League of Legends: Clash of Fates

No matter what change you make is going to result in a massive rework of skills.

As it stands they're going to rework the entire stealth system and you bite my head off for suggesting an alternative with about as far reaching consequences. There is likely no good solution that doesn't involved either rebalancing characters or ripping apart the system because of how riot has implemented the system and the hero's in the first place.

Couldn't the hacking part be detected and the perpetrator banned? Also technically you don't need the model to show you where she is, but where she was, 2 seconds ago.

Well I guess it's designed badly. In DoE, we never had that problem. The invisibility always required heavy maintenance or it required lots of positioning to be useful or it made your hero invisible but unable to do anything else except de-cloak.

I think playing stealth champions is fun actually. I wish I could play eve more, but she is never free and horrible bad. Twitch is too hard to learn wtf to do, and requires a lot of different position skills I didn't want to learn, so I stuck with different champs. It is fun to be invis though.

It is also something different to play against, so I am not .

Also they nerfed pantheon because of his ult, that is why his ult was not changed and the nerf q w and e to oblivion????

Guinsoo even claimed when I posted about it that his laning was way too strong and overpowering, which was obviously false but shitty players loved to complain, so my champ was removed from the game

I'm merely applying the same standard to you that people in this thread apply to LoL devs.

You are making suggestions on how to improve LoL and making it sound easy and the LoL devs incompetent. But your suggestions are horrible. Extremely vague, fraught with problems and poorly articulated.

It's one thing to imply that the LoL devs could do a better job, sure, but if you are going to act like you have the solutions then your own solutions shouldn't be awful.

In multiple posts you made it sound like just importing Dust into LoL would fix stealth problems and that the only reason not to was stubborn pride to "not be like DotA." But when I challenged you on that you completely fell apart and made it clear that your idea was just empty rhetoric. It's kind of pointless to suggest simple "solutions" (and cast aspersions on the LoL team for not implementing them!) that fall apart under any level of examination.

If you can't see the problem i'm loathe to explain it to you because you clearly care more about this argument than i do(and quite frankly i think both of us are now assuming the wrong thing), but hell one more time.

Dust would not be an easy port. Neither is completely tearing down the stealth system and doing it up from scratch with at least two FULL HERO REMAKES. If you'll notice from my original post I actually like the essential idea the LoL devs are going for because i do think it's a cool and unique system. When you look at what Lol has done with cool and unique systems though it's less encouraging, and I have a major issue with Guinsoo's design philosophy's, and how he handles certain things. Obviously he's not the only voice at riot, but i'm getting off the point.

To shorten it down it DOESN'T MATTER what is suggested. Their stealth idea is not that bad of one. As mentioned i like it. It's unique. Neither is dust. I DO think that even if they implemented their stealth concept dust fills a niche in a stealth based game that is generally beneficial and would not be that hard in comparison to tearing apart the entire system, and could be adapted to work, even with the new system. Yes it would require tweaks(and for the record i suggest alkai cloak nailing active items because 1. it's easier to change her than change 2 hero's and 2. Since they aren't stuck with crappy WC3 mechanics it's actually an interesting design space to explore...but they're afraid of items), but it would likely make for a more dynamic game. The issue comes down to the fact that i don't have faith in how they implement things, and them "not wanting to be DotA" is a pretty legit concern when flash is STILL a problem that will require much larger concessions if they ever decide to fix it.

This is your "original post" on the topic of Dust:

Clearly you are implying that importing Dust is a good idea and they don't do it simply because they are stubborn - something you as of yet have been completely unable to explain. Now you are arguing that they should do the stealth remake and ALSO import Dust, and then change Akali to disable item use when you are in her bubble (and change Vayne ult as well?) - because? You just really love Dust and it's worth breaking one or two characters for the sake of importing a DotA item that you can't explain the value of in LoL?

It seems like if they suffer from not wanting to be DotA you suffer very badly from the opposite problem.

Is implementing Dust as hard as reworking stealth as a whole? Maybe not. But it still sounds like a lot of work with no clear benefit and some clear drawbacks. Which is very different from your original claim that the only reason to not import Dust was stubborn refusal to not copy DotA.

Er isn´t that quite good arguing why the solution to the stealth mechanic ISN`T to make champions with it suck?

