League of Legends

[Belle Hibiki]

I'm patching up LoL. Wonder what they did to Mundo, if anything.

Also I have no idea what items are what now lawl.

[Kaden]

Mundo is very sad right now. Cleanse no longer removes Ignite and they increased the HP costs of his skills. The HP is fairly irrelevant, but the fact that you can't do anything against a summoner spell that just shuts down your champion is really gay.

IMO, he's the only champ where Quicksilver Sash is basically required.

[Belle Hibiki]

Buh? Why should Cleanse NOT remove Ignite? That sounds p gay.

Also sad face at increased health cost. I wonder how that will affect early-game harassment. That was generally where I did best in online match-ups: being an insufferable asshole with the Cleaver.

[Kaden]

I wonder how that will affect early-game harassment.

It doesn't. The spells cost something like 5 more HP per rank. It was largely like "uhh... ok?"

Cleanse no longer removes any non-CC debuffs. So it won't remove DoTs or the like anymore either.

[Belle Hibiki]

Why is that particularly bad for Mundo, though, if his health stuff is as you said not a big deal?

Unless you mean his overall health sac DOES become an issue after an early ignite?

[Kaden]

Why is it bad that Cleanse no longer removes an effect that halves Mundo's only means of survival? It also doesn't remove the active effect from Executioner's Calling or Gangplank's passive or Katarina's -regen effect.

It's the fact that he can't cleanse out of the effects that shut him down that are particularly bad for Mundo.

[Tyr]

It doesn't. The spells cost something like 5 more HP per rank. It was largely like "uhh... ok?"

Cleanse no longer removes any non-CC debuffs. So it won't remove DoTs or the like anymore either.

It means if you level Cleaver first, you effectively kill yourself if you harass like you used to with Mundo. It's not that big at a glance, but the way Mundo chucks axes, it stacks quickly.

[Belle Hibiki]

Why is it bad that Cleanse no longer removes an effect that halves Mundo's only means of survival? It also doesn't remove the active effect from Executioner's Calling or Gangplank's passive or Katarina's -regen effect.

It's the fact that he can't cleanse out of the effects that shut him down that are particularly bad for Mundo.

My point is that losing health and dying shuts anyone down.

edit: Sorry for sounding argumentative, just puzzled.

Guess I'll just have to find out through play.

[Belle Hibiki]

Adding on:

What I generally assumed with Mundo is that the lower your health gets, the greater the cost of you abilities becomes. It can be dangerous in the early game, when you don't have regen and hitpoints pouring out of your ass. Because the health is always a flat amount, the % of your current health that it takes to use those abilities goes up - except for his Ultimate.

I can get that ... but when I played, that was only a concern in the early game. Once I had Warmog's and got a few stacks, Mundo's health costs were pretty much negligible. The only thing that I ever worried about was running the fire aura for an extended period of time.

[Kaden]

My point is that losing health and dying shuts anyone down.

edit: Sorry for sounding argumentative, just puzzled.

Nah, it's cool. The difference between Mundo and most other champions is that losing health and almost dying are basically built into him. It's just how he rolls.

Like Leo said, if you max Cleaver ASAP and hurl one every time it's off of cooldown, yeah, you'll do more damage to yourself than the enemy will. If you give it a couple seconds and split leveling between Q and E, then you'll probably never notice the increased health costs.

Mordekaiser has a similar problem with his E. Just rush something with decent HP/5 (I go with Warden's Mail on Morde) and you'll never notice it. With Mundo's passive, you should be able to rush Spirit Visage and never think about his skill costs again.

[Ashe]

That's what I do. Get Spirit Visage, suddenly he's like playing Garen, no costs for abilities. Seriously, I never notice his costs on his cleaver even EARLY game. You practically heal the entire dmg back before the cd comes up. The only one I even have to think about using is his W aura, which I get one rank of and then don't touch till end game.

[Kaden]

http://www.reddit.com/r/leagueoflegends/ / http://www.reddit.com/r/leagueoflegends/...ank_teams/

Wanted to see what people here thought. After that post I was thinking about the implications of an all-tank team: initiation, survivability, and usually decent pushing. The counter that most readily comes to mind is the kite/push team to some extent. Pick champions that have the ability to disrupt initiations (Janna, first and foremost, but also Alistar, Urgot, Tristana, and so on) and champions that have a lot of mobility to push various lanes while the tank team is kept from initiating.

Also, this is an appropriate reconstruction of my response to their Anivia.

[Orion]

I think a full tank team would be a very interesting idea. Especially if you grab a few that are capable of somewhat decent damage (eg. Mord)

[Kaden]

Been seeing a lot of it lately. "Tank team" is something of a misnomer, though, but it sounds better than "champions-who-can-easily-build-for-survivability-without-sacrificing-damage team." Garen, Amumu, Vlad, Olaf, Shen, Morde, Xin, etc. are very common. Garen's probably the biggest offender with his absolutely ludicrous W and lots of damage built into his Q and E. Oh, and that whole execution move of his.

