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So, Ozone vs Gambit. Right from the start it's interesting to see Gambit banning Thresh and SSO first picking Sona to make Voidle play something else (Zyra). And when Gambit pick Aatrox, Ozone pick Zac, so one reviver per team. And Ozone did go for something different with two ADs (Cait + Ezreal).
Edit: Well, early game was awful from Gambit. So passive... Ozone took four turrets doing nothing but poking. Gambit's Karthus never used his ulti until now (level 11).
Edit2: Make that 5-0 in turrets, 2-1 in kills for Ozone. No Karthus & Zyra ulties from Gambit, no Sona ulti from Ozone. Ozone are just farming towers... This is horrible from Gambit. Atrox started with some damage and didn't do anything with it, Karthus started with Sorc boots and didn't do anything.
Edit3: First real fight and 3 for 1 for Ozone, 1 more kill later, and Ozone take 2 towers and top inhibitor. Gambit look like they have no idea what to do... 7k gold difference.
Edit4: One more turret, one more inhibitor, one more fight 2 for 1 for Ozone. Crazy... They just poked with Mystic shots and Cait and Ez ulties, and Gambit couldn't respond. Aaand free Baron for Ozone.
And they win. This was the saddest LoL game I've ever seen.
posted
Just reading that was depressing. In other news, watching Fnatic trounce Vulcun was pretty lopsided. I've totally been in that fight where your guys die, and two of theirs limp off with slivers of health, and you just know that was the high water mark for your team. Your opponents are going back to base to spend more gold than you, and if you couldn't finish them off a second ago, you're not going to when they come plowing into your turret in a minute.
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Yeah, I'm watching it now. I feel like with a bit of luck things could have been much closer. Vulcun also had good enough engage with Lyssandra and Sona (unlike Gambit in the other game), but so did Fnatic.
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Just got to the 18min fight and that engage/counter-engage is exactly what happened and it was in Fnatic's favor.
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And Fnatic vs Ozone now: so many early positional mistakes by Ozone (and a couple by Fnatic). Also, Ozone gave Fnatic both Kassadin and Zed... o_O And Kassadin got a triple kill and one more slightly later despite having no AP. And another fight at dragon where they aced Ozone for no deaths... I don't get it. Where did the Ozone from the Gambit game go?! And what were they thinking giving Kassadin to xPeke?!
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Crazy game from Fnatic. Ozone gave away too much in the picks (Kass, Corki, Zed) and despite a good start just made too many mistakes.
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SKT T1 also gave Zed to TSM and still won (picking Riven mid again). TSM tried to come up with a crazy team with Karthus top and Annie support, but SKT T1 countered with Jax.
OMG didn't first pick Ahri against TSM (TSM picked her) and then went Syndra and Volibear... o_O
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Fnatic qualify in first place with a great win against Gambit (lots of individual kills early on and Fizz got uncontrollable), so now they're playing a crazy one against Mineski with some interesting lineups: Blitz (played by Soaz, their top laner) and Sivir in bottom lane, Shen top (played by Yellowstar, their support) and Zed and Lee Sin rounding up, and Mineski go with Zilean, Nunu, Soraka, Sona and Varus. There's nothing riding on this game, so both teams are having a bit of fun.
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I watched Lemond Dogs Vs TSM, it was a pretty one sided affair. TSM has great laning, but their jungler isn't setting up ganks.
It was interesting that top Renekton was shoved up, so instead of coming back to his tower during the 2v1 gank, he cut through their tri-bush, and down towards mid. Meanwhile Fnactic's jungler came up river, and Fizz cut off Reginald in mid and won the ensuing fight. Though I don't get how Dyrus got killed up top, it's like he waited in the bushes to get killed.
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If you want to watch it, I'll just say it's not pretty... I saw half of game 2 (pretty close, but C9 were pulling ahead and Fnatic couldn't stop them) and game 3. And stayed up for the picks and bans for the first Gambit vs Najin Sword match, but then went to sleep. I have to say, as much as I wanted Gambit to qualify for old times' sake, I'm not surprised that they didn't although I know nothing about Najin Sword.
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I actually saw game 3 of NS v GG. It was quite lop sided. Gambit was reacting to NS the *entire* time.
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I still haven't managed to watch NS vs GG, but I did skim over the remaining two quarterfinals. SKT T1's matches weren't that close and there were several mistakes by Gamania Bears, mistakes that SKT T1 aren't likely to forgive.
The all-Chinese quarterfinal was very cool though. The Royal HZ AD carry (aptly named Uzi) was amazing! For once it's not the AP carry that's the star of the show. The second game was pretty close up to a point, OMG leading 8-7 in kills, and then they simply got aced in a teamfight with no kills in return. There were a few more kills here and there, and then there was another fight in which members of Royal HZ went low as they were fighting a 4 v 5, then Vayne came from the back and despite going down to around 100 HP mopped up the fight. Uzi played Caitlyn in the first game and Vayne in the second, both time with Flash + Cleanse. Both times Royal HZ gave Ahri to OMG, and played Vlad and Zed respectively in mid. In that first game Ahri got very fed (8/1/2) but it still wasn't enough to win. Uzi's Caitlyn in the same game went 9/1/4.
Can't wait for the semifinals. Posts: 4519 | Registered: Sep 2003
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I just caught the last two team fights of game 5 between SKT T1 vs NS. I guess it wasn't as easy as predicted for SKT T1.
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I'm watching the games right now and in game 3 at around 30 minutes there's an insane play from Impact and Faker for SKT.
Some interesting things happened in this semi-final: Faker got Ahri in games 1 and 3, both lost by SKT. He had Ahri available in game 2 and decided to switch to Orianna (nobody picked Ahri), then NS got Ahri in games 4 and 5 and lost both (SKT picked Orianna in both). NS picked Gragas in the first three games, then he was banned by SKT in the last two games.
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I'm tuning in for Fnatic and Royal. Sounds like I'm here in time for game 2. Game 1 was apparently very one-sided.
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I caught the tail end of the last match when I woke up. I'll re-watch the games sometime this week-end.
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Well, I watched the final. Only game 2 was actually close, but Piglet proved too much for Royal in that one. I guess in the end the best team of the tournament really did win. It feels even more impressive now that Najin Sword managed to get them to game 5 in the semi-finals.
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For sure. I admire Royal for trying to catch them off with that Kassadin pick, and there were strengths to it. But they just didn't have an answer to SKT's overarching strategy, and they continued to lose the objective game.
Your mechanics can't completely overcome a gold deficit.
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So Season 3 is about to kickoff, and this past weekend teams from NA and Europe had a chance to play for bragging rights, but they also had some matches for people at the top of challenger league to win a slot in the LCS.
Riot actually pays players in the LCS a salary, (though this year, that salary comes at the cost of players not being allowed to stream other games) which is a huge boon. On salary your team can practice full time, scrim, and you get awesome tournament experience playing the best teams in your region week after week.
Without spoiling too much, I was interested in some of the new lineups on TSM, Gambit Gaming, EG, and Coast.
The last of that list played for entry back into the LCS and their series against The Walking Zedd was a fantastic series. The last game I think was Coast playing in top form.
edit: I'm still processing the huge changes to supports, and warding. But overall I think they had the right philosophy, and it appears supports are finishing more items than they were in the past. And warding has become a much more strategic choice with pink wards being completely visible, and people needing to choose which ward item they want to buy.
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Also #1 on this week's OGN highlights reel is Madlife once again, doing stuff you just don't see, and not even stopping after doing it.
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I'm watching SKT T1 K vs Samsung Blue in the Korean Champions Winter. The first game was pretty one-sided, but in the second game T1 got a bit overconfident at one point and Blue mounted quite the comeback. Some interesting picks compared to NA/EU, especially in the AD carry department. Nidalee in the first two games (one play each) is pretty interesting too. I'll watch the third game tomorrow to see what else will happen.