Champions can have multiple issues at once you know. Pantheons laning used to be too strong and was rightfully nerfed. His QWE are crappy not only in balance but also in terms of gameplay and they can´t be allowed to be "good" due to the value of his ultimate.
Fixing the ult requires changes in the UI since abilities with ranges longer than screenwide but not global are annoying to play with. His ultimate was the bottleneck to fixing his issues, not his only issue.

Dust is fundamentally flawed because it´s a reactive consumable which makes it a counter to defensive stealth like Akalis. However Akalis kind of stealth is the one instance of stealth in lol that works like it should!

No you are wrong sorry.

You are so wrong about pantheon's laning being too good, it is hilarious. The nerfs were extremely unjustified for a B Tier character. He even had a 0/10 matchup against anivia because of a bug that went unfixed for MONTHS. Then when it is fixed, the matchup only went 2-8 in anivia's favor. There were a ton of champs that could either fight evenly or own pantheon in mid, him ripping up a bunch of shitty ashe players that couldn't handle being harassed at all with some early game strength was a terrible terrible reason to nerf him SO INCREDIBLY BADLY.

You could even play around his ult, I remember specifically playing against an extremely good pantheon, and we won the early game very handily because of how we played when he was missing and ult was up, and we even baited him into bad ult. His requires WAY more skill and timing than twisted fate's and yet twisted fate remains top tier and pantheon is nerfed? Bullshit, sorry.

Also I had fun playing against eve when eve was good, and I had fun playing against Twitch when twitch was good. I actually think their stealth is too weak right now, because hitting them stops them from going into stealth, which is pretty powerful

Well even aside from the consideration that he is too strong or too weak (everyone agrees that he need to be stronger than he is right now) there are issues with his kit and skill synergy. The way his skills work together right now is both binary (can you land W->E or you can´t) and without much room to outplay the enemy or counterplay by the enemy. This also makes him incredibly hard to balance since without the "grey zone" of player skill he can only be too strong or too weak.
The issue with his W-E combo is that there is no room for error or improvement. Even Veigar is more likely to land a W without E than Pantheon getting off a full damage E without W.
Good combos (in terms of gameplay) aren´t based around hitting buttons in sequence but judgement and adjustment of synergystic abilities.

The stealth remake is a similar issue: in the current system they can´t make "steathy" champions since there is barely any room between "players don´t get detection: stealth is too strong" and "players get detection: stealth is useless". The stealth delay on taking damage is completely irrelevant to the problems the system has. If stealth as defense had ever been a problem Akalis W wouldn´t exist.

Dust is only fundamentally flawed in the context of Lol. Other issues makes it so dust is reasonable in DotA/HoN, but not Lol. True, dust is often used as the counter to defensive uses of stealth, but countering offensive stealth isn't that big of an issue in DotA because of the way the game is tuned. Due to many things (wards, cheaper counter-wards, increased dependence on farming gold on carries, decreased amount of time spent separated into lanes, and stronger initiation, among others) the effects of invis isn't nearly as much of a problem and it's defensive uses of stealth that are problematic. DotA has much less issue with stalking from long-term invis champions and usually anyone who does stalk for more than a little bit is wasting their team's time.

Either way the delay on invising while taking damage + the new sight range based stealth both occupy what dust is good for.

Well that's the game we're talking about.

That is why when pantheon was useable, his entire gameplay for about 16 levels was using r, using q, and using w, and e did not factor in until the very lategame?

There was no problem with landing w to e, and making that a skill you need is not an issue, and it doesn't have to be at all, when pantheon was usable the e was not a part of the extremely important part of his game, movement and position was. Near the very endgame it was a great nuke, but only then. Back then it was only player skill which made him usable, because he was very difficult to play.

Also explain why twisted fate has been top tier when he has had a better full map teleport than pantheon has ever had. Remember he used to have it as a REGULAR SKILL, for months and months, and then it was his ult, and it was way better than pantheon's ult in almost every way, and it still is. Why is twisted fate still so good and pantheon removed? If it is because of his ult, it was not fuckin that

Ugh stop pretending that Pantheon was fine before he was nerfed already.

But you are missing the issue. Phanteon has 2 core flaws, one being his ultimate simply for what it does. That gets "fixed" next patch.
The other being the binarity of his QWE kit. The way it´s set up there is little room for counterplay/skill so it can only be either too strong or too weak.