Dealing with it is... hard. You can try to spike them with someone like Ryze or Anivia or Annie, but if you hit cooldowns and they're still alive... yeah, doesn't end well. Physical DPS have basically the same problem. Trying to chew through someone like Garen or Morde when they're geared up is ridiculous.

The thing people keep saying -- pretty accurately -- is that, basically, "Tanks" get too much damage from their skills. Compare Master Yi and Garen, for example. Garen gets tons of damage from his skills, so he's free to buy all the survivability he wants. Randuin's, GA, FoN, Thornmail... whatever he needs. Hell, he can even grab Atma's and combine defense and extra damage. Now look at Master Yi. What happens when a physical DPS doesn't pick up a Bloodrazor or an IE or a Phantom Dancer? They... don't do anything. His skills don't provide damage, so if he builds survivability, he does no damage. If he tries to build damage, Garen just outlasts him.

Now extrapolate that out to Ashe or Tristana or Jax and so on and so forth.

Before the game I mentioned on Reddit (where I was Mordekaiser) I played a game as Ryze and ran into that exact problem. I did pretty well for the first half of the game, kept my deaths low and picked up enough kills to have a RoA by 16 minutes, followed by Sorc's and Archangel's by the 30 minute mark. About that same time, though, I just stopped being able to do anything. They had a Garen and a Mord and an Olaf and... a couple others -- obviously -- but I don't remember who. Between my runes, Masteries, and items, by the end of the game I had 49 MPen and 55% Reduction. and I got 1 kill from when I bought my Archangel's at ~30 and when the game ended at ~55minutes.

It was just absolutely ridiculous. My biggest contribution was running into their jungle, grabbing lizard, and slowing them with auto attacks in the next team fight. Of course I then lost the buff to Garen... who it didn't work on, anyway...

[Ashe]

Ok, so I just played some games as Garen tonight for fun. The absolute highlight other than straight up chasing Shen AND Tryn through BOTH towers in laning to get the kills and then escaping would have to be when I disconnected in top lane, stood there in the center, rejoined to see their team go "Garen, holy motherfucker you are built like a son of a bitch" and then surrender.

Apparently from what I pieced together after the game, they kept trying to mess with me while I was dc. Tryn came over and wailed on me taking me to around half life before someone came from mid and chased him off (TF). Then they came back when my team decided to go push, and apparently three or four of them threw everything at me and finally dropped me, but I rezzed due to GA like some kind of Final Fantasy boss. That's when Galio showed up, ulted them, and had TF kill them since they were all in one nice spot surrounding me, I relogged, they surrendered.

To be perfectly honest, I wasn't really built all that much, since I hadn't finished Omen yet, but I had almost all of Omen, GA, Ninja Tabi, and Doran's Shield, that's it. But they were Shen, Tryn, Garen (... no comment, dude comes up six levels above me and poked me after I ran out to kill Shen, I just kinda walked past him and he left. I uh... ignored Q that game and focused on E and W leveling.), Galio, and Warwick. Galio was probably the only one who could touch me, and we know he's know for his dps.

[Tyr]

The only thing really annoying regarding tanks is the fact that Olaf is the solution AND the problem. He's tanky as god knows what but he's the only one with a steady source of True Damage (except Corki, lulz) or Cho'Gath who's ALSO a tank.

AoE metagame is long ass gone if they keep implementing tanks that just live through it and while you're cd'ing, they eat you with pure survivability and low cooldowns on their damage abilities.

[Ashe]

I'm not concerned. This is the metagame swing in action. The aoe teams went into all tank teams into *can't remember* almost a year ago when Malphite was previously retarded with being the best initiator ever at the time, and that's where it went again. Its the cycle. I wasn't active at the time though to see what style dominated those two.

[Kaden]

I'm planning on playing more Kog and actually have given Corki some serious consideration. An IE boost true damage, a Mallet for kiting and survivability, and maybe a Rageblade to boost his skills some. That sounds like a build, right?

And yeah, Garen can go fuck himself. What's absolutely retarded is that you don't even need to level his W. One rank and you can just lawl at champions and towers and baron and god knows what else while you go off to make cookies.

[Tyr]

Apparently "the build" on Corki (if AD) is Catalyst Ashe. You go for a Catalyst then just build up damage. Apparently he needs mana and health so bad, you just need to keep it as a refresher of it.

[Kaden]

I actually watched Hotshot playing that build but was definitely not expecting him to grab catalyst. Every time I see clips of Hotshot I feel like I need to go practice my last hitting.