[Piltover Customs] League of Legends stuff & things

[CLG Klavier]

"You are so poorly designed for this."

 

Welcome ladies and gentlemen to Piltover Customs! Those of you who follow League of Legends lore know that it's a workshop - you will find the same here. I'll be talking mostly about League of Legends theorycrafting, means that if you ever get lost by what's good in the new patch, how harsh are those recent nerfs and such, look no further! Aside from that, I'll be doing quick coverages of latest PBE updates, pro scene recaps and much, much more.

 

About me

I started playing League by the end of season 2, around the time Syndra came out. Since then, I managed to earn a spot in Gold division, and currently I'm fluctuating around Gold IV level, so while I'm not the best like no one ever was, I can certainly say with...a slight degree of confidence that I know what I'm talking about. Since I remember, I was a jungler, I remember waiting anxiously to finish my rune page for jungle (oh the easy season 3 days when one page fit them all...) and each time we attempt team ranked with friends, I end up there, so I embraced the forest finally. I main Rengar, Vi and Udyr, but I can play like 80% of the champions to acceptable degree.

 

Update schedule

There won't be a stiff update schedule, however, you can expect the following things to be up here pretty much same day/one day after they happen:

• LCS/any other pro games (starting from Season 5 LCS Spring Split)
• PBE updates
• Patch overviews

If it goes for remaining things like theorycrafting, guides, discussions, I will try my best to have at least 3 posts per week, hopefully more! Oh, and just in case, if there's any topic you want to hear my opinion on, be sure to let me know and I'll gladly share my thoughts!

 

[spoiler=Archive]

[spoiler=Azir, the Misunderstood Emperor: Azir part 1 - 19/20/2014]

Azir, the Misunderstood Emperor

 

 

Azir's entrance into the League certainly wasn't too positively impactful. Being probably the most bugged champion on day 1 that ever happened, the Emperor of the Sands was quickly thrown into the bin, the coding errors concealing his real power. After spraying him with lots of pesticides (40+ bugs fixed 2 patches after Azir's release!) and giving him slight buffs to his incredibly meaningless early game, Azir is starting to pick up both soloqueue and competitive play in the mid lane. However, I believe he's still heavily underrated, and he's not a contested pick he deserves to be - we see occasional Azir bans and picks, but he's not a pick-or-ban status.

 

To give a measurement to Azir's strengths, let's compare him to a so-called "Lee Sin of the mid lane", Orianna - a champion known for being an amazing pick since season 2, and always being viable due to her flexibility, she's a jack of all trades, and while not a master of them, she does them pretty damn well. Orianna is a zone control mage - her main purpose is to direct your enemies where you want to, by using your ball as a roadblock of sort. Your opponents can walk through it alright, but they're risking a Command: Dissonance or Shockwave into the face. Azir's soldiers are similiar to Orianna's ball, by trying to get past them, enemies risk getting smacked one too many times. Seeing as I mentioned Command: Dissonance and soldiers, which would be Arise!, let's compare those skills damage-wise:

 

Command: Dissonance - 70 / 115 / 160 / 205 / 250 (+70%AP)

Arise! - 80 + (25×Azir's level) + (+60%AP)

 

Level scaling, yay. Doesn't tell us much here. Let's assume the following then: Orianna will be putting points in Dissonance at levels 3/8/10/12/13 if maxing it as a second ability, and at 3/4/5/7/9 if maxing it first. If we put Azir's values for those levels, we get the following:

 

Command: Dissonance - 70 / 115 / 160 / 205 / 250 (+70% AP)

Arise! - 155 / 180 / 205 / 255 / 305 + (+60% AP)

 

For an Orianna that maxes her Command: Dissonance as a first ability, Azir outscales her damage at every point, maybe not at the high late game since Dissonance has a higher AP scaling. But then there's the fact that Dissonance is on a 9 second cooldown without CDR, and Azir's damage from his soldiers is bound to his autoattacks, so you can think of them as ~1 second cooldown spells. We see Azir beats Orianna in their core role - zone control.