The conceptual perfect state of champion balance in relation to player skill is a consistent skill -> effectivness ratio among all champions.
Karthuses Q is a great example, it´s a huge damagesource and would be too strong if it was unmigitatable by dodging or using minions for the half damage condition. "Bad" play is punished by migitated effectivness.
Pantheon skills lack this to a huge degree. There is no actual counterplay for Q which is why it had to be nerfed over and over. The main counterplay to W is to bait Pants into bad positioning - but that applies to ANY champion and the secondary counterplay, trading damage is tricky due to the stun and Pants passive.
E however is almost the opposite no matter how good Pants is it will never function on it´s own. It has to be used in conjunction with W but since W is a stun there is no actual way to break that combo.

That is because he was dominating in any high level play right?

Oh wait you mean the better the players got the worst pantheon got, There were like three people who even played pantheon in solo queue.

Stop pretending like you know what was going on with pantheon, like at all

All champions being the same difficulty to play is perfect? That seems totally wrong and flawed but ok

Except for every single one of pantheon's skills, you are correct!

It is weird to me that you make a statement that is 100% factually wrong as truth, like it blows my mind. There is no counterplay to pantheon's ult? Bahahah what a joke.

Unfortunately, this just kind of shows you are a bad player, if you didn't know how to play against Q, then what can I say? When I played against real players in solo queue, they seemed to find ways around it. In fact, it was very interesting how each different hero handled pantheon's Q. I guess now you think it is in a better state, because instead of playing around it you just ignore it.

Unfortunately this is just a last level of ignorance about pantheon, and just shows how extremely little you know about how the hero was played.

Can you stop pretending like you have knowledge of pantheon at all? When I played him, he was pretty much agreed to be a B tier character, was rarely played, and won a grand total of zero tournaments. You consistently show with your posts you never played him seriously and have no real idea what the fuck is going on with his skills. After I played him for a long time I felt that he was actually much harder than many champions in terms of positioning, because using his Q early game was all about fighting for that position

Being able to gank WITHOUT HIS ULT was actually pantheon's best play since his ult was so slow and predictable. I mean, it worked to punish mistakes, but it is not like twisted fate who can just ult and be there in 1 second.

Anyways that is enough of that

Do you have even ONE argument that isn´t "You are wrong because I said so?"

A champions competitivness is NOT a mesurement of their design quality. Denyplank also was never "Tournamentwinning" but he had to be changed anyway. Popularity is merely anectodal evidence, Lanewick was practically unknown for a LONG time.

A) That is not an argument.
B) It´s not what I said. Difficulty can vary if effectivness is consistent. Let me spell it out for you: Even easy champions need to "punish" bad players and even hard champions need to "reward" good play.

A) That is not an argument.
B) It´s not what I said. There is counterplay to Phanteons ult however it´s shitty gameplay to do so. His ult wasn´t discussed in that post at all after "Phanteon has 2 core flaws, one being his ultimate simply for what it does."

A) That is not an argument.
B) Trying to invalidate my points by calling me a "bad player" is an ad hominem
C) Your "evidence" is, once again neither elaborated upon and anectodal in the first place. What makes spearshot more than a boosted autoattack?

A) That is not an argument.
B) Trying to invalidate my points by calling me a "bad player" is an ad hominem
C) Your "evidence" is, once again neither elaborated upon and anectodal in the first place. What makes spearshot more than a boosted autoattack?
D) To go onto that more directly, fighting for positioning is something ALL champions do.

Once again, his ult is merely tangential to the issues in his QWE kit. It seems to me like you are whining about your favourite champion being nerfed and are either unwilling or incapable of identifying and adressing my points.

CWheezy has demonstrated in this thread that he doesn't really grasp anything about game design or debate and his latest post is a perfect example of that.

It's incredibly obvious what the problem with Panth is, it's completely given away by the changes he's gone through. He has a move that's a ranged stun and a move that only really does anything after a stun.

If the stun duration is as long as the damage move then those two together are really just one move, a stun that also does a lot of damage. If the stun is shorter than the duration of the damage move then it's still basically one move, it just does less damage.

They've tried playing with the stun duration but all that really does is change the damage output of the combo.

