Moba balance comparison, please comment

[Wingflier]

That was the first game, and it had some technical issues (which actually resulted in a really funny scenario; in the remake they had to "recreate" the 'first blood' of the first game, which basically resulted in 1 player offering himself up as a sacrifice to the other team at the 0 minute mark).

[Lancefighter]

Yeah. I cant help but think 'what if this was a league event'

All of the league events I've seen tend to involve a 'game cannot be restarted after fb' rule - So in this case, itd be very likely that the other team wouldve had to forfeit :\

Then again, I cant say I've actually seen a scenario where a league player was disconnected and couldnt reconnect.

[Wingflier]

I don't think it was a case of the player being unable to reconnect.  If I understand it right, the commentators were having trouble communicating (the game has a built-in livestream feed that can be accessed through the client); they restarted the game because of issues on the "entertainment end", not the gameplay end.  That was my understanding anyway.  They're still working out all the bugs with that.

[Lancefighter]

Yeah, they say in the beginning that its a problem with connections.

[Wingflier]

I've got a question.

The people in this thread say that "carries" can't burst people down as fast in League as they can in DotA, but after playing several games with Rengar, it's to still believe that's the case.

I'm watching Rengar, even in close games, kill people within literally about 1 second.  By the time he can click all of his skills (after he ults), they are dead.  Even tanks he tears right though almost instantly.  No hero in DotA kills people this fast.

Can somebody explain?

[Lancefighter]

Yeah. Rengar isnt a carry. Rengar is a physical assassin.

I really despite physical burst damage that isnt actually autoattacks.

To put things in perspective - I finished a game of dota earlier today with a rapier on PA. I was critting for 2.5k. I feel compelled to mention we were LOSING that game until that point. Sure, rengar can do bursty things.. Old akali used to be incredibly bursty (before they nerfed all of her items, and her passive, among other things). Old casters like annie can burst very well.

But none of that will compare to a PA with battlefury critting an entire team for 2.5k.

Except a kunnka, but hes hilariously more hit or miss.

Anyway, the point I am trying to make is that rengar is retarded and riot shouldve never made him. He is one of the few heros that scales incredibly well off of kills, because of his necklace. He has really good ratios on his skills, and ad ratios. I hate ad ratios. But 'carries', even in league, tend to not really have burst. (or if they do, its typically poorly represented as burst)

[Hearteater]

The test realm patch notes for LoL show some notable nerfs for Rengar.  His Battle Shout is losing 22% of its damage at Rank 5, and more brutal (for him) is his ult no longer instantly stealths him!  It takes 1.25 seconds for him to stealth when he activates it, and if he takes damage, that pushes back the stealthing coutdown, to a cap of 3 seconds to become stealthed.

Note these aren't final patch notes, so they could change.  But apparently they are looking at him.

Carries: Basically, you need to do damage mainly with your auto-attacks, and your abilities should support that.  Auto-attacks scale with crit, abilities do not.  This makes auto-attacks the top damage dealer in end-game, not to mention they are free.  So carries kill you with auto-attacks, even they might have some hard hitting abilities (Graves).  Assassins blow you up with their abilities.  Physical Assassins stack AD to do this, so they also often have pretty strong auto-attacks, but you'll notice they rarely build much crit or attack speed and so their auto-attacks never get quite as strong as a true  carry.  Also, Carriers tend to have abilities that give them attack speed, while Physical Assassins don't (with some exceptions, like Rengar has attack speed, and Ashe doesn't).

Magic Assassins (like LeBlanc) are slightly weaker, theoretically, than Physical Assassins because they don't have strong auto-attacks to supplement their damage.  However, because they do magic damage, the enemy needs MR and MR doesn't help against carries.  So Physical Assassins risk letting the enemy stack Armor more safely, while Magic Assassins force a defensive itemization split but don't have any fallback if their spells don't cut it.

[Wingflier]

Speaking of pub stompers, has anybody here actually tried Darius in normal?

Holy crap.

After facing him twice in top lane with a melee hero (blind pick), I realized that there was absolutely no way I could beat him.  If I even got anywhere near the creep I was destroyed.

I eventually got so frustrated I just bought him; I haven't lost a game since.

If you think Akali is a bad pubstomper, I'm curious about what you think about him.  I'm sure he's fine in draft pick where you can counter him at top with a teemo, a kayle, or a kennen, but if in blind pick, where most tops are melee, they might as well just leave the lane because there is absolutely nothing they can do.  They can't even get anywhere near the creep.

However, his usefulness doesn't even end in the laning phase.  Even in ganks and teamfights he has a lot to offer.  He basically has Axe's ult from DotA, except 100 times better.  It doesn't have a threshold before it does damage, and if you kill someone with it, which is super easy, it is instantly taken off cooldown (WTF?!).

He has a powerful aoe swipe, a painful movespeed and attack speed debuff with a low cooldown, and a nice initiation/pull skill to boot.

You want to talk about pub stompers.  Akali has nothing on this guy.

[chemical_art]

Darius is broken.

I have never seen a reasonable argument against this.

[Wingflier]

I don't think he would be broken in draft pick. 

He's easily kited, he has no escapes or blinks (like most of the cast), and if you shut him down early he has a hard time recovering. 

However, in blind pick, against an uncoordinated team, he's an absolute monster.  He just snowballs out of control and there's really nothing you can do about it.

[chemical_art]

I don't think he would be broken in draft pick. 

He's easily kited, he has no escapes or blinks (like most of the cast), and if you shut him down early he has a hard time recovering. 

However, in blind pick, against an uncoordinated team, he's an absolute monster.  He just snowballs out of control and there's really nothing you can do about it.

True damage + a refresh on an ultimate means even an underleveled darius is still a monster. So not only can he snowball quickly, even when underleveled he can just go tank and start slamming.

[Wingflier]

I don't think he would be broken in draft pick. 

He's easily kited, he has no escapes or blinks (like most of the cast), and if you shut him down early he has a hard time recovering. 

However, in blind pick, against an uncoordinated team, he's an absolute monster.  He just snowballs out of control and there's really nothing you can do about it.

True damage + a refresh on an ultimate means even an underleveled darius is still a monster. So not only can he snowball quickly, even when underleveled he can just go tank and start slamming.

Yeah I just get Black Cleaver then build tank.  Not only am I really hard to kill, but I still do insane amounts of damage.  Hero is so crazy in pubs.

[Lancefighter]

I dunno. League's design .. is kinda stupid at the moment. I am having difficulty understanding why the design team went in the direction they did.

And yeah - I only play draft normals, and my team still cant deal with a darius. Granted, we have no real dedicated top lane player (it used to be me until i got fed up with jungle ganks at level 1), but hes sitll far too difficult to counter in lane.

[Hearteater]

Currently, top lane has 4 viable camps.  Darius is one of them.  Since at present your top should only be 1 of 4 champs, Darius isn't pub stomping solo queue in my experience.  He's got a 1 in 4 chance of getting countered, a 1 in 4 of countering, and 2 in 4 that things are a bit more up in the air.

That said, I hate top lane in the current meta.  I wish two mages was viable, but bruisers are so insanely strong that taking a second mage just isn't worth it.  I also hate bruisers because that's all Twisted Treeline consists of.

[chemical_art]

I do feel like bruisers simply dish out too much damage even if they choose to go tank sometimes.