Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Cthulhu]

I think it's all those things.  1-1-2-1 has been the meta for a long-ass time and it would take some serious changes to dislodge it (AD Carry mid will get stomped by most good AP mids, roaming support is bad for the ADC, kill lanes are always a high-risk move that screws you over if you don't succeed).  But beyond that there are metas, there was the poke meta, the HP meta more recently, though now the game's stuffed full of %damage abilities that made HP not so good, Triforce meta which is ongoing, and the mid assassin meta which has come up in the wake of the end of the HP meta.

I'd consider these smaller currents in team composition and lane choice to be "metas" or at least part of the "meta"

And the only thing worse than someone who refuses to think outside of the meta is someone who insists on violating the meta without any understanding of it.  There are ways to subvert the meta (kill lanes I mentioned already, I'd consider rotating the top or ADC  against Kassadin subverting the meta to a degree), but you can't just pick something weird just to be picking something weird.  That's not breaking the meta.

[SalmonGod]

Zed/Ahri/Kassadin/Fizz have gotten a ton of attention lately because they can annihilate anybody by glancing at them. You know why that's a problem and Riot's nerfing it? Because it allows them to erase the ranged AD from the equation. Right now, everything is balanced around the ranged AD, how much damage they can do, and what you can do to stop that. The fact that armor is completely worthless right now is a direct consequence of S2 where tanks could build pure armor and ranged AD couldn't kill them for shit, so penetration was buffed and armor was nerfed.

Riot kinda backed themselves into that corner, though, with how ridiculous late-game ranged AD damage and lifesteal is.  If they're not held down by stuns or killed near-instantly, then they outlast anybody by healing their entire health bar every 1.5 seconds.  There need to be characters capable of actually doing that.

[IronyOwl]

And the only thing worse than someone who refuses to think outside of the meta is someone who insists on violating the meta without any understanding of it.

I think my favorite quote to this effect was something like "Watching somebody breaking all the rules can be a lot more interesting than somebody who doesn't know what the rules are."

[webadict]

sorry but im not a metagame bitch, i just play with whatever champ i like to use for the moment, so i only stick to what i can do....

i dont care for the lane i just choose one and try to do my best against the enemy i have, with the equipment i can afford in the match, i only go with rules when i know which type of champ in using...

Look, here's the thing: Kassadin is a strong champion. That's all there is to say about it. He IS, however, melee and an assassin. This is probably something that is not initially intuitive to a player. You just have to learn how to play with a melee character. They're tougher to play (at least for me), and I can understand why you'd find Kassadin weaker than he should be.

Zed/Ahri/Kassadin/Fizz have gotten a ton of attention lately because they can annihilate anybody by glancing at them. You know why that's a problem and Riot's nerfing it? Because it allows them to erase the ranged AD from the equation. Right now, everything is balanced around the ranged AD, how much damage they can do, and what you can do to stop that. The fact that armor is completely worthless right now is a direct consequence of S2 where tanks could build pure armor and ranged AD couldn't kill them for shit, so penetration was buffed and armor was nerfed.

Actually, penetration has always been strong. It has never not been strong. It has only become stronger than before due to the way penetration is calculated now (percentage before flat). Tanks were better because of this. They were not unkillable. They had approximately flat penetration * percentage penetration additional armor, which equals about 15 * .4 = 6 more armor, assuming 15 flat penetration and 40% penetration. And I'm just taking a very simple build. But, you don't gain much. The change made penetration just a little bit stronger.

What the change DID bring was AD assassins and casters into the game. This is because items that gave FLAT armor penetration were incredible. You can get like 40 flat armor penetration with just a brutalizer. Combined with the Black Cleaver (25% armor shred), and you see why AD suddenly rose heavily over the course of S3. It wasn't the ranged AD, though. It was Kha'Zix, Zed, Renekton, Jayce, Lee Sin, Tryndamere, Aatrox... Heck, even Riven and Shyvana are seeing decent play (Riven is awesome though, so there's that.) There wouldn't be as prominent or strong if there weren't such good flat penetration items.

Overall, the ranged AD gained very little power from the penetration changes.

[Flying Dice]

Ran into a 1k armor/MR hacker in ARAM this afternoon, apparently using a shitty bot, because the Malzahar did nothing but travel straight to mid and Q+W creeps until he died, then would go back again.

[webadict]

Ran into a 1k armor/MR hacker in ARAM this afternoon, apparently using a shitty bot, because the Malzahar did nothing but travel straight to mid and Q+W creeps until he died, then would go back again.

Hacks while playing an ARAM?

Lol, okay.

[Exerosp]

Pretty sure one gets 1k MR and Armour when you DC.  Might've been the net kicking his arse off, on and off.

[Flying Dice]

Pretty sure one gets 1k MR and Armour when you DC.  Might've been the net kicking his arse off, on and off.

I checked around, and there were several reports on the Riot boards of people using some sort of glitch or exploit to permanently have that buff. People in the game with them reported that there was constant spam of "Player X has disconnected" the whole time, even when Player X was actively attacking them or objectives, shortly after which everyone had their game crash as his side spawned thousands of minions. Heh, the largest thread had something like four or five sightings of the same guy doing the same thing. Someone posted a link to his Lolking report, the guy was Gold 1 with zero losses in ranked solo queue.

Relevant thread.
Lolking

Not the same player, obviously, but it's apparently a thing.

Ran into a 1k armor/MR hacker in ARAM this afternoon, apparently using a shitty bot, because the Malzahar did nothing but travel straight to mid and Q+W creeps until he died, then would go back again.

Hacks while playing an ARAM?

Lol, okay.

Meh, think what you want. It took our entire team around a minute to kill him at level 4 after we 5v4 wiped the rest of them, with him doing nothing but standing mid firing abilities at minions as they came off cooldowns.

Wishing I'd had Lolreplays installed at the time.

[Sharp]

Wishing I'd had Lolreplays installed at the time.

Speaking of Lol Replays, are they still testing replay functionality on PBE or anything or was official replay support scrapped?

[webadict]

Hacks while playing an ARAM?

Lol, okay.

Meh, think what you want. It took our entire team around a minute to kill him at level 4 after we 5v4 wiped the rest of them, with him doing nothing but standing mid firing abilities at minions as they came off cooldowns.

Wishing I'd had Lolreplays installed at the time.

No, it's just... Why bother hacking on ARAM? I mean, it's just an ARAM. Everyone plays those for fun.

[Cthulhu]

People do terrible shit on ARAMs all the time, like the people who start smurfs and stack their deck with hard poke champs.

[Sindain]

Hacks while playing an ARAM?

Lol, okay.

Meh, think what you want. It took our entire team around a minute to kill him at level 4 after we 5v4 wiped the rest of them, with him doing nothing but standing mid firing abilities at minions as they came off cooldowns.

Wishing I'd had Lolreplays installed at the time.

No, it's just... Why bother hacking on ARAM? I mean, it's just an ARAM. Everyone plays those for fun.

Why bother hacking CoD for that matter?

*Edit*
Most people hack because they're dicks and want to just roflstomp some people, not because they're getting stuff out of it.

[Flying Dice]

"Because being a dick is funny" seems like a reasonable explanation to me as well. That's been the motivation for practically everyone I've seen doing it in other games; people don't hack in Counterstrike because they want a high KDR, but because they want to piss people off and make everyone ragequit.

[ansontan2000]

And people ask me why I don't reroll TF on ARAM

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

[Astral]

Will never know why someone would reroll TF. Boss of an AP poke, and a decent onhit carry.