The NA scene have always had then main powerhouses: Team Solomid, Team Dignitas and CLG, which was later renamed into CLG Prime after forming a secondary NA team; and then there was a relatively fresh Team Curse, which quickly became the most expensive team in esports.

The famous $2 million Curse Gaming Mansion.

The recent tournaments have shown some fresh, yet ambitious and quite scary competitors: TSM Evo, an all-star team; Team Dynamic, the home of famous jungler NintendudeX; mTw.NA (was later picked up by Monomaniac and renamed into mMe Ferus), Orbit Gaming and Team Legion (it’s most famous member is Cruzerthebruzer, world’s best Lee Sin player). Unfortunately for Orbit, they ended up being 9th, and were not invited.
TSM Evo, while having the highest amount of points out of all five, was not really expected to win anything, and the reason for that is the team’s best player, Aphromoo, who carried it numerous times in the past, leaving the team (the official reason was that the team did not practice enough) for mTw.NA a month before the Regionals.

The quarterfinal games brought disappointment for some, but otherwise they went as expected. The underdog teams were showing solid performance, often coming out of early game with an even score, however, as soon as the first teamfights started happening, the lack of coordination they had compared to NA powerhouses became obvious.

Aphromoo, one of the best AD Carries in the world.

Team Legion probably gave the best performance out of all underdog teams, but CLG Prime had something very special up their sleeves: the North American powerhouse spent the last several months living and practicing in South Korea, participating in OGN Champions and learning from the Korean meta. The strategy they chose for the first game caught Legion by surprise, resulting in them getting quickly destroyed on every front.However, Legion managed to adapt remarkably quickly, not letting CLG snowball as fast as they did during the first game, slowly capitalizing on their weaknesses and mistakes, and, to everyone’s surprise, winning the second game with a spectacular base race.

It seemed like CLG underestimated Legion, and did not expect them to learn so quickly, so for the last game they went with a classic team composition. Their plan was to simply outplay Legion on the ground known well both to them and their opponent, and, even though they eventually succeeded, it was a very tough victory.
All in all, this was the tournament’s second best series, and will surely have an impact on solo queue: expect Teleport being picked up more often, as well as Promote on Support, and possibly even an ADC/Support midlane.

HotshotGG getting carried by his team. Literally.

As tense as Quarterfinals were, Semifinals is where the fierce action erupted: four North American powerhouses had to fight for three tickets to Season 2 finals, which meant that one of them would no longer be considered a top NA team, would not get a shot at the $2 million prize pool and won’t be receiving financial support from Riot Games – a very tough blow to take for any powerhouse.

TSM versus Curse

The first game brought no surprises: every team went with a composition and strategy they knew best to make sure they give a one hundred percent performance, as none of them wanted to risk. TSM made some classic picks, such as Maokai and Graves, while Curse were using their famous Morgana + Vladimir composition. The game remained remarkably close until late midgame, with both teams making mistakes as well as capitalizing on mistakes of their opponents, and it was then when one unfortunate for Curse teamfight suddenly turned out into rapidly snowballing advantage for TSM. For some reason Curse were finding Reginald’s Ryze a bigger threat than Chaox; they managed to kill him during the next teamfight, but it was Chaox cleaning up the remaining Curse players and ending the game.

Cop, the ADC player for Team Curse

The second game was promising to be just as clutch, and it probably would have been, if TSM did not make a fatal mistake of getting caught out of position near Dragon, resulting in 4 kills for 2 for Curse. From this point TSM could no longer have fair exchanges, and Curse knew it: they started aggressively invading TSM’s jungle and forcing objectives, making TSM accept fights they would potentially lose. Curse’s AD Carry player, Cop, also managed to heavily snowball off those fights, quickly pulling ahead of Chaox, which soon became obvious as he made an impressive quadrakill. All of TSM’s attempts to stop Curse from snowballing failed, and even TheOddOne Smite stealing Baron from Curse barely helped their situation.
For the third game Curse decided to step away from their composition, banning Vladimir and letting Reginald pick up Morgana. Nyjacky picked Ahri, creating a very favorable lineup for himself, while Westrice got his hands on Darius – one of his scariest champions.The game was looking solid for Curse, as they were slowly pushing their map presence, but Reginald showed it was his turn to shape the course of the game on Morgana, landing a long range Dark Binding on Nyjacky and initiating with Flash + Ultimate shortly after, bringing his team 2 kills and a Dragon for free.

