Vynertje wrote:
I think Janna on average is one of the champions with the least amount of deaths. All of her spells actually make her incredibly forgiving for positioning mistakes (the most common in low-Elo in my experience)
Vynertje,
Internet forums do not convey tone. I was never stating anything as fact and I gave a lot of context clues "I am bad" <--- written over 15 times now --- for people to gather its an opinion.
It is perfectly natural for you to 'hear' a douchbag since I was disagreeing with your premise, but I think its evident by everything I have written its all opinion/conjecture.
I think of you as a world class coder giving computer advice. Its amazing stuff but sometimes novices just need to be told "press the button that looks like a window".
Back to Janna. I don't have time to list the many reasons I think she is a dangerous pick in Silver league. So I gave a few...
Janna getting grabbed by blitz --- your dead. Leona getting grabbed by Blitz --- might live. (IN SILVER LEAGUE)
Yes Thresh is a hard char to play. Yes I know why Lee Sin is bad --- he is too hard to play mechanically. Yea I know ammu is weak early game and vulnerable to counter jungling way more than other picks.
Just because I mention X doesn't mean I am applying X to everything else or ignoring Y.
Someone suggested Lee should be played in silver --- he shouldn't. Because either you don't belong in silver and you will do well, or you do belong in Silver and you are going to be terribad at him.
I feel , for different reasons, Janna is a more dangerous pick than Leona and Nautilus in Silver league.
Here is every silver league game.
1) One team DOMINATES the skill differences are very noticiable and the game ends early.
2) The teams are actually equal skill wise (2 bad, 2 average, 1 good -- may be different roles) and the games lasts 40+ mins. At some point its going to come down to a 5v5.
40 mins in, 5v5 fight === janna team is doomed. (IN SILVER LEAGUE)
Enemy leona or Naut is gonig to engage, your whole team is going to waste very ult and skill trying to kill them, then they are going to melt under the enemy onslaught.
In my 1000+ games of bad silver play == a winning comp is 2+ tanks if the teams are evenly matched.
So there it, my advice to bad silver players. Pick an easy tank support (not thresh), you will have an easier time winning for several different reasons.
The_Nameless_Bard,
You are the perfect lab. I would love to see the stats if you played 100 games as Janna and 100 games as Nautilus. (I looked up your season 6 stats --- Evidence its harder to carry as support or run of bad luck? )
I predict you would have a higher win rate with Nautilus (if you care about winning --- your janna stats are quite good).
Internet forums do not convey tone. I was never stating anything as fact and I gave a lot of context clues "I am bad" <--- written over 15 times now --- for people to gather its an opinion.
It is perfectly natural for you to 'hear' a douchbag since I was disagreeing with your premise, but I think its evident by everything I have written its all opinion/conjecture.
I think of you as a world class coder giving computer advice. Its amazing stuff but sometimes novices just need to be told "press the button that looks like a window".
Back to Janna. I don't have time to list the many reasons I think she is a dangerous pick in Silver league. So I gave a few...
Janna getting grabbed by blitz --- your dead. Leona getting grabbed by Blitz --- might live. (IN SILVER LEAGUE)
Yes Thresh is a hard char to play. Yes I know why Lee Sin is bad --- he is too hard to play mechanically. Yea I know ammu is weak early game and vulnerable to counter jungling way more than other picks.
Just because I mention X doesn't mean I am applying X to everything else or ignoring Y.
Someone suggested Lee should be played in silver --- he shouldn't. Because either you don't belong in silver and you will do well, or you do belong in Silver and you are going to be terribad at him.
I feel , for different reasons, Janna is a more dangerous pick than Leona and Nautilus in Silver league.
Here is every silver league game.
1) One team DOMINATES the skill differences are very noticiable and the game ends early.
2) The teams are actually equal skill wise (2 bad, 2 average, 1 good -- may be different roles) and the games lasts 40+ mins. At some point its going to come down to a 5v5.
40 mins in, 5v5 fight === janna team is doomed. (IN SILVER LEAGUE)
Enemy leona or Naut is gonig to engage, your whole team is going to waste very ult and skill trying to kill them, then they are going to melt under the enemy onslaught.
In my 1000+ games of bad silver play == a winning comp is 2+ tanks if the teams are evenly matched.
So there it, my advice to bad silver players. Pick an easy tank support (not thresh), you will have an easier time winning for several different reasons.
