A friend of mine enjoys going mid Olaf, because it's never seen. He doesn't build any different, but he's really good at the game, so he zones out the other mid character with his axes alone. He usually goes roaming as soon as he hits level 6 and ganks a shitload.

I've said this at least five times in this thread, and so have others. Viktor is underpowered against every single other AP Mid out there, with the sole exception of AP Soraka and Kassadin. A decent Viktor will probably also beat a few other AP Mids, but I wouldn't count on it. Anyone with their head on straight will shit all over Viktor, and that is because Viktor is an early-game champion. He's most cost-effective with two-three dorans and the upgraded hex core, but once you get into mid-late game he starts falling off because you need to get more and more expensive items for him to keep up. His farming is abysmal (due to the fact that his laser needs 200 AP to one-shot caster minions) his attack speed is shit, and his Q is single-target. Dropping his ult on a creep-wave is asinine because the cooldown on it is absurd (It's something like 120 seconds, even with the full CDR mastery in offense tree).

On the bright side, his E is deceptive. People think it's single damage, but in actuality it's a conditional DoT. The longer they stand in your laser's path, the more damage it does. His Q provides a shield (40 HP at level 1, iirc) and the range on it is about equal to Kass' silence ball. His W provides an instant slow, and after 1.5 seconds in the dome, it stuns the other guy. I don't remember exactly how long, but I've ganked junglers incredibly effectively by dropping it ontop of a bush he was heading into that I just happened to be standing in (On that note, nobody ever seems to ward Baron's river bush). His R is also deceptive. It causes instant damage and then DoT. Depending on your AP and how late the game is, I've had it doing up to 800 per second. The beautiful thing about it, and what makes ganks with Viktor effective if you can place the ultimate, is that it follows the person you put it on. The further away from Viktor it is, the slower it is, so you'll need to find that sweet spot where you're relatively safe from damage but the cloud keeps up with them. (Note that this isn't too difficult, because Viktor is, at base move speed, probably one of the slowest AP casters in the game.)

On the subject of the 'wasted item slot', yeah, it kinda is. The Hex Core does provide AP per level and the upgrade is fairly cheap (1k gold), but you can only upgrade it once and red is almost always the only one you buy, unless you're playing support Viktor, in which case, you'd buy the blue one. But I digress. That item slot could be filled with better items. Shit, I'm almost positive Viktor would jump back into the game if they kept the Hex Core as a passive and didn't take up an item slot (or gave him and him alone a seventh slot, specifically for the Hex Core).

 

It could work as a passive, but Upgraded core + 6 other items would throw him on the other side of OP.

 

Lot's of ADs can destroy mid. AD shaco, Talon, Fiora, Jax, Panth, Wukong. It's unexpected plus the AD carries can generally trade with them if they have a gap closer. AD scaling makes their abilities just as strong and their autoattacks a lot stronger. Long range harassers can shut them down and deny their farm though.

As for Viktor, I find he just isn't that effective. His aoe stun is pretty mediocre for teamfighting without someone to set you up, and others do it better. I've never really tried him because I always saw his ult as a really shitty tibbers. Silence instead of stun, lower initial damage, and only slightly better scaling on the DoT. For overall damage on the DoT, Tibbers lasts 45 seconds compared to 7 with a constant aura of 30+.2 at all levels compared to 50/75/100+.25.

Tibbers can also autoattack and has an initial ratio of .7 to .55.

Obviously, both spells have their strong points, but the similarity always turned me off to him. Most of redshell's post outlines why people don't play him though.

 

Last time I played against Fiora, she picked my Anivia apart in mid game. Of your at the end in the big team fights she was less then successful in that.

 

I find fiora does pretty well at teamfights because when you get low you can ult and (if built properly) get all of your HP back. If they are CCing you, you just play like an AD carry and get a QSS then use it and immediately ult.

 

How does Jax rank up against the jungle of, say Udyr? I know Udyr is supposed to be a generalist, and I've used Pheonix Udyr a lot recently, so I'm pretty familiar with it. However his lack of gap closers frustrates me, and I much prefer J4 to jungle with. However, objectively, I feel like everything J4 does, Jax will do better. Well, except epic dunks, but i'll survive.

He is also supposed to be a much better top pick, though sources conflict on that account. He seems like he could be very aggressive top, which fits my play style.

