League of Legends General Discussion Thread

[Enoch]

First thanks for Gustaran for hosting another awesome competition and congratulations on Spellman for winning (buy Warwick!). There are a couple of things that might seem a bit weird here but this was my first try and it was before the rule about losing time for towers was introduced. As it was only two towers went down and when I tried it again I couldn't stop the towers falling anyway! No replay either I'm afraid because the replay client is not happy on my computer at the minute

My initial thoughts were that I wanted to be able to start attacking the baron as soon as it spawned, this meant that I had to be able to solo it using relatively cheap items. So I looked to find a champion and an item set that could do the job with less than 3000 gold worth of items.

So we need:
1) Ability to do ~9000 damage
2) Armour
3) Some serious ability to heal

From these requirements comes the core item of the build, Wriggle's Lantern. Unfortunately the extra damage is halved to 250 on baron but it still provides lifesteal, damage and armour for a very cheap price. Also it provides a free ward, which will prove to be very handy

The best way to increase the effectiveness of a Wriggle's is to boost attack speed, so the next item is the much maligned berserker's greaves. You will want boots for the movement speed around the map anyway and the added attack speed is very cheap. Lastly we will want more armour, a simple chain vest does the trick here.

Next was looking for the champion to use. I wanted a champion with an attack speed increase and a way of generating health, everything else would be a bonus. Three champions came to mind 1) Nunu (blood boil, Consume) 2) Jax (massive speed increase on ultimate, general high damage 3) Warwick (passive, Q and W). Of these Warwick seemed far and away superior.

His passive at level 11 gives 54 health per attack he makes, his q does ~ 160 damage and heals for the same amount and his w gives a crazy 80% attack speed boost! So item build and champion were set and it was time for the attempt.

Runes and masteries were:

They are not ideal but I have just hit 20 so they are what I have got Optimal runes would be either flat attack speed or a mix of attack speed, armour and health. For Masteries full defence is a must and if I had 30 points I would have grabbed the attack speed masteries in offence.

Summmoner spells were Heal and smite. Heal was there just in case and smite was there for the added damage and for farming both sets of wraiths. Level 11 was necessary as that is where Warwick's passive maxes out and mid lane plus wraith experience would guarantee that level in 12 minutes.

After all the set up the run was pretty straightforward. I wasn't worrying about other lanes or killing my opponent I was just farming. Start with longsword + health potion at the wraiths (skilling w first), then push mid and farm the other wraiths. I shopped once for wriggle's and boots and then just kept repeating. Skill up Q and W whilst ignoring E as it adds nothing to your baron killing ability. I recalled at about 12:30 to buy the chain vest and 2 wards (if I was farming better I would have picked up blue pot and green pot as well). Also I really should have picked up at least one health potion, no reason not to here.

Next stage was running back and killing Lizard for red buff (for extra damage but think this was pretty irrelevant) and Golem for Blue buff (Mana regen and cooldown reduction were crucial). Then saunter into Baron just after he spawns and throw all the wards down. The ward trick is something I saw in a game once when a Fiddlestick was trying to solo Baron and Baron kept attacking the wards instead of him. This does not work fully with melee range champions you will still get attacked. However it does occasionally block a knock up, which is crucial because when you are not attacking you are not healing! Killing baron was then just a matter of hitting q and w when they were off cooldown and hoping that I hadn't just wasted 15 minutes...

With the amount of health I had left I don't think the wards were actually necessary, the main thing they do is make sure you don't get in trouble because of blips in the rng (Summoner heal does the same thing). Unfortunately as I had not been paying attention to the other lanes two towers had gone down and the next two were under siege but fortunately still standing at the end. I tried repeating the challenge with teleport and fortify to keep the towers up but it was mostly an exercise in frustration with bots so I only tried it once.

Short version : Warwick - Wriggle's, Berserkers Greaves, Chain Vest and wards. Runes: Attack speed and armour. Get Blue buff and max q and w. Place wards on baron to help tank it.

P.s Is anyone else having to resist trying this is a real game? I just want to see the reaction of the enemy team when Baron buff just pops up over all their opponents heads!

[Enoch]

Sorry that was a lot longer than I had realised!

I'm really intrigued to see what champions everyone else used, anyone else care to share?

[uberfish]

I'd tried karthus with a stack of wards to tank, but Baron seemed to ignore the wards so I figured they didn't work.

So I used warwick but couldn't figure out a reliable 15 min baron killing technique - I think in my fastest run I was able to engage baron a few seconds after spawn with Bloodrazor + 3 vampiric sceptres + boots + blue elixir + golem buff and one tower down. The main problem was actually getting hit with baron's special attacks, which seemed to be random and devastating. Maybe a couple of wards might have absorbed a spell or two and made the difference here.