The problem with laning against Panth is the same problem as laning against AP Ali. He has a ranged stun that does a lot of damage. If you can stay out of stun range (which is fairly long) you are ok, if you have a lot of sustain or you stay near the tower. But if you can't do those things you basically can't do anything. It's like laning against Taric if Taric's stun did 50% damage. That doesn't mean that Panth is too good, but what it means is that if he can get in stun range he's really good and if he can't then he has two useless skills.

There is also the problem that making him good in team fights is hard because if you buff either of his combo skills that makes him that much better in lane. Which doesn't give you much room to work with, as that's two of his skills that are awkward to tweak.

He has fundamental design problems.

I'm sorry but no. Problems, sure, fundamental? No.

His "ranged stun" is a blink as well which puts him in terrible position vs a LOT of the cast. If he doesn't kill you with his "You asplode combo" he's now got to get the hell away or hope he can out dps you which is not likely. The only thing helping that is his innate which is mediocre as it is currently.

His global gank should not even be considered to be removed and that's easily one of the worst decisions i've seen them make.

Since you want solutions with criticism-
Ideas vary on what style you want to play, but:
Make aegis more of his game. Allow easier activation through his skills and nerf his health otherwise. Make aegis last very a very brief period of time as well to compensate.
Javelin- other than aegis changes leaving it as it was would likely be fine. I actually would've liked to have seen some synergy with the shield skill, but that'd mean adding a new effect to him.
Shield-As it was again. Again barring better synergy between in and javelin.
Heartseeker-Main rework. Allow it to proc weapon effects and balance it accordingly. Unless there's some design goal that that's wolf man only i don't see why they haven't tried this. Decent initial power to keep it threatening in lane when you're item poor, less power for higher levels but lower cooldowns.
Ult: I still can't believe how against a mobile game riot is. Any form of global mobility is shunned and hated rather than balanced around. I seriously don't get it. Anyways preferably i'd basically not touch this at ALL. If anything i'd make it more a part of his starting combo and leave it on a heavy cooldown. Make him more likely to land it for less damage, but have a much harder time killing without it. That way he's stuck choosing. Either he can solo gank with his ult on a nasty cooldown, or he gets help and can save the ult for more global purposes.

Either way this is all random junk. Even with just flat out numbers tweaks(and not much from what he was) he would've been fine. He just doesn't fit the riot sponsored philosophy of what "hero" equates to in there game. Which is a hell of a lot more narrow than DotA/hon.

You guys keep talking like using hss was a major part of pantheon play or something, and it wasn't. It might be now? but all his skills seem pretty bad.

Calling you a bad player isn't ad hominem, it is just factual, I mean, are you actually good? I mean, you didn't have my level of experience so I can't really talk to you, so that sucks

I'll just put you on ignore since tbh every post you make seems like you are a riot apologist haha.

Like, I can try to expand on how to play against pantheons q, but I could write for pages and pages and pages and pages and still wouldn't get it all, there is just so much and tiny little movements you can do.

Getting off this topic: Apparently the jungle is going to get changed so A: it's easier to jungle (creeps are weaker, spawn faster, give less gold per creep), and B: Redbuff now hastes the guy with it instead of slowing whoever you hit.

That seems... pretty bad for junglers and all melee champions. I guess if they want people to just lane safely all the time it makes sense.

This thread is so long it's taxing the database server; it takes forever to load. i think we should make a new one.

If "no wards promotes passive play" and "ward promote passive play" then the problem is not with wards. In this case, i'd look at the incentives underlying camp-and-farm strategies vs. anything else.

Is it? I still don't understand the objection to dust. It's a good idea, fundamentally. Do you have to change Akali? Probably a little. Does it invalidate her as a character? Fuck no. Does that invalidate dust as an idea? Fuck no. The whole damn point of having your own engine is that you can change things to use good ideas. Isn't that the entire reason Guinsoo gave up on DotA to make LoL?

Which is to say, you're supposed to be aggressive.

I watched a big DotA match the other day with some LoL people who had never seen DotA before. They were shocked by it. At one point the announcer said something like "wow, it's really unusual there hasn't been a first blood yet since it's already five minutes into the game" and everyone went "??? You get kills in DotA???"

Also, maybe people don't understand but CWheezy knows what he's talking about here. If you are disagreeing with him you are wrong. Sorry. That's just how it is.

Pantheon was not too strong and nobody ever seriously claimed otherwise. The only problem was that nobody in this game can possibly buy cloth armor at level 1 if they're laning, even though it made Pantheon's harass irrelevant. I faced many Pantheons in the patches where his laning power was supposedly too good (before they changed it so that he could one-shot someone with his E, which was a good change ) and the basic problem was people just were unable to play a different way than they were used to. If you did something to actually counter Pantheon he was totally reasonable, but he was an early game character and that was just too much for people to handle apparently.

People just didn't understand the concept of a character who starts strong but doesn't scale, i guess.

And yeah, for all the crying about Pantheon... Twisted Fate is way worse and has been for a long time. Corki is ridiculous and bizarrely powerful. Jarvan is game-ruining, his laning is much better than Pantheon's ever was (in that you literally cannot kill him) and yet we see such careful, incremental steps with him ("His flag gives one less armor. No other changes.") while Pantheon got repeatedly reworked/crushed by nerfs.

The problem isn't power level. It isn't even that the character is bad for the game. It's that people don't understand counterplay.

You don't know what the fuck you're talking about.

There was counter-play. Then it was removed in favor of another design on that hero for which there was not counter-play. The problem was not whether there was counter-play or not, because the version that had counter-play got rejected for the version that did not.

In fact, if anything, the problem was that there was counter-play to that version of Pantheon. Go back and re-read Zileas's "anti-fun manifesto", or whatever he called it.

Buy Cloth Armor level 1. Problem solved. It (was) literally that simple.

This is like the second or third time recently someone has brought this up. Lanewick was not unknown--among the top players. GuardsmanBob ran him regularly for some while (several patches) prior to Dreamhack, and other players used him as a counter-pick every once in a while. This is not some sort of "oh it came out of nowhere" moments. People knew about this strategy.

Is it this thread specifically? I've had some issues loading anything on the forums the past few days.

If we do make a new thread, can we make one about LoL, and then another for all the stuff about how awesome [insert other MOBA game] is, and another for the people trying to win the internet by sniping back and forth at each other with insults?

Seriously though, it could be broken down into a few different threads, maybe. There seems to be a mix of discussion about certain mechanics along with newbie questions/advice/tier lists/comments about champions/etc. Trying to follow one thing or another across several pages a day can be much sometimes, and I feel like some things get lost in the middle of raging debates. I dunno.

I think I heard one of the Rioters on a stream the other day (maybe Zenon?) say something in regards to this (not specifically Jarvan, but buffing/nerfing), that they were trying to not necessarily fix champs in one go, but making smaller changes which might require a few patches to get right. On the other hand, they overbuffed Yorick a bit... But, that might be because he was regarded as so terrible right off the bat that they felt they needed to make a bigger change, maybe. Remakes are a different story, but I think that for buffs and nerfs, they are at least saying that they are changing their attitude towards them a little bit.

I like how the new thing in this thread is for people to make terrible arguments that are on their face worthless and stupid and then validate them by calling the person they are debating with terrible, even though nobody in this thread has any credentials worth writing home about as far as I'm aware of.

WinterAyars and CWheezy are great players? Prove it. It should be relatively simple to do no?

What Dreamhack team did you guys play for? I cannot fucking wait for "well argh blargh I don't play seriously any more but in beta I was really good!"

If you are going to appeal to authority where the authority is yourself you better be willing and able to prove that you are in fact an authority.

Edit: I looked them both up, assuming their user names are the same on LoL they are both best described as "slightly above average." So yeah, the appeal to self-authority is pretty hilarious.

How many dreamhack teams ran pantheon when he was "ZOMG BROKEN". How many ran other hero's in far greater numbers?

It´s like they don´t realize that ad hominem is a bad thing.

Up to now this point is only "supported" by calling me bad.

That is the loving point. Either it does too much damage or too little. In Qs case it HAS to be too little since there is no other possibility to migitate it. Simply being too strong was NEVER an argument.
Ranged autoattacks have the same issue, thats why they are all so very close in terms of damage, range and attackspeed. Even "minor" differences have huge effects on the laning situation, most notable propably Caitlyns range advantage. The basic idea is that if you get hit with a ranged autoattack you hit them back and the situation is even again. Thats when minion aggro actually matters.

But one skill isn´t ever really arguabke without context. Even the fact that Phanteon is tied with Yi for highest base MS matters.

Phanteon has only one "combo", (R) Q -> W -> E -> Q. Any other combination is objectivly inferior in ANY situation which makes his effectivness binary: either it works or it doesn´t.

The last buff to Warwick was on patch 1.0.0.100 on September 8, 2010 which was to make E a toggle. It took a LONG, LONG time before anyone noticed his laning potentional.

One of the teams at this year's Dreamhack had a player who regularly uses Panth, though he wasn't picked in their matches this time round. But really the reason I brought up Dreamhack was I assumed that CWheezy and Winter were part of it, being that they are expert players and all...

But again, the issue is not whether or not Panth is too good or too bad. Characters like Panth and Eve are similar to SF2 Honda, who is both too good and too bad while being overall average.

I don't really mind if someone who is really good at the game says "you just don't know what you're talking about, trust me." That's not much of a logical argument but it still has some weight by virtue of who they are.

For mediocre players to say that is just funny.

Margalis account is level 1 with like two games played, why should we listen to you? you don't even play the game!

Also when I did play pantheon I was in top 350 elo before waterd quit

I just want to note how this was not, actually at all, a response to the question asked. You outright avoided it. And you of all people are bitching about insults? You start most of your posts with insults!

The third part is the existential part of internet. It's ingrained in it's every part.

Also in Margs defense, how many tournament Pantheon won also depends on his popularity and familiarity, not just his power. I'm not familiar with LoL, but in GW there is quite a delay between discovering an imbalanced build and the time it becomes "meta" so to speak. A shadow runner build was discovered 3-4 years ago, but was quite unused because my friend wouldn't want to share it. I'm assuming that discovering the right combination of items for a hero takes time as well.

Going to beat a dead horse and say, pathenon was anything but overpowered. I am not going to tell you its because I am better than you or Cwheezy and winter are. Although that was part of their argument, you neglected other parts (especially the cloth armor).

The best way to lane against pathenon was to choose a sustainable anti harass hero. I remember waterD laning against chogath with cloth armor (or armor runes) and not being able to do anything. Its that simple. In fact, there are many heroes whose laning and ganking are far superior to Path, annie is one of them.. Anivia is also a very strong laner. I would rather lane against old Panth than any of these 2. Tf's ganking prowess at 6 is monstrous. Allistar is an ass to lane against... and so on and on. The reason behind the pathenon nerf, probably was due to him not fitting the design philosophies of the creators. This is fine, but its different than saying its because the hero was overpowered.

I'll skip the rest because we're way past the point of getting anywhere, but WHAT?

Are you actually saying that all ranged auto attacks need to be dreadfully similar because the game balance can't handle them being different? Or am i misunderstanding something.

Lol what? Now you are just wholly inventing things. Yeah, I've played two games of LoL...derp.

I don't understand why people are having so much trouble with the concept that a character can be messed up without being overpowered. Eve is a good example of this - to my knowledge at no point was she a major tournament presence but she's still messed up in her old state. There are characters who can lane against Jarvan no problem. Or against Annie no problem. Or against <INSERT CHARACTER HERE> no problem, especially if they have the right runes. Yeah, if you play a character that has high health, built in sustain, cloth armor, armor runes and a silence then Panth probably isn't too bad...sure. I'm not sure what that says exactly though.

They were clearly having issues with Pantheon in that the goal is to make him useful in team fights and not be either feast-or-famine in lane and that's tough to do due to the nature of his kit - he essentially has 2 abilities instead of 4.

I've won about $50 in RP in various tournaments and leagues. I was on a team that top-8ed the CA tournament. I was on a team, and designed the team strategy for/led the draft for, the team that won the Runeterra community tournament. I was a long-term ringer for a team that top-8ed the Alienware league. (We would have done better had we been able to play more matches--we were screwed over by the way the league was set up, though we weren't in any shape to take (say) a top 3 spot.)

I wasn't the best--i am not even a part of a top team--but you're being ridiculous. You pretty clearly don't have the faintest clue what you're talking about and you're pretty brazenly trolling the thread.

Oh yeah, thanks for reminding me.

Back in beta and for the first month or two after ladder was released i was ranked top 500 (or close to it) and regularly played top players. My normal elo was 2k the last time it was visible.