Crs Nyjacky, quite possibly the scariest Morgana player to walk on Earth.

And just to prove that it wasn’t an accident, he landed another long range Dark Binding a few minutes later, following up with an ultimate and turning the teamfight into a 4 for 1 exchange. At this point all TSM had to do is keeping up the pressure, taking down all 3 inhibitors and finishing the game shortly after.

Dignitas versus CLG Prime

It was clear that CLG would go with their usual composition: what could have worked against a less experienced team like Legion, would surely bring more troubles to CLG than their opponents if their opponents are the titans of NA scene. The game turned out to be incredibly tense, yet at the same time it was being dragged out because none of the teams wanted to make any risky moves, knowing how hard an opponent of their level can snowball off them. It was 35 minutes into the game, 2:1 CLG – Dig score, with only 5k gold difference due to poor Dragon control from CLG, when Dignitas decided they were ready to safely force the Baron. When CLG came to interrupt them, Scarra landed a perfect ultimate on Gragas, splitting Bigfatlp from the rest of the team and picking him up, while Patoy on Nunu stopped the rest of CLG with an amazing ultimate at the cost of his life.

The main reason Dignitas got into Grand Finals – Scarra.

At this point Dignitas just had to clean up the rest of CLG and get a free Baron buff. From then, CLG were screwed: their only frontliner, Shen, had no MR built and was getting wrecked by the insane burst Scarra was pulling off on Gragas, and one of their lategame champions was very far behind on items. CLG still had a farmed Kog’maw, arguably the scariest lategame carry, but CLG’s frontliners were getting melted way too fast to let Doublelift on Kog deal enough damage to Dignitas players.
Game two began with a slight surprise, as Dignitas decided to use the poke composition, which their opponents, CLG, were originally famous for: they picked up AP Nidalee for top lane and Caitlyn for ADC, while keeping Gragas. If you are not familiar with the poke comp – it generally revolves around having three champions with heavy high range poke and ability to disengage, and a jungler with good initiation that would eventually grow into a heavy frontliner. With Dignitas running poke comp and CLG having mostly close range champions, Dig were able to push their map pressure, taking down all outer turrets 20 minutes in. That, combined with a poor Dragon control, made CLG once again fall behind on gold, and followed by a bad Baron call resulted in CLG losing their first inhibitor just 27 minutes in.

An actual screenshot from the 2nd game of Dignitas vs CLG.

At this point CLG were almost 10k gold behind, and with HotshotGG getting caught near Baron shortly after it seemed like CLG are about to fall, but they managed to interrupt Dignitas with an unbelievable teamfight, taking 3 kills and the Baron buff for free. 35 minutes in this was the first turning point of the match: CLG, finally able to take the initiative, were dictating the rules and taking down Dignitas’ turrets. The next two teamfights turned out to be complete disasters for Dignitas, bringing Doublelift on Kog 7 kills and letting CLG catch up and even pull ahead on gold.

The second turning point happened 55 minutes in, when Dignitas already had one inhibitor down and CLG were pressuring the second one. Dignitas initiated another unfortunate teamfight, almost instantly losing their Jungler and Support to Doublelift, but Doublelift went slightly too far, letting Imaqtpie on Caitlyn quickly kill him, and, even though it resulted in a triple for Kog, without him CLG were simply unable to continue pressuring Dignitas’ base against two high range poke champions, and were forced to leave. If Doublelift played a bit safer, and did not let himself get caught, it could possibly have been game right there. CLG didn’t know yet how badly that mistake would turn out against them.

Dignitas after winning over CLG and progressing into the Grand Finals.

CLG giving up Baron after a bad teamfight initiation allowed Dignitas to fully use the power of the poke composition, focusing on taking down CLG’s inhibitors and doing an amazing job at disengaging every time CLG tried to catch one of the players. The tension was growing by the minute, as even a slightest mistake could potentially end the game. Dignitas managed to take down all three inhibitors, and at this point CLG were pinned down by superminions and Dignitas pressuring the remainings of their base from all sides, but even then CLG refused to go down easily, defending their base to the very last moment, which made the inevitable ending look even more brutal.