How important is it to invest in red +AD for him, or other characters? Most of the time my characters are basically tanks for the team (Skarner, Taric, J4, Udyr) so I don't have the AD reds that seem to be recommended for Jax.

 

Jax's jungle is faster than most other champion's because of his passive, but that's really the only thing he has going for him, aside from being able to initiate over walls, I suppose. Plus he can jump to wards, so he has the same escape potential as Tristana, Ziggs, Graves, Caitlyn, and Corki (off the top of my head). Jax is actually a lot squishier than the champions you listed, but he and Fiora benefit from abilities that dodge or reflect damage, respectively, which is why they even work in top-lane in the first place. Attack damage reds for Jax are a must, and you can forget about AS on him, because his passive provides all the AS he'll ever need.

On another note, this just happened. Scoreboard so I don't break the page.

For the record, lanes were Fiora top, Kass mid, and Renekton/Morg bot. Pantheon never ganked bottom, despite ample opportunity to do so (Blitz and I didn't start warding bottom until about the six minute mark), and Panth seemed to have a hard-on for Kennen, because his two kills were both on Kennen, and one of his deaths were because he dove Kennen hard-core while I was right there, and ended up getting killed by Kennen's ult. Even if he got the kill on Kennen, his death is worth more because of the assist gold I got as well as the gold for the kill that Kennen got. And, shit, none of them were focusing me whenever I was in a teamfight, which was probably their biggest mistake.

 

Initiators who won't initiate piss me off.

If I'm playing Tristana, and I'm so fed that I've sold my boots to buy a third Phantom Dancer, then please charge into a fight first and CC people so that I can start murdering them. Waiting until they initiate on us and blow me up doesn't win us the game.

This post is dedicated to everyone who is playing Hecarim, Malphite or Jarvan without knowing what he's supposed to fucking do.

 

Those people have all of my hate.

We're fed as fuck, farmed to all hell, have Baron, and have more than enough CC to make it an easy fight, yet it's all worthless if the designated Initiator is too pussy to initiate.

 

Agreed. I fucking loathe when I'm the glass cannon AD/AP carry and I have to initiate for our tank to actually start doing his goddamn job.

 

I personally despise when I'm the tank, and my team runs when I initiate, no matter how perfect the initiation was.

Then they usually come back one at a time, to die scattered on the path back to the base.

 

This is why you initiate with someone who has awesome initiations, like Amumu's or Galio's ult.

 

Plenty of the time the team still won't follow you. And then they rage at you for going in alone. And then you don't initiate right away the next teamfight, and they rage at you for that too.

 

Solo queue, man. You can never make your team happy. Also, it's always your team with the shitty teamwork, your team with the feeder, and your team with the Brazilian. Every. Single. Time.

 

What makes it worse is when they charge in with their ult after the fight is over and clean up any kills they can, then whine at the end of the game that they went 12/4/0 and still couldn't win.

 

This reminded me, a friend of mine and I were playing a couple rounds earlier and we got into a Summoners Rift match where we were literally the only two people in the entire match on either side that spoke English. I think they tried making plans but neither of us could understand anything beyond our names and it was ungodly frustrating when all we understood was our names and them just pinging the map at random. It grew even more annoying when they would start typing in all caps about us because we had no idea what the hell they were asking us to do.

We still won though, Xin Zhao and Nunu is just fucking evil :3.

 

Weird thing, I was in the middle of a game as Galio support when I pressed something on my keyboard and all my typing turned into Japanese. Still won that shit while typing w.t. (f).

 

Patch Notes 4-25 on PBE

Patch Notes


New Chalice upgrade OP. Amumu now OP. Annie buffs letting her smash people more with a lot more stuns. MF now not an inferior graves. Shen massive nerf. Ryze buffs hidden under minor nerfs. Talon early game buffed as all fuck.

 

Ugh, Athene. I was sick of hearing about that guy years ago.

Morello's Evil Tome finally builds out of Kage's Lucky Pick? That's really going to help offensive AP supports like Lux, Nidalee and Kayle.

 

Ryze:

• Spell Flux
  • Damage ratio increased from 50/70/90/110/130 (+0.35) magic damage to 50/70/90/110/130 (+0.35) plus 1 % of his max mana magic damage

YEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEES