Saturday, December 10, 2011

Random Tangent!: League of Legends

In lieu of my recent detachment from Skyrim, I've found myself returning to League of Legends quite often. Its forty-minute, action-packed, committed sessions of gameplay always pull me back for another round - I might be addicted. Personally, my favorite characters are the only ones I can play - 'Mage' classes. The mage classes focus more upon the ability power statistic - they use their abilities, which cost mana, to inflict damage upon their enemies or heal their allies. I find myself attached to these characters - they're incredibly fun for me to play, as they deal out massive damage relatively quickly, and have the most powerful stuns and slows in the game. The only downside is their tendency towards slower movement speeds and a 'squishier' nature.

My two favorite characters to play are Veigar and Morgana. They have two of the best stuns in the game, and can deal enough damage quickly enough to down many other champions, with the right item build. Veigar's area-of-effect stun sets up a fence around the area you cast it upon that stuns any enemies that touch it for two or three seconds - quite a long time in combat. Skilled Veigar players then drop his AoE bomb spell, which scales almost directly with ability power, leaving many opponents at two-thirds health or less. Follow this up with Veigar's ultimate and his main spell, and champions are dead or dying, easy enough to finish off with a few auto-attacks or an Ignite spell. Morgana has similar abilities - her skill-shot stun lasts for 4 seconds and deals out quite a bit of damage (300 + a percentage of ability power at level 5), her AoE deals damage every second, and lowers enemy magic resist. She has a spellshield that can deflect some damage, and her ultimate attaches chains to every enemy champion around her, dealing damage at first, and inflicting the same amount after a few seconds, subsequently stunning every champion still chained for 4 seconds. In combat, this ultimate can disable the entirety of the enemy team quickly - if she survives. Both Morgana and Veigar have very little health, even at level 18. As mages, they must stay behind their damage tanks to avoid a quick and painful death.

Another champion I've recently been attempting to learn is named Ezrael. Throughout the League of Legends gaming community, Ezrael's name is a joke - he's seen as a useless champion that almost ensures defeat for any team. For some strange reason, this is exactly what draws me to him. His skills focus around both ability power and attack damage, and his two primary skills are both medium-range skill shots. The other two - his third ability and his ultimate - are a ranged teleportation attack and a wall of sparkles that can fly across the map, dealing damage to all enemies in its path. This skill set makes him a true challenge to master - each ability use must be timed perfectly, as Ezrael is a squishy character, and lacks a large mana pool. Though this may be true, his ultimate is perfect at taking champions at low health down from almost across the map - the range is somewhere between one quarter and one half of the length of a lane. Every enemy it passes through removes 8% of the damage from its effect, but still, it deals a relatively large amount (500 + ability power and attack damage, if I remember correctly).

The fields of Runeterra have called to me so often recently that I've not been able to put this game down, and if you haven't already checked it out, I'd strongly suggest it.

Have fun, good gaming, and remember: don't feed the trolls (or the enemy team!)
-Toast

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