League of Legends General Discussion Thread

[Sullla]

But yesterday; Sunrise, Terror, Ub3rfish, myself and Seyruun (all roughly equivalent in terms of skill I think) fired up a couple games and though 3 of those 5 guys aren't even level 30 yet, we got matched up against 2 premade teams of players where most of them had over 550 wins and the least experienced player we went against still had 250 wins (roughly 3 times the experience of any of us). Naturally we got raped both times.

Look, matchmaking is indeed terrible sometimes, no question about it. At the same time, I think some of you are focusing way too much on the "number of wins" stat and using that to make excuses. Just because someone has 500 wins doesn't mean that they're any good. They might have 800 losses. All it means is that they've played a ton of games. I've seen many, many people who had 500+ wins (1000+ total games) that lacked an understanding of basic game mechanics and were easily beaten. You have to stop thinking, "we couldn't have beaten that team," or you'll never get any better.

In the game a couple of days ago that Seyruun was referring to, what happened? I didn't save the recording of that one, but as I remember:

- The enemy team had a Twich player that picked up 4 kills in the first 6 minutes. That should never happen; Twich is very weak at low levels and easily killed. There were multiple occasions where we knew Twich was near middle or near bottom lanes, and then players ran forward away from the safety of their tower, and suddenly Twich was behind them and they were dead. You can't blame the other team for that! Lack of map awareness.

- The other team had no jungler, and we did, yet they managed to get all of the big neutral buffs. Look, when you have Smite and the other team doesn't, you have a giant advantage. That's why you take a jungler in the first place. When you are playing a jungler, you have the following priorities, in order:

1) Control/Smite Baron.
2) Control/Smite Dragon.
3) Gank/Cover other lanes to help your teammates.
4) Grab experience/buffs from the jungle.

In the game in question, we lost two dragons and a baron because our jungler didn't use Smite. Don't blame matchmaking for that!

- The other team had Twich roaming the map while stealthed, Shen global ult, and one Teleport. They kept sending 3 or 4 player gank squads to individual lanes, getting kills, and then pushing down the tower there. Sadly this worked over and over again. I know someone in that game said "I don't think it's possible to defend against this strategy without Teleport", which is simply not true. Here's how you stop that kind of play:

1) Map awareness! When the enemy champs disappear off the minimap, and there's a stealth character in the game, play defensively next to your tower.
2) Be much more aggressive about calling/typing out missing champs. Over and over again, an enemy champ would leave their lane, and our teammate wouldn't say anything or follow them as they left.
3) Push other lanes when they send 3 or 4 to gank. If they leave your lane to go elsewhere, they aren't in your lane, and you should punish them for it. Repeatedly trying (and failing) to get kills in other lanes is a very good way to lose a game. Remember, they aren't getting minion kills or minion experience while they're running around the map.

Remember, in that game Speaker and I each had 3 deaths. Now we were playing characters with good escapability (Vlad and Janna respectively) but I believe the rest of the team had 8 deaths, 10 deaths, and 11 deaths. We're not *THAT* much more escapable, we were generally in better positions.

Anyway, my point overall is that none of these enemy teams are so great that we can't beat them. Forget looking at how many wins they have. Once you've played about ~150 games, more games played doesn't mean very much. Some of Speaker's friends have played over 1000 games and are 800 ELO players, which is a very, very low ranking. It really doesn't matter. Focus on what you can control, and stop making excuses. I could have played much better in the games where we lost, and I use that to try and get better. Don't be fatalistic, do what you can to improve.

Me, I'm learning to jungle with Rammus, so that we don't lose Baron due to missed Smites.

[v8mark]

Being the guy who died twice very early on to Twitch in the game described (I was Annie mid) I pretty much agree with Sulla's analysis. However, part of the reason I died was because, as Maleficant says, I was not experienced enough to spot the danger where I was farming. I was on my side of halfway, within probably half a screen of the tower. I thought I was entirely safe, yet there was still room for Twitch to destealth behind me and, with the help of the other mid player, kill me. After that, I got too aggressive and it happened again, all within the first 6 minutes.

Now, this is entirely my fault, and is poor play, but it's extremely difficult to adjust when you're used to playing teams that simply don't do this sort of thing.