CLG Prime vs Curse: 3rd place match

This was the last chance for both teams to get their tickets to Season 2 and Season 3 World Championship. If CLG lost, they’d no longer be concidered a top NA team, which means the time they spent in Korea was a waste. If Curse lost, it would’ve meant that the world’s most expensive team isn’t among the best ones even for their regional. Everything was on the map.

CLG Prime’s top lane player, Voyboy.

CLG once again decided to go with their triple Teleport strategy, putting pressure on every Curse’s lane, appearing with unpredictable ganks and split pushes. Though Curse were able stay on par on gold, successfully exchanging most towers and capitalizing on CLG’s poor Dragon control, it was CLG’s forced Baron teamfights that decided the game. It seemed like Curse were simply unprepared for that kind of aggressiveness, and every time Nyjacky initiated with Morgana ultimate, Westrice was too far away to follow up, rendering the core of Curse’s team composition useless.
Curse realized that their teamfight aimed composition worked against them in the first game, and went with a global presence one, picking up Shen and Karthus. The weakness of such team composition is usually the individual weakness of the lanes, and this is exactly what CLG decided to try to capitalize on, knowing that, if they would be able to avoid falling to Karthus ults and Shen counterganks, they would easily crush them in teamfights. Unfortunately for CLG, they made a few careless moves that let Curse pull ahead of them by 5k gold, but it simply wasn’t enough: as soon as Voyboy’s Jax hit lategame state, Curse lost control over CLG. They started losing Barons, turrets, and, despite Nyjacky dealing destructive amounts of damage on Karthus, teamfights – Voyboy was quickly getting unstoppable. At this point there was nothing Curse could do to save the game.

Team Solomid holding their $40,000 check.

TSM vs Dignitas: Grand Finals

Despite Grand Finals being usually very anticipated, and these finals being no exception, they turned out to be extremely one sided, which is why I won’t be doing in-depth analysis of the matches. The reasons (there were several of them) the games were an easy victory for TSM were, first of all, Dignitas not properly preparing to face them. The main goal team Dignitas had heading into NA Regionals was getting into Season 2 World Championship, and, due to their tournament bracket position, they knew that the only way they would have to fight against TSM for a World Championship spot is if they both lost semifinals, which was highly unlikely.
The second reason was TSM knowing NA scene too well: they have a positive record against every NA team, which made preparing to facing TSM an even less appealing perspective for Dig. As a result, they got stomped by TSM.

The consequences

TSM Evo:
Shortly after the Regionals it became known that TSM Evo will be parting their ways. As Wingsofdeath explained in his blog, the team has not been performing very well ever since Aphromoo left it, so the players decided that, in case they would be unable to win a trip to Season 2 World Championship or at least show some signs of improvement, they would disband it.

Curse:
Though some may argue that the team had little time to fully prepare to Season 2 finals, the three months (since their last roster change) the team had should have been enough to at the very least become one of the top 3 NA teams. Instead they, as the Regionals have shown, remained a #4 team – which they have always been. Though it most definitely will not be disbanded – the amount of money Curse has been pumping into it is just too much for that – it will surely see some roster changes in preparation to Season 3. One, in particular, would possibly be replacing Westrice with Wingsofdeath from TSM Evo, who is known for having a bigger champion pool and being able to play “op” champions when needed.

Update #1: Westrice confirmed on his Facebook that Curse won’t be changing their roster, but instead will swap roles.

Update #2: Saintvicious said on his stream that “Westrice is benched” from Team Curse. It’s not official yet who’s going to replace him, but rumor is that it’s going to be Salce, previously TSM Evo’s mid lane player, who is currently practicing top lane in solo queue (for yet unknown reason).

North American Meta vs. European Meta

North American teams seem to be very conservative with their favourite champions, using Graves and Morgana, which European teams have fully replaced with Ezreal and Gragas/Orianna. The second noticeable trend is Leona being Europe’s favourite aggressive support, while NA teams are sticking to Blitzcrank. Lastly, the junglers: while Alistar and Nunu are being recognized as top tier junglers by both regions, Europe seem to be also favouring Malphite, where NA are instead going with Shyvana and Olaf.

