Doran's Blade - A Tad Too Strong

I think that it's cool that Riot was able to move the game away from everyone and their grandparents starting boots 3 pots.  I like what they did to Doran's Blade to make it better in lane and less effective late game.  I think it was the right direction.

But now we see pretty much every ADC starting Doran's Blade, heck top laners and even junglers are starting with it.  And is that really any better in terms of options than everyone going boots + pots?

Doran's Blade is simply too good as a starting item.  It gives you sustain, extra health and damage.  Not only does it give you so many things, what it gives are is also strong.  There's no way to get more AD than a Doran's Blade out of the fountain.  You can get equal AD with a long sword but you won't get the health and depending how much you AA you won't even get more sustain (health pots vs. the Doran's heal).

So, I suggest that the AD on Doran's Blade be lowered slightly.  Perhaps bring it to 7 or 8.  This way it's still good, it still helps you last hit and trade, but it doesn't give you as much damage as someone starting a long sword.  It makes starting with other items more of a realistic option.

This would also fit with Doran's Ring vs. Amp Tome comparison, where Amp tome gives more AP while Doran's Ring gives you more than Just AP.  Or Doran's Shield vs. Ruby Crystal.

Ward Placement - Vision Radius

So one idea I've been kicking around is the addition of a vision radius while placing wards.  

What I mean by this is that if you normal cast a ward, not only can you see the radius where you can place the ward, but you can also see the area which the ward will give you vision of.

Right now casting a ward is like this:

I want it to be something more like this,

insofar as I want there to be a second radius that you can see when casting the ward.

This change won't make warding any harder.  Smartcasting wards will be the same.  The only difference is that if you Want to place a ward with precision focused on vision, you can.

New To Jungling - Some Tips For Beginners

So a few people I've seen have said they find jungling to be a problem so I figured I would make a blog about a few things that I found that helped me out.

Keeping Track of Neutral Monsters - Buffs like Blue and Red as well as bigger objectives such as Dragon and Baron can all be timed.

Blue and Red respawn 5 minutes after their camp is cleared.

Dragon respawns 6 minutes after it dies.

Baron respawns 7 minutes after it is dead.

A good way to keep track of everything is to type things in chat.  Use your own time stamps and small words that let you know what you're talking about.  Say you kill Blue Buff in your jungle at 2:05.  You would type into your chat:  "7:05 ob."  7:05 being 5 minutes from when your Blue Buff died, so the time it will respawn, and ob standing for "Our Blue."  Or stands for our red, tb means their blue and tr means their red.  

Time any objective you see die, even the opponents buffs.  It will not only help you to possibly counter jungle but if you don't see them on the map when one of their buffs is coming back up you'll have a good idea what they're doing - getting that buff!

Choosing a Jungler That is Right For You - While playing champions that are at the peak of their strength can be useful, some junglers won't fit your playstyle.

I would say that there are probably three main types of junglers that most champions fall under.  Early game monsters.  Late game carries.  Counterjunglers.

Early game monsters are there to get their lanes kills, snowball the game super early and win it before the other team has a chance to catch up and outscale you.  They tend to get a few buffs and then just gank lane after lane, forgoing farm in order to get teammates rolling.  Champions like Lee Sin and Xin Zhao are good examples of early game junglers.

Late game carries are champions that although they're jungling, if you let them stay relevant they will crush you late game.  These champions tend to be very vulnerable to counter jungling and although they can sometimes do very well early, that isn't the norm.  Champions like Nasus and Sejuani are good examples of late game carry junglers.

Then we have counterjunglers, the most hated group of junglers.  These junglers excel at screwing over their counterpart on the other team.  They have kits that are very good for dueling, setting traps or stealing camps.  Champions like Shaco, Nunu and Shyvana are examples of counterjunglers.

Now of course some champions will be outside of these groups.  Some will be part of one and part of another.  But generally these are the three things junglers will focus on most.  So try out a few different types of junglers and see what you like to do about them.  Then, once you figure it out, practice junglers that are good at what you like to do.  (So if you enjoy counterjungling, practice Shaco.  If you like to constantly gank, try Lee Sin).

