LoL General Chat

[Ikaru]

[diana]

I GOT IT JUST OVER TWO WEEKS AGO

COME OOOOON

[Noivy]

dat ass.

you wanted it too much.

[Shanco]

[The Fush]

OH SHIT MOTHERFUCKERS BE THERE

BE THERE Y'ALL

INFERNO DOG VS INFERNO REPTILE THERE GON' BE SOME HEAVY BODYBAGGIN'

[Shanco]

[Noivy]

favorite champ gets a legendary skin.

fuck no i have to reinstall.

[Shanco]

It's not legendary; the hype around Scorched Earth Renekton is that it's been on the beta for over a year, been delayed over and over, and is finally coming out.

As someone who has played using this skin on the PBE, I gotta say it's a pretty darn sexy skin.

EDIT: It's a 975 skin.

[Jelly]

Tbh I feel like going 4-6 in placements and getting put in Bronze III will be the death of me. It's just too hard to carry man.

[Shanco]

Anyway, continuing the conversation from the screenshots thread here.

Well I would attempt to continue the conversation if it wasn't for Roo and EDH summing up what I was about to say almost perfectly. That and I'm almost a king of off-meta crap - including support Ashe and the Garen of Righteous Fire (Liandry's + Sunfire + Abyssal + IE + cleaver + Treads). I really don't care when people go off-meta at all; in fact I welcome it (including the AP Fiora that carried me in one of my ranked games last season). There is a line between when it's okay or just for fun, and when it becomes trolling.

I have much less tolerance, however, for the people who make fun of or look to put down anything off-meta (ref. jungle Quinn conversation) just because it isn't normal, especially since the game in question wasn't ranked. When someone's looking to have fun, going and essentially shitting on their parade is not cool at all.

EDIT: As a useless side note, my brother also once played a Jax-style bruiser Leona that had (I think) BoRK, Triforce, Treads, Randuin's, Spirit Visage. Really bad in lane, but he was able to snowball off a couple kills. We had one teamfight where Leona was able to make the carry completely useless while dealing tons of damage. No one on the other team could kill her and we ended up winning effortlessly. He had the shit flamed out of him at first, but towards match's end our teammates were praising him.

[The Fush]

Anyway, continuing the conversation from the screenshots thread here.

Well I would attempt to continue the conversation if it wasn't for Roo and EDH summing up what I was about to say almost perfectly. That and I'm almost a king of off-meta crap - including support Ashe and the Garen of Righteous Fire (Liandry's + Sunfire + Abyssal + IE + cleaver + Treads). I really don't care when people go off-meta at all; in fact I welcome it (including the AP Fiora that carried me in one of my ranked games last season). There is a line between when it's okay or just for fun, and when it becomes trolling.

I have much less tolerance, however, for the people who make fun of or look to put down anything off-meta (ref. jungle Quinn conversation) just because it isn't normal, especially since the game in question wasn't ranked. When someone's looking to have fun, going and essentially shitting on their parade is not cool at all.

EDIT: My brother also once played a Jax-style bruiser Leona that had (I think) BoRK, Triforce, Treads, Randuin's, Spirit Visage. Really bad in lane, but we had one teamfight where Leona was able to make the carry completely useless while dealing tons of damage. No one on the other team could kill her and we ended up winning effortlessly. He had the shit flamed out of him at first, but towards match's end our teammates were praising him.

Also moving from the screenshot thread, I think I'm gonna placehold this for when I get around to summing up the discussion between me and Ikaru about AP Leona, specifically in the mid lane against common mid champs.

[Amethyst]

Tbh I feel like going 4-6 in placements and getting put in Bronze III will be the death of me. It's just too hard to carry man.

For some reason I read this as Pants III and I'm really really really not sure how that happened

Anyway AD Bruiser Leona is definitely passable since she actually has tools in her kit that are useful for that.

[Pocky]

look at the sun bitch it burns lol ur dead <--- AP Leona in a nutshell

[Amethyst]

*ur 60% health and gonna kill me

[Dana]

I'm almost a king of off-meta crap

Oh Ryan, you are such a Troll. :3

[Ikaru]

off-meta

AP Fiora

I feel like the entirety of my two last posts were completely ignored.

