meh, we frenchie saved NA hockey honors, must we really save NA league of legends honor now?

 

The French have always paved the way for American superiority. It's what you're best at.

 

Or you could take a character who doesn't need much farm early game and still have a decent team. Observe:

Soraka, Kennen, Amumu, Ashe and Blitzcrank. Three AoE CCs and one of the best single target CC champions in the game more than makes up for Soraka's lack of CC. Blitzcrank doesn't need farm at all to land a good hook on the enemy carry and win the game, but with his low cooldown ult and movespeed from Overdrive he can quickly clear waves to catch up on farm.

Soraka, Vladimir, Tryndamere, Jarvan IV and Leona. Tryndamere in the jungle and a double bruiser kill lane to counter the enemy AD/support. The team lacks range and doesn't have a whole lot of CC, but makes up for it with how durable everyone is. Leona doesn't need a whole lot of gold to be an asset to the team, which is nice because she can't easily farm minions once Soraka goes support. But Tryndamere can, and as the carry he'd make better use of the gold anyway.

Soraka, Talon, Rammus, Morgana, Twitch. Talon could go mid to lane against their caster instead, sending Soraka top to spam Starcall on their melee. Morgana farms bot with Tormented Soil, keping the enemy overextended for easy ganks. Rammus jungles and ganks all day while Twitch roams the map ganking and counter jungling anywhere that Rammus isn't. This team needs people who don't constantly push so Rammus and Twitch can gank, as well as a weaker enemy bot lane that Morgana can hold off without the turret taking too much damage.

Soraka, Caitlyn, Nautilus, Sivir, Ryze. Caitlyn solos, she's a laning monster that can crush most champions. Nautilus jungle, a powerful tank and CC machine to peel enemies off the two AD carries. Sivir goes bot with Ryze because Rune Prison setting up Boomerang Blade/Ricochet is fun. Ryze only needs Tear of the Goddess and a blue buff to do decent damage all game, so he's hardly going to cripple Sivir by stealing 995g. Ryze, again, can very quickly clear waves with his ult to catch up in farm when laning is done and Soraka goes support.



Even 'gimmick' builds can have their place on a team if you look for it. Don't just dismiss things because they're different or they don't fit the current standard team comps. You get much better at the game by experimenting and trying new things, rather than by reading guides and following tier lists.

 

Well I decided to play a ranked game, since I've been level 30 for a while, can play a couple roles (all if very necessary) and think I'm reasonably good.

I was captain, second ban/pick. It all went pretty well, standard bans etc, i called ad bot and some calls mid and top. I lock graves, and the second guy picks kog maw. I say "Hey man, I called it. Can you play anything else?" He doesn't respond, and locks kog.

So in game, he's forced to go mid since we have two AD carries, and instead of picking a real support, Viktor just comes in bottom lane. I was a little annoyed, but figured it might not turn out badly if we all play well. Kog feeds first, second and third blood within ten minutes. He doesn't listen to anyone and never groups, makingg any fights 4v5 because he is fucking around in the jungle. We try to defend our towers and we die.

So I thought Ranked was where you went to play seriously. It was worse than normals.

 

First ranked game, dude. As Evan Tide said, ranked gets better at matchmaking you the more you play in ranked. This sounds like 1200 ELO shenanigans to me, but I don't really play ranked, just know what ELO is good and what isn't.

 

Replace Soraka with Vlad and you have a better team.

Replace Soraka with Kennen and you have a better team.

Replace Soraka with <random AD bruiser>, Vlad, Kennen, Swain, or any other useful character and you have a better team.

Any AP carry makes this team better in place of Soraka, or even switching the ryze with the soraka.

Yea they can, and that place is better filled by better champions. If you take the time to put together a gimmick team around a gimmick build in organized 5s, the team you play against won't lose if they are similarly skilled and organized but picked a real line up.
If you take the time to put together an organized team around a gimmick build in normal queue, congrats you won a normal game with way more effort than necessary and probably still lost vs another premade.
If you didn't take the time to do either, you are S.O.L. The best time to take soraka mid? When you are playing mid but aren't confident in your skills at a real caster. Then you can faceroll ap soraka and do well in the first 15 minutes and remove yourself and the enemy AP from carrying the game. Sounds fun to me.

But really? "Don't just dismiss things because they're different or they don't fit the current standard team comps." That is PRECISELY why you should dismiss things, because unless you are playing team 5s and taking it extremely seriously (in which case AP soraka is NOT A VIABLE PICK), you should make sure your pick damn well fits the current meta because that's what your team is picking for. Being a unique snowflake is fine and dandy, but don't do it to your PUB team because you are a LoL-Hipster and don't want to follow tier lists.

Btw, Tier list? I play malphite. Tier fucking 5 because unlike soraka, he isn't a gimmick pick. He actually works.

 

Here's the thing about bringing up the meta-game; IT CHANGES. Last season, we thought the Europeans were stupid to field 1 top, 1 mid, 2 bot, 1 jungle. Guess what? That's the current meta. That'll probably change, too, possibly to 3 bot so you can shit on 2 bot.

Back in the day (this makes me feel old) people always started doran's whatever. Now, unless you're going up against a lane that you KNOW you can dominate, you go boots + pots, then pick up your double doran's asap.

Boots of mobility are making a comeback, especially on junglers (although every single Twitch ever gets them) because you can use them to get around the map much faster, thus getting faster ganks and possibly preventing a tower loss.

And another thing, you're knocking AP Soraka at the same time as acknowledging what she'll do. She'll shut down the enemy AP carry and then transition into support. I don't see any other AP characters that can do that. Oh, sure, Kassadin's got his silence and his slow, but that's not a big deal. Kassadin's silence, apparently, does not affect Summoner Spells, because not a half hour ago I slapped ignite on Kassadin after his little silence hit me.

Also, as far as Starcall goes, what else would she use it for other than farm? The damage it deals is negligible at best, and chip damage at worst. Thus, the only real use it has is for farming. Sort of like Tristana's Explosive Shot, since, y'know, the passive and all, and the DoT damage on it is so shitty that ignite does more.

 

I'm torn about this.

A. I've Dominated the couple of Soraka mid's I've come up against. (Playing Lux.)

B. I don't like metawhoring, so I'm all for trying to break it.

 

Here's the thing about bringing up the meta-game; IT DOESN'T CHANGED BASED ON WHAT PEOPLE DO BELOW 2k+ ELO. It trickles down, not up. You aren't going to change the meta by trying to bastardize your AP mid with a gimmick pick and expecting your team to fit around it.

So I'll redirect you to:

You are not going to change any meta by picking AP soraka, and you aren't going to help your team in solo queue either. When your team goes Singed top with sona bot, they are expecting their mid to deal damage, not be a useless support in the late game. If you want to build a subpar team around a gimmick build for your organized group then more power to you, but AP soraka doesn't work in solo queue beyond the first 15 minutes, at which point your team will either carry you or not. It won't be you that made the difference.

She's about as good at shutting down mid as red pot AD rune Shaco back in the day when he would do red buff (back when it spawned at 1:40) and try to one shot mid with deceive (back when it did 130% at rank 1). Except shaco could snowball off of that.

 

No. No no no. You're so completely wrong. Teams like mTw (formerly Goose) and Moscow 5 have both proved that gimmick picks, when used correctly, can beat even the best teams in the world. Maybe we'll never see AP Soraka being played in a tournament final, but we did see a Jarvan/Leona bot lane and an AP Malphite mid.

Hmm... Karma is probably the closest to AP Soraka, but she's better off going top where she can spam shield bombs on minions to annoy bruisers. Zilean and Lux can both dominate mid but their kits and scaling push them towards supporting the team later on. Kayle and Nunu also end up as support if they go in the jungle, though neither one tends to stack AP.

The meta game trickles down because most people are sheep who copy what the best players do without ever trying to understand why they do it. It only rarely trickles up because damn near everybody at a high level is completely unwilling to try anything different until it beats someone in a high profile tournament.

You don't have to be an engineer to be an architect, you don't have to win an Olympic gold medal to be a good coach and you damn sure don't have to have an Elo above 2k to experiment with new team compositions in LoL.

 

Is it possible to see who is responsible for what tags? I like the math dickwaving one.

 

So in the grand finals of IEM Hanover, with $50,000 on the line, Moscow 5 run Lee Sin and Alistar double jungle and give their blue to Urgot at level 1 so he can solo bot against Corki and Janna.

Gimmick picks for the fucking win.

 

You keep using that word, but I don't think you understand what it means.

Jarvan/Leona isn't a gimmick pick and neither is AP malphite. Those are picks that counter their lanes and DON'T become entirely useless supports in the late game. All three retain high damage output and absurd amounts of CC. Jarvan/Leona isn't anything new either, Chauster and Atlanta ran that multiple times on their streams at the start of s2. It's a comp that requires some communication and probably has no place in solo queue but it is far from a gimmick pick to pick a team comp with huge amounts of cc that can be chained along with absurd damage. It's something I even play with friends. Granted, the first time we fed horribly because Juede was drunk off of his ass and didn't tell me that until afterwards, but there's still a jarv/leona match in my match history from yesterday afternoon. Calling that a gimmick pick is like saying Blitzcrank is a gimmick pick because he isn't a traditional support.

Picking two junglers with heavy ganking capability and replacing your AD with an Anti-carry/AD carry that will remain an anti-carry/AD carry for the ENTIRE GAME isn't a gimmick pick.

Soraka's damage becomes irrelevant, her heals become mediocre, and her cc becomes nonexistent (because a single target silence is good vs fiddlesticks only when it comes to being even remotely important). She excels at one small portion of the game and nowhere else and she also doesn't have a high ability to snowball.

Not adhering strickly to the meta doesn't mean the pick is a gimmick, it means that they are playing with high coordination in a team setting and are able to make picks that wouldn't be as viable in a solo queue setting. AP soraka isn't AP malphite, AP soraka is like playing AP taric, except without the stun. AP soraka is like playing AP ezreal, except without the blink or attackspeed increase/reduction. AP soraka is a gimmick pick.
Really, if you can't see why comparing a pro team's unorthodox picks of viable champions to solo queue troll picks is fallacious, you're just an idiot.

I mean that in the nicest way possible, but it's hard arguing with someone whose argument is "You are so completely wrong" backed up by "the Pros did this unrelated thing" while also saying "stop following what the pros do."

 

Did someone else log in to Churchey's account to post that, because he suddenly started making sense and I'm confused.

 

Now give me your account info so your posts can start making sense as well.

 

GODDAMNIT.

-Facepalm-

Will someone stop these fuckers?!?

 

Watch in awe as double jungle begins to become the new meta. The only issue I really see with double jungle is that, inevitably, one of the junglers is going to fall behind the other, unless they do something like assigning half the map to each one and just being like "whoever's closer to mid gets that gank."

All the same, Dragon side jungler will be fed like a motherfucker off dragon kills, since iirc most kits allow you to solo Dragon around 11, and Dragon respawns like every 3 minutes.

 

Anything to shatter the current meta. Shit's getting so boring.

Also, why not just have both junglers go for dragon? It'll be faster that way. Double jungle on dragon could probably do it as soon as level 8 or nine, depending on your comp.

 

The Dragon respawns every six minutes actually. That said, there are quite a few junglers that can solo Dragon earlier than level 11.