 

But this is where the things split heavily. Orianna's kit is all about that utility and teamfights - she can shield her teammates, haste them so they can run away, and most importantly, she has her Command: Shockwave, which is one of the most impactful ultimates in the game. Meanwhile Azir trades most of Orianna's utility for extremely high damage output. We all remember the pre-nerf Kayle and how insane she was at 4+ items. The Emperor is nearly the same in that, except he can stay at a way longer range to deal damage, has long range slow, and a blink ability.

 

Now we're drawing parallels to Kayle. Back when the Judicator was a heavily contested tier 1 pick, her main strength were permanently ranged autoattacks with a 65% AP scaling. 40% from her E itself, 20% from Nashor's Tooth and an extra 5% from the Spellsword mastery. That allowed her to build pure Ability Power and have both impactful offensive and defensive side. Azir's soldiers have a 60% AP scaling and it can't be increased since they don't apply on-hit effects, so Spellsword won't do anything to them, neither will Nashor's passive etc. That's still pretty damn close to old Kayle's, and there's also the fact that Azir's virtual damage range is ~1000 units, while Kayle's was only 525. That's nearly a double of that.

 

As we see, Azir draws lots of strengths from pretty strong champions - Orianna's zoning and Kayle's damage output. That aside, he has his own merits - a slight temporary knockup, and his ultimate, which might be a glorified Anivia wall, but it still turns the tides of fights, especially with the movement speed boost for your own team.

 

That was just a small introduction to Azir, since I'm playing him a lot lately, just wanted to share what do I think about him, where his strengths lie and so on. Expect a more informative rune/mastery/item guide in the following days. Back to the drawing board!

[/spoiler]

[/spoiler]

[CLG Klavier]

Azir, the Misunderstood Emperor

 

Azir's entrance into the League certainly wasn't too positively impactful. Being probably the most bugged champion on day 1 that ever happened, the Emperor of the Sands was quickly thrown into the bin, the coding errors concealing his real power. After spraying him with lots of pesticides (40+ bugs fixed 2 patches after Azir's release!) and giving him slight buffs to his incredibly meaningless early game, Azir is starting to pick up both soloqueue and competitive play in the mid lane. However, I believe he's still heavily underrated, and he's not a contested pick he deserves to be - we see occasional Azir bans and picks, but he's not a pick-or-ban status.
 
To give a measurement to Azir's strengths, let's compare him to a so-called "Lee Sin of the mid lane", Orianna - a champion known for being an amazing pick since season 2, and always being viable due to her flexibility, she's a jack of all trades, and while not a master of them, she does them pretty damn well. Orianna is a zone control mage - her main purpose is to direct your enemies where you want to, by using your ball as a roadblock of sort. Your opponents can walk through it alright, but they're risking a Command: Dissonance or Shockwave into the face. Azir's soldiers are similiar to Orianna's ball, by trying to get past them, enemies risk getting smacked one too many times. Seeing as I mentioned Command: Dissonance and soldiers, which would be Arise!, let's compare those skills damage-wise:
 
Command: Dissonance - 70 / 115 / 160 / 205 / 250 (+70%AP)
Arise! - 80 + (25×Azir's level) + (+60%AP)
 
Level scaling, yay. Doesn't tell us much here. Let's assume the following then: Orianna will be putting points in Dissonance at levels 3/8/10/12/13 if maxing it as a second ability, and at 3/4/5/7/9 if maxing it first. If we put Azir's values for those levels, we get the following:
 
Command: Dissonance - 70 / 115 / 160 / 205 / 250 (+70% AP)
Arise! - 155 / 180 / 205 / 255 / 305 + (+60% AP)
 
For an Orianna that maxes her Command: Dissonance as a first ability, Azir outscales her damage at every point, maybe not at the high late game since Dissonance has a higher AP scaling. But then there's the fact that Dissonance is on a 9 second cooldown without CDR, and Azir's damage from his soldiers is bound to his autoattacks, so you can think of them as ~1 second cooldown spells. We see Azir beats Orianna in their core role - zone control.
 
But this is where the things split heavily. Orianna's kit is all about that utility and teamfights - she can shield her teammates, haste them so they can run away, and most importantly, she has her Command: Shockwave, which is one of the most impactful ultimates in the game. Meanwhile Azir trades most of Orianna's utility for extremely high damage output. We all remember the pre-nerf Kayle and how insane she was at 4+ items. The Emperor is nearly the same in that, except he can stay at a way longer range to deal damage, has long range slow, and a blink ability. 
 
