Understanding Your Champion

By Jerrod "Thousand Eyes" Steis

So you’ve heard casters and other people talk about what a champion is good at, what certain team comps are good at, and finally, champion power curves. This is some complex stuff that I find a lot of people grasp, but do not truly understand. Everyone knows that Tristana has a strange power curve, and it has to do with her passive, but do you know what specifically about her kit makes this true?

This kind of logic applies to all champs and teams, and I feel a huge part of trying to climb the ladder comes from understanding what you and the rest of your team are good at. Now, many people try and memorize things like match-ups or where a champion's strengths lie, but that takes a lot of time. Time that could be better spent putting a plan together for the game. The better thing to do is apply logic and draw conclusions from that.

First of all, this requires understanding champions. I’m not saying you need to memorize every skill and every cooldown, although the more you do, the easier it is and more precise you can be. It’s important to look at what the basic champs skills are. Let’s take an example, since that’s the best way to get a handle on these types of things.

We’ll take Caitlyn as a first example. Caitlyn’s known as a lane bully ADC that dominates in lane and falls off in comparison to other ADCs as the game continues. I’ve seen a lot of people take this to mean she doesn't do damage late game, and that’s not true. First, what makes her strong in lane?

·         Her 650 range is the highest base range in the game.

·         She has a very easy time pushing the lane at level 1 with her Q

·         Her Q also is a great way to farm and poke at the same time because it passes through targets

·         Her E lets her escape ganks on the off chance she gets her range closed in on.

·         She can self ward with W

·         Her Ult is guaranteed damage and can be impactful in non-sustain lanes

Some of this is pretty obvious stuff, some of it not as much. The more you’re able to piece together from experience, the more you can strategize. Now, since we know what her strengths are; what are her weaknesses?

·         Ultimate can be blocked, and forces her to stand still and cast

·         Only one basic skill does meaningful damage

·         She has no built-in steroids

·         Her only self peel is slow and has a long CD

           

            So how do these points lead to Cait having a lackluster late game? First, her ultimate can be intercepted by other champs. The cast time is long and the target is obvious. Using this in a teamfight can not only mean death if used at the wrong time, but lowers your DPS because you’re no longer attacking the enemy. It’s best used in between fights, but once late game comes around, ADCs are known for constant DPS in teamfights which means her Ult has little to no use in that aspect. Add in the fact that the long and obvious cast time means someone else has a long time to jump in front of the bullet and tank the shot. Late in the game people are almost always moving in groups, which means the tankiest person can usually take the shot and you’ll get the least out of your skill.

            Next, her W and E come into account. When you compare Caitlyn to other ADCs, most other ADCs have more damaging skills. Kog has his W Q and ult(which I’m counting because it can be used multiple times in a fight), Draven has everything except his E, etc. Caitlyn has one basic skill that can be used in a teamfight outside of her auto attacks. Not only that, but it loses damage as it passes through targets and forces her to stay still to cast it. Her W and E are of no use to her in teamfights outside of trying to get away from people.

Finally, and in relation to the last point, she has nothing in her kit that boosts her damage output. Think of every ADC that is known for late game power: Kog Maw, Twitch, Vayne, Tristana. What do all of these champs has in common? They all have something in their kit that inherently boosts their damage output. Whether it’s percentage health damage, attack speed boosts, or a range increase. Caitlyn has nothing of the sort that can give her more damage other than building items, which means her possible damage is inherently lower.

Now I went into a lot of detail, but as long as you can understand the bullet points, you can apply this to any champ. Look at where they are strong and where they aren’t strong and you can piece together what you as a player and team need to avoid and what you need to exploit.

The common things you need to look at are:

·         Range

·         CD length

·         What Abilities do

·         How well they scale (do they do % damage/have high ratios or fall flat)

·         Where does power spike and where does it die

            You don’t have to know specifics, but have a general idea. I’ll use Shaco this time to demonstrate my point since he’s a champ I don’t know as well.

