Lee Sin

So nobody is quite sure about whether this guy is an April fools or not. I vaguely remember a red post at Riot stating they had no intentions of ever releasing this energy based melee champion.

EDIT: An anonymous has kindly informed me the red post may have possibly deconfirmed Lee instead of cancelling him. Whether that makes an impact on whether they will release him or not I do not know.

Riot have released a genuine image of Lee Sin:

I'm pretty sure he's really going to be released this time. There's a small following on the forums that dictate Urf will be the new character instead. Urf is a seal Warwick killed in the lore, he can be seen floating around ingame.

It's possible Riot will release both characters on April fools, which would be the best solution to avoid the ridiculous complaints spamming the LoL forums.

Here is a list of abilities Lee Sin will allegedly have, directly from the LoL website:


Sonic Wave / Resonating Strike:

• Sonic Wave: Lee Sin projects a discordant wave of sound to locate his enemies, dealing physical damage to the first enemy it encounters. If Sonic Wave hits, Lee Sin can cast Resonating Strike for the next 3 seconds.
• Resonating Strike: Lee Sin dashes to the enemy hit by Sonic Wave, dealing physical damage plus 10% of their missing health.

Safeguard / Iron Will

• Safeguard: Lee Sin rushes towards a target ally, shielding them both from damage. If a shield is broken, half the energy cost is returned. After using Safeguard, Lee Sin can cast Iron Will for the next 3 seconds.
• Iron Will: Lee Sin's intense training allows him to thrive in battle. For 5 seconds, Lee Sin gains lifesteal, spell vamp, and armor.

Tempest / Cripple

• Tempest: Lee Sin smashes the ground sending out a shockwave that deals magic damage and reveals enemy units hit. If Tempest hits an enemy, Lee Sin can cast cripple for the next 3 seconds.
• Cripple: Lee Sin cripples nearby enemies revealed by Tempest, reducing their Movement and Attack Speed for 4 seconds. Movement and Attack Speed recover gradually over the duration.

Dragon's Rage (Ultimate)

• Lee Sin performs a powerful roundhouse kick launching his target back, dealing physical damage to the target and any enemies they collide with. Enemies the target collides with are knocked into the air for a short duration.

Flurry (Passive)

• After Lee Sin uses an ability, his next 2 basic attacks gain 50% Attack Speed and return 10 energy each.

As you can see, Riot have inserted both Lee and Urf into this screenshot, so it could go either way at this point. Guess we'll have to wait til wednesday eh?

My next post will be regarding the recent buffs and nerfs to the game, and what direction Riot are taking it. Check back in a couple days if you're interested.

Upcoming content

Welcome back everyone, I hope you like the new layout. I didn't make any drastic changes because blogger isn't exactly known for doing exactly what you want it to, so frustration got the best of me when attempting to add some of my own HTML code into the blog.

I bet you guys are all sick of seeing Nocturne in the majority of your games this week, despite half of them being terribad noobs. His ultimate gets annoying when it gets casted over and over, and I've stopped playing squishy characters because he's always picking me as a target.

There's a lot to talk about with the changes this patch by Riot. However, I've also decided to cover several other things over the next week, such as:

Recent skins

The blind monk Lee Sin

Recent nerfs and buffs

Videos of the best players

Farming IP

Lane dominance and map control

Make sure you check back if you're interested in any of these topics.

As for me, I've been playing a lot of games recently, and have obtained an array of new characters because of it. Ranked matches have always seemed to be more tard ridden than normal games, which is why I stick to normal. With all the new matches, it's got to the point sometimes where I just pick a faceroll character because I'm feeling lazy. Don't you just love realising the enemies in the lane are feeders? You'll love it even more when playing someone like Teemo or Xin.

I'm going to start preparing my next article now, so check back on monday.

Nocturne!

Allegedly a new stealth hero finally joins the ranks of the League next week, Nocturne.

I'm one of those people who just loves playing characters with invisibility, or any escape ability for that matter. Here's an image of our shadowy champion, for those who haven't seen the awesome. The fact that he uses stealth has not been clarified.

Riot have released a little information on Nocturne, but not much so far.

Nocturne is an assassin type character who functions very differently than the traditional archetypes. Unlike a traditional stealth character such as Twitch who becomes personally invisible, or a character such as Nidalee who has special synergy with the brush, Nocturne’s ultimate ability afflicts the entire enemy team with a specialized debuff. This ultimate – dubbed Paranoia – removes the player’s shared vision with allied units, leaving them blind to anything beyond the sight range of their own champion. In this way, Nocturne is able to sow confusion amongst the enemy team, striking quickly and taking down enemy champions while their allies are blind to their need for assistance.

While this ulti is copied directly from HoN, and probably the DotA equivalent as well, I think it's an excellent addition to the ranks which can disrupt the enemy effectively. Most pub teams will split up and get wiped out during Paranoia, but I believe the good teams will quickly batten down the hatches and ride it out.

I'm a little excited about this guy, more excited than Jarvan anyway! I think a LOT of people are going to be buying him, mainly because of how he looks so awesome. Good one Riot!