While 3 out of 5 top bans are identical for both regions, the other two are really reflecting which champions are believed to be making the biggest difference: for NA those champions are Yorick and Karthus, while for EU it’s Malphite and Maokai.

Season 2 World Championship preview

Begins: on the 4th of October, in Los Angeles;

So far, 9 out of 12 slots have already been taken:

The 3 teams from Europe are going to be M5, SK and CLG EU;
For NA those are TSM, Dignitas and CLG Prime;
Then there are two Chinese teams (World Elite and Invictus Gaming) and one from Taiwan (Taipei Assasins).

As for the remaining slots, the first one would go to the winner of Regional Finals in Da Nang (the front runners for this one are Singapore Sentinels and Saigon Jokers); the second one would be given away at Korean Regionals (here the frontrunners are Xenics Storm and NaJin Sword); and the last one would go away to whichever Korean team gets more Challenger Circuit points (either Azubu Blaze or Azubu Frost – depends on Frost being able to defeat CLG EU in OGN Champions Summer Grand Finals).

Additionally, it was recently told that out of the total $2,000,000 prize pool, exactly $1,000,000 would go to the 1st place team.

Top 2 games of the event

#1 – Dignitas vs. CLG Prime Game 2

#2 – CLG Prime vs. Legion Game 2

Complete MLG Anaheim champion statistics

 Games you want to make sure you haven’t missed (some of the VODs are already available here):

TSM vs MRN Game 1
One hell of a pure, entertaining wreckage. TSM tried to force a fast surrender (which they promised to deliver in a pre-game interview) by initiating fights at every possible occasion, but ended up giving away a lot of kills and nearly losing their control of the match. While barely serious, this match turned out to be one of the most entertaining ones of the tournament.

Curse.EU vs Team Dynamic Game 3
After getting completely destroyed in the first game, Team Dynamic managed to quickly recover and completely shut down Curse.EU in the second one. This was a clear warning for Curse.EU, and they came back to the third game giving a very strong performance, which, combined with some  unexpected plays TD were pulling off, made it an incredibly tense and fun game to watch.

TSM vs Fnatic Game 1
Fnatic was being considered one of the underdogs of the tournament due to the recent roster change (Shushei being replaced with Soaz) and Fnatic under performing for the whole last year, which is why the outstanding performance they showed knocking out TSM EVO to the losers bracket went completely unexpected.
The intensity of the first TSM vs Fnatic game was huge; at some point it felt like Fnatic are going to claim the victory, however TSM managed to drag the game out, at some point even out smiting Fnatic (very well known for being the team you don’t want to fight for Baron with). Overall, a great game.

TSM vs CLG.EU Game 1-3
Being the most anticipated series of MLG Anaheim, it delivered everything we were hoping for: highest level of gameplay, close games and clutch comebacks.
Also watch out for the mindblowing AP Kog’maw gameplay from CLG Froggen during the second game, which he turned around by picking up a spectacular quadrakill:

Watch this video on YouTube.

CLG.NA vs Dignitas Game 2 (Loser bracket finals)
The second CLG.NA vs Dignitas game quickly turned into Dignitas favour in early levels, which they used to start agressively snowballing, entering mid game with a 9-21 score and two fed carries. However, CLG.NA managed to use the flaws in Dignitas’ agression playstyle to shut down their snowballing, at some point having Bigfatlp turn the game around with an incredible Baron fight, which led CLG to a clean 2-0 victory. Overall a very tense game with probably the toughest comeback MLG Anaheim has seen.

CLG.NA vs TSM (grand finals)
With the recent roster changes in CLG.NA (HotshotGG leaving top lane and taking Santvicious’ place in the jungle) as well as their new member, Voyboy (one of the scariest top laners out there) being unable to attent to MLG Anaheim, nobody really expected CLG.NA to perform well. Surprisingly, they managed to do remarkably well and even take out Curse.NA, but then were beaten by Dignitas and lost our attention. However, CLG.NA seems to have managed to set their mind right, take out MLG Anaheim favourite team CLG.EU in a very close fight, take revenge on Dignitas in the losers bracket final, and then proceed into the Grand Finals with a good old classic rivalry match-up of CLG.NA versus TSM.

Quality plays from ReginaId.