Now we're drawing parallels to Kayle. Back when the Judicator was a heavily contested tier 1 pick, her main strength were permanently ranged autoattacks with a 65% AP scaling. 40% from her E itself, 20% from Nashor's Tooth and an extra 5% from the Spellsword mastery. That allowed her to build pure Ability Power and have both impactful offensive and defensive side. Azir's soldiers have a 60% AP scaling and it can't be increased since they don't apply on-hit effects, so Spellsword won't do anything to them, neither will Nashor's passive etc. That's still pretty damn close to old Kayle's, and there's also the fact that Azir's virtual damage range is ~1000 units, while Kayle's was only 525. That's nearly a double of that.
 
As we see, Azir draws lots of strengths from pretty strong champions - Orianna's zoning and Kayle's damage output. That aside, he has his own merits - a slight temporary knockup, and his ultimate, which might be a glorified Anivia wall, but it still turns the tides of fights, especially with the movement speed boost for your own team.
 
That was just a small introduction to Azir, since I'm playing him a lot lately, just wanted to share what do I think about him, where his strengths lie and so on. Expect a more informative rune/mastery/item guide in the following days. Back to the drawing board!

[CLG Klavier]

Squashing time! - introduction to Zac

 

Back in patch 4.11, Riot attempted to counter the endless dominance of agressive early game junglers like Lee Sin, Kha'Zix and Elise by reworking Spirit of the Ancient Golem and giving a few tank junglers some slight quality of life changes to make them a bit more viable of a pick (and of course there was the huge Maokai overhaul which led him to toplane in the end but that's another story). One of the champion who received a slight buff was Zac: the cooldown on his Unstable Matter [W] got increased by 1 second to a total of 5, however, when Zac picks a blob from his passive now, the cooldown is reduced by 1 second, which leads to overal increase in his clear speed since in the end, you will get way more many Unstable Matters off then in the past.
 
However, the entire project failed miserably and didn't achieve what Riot planned to, just like the Feral Flare one did, except without the temporary phase of total brokeness. The holy trinity of aggro junglers didn't disappear and they wrecked the pro scene until the very end, when they got nerfed hard and stepped down for other picks like Rammus and Rengar among others. Now, we're pre-season 5 and the jungle got another major overhaul, even larger than in the past, which ended up leaving everyone confused. We knew one thing from the start though - since jungle monsters are so beefy and hit so hard right now, you will need some form of innate sustain to live in it.
 
Theorycrafting started, and lot of picks were tested, Zac among them, but they all paled in comparision to the new holy trinity of patch 4.20 - Warwick, Pantheon and Fiddlesticks. Not only their sustain was ridiculous to the point of barely taking any damage in the jungle, but they had other kinks that made them pretty much pick-or-ban on any level of play (Warwick's synergy with Skirmisher's Sabre, and Pantheon's level 1 dragon cheese). In the current patch, those 3 got nerfed enough that they're not contested any longer and can finally step down for more picks. Along with their nerfs, Zac got a pretty significant damage buff on his Elastic Slingshot [E] and on the knockback range of his Let's Bounce! [R]. A total sum of those buffs, jungle changes, the older buffs to him and finally, nerfs to champions flat-out better than him, might bring Zac back into competitive and soloqueue play. And I'm pretty sure they will.
 
What Zac does?
As things stand and probably won't change, Zac is an AP tank, leaning a bit more on the bruiser side. His main strengths in jungle come from high levels of sustain (key word being sustain - you can easily hover around 50%-60% of HP, but you can't really HEAL yourself per se) and one of the best ganking tools in the game, Elastic Slingshot [E] which allows for gank path creativity even above the level of Jarvan's Flag&Drag due to much bigger range and being bound only to a single ability. The Zaunite's sustain comes from the fact that his passive, Cell Division [P] makes his abilities drop blobs upon hitting things with your abilities. Your skills cost a % of your CURRENT health, while your passive recovers you % of your MAX health when you pick up a blob, so realistically, monster damage aside, you will be regaining more health from your passive than you put into your abilities. The range on his Elastic Slingshot [E] and his ultimate, Let's Bounce! [R] allow you to dive into the enemy backline easily and knock squishies into your team for kill, while your passive will keep you covered even if you die in process (granted your team can protect you for those few seconds).
 