As Maleficant has also said, it's also extremely demoralising when you go 1/8/3 or whatever in a game, as I did in that one, because you are, at least partly, responsible for a loss which everyone feels keenly. This is true especially when the problems are fundamental mistakes in your play that pro players scoff at others on a regular basis for making. Team games are great fun, but they really suck when you know you've made a mistake (or worse, a series of mistakes) that directly lead to the team losing the game.

What this comes down to is a fundamental difference in skill and experience levels. Of course, the good players get annoyed with the others, which is fairly natural -- I do this when I'm on the other end of it too sometimes. All I want is to have fun and improve, and I guess the same is true of most other players. I try and accept this as much as possible -- inexperienced players are not trying to feed, and experienced players are just hurting from a loss they could do little about.

I do generally think that we punch slightly above our weight as a team, and the reason we're often up against much more experienced players is because we have a relatively higher 'hidden' ELO. So, let's just all try to improve, then we'll be able to beat these 500-win jokers. And let's have fun doing it.

[Pandajuice]

I hear what you're saying Sulla (and Gustaran) but the simple fact remains there are a lot of us here who still don't have good LoL instincts or know every intimate detail of the game when someone like you and Speaker seem to, so when they play games with you guys, the skill gap is pretty noticeable. You guys seem to instinctually know when to play defensively and when to move lanes and when to gank which comes with experience a lot of players in this community simply don't have yet. I consider myself decent at this game, but I still have a hard time distilling it down to be as simple as your post makes it out to be.

Twitch is not as easily killed as he's made out to be when you're low level too. I remember when we laned together Sulla, he popped out a few times on us even when we were in relatively defensive positions and yet we were unable to kill him; and when I attempted to kill him as MF, he killed me instead. I remember it being a situation of "try to run and die or stand and fight back and die." I agree with you however in general about not extending unless you know exactly where a stealth champ is but again, a level 24 Terror Incognita just isn't going to have that feel for the map yet.

Jungling is a very specific and difficult skill to pick up and play properly. Again, I'm citing this community's general lack of experience, especially when it comes to jungling. This isn't Mookie we're talking about. It's Seyruun or Ub3rfish or sometimes me. So when you're an inexperienced jungler (like literally maybe 10-20 total games jungling with various champs) up against a vastly more experienced team who DO understand how to counter-jungle, you again get a skill disparity. I can blame matchmaking to some extent because a more experienced/better player will instinctively know when to check on dragon, when it's safe to solo/duo it, and can more accurately guess where our jungler may be at any given moment simply because they've played 1,000 games versus our 250. It HAS to make a difference.

Also when there is a 3 or 4 man gank squad roaming the lanes as there was in our game, it's not as easily counter-able as "simply push the empty lane." Many champs aren't very competent pushers, and by pushing you're extending yourself which you've also said is a bad idea when there's a Twitch running around. The instinct many of us have when seeing 2 allies top taking on a 4 man gank squad is to rush up there and even the odds and perhaps prevail in the incoming team fight. We're taught (and you've said as much in your commentaries) to have map awareness, to watch where the enemy is heading and anticipate potential team fights so our allies aren't outnumbered. I mean, how annoying is it when a team fight breaks out near Dragon and you're 4v5 because the Akali on your team decided to stay mid in a vain attempt to push the tower alone? It's another very complex situation where the correct decision has to be made on the fly that many of us simply cannot do at this juncture.

It's just frustrating when you're not sure what went wrong and don't understand how you got stomped so badly and even more frustrating when you look like a prat in front of other great, respected players. When those players who know a lot more than you just say general things like "If we're just going to play like shit, we might as well surrender now" while you're left scratching your head as to what's going wrong, it's easy to look at the other team's win records and say, "Oh, maybe that's why. 600 wins, no wonder I was getting my ass beat."

I guess what I'm saying is PLEASE give out advice and tell people what they've done wrong or could do better during or immediately after the match if it's prudent, especially when you guys choose to come down the ladder a bit and play with those of us who really are still learning this complex game. When done in a mentor/student way and not in anger, it'd be very difficult to get offended by suggestions and would be invaluable to those of us who truly do want to get better at the game. Otherwise matches like that are just frustrating, discouraging and anyone with a shred of self esteem is going to look for excuses.

