League of Legends General Discussion Thread

[Sandover]

Sivir is great, practically godlike 40+ minutes in, with a premade that just supports, supports, supports

That's the whole point of having any ranged physical carry on your team. Keep her safe to do her thing and watch as everything she right click on dies. Sivir is by no means special in that regards.

[Pandajuice]

I think Sivir is a fun and underrated champ and again, it seems like she is central to that annoying "some champs are simply better than others" stance a lot of players have. While that may be true with all else being equal, I think Sivir brings something unique to a team that the enemy team now has to account for that a lot of narrow minded players simply seem to miss.

Sivir is best played as a tower downing, backdoor disruptive force that the enemy team must account for and whenever your team disrupts the typical flow that another team is used to, they weaken. It's what having Twitch or Shaco does if played well - they force teams to adapt and adopt a different (hopefully weaker) playstyle than the norm which is pretty valuable imo.
If someone tries to play her as simply an AD carry, she isn't reaching her full potential, and yes, there are better champs for that role. But in my opinion, there is no better champ for backdooring than Sivir.

She can break off from the poking phase before a team fight, get to a tower, and destroy it while the enemy team is distracted in the team fight that is going on elsewhere thinking they are winning because they are 4v5. Once she does this a few times, the opposing team now has to account for her and send one or two covers to make sure lanes don't get too pushed and that Sivir is turned away. Meanwhile the rest of your team is now pushing elsewhere with at least equal numbers which forces the enemy team to have to quickly decide to deal with Sivir and keep her back, or deal with the other 4 champs pushing top. Whatever they decide is the wrong answer and keeping them confused and spread out around the map can only lead to good things.

Disruption is a very underrated tactic in LoL that not many people talk about but it does win games when utilized properly. It's also a lot more fun than the current metagame that is based on whichever FOTM supercarry can get fed first and begin dominating.

[Gustaran]

She can break off from the poking phase before a team fight, get to a tower, and destroy it while the enemy team is distracted in the team fight that is going on elsewhere thinking they are winning because they are 4v5. Once she does this a few times, the opposing team now has to account for her and send one or two covers to make sure lanes don't get too pushed and that Sivir is turned away. Meanwhile the rest of your team is now pushing elsewhere with at least equal numbers which forces the enemy team to have to quickly decide to deal with Sivir and keep her back, or deal with the other 4 champs pushing top. Whatever they decide is the wrong answer and keeping them confused and spread out around the map can only lead to good things.

Disruption is a very underrated tactic in LoL that not many people talk about but it does win games when utilized properly. It's also a lot more fun than the current metagame that is based on whichever FOTM supercarry can get fed first and begin dominating.

While that sounds great in theory this will hardy work in higher level play.

1. Pulling a champ out of a 5v5 teamfight can easily lead to disaster.
Great if Sivir gets an outside tower, while 4 champions die mid and lose the tower there.

2. No decent team let's you backdoor several towers for free. Most likely Sivir gets ambushed and taken out while strolling off solo since she has no good escape tools.

3. There are better champs available for backdooring. If you badly want to backdoor I would suggest using champs like Twisted Fate or Pantheon who at least have the ability to rejoin the team instantly with their ult if needed.

[v8mark]

While that sounds great in theory this will hardy work in higher level play.

2. No decent team let's you backdoor several towers for free.

See Game 1 of the WCG finals; the Europeans did this repeatedly.

Although, in support of your later point, that was with Twisted Fate, making extensive use of his ult.

I don't really see how Sivir is any better than any other AD/AS carry at backdooring...?

[Cull]

Sivir's w is really not that good. You should only really use it to get that last one hit, if you're enemy laner just blue pilled, and you can push hard. Its her ability to somewhat poke, and her ulti that makes her good. Its her ablity to q, and have the enemy squishes groan. Sivir is an AD carry. Before they buffed her q, she could be built ap. Now she's AD.

The only reason sivir is so "good" at backdooring is miscommunication among solo que players(combined with her ulti, which lets her hit 2.0 speed with just one AS item), and in Normal games, the unablity to see the enemy team's picks, making it hard to exactly counter Sivir, seeing you don't KNOW the enemy team picked Sivir. Its the same with any team comp that varies from the traditional win teamfight, own towers, win game.

In WCG, the Europe team played a backdoor team versus a US that simply did not counterpick against the Europeans.

[Meciflorean]

Expanding upon what Cull has already stated, and echoing my early comments, what does she bring to a competitive environment *on her own*? I've seen Teemo's "win" games by your reasoning. That does not make Teemo in any way a good, or even decent competitive pick.

At any rate, enough ranting. I enjoy good discourse on a subject, but it's past my bedtime.

First off, obviously what I said was a hyperbolic joke, in reference to several people in this thread who have written her off almost entirely, some based merely on the fact that she isn't used. My only goal was to point out that Sivir WAS used in a very competitive tournament, to good effect - from what I hear (I have no real way to confirm). There was really no reasoning in my post. I heard Sivir was used well in high-pressure games, and I think she deserves to be considered on her own merits. I should add that, from what I heard, she was indeed able to farm extensively, and wound up with a couple bloodthirsters and a last whisper or something.

