League of Legends

A lot of the champs have pretty fun lines. Some of them are pretty run-of-the-mill though... really depends on who you play.

I like the audio for the most part, but it's better for some champions than others. I mentioned previously in the thread that Victor's empowered auto-attack feels more powerful than normal mage autos, and it occured to me yesterday how much audio plays into that. Support and mages don't have very good auto-attack sounds, whereas auto-attack heavy champions have very nice, meaty sounding ones.

/designer hat on

Which was probably done to give the player a hint as to what's the most effective course of action for a given champ! Having a nice, rewarding sound for auto-attacks encourages to use it more, while having no or a weak sound doesn't make the player feel good, and encourages them to use things that do feel good, like their spells! Audio design is often overlooked, but it's very neat.

edited 2nd Oct '14 3:27:37 PM by kegisak

Huh, that's really fascinating actually.

I don't do it out of any dislike for the audio of the game, I just feel as though I can maximize my leisure time by listening to podcasts or the radio or radio plays as I play video games.

I just realized that remade Sion is exactly how I imagined the humanoid form of Deathwing would have looked like if they gave him a proper one in World Of Warcraft (not that pretty shitty undeveloped placeholder one they made for one like, one notable quest).

That said, I really don't understand Riot's design in the remake. I mean, he looks obviously like an Orc, or even a blackish/corrupted Garrosh Hellscream with Deathwing's jaw. It's just so painfully generic and I shouldn't look at Sion and immediately think he's from the new Wo D expac. Hell, I'm not going to be surprised if Garrosh appears in the expac with that near exact design as a raid boss.

Like, even giving him some hair might have helped a ton. Maybe give him a decayed skeleton lower jaw so it isn't metal and reminds people of his original design a bit. And maybe a new weapon instead of an axe because two Noxian bruisers with axes is overlapping just a tad. There's no Noxian with a sword, and maces are underrepresented. Maybe a halberd even.

edited 2nd Oct '14 6:41:07 PM by Elementroar

I think having an axe is important precisely because it makes you compare him to Darius. We didn't need a fancy new weapon user, we needed an undead Darius to emphasize the Noxus connection and history. Also if you watch his animations he punches like half the time anyway.

That said, I agree his design is odd.

edited 2nd Oct '14 6:59:35 PM by Clarste

Sion already had an axe. I'm pretty sure they wanted to keep that. Besides, he and Darius use their axes really differently. And they also don't want outright skellingtons because China bones. Aside from that, I'm predicting he'll be either overtuned (and thus strong) or weak by design.

edited 2nd Oct '14 6:59:46 PM by HazzyHaz

Good luck to reacting that monster laneganking you. Damn outright forces you to place a ward far in the opponent's bush or down dragon pit to react to it.

Well, he's got a scaling ability. So like Nassus and Veigar, I think he can easily snowball pretty well if he gets the chance.

If his attack isn't spectacular, then he can snowball into indestructibility. If his attack is good then you'll probably be justified in forgoing defensive items and just letting him scale reasonably tough and just brutalizing anyone that comes near you. His Q looks like you can get an entire wave with it, so I could easily see him getting tons of creep kills with it and getting a good bonus to his health. Otherwise... his utility means that he'll be useful in teamfights so all he needs to do is become unstoppably tanky and he can make a difference.

So yeah. I figure, unless his base stats are utter garbage he at least has the potential to be really strong.

That's true. The sheer terrorism potential of his ult is pretty notable.

edited 2nd Oct '14 7:14:50 PM by kegisak

They kept the axe because it is part of Sion identity as a character, that and trying to keep the shield mechanic and health gain because they are interesting things and part of the character that Riot said they wanted to keep when they began talking about the rework.

edited 2nd Oct '14 7:15:36 PM by joaqs

Counter with Fizz. Moreover, in teamfights, you won't be getting chances to channel the Q that much which means you really only offer a slow, after your ult gets expended.

I think the undead element of classic Sion's design is just as important as well as his weapon. The metal bits just screams Cata-Garrosh/Deathwing and I swear I have seen his armor on World Of Warcraft Orc. They title him the 'Undead Juggernaut' but honestly, with the technicolor palette of native Runeterrans, he could pass off as being 'alive' and nothing in his dsign really says he's 'undead'.

I would argue that there's still some overlap with the skill usage, such as the whole 'dunk with axe' move as part of both kits in some form. Though it's hard to find creative ways to use an axe all the time. Maybe in hindsight, they should have given Darius a different weapon to prevent overlap even then with original Sion. Halberd, flail etc. Still lots of medieval weapons to choose from really.

I'm interested if/when they release a Traditional Sion skin, like for the other reworks. I think the undead elements are just too important when they're part of the name.

They've said no to a Traditional Skin and its mostly because of reallocation of assets that results in a very awkward experience. Like, Karma didn't have too big of a difference in how she opperated, but Sion's old VA doesn't mesh with his new stuff.

We could've had him shout GET TO DAH CHOPPA when he ults, though.... oh well, next legendary skin...

The Orc look doesn't really bother me seeing that Sion's old design always came off as a throwback to Grandpa DOTA, where he was clearly inspired by the Big dumb Ogre champions.

[1]

All of riven's joke lines are said in sch a comically serious way!

Sheath Shopping

Warranty

edited 3rd Oct '14 7:32:19 AM by FrozenWolf2

After FIVE games of being outplayed and being stuck with teams with at least 2 or 3 allies that do nothing, I finally got a game... where I'm instead surrounded with competent guys, and the enemy was so incompetent 3 of them left.

