Category: League of Legends


League of Legends: Varus, the Arrow of Retribution

Filed under: Gaming, League of Legends by Kana-chan — 2 Comments
May 19, 2012

Oh boy. Oooh boy. I’ve been  waiting on this. The newest addition to League of Legends, provided by the one and only Meddler of Riot Games. I was eagerly awaiting this champion, because Meddler also made Ziggs. Dying to know if that was a one-off or if he’d keep up the same quality of work. And did he ever nail. Meddler’s now sitting with Xypherous a favorite designer, and that’s about the biggest compliment I can give. Now, with that out-of-the-way, let’s take a look at how Varus actually functions, and break down his playstyle.

Varus, The Arrow of Retribution:

(Passive) Living Vengeance: Varus gains attack speed for a short time after killing a target. Minion kills grant Varus 20% attack speed for 3 seconds. Champion kills or assists double this, giving Varus 40% attack speed for 6 seconds.

Piercing Arrow:  (first cast) Varus draws his bow back, charging up a powerful shot. Range and damage are increased as you charge, up to a cap. If the spell is held for too long, Piercing Arrow is cancelled and refunds half its mana cost. (second cast) After charging, Varus fires a long-range attack, dealing damage based on how long the skill was charging, up to a cap. This ability does diminishing damage the more targets it passes through.

Blighted Quiver (Passive ability): Varus’ arrows apply blight to any target hit, along with a small amount of bonus magic damage. Blight stacks up to three times, and can be proc’d by any of Varus’ other abilities, dealing a percentage of the target’s maximum health as magic damage for each stack of blight.

Hail of Arrows: Varus fires a hail of arrows at target location, desecrating the ground under it. Enemies on desecrated ground suffer a move speed penalty and receive 50% less healing.

(Ultimate) Chain of Corruption: Varus fires off a tendril of corruption, binding the first champion hit. This corruption will spread to any nearby enemy champions, rooting them in place if the tendril makes it to them. This effect can continue to spread until all no targets are available, but can not spread to the same champion more than once.

Varus excels at poking and long-range harassment, even more than most other carries. His Piercing Arrow ability has the single largest range of any non-ultimate skill shot when fully charged, and hits like an absolute truck at full charge. Varus has an insane amount of tricks up his sleeve, allowing for truly impressive play. With proper vision, Varus can easily snipe red or blue buff, dragon, or even Baron Nashor with a well placed Q, easily granting himself and his team a large advantage. Hail of Arrows applies a decently sized area that slows enemies and reduces healing, making it an essential skill against enemies with sustain, such as Soraka or Dr. Mundo. His ultimate can easily change a team fight, spreading out and binding an entire team if they clump together.
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League of Legends: Lulu

Filed under: Gaming, League of Legends by Kana-chan — Leave a comment
April 12, 2012

This is something I’ve been meaning to do for awhile now, and it just never felt like the right time. I was considering just skipping along past the crazed yordle, but with the delay to Hecarim, this brings up the perfect chance to get information on Lulu out there before the patch. That and I never get to play Lulu, so anything more than a first impressions on one game would take some time. I’m usually stuck in the jungle, and while you can do jungle Lulu, I’d rather just wait until I get good enough with the support role to know what in runeterra I’m doing.

So Lulu is a support champion and the most recent addition to the line up in League of Legends. While being support, she has no sustain mechanics and no in-built heal outside of her ultimate, so careful play is going to be required of both your carry and yourself if you take her out to lane. While sustain lanes can be a problem to deal with, Lulu has some of the greatest harass and control a support can give, only really being rivaled by Janna. To know why, let’s take a look at her skills.

(Passive) Pix, Fairy Companion: Pix is a fairy companion to Lulu, and will launch a barrage of attacks at anything Lulu attacks. These attacks scale per level to Lulu, and are delivered in a three-shot burst. Bullets from Pix do have hit detection, and will deal damage to the first target they hit, which may not be the target Lulu is attacking.

Glitterlance: Pix and Lulu both fire a bolt of magical energy that damages and heavily slows all targets it hits. An enemy can only be effected by one Glitterlance per cast.

Whimsy: Single target spell that can be cast on allies or enemies. If cast on an ally, Whimsy will give a boost to ability power and movement speed for a short time. If cast on an enemy, Lulu will polymorph them, silencing and preventing the enemy from attacking, while applying a very weak slow. Enemies still have full control of their movement.

Help, Pix!: Pix jumps to the target Lulu has chosen. If that target is an ally, they will gain a shield and Pix will attack for every basic attack from that ally instead any attack from Lulu for 6 seconds. If cast on an enemy, Pix deals damage and then follows that enemy, granting vision for 6 seconds.