The first game of CLG.NA vs TSM turned out to be a complete disaster for CLG, making TSM look even more unbreakable, but once again CLG.NA managed to keep their moral up and bring some unexpected strategies and clutch plays, winning the next two games and claiming the first best out of three.
The sudden loss of the first series was a wake-up call for TSM, and they were able to open the second series with a decisive victory. The second game was CLG’s turn to win again, bringing it up to a 1-1 score and the last game of the tournament. TSM came up with an unusual strategy for the last game, sending Karthus top to prevent Nidalee from pushing, and Kayle mid to shut down Kassadin, and it payed off. TSM started rapidly snowballing, and even HotshotGG stealing Baron was not enough to stop them: TSM took the second series with a total score of 3-3.

Overall, one of the most spectacular Grand Finals, with advantage frequently jumping between two equally strong teams, and a level of tension comparable to IEM Kiev Grand Finals.

Even though in the end CLG.NA were unable to take down TSM, they nevertheless proved themselves as one of the leading League of Legends powerhouses. HotshotGG, who was expected to under perform due to being new to his role of a jungler, proved to be fitting it perfectly. On the other hand, TSM have shown that, while they’re still not quite at the level they were at during IEM Kiev, they’re still an incredibly strong team, and one of the front-runners for the Season 2 championship finals.

Congratulations to TSM on winning MLG Anaheim, and to CLG.NA on making it to the Grand Finals despite being an underdog team.

1st place:  TSM – $20,000
2nd place:  CLG.NA – $12,000
3rd place:  Dignitas – $5,000
4th place:  Team Dynamic – $3,000

Team Solomid.

The next major tournament is going to be DreamHack (16-19 June), and will have 8 teams (M5, CLG.EU, AL, fnatic, Na’Vi, Teamless, Fragzone and HCL) and a $40,000 prize pool. Make sure you don’t miss it!

The new champion, Darius, the Hand of Noxus (most likely named after two famous top lane players – Dyrus (TSM) and Darien (M5), was released several days ago, and has been advertised as a powerful top laner and jungler. How strong he actually is, and which roles does he fit the most?

Hemorrhage (passive):  Darius’ basic attacks and damaging abilities cause enemies to bleed for 12 / 15 / 18 / 21 / 24 / 27 / 30 / 33 / 36 (+0.4 per bonus attack damage) magic damage over 5 seconds, stacking up to 5 times.

Darius gains 5% movement speed for each bleeding enemy champion.

Decimate ( Q ):  Darius deals 70 / 105 / 140 / 175 / 210 (+0.7 per bonus attack damage) physical damage to all nearby enemies in a circle around him. Champions in the outer half of the ability are struck by the blade, taking 50% additional damage.

Crippling Strike ( W ): Darius’ next basic attack deals additional 120 / 140 / 160 / 180 / 200% damage and slows the target’s movement and attack speed for 2 seconds.

Crippling strike’s base cooldown is reduced by 1 second for each stack of Hemorrhage on the target.

Apprehend ( E ):

(Active) Darius pulls in all enemies in front of him.

(Passive) Darius gains 5 / 10 / 15 / 20 / 25% armor penetration.

Noxian Guillotine ( R ): Darius leaps to target enemy champion and strikes a lethal blow, dealing 160 / 250 / 340 (+0.75 per bonus attack damage) true damage. For each stack of Hemorrhage on the target, Noxian Guillotine deals an additional 20% damage.

The cooldown is refreshed if Noxian Guillotine kills the target, or if the target dies within 0.5 seconds after use.

 

First thing to note is that, unlike most bruisers, Darius has absolutely no built-in sustain nor mobility, which is already a solid reason to place him below the top jungling tier. His Q allows him to clear jungle camps at a reasonable speed, however it’s not quite enough for him to compete with counter jungling monsters like Shyvana or Mundo. In top lane the lack of sustain also makes it rather hard for him to successfully exchange during the laning phase, and the lack of mobility makes him weak and vulnerable to ganks early game. But the reason we’re not going to instantly place him in the lowest tier and call it a day is – you probably already know the answer – his ultimate.

Watch this video on YouTube.

Watch this video on YouTube.