Strengths:

·         Mobile from Q which is a flash with invis

·         Great at setting traps and bursting with surprise while feared

·         Very slippery

·         Passive and E give a lot of damage

·         Ult creates clone for confusion and procs all on-hit and can attack on its own

            Weaknesses:

·         No immediate CC on command

·         Dangerous/Slow early clear

·         Very squishy and revealing in wrong location means death

·         Usually needs to gank because he will not clear well until he gets items

·         Teamfight potential is weak because invis time is low and W needs to be pre-set to be of much use.

·         All single target damage

These are the reasons why Shaco is known for devastating early ganks, but can’t teamfight well unless he gets far enough ahead to burst people. His dueling potential is also great especially if he puts a trap down in advance when the game is still running as planned. As you can see even though I’ve never played Shaco, my experience and understanding of the fundamentals of his kit let me know what he does and what I should do in response.

Now if you’re trying to find what a team as a whole is built upon, you apply the same process times 5. You’ll look at the positives and weaknesses of each champ on your team and the other team. Compare the similarities and you’ll see what both teams compositions are built for and are weak against. You can look and see where each player gets their power spike in terms of levels and items once you get really good at it.

This is a massive part of becoming a successful jungler more than any other role. It lets you know who’s weak and when, and that’s huge when you’re affecting every lane and contemplating invading the other jungler.

So let’s take it all full circle and look back at Trist and how her power curve works. She’s got a good early game, poor mid game, and a disgustingly strong late game. Her good early game comes from the fact that her base damage on her E skill is pretty good, and it’s magic damage on top of that, which most bot lanes don’t itemize for early. Her E also gives grievous wounds, meaning that she should regen from the trade better. Once you get to mid game, the damage from that falls off because it scales off AP which you won’t build. In fact, all of her skills have AP scaling, which is why she falls off very hard past early game. Her saving grace, actually, has nothing to do with her early game power and is why she has a strange curve. It’s actually a combo of her passive and Q. Her passive gives her range per level and her range gets to be higher than anyone in the game late besides an ulting Twitch. Throw in a whopping 90% attack speed boost on her Q and you've got a lot of damage hitting from very far away. The Q attack speed means she can build more AD and hit harder. The final part of her kit that makes her unstoppable late game is the safety she gets. Her ultimate is low cooldown and blows people away from her as well as having a long range jump that resets on a kill or assist.

Analyzing champions is a huge skill of League of Legends that takes some time to fully understand on its own. However, you don’t have to start memorizing everything about every champ. With 119 champions in the game that is nearly impossible. The important thing is to understand the basic idea of what each champ does and plan around everyone’s strengths and weaknesses. If you apply this to your own games, you can look past the idea of just trying to CS and following a similar pattern every game, and start strategizing on how to pull an advantage through logically understanding strengths and weaknesses.

Intimacy has its Price : The Big Booth Debate

Booths vs. No Booths

By Jerrod "Thousand Eyes" Steis

            Recently the big stink going around the LCS circuit is over the implementation, or lack thereof, of soundproof booths. Anyone who watches LCS today will see the players are in an open air environment and are fully visible to fans. This was to promote intimacy between fans and players, just like almost any other sport. However, LoL, and E-sports in general, aren't like other sports. There’s a lot of deception and trickery as well as other things that need to be hidden from the opposing team. Most sports remedy this by having a playbook or sidelines where these plans are relayed out to the field. Imagine, in football, if the audience told the other team what play they were running. That’s the best analogy for what the LCS is dealing with at the moment.

            Riot’s always run a thin line between having the audience feel engaged with the game, and the audience actually being part of the game. The LCS is run in an open atmosphere where players and spectators see things at almost the same time. Riot has admitted there is a slight delay, but even still, players know the delay. Players wear sound-proof headsets and small earbuds that go underneath. These headsets don’t completely block out all sound, but they at least do something to keep players from hearing anything from the audience that might change the outcome of the game. However, even if they can’t make out specific words, cheers alone can be enough to understand what's occurred. Let’s look at what the crowd generally cheers for in the LCS:

·         Wards

·         Towers

·         Dragons

·         Barons

·         Kills

·         Steals of any kind

            Of all of these, the only ones that aren’t always visible to both teams are Dragons and Barons. Based on positioning  of the enemy it can be pretty simple to make out what was done and have an almost exact timer for it if the audience is heard. Krepo has even come out himself to say that players are well aware of both the crowd and the delay that they’re seeing.

