Hmm I've been writing for about 5 hours today when I realized that my lol client is still online from last night.

And it didn't disconnect me. Riot is improving their client.

 

Just getting back into playing since my nephew is making a push to 30. I realized I'm not even there myself yet still 1000 xp away ().o.

 

Neighbor's kid joined some amateur team. Dad called me to ask if the kid was legit (he dropped a class this semester to have more time to play) or if he should say something to the parents. We had a long conversation about it when he realized it was the same game I played where I tried to explain to him that there was money in it and professional players pulled decent wages before tournament winnings just from their sponsors and streaming.

That being said, the kid isn't on a team I've ever heard of and google shows only an ad on the lolreddit looking for an 1800 player for their mid position. But my dad started asking a lot of questions about the game and ended up downloading it because the idea of a free game that could be a casual thing interested him.

He downloads the iLol mac client and last I heard was playing the tutorial.

I haven't heard from him in a week...

Edit since new post:
So. Mid Maokai. He doesn't work well as an AP mage. VS scrubs and in duels, he's pretty strong because his ratios are so high that he nearly always wins 1v1s.
But he doesn't work well in the late game or even mid game because as an AP he's squishy and can't deal the damage he needs to before dying.

But in season 3, burst mages suck anyway, so no problem.
Without a doubt, the strongest items in s3 are the HP items. The nerf to armor/mr and the change to %penetration makes it so that HP is just the best thing you can build. There's a reason the league is now called the League of Warmogs and AD carrys now build warmogs instead of GA. It effectively makes the mages useless. Besides Ori/Cass who have the sustained damage, HP will outlast the spells, and they will die before the cds come up. On top of that, if the ADC doesn't get his warmogs, you will kill him before he can chip your massive pool of hp down.

Queue the new Maokai. NOTHING has changed, but now his 20% reduction ult is more valuable, his CC is still just as great, his AP ratios are still crazy, and his fucking passive is godlike.

The build is a late game build. But Maokai farms absurdly well. In the last 50 minute game I played (introspectiv3d, Merrill, Henryisabunny, and Parkingmeter), I was at a full build and switched out items twice as well.

The idea behind the build is stack HP. Your damage will come solely from runes (full AP with mpen reds, check my 'Octopus' rune page) and the RoA/Liandrys if you get that far. Ignore resistances nearly entirely and stack the goddamn HP. My core that I complete pretty much every game is boots1-->RoA rush-->guise-->mogs-->sunfire. It's about 10k deep, but you shouldn't have trouble earning it on maokai.

Early game, you farm farm farm. A cheese strategy that will work vs less skilled opponents is to steal wraiths. Be careful doing it, but essentially throw 3 saplings at their wraiths starting at 1:05. The improved wraith takes a 4th sapling to kill and a lot of autos, but if you steal it and get to lane, you can get level 2 three creeps ahead of your opponent. At that point, you can all in them and kill them 90% of the time. E/W+ignite+2 autos does the trick and you have first blood. And once you're ahead, ain't no stoppin us now.

Then it's farm. Sapling clears ranged minions at level 3. After your Rod/guise and a few points in Q, you can sapling the ranged minions and Q the entire wave. The Q+landing will kill the ranged, then the sapling will run to explode on the melee and clear those out entirely as well. Like I said, his damage is absurd, so generally an E+W+Q combo will chunk half your opponents HP and a followup combo+ult+ignite will finish it if they dont build mr/hp.

From this point, get your mogs then your sunfire. After the mogs you can tank mostly anything. After the sunfire, you have 4k+ hp and don't give any shits. Your passive (which will be up quite a bit in a teamfight) will heal you for 280+. You innately have extremely high armor and your 20% reduction ult makes you the tankiest mofo around.

And your damage? The base on sapling is 460. It also has a 1.0 AP ratio. The RoA/Guise/AP runes go a LOOOONG way. His total AP ratio is 2.7, which isn't too shabby, and 1.9 of it is AoE. You aren't going to Eve anyone down, but you do enough that your HP buys you time to spare to kill bitches.