Welcome back, Okairinasai

Yeah yeah, I've been gone for a week, I've been very busy with personal issues in real life, therefore I wasn't able to post. Also, I have been working on revamping my hilarious images blog entirely (changes will appear soon). I apologise for the delay, but now the blog will be back on track with plenty of updates and information on the league. This is not a lie fabricated by me because I was watching anime and playing LoL all week (the last few episodes of Bleach were awesome, shame about the filler).

So what do we have since I last posted? There's a new champion out and about, Jarvan IV.

From my experience so far (around 40 games with Jarvan in them), Jarvan is a very strong hero with some excellent utility. He is essentially a tankier version of Xin Zhao. I have fought him 1 on 1 as Xin, and  I lost most fights unless it was late game.

I expect there to be a fair amount of complaining about his ultimate, because trapping 3+ people in a ring while Fiddlesticks or Katarina AoE stomps them is practically GG. For those of you who want to see a video of Jarvan, here is HotshotGG playing his first games with him (skip the first few minutes to get to the game).

Whilst I'd love to chat about Jarvan all day, I'm going to move on to something more important, that was announced today.

League of Legends has been officially confirmed as a title in the 2011 World Cyber Games. This is great news for casual and hardcore player alike, since the League will be featured among some of the greatest games that have ever been produced. Here is a list of the 2011 games:

WCG 2011 Official Game Titles:

Fighting

    * Tekken 6 (Namco Bandai Games)



FPS (First Person Shooting)

    * Counter-Strike 1.6 (Valve)
    * Crossfire (Neowiz Games/Smilegate)
    * Special Force (Dragonfly)



MMORPG (Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game)

    * World of Warcraft®: Cataclysm™ (Blizzard Entertainment)



RTS (Real Time Strategy)

    * League of Legends (Riot Games)
    * StarCraft® II: Wings of Liberty™ (Blizzard Entertainment)
    * Warcraft® III: The Frozen Throne™ (Blizzard Entertainment)



Sports

    * FIFA 11 (Electronic Arts)

WCG is the longest running esports event in history, so with coverage like this expect a fair few new players ingame. Last year League of Legends was only presented as a promotional title in WCG, so they've managed to take a step up the ladder this year. I am personally looking forward to this, considering it's a step towards more competitive play.

On another note, I've been on an incredible win streak this week, I can't remember the last time I've lost more than one game in a row. Touchwood. If you wish to play with me on the US servers, add my summoner name: ByakuyaYO. I know the Yo on the end makes me look like a pleb, deal with it.

News update

So what's been happening this week at Riot?

They have finally announced the release of Jarvan IV, the long awaited Exemplar of Demacia. Xin Zhao is this guys bodyguard, so surely he's going to be overpowered. Here is the only picture that has been released of Jarvan, a long time ago. This is the only interesting news Riot have posted this week, apart from the various skin price reductions and summoner showcase.

He is allegedly a dps character, hence the giant spear. However, to me he looks like he could easily be implemented as another skin for Xin Zhao. Riot are going to have to be careful with his skills, or he could just end up as Xin mark II.

So what else happened this week? The european servers were horribly broken for the better part of the week, with countless chat and ingame errors. It seems to have cleared up now though, so congratulations EU players, it's a shame you had so much downtime.

I saw some freedom fighters on the EU forums who decided since their forums and client weren't working properly, they thought they could fix the problem by spamming the US servers until they broke down. This was pretty damn funny, because I can't see a grain of logic behind that inspired plan.

Derp.

The free champions of the week have inspired a lot of QQ on the forums throughout the week, namely about Irelia. I don't have any problem with her balance whatsoever, but since the casuals do; Irelia players buckle down for the incoming nerf.

Other than that, this week has been incredibly baaawring for LoL, maybe they've decided to keep some cards up their sleeve instead of drooling them all over the table which seems to be the usual plan.

I personally am working for a couple more interviews, so hopefully you'll get to see those in the next couple of days. Until then, have a good weekend folks, or what's left of it.

Interview #3

Greetings everyone, whether you are discontent because I missed yesterdays post or here to see my wonderful blog, I have now obtained the long awaited Heat n Serve interview you've all been eager to read (except one guy, he was all "Heat n Serve is overrated").

Heat n Serve is a well respected administrator at the Leaguecraft forums, which can be found here. He is known for his character and mathcrafting guides, which are popular due to his logical builds that are backed up with sound justification. Here is a list of all the guides he has published, incase you want to take a look:

How to Mathcraft: http://tinylc.com/g
Gangplank: http://tinylc.com/d
Mordekaiser 1: http://tinylc.com/e
Mordekaiser 2: http://tinylc.com/Gj
Galio: http://tinylc.com/f
Jungle Malphite: http://tinylc.com/h
Taric: http://tinylc.com/Tp

Before we continue onto the interview, I thought I'd mention this blog has now hit 10,000 views in just over a week! Woo go blog.

I will be using HnS as an abbreviation throughout the interview for Heat n Serve, if anyone has to read this to understand that, then I guess it was worth writing this bit after all.