This doesn't speak of my skill much, right? Well, 1st day win bonus is a 1st day win bonus.

On the other hand, I am trying to make my own list of 30 Favorite League champions. I just wonder if my current skill makes me deserving to make such list.

And I don't mean just how they play gameplay-wise, but also every bits of their lore and characteristics and personality.

edited 3rd Oct '14 7:32:17 AM by ChrisX

It's incredibly elitist to say that you need a high amount of experience or Elo with a game to "deserve" to make such a list.

Well it's not a tier list or something like that.

I think the biggest problem is that I feel kind of not very confident on my skills and feared that some pro players that saw the list say that some of my reasonings are off. Or "You haven't even played (insert champ not in the list), how can you be so prejudiced!?"...

Could be elitism, but... it's mostly directed on myself, so it could also be something of a Self-Deprecation, I think?

As long as you say its a personal list and not an analytical one you should be fine. Besides, i doubt that pros are actively perusing every tier list ever made

And for that matter, I doubt they'd care if they saw one they didn't agree with. And like ,the way I've seen some pro matches, sometimes really unexpected ways of using champs makes them crazy good, so it can be hard to judge that way. Like, midlane Hecarim. Who would expect that? Noon, and that's why it worked: Hecarim thrives on confusion and panic.

On a similar note... I'm still generally wrapping my head around why certain champions are used where they are, aside from some of the obvious features(Like, Soraka has a heal that only works on allies, so she's obviously not as useful in a solo lane).

There are certain features that make champions excel at certain roles. Like, Thresh's abundance of slows, a support dash and a unique stun make him an excellent playmaker. He's really good at engaging fights on his terms and the magic damage passive from Flay makes him a pretty good harasser too.

You know, the passive that gives your auto-attacks, at max level, 200% of your AD as bonus magic damage.

And a sheild that allows junglers to jump right to you.

And a stun that allows you to both initiate and carry up on a fight.

And a slow that allows you to put your enemy at a disadvantage.

And an ult that punishes enemies for trying to flee.

And the ability to scale both AP and Armour naturally up to a pretty respectable amount if stuff dies around you frequently.

My point is, I just played a bot game with top-lane, AD Thresh, and it was... crazy. My auto-attacks, at a full charge, dealt about 900 damage. Of split damage too, making it hard to itemize against. His armour scales high enough that I could build only damage and attack speed items and still be survivable, the scaling of his AP means that my abilities still did a pretty solid amount, and ruunan's hurricane applies his flay passive as on-hit effects.

Like, I know you can never judge a builds effectiveness just against bots because they're dumb as hell, but it was so effective. There must be some weakness or I feel like it'd have been seen by now, but I can't for the life of me figure it out.

AD Thresh is kinda troll by funny, but it has some real big weaknesses. He has really long cast times on his signature CC moves, so that you're really losing out on dps by using them. Q even locks you out of auto'ing, and the dash part of it is negated by the fact that you've build squish AD.

Moreover, you need to get 4-5 souls per level to actually match a regular champ's armor/level scaling, so if you ever get behind and zoned, you're fucked.

edited 3rd Oct '14 7:58:57 PM by HazzyHaz

Aaaaand there's the weakness, heh. Yeah, I guess there's a lot of builds that could work IF you can work the early game.

I don't think it'd be THAT hard, for a couple reasons - he's ranged, which gives him a bit of a C Sing edge on other toplaners at least. And his lantern collects souls, so worst case scenario you can use it, though you'll lose mana fast if you do.

Your range is 100 less than a regular adc, which means you'd get all-in'd pretty easily. And your lantern is on a 20s cooldown which makes it a shitty damage control.

Mmm... fair enough. Like I said, it'd have to have some weakness.

Still, I could imagine someone doing it as a gimmick, if not like, professional play. It might be fun to try it out in a solo queue game... if only I actually enjoyed playing top lane at all.

So I've been thinking...

Am I the only one who thinks that calling the Narrative team now having a Dork Age actually goes too far? There are a lot who are enjoying the new narrative so far, it's just that the old lore fans are just being a very loud Vocal Minority like a Grumpy Old Man Up To Eleven. I feel that they are pissed because they cannot control over the lore direction again, and I think that's just damn petty. Heck, we over here don't seem to complain much about the new lores! If you compare with the Story & Art board, whatever complains we have would sound like choirs with how they claim they're all better writers and Riot Narrative Team is a fool to not follow their vision.

Fuck them.

So I was thinking maybe I should remove stuffs about them being in Dork Age, but let's hear your opinion first.

edited 4th Oct '14 9:24:28 AM by ChrisX

Determining a Dork Age is difficult since opinions are subjective and what some people call a dork age may just be them *****ing. Looking at Generally Regarded Dork Ages they tend to have recognition that a drop in quality has accrued.

Lo L's lore is hard to validate this claim... cause lets face it It be hard to validate just how many people actually care enough about the lore to be upset over a reboot. Sorry Lore buffs you'd almost have to concede that the Lore has never been Lo Ls major draw.

Unlike say comics where there is a drop in readership to go with the vocal criticism.

I mean I ain't heard nothing about a drop in Lo L's player population as a response to the reboot.

edited 4th Oct '14 10:53:08 AM by FrozenWolf2