This set up has recently come under fire as Complexity’s ADC ROBERTxLEE stated on his stream that there was a point in his match against Curse where he wasn't sure what was being said on the comms. This wasn't an issue with headsets not working properly either. The sound that was being heard was coming through his teammates mics. Riot absolutely needs to address this issue. Communication between teammates in a game as cooperative as LoL is paramount. Most of the time, plays happen in League because the other team didn't work as a cohesive unit for one reason or another. If this persists and happens again, it could easily swing the outcome of a game, and consequently a season, if it occurs at the right (or in this case wrong) time.

Ideas have been passed around for a while now, and the most readily accepted one is the implementation of booths. Booths have been used in many E-sports games. Starcraft and Dota usually use booths for their events for the exact reason that people are clamoring for them now. They do a better job at keeping sound out of players hearing range than headsets alone. In fact, OGN, the Korean LoL league, uses both of them

The only issue here is the possibility of these booths being little to no use in terms of effectiveness. People have argued that considering the strength of the headsets used, the diminishing returns of adding a booth are almost non-existent. The headsets used in the LCS are approved for use near jet engines, meaning that if sound gets through them, theoretically, a booth isn’t going to do much to stop it. The other issue comes with vibrations.

Obviously sound comes from vibrations, and at events like the LCS there’s not only a lot of sound, but a lot of other things that can cause vibrations as well. (e.g. feet stomping, inflatable noise makers, etc.) Booths and headsets do nothing to stop this and it can cause all of the issues that come with sounds. For large scale crowds, there really is no effective way to keep things from being heard outside of playing from a remote area, and Riot will do anything to keep that from happening.

The normal LCS crowd has a few hundred people. According to most, albeit self-proclaimed, sound experts, vibrations shouldn't be an issue routinely faced in the LCS. World’s may be another issue, but normal games leading up to the world playoffs should see at least some effectiveness from booths.

There’s also been the argument of money. To be honest, it’s hard to get a grasp on which side of the argument is really true here. It’s more an issue of conflicting information rather than one side being right or wrong. I’ve seen reports of the LCS making Riot tons of money, and I’ve seen other information that says the LCS actually loses money in exchange for further advertising the game. There’s no official information straight from Riot so I can’t actually confirm which side is correct. This is in addition to varying booth prices. Depending on how high tech Riot would get if they decided on booths, the prices could go from a few hundred each or into the thousands. If it’s true that the LCS doesn't make money, it’s easy to see how Riot could refrain from putting more money into booths.

Personally, I find myself siding with putting booths on stage. Riot has always prided themselves on keeping player/audience interaction high, but at this point there are enough other ways for players to interact that the negatives outweigh the positives. Even if they decide against booths, there needs to be some kind of statement as to why or what Riot intends to do. There’s no reason to not comment on this considering the amount of backlash that has occurred. Fans need to at least hear a reason and keeping quiet about this will only increase the controversy as people make up their own reasons.

Reaction Time : What Is It...And How Can You Improve It?

by Jodi "PunkLit" McClure

An enemy jungler jumps out at you from the bushes unexpected. You activate your shield and hit him with a stun a split second later, before backing under your turret. Reaction time, that tiny interval between stimulus and response, needs to be extremely fast in pro gamers. Your brain has to make a nearly instantaneous assessment so you can act accordingly. It differs a bit from reflexes, which are involuntary or instinctive movements you make without conscious thought. With reaction time, you need to have a high capacity for strategic thinking.

For visual based stimuli, it's possible to decrease your reaction time with three weeks of practice, and the effects of practice last for at least three weeks, so continual practice should keep your reaction time at its trainable best. In fact, there are plenty of gaming sites online (like Aim400kg) with programs specifically made to help you hone your aim, speed and accuracy.     