The_Nameless_Bard,
You are the perfect lab. I would love to see the stats if you played 100 games as Janna and 100 games as Nautilus. (I looked up your season 6 stats --- Evidence its harder to carry as support or run of bad luck? )
I predict you would have a higher win rate with Nautilus (if you care about winning --- your janna stats are quite good).
I used to care about KDA, now I care about CS and Objectives.
My 
Nautilus didn't even have a positive win rate last season, while my Janna from last season was at around a 63% win rate (my highest win rate from last season). I highly doubt my win rate with Nautilus would be better because I'm not particularly good with Nautilus. I just was having fun playing him in normal games, so I started picking him on a whim in ranked during the preseason even though my Thresh is honestly better.
I stopped playing for 3-4 months last season and then climbed from Silver IV to Silver I in just about a month. I did that playing primarily utility supports because those are what I play for the most part.
Nautilus didn't even have a positive win rate last season, while my Janna from last season was at around a 63% win rate (my highest win rate from last season). I highly doubt my win rate with Nautilus would be better because I'm not particularly good with Nautilus. I just was having fun playing him in normal games, so I started picking him on a whim in ranked during the preseason even though my Thresh is honestly better.I stopped playing for 3-4 months last season and then climbed from Silver IV to Silver I in just about a month. I did that playing primarily utility supports because those are what I play for the most part.
Ixtellor wrote:
Spoiler: Click to viewI'm not planning to turn this into a discussion on how you phrased your comments. Purely from your first post however it is very hard for me to see how you phrased it as a 'humble opinion' rather than a 'fact' (as I interpret it). Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but how you formulate that opinion is, at least from my point of view, very important.
Anyway, back to the discussion on Janna. I'll only quote you and reply to those snippets to make sure I really tackle your points.
Quoted:
Janna getting grabbed by blitz --- your dead. Leona getting grabbed by Blitz --- might live. (IN SILVER LEAGUE)
I think the first mistake is the assumption that Janna dies if she gets hooked. Aside from the fact that she has FAR above average movement speed due to her W, she has 3 other defensive spells that can help her out if she gets hooked. She can shield herself (E), she can knock the enemies up (Q), she can knock them all back (R) and she can slow them (W), albeit the latter at the cost of the bonus movement speed. Plus, you generally run Exhaust on Janna. She generally does not die from catching an occasional hook.
The thing is, skill is a relative thing. The Janna will not only catch more hooks than the average player will (% wise), the Blitzcrank will also miss a higher %: they cancel each other out. I think it's naive to assume that a player at lower Elo will get hooked by a higher % hooks than a high Elo player. If that were the case, we'd likely see a higher w/l for Blitzcrank in lower Elo than in high Elo. That is not the case: 51,91% in Bronze, 52,66% for Diamond (I do realize that the popularity at each rank is different, therefore these winrates are not 1:1 comparable. However, I think the data is representative enough to demonstrate my cause above).
I think the general 'safety' of Janna is represented in her deaths. I just looked it up, she has the LOWEST average deaths in plat+ Elo for her role, and I don't see any reason why that trend would be different for low-Elo. The total deaths will be higher, but that will go for all champions involved.
Quoted:
Here is every silver league game.
1) One team DOMINATES the skill differences are very noticiable and the game ends early.
2) The teams are actually equal skill wise (2 bad, 2 average, 1 good -- may be different roles) and the games lasts 40+ mins. At some point its going to come down to a 5v5.
40 mins in, 5v5 fight === janna team is doomed. (IN SILVER LEAGUE)
Why? Janna is one of the best teamfighting supports in the game. Those tanks you described are going to engage, sure. The next step is that Janna resets the teamfight by using Moonsoon. She just knocks everyone back and now these tanks/bruisers have their main spells on cooldown. So what now? They can't get to the main carries.
The scenario is essentially this: A great Janna will perfectly time her ultimates to completely reset a teamfight, whereas a great Leona will get good engages off. Pitting them against each other will create amazingly interesting fights, whoever plays it best wins (although the pressure to outplay is on Leona IMO because Janna can just sit back and respond). When we pit bad versions of these players against each other the situation remains the same: whoever plays that exact teamfight best wins. The Leona will get a poor engage off, only getting the slow part on her ult on the carries. The Janna will then have more room for error on her ultimate.