Another advantage to this build? You can tank baron and literally take no damage if your team is casting spells at a somewhat decent pace. I actually used him to heal after a teamfight.

If the game goes on longer, stacking more HP is good. The complete build would be RoA/Mogs/Sunfire/Liandrys/Randuins and boots. I sold my sunfire in one game to get frozen fist, but that was because the vayne had 24 of their kills, qssword, and cleanse, so I wanted more CC.

The build isn't unbeatable, but I think it's pretty damn close. You do enough damage to out-tank mostly everything. The biggest threats to you are:

-Warwick. He will heal for around 800 off of you. It hurts, but you will outtank him still if your team does damage.
-Vayne. She hurts, but generally you can kill her before she can kill you if you focus her.

I haven't fought these but they shouldn't be a huge issue. It may require a spirit visage to deal with:

-Brand. Possibly the only caster who could kill you 1v1, his % damage coupled with Liandrys and a rylais is extremely formiddable. Still though, you should be able to take him with focus and his liandrys/rylais build is something that you can kill him several times before he completes. He also isn't very popular.
-Malzahar. Same as above, the pool combined with malefic visionandrys is formidable damage that you should avoid. He can keep up with your pushing and bully you early game if you don't get that level 2 kill, so beware him. Once again, not a very popular opponent.

Liandrys/BotRK: Not too much of a threat. The damage from them does hurt, but most random joe ads and aps don't make great use of them. You are still supremely tanky with some pretty high damage, so just all in them. Remember that the time they are killing you is time they aren't killing your carry.

There are 5 matches of this build in my current history, and I honestly feel like it's one of the strongest builds in the current game. Try it out before they fix hp stacking.

Also new avatar.

 

I've played AP Maokai for the longest time, and he actually poops on plenty normal AP mids as well. His level 4 burst + ignite is enough to instant gib any mages at 3/4 hp. (Throw sapling, snare so that sapling hits them with both damage, and finish off). Anyways, I agree with your build in general except for Liandry's. I personally find Abyssal scepter to be far more valuable for both damage and tankiness. The aura is always nice too for your team. And if you are hp stacking, getting MR is usually a good idea against any HP shredding items/abilities.

 

Churchy was right about Brand.

/sadface

 

AD Thresh is the best thing since sliced bread.

His DPS is just as good as most carries, despite low atk spd, because of Q passive. He has self-peels out the ass. Can stun/pull someone to initiate. Can counter enemy divers with Box. Can shield his team and flash allies to safety over walls.

But the reason it needs to be AD Thresh that works while support/AP fail? He does a LOT of fucking consistent unavoidable damage while his utility skills are peripheral adds.

It's like playing Cait combined with Blitz. You get Cait's auto harass + carry damage while having all of blitz's utility.

If you tried anything else, you're basically a sitting duck once spells CD and your spells don't do much damage and aren't even really supposed to hit enemies in the first place.

 

I've played 12 freaking arams in a row with a maokai in the game. Grah.

---------- Post automerged at 03:56 PM ---------- Previous post was at 03:13 PM ----------

Make that 14. @.@

 

Hey Churchey, want to 1v1? :>

 

Played several games this morning, and got lag raped nonstop. Tons of reconnecting, stutters, and 900ms ping. Nothing on my end, and it was happening to a few others. Hopefully it'll be fixed, I want to hit 30 soon

 

Had the joy of playing the only Amumu I've seen in a game since I started ranked and we stomped them. I love that Mummy almost as much as I love Snoopeh.

EUW's been fucked since lunch today for me, Ranked queue's are listed again but I don't trust them either way with the notice still being up. Seems to be a common thing on Sundays, EUW servers falling over for some reason.

 

It was a combination of the amumu and the diana, who is another strong matchup against mao. The amumu passive really let the diana's sustained damage shine and the ganks were something I couldn't beat.