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Ended up watching game 3 too. I'll pay for it tomorrow. Blue were playing just too scared all the time.
I managed to learn a bit more about the trinkets and gold generating items by watching the LCS qualifiers and the Korean match, but there's still so much more to learn... I really want to get back in the game next year.
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I'm glad people are realizing that Leona is just a fantastic pick for teams who want early aggression via flash, ult, xeneth blade, and shield bash or any combination of those. Not to mention her W is just fantastic early as well, a ton of armor and magic pen for quite a long time.
Late game she can fall off a little, but if you have been punishing the team early into mid, then she's done her job.
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I'm watching the second Korean quarterfinal, CJ Blaze vs KT Bullets (starting on game 4). I have to admit I wasn't really impressed by the overall quality of play in the first two quarterfinals so far, but I guess that players are still adapting to all the pre-season changes in terms of map, items and playable champions.
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Are you talking gameplay, style, pricing, or what exactly?
From the gameplay point of view, from what I've heard/read, DotA2 is harder to get into. It also has more powerful champions (I've heard it said that in DotA2 all champions are overpowered, while in LoL all champions are underpowered).
DotA2 also has the "deny" mechanic where you can kill your friendly minions in order not to let the enemy gain gold/experience from the kills, a mechanic I find rather uninteresting: if you want them not to get experience/gold you'll have to harass them and push them out of the lane or away from the minions in LoL; denying feels like added complexity for the sake of complexity and without a counter.
DotA2 has items that will give you hard crowd control abilities, which is a thing they purposely stayed away from in LoL, keeping these abilities on champions only, thus making picking the right team comp more important (IMO). Basically DotA2's items will give you interesting active abilities, while LoL's will mostly give you power and defense, and only some "soft" utility (speed-up friendlies/slow enemies).
In terms of pricing the most important part is that you get all the champions for free in DotA2, while you'll have to play (and probably pay) a lot to have them all in LoL, and play some more to buy runes (with in-game money only).
There are certainly many other differences big and small, but I don't know enough about DotA2 to list them. Posts: 4519 | Registered: Sep 2003
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Yeah once I got back into dota, my interest in LoL managed to vanish entirely. The expanse of diversity in abilities functionally trumps LoL in all ways. Which is pretty hardcore and extremely daunting to new players (and that's why LoL has such comparatively low impact abilities and ultimates), but the experience is just .. ahh, so refreshing.
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quote:Originally posted by Samprimary: Yeah once I got back into dota, my interest in LoL managed to vanish entirely. The expanse of diversity in abilities functionally trumps LoL in all ways. Which is pretty hardcore and extremely daunting to new players (and that's why LoL has such comparatively low impact abilities and ultimates), but the experience is just .. ahh, so refreshing.
DOTA does have a pretty ugly art palette though.
Have any of you guys watched Heroes of the Storm yet? I do like the idea of different maps, and it looks like the Blizzard polish is still there, group leveling is good, no items I'm not sure of, and I haven't seen the leveling tree mechanic in action, I am worried their stable of characters might be too limited.
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I'm taking a look now at a few videos of HotS, but it doesn't really do much for me. It would take a lot to make me move from LoL seeing how much I've invested in it already. I don't really feel like going through a similar learning phase again.
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That was actually a very frustrating game to watch. I think Jatt had it exactly right, Teemo suffocates maps.
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The last game I saw was XDG vs Cloud 9, that was a pretty cool one. It's nice to see C9 trying different things; especially making Yasuo work pretty well.
On the other hand I'm a bit bored of the Shyvanna/Mundo/Elise/Renekton picks/bans. It looks like a lot of champions have almost disappeared from top and jungle lately, being replaced with combinations of these 4.
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I missed that one. I did catch Dig trounce Coast. Also a Chinese team (LMQ) is in the Challenger series tonight, which means they'll be joining our LCS if they win it all.
It would be nuts if this became a thing every year.
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There's nothing riding on this game, so both teams are having a bit of fun.
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