Alright, he are the pictures from the contest. That replay client does not like taking screenshots; I had to record in Fraps, then grab screenshots with PrintScreen off of the recording. Interesting. Anyway...
For this challenge, we had our choice of 10 champions. Much of the challenge involved picking which 3 to use. Right away, I threw out any possibility of using the AP caster champions. These champs have low base attack damage (AD), slow attack speeds, and rely on using their spells for last hitting minions. With no runes, they would quickly run out of mana and become poor farmers. The blue golem was not allowed by rule, and wouldn't have been worth the time investment even if it was allowed. So much for LeBlanc and Morgana. Heimer you might think would be a great farmer, but for this challenge precision was much more important than pushing. I've played as Heimer, and his turrets with their auto-attacking will cause you to miss minions. Maybe the turrets could theoretically let you farm middle lane while Heimer goes and grabs neutral jungle minions... but that would rely on extreme luck, and Heimer is so mana dependent, it didn't seem like a good idea.
Amongst the other champs, Garen didn't offer anything that a ranged carry couldn't do better. Amumu and Rammus are simply awful farmers, although Rammus could theoretically put up a fast time with his Powerball. You'd have to be REALLY good at last hitting with his low attack damage and slow attack speed though. Maybe I'll try that sometime, I don't think it would be as bad as it first appears. Like Heimer, Modekaiser is known as a great farmer, but that's more do to his shield making him tanky in the lane than any innate farming skills. Without need to worry about harass from enemy champs, he doesn't offer anything special. He didn't seem like a good pick.
So what are you looking for in this challenge?
* Movement speed
* High attack damage
* Fast attack speed
* Skills which allow you to farm quickly and/or move around the map
And I would rank them in that order. The movement speed is why Rammus would work for this thing, even though he's terrible at every other metric. As ranged carries, Ashe and Caitlyn were obvious picks, with great base attack damage and attack speed. Both also had skills that aided in farming, Ashe volley (W) and Caitlyn peacemaker (Q). Caitlyn's net also allowed her to get a quick movement boost, to reach jungle minions just a little bit faster. You can use it to go through the walls of the wraith camps in the exact right spot, but I never play Caitlyn and couldn't pull this off consistently, heh.
Master Yi was by far the strongest option for the last pick. Not even close. Yi is actually the best champ for this challenge overall, hands down. He might be the best in the whole game - I thought Nunu would also be awesome, and Twisted Fate once he gets his ult. Yi's Alpha Strike hits up to four times, and has a chance to do 400 damage to a minion, basically an instant kill. His Wuju Style adds significant passive damage, 15 at first rank, and there's no need to use the active for this challenge. Higher base damage is key, as it gives you much, MUCH more of a window to last hit correctly. Less room to mess up, basically. Finally his Highlander ult is a free ghost and huge attack speed buff. Pop ult, run to the wraith camp, Alpha Strike, auto-attack whatever survives, and you're back in lane without missing anything. Amazing stuff.
I meta-gamed the Yi pick pretty hard, pretending that I had no idea what to do after Ashe/Caitlyn. That was a total lie, as I did my Yi game five days before the deadline. I guessed that not revealing my last pick would be worth more than a few extra seconds. Sorry for that, you have my apologies.
Then Enoch went and posted the 9:03 Yi time, which I was terrified everyone would latch onto and duplicate. Fortunately, I ended up being safe in the end... But Yi was the best choice for this challenge. I don't think you could win if you didn't pick Yi.
You never have time in this challenge to go back to the fountain to purchase. Even with Teleport, you'd waste too many potential minion kills. Therefore I bought Doran's Blade with all of my champs. Extra damage, extra health, and a tiny bit of life steal to stay alive longer. The health and lifesteal were not at all trivial; you have to clear the wraith camps constantly to get a good time, and they will do a lot of damage to your character. I did suffer deaths on one or two runs, heh. No runes makes it tough. For masteries, I went 22/0/8, loading up on all the offensive stuff along with improved experience in the utility tree. I'll post a picture of my masteries when I throw this up on YouTube (probably tomorrow). Basically, more offense to make it easier to last hit with extra damage, armor pen, and attack speed. It's infinitely easier to last hit when you do 70 damage to minions than when you do 50 damage, trust me.
