LoL - Home On The Ranged

I took my first tentative steps into the world of the league of the legend of the world of the.... um, what was I saying? Oh yeah, PvP. League of Legends. I upped the ante.

Quite frankly, I probably should have started PvP runs sooner. Trying out a character on AI bots is all well and good, but the true test is against human players. At my low level, I'm not sure there's much of a difference. To be honest, the human players may be easier. It's sort of like the bots are less prone to error, but more predictable. Human players show flashes of inspired play, but will also be derpy on occasion. You trade frustrating deaths for free kills, essentially.

I expect that as I level up, players will become more unforgiving. Thus, AI bots will be more necessary for trying out new characters. For now, I've actually been trying the freebies in PvP games. My experiences have been mixed, but rarely am I a drain on my team. That is to say, I take care not to feed kills. I may not always contribute to the kill count, but I take care not to die a lot as well.

I've learned a few things. First, I'm not so great at the melee playstyle. Every melee toon I've tried so far, I feel like I do a lot of fumbling. I've been on the receiving end of some stellar melee play, where I'm just getting chopped to pieces but Master Yi (and can't run away because F that guy. Seriously). Good melee seems really tough to play.

Ranged is a bit more forgiving. On Morgana, I've become a force to be reckoned with. most games, I'll at least triple my death count. I've become "Legendary" quite a bit. With other ranged toons (Miss Fortune, Sivir), I've had decent success as well. Not quite as effective as I feel I am with Morgana, but generally about double kills v deaths. And in all cases, I stay on the top end of the leveling push.

Oddly, my wife has taken to the melee playstyle. She's been chumming around on Sion, and doing a pretty darned good job. One on one in a lane, she generally wins. And when the two of us share a lane, we tend to do very, very well. Sion is a turret killing machine, and Morgana can bring some nice burst to bear on enemy champions, while offering some support.

Here are a couple of my replies to comments yesterday. I wanted to mention them here because I elaborated a little, and this is an elaboration post. Plus, I got great feedback from folks. So thanks for that.

• Matticus gave me some stellar tips, and I replied thus: 
• Re: items - "Typically, I snag a Doran's ring, then rod, then hat, then hourglass. That's been my basic progression and it seems to work out well." 
• Re: Morgana's Ulti - "The running INTO the crowd takes a bit of getting used to. As a caster, my natural instinct is to run away. I gotta remember that the ulti is "blood in the water" time. Feed, shark, feed!"
• Diablokls offered a tip about runes, which launched me into a bit of a diatribe on the Free to Play model:
• "That's really why I'm growing fond of this whole F2P model. I'm a little hesitant on games that gate content behind payments and the like... but a game that lets me choose between grinding (time) and paying (money), I'm okay with that. It's sort of like the company is saying, "We believe in our product, and will let it speak for itself. There are no gimmicks here." The Riot team really seems to put value in their content. The skins are gorgeous, for instance. Purely cosmetic, but you can tell thought and enjoyment goes into them."
• Also, Mobafire.com was suggested, and I'll second the referral. I'd found the place via Google earlier in the week. Great resource for builds. 
• I've got a running list of Morgana "alternates" for trial when the free to play rolls around to them. Malzahar and Cassiopeia are on the list.

There's nothing quite like quoting yourself. Am I right? Lazy blogger is lazy.

That's enough for today. Pleasant LoLing. 

LoL - Morgana Ability Primer

I found the Warlock in League of Legends. Finally. Okay, so she's actually a fallen angel, but she plays like a Warlock, or at least the playstyle feels like coming home to me.

I'd been just randomly choosing characters in my first few play sessions. I love the fact that the free to play champions rotate weekly. It makes a whole lot of sense. You can play every one and never pay or, like me, when you find the one you're looking for, plop down some IP for the character and RP for a cool skin. (I went with Blackthorn, fwiw. Looked awesome.)

I'd been searching for a toon that was both decent at minion farming, but could really bring the pain to champions. So far, I'd felt like I'd either gotten one or the other. They were either bearish to level up, or ineffective at snagging me those all-too-important champion kills. I've done a few melee, a few ranged, and a few glass-cannon mage-types. They all left something to be desired.

I'm sure better/more experienced players than I can make those other toons into stone cold killers. As a Warlock, I require a certain amount of deviousness to my playstyle. While I believe I can play decently with any of the champions, I do have very specific set of skills. Skills that make me a nightmare for a player like you....