[Speaker]

All I ask is that when I play with you guys, you actually take advice. I have been particularly frustrated playing with you guys at times because it seems like you always make excuses for why things go wrong, rather than learning from it. I will promise not to rage (which I really only do on extreme occasions [Sorry Dantski ]), if you promise to take advice and improve.

It was only when I admitted to myself that I was pretty clueless about the game, and watched livestreams and analyzed my own game with a totally open mind that I shed most of my bad habits (I still occasionally overextend, chase, tower dive with no escape plan, etc.) and improved at the game.

[sunrise089]

@Sullla - No arguments that blaming matchmaking shouldn't be an automatic excuse. And, no arguments that an 800 wins-per-champ team could be worse than a 100-wins-per-champ team. I know there is the "scorpio example" of someone who plays 10 games per day and never learns, and I know there is supposedly "hidden ELO matchaking" to balance the teams.

On the other hand, I think sometimes skilled players give "hidden ELO" too much credit. For instance, when a five-man RB premade doesn't change at all and we do very well one game and very poorly the next, it may be a bad strategy on our part, or lazy play, or poor champion selection. It may also be a different level of enemy skill. When I see the enemies go from lvl 26-28 with 100 wins to all 30s with 600+ wins each and the second team dominates us after we dominated the first I don't give Riot the total benefit of the doubt. I'd love it if they made ELOs visible in non-ranked, and I'd really love it if they published their game statistics broken down by estimated ELOs and number of wins. The fact that Riot doesn't make this info public doesn't fill me with confidence in their system.

EDIT: Rereading your post Sullla, I don't think we're disagreeing, just focusing on two different sides of matchmaking. I'm just on a small anti-matchmaking kick because yesterday it really did feel like the skills disparity was huge in 2-3 consecutive games.

None of that is to say we shouldn't try to win every game, or that there are unbeatable premades out there. And, I certainly appreciate all of the advice and guidance we do receive during and after the games, both from more experienced players sharing their expertise and from less experienced players tossing out ideas. For every ragequit from TS there are five instances where my game has been (slightly) improved by incorporating some good advice.
_____

Separate issue - since you bring it up Sullla, can you or Speaker or whoever provide some more detailed guidance (maybe not...it may only be something we can learn via experience) on what signs help you understand what to do when the enemies in your lane disappear. I think I'm ok with calling out MAIs, but when the enemy goes invisible there are at least three things to consider doing: 1) nothing, since they're just hiding in the bush or out of view or even trying to get you to push to gank you, 2) push the tower since the enemy left to gank somewhere else but your allies can handle it, or 3) run to help your allies survive the gank. I really have next to no idea when I can't actually see the enemy whether to blindly run mid from bottom or whatnot. One answer is "have wards" but surely that isn't the whole story, right?

[Pandajuice]

All I ask is that when I play with you guys, you actually take advice. I have been particularly frustrated playing with you guys at times because it seems like you always make excuses for why things go wrong, rather than learning from it. I will promise not to rage (which I really only do on extreme occasions [Sorry Dantski ]), if you promise to take advice and improve.

Hey, I'm all about taking advice and trying to learn as much as possible. It's always a treat for me to play with you, Mookie, Atlas, Sulla, etc because I know I'll probably learn something. I only made the matchmaking excuse the other day when we played because quite honestly, no other reasons for our obliteration were being discussed (besides Twitch being fed but that shouldn't win or lose a game by itself) and no advice was being given.

Speaker, before that game I'd had a lot of success in solo queue building Madred's first on MF which you clearly didn't like when I did it in our game. How come? Why is Madred's a terrible idea when it seemingly has worked so well for me in the past? I thought I'd found a perfect build (Doran's blade, boots of swiftness/mercs, Madred's, IE, bloodthirster/last whisper) that was working for me, but since that game I'm all confused again about how to build MF and have been in one hell of a slump with her.

[Speaker]

Speaker, before that game I'd had a lot of success in solo queue building Madred's first on MF which you clearly didn't like when I did it in our game. How come? Why is Madred's a terrible idea when it seemingly has worked so well for me in the past? I thought I'd found a perfect build (Doran's blade, boots of swiftness/mercs, Madred's, IE, bloodthirster/last whisper) that was working for me, but since that game I'm all confused again about how to build MF and have been in one hell of a slump with her.