Even still, I firstblooded Diana and then traded a kill in a 1v2, then outfarmed her throughout the lane phase even with the amumu camping. Ended up 9/10/12, but Diana/Amumu were both too tanky to burst down when they camped. It was also a constant skirmish that wouldn't let me get my farm on. I farmed decently (#1 farm iirc), but not nearly quickly enough.

More than anything, I think it was just me playing on tilt and staying up way too late. Still though, that's like 6-1 with the build.

edit: I forgot why I wait for invites now.
Player 1 calls top. Players 4 and 5 call ADC, pick mf and cait, and both lock in. Then argue over who picked first. Player 1, upon seeing this, picks vayne and locks in. Player 2, upon seeing THIS, picks twitch with smite and locks in.

4 ADC+Mao, lets go.

 

Is your dad still mia on SR?

 

He's working on the tutorials repeatedly.
Also, not only do I get 4 troll ADC picks, but they all fucking suck at ADC

 

I don't even understand why people want to play ADC with conventional ADCs so much.

It's largely boring and takes far too long for any real rewards to come. All that while also being the most technically difficult role in the game with the easiest play style just makes me want to smack my head against something.

 

I fucking love the new league system. It's amazing how much more fun ranked games are when you don't have that number hanging over your head. Even though it's completely obvious that League Points and Elo are basically the same thing, my brain just doesn't care.

I've been spamming ranked games all weekend, where before I'd only manage one or two before being overwhelmed by my contempt for humanity.

 

I can't make my mind up about it. On the one hand I like the promotional side of it, the BO3 much as it's entirely possible you get screwed over.

On the other, it's frustrating to get 8 - 10 league points a win and then lose 25 for 1 loss after already being demoted after 3 games. Considering the 'elo' each Division ranks in at I should be high Division III / pushing Division II yet it seems the now hidden elo system that works everything out almost wants me in Division IV which is something like 100 ELO below where I was averaging prior to this change. Could be my Division is filled with people who simply have more wins / a higher % ratio to me though.

Could be the system just still needs some tweaks as it seems overly harsh on defeats and yet gives practically nothing on a victory unless it's against a team made up almost exclusively of people above you in the tier system. I've yet to earn more than 12 for a victory and yet I've seen myself lose 33 for 1 game. Kinda silly.

 

I've actually been keeping a spreadsheet on this, because I'm a massive nerd and I was bored. Also because the LP gains aren't displaying anywhere and you have to math shit out if you want to know what happened.

I've played 30 games so far, 21 wins and 9 defeats. I've been promoted twice, from Bronze II where I was placed (I had an Elo around 1130 before the patch) to Silver V. I've been getting around +23 LP on a win and -17 on a loss, with maximums of +26 and -20.

Also, both of my promotion winning matches have been absolutely terrifying. First one I get stuck as Taric support and the last pick locks in Heimerdinger. Second one I pick Taric for someone else and end up stuck with Garen top because that's all he had. And I hadn't played Garen since Sunfire Cape's passive was made unique.

 

I've been checking my profile each game to see how much I've gained/lost and today seems to have evened out, I've played 4, won 3 lost 1 and somehow I've only gained 5 points on yesterday. Maybe it's also related to the length of the game? I did lose a 55 minuter whereas all my wins have been 25 - 30~ minutes.

Still, so long as it evens out I won't complain too much. I prefer this system to everyone using their elo like some kind of weapon, as you could have been carried regardless. Fun to note my 3 wins today came from Jungle... Cho is a mighty beast, what more needs to be said? Though a forced Shaco game went well, considering it was my debut...

Elise comes on sale tomorrow too. Guess that means she'll finally get nerfed? Seems to be a theme lately, I'm not entirely sure if she needs it though the argument's rather strong with her having 2 %hp pokes.

 

Solo queue is like asking for trouble. I go into one and think we have a solid team - Lux in mid, Zed top, Corki and Janna bottom and Malphite jungling. Turns out Mal wanted top and Zed wanted bottom, not to mention that he did not know at all how to aim his skill-shots. So now we've got a Janna forced to go top and support Mal while Corki and Zed try and outdo each-other at bottom for farm while I'm in mid just like waiting for it to all fall apart.