(Ultimate) Wild Growth: Lulu enlarges an ally, granting bonus health and briefly knocking up all nearby enemies to that target. In addition, as long as Wild Growth lasts on a target, they will have a passive aura that slows all nearby enemies.
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Playing What You Got

Filed under: Gaming, Gaming Mechanics, League of Legends by Kana-chan — Leave a comment
March 6, 2012

Thinking about what I said before, I don’t really think I went into enough detail about how you can use each of your champions moves to better your play and to get the most out of any engagement. While this is still true for junglers everywhere, it is still important for everyone to know at least some of the ways they can use their skills in non-standard ways to benefit themselves and the team. Obviously, damage skills have their own catagory, and I can’t sit here and list off all the plays some ninety-something champions can do. So instead of looking over, say, Brands E -> Q stun, we’ll go into simply using your other moves better.

First up are actually not directly tied to champion skills, but are the spells each summoner chooses before the battle begins. Some have obvious utility like Teleport being able to blink you across the map, which allows you to split push/farm/gank from fog of war/whatever, or Ignite which deals a bit of true damage as a damage over time effect and a heal reduction effect. The most obvious and well-known summoner spell for being used in a multitude of situations, and the star example to start with, is the summoner ‘Exhaust.’ Exhaust lowers evenmy attack speed, move speed, and ability damage for a short time, and you can see people using it frequently in offensive situations (exhausting a target for an easier kill) or defensive ones (exhausting someone trying to catch you). What is primarily an offensive skill can be used in other ways to save yourself or a teammate.
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From the Bushes

Filed under: Gaming, League of Legends by Kana-chan — Leave a comment
March 1, 2012

As promised last week, a piece I’ve been looking forward too writing and getting out. Namely, the art of ganking. This is the aspect of the game that will truly set apart bad junglers from the good ones. Everyone has played a game with a jungler who just sits there all day and farms without ever helping, but sometimes even worse is the jungler with a terrible gank. Starting with the basics, we’ll cover what a gank is and how you can do it effectively.

Obviously, a ‘gank’ is when you go to a lane with the purpose of harassing or ultimately killing an enemy. The are a large number of benefits that come from a good gank, or even what a good gank is. Personally, anything that involves a waste of resources is a success. If you run out of a bush and the enemy instantly blows their summoner flash, perfect. Even if you do nothing else in lane, they still lost a very powerful tool for about four minutes. This lets your own laner be more aggressive, as they now have an escape (or initiate) tool where their opponent doesn’t. Even better is when you can kill an enemy, giving your team a gold advantage (kill gold + assist gold) and giving your laner an experience advantage. Every second the enemy is dead or running back to lane is a possible last hit’s worth of gold and experiance vanishing down the drain.

Successive ganks can even be used to harass an enemy mentally over the course of a game. Merely by sitting near one lane and ganking it repeatedly, the enemy will begin to become paranoid, especially if they are getting killed, and can sometimes even begin to ‘zone’ themselves, too afraid to move up near the creep line. This can give your laner a constant advantage as the enemy simply falls behind, even if you’re off merely farming the jungle.
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League of Legends: Nautilus

Filed under: Gaming, League of Legends by Kana-chan — 2 Comments
February 18, 2012

So a new patch has come and gone and a new champion has been released. Nautilus was a billed as a tank, and I thought I’d play him a bit to see just how everything works on him. Almost sorry to say that 3 days and a dozen or so games, I have yet to build this guy once as he was intended. Almost sorry. Nautilus is just insanely fun to play with a variety of builds, each one having a specific style to it. So, bear with me when I say I play Nautilus in lane or jungle, and my build changes drastically. How drastically? Well, before opening that can of worms, let’s look at his skills…

Alright, I lied. First let's look at the Big Daddy.

 

(Passive) Staggering Blow: Nautilus’ basic attacks bind the target in place and deals bonus physical damage. Effect can not occur more than once every 12 seconds on an individual target.

Dredge Line: Nautilus throws his anchor in a line pulling himself and the first enemy hit together. Dredge Line can also be used on terrain, quickly pulling Nautilus along and reducing the cooldown by half.

Titan’s Wrath: Nautilus creates a shield around himself, scaling off of bonus health. While the shield holds, Nautilus’ basic attacks inflict a short damage-over-time effect on the target and near-by enemies.

Riptide: Nautilus sends out a pulsing shockwave, dealing damage and slowing anything caught in the pulse. Subsequent hits from pulse dead reduced damage and slow less.