Others here--Uthgar and Locust, notably--have been in top teams at various times in the game. Locust is in RS right now, one of the top teams in the game, and Uthgar's team came close to winning the CA tournament, even defeating Team AON (Reginald's team prior to TSM). Yeah, Uthgar doesn't play the game seriously anymore but in beta he was really good. They're not directly involved in this, and i have no clue what Locust's opinion of old Pantheon is, but i'm just noting: there are some strong players in these forums.

And how many other changes have there been to jungling, laning, and the various other mechanics surrounding those things have there been since then? How has the metagame evolved since then? A character's power is not defined in a vacuum, but in relation to their place in the game.

It's pretty hilarious that people here keep bringing up lanewick because there are perfectly good examples of "metagame surprises" that you could be using! You don't have to use this awful example of lanewick, who isn't an example at all, and then try to defend it by shifting the goal posts. You could use Ashe, who pretty much everyone agreed was good... but... i don't think people realized that she was quite that good. (Although it's possible top level players did and i didn't catch on.)

You won a whole $50 in pretend money over the course of your entire LoL career? Wow. What a boss!

Ha ha you actually went there. Awesome.

You do realize that in beta the pool of players was much smaller and also heavily favored people who had played other MOBA's right? Also you do realize that nobody really cares how good you were in beta and the fact that you point to that as an accomplishment is humorous right?

Are you actually bringing up normal, as in non-ranked, elo? Wat?

But you aren't them. How is that at all relevant? Some other people who post here aren't average players. That makes you a great player via...proximity? I'm confused.

This is only an issue because you and CWheezy are trying to make yourselves sound like great players. I don't think it's fair to dismiss arguments simply because they come from non-elite players and I don't think elite players are always correct either but if your primary argument is "you are bad" you should probably be pretty good and significantly better than me.

I was kind of expecting people who claim to be very knowledgeable about MOBAs in general and to be highly skilled at LoL to be significantly better than myself, given that LoL is the first MOBA I've played for any length of time and I don't claim any significant expertise. But you and CWheezy are basically at my level.

Okay then, Margalis. Time to put up or shut up. How much money have you won in this game? How many tournaments or leagues have you top 8'd? What team are you on?

The point is that autoattacks have a huge impact on laning. Even small differences between them generate big advantages.
In a pure autoattack vs. autoattack lane minions and thus positioning makes the difference.
But if your part of the damagetrade is stronger than enemy and minion damage the lane becomes a onesided advantage.
They and similar "nukes" are strong assets during laning since laning is ultimately about attrition. The best laners are the ones that can consistently make the enemy run out of HP and/or Mana.
Thats why differences in Autoattacks have to be accounted for in the skillset.
Usually these nukes have a "caveat" so using them doesn´t automatically win the lane. Akalis Q and Shens Q deal comperativly weak damage and need a followup melee hit. Annies Q? Prohibitivly Manaintensive as harrassment (her notoriously high autoattackrange is supposed to serve for that).
Zileans Q? Pushes the lane (still extremely strong though). Not to speak of all the dodgeable skillshots.

But how do you design Phanteons Q to be a "fair" harrassment ability? Phanteon can´t harrass with his other abilities, W can´t be strong/cheap enough to harrass since it has a stun attached and E is a close ranged channeled AOE.
Prohibitive Manacost also doesn´t work, there needs to be a "correct" way that is manaefficient and a "incorrect" way that makes you run out of mana or such an ability is simply too expensive. How would you get Pants to "waste" mana on Q? "I´ll make him hit me with Q, that way he will run out of mana faster than I run out of HP?" If that actually works Q is entirely pointless.
Right now Phanteons Q means "this melee champ has a ranged attack".

But wait, how does that concept work for Kayle, doesn´t she do the same? Well, hers pushes the lane and is prohibitivly manaintensive. Her actual harrassment comes from Q which requires followup damage to be "worth it" in terms of mana->damage.

The point is that the Metagame isn´t all knowing and thus not a reliable factor for balance changes, merely an indicator. You basically are agreeing with that point here, you just whine about my example because...?

Ashe is a "bad" example since on EU she has been a top pick since forever. It´s another point, Metagames are different between the servers and I hope the two EUs will differentiate from each other as well.

This ultimately means that "top player opinions" are still opinions. Phantheon being "low tier" is irrelevant since his abuse case is his ult and that particular thing is done better by TF. They still both need work and it´s not plain buffs.