This is not about me. Personally I don't care how Sivir is regarded, I'm not trying to defend using her (I barely even do). I'm not even saying she's good (because I don't know). Again, my points were simply that 1.She was used competitively, 2.What is competitive in the first place is heavily subject to change as the metagame changes and people think of new ways to leverage champions, and come up with strategies where she is competitive.

a well-skilled competitive *player* can do marvels with almost ANY champion, especially when supported by equally well-skilled competitive players.

Given the competitive environment she was used in, this doesn't make sense, when you later say that some champions are simply worse than others. And no, champions don't win games by themselves, and you could say that about any champion. As I've said before in this thread, no champion should be considered in a vacuum. That section was pretty needless.

@Gustaran: Why were the 4 champs fighting mid to begin with? They could easily defend a tower 4v5, gaining an advantage from pushing another lane (gold+exp) at the same time. Just as an example.

@v8mark: From what I gather, Sivir is a great solo pusher because she clears creep waves very fast, she's can run away fast with her ult, her ult buffs friendly creeps, and maybe that her shield+dodge makes her hard to gank. I believe she also has a high base move speed, though I could be wrong.

I won't comment too much on you guys' analysis of game mechanics or Sivir's abilities because frankly I'm not qualified to - but I'll say that I've found her shield to be great for laning, and her boomerang is great poke if you aim it well.

[Gustaran]

See Game 1 of the WCG finals; the Europeans did this repeatedly.

There is an extensive interview up on Elementz blog with the players where they talk about why they lost that game (is there actually a video anywhere?).
While I am certainly no expert and can't determine if Sirvir may or may not see a rise on the tier list because of these games, the loss rather seemed to be a problem of team composition in general than of overpowered backdoor Sirvir alone.

But of course you've got to give credit to the fact that she was used at all at such a high level. Maybe we will see more of her in future games.

[v8mark]

There is an extensive interview up on Elementz blog with the players where they talk about why they lost that game (is there actually a video anywhere?).
While I am certainly no expert and can't determine if Sirvir may or may not see a rise on the tier list because of these games, the loss rather seemed to be a problem of team composition in general than of overpowered backdoor Sirvir alone.

But of course you've got to give credit to the fact that she was used at all at such a high level. Maybe we will see more of her in future games.

The backdoor I was talking about was with Twisted Fate, so it doesn't say anything about Sivir specifically. I was just questioning the notion that 'no good team will ever let you backdoor'.

[uberfish]

1. Pulling a champ out of a 5v5 teamfight can easily lead to disaster.
Great if Sivir gets an outside tower, while 4 champions die mid and lose the tower there.

The willingness of people to engage in unfavourable 4v5 or even 5v5 team fights outside their tower in this game is rather odd, until late game where the damage and spatial control of a single tower becomes less relevant I think it's correct strategy to have 4 defend tower and 1 push/farm another lane if the other team decides to group all 5 in mid.

[Meciflorean]

But of course you've got to give credit to the fact that she was used at all at such a high level. Maybe we will see more of her in future games.

Yeah, this exactly. Well put
I don't think the games were recorded, unfortunately. Something about not wanting to risk crashing the game, I don't know.

Some relevant quotes from that interview:

}Seems like Sivir was the game changer? Why wasn’t she banned the whole series?

Chauster: No one has ever run Sivir in 5s in the greater part of the last 6 months, no one knew her potential. After losing 2 games we singled out the reason for our loss and capitalized on it.

Going through all the games now why did you lose game 1? Was it just Sivir surprising you?

Elementz: Sivir played a large factor in that game, but I believe we were just massively out picked that game. We didn’t have a team setup to counter theirs. They had Anivia as well so it made pushing against them impossible even with Pantheon back dooring on bottom lane.

ReginaId: I wasn’t there, but mainly bad picks IMO.

Chauster: We lost because we were unable to capitalize in the early game that we had the advantage in. As a result the enemy team farmed for over 40 minutes before taking the first inhibitor. Obviously a late game Pantheon 40+ minutes into a game pales in comparison to an Anivia and Sivir who become gods late game and we lost at the one hour mark. What do you think about game 2?

Elementz: Same deal but in a different sense. They banned Janna and managed to take Sona and Taric making for an extremely strong duo lane bottom. Then they also had Sivir and Corki farming a lot in both their solo lanes. They had 2 super carries with 2 super supports. Simply out picked once again. We actually managed to gank Shaco at our red and get first blood but it wasn’t enough to snowball us into the lead vs that team.
[...]
Elementz: We learned that we can’t let them get multiple supports with these big time farming types of champions. Regardless of the supports and ranged carries being nerfed they’re still very strong when put together. So just like always we learn and adapt to the team we’re playing. This time it just took longer to adjust.

Chauster: We talked about the game and realized that even though we had some major advantages early game, we were losing because sivir was too hard to kill with well-played support and multiple dps threats on the same team. The champs needed to counter the team OP were champs we usually do not play so we didn’t want to risk playing champs we weren’t that familiar with.

Next game was your first win during the finals, any changes to your strategy or did you just played better under the heavy pressure now? Game 4 (your first win) seemed pretty one-sided time wise?
Elementz: We banned Sivir and adapted finally plus some good plays by our team.