Rewind resets all of your basic ability cooldowns, meaning you can dive in with Burrow Charge for a stun, pop Hardened Carapace to burst AoE damage, Impale for a second stun, Rewind to reset, then do it all again. That's four stuns, two Urticating Spine bursts, and however many auto-attacks you can weave in-between. If your team can't score a pick off the back of that kind of single-target control, you weren't going to win the match anyway, lol. For obvious reasons, try to keep track of enemy Cleanse cooldowns.
Yeah that looks really good, I just QM so whether I need extra spell armor is up in the air until I load in so I don't pick it at 1 as much as I would if I was drafting but when it do pick it does its job so well.
Cheers! And welcome back
Steam - Talon Valdez :Blizz - Talonious#1860 : Xbox Live & LoL - Talonious Monk @TaloniousMonk Hail Satan
Which I mean most of the time you still go Cocoon just because of the versatility, but lmao there's been times where the tank had engaged, I Cocooned immediately, dived the enemy cause HEY FREE ENGAGE AND THEY HAVE NO TANK
and my idaho spuds are just huddled around the Cocoon instead thinking that they'll kill the tank when it pops, in the middle of a teamfight
gang this isn't a pick out in the open on a straggler this is the play that wins us the goddamn fight
Cocoon was still the right pick, just because HEY WOW THAT WOULD'VE WON US THE GAME, so tl;dr I only go Locust Swarm when I know we're fuckin' super losing and not even RNGesus can save us
Or if by some weird twist of fate the game puts another pick/isolation tool on our team or if we're too CC heavy or something. Fringe cases at best.
Battle.net Tag: Dibby#1582
That's fair. I would say that, at level 1, the only real choice for me is between Nerubian Armor and Regeneration Master. People love Legion of Beetles, but unless you're going full beetle build (which I think is pretty jank, personally, because it kind of incentivizes folks to play into Anub's weaknesses, rather than to his strengths), I'd totally ignore it. Regen Master isn't bad; 30 HP/sec and 500 bonus health is always helpful. Kind of depends on how quickly you can get it online. I can get a shit-load of orbs quickly, but that's just my playstyle. Little harder to do with Anub'arak just because he lacks early-game waveclear. But if you can get it active by level 10 or so, awesome; that sounds about right.
I would argue that Nerubian Armor has value even against AA-heavy matchups. Like knocking 60% off of Valla's Multi-Shot is definitely appealing, lol. And if we're looking at Quick Match, the most popular characters according to Hotslogs are Nazeebo, Valla, Abathur, Li-Ming, Nova, and Azmodan. Of those, Valla's the only AA hero; the rest are all ability-focused. So even if you end up just rolling the dice against the QM matchmaker, Nerubian Armor's probably your best bet in most cases.
Glad to be back!
edit: Or if you see me online on battle.net, even, just idling or w/e feel free to hmu. Btag is in sig in case I'm not on anyone's list
Battle.net Tag: Dibby#1582
Legends of Runeterra: MNCdover #moc
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And dibby. Holy shit, yes. The amount of times that's happened is amazing. But I will see that and raise you my last anub game where I cocooned lili mid skirmish. We killed the other 2 before it ended and then my 2 teammates walked away and hearthed as it ended.
Steam - Talon Valdez :Blizz - Talonious#1860 : Xbox Live & LoL - Talonious Monk @TaloniousMonk Hail Satan
Battle.net Tag: Dibby#1582
I'm telling you, @Dibby ; ARAM is the place to be.
lmao dude honestly you might be right I'll be willing to give that a shot next time
god, fuckin' 4 dead on the enemy team, core exposed and what does team do, FUCKIN' BACK AND CLEAR WAVES LMAO
sonya goes in last minute barely any health just stands there and facetanks the li-ming disintegrate the entire time while sylv keeps waffling on whether or not to go in hmmm
Battle.net Tag: Dibby#1582
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Other times I'm with Kime, no objectives no meaningful mercs no rotations etc. Bit boring.
Steam - Talon Valdez :Blizz - Talonious#1860 : Xbox Live & LoL - Talonious Monk @TaloniousMonk Hail Satan
It's why i still prefer QM, because I'm but wasting for a match+draft, just match.
Vs a Cho'gall team too, fuck those losers
Battle.net Tag: Dibby#1582