I got this much gold by taking Teleport/Exhaust (Exhaust ensured first blood and could stop retreats to towers) and ganking the computer opponents a lot. Soraka and Sivir seemed to be the best teammates.

the 21:53 time I submitted was after one death to baron (during which a couple of towers were pushed), I got frustrated and decided to add Malady on top of the Bloodrazor and that was an easy kill at lvl16.

[Sir Bruce]

Someone collected the design status for all the champs and organized it in a thread on the official forums. Pretty interesting to read what the devs think about current gameplay, power levels, and game design.

http://www.leagueoflegends.com/board/sho...p?t=685784

[Lollerpwn]

Didnt bother uploading a pick of my attempt. But after seeing enochs report i think its pretty funny.
Probably should have done the wardtrick. As I died on my very first attempt with bloodrazer a recurve bow and something else. Altough I still think the hardest part was protecting your towers. I used malph bot and shen bot and altough shen was decent he would tele in to protect malph which left the lane open. Also at 15 minutes i had to go bot to protect a tower instead of going to baron. I was running armor pen and full attack speed runes and 21-0-9 masteries. Since I thought that if I wanted to win i'd better kill it quick thats why I went for more offense instead of defense. And money wasnt a very big deal since I got at least 20 kills every attempt. For spells i had smite teleport, smite to kill dual golems to get to level 2 before the bots were in lane. Then teleport to be able to shop right before 15 minute and then teleport in on my wriggles ward.

[VarisNox]

Had two attempts. Thought process was I wanted shielding and/or healing and attack speed. Of the champions, the three most obvious choices to me were Udyr, Warwick, and Jarvan IV. I didn't really want to do WW, even though he was most likely the best choice for the challenge, so I tried with Jarvan first.

Jarvan, in addition to his shield and Armor/Speed buff in his E skill also has another nice advantage: his passive. The extra damage from the passive let me clear Baron pretty easily.

Not too bad! However, I also wanted to try it out with Udyr.

A bit better. The extra procs of wriggles and Madred's gained from Tiger stance's 3 attacks was definitely noticed during the fight.

In both cases, I lost the two side lanes, and barely lost mid as the Baron fell, which was disappointing. Also, having Nasus bot on your team is hard mode

Masteries were 15/3/12 for Udyr and 1/17/12 for Jarvan.

Hilariously enough, I actually beat the Baron faster than Enoch with my second try. However, one extra tower was downed on my side.

[Sullla]

With all respect, in the future I would suggest not adding bots into these sort of challenges. They add way too many randomness to make the results all that comparable. I didn't enter because I couldn't stand the thought of spending 15-20 minutes on a good attempt, only to lose because some stupid AI bot let their tower get pushed down. Love the intention, but I think the execution might be handled better without the AI mucking things up.

[spellman]

I knew it was Warwick, KNEW IT! *shakes fist at not heros he hasn't bought*

Udyr and Jarvan were totally not on my radar. Then again, I don't own them too. =p

Instead I tried with Nasus (which I bought w/ IP). Life steal, Wriggles, pray siphoning strike is farmed enough, and went on a ganking spree when I wasn't farming the crap out the minions. Still too squishy.

[Gustaran]

With all respect, in the future I would suggest not adding bots into these sort of challenges. They add way too many randomness to make the results all that comparable. I didn't enter because I couldn't stand the thought of spending 15-20 minutes on a good attempt, only to lose because some stupid AI bot let their tower get pushed down. Love the intention, but I think the execution might be handled better without the AI mucking things up.

Hey, aren't you the guy who spends hours on chance dependent encounters in Final Fantasy games ?

Sullla, if it was only you playing I would happily remove bots and let you jungle/farm for 30 minutes, since I know you would be up for it. But if you recall the feedback ofthe last challenge, many people didn't even like the thought of "boring" farming for 10 minutes
In addition I don't really agree with the bots adding too much randomness.
After all, your bot choice and lane order of enemy bots add some additional interesting choices to the game, i.e. Sivir bot is much better in holding a lane then Nasus bot.
I understand however that receiving a penalty because of a bot action is not ideal, I will think about if there are ways to avoid that in the future.
And unfortunately interesting contests without any bots are a little hard to do, if anyone has some good suggestions I would be interested to hear them

[Enoch]

On the bot discussion I will say that I didn't improve my time because dealing with the bots drove me crazy. I agree that it did lead to some interesting strategy but once you got in game it made the whole thing feel very rng dependent.

Also after seeing the other results, everyone seems to have farmed the bots hard. My poor Warwick's budget equipment! Oh well at least my run showed that it is possible in a relatively normal game environment.