League Of Legends

I've decided that I hate all of the jungle items on Shaco. Wriggles is too much gold, he doesn't have proper synergy with Elder Lizard, AP Shaco hasn't been viable forever and he's got almost no spellvamp synergy, and Golem is likewise bleh. I've been tinkering with doing the ADC gimmick of starting with lifesteal from utility along with lifesteal quints and starting Doran's Blade. With proper box management and placement you can get away without starting with any health potions given the sustain you show up with and can immediately start working on something core on your first trip back.

Draegan_sl said:

But I really want to learn Shaco, I haven't been able to get a game where I could get some early ganks to get some early gold. Is he still build like machete/5 then boots/shiv/cutlass (or hydra)?

Click to expand...

I know you can start dorans blade or boots+pots, but usually I will machete+5 just because if all else fails it's nice to have the pots + machete to help clear some jungle camps. Probably 95% of the time I will do Red > Blue then go to dragon/baron pit, deceive over the wall and wait in the enemy red bush. Many times they start red without looking, I wait til it's about ~60% hp or so then box behind them and jump. You can get a kill many times. If they are a very strong duelist (Lee Sin or Udyr usually) I won't do that and more often then not try to gank a lane after I get my second buff.

I always rush Tiamat on shaco no matter what. (sometimes I will get madreds + boots before that but only if I'm behind and only if they have 4 or 5 AD). Tiamat helps clear jungle much faster and allows you to start to split push that much better. Once you get pickaxe/madreds you should be able to easily solo dragon. If that's your plan, buy a pink ward first to make sure it's clear because if you do solo it you will be low. Pop your ult, throw down a box and dance between the dragon so it switches agro between you and your clone.

Once laning phase ends, you probably 90% of the time never want to be with your team. Always split push, never not split push! In both my games I went Hydra > Shiv > LW > Health item (sunfire/randuins/warmogs depending on the enemy team). What you really hope is that they have to send either mid or top lane to stop your counter push, which hopefully means they win (or at least stall under a tower) the 4v4. Lay boxes down either in paths you might get ganked from, or just in lane so when you're running they are there to cover you if you get chased. You should NEVER die in a 1v1. Heck, as I said in my Gold promo games I got 4 man ganked and still didn't die.

As I've said before though, Shaco is a complete different play style from every other jungler. So it does take some time to actually learn him, learn his damage, learn his counter jungle / counter gank. It is really rough if you get behind though, which is why you really do try to abuse his early game by shutting down the enemy jungle or trying to snowball your lanes. Probably one of my worst shaco games ever was against a jungle nunu (why wasn't he banned yo). I went to counter jungle, his team collapsed on me, I gave first blood to the enemy leona (not bad actually) but then he started to counter jungle me 24/7, they had everything warded too so he'd follow me lane to lane as well. That was a rough game :\

With Wriggles Lantern being in the piss poor condition it is just delete the thing and have Machete build into Tiamat. It's a way better AD jungle item.

If you do a machete start do you go into made or go right for hydra?

straight to hydra. Usually the machete just sits in my inventory all game. Or I'll sell it to get a pink ward for dragon.

Why does Urgot suck so much? Cool skin of his going on sale tomorrow and made me realize I think I've seen him played like once ever.

Urgot countered the traditional ADC meta so he constantly got nerfed until he became useless. As much as riot claims they don't force a meta, their protection of the ADC role displays otherwise. Personally I think the idea behind ADC and support is archaic, but its what we have... at least the ADC in league is an improvement over dota/hon carries.

After having a rough couple of games mid ryze against champions I didn't have a problem with before I started going only top and have been very successful up there with him. I guess nasus is a popular top champion in my elo, faced him 3 times over the weekend and nasus just gets shit on by ryze, you can even auto attack harass him and he can't do anything about it. I think my time spent at mid has helped my positioning a lot and since I actually ward its damn near impossible to gank me.

I wasn't running into the troll issue really before, but I was doing blind normals while really trying to learn one champion. Started doing exclusively draft normals this weekend and immediately had a bad string of trolls and was like oh, this is what ppl are complaining about, but after a few games it was the exception and not the norm.

So is Poppy basically worthless? Tried to play a few games with her and she just seems to be completely balls.

She is one of the hardest carries in the game thanks to her passive but getting her to the point where she is actually famred is pretty hard.

She's pretty decent on Dominion.