Gamers (and everyone else) tend to react more quickly to auditory queues than visual ones, because an auditory stimulus only takes 10 msec to reach the brain, but a visual stimulus takes 20-40 msec. You probably don't even realize how much you rely on auditory clues in League until you play the game with no sound.  Then, you're stuck watching out for things you normally listened for, like the sound of Varus drawing back his bow or Zac preparing to jump.   

Training alone won't help you with speed, though. Age and sex are both strong factors in how quickly you react, both instinctively and intentionally. While most people tend to believe it is teens who have the fastest reaction time, repeated studies have found the optimal age for reaction time is in your mid to late twenties. Ditto with reflexes. It's also interesting to note that men have slightly faster reaction times than women, a disadvantage not reduced by practice or training. Perhaps this in part explains why natural-born female gamers haven't breached the highest levels of pro-dom.

Another important factor affecting reaction time is 'arousal,' or your state of attention, including muscular readiness. Reaction time is fastest with an intermediate level of arousal, and lessens when the player is too relaxed or tense. A good night's rest is essential to performance, as is the experienced calm of a confident player. Plus, in the cool air of the LCS studios, the hand warmers we see players gripping before their games helps to both stimulate and loosen the finger muscles for maximum flexibility. Visual fatigue also plays a part, although the jury is still out on the effectiveness of Gunnars and other gaming glasses.

Despite most of us not worrying about our own execution on a scientific scale, video game players in general still have faster reaction times than their peers (up to 25% faster.) Gaming also improves a players perception, attention and probabilistic inference (aka decision making), and can enhance the players skills and performance both in and out of game - a fact the US Military (and Sci-fi writers) take full advantage of. (Ender's Game, anyone?)     

If you want to be a pro gamer, training to improve your reaction time and reflexes could be vital to your success, and good old-fashioned practice really does help in this regard. Try out online training games to improve your click speed / aim, and make sure you are playing at your awake, attentive and confident best. Don't play when you're tired or tense, or when you've just woken up and your body isn't functioning yet. (And remember to fine tune your computer settings, because latency is the one reaction time killer you can't do much else about.)  

Ref: 

A Literature Review on Reaction Times by Robert J. Kosinski Clemson University

Improved Probabilistic Inference as a General Learning Mechanism with Action Video Games  by C. Shawn Green, Alexandre Pouget and Daphne Bavelier

Military uses video games for training troops by Mathias Ask

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Is the Generation Gap Slowing eSports Development ?

by Louis "Guichex" Lemeillet

“Hey son, shouldn't you go find some activity or join a sports club while you're searching for a job ? I know it's not your kind of thing but you could meet new people there !” “Dad, I'm already meeting new people quite often with my online games, and I have many friends I play with regularly” “Yeah, but that's not the same”. I bet I'm not the only one who went through a similar discussion with his parents. And in my opinion that last phrase is one of the best highlight of what is going on when you talk about “gap generation.” Our parents are having trouble figuring out what's going on within the digital age - where their children spend a lot of time playing video games or using social medias, because they don't understand where we're finding our fulfillment doing or watching such things.

For explaining this, the intelligentsia often refers to the introduction of “digital technology” and separates people born during or after the 2000s from those born before. Of course, it's not that strict and most generally includes people who grew up surrounded by those technologies. These generations are called the digital natives - versus the non-digital natives.

           

        A digi-what ?

            A digital native is a person “born during or after the general introduction of digital technologies”. It concerns every person who grew up with the technology, so every one between their late teens and early 30s. And to be even more clear : it is a person who can intuitively use any kind of digital device like smartphones, tablets, motion-control or such. Our parents don't know, at least intuitively, how to use such things; and they have to learn through a different process as they didn't grew up surrounded by this technology. For them, a similar situation would have been the introduction of the television, versus our grandparents who didn't knew that technology.

            Our parents had a similar way of life, except that it was not in front of the same technological device. They ate in front of their TV like we eat in front of our computers, they discover a new way to inform themselves, so did we. They saw the introduction of tape recorders, the all-new possibility to record and see something later, as we saw the introduction of the Cloud where you don't even have to record to see something you wanted to see. Both generations had their newfangled technology but they didn't grew up with the same, forever creating a gap between their behavior.