The point here is that champions are not one size fits all, at least in my limited experience. I enjoy a specific playstyle (my infatuation with DoTs and corrupted abilities is not unique to WoW, though it doesn't always take the "evil toon" form. For instance, in the old Final Fantasy MMO, I was a Red Mage.) Finding the champion that fit me was pretty much priority #1. Morgana is that champion.

I called this a "primer" and then rambled on for five paragraphs. Apologies. It would have been hard to fill a whole post with abilities though, as in League of Legends you basically have four. Morgana's are as follows:

• Dark Binding - An aim and fire spell that will root the first thing it hits. Also does a decent amount of damage at higher levels.
• Tormented Soil - This is a black circle of death. Does damage over time as well as applying a magic debuff. It works well for farming, and is great for weakening champions.
• Black Shield - Only works against magical attacks, but blocks interrupts and stuns so that you or a buddy can escape.
• Soul Shackle - The super ability. This one links you up with nearby enemy champions, does a good deal of damage to them, slows them, and explodes if you stay close.This is the champion-killer.

I need to do some research on the optimal order to buy items. I'm sure that information exists, I've just not really looked. For now, I just snag the recommended items in order. I go through mana like crazy. For my marks and seals, I'm focusing on ability buffs, cooldown reductions, and mana regen.

In game, I tend to farm minions from afar, slapped down TS until Soul Shackle is unlocked. I'll alternate between leveling DB and TS, as Dark Binding is useful when running away. I save Black Shield for last, as it seems the less useful of the four early on.

I'm still developing a lot of my strategies, but there are generally two ways I get kills. First, I'll try to lure a champion away so that we're 1-on-1. Then I bind them, throw TS beneath them, and go to town. If I have Soul Shackle, the damage wave is pretty intense. If they don't run away, they're probably going to go down.

The second way is to bait melee champions. I'll be standing in a cloud of minion and they charge in, expecting me to run like a normal caster. When they get close, I pop Soul Shackle and throw down TS. I save DB for when they've realized their mistake.

It's a nifty little playstyle, relying heavily on good timing and aim. Right now, with cooldowns basically a full (I am a newb), missing with a DB is awful. I can't afford to misplace my mana-expensive abilities. Hopefully, through seals and mastery, I'll be able to give myself a little more wiggle room.

I believe Morgana is pretty unique in that she's a caster with strong abilities, but also has a decent amount of survivability. Most of the other casters feel fragile. Morgana feels like a warlock. She regains health through damaging, and can take a little bit of a beating.

She also has wings that are burning in her Blackthorn skin. How can you beat that?

With All Due Respect, Rivs...

Rivs and I do this every couple of lunar cycles. He says mages are cool, I correct him. The Legion keeps on Burning.

(On a serious note: I'm a fan of River's intent: Gotta stoke the ole Mage/Lock fires every now and then. Some rivalries never get old. And, to be fair, it seemed a slow news day. I mean, we're talking about attunements again. Attunements. So, instead...)

10 Reasons Mages Are More Awesome Than Warlocks. A Rebuttal.

10. Demonic Portal – Seeing tons of people beating on thin air that was previously you is pretty damn cool.
9. Summoning – Ripping people from one location to where you desire them, way better than hopping through to some smelly "city." Like anything of note happens there.
8. Cookies – Much easier to pop in your mouth, no sitting required. Also, cookies are perhaps the most versatile form of food. Could go with a plain vanilla wafer if you're old school, or the more recent Cataclysmic Oreo of Doom. That's two chocolatey circles of black doom, one creamy soul filling.
7. Minions – They talk back, but we force them to do our bidding anyway. Elementals are for the slow of mind (Like dear Watson). Witty comebacks help you cast spells faster. It's magic science.
6. Damage – Don’t need a pet to do that.
5. Soulsteal – Ever steal a soul? 'Nuff said.
4. Fel Armor – Because dead things don't hurt.
3. Keybinds – 9 out of 10 Admirals' daughters prefer numerous nimble fingers in a lover.
2. We’re hotter – We can actually set ourselves on fire. So how is this a contest again?
1. The Nether – It's rough having a whole 'nother dimension at your beckon call.
0. You can find warlocks lurking in the cellars of taverns. Mages lock themselves in their pretty towers. Fun fantasy fact: Graceful spires are for damsels in distress. At least that's the word on the street. We've never actually tried to rescue one.

11 is louder than 10.