Darius’ ultimate is why he’s so feared of in teamfights. The base damage (up to 320 on level 6) is huge, the AD scaling (up to 1.5) is even better, and on top of that it deals true damage. Combined with W and E this allows him to destroy enemy carries in bare seconds, putting him just slightly below top tier assassins like Irelia or Jax. What Darius lacks as an assassin is mobility (his E range is way behind Irelia’s or Jax’ similar abilities), which can be somewhat compensated by using movement speed quintessences; and instant burst: his passive, Hemorrhage, requires him to actually stick to his target for a bit to be able to maximize his burst, giving plenty of time for the opponent’s team to react and possibly prevent it.

 Conclusion

You most likely won’t be seeing Darius in the competitive play, as at every aspect he’s good at there’s a champion that will do better. Also I expect his ultimate to receive a nerf – possibly the cooldown reset getting removed, because right now it’s one of the most ridiculous abilities in the game. However, Darius will surely be staying in solo queue for a while: he really starts to shine in teamfights, easily picking up kills with his ultimate – and that is much more likely to happen in solo queue, where fights occur more often, sometimes over nothing, giving him a much wider room for snowballing.

Lategame viability B+
Mobility D
Initiation F
Burst A
Constant damage C+
Crowd control D

Today let’s have quick run through the features spectator mode is equipped with.

I don’t wanna miss a thing

Spectator mode allows you to track what skills players are maxing first, what items they have, how much gold they possess and how much they’ve farmed since the beginning of the game. Camera controls can be set to:

• Watch one, specific player

• Free mode, so you will control what part of map you want to observe

• Directed mode: With an AI controlled camera set to automatically follow the action. From what I have seen it catches about 80-90% of interesting moments. I’m not complaining here as non AI is perfect (except GLaDOS or in LoLs case Orianna) and if you think the AI is not doing its job properly, you can switch between the modes at any time.

With timeshift controls you can jump to any moment of the game, see the most exciting moments in slow motion and even watch them twice and then fast forward to the point you left watching the game live.

3 minute delay

In any game you happen to observe, there will be a 3 minute delay preventing you from literately map hacking or any other abusive behaviour. Imagine you are watching your friends’ game in real time and telling him about every move and position of the enemy team. That would be insanely stupid. Since we are on topic of spying on your mates though:

Watching your friends

Playing Big Brother just got pushed to another level. More seriously though you can watch any normal or ranked game your friend happens to be playing. The feature provides you with something to do while you waiting for them to finish a game and play next one with you or to actually you’re your friend by pointing out their mistakes which they may have missed in the fray. Finally it could even be used by professional players or coaches to train less skilled adepts of LoL.

Featured Games

The LoL client now has a list of live Featured Games that you can watch. These games cycle at regular intervals so if you don’t think there is anything worth watching at the moment, stay awhile and maybe some more interesting games will pop up. Featured Games tend to showcase high-level play, so if you want to improve yourself perhaps this is good way to start, as you can see skill and item choices at any time.

Opportunities

Spectator mode opens a lot of possibilities for commentators of LoL games. Now with every feature I have mentioned above, commentating games and streaming via twitch, own3d or uploading them on youtube has never been easier. Can we have a LoL version of Day[9] or Husky? I certainly hope so. Anyone can try it; perhaps even you have what it takes to turn your hobby into more profitable activity. And the more people will focus on producing good quality commentaries the more popular League of Legends will get.

Spectator mode allows also less skilled players to improve themselves by watching the best player in their region compete with each other. I hope even more featured games will be implemented in the future, as currently we only have access to 5 games at one time. The ability to add some favourite players without adding them to your friend’s list would be a nice implementation so we could cheer for teams we are supporting.

What about our dear Blizzard? Missed chances?

Now it’s the time for some Blizzard bashing = my favourite part. WoW players have been asking for Observer mode as well for a long time. I’m not talking about PvP only, especially with the popularity of the recent PvE competition between Vodka and Method hosted by Athene. This showed that a lot of people are willing to watch speed runs. It’s not like observer mode couldn’t be implemented into WoW, as the guys over at Arena Tournament have managed to do it. But are we going to see that kind of feature in the official version? I honestly doubt it.

Spectator mode gets even more publicity for games with the amount of videos covering the title blooming after it gets released. Let’s just hope more game developers will realize that and put some kind of observation feature into their games.