Summoner spells were Ghost and Smite. I played around with Teleport (and even used it in the Caitlyn game that I did first) but I could get off 2 Ghosts as opposed to only 1 Teleport in the ~9 minutes of farming, so that made Ghost a better choice, IMO. Smite is an absolute necessity for this challenge. You need Smite to clear the big wraith at each camp. End of story.
Basic gameplay is pretty simple. Start at the blue wraith camp, Smite the big wraith and kill the other three. Done right, you have time to get all four and get into the mid lane before the first minions die. Farm up the first 2 waves of minions, then go clear the purple wraith camp - your Smite will just be back up again. Clear 2-3 waves of minions and then go down to the blue wraith camp again, using Ghost/Teleport here to reduce transit time. Rinse and repeat. Knowing when to go to the wraith camps and when to stay in lane is a fine art, and tough to gauge. You also want to auto-attack the minion wave as much as possible - so that your minions will put to tower, and give you time to go farm the wraiths - but in nuking the minion wave, you can't miss any last hits. This is pretty tricky, and constitutes a fine balancing act! It can be strangely hypnotic in a way. At the same time, you can get "locked in" to last hitting, and be so on your game that you don't miss anything. It's a weird feeling, the same sort of thing that athletes talk about being "in the zone" or whatever. It's happened to me when playing DDR (Dance Dance Revolution) too, you're just in this place where you literally don't miss. I don't really know how to describe it, but you can see it at work in some of the replays here. Especially in the Ashe video, where I last hit a minion while simultaneously volleying two others on several occasions. Fun stuff.
Pictures:
![[Image: farmcaitlyn.png]](http://www.garath.net/Sullla/farmcaitlyn.png)
I did the Caitlyn game first, as I thought it was the most obvious champion to use. As such, this is the weakest of my three submissions. I did not use the net nearly as effectively as I could have done so, and I used Teleport instead of Ghost, although the Teleport timing was absolutely perfect on this run. If you used the net properly and timed your wraith trips better, this time could be much faster. I think a perfect Caitlyn game could be under 9:00. She's so strong in lane. Interestingly, I wrote down this time as 9:29, although it's actually a second faster. Should have watched more closely.
![[Image: farmashe.png]](http://www.garath.net/Sullla/farmashe.png)
I did the Ashe game next, and this is the one that gave me the most trouble. I must have played Ashe more often that the other two champs combined. Quite a bit more, actually. Even though Ashe gets the same amount of base damage as Caitlyn, she has no movement skill to boost her to wraiths faster. He volley is also a lot worse at farming minions than Caitlyn's peacemer. Furthermore, Ashe's crit chance passive is pretty useless when you have to attack constantly for last hits. Caitlyn's sniper passive is much better - you can even autoattack to charge it up sometimes for a last hit. I had lots of trouble with Ashe before getting that 9:25 time. This is by far the best of my three times. Caitlyn is way better at this than Ashe, so there's no way my Ashe time should be faster. Again, could be improved, I think you could get Ashe down under 9:10 on a perfect run, but this was my favorite of the three, because it was the hardest.
![[Image: farmyi.png]](http://www.garath.net/Sullla/farmyi.png)
Yi, meanwhile, is just a monster. Check out the base stats for Yi in the bottom corner. He has WAY more attack damage than Ashe or Caitlyn, 133 to their 86/88. Uh, that makes a bit of a difference! He also attacks faster too. I alternated skilling Alpha Strike and Wuju Style, with a point in Highlander at level 6. Basically, Yi can clear the wraiths whenever they respawn with very little difficulty. The fact that Yi wasn't ranged was no real issue for me. In a way, it can be easier to last hit because you don't have to worry about the transit time of the projectile. The only issue was last hitting caster minions at the purple tower, but I was usually off doing wraiths when that happened. If any of you skipped Yi for this challenge, try doing it with him. He is amazing at this. I actually only played Yi twice, got my 9:08 score on the second try, and stopped there. A perfect run could go well below 9:00, maybe even down in the 8:45 range. I made significant mistakes on this attempt and still had a great time.