            Nevertheless, our parents perfectly understood the introduction of video games. They bought for us (well not all of us, some always see virtual games as “the devil”) Nintendos, Ataris, Playstations, etc. They understood it was something we liked and enjoyed as it was something completely new and dreamy. They even got into it at some point to share some time with their children. In the end, it was only like a board game that you were playing on your TV with “some technological device.” Where they lost us is with the introduction of the Internet and the possibility to interact with millions of people instantly and all over the world.

            They understood why we would play with our friends in our living room, but they couldn't understand why we would play with our friends each in our respective houses. Not seeing each other while we are playing is something totally abstract to a lot of our parents, but absolutely normal for us. This subject is extremely wide though and a lot of other things are coming in the way to explain this phenomenon like the birth and development of virtual identities, etc. If you wanted my point of view, here it is in its simplified version: Internet allows us to be whoever we want online and we can loosen up a lot more than our parents in real life. We're being more and more honest in our real lives because we can express all our bad sides on the “virtual” one, and we so create a generation gap.

        Digital Natives Rule eSports

            Now, let's look at the eSports stats we are beginning to harvest. Worldwide viewership for professional games tournaments exploded from 8.4 million in 2010 to over 70 million last year, with the lion's share made up of a demographic of men between their late teens to early thirties. Men over thirty are not a really big demographic in eSports; and you see here a real first difference regarding eSports audience. Viewers are digital natives & non-viewers are non-digital natives. Pretty manichean.      

           

            If we compare the audience of eSports, and what we discussed before about the digital natives, we can see a clear similitude between the two. eSports fans are digital natives who grew up surrounded by video games and Internet. It feels quite logical that people fond of virtual sports would be familiar with new technologies, even if they're not addict to it, but it also proves that non-digital natives wouldn't understand what we're seeing in all this. Somewhere along the road we lost our parents, the non-digital natives, and they can't come back now that we're becoming more and more connected by live, real life events, team bonding, sportsmanship or other values they could understand.

            Where I am going with this is: People playing and more importantly, watching video games are mostly between 12 & 30 years-old, people running eSports companies are also quite in their early 30's top. But the executive heads in charge of big mainstream industries are much older than that and belong to the non-digital natives generations.

        Are eSports Really Mainstream ?

            As much as they pretend to understand youngsters by showing how they love their smartphones or their Macbook (yes Dad, I'm looking at you), our parents generation won't see immediately what eSports is all about, how does it works, why do people enjoy that and most importantly where are the perks of all that. They can't see as easily as youngsters where can profit be made because they didn't grew up surrounded by digital technologies, Internet and its inter-connectivity, and don't understand as fast as us what are the perks, what are the drawbacks.
            And, naturally, if you don't see clearly where you can benefit from all this, then you won't take risks by investing in such a new industry. If you can't understand it, you'll fear it. Not like “Oh my god, nerds are taking over the world !” but more like “This is just a trend, it'll not last, no point in investing for a bunch of young utopists”.

            Of course, experienced strategists in huge companies will always see some potential in new industries, and will help their companies make a move towards eSports like Coca-cola did. But one believing in something won't make it popular, we need many. We can see that we're still far from the “mainstream” when you're looking at medias talking about eSports : even if its slightly changing with time, every report I saw was like a report on “wild life” where a specific kind of “humans” were enjoying watching other people playing video games. Ever saw that little smile and nod of a journalist listening to a report on eSports? It will necessarily change when it'll become mainstream, but for now we can just wait and believe that someday you'll smile and nod in front of this journalist like he did when he's forced to acknowledge eSports.

        Better Safe Than Sorry

            But we are also facing something more : because you are a digital native doesn't mean you understand eSports. In my opinion, you'll be more able to understand why it's working and how you create something which will result in profits for everyone ; but that is all. If you truly want to understand eSports, you have to drown yourself into it and live the thing : eSport is truly a subculture on his own. It means non-digital natives would have to understand a culture where people are using technologies they're not familiar with and share something that is not “real” to them. And by “real” I mean that we share something “virtual,” as a video game is taking place in a “virtual world.” Non-digital natives are really facing trouble deeply understanding that. It's not that they can't understand, it's that you'll never have the same approach towards it if you were raised surrounded by “virtuality”.