Discuss

4pl All Or Nothing 2 bracket

While both Natus Vincere and SK unfortunately faced and lost to some of the toughest European teams in the first round, the French powerhouse Against All Authority lost to a freshly formed Luna Gaming. This might be a result of aAa‘s roster change:  it’s mid lane player MoMa recently left the team, mentioning on his Facebook page that it was facing serious mood problems.

On the other hand, Poland team Meet Your Makers has shown some great performance, beating CLG.eu (former AL) in the first round, and then delivering an incredible second game versus M5, absolutely crushing them and then snatching the victory with a very clutch baron steal; even though they still lost the series. Definitely a must watch game.

The final two games of M5 versus Absolute Legends (former Mistral) turned out to be surprisingly one sided: AL proved to be one of the few teams that know how to beat M5, landing one blow after another without giving Moscow Five a single chance to recover and get back in the game; but even with a 0-11 score and a 10k gold difference the Russian powerhouse fought back amazingly well, setting the series’ intensity on a level comparable to the recent IPL Vegas.

Even though M5 still remain undefeated, losing only one offline game since they joined the pro scene, 4pl All Or Nothing 2 showed their weaknesses along with their strengths, and further proved the fact that they can be beaten. Of course, it must be said that online tournaments come with additional circumstances like timezone difference: for example, Moscow Five had to play in the finals at 3 AM.

4PL All Or Nothing 2 finals VODs

M5 vs AL Game 1

Watch this video on YouTube.

M5 vs AL Game 2

Watch this video on YouTube.

League of Legends is currently one of the most popular online games available. If you want to know the reasons behind its success dig in and read more.

5. Similar to WoW (Graphic, Champions)

Both LoL and WoW have similar, cartoony, colourful graphics, and let’s face it; the champions don’t have many details in-game. Even on max graphic settings both games don’t look particularly good. But the resemblance is going far further: A lot of champions are shamelessly copied from certain WoW specs/classes (nothing wrong about that WoW is taking everything good from other games as well), and the masteries and runes seems strangely similar to gems/talents, so any WoW player who is starting to play LoL will quickly find a lot of familiarities he or she can relate to.

4. Easy to pick up, relatively easy to master

Generally MOBA games are easy when you contrast them with FPS, RTS or MMO arenas. While having the most resemblance to last genre, as you have to proper position yourself in teamfight, there is a lot less abilities your hero posses. So the only thing to be worried about is last hitting and map awareness. Riot goes even further to make  LoL even more casual, when compared to other titles within the MOBA Genre: Creep denying and gold loss upon death were cut out from the game to make it more forgiving and noob friendly.

3. Plenty of champions and map to choose from

The variety of 90 champions and 3 maps easily prevents casual person from getting bored over the game. When you get bored with one hero, you simply buy and play another one to experience his or her abilities and play style. Moreover a lot of champions can be and should be built in different ways, depending on the composition of your team and the enemies team composition. If you add to this to the choice of  3 maps, which you should play and build your hero in alternative manner, the game itself could be hardly called dull or lacking of content.

2. Huge money to win on tournaments

The League of Legends Season Two prize pool is 5 million dollars! That amount of money surely does convince the ‘wannabe pro-gamer’ kind of people to invest they time in getting better at League of Legends. As you play League of Legends you quickly discover the game is hardly playable as solo player, so you will drag your friends into it in order to make arranged team, which can greatly improving your chances of winning and competing for grand prizes.

1. Free to play

I think this is the most compelling factor for majority of people. Free to download and free to play in one package. On top of that you can obtain every power and champion in game without spending a single penny. However if you suffer from Pokemon Syndrome (gotta catch ‘em all) you might want to say goodbye to any social life or get ready for paying for champions from your pocket, because every new champion cost 6300 ip (which is about 85 games played, each taking 40 minutes on average) or 975 rp (about 5 pounds).

Discuss.

Also you can watch what Blitzcrank, your favourite League of Legends robot have to say about those reasons:

Watch this video on YouTube.

Firstly apologises for been a week late on reporting about this newest LoL patch. I will try to avoid this kind of delay in the future, but for now let’s just cut to the chase.

Dodge removal

As you might remember from previous patch, Sivir had her dodge passive redone along with a whole champion overhaul. The same thing was promised for Udyr.