The three replays are zipped together below. I'm going to cast one of these, probably the Ashe game, and throw it up on YouTube tomorrow. Many thanks to Gustaran for setting this up, and to everyone who participated.![[Image: smile.gif]](http://www.garath.net/Sullla/Smilies/smile.gif)
http://www.garath.net/Sullla/farmingcontest.zip
For this challenge, we had our choice of 10 champions. Much of the challenge involved picking which 3 to use. Right away, I threw out any possibility of using the AP caster champions. These champs have low base attack damage (AD), slow attack speeds, and rely on using their spells for last hitting minions. With no runes, they would quickly run out of mana and become poor farmers. The blue golem was not allowed by rule, and wouldn't have been worth the time investment even if it was allowed. So much for LeBlanc and Morgana. Heimer you might think would be a great farmer, but for this challenge precision was much more important than pushing. I've played as Heimer, and his turrets with their auto-attacking will cause you to miss minions. Maybe the turrets could theoretically let you farm middle lane while Heimer goes and grabs neutral jungle minions... but that would rely on extreme luck, and Heimer is so mana dependent, it didn't seem like a good idea.
Amongst the other champs, Garen didn't offer anything that a ranged carry couldn't do better. Amumu and Rammus are simply awful farmers, although Rammus could theoretically put up a fast time with his Powerball. You'd have to be REALLY good at last hitting with his low attack damage and slow attack speed though. Maybe I'll try that sometime, I don't think it would be as bad as it first appears. Like Heimer, Modekaiser is known as a great farmer, but that's more do to his shield making him tanky in the lane than any innate farming skills. Without need to worry about harass from enemy champs, he doesn't offer anything special. He didn't seem like a good pick.
So what are you looking for in this challenge?
* Movement speed
* High attack damage
* Fast attack speed
* Skills which allow you to farm quickly and/or move around the map
And I would rank them in that order. The movement speed is why Rammus would work for this thing, even though he's terrible at every other metric. As ranged carries, Ashe and Caitlyn were obvious picks, with great base attack damage and attack speed. Both also had skills that aided in farming, Ashe volley (W) and Caitlyn peacemaker (Q). Caitlyn's net also allowed her to get a quick movement boost, to reach jungle minions just a little bit faster. You can use it to go through the walls of the wraith camps in the exact right spot, but I never play Caitlyn and couldn't pull this off consistently, heh.
Master Yi was by far the strongest option for the last pick. Not even close. Yi is actually the best champ for this challenge overall, hands down. He might be the best in the whole game - I thought Nunu would also be awesome, and Twisted Fate once he gets his ult. Yi's Alpha Strike hits up to four times, and has a chance to do 400 damage to a minion, basically an instant kill. His Wuju Style adds significant passive damage, 15 at first rank, and there's no need to use the active for this challenge. Higher base damage is key, as it gives you much, MUCH more of a window to last hit correctly. Less room to mess up, basically. Finally his Highlander ult is a free ghost and huge attack speed buff. Pop ult, run to the wraith camp, Alpha Strike, auto-attack whatever survives, and you're back in lane without missing anything. Amazing stuff.
I meta-gamed the Yi pick pretty hard, pretending that I had no idea what to do after Ashe/Caitlyn. That was a total lie, as I did my Yi game five days before the deadline. I guessed that not revealing my last pick would be worth more than a few extra seconds. Sorry for that, you have my apologies.
Then Enoch went and posted the 9:03 Yi time, which I was terrified everyone would latch onto and duplicate. Fortunately, I ended up being safe in the end... But Yi was the best choice for this challenge. I don't think you could win if you didn't pick Yi.You never have time in this challenge to go back to the fountain to purchase. Even with Teleport, you'd waste too many potential minion kills. Therefore I bought Doran's Blade with all of my champs. Extra damage, extra health, and a tiny bit of life steal to stay alive longer. The health and lifesteal were not at all trivial; you have to clear the wraith camps constantly to get a good time, and they will do a lot of damage to your character. I did suffer deaths on one or two runs, heh. No runes makes it tough. For masteries, I went 22/0/8, loading up on all the offensive stuff along with improved experience in the utility tree. I'll post a picture of my masteries when I throw this up on YouTube (probably tomorrow). Basically, more offense to make it easier to last hit with extra damage, armor pen, and attack speed. It's infinitely easier to last hit when you do 70 damage to minions than when you do 50 damage, trust me.