Also +1 Ame

As an aside, the Hexakill mode is fun but I'm not sure I need even more hectic games than I already have ;-;

[Wes]

Anyway, continuing the conversation from the screenshots thread here.

Well I would attempt to continue the conversation if it wasn't for Roo and EDH summing up what I was about to say almost perfectly. That and I'm almost a king of off-meta crap - including support Ashe and the Garen of Righteous Fire (Liandry's + Sunfire + Abyssal + IE + cleaver + Treads). I really don't care when people go off-meta at all; in fact I welcome it (including the AP Fiora that carried me in one of my ranked games last season). There is a line between when it's okay or just for fun, and when it becomes trolling.

I have much less tolerance, however, for the people who make fun of or look to put down anything off-meta (ref. jungle Quinn conversation) just because it isn't normal, especially since the game in question wasn't ranked. When someone's looking to have fun, going and essentially shitting on their parade is not cool at all.

EDIT: As a useless side note, my brother also once played a Jax-style bruiser Leona that had (I think) BoRK, Triforce, Treads, Randuin's, Spirit Visage. Really bad in lane, but he was able to snowball off a couple kills. We had one teamfight where Leona was able to make the carry completely useless while dealing tons of damage. No one on the other team could kill her and we ended up winning effortlessly. He had the shit flamed out of him at first, but towards match's end our teammates were praising him.

There's a difference between off-meta, and borderline trolling or even full on trolling. Whether you accept it or not, metagames exist for a reason. Top tiers within said metas exist for a reason. You may be asking yourself: Why do they exist? Well, my friend, just call me the bus driver cus I'm taking you on a ride straight to school.

Metagames and tiers are esablished over a long course of time through various people playing certain things moreso than others. Break it down and every lane/roll has its top and low tiers champs whether that is by usage, viability, or both. Most of the time the usage stat comes from viability. Sometimes FotM happens, but even then said FotM has viability to it in a way that fits the current meta or makes a change to said meta in a way that is positive for itself. You mentioned Jungle Quinn. That by itself is not even off meta, but more along the lines of trolling. Why? Because it brings no CC other than an extremely short knockback and then on top of that has no real kill potential against things like Leona. As for your "Garen of Righteous Fire", what do the Liandry's and Abyssal actually give him? Nothing. That is what we like to call a waste of time and gold build and is completely inefficient for what Garen does as a Champion. In some cases, why do you think some champions simply aren't used in the competitive scene? Because they are not as viable. While they may be fun, they may have their own places in the game, in the overall meta they aren't used as much because they aren't as viable. People need to keep in mind that off-meta typically has to be used with a decent amount of skill and not everyone can pull it off.

All in all, this is a game and it's ok to have fun. However, make sure your team is ok with it beforehand, otherwise don't do it. It's not fair to the team because more than likely you're going to bring them down, whether you think so or not.

[The Fush]

For some reason I read this as Pants III and I'm really really really not sure how that happened

Anyway AD Bruiser Leona is definitely passable since she actually has tools in her kit that are useful for that.

How on earth does Leona have anything passable as "AD" other than her Q?

Anyway, regarding AP Leona, me and Ikaru agreed that it was wouldn't work out unless you had pre-co-ordinated with your team in which case it could actually be decently powerful.

The main problem is that AP Leona wouldn't fit the definition of a burster or anything so she wouldn't be a role-centralizing pick so much as a team centralizing one. Aside from Q+Lich Bane and her Ult, she has no stable form of good damage (though Q is good regardless).

So if this is the case, it isn't gonna stop Leona from using CC and stuff and still securing kills for her team. If she's building AP, though, there's a few key differences between her and normal Leona:

• Farming of minions and possible kills lead to a higher gold income, letting Leona buy more expensive items which would benefit her towards her intended purpose (e.g Iceborn Gauntlet).
• The damage combined with her CC leave her more of a case of "here they're exposed and damaged for about like 40% of their health we can kill them" rather than "here they're exposed try to kill them".
• Co-ordinating with ganks with the jungler is more key to your survival in the game so you can keep up and secure kills early on.