Because the question is essentially about engage versus disengage, its effectiveness is 100% based on what you personally prefer playing. The bottom line is that if you're comfortable on control mages, you're going to perform terribly on an engage champion because you're not used to filling the role as primary engage. If you're used to playing primary engage you're going perform poorly on champions that are supposed to hang back and chill. Therefore my personal philosophy with regards to climbing ranked is 100% finding something you enjoy playing, feel comfortable on and finally: don't mind playing a lot.
A bit of a philosophical rant
Some edits to add stuff: I appreciate the analogy "world class coder", but I would like to take this opportunity to take this discussion to a different level to debate my POV from a bit more meta-level (and opinionated). I look at League from a very different perspective than I know some others do. I personally believe there are no situations in which there's "one card to trump all others" in a game as complex as League. Because of this, I don't think you can give advice like "In Situation Y, do X".
Now to return to that analogy: coders have a very different look at problems than for example historians. For coders (and other beta-disciplines) there is (almost?) always a correct answer. There is no correct answer for most problems historians face. My opinion is that for League, a historian's perspective (to zoom in on an individual actor rather than to zoom out and get a more general picture) will yield much better results. Not only because League is very complicated, but also because you're dealing with human behaviour: some people have certain skills and some do not and people will react very differently to certain situations.
Purely looking at how to decide what champions are well-suited for low-Elo, you can take one of these two approaches:
1. You try to formulate a general rule to help people escape from Elo-hell. For example, this can be that it is important to pick champions that can perform standalone from your team (this I disagree with but lets not get into that). This could work for a large group of people (those who are familiar with that certain playstyle), but will not work for players who lack the desired skills to be a good active and aggressive player. I for example consider myself a great reactive player but not as good pro-active, thus this playstyle will not work for me. Another example of such a kind of approach is a chart listing the most important objectives (i.e. nexus turrets > baron > inhib). This may apply to a significant number of games, it also does not work for many others. This is also why skills like awareness and adaptivity are such important skills to become good at this game: you need to know what's happening and be able to react on-the-fly.
2. You avoid generalizing and try to zoom in on the specific player and his/her context. I'd say this is pretty much 'mentoring'. Although I'd argue this is the most effective way to help someone climb, the problem is that it is impossible to hold someone's hand through all of these kind of questions/discussions or that you may be too specific/zoomed-in to provide a real answer to the matter at hand (my typical answer "depends on the situation").
While both have their downsides, I think it is much better to try and consider an individual's circumstances and find a solution to that. However, there is still the problem of what to do with situations in which you can't take the time to zoom in, think twice and ask for a second opinion. Instead, I try to explain the framework for people to think in so they can make these decisions on their own. I've also tried to use certain models (i.e. my model on pressure on page 4) to do so.
To summarize, there are simply too much variables in League to try and formulate some kind of a general rule, in your example something like "engage/tank supports are better than defensive/utility supports for low-Elo". Instead I think you should zoom in on each situation or provide a framework to allow players to do so themselves.
Feel free to disagree with this bit of League Philosophy here, I'd love to hear some opinions but please do so with arguments ;-)
Vynertje wrote:
Spoiler: Click to view Leona's release (actually I started just before Sona was released, to clarify); if I liked Leona I would have had plenty of time to practice her, so I obviously am choosing to not play her for a reason. Same with, say, Alistar, who I have not touched significantly since season 1. I feel it's important to establish what a player is actually good at, not throwing a predetermined list of champions at them that is supposed to "carry them out of Elo hell".
The_Nameless_Bard wrote:
I think this is really important for people to understand. I've been told a lot of times that if I just played different supports things would probably be easier for me, but people fail to understand that those different supports are not champions I play well or particularly want to play or I'd be playing them since I've been playing this game for more than five years now. Good example: I've been playing since before Leona's release (actually I started just before Sona was released, to clarify); if I liked Leona I would have had plenty of time to practice her, so I obviously am choosing to not play her for a reason. Same with, say, Alistar, who I have not touched significantly since season 1. I feel it's important to establish what a player is actually good at, not throwing a predetermined list of champions at them that are supposed to "carry them out of Elo hell".
Leona's release (actually I started just before Sona was released, to clarify); if I liked Leona I would have had plenty of time to practice her, so I obviously am choosing to not play her for a reason. Same with, say, Alistar, who I have not touched significantly since season 1. I feel it's important to establish what a player is actually good at, not throwing a predetermined list of champions at them that are supposed to "carry them out of Elo hell".I couldn't agree with this more. People will badger others unto playing champs they think are meta or the right comp for the game. Every game where people play the champs they want we get the win or just barely lose.
