A random passing question: How many champions do you think can kill an enemy champion in the fountain (assuming goldfish)? In theory, I can imagine Trynd and Karthus being able to pull it off; as in, theoretically, Trynd can spin in, Ulti, then start whacking for 5 seconds straight hoping one will get killed, while Karthus can activate Requiem, activate Defile, Flash in as close as possible then tear away with Lay Waste. Any other ideas?
AP Ezreal can do stupid amounts of damage from high range late game. Late game Kog could maybe do it as well, not sure if his W boosted auto's can reach out of range of the laser.
Also, new Sona's poke is pretty stupid. That extra magic damage on auto's is insane. 120 damage plus 100 percent of your AP is sickening at level 1, and that's before factoring in powerchord. I kind of want to try Sona-Ashe, and see if you can't solo out a squishy support/adc at level 1.
Play a bruiser against him, wreck him because you're mobile as well, and you have better base stats?
Just had to lane against a Yasuo as Irelia because my mid wasn't dealing with him well. Went into lane while he was 2 kills up on me, killed him twice no problem. Yasuo can't handle the stronger bruisers, at least from my experience. I'd imagine that Jax/Renekton/Trynd/Riven would all give him fits.
Next time Riot makes this sort of crap like Doom Bots, they should explicitly make it available only to the top 100 players per region or something and NOT to public. I know they did say the bots get special abilities, but 16 Ezreal ultis is just ridiculous. The absolute definition of unfun.
I miss URF. Really. Hell, I bet for most average players, even URF humans will still be in trouble fighting these doom bots.
Just split push against them. Super easy to win doing that. 1 person in each side lane that can hold tower, 3 people in the middle to shove down the mid inner and outer turrets, then hold as best as they can against the bots when they finally break the 2-1-2 lanes. The side lanes then just shove in and drop wards so they can TP to them.
Or, just play to have fun and don't worry about winning? Half the fun of playing against them is seeing the insane things that can happen...like walking into a Garen/Fiddles ult in a random bush in the jungle, or trying to take down Doom-bot Cho-Gath with Swain ult and 6 stacks.
Eh, not that bad. Just need to get two people that can handle the side lanes and 3 in mid. You'll go down to your inhibs probably, but the bots can't handle a splitpush/backdoor strategy.
If you try to teamfight though, it's rough. Also, Lux is a pest on that. Still haven't had to deal with Cho or Blitz yet though.
I pulled a stat that had her as the second most picked, but I think it was a bit out of date (it was definitely NA LCS 2014 though).
The rule of thumb is if something is grotesquely overpowered (Lucian/Twitch, now Kog/Lucian/Trist) that gets picked. Otherwise Cait gets picked. She's never not been extremely relevant to the pro scene.
Except for now. Also season 3 worlds(somewhat relevant, but not extremely so. Huge variety of ADC's picked). Also season 2 worlds (Got picked once. Never banned). She's been dominant in certain meta's, and she's going to be a strong pick frequently, because she's strong at laning. She's also not nerf worthy, because she isn't the constant dominant pick, and doesn't crowd other champions out of the role.
...popular ADC picks? At the LCS level, she's the #2 contested ADC behind Lucian. In regular play, she's the most popular champion in the game, yet still posts a > 50% win rate despite the fact that popular champs are universally lower win rate because of that popularity.
Caitlyn is the definition of a popular ADC pick. And she has been for more than 2 years.
And no, she doesn't have a Lee Sin power curve. She has more of a Trist power curve. Steroids mean almost nothing to an ADC's late game unless they're Kog'Maw level. Safety is EVERYTHING. Trist has a better late game (higher damage and even safer to play in teamfights), Cait has a better early game, they both suck mid-game unless fed.
I don't know where you get the idea that she's highly contested in the LCS, in fact Lucian wasn't even the most contested ADC pick this weekend. That was definitely Kog and Trist, two late game powerhouses. I don't have much of an opinion on Cait because I'm not terribly fond of bot lane, but don't just make claims that are blatantly false.
I just tried out Mao'Kai for the first time since the patch. It worked out late game, but was still good late game. Lots of power in Ancient Golem.
The might be the most recent LCS, but for the longest period of time, it really was CAitlyn/Lucian lanes all day, all the time, with the occasional Jinx/Sivir/Twitch popping up every now and then.
This year it's been Twitch/Lucian since the Twitch remake. Before that, Sivir/Cait/Lucian were the top three, though Corki has seen a decent amount of play, as has Graves. There has been a pretty big variety of ADC's in the LCS, probably a wider variety of those than supports/top/jungle, honestly. Cait hasn't been a priority pick/ban for quite some time, though a lot of people do default to her if what they wanted was banned/picked.
