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[xDarkz]

Thanks for the suggestions, guys. I'm going to go try some Dota 2 and Overwatch.

I made the unfortunate mistake of getting online on LoL today because my girlfriend and friends wanted to play some. Diana jungle, 30+ kills, 8 Deaths, S+ Rating, Lost.

With thirty kills, I should be able to take over the game, no? But alas, tank item efficiency, and heavy reliance on Rito's glorified "team communication." I don't expect to be able to 1v5, but you've got to be kidding me if I'm 15 kills above the next person and having trouble closing out the game.

[IronyOwl]

If you're looking for a snowballier game, Dota 2's definitely got your back. That said, "do well, lose game" is an inevitable phenomenon in a ten-man game.

[xDarkz]

If you're looking for a snowballier game, Dota 2's definitely got your back. That said, "do well, lose game" is an inevitable phenomenon in a ten-man game.

I just tried it. It'll take some getting used to but man.... I'm loving how absolutely broken everything else.

Axe is pretty fun! He's like Rammus and Darius in one kit.

[TempAcc]

LoL is basically a very much boiled down DotA with weaker heroes. DotA's overall ridiculous diversity in hero abilities allow you to do some really absurd stuff. The more snowbally gameplay means you can really carry a game by yourself with the right hero and playing well, but playing well is considerably harder overall, since DotA is a harder game overall with more mechanics to worry about then LoL (IE denying, creep camp stacking, tree pathfinding and vision, blink dagger being a thing, overall faster map movement, buybacks, tele scrolls, etc).

Axe is one of the more simple heroes in the game so he's good to learn to play overall, though if you want an even easier one, try Skeleton ;~;7Wraith King, which essentialy only haves 1 active skill, and thats a targetted stun/slow.

[4maskwolf]

I must admit I'm not really seeing the issue with Riot limiting snowball potential.  It's as if they want to make a team game actually require teamwork instead of being won by an individual.  Perish the thought.

More seriously, though, I'm not a fan of snowball champions because a single kill lead can quickly turn into them steamrolling your entire team no matter how well everyone else on your team does.  I've seen cases where a gank top lane gets thrown off by a countergank, a top-lane or jungle hypercarry gets two kills, and from that point on the game becomes unwinnable as they inexorably press their advantage.  Either you devote far too many resources to shutting them down, which means that other lanes go undefended and get farmed and pushed and you fall behind across the board, or the carry starts wiping the floor of your team whenever they catch a group of them.  Now granted, CC heavy teams can make this situation a lot more manageable, but being restricted to a single type of team composition in order to stop that one snowball champion from wrecking you for a single mistake seems distinctly unfun.

That's not to say I'm against the idea of snowball champions, but having one mistake early game spell instant loss means that the rest of the game is a huge waste of everyone's time and generally discourages taking any level of risk when facing one of these champions, since if you take a risk and it fails the game may well be over.

tl;dr: it's a team game, why is the limiting of mechanics that make the game into a steamroll by a single player a bad thing?

[TempAcc]

The thing is that, due to the very nature of the design choices that go into champions and the general game in LoL, the game itself is VERY vulnerable to snowballing if riot doesnt make tweaks like this. Heroes tend to gravitate around the same power level and have similar power curves through the game, at least much more similar then other games of the genre. Heroes have power spikes at certain points and when certain items get completed, yes, but i've never seen anything like the good old days of AD stacked twitch doing 900 damage with crits at max attack speed.

DotA, however, isn't that vulnerable to snowballing because the heroes are all very impactful. So what the enemy phantom assassin is murdering everything in two seconds? If you team has a lion/lina you can probably just burst her down with an ult+dagon combo or chained CC (hard CC is a lot more prevalent and more powerful in DotA). Maybe you have a winter wyvern that can basically use her ult to turn the enemy team onto their own carry and give 100% physical protection to someone, or you have a doom with aghs, which can basically shut down every active and passive skill with a single button for nearly half a minute while doing damage over time.

What I'm trying to say is that, with proper coordination and the right item choices, even an underfed team can shut down a super fed carry in dota, while this is generally harder to pull off in LoL, so riot needs to tweak the game to specifically not favor snowballing, or else people who are really good with a certain carry will almost always snowball out of control. This is essentialy why every pro LoL player recommends that people pick a snowbally hero and learn him REALLY well, while in DotA you need to be able to properly play at least a group of heroes, since they're so impactful that some heroes can almost shut off others. Counterpicks and bans are a lot more important in dota overall.

Hell, dota has heroes based entirely around the concept of snowballing yourself AND your team (hello, bounty hunter), and matches don't tend to be very one sided even then, unless your team screws up massively, of course.

[Jopax]

Mage changes have been announced in more detail, also new items. They've added an item dash now. So I guess now there will truly be no dashless champ in the game :V

[squidgen]

And apparently Malz is a really good jungler now? Unless spawning more than 3 voidlings is a bug (heh)

[TempAcc]

Jungle malz best malz

[Cthulufaic]

Me and my broheim completely destroyed a game as an Azir + Lee Sin bot lane.  The enemy was tilted.  Their caitlin and lux were cucked.  They surrendered at 20.