I was a Janna main season 5 in low Silver to start with a fall down the Bronze 5. Preseason this year I decided to ignore people and their complaints and start playing Annie support. Currently 23-10 between the preseason and this season with her. I just feel more comfortable with burst champs that offer more late game use. Don't get me wrong I have had some 40+ assists Janna games, but I can't carry other lanes.
On the Tanky support conversation, is it just me or has the meta shifted to a point where Tanks aren't the end all be all?
AGroupofItalians
<Member>
<Member>
AGroupofItalians wrote:
Hello,
I started using Thresh only recently and I was wondering if you could tell me when the best way / situation to use Thresh's Lantern would be?
Thanks.
I started using Thresh only recently and I was wondering if you could tell me when the best way / situation to use Thresh's Lantern would be?
Thanks.
Do not use it just for the shield, (almost) always use it for the passage - otherwise you're just wasting the long cooldown for a 60 point shield. I guess there isn't really a 'best situation', just consider it like a gap closer for someone in your team.
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I love Janna, I had more fun playing Janna than any other support when I tried to go support. But based on 1000+ games in silver league, I feel like I have a good idea of what champs work at that skill level. I also feel like I made the greatest plays of my life with Janna --- she is an amazing champ --- when played well and with a team that knows her abilities (See NOT SILVER LEAGUE).
While still anecdotal --- I have a lot of experience in Low ELO and I was relaying that information to another low ELO player.
You said the same thing again...if your good with her. But thats the thing about silver league nobody is good at anything, or they wouldn't be in silver league.
And my advice is to pick champs that are more forgiving and easier to play as support. Tanks.
Your reasoning is still flawed. If you had a correct idea of what's good and what's not you wouldn't still be silver any more. To me at least it means you do not have the correct approach to (climbing) League. I've played in low-Elo as well and you're not unique in this sense.
Secondly, I use 'good' in relative terms. I apologize if that wasn't clear, but by good I just refer to it as 'practised the champion enough to be effective at your relative skill level'.
Finally, my main issues with the comment are two things. One is that you originally stated it like a fact instead of your personal advice, I already mentioned that. My second problem is that you imply that tanky supports are more forgiving and easier to play, which is 100% ********. I completely agree that if you're not confident on the role in question you should pick something relatively easy, but Janna is much easier (and much more forgiving) than Blitzcrank, Thresh or Leona. Thresh really requires you to master him (I think his winrate for people playing <25 games with him is about 40%) and though Leona and Blitzcrank are relatively simple in their core gameplay, they can backfire horribly and arguably in some aspects more than Janna.
Instead, my advice would be to pick a support that most closely resembles your own preferred playstyle. If you tend to play control mages, you may find champions like janna/nami/sona much easier to play effectively. If you play lots of tanks and/or decisive-engage-champions (as far as that is a term) you will find more success on Leona. Thresh is a bit of a hybrid but with an incredibly high skill cap.
To respond to the second part of your post which I did not quote, Lee is one of the champions with the highest skill-cap and requires LOTS and LOTS of practice and skill to get right. That is why people do not recommend him, not because his skills can backfire. Again, I mentioned I consider Thresh much harder than Janna to play at an effective level.
Not 100% true, since sightstone only gives 3 stacks it may be worth upgrading it, you get one extra ward stack, active CDR and some extra health. Those things combined aren't as bad IMO as people make it to be, however your priorities should be on finishing your core build first.
I think Janna on average is one of the champions with the least amount of deaths. All of her spells actually make her incredibly forgiving for positioning mistakes (the most common in low-Elo in my experience)
My main question is what kind of builds should I be looking at? I mainly like to play peeling and engage/disengage supports like
After that, where do I go? Do I opt for more "support" items, like
I think my Nami build guide has a decent overview of what items are good for ranged/ap supports. Right now, it's still recommended to go Frost Queen's Claim first, together with either boots of mobility, boots of swiftness or ionian boots of lucidity. After that items like Locket, Frozen Heart, Morellonomicon (for supports with good AP scaling), Zekes (if you have a very AA/crit reliant ADC) or Mikaels (vs hard, single-target CC). It's 100% a question of what you need at the exact moment.