...popular ADC picks? At the LCS level, she's the #2 contested ADC behind Lucian. In regular play, she's the most popular champion in the game, yet still posts a > 50% win rate despite the fact that popular champs are universally lower win rate because of that popularity.
Caitlyn is the definition of a popular ADC pick. And she has been for more than 2 years.
And no, she doesn't have a Lee Sin power curve. She has more of a Trist power curve. Steroids mean almost nothing to an ADC's late game unless they're Kog'Maw level. Safety is EVERYTHING. Trist has a better late game (higher damage and even safer to play in teamfights), Cait has a better early game, they both suck mid-game unless fed.
I never said she wasn't a popular pick, only that she doesn't shove out other picks. Right now, in the LCS, she's not nearly as popular as before the BT changes. Kog, Trist, Lucian, maybe even Corki...all of them are in a much better spot than Cait on a competitive level.
Cait's also not the most popular champion in the game, or even the most popular ADC, so I have NO idea where you're getting your information from. She's just a good, safe ADC, and one that is great for new people to use to learn the role (probably another reason why Riot hasn't nerfed her too much, honestly).
I highly disagree that she gates out ANY ADC, personally. Cait hasn't been touched much, aside from a nerf to her base attack speed, in quite awhile. There's going to be spikes in different ADC's use, sure, just like any role, but I really don't think that Cait is the reason they aren't picked.
Range is a steroid, sure...but if you look at the popular ADC picks right now, they ALL have something to increase their DPS. Cait really doesn't, and it makes her late game worse than most other ADC's, though Corki/Graves and a few others are probably worse.
People pretty much refuse to play Ashe strictly just because of Cait. Ashe can not win the matchup at all. Same with Quinn. Quinn has really short range and nothing to really compromise for it. Cait fulfills the lane bully role but so do Draven, Graves and MF. The difference is Draven, Graves and MF allow the opponent to interact with them. Cait just says "I'll just right click you with my really high range and poke you from a far with my Q. I'm not going to let you near me because I have higher range than you + traps and even if you get near me I can just knock my self back while slowing you. Oh yeah, my base stats are good enough for me to not get bursted down quickly."
Cait played perfectly provides no interaction at all. Since the last year or so Riot's been saying there needs to be more counterplay available so something has to be changed.
If that was the case, she'd be 100 percent pick/ban rate in the LCS. She's not even close. The comparison to Renekton is probably the best one I've seen. Great early, and slowly falls off.
Cait is a very popular pick, but she's toxic as hell. Like, really, she's Urgot/Yorick-in-their-primes toxic, and it seems like the ONLY reason not to eviscerate her is because of the pain of like 20% of the population losing their top adc pick. I don't know that she needs to lose range, but if not, she should at least pay the real price for having that kind of range - she should be easy to jump on and destroy earlier in the game.
Cait is a safe ADC that can punish a lane and suffers mid/late for it. Her stats are on the low-end of the popular ad's. She has no self-buff to help her damage output aside from her headshot, and two of her skills aren't used in combat for damage at all, 3 if you count her ult most of the time. Her sole purpose is to push hard and fast, and to make laning phase hell for whoever she's against. If you can catch her though, she can't outduel many people that are equal in gold to her. I'd say she's almost the most balanced ADC in the game, as she has clear parts of the game where she is strong, and clear parts where she is weak.
Her power curve is more complicated than you're making it sound. She's almost always the strongest laning ADC, though lower skill players don't have access to the downright toxic parts of her kit (maybe that's why it's not worth reworking her?), but she's one of the absolute worst midgame ADCs. Her actual late game is among the best, however, as A) one big item buy is worth much more dps than almost any steroids (excepting maybe Kog'Maw, Draven and Vayne for single target, Twitch for multi target), so having/lacking steroids isn't actually that big a deal for a truly endgame ADC, and B) late game dps for ADCs is almost always a test of simple uptime - that is, the ADC who will deal the most damage late in the game is the ADC who can shoot the most while kiting the least without being actually tracked down.
Long story short, she has one of the better late games among all ADCs because the steroids don't matter that much while her extreme late game safety matters a lot.
She's FAIR in the sense that her win rate is around average when you only consider the meta-relevant ADCs; she's broken as hell in that she's one of the least fun champions to play against in the entire game and she's also broken as hell in that she gates out something like half the ADC roster from being viable picks just by her own existence - if she were removed from the game, Marksman pick diversity would go up significantly.
I highly disagree that she gates out ANY ADC, personally. Cait hasn't been touched much, aside from a nerf to her base attack speed, in quite awhile. There's going to be spikes in different ADC's use, sure, just like any role, but I really don't think that Cait is the reason they aren't picked.