Let's get onto the interview, shall we?
 
Me: So, how long have you been playing League of Legends?
HnS: I puchased the preorder in September 2009, which in turn got me an
invite to participate in the closed-beta. Prior to that, I had played
DoTA for about 3-4 years.

Me: What do you think of the game in general? Is Riot taking it in the
right direction?
HnS: I think they are doing a good job removing what they refer to as
"passive play" and other things that make the game less exciting. This
is good for me because I would categorize my play style as somewhat
reckless... lol. 

Me: Do you play with a clan? Or friends?
HnS: A couple college friends of mine play the game with me. I also play
with a handful of people I met through leaguecraft. I always wanted to
start/join a clan, but I really don't have a regular enough schedule to
commit to something like that right now. Fortunately, it doesn't seem
like I'm missing out on too many tournaments at the momemnt. :)

Me: There are a lot of complaints about the idiots and trolls in this
game, does this affect your gameplay too? What is your approach to the
common in-game flamer?
HnS: Absolutely. Instead of focusing on winning the game, I start to focus
on what the flamer will say next. I will act in ways to minimize the
chance I will have to listen to said flamer rage at me (even though
usually nothing will please them or make them shut up). Thus, I stop
making the best move, or hesitate enough that I miss my window of
opportunity.

I used to get baited into doing some flaming of my own, but more
recently I "/ignore"-ed someone who was flaming and it was a smart
decision. I regained my focus and played pretty well from there on out.
I highly recommend using the ignore feature; I know I will be using it
much more from now on.

Me: You are very popular on the Leaguecraft forums, a candidate for
member of the month. What would you attribute this to? Your winning
personality? Guides? Both?
HnS: More than anything, I try to be fair to everyone and be a just admin on
Leaguecraft. In my guides, people will argue against my builds and I
generally defend myself in a civil manner. I like to think people
appreciate the civil (if sometimes heated) discussion that takes place
after I publish a guide.

Not everyone likes my guides, but I at least give a good effort and give
logical arguments for readers. They can then at least walk away and
make an informed decision on how they want to play the champion in
question. I try to provide math when I can, because the math keeps
everyone honest. Sadly, not everyone sticks to the basic principles
which make guides helpful, informative and easy to read. Good grammar,
formatting and organization concepts are in all of my guides. I give
the reader quality so they are more receptive to the arguments I am making.

Me: Recently, Riot have been bought by one of the most influential internet
companies in the world, Tencent. For an astounding $400 million! Would you
say this is a good thing?
HnS: Certainly. Riot has a lot of ideas on the table and right now just
doesn't seem to have the human capital to accomplish all of their goals.
I'd imagine when they get more people, they will be able to give
better support to customers, fix bugs, develop maps, create a forum that
doesn't suck, etc.

Me: Which type of champion is your favorite to play?
HnS: Tanks and Casters are my "go to" champion classes. I play supports
every now and again. I probably play physical dps champions the least;
They lack the complexity and depth of play that I look for in selecting
a champion.

I also tend to play champs everyone thinks are bad. I'm not sure if I'm
out to prove people wrong, or if I just gravitate to making bad
decisions in champ select. :(

Me: If you had to share a house with ANY champion in game, who would you choose 
and why?
HnS: Gragas. I did a little beer brewing of my own with some friends in
college and I wouldn't mind returning to that hobby. I bet Gragas makes
some tasty brews.

Me: And finally, is there anything you want to add?
HnS: /joke

And there you have it! Some enlightening words from Heat n Serve himself! I hope y'all learnt something from this, but if not; then maybe my next interview will be more interesting. If you have any suggestions as to who you want me to harass for some questions to or anything you want me to discuss, let me know in a comment.

Have a good week, and get back here in the next couple of days if you want more content.

Another day another post.

For more comics, go to any of these links:
League comics
More League comics
And some more
Some League comics
Well, guess.

So, last night I had a pretty awesome dream.

Me and my team were losing a LoL game badly. We were killing dragon to catch up, and the enemy team found us when we'd barely started. All of my allies retreated, and I got caught with an exhaust. Now I can imagine at this point in the dream I was probably clawing my mattress, softly mumbling "Noooo....", because that's what I do when I get ganked when I'm awake.

Anyway, while I'm feebly trying escape this gank; I have an alarming epiphany. At this point I'm almost dead. However, I realise at the last moment: I'm Tryndamere.

With a mighty roar, I yell: "I'M TRYNDAMERE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" (In my dream, and in real life) And pentakill the entire enemy team. For some reason this awoke me from my slumber, to crawl out of bed and post to you today.


Before my sanity is brought into question, let me pose another one. Do you think Trynd is overpowered? Because there has been a surprising amount of QQ on the forums about it recently. I personally think he's a lacklustre damage class with his ultimate being his only utility. The slow is alright, but only late game when you have officially reached god mode status.

The comics are here because they went down so well last time. Enjoy.

EDIT: There seems to be a little misunderstanding about the comics, I have stated in a previous post I did not draw them, but I shall say it again. All credit goes to Omnibus, they are hilarious, and they are very well drawn.