Summoner spells were Ghost and Smite. I played around with Teleport (and even used it in the Caitlyn game that I did first) but I could get off 2 Ghosts as opposed to only 1 Teleport in the ~9 minutes of farming, so that made Ghost a better choice, IMO. Smite is an absolute necessity for this challenge. You need Smite to clear the big wraith at each camp. End of story.
Basic gameplay is pretty simple. Start at the blue wraith camp, Smite the big wraith and kill the other three. Done right, you have time to get all four and get into the mid lane before the first minions die. Farm up the first 2 waves of minions, then go clear the purple wraith camp - your Smite will just be back up again. Clear 2-3 waves of minions and then go down to the blue wraith camp again, using Ghost/Teleport here to reduce transit time. Rinse and repeat. Knowing when to go to the wraith camps and when to stay in lane is a fine art, and tough to gauge. You also want to auto-attack the minion wave as much as possible - so that your minions will put to tower, and give you time to go farm the wraiths - but in nuking the minion wave, you can't miss any last hits. This is pretty tricky, and constitutes a fine balancing act! It can be strangely hypnotic in a way. At the same time, you can get "locked in" to last hitting, and be so on your game that you don't miss anything. It's a weird feeling, the same sort of thing that athletes talk about being "in the zone" or whatever. It's happened to me when playing DDR (Dance Dance Revolution) too, you're just in this place where you literally don't miss. I don't really know how to describe it, but you can see it at work in some of the replays here. Especially in the Ashe video, where I last hit a minion while simultaneously volleying two others on several occasions. Fun stuff.
Pictures:
I did the Caitlyn game first, as I thought it was the most obvious champion to use. As such, this is the weakest of my three submissions. I did not use the net nearly as effectively as I could have done so, and I used Teleport instead of Ghost, although the Teleport timing was absolutely perfect on this run. If you used the net properly and timed your wraith trips better, this time could be much faster. I think a perfect Caitlyn game could be under 9:00. She's so strong in lane. Interestingly, I wrote down this time as 9:29, although it's actually a second faster. Should have watched more closely.
I did the Ashe game next, and this is the one that gave me the most trouble. I must have played Ashe more often that the other two champs combined. Quite a bit more, actually. Even though Ashe gets the same amount of base damage as Caitlyn, she has no movement skill to boost her to wraiths faster. He volley is also a lot worse at farming minions than Caitlyn's peacemer. Furthermore, Ashe's crit chance passive is pretty useless when you have to attack constantly for last hits. Caitlyn's sniper passive is much better - you can even autoattack to charge it up sometimes for a last hit. I had lots of trouble with Ashe before getting that 9:25 time. This is by far the best of my three times. Caitlyn is way better at this than Ashe, so there's no way my Ashe time should be faster. Again, could be improved, I think you could get Ashe down under 9:10 on a perfect run, but this was my favorite of the three, because it was the hardest.
Yi, meanwhile, is just a monster. Check out the base stats for Yi in the bottom corner. He has WAY more attack damage than Ashe or Caitlyn, 133 to their 86/88. Uh, that makes a bit of a difference! He also attacks faster too. I alternated skilling Alpha Strike and Wuju Style, with a point in Highlander at level 6. Basically, Yi can clear the wraiths whenever they respawn with very little difficulty. The fact that Yi wasn't ranged was no real issue for me. In a way, it can be easier to last hit because you don't have to worry about the transit time of the projectile. The only issue was last hitting caster minions at the purple tower, but I was usually off doing wraiths when that happened. If any of you skipped Yi for this challenge, try doing it with him. He is amazing at this. I actually only played Yi twice, got my 9:08 score on the second try, and stopped there. A perfect run could go well below 9:00, maybe even down in the 8:45 range. I made significant mistakes on this attempt and still had a great time.
The three replays are zipped together below. I'm going to cast one of these, probably the Ashe game, and throw it up on YouTube tomorrow. Many thanks to Gustaran for setting this up, and to everyone who participated.
http://www.garath.net/Sullla/farmingcontest.zip