What are some of Zac's weaknesses? First of all, he's still a tank, means that early on, he lacks damage to duel anyone. If you get invaded, high chance is you will die unless you manage to escape. You can pray your allies will come to help you while your passive is in proccess, but it's not something you can rely on.  Even though your Elastic Slingshot [E] is such a great ability, it has a pretty long channel time, which allows your enemies to react if they notice you with a ward or you accidentally channel outside of a bush (we've all been there). There's also the fact that while you're in your passive form, the bloblets can be simply...Smited or eaten by Nunu, so if you're in a small skirmish and the enemy jungler has their Smite up, you're done for. Heaven forbid if they have Ranger's Trailblazer since then they can just AOE your ass out. All in all however, lots of Zac's weaknesses can be covered simply by careful play and map attention, and they're not major enough to outweight the pros.
 
How to Zac?
Runes: Rune-wise, Zac has quite a lot of flexibility (haha, get it). Only thing I'd say is set in stone are the seals (yellows), in which you'd probably always want to take Armor. In the current jungle, the extra Armor is even more important than it used to, however, due to Zac's strong sustain in the early levels, you might want to take Scaling Armor instead, or a mix of both. Scaling Armor outweights Flat Armor at level 6 onwards, so it's relevant for a bigger part of the game. Health, Flat or Scaling, is a possibility as well, since Zac scales well with extra HP, it increases his sustain, but it's something I didn't yet test, plus I'd be pretty afraid to go into the new jungle without any Armor behind my back. Feel free to test it out though.
 
In marks (reds) you have many options as well. First thing that pops to mind is Magic Penetration or Hybrid Penetration. Zac's base damage on his abilities is pretty high as-is, so the extra Magic Pen will make you more of a threat in the early game. If you don't wanna waste your marks in the jungle (jungle monsters have no Magic Resistance anyways, and penetration can't make them go below 0), then Hybrid Penetration is an option. You lose 2 Magic Pen for 5 Armor Pen, which will make your autoattacks hurt those jungle creeps a bit more. An old choice for tank junglers, Attack Speed, isn't really bad either. It doesn't have as much synergy with the Hunter's Machete anymore, but it still improves your clear speed noticably and has small synergy with the Krug smite buff. If you don't think you need any offensive runes, Armor is another choice in here, which might allow you do pick Health in seals if you really wanna go all-in on being a tank.
 
Flat or Scaling Cooldown Reduction glyphs (blues) on Zac are one of your best bets , since not only is he manaless, but his sustain and damage come purely from spamming his skills, so the more often you can use them, the more useful you are. However, with how Zac's build paths will usually go (things like Juggernaut Enchantment, Locket of the Iron Solari, Spirit Visage which is core most of the games etc.) it's quite easy to overshoot and end up with more than 40% CDR, so keep that in mind while putting your runes together. You can never go wrong with standard Magic Resist, and it's what you're probably gonna have in your runebook, unlike the slightly fancier options, so feel free to use it. Zac's scalings on abilities are pretty solid (70% on E and a total of 100% on your ultimate!) so Ability Power works as well, preferably Scaling, since early game your damage is high enough without big chunks of AP.
 
With quintesences you there is a lot of freedom. You should either use them to fill up whatever you miss from the smaller runes, or what you'd rather have more of. Options include Armor, Health, Movement Speed, Attack Speed, Ability Power, Magic Penetration, even Spellvamp is a pretty well-working option for even more sustain. Experiment and see what fits you the most. If you were to put together a rune page for Zac using the most basic runes most of us have, you should probably go:
 
9 Attack Speed Marks
9 Armor Seals
9 Magic Resist Blues
3 Ability Power Quintesences
 
And if you lack a free rune page, feel free to use your standard mage one as well. So long you have some Armor and damage amplification in it, you're good to go!
 