Range is a steroid, sure...but if you look at the popular ADC picks right now, they ALL have something to increase their DPS. Cait really doesn't, and it makes her late game worse than most other ADC's, though Corki/Graves and a few others are probably worse.
Wow. I just realized how bad GD is on Riots forum. In the Lucian nerf thread the op said Caits range should also be nerfed. Sometime later I pop into the thread and say "Cait is actually more safe than Lucian and more than any other adcs in general so should get nerfed because she had decent base stats, highest innate range in the game, a self knockback slow and snare that grants vision. There's a fine line between safe and being interactive. Cait is the later. Riot hates interactive champions so she should be nerfed." I get nothing but downvotes with no counter argument.
Cait is a safe ADC that can punish a lane and suffers mid/late for it. Her stats are on the low-end of the popular ad's. She has no self-buff to help her damage output aside from her headshot, and two of her skills aren't used in combat for damage at all, 3 if you count her ult most of the time. Her sole purpose is to push hard and fast, and to make laning phase hell for whoever she's against. If you can catch her though, she can't outduel many people that are equal in gold to her. I'd say she's almost the most balanced ADC in the game, as she has clear parts of the game where she is strong, and clear parts where she is weak.
So, in a glance, Ziggs is nerfed (doesn't look like too much problem seeing that his damage numbers stay), Skarner gets further nerfed (gotta try him with his new kit first before commenting on this one), Jax is now less durable (does it matter?) and Essence Reaver item gets boosted (hurray for Ashe, Jinx and Jax, maybe?). Hmm.
Ziggs movement speed nerf is pretty obnoxious, but not anything he didn't need. He's still amazing at wave-clear and gets to play safe the whole game, so it's not a big deal. Skarner's nerfs aren't a big deal, makes him slightly slower at clearing the jungle and cuts into his dueling potential, but they don't stop him from doing his job at all. Jax's durability nerf is needed, but probably not enough, honestly. He's still the gold standard for a late-game splitpusher from what I've seen.
Essence Reaver is still awful aside from on Jayce and maybe Urgot/Ez. If the changes on the PBE go through though, it should be a decent option for a lifesteal item. Might even be enough to bring back Blue Ezreal.
So read over a lot of the game you guys play but I can't really tell what exactly would appeal to me. I'm that type of guy who is into more complex game I play Arkham Horror a lot (with all the expansions), Zombicide (With all the expansions) and a few others. Do you guys know of any games out there that have the complexity and/or number of awesome pieces as these two games?
Oh and if your watching kickstarter and like Zombicide, Season 3 is doing its thing. I kinda want to get in on it just to get a House and Gordon Ramsey figure to massacre zombies with.
Check out games from Plaid Hat games. Bioshock: Infinite, Mice and Mystics, and Dead of Winter all have absolutely amazing art, and the latter two are great games as well (Haven't played Bioshock yet, but I know the designer, and I've heard good things).
I just played Maokai in ranked as a jungler.. and I can tell you.. it is total garbage now (W range nerfed from 650 to 525). All ranged champions out-range his ridiculously low Twisted Advance range everyone just walk out from the so called "gank" if Maokai enters the lane. I don't know about his laning capabilities but jungling is in history now. Who cares if other skills are slightly buffed because he is not going to ever have those true AP scales of +70%. Why is Riot doing this again...
One game isn't a good judge for what amounts to a nearly complete rework. It's going to take a bit to figure out the optimum way to play him now. I just saw Oddone play the tree, and he did fine on him.
Also, his W now is an old-DFG on a 9 second CD if you go AP Maokai. You lose some burst from the sapling's, but I'll take a W that hits for 35% of their max HP every 9-ish seconds.
I'm going to throw this out there. You should all check out Dead of Winter, a game designed by two of my good friends. It's currently the top of the hotness chart on Board Game Geek, and was voted one of the most anticipated games of the year. I finally had a chance to play the finished game a week ago, and it was fantastic. It does an amazing job at blending storytelling into the game, something that way too many games either ignore, or focus on so heavily that it becomes a detriment.
My favorite card of all time is Balduvian Horde. It was the first decent rare I got when I started playing Magic during the transition from 5th-6th edition. Something about the screaming barbarians really did it for me, and I got hooked into the game.
AP Ezreal can do stupid amounts of damage from high range late game. Late game Kog could maybe do it as well, not sure if his W boosted auto's can reach out of range of the laser.