Now Playing: League of Legends

I've sort of been stuck in a gaming miasma. I think I mentioned it a bit on here. I haven't really felt like diving back into any of the MMOs I'm still carrying on subscription. Just something about the MMO playstyle is unappealing right now. It is also summer, and there's not a lot of new content in my games of choice. It's easy to feel bogged down and unmotivated.

While my gaming woes have caused me a bit of angst, it is not something I'm completely unaccustomed to. Generally speaking, I've always been a broad gamer. I enjoy multiple game styles, everything from FPS to RPG. I'd been subsisting on the meager manna that is Facebook gaming (and by meager, I mean addictive, loaded with content, and somewhat red-district-like). But I haven't really been happy. Don't get me wrong, the social games I play are fun, and great ways to kill time. There's just something about the never-ending energy bar refill waiting gameplay that irks me. I feel the constant need to stop in and use energy (or I'll lose it, since the bar is maxed out). I suspect this feeling is by design.

The problem with the energy bar mechanic is that it sets a pretty hard limit on the amount you can accomplish. Couple that with needing to beg for items and the shiny "use $$ to skip" features, and you have a game that leaves you pretty unfulfilled on any given sitting. Sometimes, you want to eat your fill, and not feel like you have to trudge back to the water hole in a couple hours to do it again.

It is, if you will, the darker side of Facebook gaming. The games do a lot of things well, but they are what they are. They can't help but be a bit whorish.

So I'd been looking for alternative gaming outlets. I didn't want to spend a lot of money. In fact, I was gravitating toward "free to play" or at least "free to try." I find myself a bit unwilling to plunk down cash blindly these days. Not that I don't have the cash, just that I'm wary of the wide world of gaming. Even great development houses have been known to lay stinkers.

Saturday night, we had a couple friends over for some tabletop gaming. Play some random bargain bin games and a D&D based game called Castle Ravenloft. As gamers are wont to do, we discussed what else we were playing. It was our friend and resident DM who mentioned two highly recommended options (after a bit of ranting on my part). Day Z and League of Legends were his ideas.

Now, Day Z is pretty badass if you ask me. I encourage anyone interested in zombie settings and survival with guns to check it out. Very intriguing concept. I wouldn't be surprised to see a standalone game come out soon. For now, Day Z requires purchase of ArmA II. You see, it's a mod. A crazy, all-encompassing mod, but a mod. You need a version of the game (CO), and that'll run you $30 on Steam. Since I play with my wife in pretty much all the things, that's $60 for me (since it's an online game, for single player games we're more than happy to share a copy). I just wasn't quite that willing to plunk down the cash. Day Z will be something I keep my eye on, but the "free to play" League of Legends won the Logical Choice debate.

Now, I used to do a lot of RTS back in the day. Starcraft, Warcraft I-III... I've done them all. I remember the mods that League of Legends sprung up from. I enjoyed the hell out of those. I guess I missed where they'd developed a standalone, free to play game. Pretty awesome. So wife and I jumped right in and are having a blast. You can find me on there as Fulguralis if you'd like. We're still pretty newbish, but I've rocked the leaderboards so far on every AI game. I need to learn more before I feel comfortable going up against live opponents.

To me, LoL is what happened when WoW had a random one-night-stand with a FPS. That's the best I can explain it (and be brief). It's a lot of fun, and you'll probably see me writing more on that in the upcoming weeks. How many of you, dear readers, have tried LoL?

Yub Nub

Because nothing celebrates freedom like a dancing Ewok.

The One That Got Away

Apparently my brain is stuck on relationship-related gaming musings. Today's brought to you by a Katy Perry song that's stuck in my head. I have a love/hate relationship with pop music. It just gets in there, I can't help it, and then... then... bah! Not very warlockerly, I know.

On the opposite end of the things-that-stick-in-my-head spectrum is a gaming phenomenon. Tell me if you've ever had this one. It could just be me.

Freshman year of college (almost ten years ago now, holy cow), I had a random-draw roommate. You never know what you're going to get, right? In this case, the guy was pretty cool. I'm a strange hybrid of athletic and nerdy. I love sports and playing sports, always have. And I'm pretty decent at just about any of them in a casual way. Similarly, I've always loved gaming and can sit down to a new game and not be completely awful. I span several worlds, I guess you could say. (Oddly enough, the dichotomy worked against me in most circles as far as acceptance went. To the jocks, I was a nerd. The nerds, I was a jock.)

Random Roomie was completely vested in the burgeoning nerd culture. Yes, this was back before nerds were "cool." He had a tricked-out Alienware laptop that I was insanely jealous of. We shared a passion for the X-files. And more than once I asked him what game he was playing so that I could give it a try.