Masteries:

 

Given how Zac functions, 9/21/0 is probably the best mastery setup you can go with on him. The 9 points in offense give you more Cooldown Reduction so you can use your abilities more often, and some extra Ability Power to make them stronger. One point of argument is the Expose Weakness vs Double-Edged Sword choice. I prefer Expose Weakness, since it's easy to hit entire enemy team wtih your abilities to up the damage of your entire team. Double-Edged Sword meanwhile gives you a 2% damage increase as opposed to 1%, but it also makes you receive 1% more, which for a tank might spell doom most of the time. That's a 5% increase against the entire enemy team, which is quite a lot especially in case of fed Marksmen. Wouldn't recommend.
 
Meanwhile in Defense tree, feel free to take out points from Resistance and Hardiness, depending on the enemy team composition. You probably won't need that extra MR against a full AD team, but I'd be very careful with taking out the extra Armor, since it obviously translates into a bit more surivability in the jungle. Not much to say about the rest, except for the fact that Second Wind is underrated as hell, especially on Zac, who tends to thread on that less than 25% line quite a lot, which will make you really tough to kill at that point, so long you can pick up your blobs.
 
If you REALLY wanted to, you could go into the Utility tree as opposed to Offense, but it doesn't really give you enough. Sure, longer potions and lower summoner spell cooldown is pretty great, but you trade off a lot of damage for it. Also, don't even attempt gimmicky pages like 0/17/13 to get Spellvamp from the Utility tree. I've seen them quite a lot around the net, and while they do make you durable while fightning the creeps, they make you way less useful against champions, which you will be mostly doing. Although if you plan on AFK-farming the entire game, go for it.

 

That would be it for today! Hopefully tomorrow, or in 2 days the latest, we'll dive into the in-game stuff about Zac - skill usage, build paths, and hopefully more. Stay tuned. Back to the drawing board!

[Cirrus]

you didn't finish your birdman guide what's up with that

 

Zac is a pretty cool champion. I liked most of your post; you did miss a key weakness (or maybe you just didn't mention it :<) though - his lategame scaling is poor regardless of how he builds. taking advantage of your early-mid strength is crucial to a successful game, whether you are jungle or lane Zac. re: runes and such, armor is definitely better than health in the short run and long run (if you wish for scaling, go with scaling armor). Zac is not doing too well in the sustain department in season 5 currently; I mean, it's okay, but you get beat to half-death a lot more quickly than you used to.

 

the base damage buffs on E and R are really really nice though. Zac lives and dies by his bases most of the time.

[CLG Klavier]

Azir was more or less me rambling about his place in the game and whatnot, I don't have a full guide in plans yet, but hopefully soon.

 

Bad late game scaling...depends what you mean by it. Damage-wise, I wouldn't say so since his W has a %HP damage on it, so the longer the game goes, the more relevant it becomes, and you can spam it for days thanks to the cooldown reducing mechanic on it, PLUS you still got your amazing initiation.

[Dad]

I feel like Azir is going to skyrocket in popularity.  More and more pros are playing it and he is just FUN to play.  I feel like his spot in game is high placement.  He has incredible zoning, ganking, and playmaking potential.  Not to mention a high skill cap.  But I love what you've written.  Keep it up.

 

EDIT:  And make me a Viktor guide.  Fuck your meta.  GLORIOUS REVOLUTION.

[CLG Klavier]

So, sorry for the lack of content, but this Christmas was busier on me than I figured it could be. Tomorrow I have an entire day off, so I will finish up the Zac guide for sure, and maybe throw in something extra as a compensation.

[Cirrus]

My opinion of Zac's lategame problems are twofold; he cannot actually pick up many of his blobs in a lategame teamfight, leading to decreased durability, and his placement doesn't always lead him having the best sustained damage (because W can miss, et cetera) - although it looks pretty good on paper, he's as not much of a threat to the backline as he is early/midgame. His CC also becomes a bit lacking as the game goes on as much of it is frontloaded - compare and contrast with someone like Nautilus who will lock you down for a year, or Amumu who will beat your face in with his existence as a holy hand grenade, or Rammus ... yeah.

 

Initiation is good throughout the game though for sure. Questionable one-man followup as the game goes on is the thing I was referring to. His team should still be ideally able to take advantage.