Udyr

• Monkey’s Agility no longer grants Dodge

This is a brand new Udyr for you, thank you Riot, you are awesome. In all seriousness though, the only champion left that scales with Dodge is Jax, so I expect he will get a remake next patch. Also the dodge runes are being removed from the game. Players who own them are already getting IP back.  While Riot claimed that removing dodge from game is a high priority as it’s badly designed RNG, they seem to be taking it rather slowly. I will report more on this topic when they finally finish.

Champion balance

Looks like the last Sivir changes were not good enough. Despite the fact last patch made her much stronger, the changes to this champion keep coming.

Sivir

• Boomerang Blade
• Base damage reduced to 70/115/160/205/250 from 80/125/170/215/260
• Now scales with ability power at a 0.5 ratio
• Ricochet
• Damage falloff per bounce reduced to 20% from 25%
• Fixed a bug which caused Ricochet to cost additional mana on throwing the projectile

With Ability Power scaling given back build including Hextech Gunblade and Trinity Force became extremely potent, giving her Boomerang even more damage capability with opportunity to heal you as well. Due to constant buffs we can see a much more Sivir across every elo range.

Riot took interest in long forgotten Yordle caster known by the name of Veigar, reducing mana cost of every one of his spells.

Veigar

• Primordial Burst mana cost reduced to 125/175/225 from 150/200/250
• Dark Matter mana cost reduced to 70/80/90/100/110 from 100/110/120/130/140
• Baleful Strike
• Mana cost adjusted to 60/65/70/75/80 from 75 at all levels
• Total ability power accumulated from Baleful Strike is now displayed in the tooltip
• Event Horizon mana cost reduced to 80/90/100/110/120 from 80/95/110/125/140

I do not think reducing mana cost will address every issue as to why Veigar is not so much a popular champion. While his lane sustainability is greatly improved by it, he still lacks some escape mechanism and, to be clear, even if you place you stun perfectly it might be not enough to keep assassins from 2 shotting you.

While lots of low-elo players were shouting for Tryndamere nerfs, the higher elo players already know how to counter him and don’t care much about changes made to him.

Tryndamere

• Bloodlust heal per 1 fury reduced to 0.5/0.95/1.4/1.85/2.3 from 0.65/1.15/1.65/2.15/2.65

It will reduce his lane presence if he is doing well in his lane, while if he is a little back it will have almost no impact on him whatsoever. After this nerf he dies even faster to an ignite + exhaust combo. Personally I do not understand the logic of catering to less skilled players as I do not even remember when I saw him on top elo (either solo or tournament play).

Twisted Fate received some life-quality revamps to become more viable carry. With improved auto-attack range it is much easier to farm creeps or harass opponents but the most important change is target locking after picking a card. With auto-attack stop after you lock the card, it is much easier to throw it at the target you wanted to.

Twisted Fate

• Auto-attack range increased to 525 from 510
• Pick a Card will no longer randomly attack targets once a card has been picked and will not stop attacking if Twisted Fate is given an attack command or is already attacking a target

Dodge runes are dead, long live new runes

With extra IP given to players because of the dodge rune removal, it would not be the Riot way to not introduce something new for you to spend your precious IP on. That is indeed the case and we have given much more new runes to choose from. Hybrid penetration and +bonus % health runes boost a champions that scales with the particular stats (like Akali, Jax, Kayle for hybrids and Cho, Vladimir and Volibear for health). Spell vamp and life steal runes might improve lane sustainability. Gold per second runes can benefit every champion but they are the best for support heroes. Overall Riot gave the players much more viable options to customise champions and, with new runes, there is a chance we will see less cookie-cutter builds.

Looks like new jungle is here to stay

There was no changes made to jungling, so it seems Riot intend for it to stay this way. Leveling in the jungle is now ridiculously hard, it is much harder to keep up level-wise with your partners in lanes. There were a lot of complaints from top players as well as people from forums, but so far Riot is not doing anything to address these issues.

Please let me know in the comments section below if you enjoy patch analysis. Or would you rather see some more LoL tournaments coverage? Or perhaps you do not want to see LoL on this page ever again?  I hope you enjoyed the read, stay tuned to Hydramist.tv and Merry Christmas Hydramist readers!