(Ultimate) Depth Charge: Nautilus sends out a pulsing shot that seeks out a single target. As the charge travels, it will knock up any enemy it passes under, finally knocking up and stunning the target.
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League Basics

Filed under: Discussion, Gaming, League of Legends by Kana-chan — Leave a comment
February 8, 2012

First and foremost, you may be thinking, “Kana! Why are you posting Wednesday morning?” and the answer to that is simply: TERA Online beta this week! Yes, the closed beta to my Monster Hunter-surrogate begins Friday. So, I’ve decided to push back both posts, though honestly depending on how much footage I record Friday may mean the post is pushed back to Saturday morning. Hoping to get some solid gameplay with at least 2 classes this test cycle. Thinking Berserker and Archer, but if there is a class you’d rather see, by all means let me know! I’d be glad to get some footage about more of what people want. Now then, that out-of-the-way…

Today I wanted to cover something a little different from game mechanics. Going to go over a few of the basic mechanics of League of Legends and how you, the play, can interact with them to improve your game. Going to covering a decently wide range of topics so we won’t dive into too much detail, but if there are questions I can always expand on them later.

Zone Control:


First, watch that. Yes, the video is old, but it’s still every bit as accurate now as it ever was. Zoning has the effect of controlling your opponent through what are essentially mind games. What you want to do is bully the enemy lane (most effective if it’s 1 enemy in the lane, but it can be done against 2) until they have to retreat, then moving into position to prevent them from farming. Even better, if you can hold them well while only last hitting minions, your minions will only push very slowly. For every minion of yours that dies in the middle of the field, as opposed to the enemy tower, is another bit of experience you can deny, gaining more of an advantage. Some champions have insane innate zone control; Ziggs can completely lock out an enemy mid just by using Hexplosive Minefield, though the large radius will probably wind up pushing the minion wave bit by bit.
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League of Legends: Ziggs

Filed under: Gaming, League of Legends by Kana-chan — 2 Comments
February 3, 2012

Well, it’s been forever since I’ve done one of these first impression articles, so I thought I’d get back to it, especially for some of the more recent champions, and maybe for some general stuff. Plenty of great things to talk about in the wide world of league, but for now, let’s start with the most recent champion released: Ziggs, the Hexplosives Expert.

Ziggs is a ranged mage with an ungodly amount of zone control, however he is lacking in any short of hard crowd control outside a single small knock back (For comparison, it’s a little bigger than Maokai’s). He is extremely squishy, and lacks a reliable escape as well, so once you close the distance he’ll go splat real quick. However, unlike most other mages, Ziggs is amazing at area-denial and psychological attacks, keeping enemies from moving in specific directions, or even from leaving specific areas at all. For starters, let’s look at Ziggs’ kit and how it all ties together.

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Arsen’s Terrible at LoL – October 11, 2011

Filed under: Gaming, League of Legends by thirtythreeas — Leave a comment
October 12, 2011

Just the videos this week. There will be an article about something else later on.

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Arsen’s Terrible at LoL – September 19, 2011

Filed under: Gaming, League of Legends, Uncategorized by thirtythreeas — 1 Comment
September 23, 2011

So this is super late.

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Dominion is Coming

Filed under: Gaming, League of Legends by Kana-chan — Leave a comment
September 22, 2011

So, as some of you may know, Riot recently enabled Dominion for a few hours during off-peak times of the day to let players get a little taste of Dominion. What you may have also heard is that Dominion is absolutely bloody amazing. I’ve had a friend call it “everything Arathi Basin wishes it could be” and we both had an absolute blast playing four games before the map was pulled to prevent servers from crashing. And so here we are! This will be a first impression of the new map and items, and my thoughts on the idea overall. Alright, with that out-of-the-way, let’s get started with those juicy items.

Items:

My, my, my, Riot has gone out of their way to create some outstanding items with a flair for the insane. Just going over the small list of things I got to toy around with…

  • Ionic Spark: Probably my favorite of all the new items for any ranged carry, or anyone who uses attack-speed items. Still feels weird having a freaking bow on a dude with a 6 foot lance though. I guess he’s just really dexterous? Anyways, back to the item! Ionic Spark gives 45% attack-speed and 250 health, with a unique passive of blasting up to 4 targets with 100 magic damage. The item is better the earlier you can get it (because 100 damage means a lot more to a mage trying to break through 1000 hit points than one with other 2000), the effect is noticeable and satisfying, and overall the item is an absolute blast to use. I honestly can’t play AD Ranged in Summoner’s Rift anymore, it just feels incomplete without this.
  • The Lightbringer: This is one of those insane items you will always hate but grudging build to counter certain people. The Lightbringer gives 50% attack-speed and 20 damage, and has a special passive effect of granting vision on your target for 5 seconds, every time you land an attack. You will hate this item because it means you get to watch that person with 13 hitpoints walk away from you and live, every time. You will love this item for every time an enemy walks away with 13 hp, and then your jungler comes barreling out of the forest to rack up the kill. Vision is a powerful ally, and so is this bow!
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