COMMUNICATION - This one is super simple.  It's also super effective.  Talk to your laners.

Ask them where wards are.  Ask them what CDs they have.  Ask them what CDs the enemy has.  Ask questions, get information.  Information is power.  If you know that the enemy Ashe doesn't have flash up as jungle Volibear then you can confidently come in fast and flash flip her to your teammates without worrying about her flashing your flash.  You can use CDs effectively without wasting them.

Ask For Help - Laners at low elo generally are not going to come on their own to help you.  As a jungler it is part of your job to help dictate how the game plays.  Use assist pings, warning pings, talk in chat.  Do what you need to do to get your laners to do what they need to do.  Should they know better?  Yes.  Does it really matter whose fault it is when you're dead and a buff down?  Not really.  The fact of the matter is that these things happen and it's in your best interests to try and make sure they happen less.  don't play the blame game, be the general on the battlefield and direct your troops so there is no blame to be had!

What You Want to be Doing - I wish that this was simpler but unfortunately it isn't.  Jungling isn't black and white, especially in the high level meta.

Here are some of the things that you CAN do:

Farm - Kill creeps in your jungle

Hold Lanes - Last hit minions in a lane while your laners are dead/back

Push Lanes - Push with or without your laner, depending on the situation, so that your minions hit the enemy tower and deny the enemy laner CS.

Gank - Attempt to kill enemy in a lane from river/tri/sides of the lane

Lane Gank - Attempt to kill enemy through the lane, coming through brushes

Counterjungle - Kill creeps/enemy jungler in enemy jungle

Lane - Literally lane with one of your laners (This is usually only in cases of lane swaps where one of your solo lanes is dealing with a duo)

What you SHOULD do in any specific situation is going to depend on a lot of factors.  If you're behind, if you're ahead.  If the lane you're considering ganking could 2v3 or 1v2 you.  If you could gank bot or top.

I believe that there is one question which really decides everything.  Which of your options helps your team as a whole the most?  

Think of the game as a whole work in progress.  If you go top for an extended gank will you open up the possibility of a free dragon if the other team makes a play for it?  If you hold mid while he backs are both of your bot laners going to die in a dive because you aren't there to help?  A lot of these questions you'll only learn the answer to through experience but some you can figure out with simple logic.

If you can gank a lane with a hypercarry who is having some issues or gank a lane with a weak late game champion that's simply been pushed in for a wave it's a pretty easy decision if both ganks have the same chance of success right?  You go with the hyper carry.

In general this is something along the lines of what I find works with the average jungler:

Get both buffs.  Gank a lane that is either in need of help or the enemy is over-extending with no wards.  If all of your lanes are pushed, farm your jungle.  If your lanes don't need help but one of them wants to back, hold it for them.  If you get a kill on a laner, help your teammate push any minions to turret so that they can back and force the enemy to lose CS.

If a pathway is warded, go a route that has no vision.  For example if you're ganking bot or top and the river is warded, try going through the tri-brush.  If the side of mid is warded, come from one of the jungle routes.  And if every path is warded and a lane truly needs help, invest in a pink ward.  Place it to clear a route so that you can gank.  It's not fun having to do your teammates job but it's necessary sometimes if you want to win.

Learn From the Best - If you have the time and care enough, watch high elo junglers!!  Watch what they do, watch how they play.  Watch the decisions they make.  If you go to twitch and the LoL streams you can usually find at least one high elo jungler on the front page.

Diana Skin - Thunder Goddess Diana

I don't usually come up with skin concepts or complete champion ideas but when the new Ultimate skin was still up in the air I was hoping that it would be for Diana.  I kept thinking to myself how cool an Ultimate skin for her would be and this was one of the concepts I came up with.

It doesn't take that much imagination to get a pretty good picture of what the skin would look like.  Her Q would be a curved lightning bolt with the tip at the end.  Her W would be small balls of electricity for the damage component and perhaps a lightning cloud for a shield (similar to Astro Nautilus W perhaps?).  I think that her E would be like a small vortex in a storm or perhaps she could even be struck by lightning and the pull is from magnetism or something.  Her ult would essentially be what it is now except be yellow.  Perhaps there would be streaks of lightning involved.