Just had to lane against a Yasuo as Irelia because my mid wasn't dealing with him well. Went into lane while he was 2 kills up on me, killed him twice no problem. Yasuo can't handle the stronger bruisers, at least from my experience. I'd imagine that Jax/Renekton/Trynd/Riven would all give him fits.
Just split push against them. Super easy to win doing that. 1 person in each side lane that can hold tower, 3 people in the middle to shove down the mid inner and outer turrets, then hold as best as they can against the bots when they finally break the 2-1-2 lanes. The side lanes then just shove in and drop wards so they can TP to them.
Or, just play to have fun and don't worry about winning? Half the fun of playing against them is seeing the insane things that can happen...like walking into a Garen/Fiddles ult in a random bush in the jungle, or trying to take down Doom-bot Cho-Gath with Swain ult and 6 stacks.
Eh, not that bad. Just need to get two people that can handle the side lanes and 3 in mid. You'll go down to your inhibs probably, but the bots can't handle a splitpush/backdoor strategy.
If you try to teamfight though, it's rough. Also, Lux is a pest on that. Still haven't had to deal with Cho or Blitz yet though.
Except for now. Also season 3 worlds(somewhat relevant, but not extremely so. Huge variety of ADC's picked). Also season 2 worlds (Got picked once. Never banned). She's been dominant in certain meta's, and she's going to be a strong pick frequently, because she's strong at laning. She's also not nerf worthy, because she isn't the constant dominant pick, and doesn't crowd other champions out of the role.
This year it's been Twitch/Lucian since the Twitch remake. Before that, Sivir/Cait/Lucian were the top three, though Corki has seen a decent amount of play, as has Graves. There has been a pretty big variety of ADC's in the LCS, probably a wider variety of those than supports/top/jungle, honestly. Cait hasn't been a priority pick/ban for quite some time, though a lot of people do default to her if what they wanted was banned/picked.
I never said she wasn't a popular pick, only that she doesn't shove out other picks. Right now, in the LCS, she's not nearly as popular as before the BT changes. Kog, Trist, Lucian, maybe even Corki...all of them are in a much better spot than Cait on a competitive level.
Cait's also not the most popular champion in the game, or even the most popular ADC, so I have NO idea where you're getting your information from. She's just a good, safe ADC, and one that is great for new people to use to learn the role (probably another reason why Riot hasn't nerfed her too much, honestly).
If that was the case, she'd be 100 percent pick/ban rate in the LCS. She's not even close. The comparison to Renekton is probably the best one I've seen. Great early, and slowly falls off.
I highly disagree that she gates out ANY ADC, personally. Cait hasn't been touched much, aside from a nerf to her base attack speed, in quite awhile. There's going to be spikes in different ADC's use, sure, just like any role, but I really don't think that Cait is the reason they aren't picked.
Range is a steroid, sure...but if you look at the popular ADC picks right now, they ALL have something to increase their DPS. Cait really doesn't, and it makes her late game worse than most other ADC's, though Corki/Graves and a few others are probably worse.
Cait is a safe ADC that can punish a lane and suffers mid/late for it. Her stats are on the low-end of the popular ad's. She has no self-buff to help her damage output aside from her headshot, and two of her skills aren't used in combat for damage at all, 3 if you count her ult most of the time. Her sole purpose is to push hard and fast, and to make laning phase hell for whoever she's against. If you can catch her though, she can't outduel many people that are equal in gold to her. I'd say she's almost the most balanced ADC in the game, as she has clear parts of the game where she is strong, and clear parts where she is weak.
Ziggs movement speed nerf is pretty obnoxious, but not anything he didn't need. He's still amazing at wave-clear and gets to play safe the whole game, so it's not a big deal. Skarner's nerfs aren't a big deal, makes him slightly slower at clearing the jungle and cuts into his dueling potential, but they don't stop him from doing his job at all. Jax's durability nerf is needed, but probably not enough, honestly. He's still the gold standard for a late-game splitpusher from what I've seen.
Essence Reaver is still awful aside from on Jayce and maybe Urgot/Ez. If the changes on the PBE go through though, it should be a decent option for a lifesteal item. Might even be enough to bring back Blue Ezreal.
Check out games from Plaid Hat games. Bioshock: Infinite, Mice and Mystics, and Dead of Winter all have absolutely amazing art, and the latter two are great games as well (Haven't played Bioshock yet, but I know the designer, and I've heard good things).
One game isn't a good judge for what amounts to a nearly complete rework. It's going to take a bit to figure out the optimum way to play him now. I just saw Oddone play the tree, and he did fine on him.
Also, his W now is an old-DFG on a 9 second CD if you go AP Maokai. You lose some burst from the sapling's, but I'll take a W that hits for 35% of their max HP every 9-ish seconds.