Madred's first is terrible on MF because of the following:

1) You have no survivability. You should be getting 2-3 Doran's Blades as your first items. The extra 200 health is HUGE in the early game, and will help you snowball.

2) Madred's Bloodrazor does magic damage. You should be running armor penetration runes on Miss Fortune since the majority of your damage will come from auto attacks, which do physical damage. Neither the Madred's Razor, nor the Recurve Bow will help you in the early/mid game. You need damage, which will help you harass, last hit, and win your lane.

3) You will never ever ever ever ever finish your build. Madred's + Infiinity Edge is nearly 8000 gold. Bloodthirster is another 3200. Last Whisper 2000. And you still have 0 survivability, so you die as soon as any assassin says hi to you. Ideally you can build 2 damage items (Infinity Edge + Last Whisper, then you need some defense (Banshee's Veil generally). Maybe you can squeeze in some more attack speed if you are doing well and have the gold.

Aside from on certain characters like Warwick or Kog'Maw, Madred's Bloodrazor is a situational item against a team that is stacking HP, but lacking resists. It has no synergy with characters like Miss Fortune, Ashe, Tristana, etc. Don't build it.

[Gustaran]

ok[/i] with calling out MAIs, but when the enemy goes invisible there are at least three things to consider doing: 1) nothing, since they're just hiding in the bush or out of view or even trying to get you to push to gank you, 2) push the tower since the enemy left to gank somewhere else but your allies can handle it, or 3) run to help your allies survive the gank. I really have next to no idea when I can't actually see the enemy whether to blindly run mid from bottom or whatnot. One answer is "have wards" but surely that isn't the whole story, right?

I think these things come with experience. I strongly suggest watching some 2000+ livestream players, commentators like TreeEskimo very often talk about why a choice was good or bad.
IMHO you should think about a missing opponent in strategic terms: What is the situation on the map ?

Example 1: You play mid and your level 11 opponent goes top towards your 1v2 lane, creating a 3v1 situation. A 3v1 gank with a level advantage is very dangerous for your top player so you or your jungler should probably help out to make it 2v3 at your tower.
Example 2: You are in a bottom 2v2 lane and your level 6 opponent goes top to gank mid. Mid is Speaker who is level 8, at full health and has already gotten two kills, so you just call MIA and he will be able to defend his tower with ease while your opponent loses gold and experience for running around.

Maybe some of of the better players here disagree with these examples; they are just intended to show that there is no hard rule that's always 100% right.
That's why it's good to watch the best players, because frankly: Solo queue is so low sometimes you can get away with all sort of crazy things that fail in a 5v5 premade.

(besides Twitch being fed but that shouldn't win or lose a game by itself)

In an otherwise even game that WILL lose you the game if you feed him 4 kills in 6 minutes (it's a little hard to believe this actually happened especially with Twitch being nerfed so hard ) The problem is that if you feed a stealth champ in your lane, he will gank other lanes and deprive players there of gold and XP. Everybody needs to play super careful because the fed Twitch might be near. So just play it safe. Hug the darn tower if you must, but dont feed. Usually the more experienced players on your team will gain an advantage in their lanes as long as you don't screw up.

When I see the enemies go from lvl 26-28 with 100 wins to all 30s with 600+ wins each and the second team dominates us after we dominated the first I don't give Riot the total benefit of the doubt.

I totally agree, there are rather big skill gaps in the matchmaking system. It's probably a tradeoff between waiting time and equal skill level. And nobody denies that it's ok to lose in a game because the other team is simply better. But needless feeding can - and should - be avoided.

[Speaker]

I totally agree, there are rather big skill gaps in the matchmaking system. It's probably a tradeoff between waiting time and equal skill level. And nobody denies that it's ok to lose in a game because the other team is simply better. But needless feeding can - and should - be avoided.

Nah, it's not matchmaking's fault. My normal elo is very high. I am 75 games above .500. Sullla is probably about 50-60 games above .500. The average elo was no doubt similar between the two teams, though ours probably had a much higher standard deviation. It didn't help that Sullla was playing support instead of carry.

Anyways, the best way to get better is to play against better players.

[Cull]

If bottom/mid lane goes missing or goes on the bottom river, go check dragon any way you can, even facechecking if you have to. Giving essentially free dragons gives the other team a large edge. Other than that, just follow common sense I suppose.