So, since AP Leona wouldn't be full burst, the team would require a offense-focused jungler or top laner aswell to make up for the lost damage; or just a 3rd source of (half-ish) burst damage in general. Also, AP Leona most likely wouldn't build items like talisman of ascension or passive buff items; her build contributes to teamfight effectiveness in different ways than a support leona would; Rylai's slow over Locket buff, the like. It's arguable that the build pros of AP Leona might not be as worthwhile if your team isn't building items that can work with it. Of course, that's basic LoL logic, but AP Leona would be particularly vulnerable to it.

The problem is, without the team co-ordinating, picking their champs and their builds specifically, Leona's purpose is weakened because she can't dish out all the AP burst on her own and, like with any Leona, she wouldn't be able to execute disruption in teamfights as effectively; Leona is more affected by team co-ordination than most champions. And in normal games with random people, people won't have planned with you before the game and therefore AP Leona would lose presence.

There's also the side note of her having some decent bulk, but like Ame said if you're looking for a tanky AP mid you're better off with Malphite or the like, so that's more of a minor pro.

So, ultimately:

• AP Leona's main attraction over normal Leona is the slight damage added on top to the disruption already there.
• AP Leona's possible kill securing and actual farm would lead to her buying more expensive items that contribute to the team in different ways, such as Abyssal Scepter's magic resist debuff or the slows of Rylai's/Iceborn.
• She's weak early/early-mid game on her own since her damage wouldn't be as high as the enemy mid laner's, if we're to assume the enemy is picking the standard mid laner. However, her CC disruption and lackluster/decent damage would work well when co-ordinating in a gank, especially if the ganker is also CC heavy (think Nautilus, Rammus, Blitzcrank, etc).
• Late game, her Q is her best damage/overall use tool due to items like Lich Bane and Iceborn Gauntlet's contributions and the stun it provides, along with whatever other on-hit effects you may have. Her ult can do insane damage, but it has a large cooldown. Overall, Leona won't have as much burst presence as the usual AP carry would.
• Personal opinion, Leona would be more of a counterpicker to certain champions rather than a standard AP mid, due to how her disruption would work; of course, if the enemy specializes in harassment then Leona won't be able to retaliate easily and she's screwed instead (e.g Ziggs, possibly Karthus).
• In a premade game where she's co-ordinated with her team, she can make the best use of her disruption and decent damage to fuck over the enemy team. This ultimately means she's more of a damage-support than a burst carry, especially with things like Sunlight. You can also pull off some fancy combo shit if you like; say, if you have a Rumble at top to make up for some lack of Leona burst then you can double ult and he'll Q them or something. Experimentation and the like.

So yeah, it's not really a viable strategy in normal gaming. Leona's ultimately more prone to the effect of teamwork, AP or not, and without a proper plan with you're team you're pretty much fucked. However, if you've actually planned shit out with a premade team or something, then she can actually be pretty damn threatening. That applies to almost anything in LoL, but as I said, Leona's particularly prone to it.

In short: Don't do it with strangers. It's good to do it with premades where you've planned it, though. Ultimately your choice, and pretty much something you're barely ever going to see.

I think I'm gonna want to give it a try with some of my friends sometime. This is essentially all theorycrafting, as a disclaimer; I don't have Leona yet, so I can't really speak too much for it.

Edited January 25, 2014 by Tribal Fush

[Ikaru]

She has the ability to stick to her target with tons of CC and attacks that might actually hurt, while still managing to be tanky through items and her W. I neglected to mention that yesterday but if I were going to build any sort of damage on Leona I would go AD over AP.

[Shanco]

Basically, take Jax with less attack enhancements and a second stun, and you get bruiser Leona.
Not to mention her E lets her slip through the front lines easily.