There's no concept art as of now but if someone wants to make some, feel free :p

Blue Buff - A Longer Leash

As of now the leash for Blue buff is very short.  Unless you force it to move past it's leash range with a spell such as a blitz hook it will not reach the bushes, and invisibility, in almost every instance.  I think there are two reasons this needs to change.  This first is simply for balance with Red buff.

Red buff will not only go into nearby bushes, it will leash past those bushes entirely to the other side of the buff area without a spell at all.  It only needs to be attacked and it will walk there around the terrain.  So why is it that Blue buff won't even reach the first set of bushes?

The second reason is for balance with the game.  Being able to pull your buff into the brush is an important mechanic, especially in the early game and especially with Nunu in the spot that he's in.  It allows you to position yourself so that counterjungling isn't as low risk.

Here's a little video explaining how this change would affect counterjungling, specifically with Nunu in mind:

Now this won't fix the problem completely, but it will help and it also simply makes sense to put Blue on par with Red.

Random Paint Stuff

So the other day I realized I was only 47 RP away from purchasing Thresh on my smurf.  So I figured I would do what a bunch of people do and draw a picture and beg for RP.

I did just that, got Thresh too :D.  And here was the picture I drew for it:

After I felt the need to draw more so I drew this:

#randomstuff

Vladimir - QoL Buff for Tides of Blood

If we were to look at Vladimir and the spot he is in, I would say that it's underwhelming.  He isn't awful in lane by any means, nothing like say, Poppy, but he isn't a laning monster either.  He's still fairly open to ganking in top lane and has some issues with being heavily outraded with mid match ups.  He does have a pretty solid 1v2 in terms of CSing because of his Q and his range but once his pool is down he is very very killable.

His pick and win rates are both lower than average in general.  He's almost never banned and I find him to be generally considered a weaker pick.  He has good AoE damage and survivability with items but he has no CC and unlike other champions that lack CC he doesn't have huge ranged poke or massive burst to kill a carry.

Taking all of these things into account, I believe that a small buff to Vladimir's E wouldn't be out of line.  So, I suggest that the cast time on Tides of Blood be removed.

How this would help:

One of the major influences on laning strength and honestly champion strength in general, is the ability of a champion to kite.  By kite, I mean their ability to do damage while making distance.  Champions like ADCs are usually very good at this because they can do a lot of damage with the auto attacks they can fit in while running from an enemy.  As of now Vlad isn't terrible at kiting but because of the casting time on Tides of Blood he has a lot more trouble than he could have.

By removing the cast time on Times of Blood Vladimir would be able to retreat while doing damage much more easily.  It would help him handle ganks, especially ganks more towards mid game where he already will have spell vamp and Tides can actually heal him despite it's health cost.

It's also a very realistic change.  In fact, most of the abilities that work mechanically like Tides of Blood (Such that it's a champion centered ability that does damage within a certain radius of the champion) already have no cast time.  Zac's W Unstable Matter, Ahri's W Fox-Fire, Diana's W Pale Cascade, Katarina's W Sinister Steal and many others don't have cast times already.

But putting all of this aside, this change would make Vladimir less clunky in general.  It will make it much easier to move through his other abilities before pooling which I've seen even Diamond players mess up with.

Adjustments To Tear + Archangels/Seraphs + Manamune/Muramana

Right now the Tear items are as a whole very strong.  They have low costs for their output and the only "downside" to them is the fact that they require "stacking."  By this I of course mean that in order to get the stronger active abilities of the final items, you need to use abilities etc to get the static mana up to + 750.

Now while this is a unique mechanic to league I believe that it leaves something to be desired.  One one hand, I believe that Tear is too easy to stack on some champions such as Jayce, Karthus and Nidalee, while being much harder to stack on others such as Dianna, Blitzcrank and LeBlanc.  So for those who can stack a tear with ease the upgraded versions are too strong while for those who have trouble stacking their items the upgraded items are on the weaker side.