[TempAcc]

Try rengar + tresh or adc tresh + blitz, its pure infinite murder.

[frostshotgg]

Super interesting changes coming next patch. I'll summarize them as best I can for those who don't care to dig.

Spoiler: Malzahar (click to show/hide)

New passive. After not taking direct damage for a while (seemed like 25+ seconds from what I saw), he now takes massively reduced damage and can't be cc'd. After taking damage, the effect lasts a bit longer before going away.

Old W is now appended to his R. New W summons a single voidling for a length of time. The first time a voidling attacks something big or assists in killing a unit, it spawns another voidling, although with the same remaining duration as its creator voidling. 3+ voidlings and they all attack faster. Can get up to at least 6 at rank 1, from what I saw.

E has its duration refreshed by casting Q or R on target, and restores % max mana instead of flat.

R has old W for damage instead of base damage.

Spoiler: Brand (click to show/hide)

Passive now stacks. At 3 stacks it explodes after a bit for a pretty hefty chunk of damage. R now has a Trundle Q style slow tacked onto it. No numbers from what I've seen just yet, but it seems like they're reducing his damage numbers to make him less good at killing dudes alone.

Spoiler: Vlad (click to show/hide)

Every 3 Qs he gains bonus damage on it and movespeed for a bit. E is now a charge up like Varus Q, but drains health while charging. R now heals him for a buttload for each champ it pops on.

Spoiler: Zyra (click to show/hide)

Passive now spawns random seeds to make plants from around her. W now gives passive plant health instead of CDR. R now gives plants straight damage instead of attack speed.

Spoiler: Velkoz (click to show/hide)

Q now refunds half mana if it kills a unit, and only he can see the max range split indicator. R now doesn't build up passive stacks, but on champs that recently had passive popped on them it does true damage

Spoiler: Cassiopeia (click to show/hide)

Passive is now "can't buy boots, get ms/level instead". W now stops all movement abilities including blinks, but stops at a fixed range (800) or first wall. No stopping people who have already closed the gap. E always heals and always has a short CD and does more damage on poisoned targets.

Spoiler: Annie (click to show/hide)

W no longer cheats its animation. Tibbers does less damage coming down, but persists if Annie dies and does a lot more damage punching shit.

Spoiler: Fiddlesticks (click to show/hide)

Passive replaced. If he stops for 1.5s he gains huge MS when he moves again. W is no longer permacast. E prioritizes drain targets and bounces more.

Spoiler: Veigar (click to show/hide)

Passive is now gain AP from hitting enemy champs with spells and from takedowns. Q gives passive stacks instead of direct AP, same net bonus. All mana costs down. R got a big nerf on damage because Riot sucks at balancing Veigar. Who knew.

Spoiler: Rift Herald (click to show/hide)

Only spawns once, but gives a buff that lasts through death and for 20 minutes and gives you damage reduction and a bonus damage shot every so often while alone.

Spoiler: Turrets (click to show/hide)

Turrets keep their damage between targets so juggling aggro early doesn't help as much. Outer turrets give less global gold but more to the nearby champs, inner turrets give less everything. Bonus damage to towers from AP is magic damage. Now have a small amount of Armor/MR and less health, but you can pen the defensive stats. Backdoor protection is flat 2/3 damage reduction.

Overall, really excited for Malz because his ult is no longer embarrassingly bad, or rather his passive enables his ult to be used on occasion. Maybe. Jungle hype is real though.

I can't help but sigh on the Veigar changes. Riot really just needs to either remove him from the game, or accept that large, perfectly reliable, single target nuke is a valid skill when it's 80% of the champion's value. Come back in 5 years and Veigar's R ratio will be down to 20% AP and damage is double reduced by MR.

[TempAcc]

So, jungle malz on PBE is absurd. His clears are fast and safe due to the amount of voidlings he can spawn, he can even clear drag at level 3. Will prob get nerfed, but I hope they keep jungle malz as a thing that exists.

[frostshotgg]

I'm curious who you would classify as both an assassin and a lane bully. I can think of Lebonk and that's about it.

[Jopax]

Yeah, Zed is kinda bullshit since he can push all day long and only gets punished if your jungler camps the lane, which is rarely the case. You could try pushing back, but good luck having any mana left to actually fight him afterwards. Honestly, the only real counter to him is someone who can tank trough the damage and match his pushing power somewhat, without having to invest all of their mana into doing that. Poking him out of the lane might be viable if he didn't have a minion wave in your face almost constantly. And if you play safe and conserve your mana, he'll just shove the lane and go gank some other lane.

Assasins should imho be a variant of the carry, weaker early game which is compensated by the ability to delete people one you're farmed and leveled somewhat. Zed doesn't have a weak early game, nor mid game, nor lategame. The only way a Zed does poorly is if he's bad or if he's facing a well coordinated team that knows how to lock his slippery ass down, which is a rather rare thing in anything but the higher elos.