^ Not worth a new post but yeah this is a huge detail I forgot too
~Ikaru

[Amethyst]

Rylai's would be a poor choice for Leona; the only thing that would benefit from it is her W because everything else already has CC. Stacking a slow on top of a stun is wasted gold, and she really has no trouble sticking to a target as is.

Iceborn would be passable but in my experience Triforce is better on her. I sometimes build Triforce as a support if I get really ahead.

[The Fush]

I wasn't discussing her with an AP build in terms of supporting.

Anyway, I still don't quite get it; Q is literally the only thing to help her with doing any sort of attack damage other than autoattacks, and even then the bonus from Q is AP based, not AD. She doesn't have any sort of empowerments, either. All I can see is basically Leona, but with a tiny extra hint of damage on top; there'd be no point to building her as a bruiser.

[Amethyst]

My mention of Rylai's was unrelated to supporting.

Peeling aside, if you're playing Leona you're probably going to be diving the enemy carry.

Let's assume that a level 18 carry has about 2000 health. This isn't taking lifesteal into account, and it's kind of a low number, but it's a nice workable one.

AP Leona's combo at level 18 will deal 990 base damage, which means she needs 1010 damage from AP Scaling. Her total ratios add up to 190% AP which means she will need 531 AP to burst a 2000 HP target. This is also very generously not taking into account any MR or regen, so the actual number is going to be far higher than that.

In order to get that much AP she's basically going to have to build glass-cannon, which also means that as soon as she jumps into the enemy team she's probably going to explode (and I don't mean her shield). Leona isn't an assassin; playing her that way is going to be a bad time. Nonetheless, in order to reach 500 AP (we'll say she's getitng at least 31 from runes/masteries) she'd probably need something like, rabadon+zhonya+dfg ((granted if she has dfg that adds another variable into the burst damage, but it doesnt solve the problem of the game basically becoming a 4v5 before our glasscannon leona can finish killing the carry)). These items total a little less than 10k gold.

Therefore if you're going to build damage on Leona, it makes more sense to build for tanky DPS. Even with just a Sunfire Cape Leona will have enough health to still fulfill her role as a tank- she can soak up damage and resist the opposing carry's lifesteal, meanwhile doing constant damage to whoever she happens to dive around. With the movement speed from Triforce she has no trouble sticking to any target, especially considering her E's low cooldown. If the enemy team tries to blow up the tanky Leona diving into the team then they're wasting a ton of cooldowns allowing her team to follow up the engage very effectively. As we know, focusing the tanky people is bad, mmkay. Meanwhile if they let her do her business, our AD Leona still has a full 990 base damage that she's dealing out to the carry plus 43 damage per second from sunfire, plus her damage combo: (E-triforce) AA- Q AA- (Q-triforce) AA (her Q is an aa reset, remember)- which, assuming level 18 and no AD other than triforce, that looks something like 129 + 258 + 129 + 129 + 258 = 903. Factor in the sustained damage from sunfire, other AA's and her lower cooldown Q/E procing triforce and she's going to very quickly surpass the damage an AP Leona does. All of this is only with two items, Triforce and Sunfire, which cost about 2/3s of what it would take AP Leona to do similar damage (and die in the process)

[The Fush]

My mention of Rylai's was unrelated to supporting.

Peeling aside, if you're playing Leona you're probably going to be diving the enemy carry.

Let's assume that a level 18 carry has about 2000 health. This isn't taking lifesteal into account, and it's kind of a low number, but it's a nice workable one.

AP Leona's combo at level 18 will deal 990 base damage, which means she needs 1010 damage from AP Scaling. Her total ratios add up to 190% AP which means she will need 531 AP to burst a 2000 HP target. This is also very generously not taking into account any MR or regen, so the actual number is going to be far higher than that.

In order to get that much AP she's basically going to have to build glass-cannon, which also means that as soon as she jumps into the enemy team she's probably going to explode (and I don't mean her shield). Leona isn't an assassin; playing her that way is going to be a bad time. Nonetheless, in order to reach 500 AP (we'll say she's getitng at least 31 from runes/masteries) she'd probably need something like, rabadon+zhonya+dfg ((granted if she has dfg that adds another variable into the burst damage, but it doesnt solve the problem of the game basically becoming a 4v5 before our glasscannon leona can finish killing the carry)). These items total a little less than 10k gold.