Urgot is weird because he can still be very strong, he just doesn't scale well at all in the end game so you really have to make him work early and mid game. I know doublelift still plays Urgot every once in awhile. (He did at that Allstars not too long ago) and he actually was crushing with it...until everybody else started to throw. He basically can solo his lane though, he's such a monster. Get that early bruta, land your poison so you lock in with your arrows and just spam the enemy and watch them get pushed out of lane. (Sorry I have no clue what any of urgots abilities are called because I never play him lol)

Poppy, I agree is complete trash, until you get 4 or 5 items on her, then GLHF enemy team! One of my RL buds is super troll with Poppy, goes Trinity into all zeals into all pds. It's such a stupid build but the few times I've seen him get a couple zeals, he just ults the adc and there is nothing he can do to get away since he has so much movement speed and crits basically every attack lol. Her passive is the best passive in the entire game imo. I still assume she'll be reworked eventually though.

i love playing Nasus top. he does get shit on early especially by anyone w/ range. just sit back, give up some early farm, and with 3x lifesteal quints you can out sustain most anything once you get to 5-6. i run ghost/flash or teleport/flash and just become a raid boss late game. tank/cdr, farm the Q under tower, hope your team can keep the game even till you join team fights.

i think urgot works well in the current top lane meta. a bit of range to harras well, tanky, and his ult is an amazing mid/late game initiation. if he's bot lane ADC, he doesn't have the damage to carry.

Arbitrary_sl said:

She's pretty decent on Dominion.

Click to expand...

AP Poppy in Dominion is pure terror. She can just farm up off kills/assists and by mid-game with her ult she can two shot your carry and you can't do a thing about it. The only thing that keeps her in check is that a lot of people don't seem to know how to play her well.

fris_sl said:

i love playing Nasus top. he does get shit on early especially by anyone w/ range. just sit back, give up some early farm, and with 3x lifesteal quints you can out sustain most anything once you get to 5-6. i run ghost/flash or teleport/flash and just become a raid boss late game. tank/cdr, farm the Q under tower, hope your team can keep the game even till you join team fights.

i think urgot works well in the current top lane meta. a bit of range to harras well, tanky, and his ult is an amazing mid/late game initiation. if he's bot lane ADC, he doesn't have the damage to carry.

Click to expand...

I was looking over Urgot's abilities and I thought he might be pretty decent top lane. I have no idea if that's true though.

Anyone play KogMaw at all? He's on sale too. I don't really play bot carries but I'm curious.

Draegan_sl said:

I was looking over Urgot's abilities and I thought he might be pretty decent top lane. I have no idea if that's true though.

Anyone play KogMaw at all? He's on sale too. I don't really play bot carries but I'm curious.

Click to expand...

KogMaw used to be really strong and was the definition of a late game hyper-carry ADC. He's was/is the best tank melter in the game. I am not sure what exactly caused him to fall out of favor (he used to be played a lot), but my only guess is that Vayne does his job better nowadays. Equal late game hyper-carry ability however Vayne has far better mobility/escape while Kog has better range and poke. In todays league of gap closers mobility>> range.

P.S: the Chinese firework skin for Kog is probably one of the coolest in the game.

Draegan_sl said:

I was looking over Urgot's abilities and I thought he might be pretty decent top lane. I have no idea if that's true though.

Click to expand...

wingsofdeathx, a moderately popular high rated streamer, used to take Urgot top lane prior to the character getting dumpstered. I played it some and thought it was pretty decent. You wait for the melee dude to walk up and try and last hit and you drop a Corrosive Charge on them and mash Q. You've got tower tricks with his ult and you could build a Frozen Heart. He got a little better in S3 with the introduction of Muramana and the penetration changes but it's hard for me to see anyone really picking him up.

I know that officially Riot says they aren't trying to enforce a meta but they totally, totally do. Urgot was one of the big 1v2 champions initially. In competitive play it wasn't uncommon to see purple side Urgot show up to lane with blue buff and spam away. Then he got absolutely and completely dumpstered. Olaf was another excellent 1v2 champion and he too had a hatchet taken to him even with a miserable win rate for all non-competitive game modes. The last patch included changes making it harder to take down a turret early, a key component of the 2v1 situation. Jungle small camps have had their spawn timers changed twice to eliminate one of the main reasons why purple side would lane swap - blue side bot lane duo starting on golems.

bixxby_sl said:

So is Poppy basically worthless? Tried to play a few games with her and she just seems to be completely balls.

Click to expand...

I mained Poppy when I first started ranked and got to about 1400 rating with her in season 2. If you could pick any champ with 6 completed items, Poppy (or Vayne, toss-up imo.) would hand downs be the strongest champ in the game. The problem is getting her to that point in the game because it is very hard for her to get money. In SR she generally is best in top lane and played as an ad bruiser. Philo stone and Sheen are her core build but like someone else mentioned, AP Poppy in dominion or 3v3 is a fun time.Use this guide if you wanna mess around with her more.

Look at that, Urgot will be in the free champ rotation this week. Will have to check him out.

He's pretty bad right now. He got hammered hard a couple patches in a row because pros were using him too effectively in 1v2 lanes. The range on his Q is just pathetic now compared to what it used to be and the damage on it is terribad until/if you're in the 250ad range. I mean, at rank 1 it's 10 base damage. A whopping 10 (yes there is ad scaling, I know). The real kick in the nuts though is that the augmented range for it is about the same as an Ezreal Q, and it just feels awful. It also won't proc sheen, just more icing on the cake.