           
            These facts created invisible barriers which are hard to break for a lot of people, and eSports will have to take its time to become something “mainstream” and acknowledged by everyone. We have already forced it a lot, and it would be “delicate” to go further without taking others in consideration. But times are changing and Nintendo, for example, is now dedicating part of its efforts towards eSports while they tried to deny the EVO's crew to stream their Super Smash Bros Melee tournament just last year.

            Coca-cola invested this year into the Challenger Series of League of Legends with their brand Coke Zero : an ultimate proof that, despite companies are starting to understand the potential of eSports, they're just dipping their toes. Some companies could have gone all-in but many prefer to see where this is going; mainly because it's a whole new world they can't understand fast enough.

            Nevertheless, it's also a proof that mainstream companies are starting to see what is going on, and will seek advice towards the young generations to understand this new “thing”. Knowledge and feelings will be shared between eSports and mainstream companies to create something big and profitable for both parts. I often think that this cautiousness might be a good thing. For once, rushing things and injecting tons of money will not happen, and will not ruin our beloved virtual sport.

League of Legends' Fan Art : Almost as Popular as the Game

League of Legends' fan page on deviantArt boosts over 12,000 members, 14,000 watchers, and just topped One Million page views - and that's just one of about forty League groups that occupy the well-known internet art site. There are pages just for League cosplay, wallpapers and crafts, and one devoted solely to yordles. Because League is filled with over a hundred unique and interesting champions...it's a enormous magnet for artists.

Searching the top viewed League pictures there, you'll find a who's who of fan favorites. There's Sona, Ahri, Ashe, and this incredibly dramatic portrayal of Garen by artist David Rapoza.  

Garen by DavidRapozaArt 

League drawings spread across a vast spectrum, from the immensely popular anime styles to more traditional paintings. There's adorable chibis, funny cartoons and gorgeous interpretative art.  

Riven and Talon by LeeKosi

Couples are a common theme on deviantArt. Fans love to pair off champions. There's a lot of dA romance going on. Lulu cuddles up to Veigar and Ezreal is hot for Lux:  

Ezreal and Lux by justduet

And only in art will you find  sworn enemies discovering forbidden love: 

Garen and Kat by eliskalti

There's also a lot of unusual pairings like Riven and Zac, Volibear and Sejuani, Amumu and Annie. In fact, you could probably enter any two champion names together and find a couple picture of them somewhere.   

Rengar and Nidalee by LionKinEn

   

Which brings us to Rule 34, and the sure knowledge that every possible sexual pairing in league has been explored. Perhaps not all on deviantArt, but one can easily do a search online and find their favorite champions nude and in bed.  

Katarina and Ashe by sharrm

       

League fans don't just stick to two dimensional art. They create their beloved champions in papercraft and sculpt them in polymar clay. Poros, Teemo mushrooms and Cait's cupcakes grace everything from earrings to charm bracelets. Champions are knitted into amigurumi and sewn into plushies. Even sneakers become canvas.

Cho-Gath by nataliarey

Comics are another popular art form that League has influenced. Besides Skyen's popular Caster Comix, there are some wonderfully innovative comics and graphic novels found on deviantArt's pages. I would especially recommend  The Bounty Hunter by Andrea Leon and Night's Aegis by ShiNaa. 

Night's Aegis by ShiNaa

Custom skin ideas show-off these artists amazing creativity. Some of them are based on current in-game themes, and some are completely over the top, but they are nearly all good enough to make us pull out our wallets if Riot ever implemented them. Who wouldn't want to play with this glorious Sakura Maokai?  

 Sakura Maokai by Uriak 

Videos and streams that show the artist at work are incredible to watch, especially when they give you instructions on how to do it yourself. Also fun is TravagGames, who puts up videos of his friend Rob drawing League champions he's never seen before off verbal descriptions alone. 

If you'd like to become a member of deviantArt's most popular League of Legends group, head on over to http://leagueoflegends.deviantart.com/ and join up!

*Art used with permission from artist. If you like their work, please be sure to visit their pages and leave them a nice note. :)