It could be argued that this difference in relative strength is fine, that it's one of the factors in choosing to go down these build paths.  And there is some validity to that.  But it's my personal opinion that one should choose an item because of how it affects a champion's kit, not because of how the champion's kit affects it.

So, I believe that we should change Tear and it's associated upgrades into something closer to Rod of Ages. That is, the items should stack over time instead of when a champion procs the passive.  This would equalize the items strengths on champions so that the stats and usefulness of the items is what matters and not how quickly or cheaply a champion can stack them.

Then, in order to make sure that the Tear itself doesn't stack too quickly, but give incentive to buy the stronger items, the mana passive could be much slower on the Tear and much faster on Archangels/Manamune.

This is the passive on Tear of the Goddess currently:

Unique Passive - Mana Charge: Each time you cast a spell or spend mana, your maximum mana increases by 4 (3 second cooldown). Bonus caps at +750 bonus mana.

Manamune:

Unique Passive - Mana Charge: Each time you attack, cast a spell or spend mana, your maximum mana increases by 4 (3 second cooldown). Bonus caps at +750 bonus mana.

Archangel's:

Unique Passive - Mana Charge: Each time you cast a spell or spend mana, you gain 6 maximum mana (3 second cooldown). Bonus caps at +750 bonus mana.

This is something along the lines of what I would change it to:

Tear:

Unique - Mana Charge: This item gains 4 bonus mana every 15 seconds.  Bonus caps at +750 bonus mana.

Manamune/Archangel's:

Unique - Mana Charge: This item gains 4 bonus mana every 5 seconds.  Bonus caps at +750 bonus mana.

Champions that want what tear items have to offer would still get tear/the upgrades.  Only now champions that might be a little hesitant to by it simply because it stacks so slowly for them can purchase it as well.  And champions that got it because they could stack it at basically no cost will perhaps think twice before getting it.

There will still be an incentive to get Tear early, and now there will be an incentive to purchase the upgraded versions before they are fully stacked.

New Item - Invulnerable Ward

This is a concept I've been thinking about for a few days.  I'm not sure of the exact costs, durations or limits of it yet but I thought it would be interesting to have a third kind of ward to make something like Rock - Paper - Scissors.  Essentially, an Invulnerable Ward would last it's full duration in the spot it's in no matter what.

The idea would be that Sight Wards counter Invulnerable Wards because they do the same job at a lower price.  Vision Wards counter Sight Wards because they can see them but the Sight Wards can't see the Vision Wards.  Invulnerable Wards would counter Vision Wards because Vision Wards wouldn't be able to kill them at all, making the Vision Ward a waste.

There are a few different ideas I had for Invulnerable wards to balance them.  They could either cost a lot of gold, have a lower duration and/or could have a team limit (meaning the team as a whole could only have a certain amount on the map at once, maybe even only one).

I really like the idea of a trinity of wards for a few reasons.  One, it would give more ward counter-play options.  Instead of having to fight fire with fire (magical sight vs magical sight) you could avoid the fire altogether.
Another reason is that it gives guaranteed vision.  While many might think this is a bad idea in itself, I think that guaranteed vision allows more options for teams to play well.  If one team is incredibly far ahead, can afford vision wards and oracles and consistently clears the other team's wards, the team that is behind is going to have an increasingly hard time turning the game around.  And while many might say this is fine, one of the reasons that I like LoL is that turn-arounds are so possible.
Just think about the mechanic of inhibitors.  Yes, they make your lanes push and help you to siege turrets, but they also force your own minions to get to the other team at the same time.  And if you aren't actively using them for siege purposes it actually helps the other team to get gold/exp without having to overextend into lanes.
Invulnerable wards would help in somewhat the same way.  They would give a team vision despite being outdone in terms of magical vision.  They would allow for a lot more playmaking when you're behind.

Obviously this idea would need a lot of tweaking and tuning but I believe it could be a very good addition to LoL.