Back then, I was more of a FPS player than I am now. Halo parties were The Thing, especially when you have 8 floors of dudes in a wing and can run Ethernet cords all over creation. Random Roomie was more into Tactical Fleet Simulations (TFS, a term I didn't know existed until recently). He also wasn't big on the social component of, well, anything. Apart from our nightly X-files marathon sessions, we didn't really hang out. Yet, I would hesitantly call us friends. We certainly got along better than a lot of other roommates.

One of my most vivid memories was of a TFS-like game he was playing one time. I walked in from a Halo session, perhaps after a few bevvies, and saw a whole bunch of really cool looking spaceships on his screen. He was launching some mini-probes and there were lasers, and it looked epic. I watched for a bit before asking him what game he was playing. The answer has since been lost in the sands of time.

Keep in mind, this was before things like Steam and easily downloadable games. Generally, if we wanted a game, we went to the local Best Buy or GameStop or whatever and plunked down $50. As a college student, that's a lot of beer. I mean, money. So, the game got relegated to my "sometime when I have money" list in my brain, where it was promptly drowned by copious amount of alcohol, I'm sure.

Ten years later, I found myself having a sudden craving to FIND THAT GAME. I don't know what it was. A boring Sunday, time on my hands, money no longer the biggest issue in my gaming life... I wanted to play THAT game. Not a similar game, but that one.

So I spent probably 4-8 hours (I lost track of time) wandering the Interwebs, looking for a screenshot to match my memory. I learned what a TFS is. I spent $20 on a Steam game that I played for all of 5 minutes before realizing that it was not the one (it looked similar). The best search term I had to go on was "like Civilization, but in space with cool lasers." I researched the history of 4X, turn-based games. I found a myriad of top ten lists in both genres... but it was all for naught. True Blood came on at 9pm and that effectively ended my search.

This isn't the first time the desire to find the mystery game has struck me. Random Roomie and I have lost touch over the years, but I suppose I could shoot him a Facebook message. "Hey, remember me? How are things? Listen, do you remember that cool spaceship game you were playing that one time? I don't know, I think it was a Tuesday. It had lasers. And celestial bodies. Whaddya mean that doesn't really narrow it down?"

Okay, so I don't really want to go that route. Where's the fun in that? Plus, it seems fruitless and awkward, and I try to avoid fruitless and awkward whenever possible. Instead, I'd rather whittle away countless hours hoping to luck upon it through the wonders of Google. Excuses, excuses.

And before you ask... no, I don't really know any more than this. I know, I can't even describe the screenshot adequately. If I could remember like a faction name or a symbol on the side of the ship, one of you could probably name the game in a heartbeat. But I can't. And the memory only gets fuzzier with each passing year.

Do you have a game that "got away?" Were you able to find it years later? Did it even live up to your rose-colored expectations? (I have a sinking suspicion that even if I found this game it would turn out to suck.)

Maybe in another life, I'd download right away, so I don't have to say you were the one that got away. The one that got away.

Heart Mind Handshaking Fail

Do you ever have that feeling that your heart and head are out of sync when it comes to gaming? Like, in theory, you really want to play a game, but you just can't bring yourself to log in? What is up with that?

Lately, I just can't get into any button-pressing, fighting games. MMOs, Diablo, they're all falling prey to this. The only games I'm really playing are facebook games. My mind is screaming at me that it's being slowly mushed. Crotchety statements hailing from the era of the black and white television scream through me. Something about boobs and rotting. Completely unpleasant.

Yet, I can't deny my heart. I sit and stare at a log in screen, and my heart flails. Sure, you can log in... but do you really want to?

I don't have a good answer for my heart. Truth is, I don't really want to. But I don't feel like I really want to do anything. Mostly, I'd like to nap. Switch my brain off. Watch some terrible movies.

You might say, "Well, just do that, then."

It's not that simple. My brain likes gaming. A lot more than movies or TV. It's why I go back to the Old Standby games. I'm looking for that feeling I used to feel when those games were new. But you never get that back. We all know that. The new shine always wears off. You can't make a career in gaming based on new shine alone.

(Or can you? But that's a topic for a different post.)

I probably just need to make some new goals. When you have goals, you tend to be more excited about playing. I've just reached a plateau where I've achieved the previous goals, but not set new ones. So I guess the whole point of this article is:

Setting new goals is hard.