On a different issue Guinsoo posted a lot in this thread about the jungle changes and their implications: http://na.leagueoflegends.com/board/showthread.php?t=991563

I know there's the other thread, but whatever this is relevant here. Your line of attack is nothing but blatent trolling.

First you deflect points by claiming that the skill level of the person giving the point shouldn't matter.

Then you immediately follow it up by trying to belittle CWheezy's and Winter's skill levels and use that belittlement as a way to refute their points.

You can't have it both ways. Especially when you willfully concede some points (like that panth was not overpowered at the top) and ignore others (that cloth armor was an effective deterrent to pantheon).

It's doubly so because from what I see you're trying to prove something (that Panth was overpowered) that should be false until proven otherwise. If Winter and Wheezy say no it wasn't you should have some actual evidence why it was (tournament wins, hero win %, etc.).

Logo- You forgot how he made claims about how Winter and such were never in a tournament team, and when Winter refuted them, Margalis said they "didn't matter", and said he was just as good as they are without giving any indication that it was true, refusing to share his record, and in fact opened a new thread to deflect the issue.

And my point is that the examples people are using of this are not, in fact, examples at all.

There are some good examples (ie Ashe being really fucking strong--but even that is a questionable metagame failure, since she got played all the damn time), but lanewick is not one of those examples and people continuously use that one character build to argue their point. It doesn't make them look good, or like they know what the fuck they're talking about, when they use something that not only doesn't illustrate the point they're trying to make but that, instead, illustrates pretty damn nearly the opposite.

We can argue whether "the metagame" is something you want to balance around or not (i'm a little baffled as to what you want to balance on if not that), but lanewick does not prove what people seem to think it proves.

This is not just some minor technical issue. You're taking something that was well known to be powerful and arguing it's a metagame failure (and therefore the metagame is not trustworthy) because people didn't realize it was powerful. What you are (or whoever is) saying is literally and exactly untrue.

Same for the US. It's just that people didn't seem to realize just how strong she was. Nobody was afraid of her, but they should have been. (Instead they banned other carries that were easily counterable, as per the results of the tournament.) This is even an oversimplification and there are a number of ways it could be wrong, but it's a hell of a lot better example of "the metagame is wrong" than lanewick.

Keep in mind this is not my argument. I'm not arguing this point. I'm just improving the arguments of my enemies because their arguments are so bad it's irrelevant to respond to them. Whether or not the argument (that the metagame isn't trustworthy) is true or not--and i have my own opinions on this--doesn't affect the a point that i'm making. Which is that you should use strong examples that require actual arguments to refute, rather than weak examples that can be refuted by an obvious counterexample that anyone who watches top level play for more than ten minutes can come up with.

So when i say, for example, that Ashe is a better example: she's a better example because, although she might not be an example of the metagame being wrong, she doesn't fall victim to the obvious counter-arguments that other examples like Lanewick do.

Yeah, i'm just waiting for him to bring something up in that other thread and then i'm going to copy/paste stuff.

For the record: here's the new thread.

Why? Margalis deserves to be hounded for his hypocrisy, arrogance, stupidity, and cowardice. How convient that he started a new thread just when he was caught in this one, huh?

Yes, this is what i'm saying: i intend to do exactly that. But i'm giving him a chance, you see. If he wants to behave himself i'll let it slide. I have... let's say... my doubts, but if this is indeed going to be the new thread (and i wouldn't be opposed to starting another, different one) then i'll give him some slack and see what he does with it.

I did update my tier list in case you are interested.

Kayle moved to trash tier. She sucks now.

Is this due to the bug of the offensive %Reduction that only affects base values or a good amount of personal experience?

Further, why is Lux so low? I know she isn't as strong as other mages, but she definitely has some traits. (good burst, long range, slow + snare, decent shield)

Around which ELO is this list valid? (since, at low ELO, champions such as Mordekaiser and Karthus are probably way higher)

What's your reason to put Swain, Cassiopeia and Kog'Maw in Tier 3? I personally (!) feel they should be at least in Tier 2, in case of Cassio even Tier 1.

Are there any Champion you feel, that they would be ranked higher if people would understand how to play them effectively in the current meta? (One example of this is the old Kayle, she was considered weak until a lot of high ranked players managed to pick her up in a certain way - don't know how this exactly went)

New thread time.