Therefore if you're going to build damage on Leona, it makes more sense to build for tanky DPS. Even with just a Sunfire Cape Leona will have enough health to still fulfill her role as a tank- she can soak up damage and resist the opposing carry's lifesteal, meanwhile doing constant damage to whoever she happens to dive around. With the movement speed from Triforce she has no trouble sticking to any target, especially considering her E's low cooldown. If the enemy team tries to blow up the tanky Leona diving into the team then they're wasting a ton of cooldowns allowing her team to follow up the engage very effectively. As we know, focusing the tanky people is bad, mmkay. Meanwhile if they let her do her business, our AD Leona still has a full 990 base damage that she's dealing out to the carry plus 43 damage per second from sunfire, plus her damage combo: (E-triforce) AA- Q AA- (Q-triforce) AA (her Q is an aa reset, remember)- which, assuming level 18 and no AD other than triforce, that looks something like 129 + 258 + 129 + 129 + 258 = 903. Factor in the sustained damage from sunfire, other AA's and her lower cooldown Q/E procing triforce and she's going to very quickly surpass the damage an AP Leona does. All of this is only with two items, Triforce and Sunfire, which cost about 2/3s of what it would take AP Leona to do similar damage (and die in the process)

It wasn't your comment on Rylais, it was your comment regarding Iceborn.

I spent my entire time on that post stating that you shouldn't build AP Leona for pure bursting and that was why I mostly disapproved of it; I saw the AP as more a nice little bonus to add on to the disruption and lockdowns. Building a rabadons wouldn't really profit in the long term because the damage contribution would end up pretty small.

I'd probably end up taking AP items that either contribute to your bulkiness or to the team; Abyssal Scepter, Rod of Ages, the like. Building pure AP on Leona is going to get you absolutely nowhere, and the problem with her is that she can't deal high damage. Simple as. Ultimately, she's going to end up making the rest of the team become carry as fuck anyway. I just think AP is a different way around of doing it compared to normal Leona. Sorry if I didn't make that clear in my previous post.

I suppose it does deviate from the idea of putting her in mid lane, but I'm just referring to her building AP in general now.

Also, does your formula for the AP Leona damage put in Lich Bane in any way? Because I'm pretty sure it'd be a good contributer to her Q, and in lategame she'd generally be able to pull off more than one Q in a teamfight while sticking to a target. I get your idea, though, and I can see why Leona can work as an AD bruiser.

[WanderoftheColossus]

I wasn't discussing her with an AP build in terms of supporting.

Anyway, I still don't quite get it; Q is literally the only thing to help her with doing any sort of attack damage other than autoattacks, and even then the bonus from Q is AP based, not AD. She doesn't have any sort of empowerments, either. All I can see is basically Leona, but with a tiny extra hint of damage on top; there'd be no point to building her as a bruiser.

Bit of a LoL player myself, Diamond IV on my main and Plat V on my smurf I can tell you now that Leona as an AD works much better than AP Leona. Her skills may scale off AP but her skills aren't on a low enough cooldown to repeatedly spam them. Also take into account the meta at the moment is mostly tanks/high burst (Mundo, Shyvanna, Jinx, Ziggs) and Leona's "AP burst" isn't enough to warrent her actually building AP. However, the amount of CC she has does allow her plenty of time for auto attacks in between all her skills so building AD is much more beneficial to you should you want to play Leona as anything but a support (jungler).

You really want a cheese lane play Leona Volibear Bot, bot take the summoner spell exhaust. Voli initiates and flips, leona stuns said enemy champ voli exhausts after stun wears off you'll burn flash and barrier if you have ad reds with armor yellows and MR blues. At level two you will get a kill. Leona spears, Voli flips, Leona stuns, Voli Bites. You will win bot lane and in the current meta, you can carry with two tanks bot lane and no adc. Went on a 10 game win streak with my friend in ranked with it.