BLGaming Index

League of Legends Patch Notes - Nautilus

Tue, 14 Feb 2012 15:22:54 +0000

Good evening BLG readers! Udyr has just posted the patch notes for tonight's update and their new champion Nautilus. This patch also includes some big changes; specifically Soraka and Sona nerfs, and a significant upgrade to Shen. Will this bring Shen back to the top, or are these changes not enough? Leave your opinions of him and all the other changes in the comments!
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Buffs will be highlighted in BLUE, Nerfs in RED

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PVP.net v1.54

Co op versus AI
- Added Ziggs, Master Yi, Nasus, Ezreal, and Nidalee to the bot roster
- Players can now add many more of the Beginner bots to Custom Games
Spectator
- Major item purchases will now be visually distinguished on the Scoreboard
- Ranked Teams

General
- PVP.net will now wait for 8 seconds after a queue dodge before requeuing

League of Legends v1.0.0.134
Nautilus, the Titan of the Depths

Staggering Blow (Passive) – Nautilus’ first basic attack against a target deals bonus physical damage and immobilizes the opponent briefly. Staggering Blow cannot trigger on the same target more than once every 12 seconds.
Dredge Line - Nautilus throws his anchor forward. If he hits an enemy, he'll drag himself to his target and his target to him. If he hits terrain, he'll drag himself to the terrain and the cooldown is reduced.
Titan’s Wrath- Nautilus places a shield on himself that absorbs additional damage based on his maximum health. While the shield is active, Nautilus' attacks deal damage over time to units around him.
Riptide- Nautilus slams the ground, causing the earth to ripple out in waves. Each wave deals damage and slows the targets hit. This slow decays over time. Multiple waves that hit the same target deal reduced damage.
Depth Charge(Ultimate) – Nautilus launches a depth charge towards a target that picks up speed as it travels. This charge knocks up all enemies it encounters while traveling and explodes on impact, stunning the target and launching them into the air.

Ahri

Spirit Rush
- The allied ultimate HUD indicator will now remain green until all 3 spell casts are used
- Cooldown between casts increased to 1 second from 0.75
- Cooldown increased to 110/95/80 seconds from 90/80/70

Alistar

Pulverize mana cost reduced to 70/80/90/100/110 from 80/90/100/110/120
Headbutt mana cost reduced to 70/80/90/100/110 from 70/85/100/115/130
Triumphant Roar mana cost increased at later ranks to 20/35/50/65/80 from 20/30/40/50/60

Cassiopeia

Fixed a bug where Miasma's slow was not stacking with many other slows in the game
Noxious Blast ability power ratio reduced to 0.8 from 0.9
Twin Fang damage reduced to 50/85/120/155/190 from 60/95/130/165/200

Gangplank

Parrley mana cost increased to 50/55/60/65/70 from 40/45/50/55/60

Raise Morale range reduced to 1200 from 1500

Heimerdinger

Fixed a bug where H28G Evolution Turrets could survive when Heimerdinger died if they were being teleported to

Irelia

Transcendent Blades' allied ultimate HUD indicator will now remain green until all 4 spell casts are used

Kennen

Thundering Shuriken cooldown increased to 8/7/6/5/4 from 7/6/5/4/3

Maokai

Vengeful Maelstrom's allied ultimate HUD indicator will now turn grey as soon as it is cast

Nunu

Fixed a bug where Absolute Zero's slow did not grant assists

Rammus

Defensive Ball Curl armor and magic resist values reduced to 40/60/80/100/120 from 50/75/100/125/150

Riven

Blade of the Exile's allied ultimate HUD indicator will now remain green until the shockwave cast is used

Ryze

Overload mana ratio reduced to 7.5% from 8%

Shen

Ki Strike
- Damage increased to 10-112 (+10% bonus Health) from 10-95 (+8% bonus Health)
- Cooldown is now reduced by 1.5 seconds whenever Shen attacks instead of 2 seconds when being attacked
- Now grants Shen 10/20/30 energy when he Ki Strikes
- Damage now scale correctly with all sources of bonus Health (% health runes, Juggernaut mastery)
- Added a buff timer for Ki Strike's cooldown (like Ziggs' Short Fuse)
Vorpal Blade
- Energy cost adjusted to 60 from 70/65/60/55/50
- Damage adjusted to 60/105/150/195/240 (+0.6 ability power) from 70/105/140/175/210 (+0.75 ability power)
- Heal effect changed to 6/10/14/18/22 (+2% of Shen's maximum Health) from 18/26/34/42/50
- If Vorpal Blade deals the killing blow, it will now trigger 33% of the heal effect for Shen
- Allied damaging spells can now trigger the heal effect, in addition to attacks (Vorpal Blade cannot trigger itself)
Feint
- Feint duration increased to 3 seconds from 2.5
- Energy cost reduced to 40 from 45
- Shield amount adjusted to 70/120/170/220/270 (+0.6 ability power) from 50/100/150/200/250 (+0.75 ability power)
- While Feint is active, Ki Strike’s cooldown reduction on hit is increased to 3 seconds from 1.5
Shadow Dash
- Cooldown reduced to 10/9.5/9/8.5/8 seconds from 10
- Energy cost increased to 120 from 120/115/110/105/100
- Restores 40 energy per champion affected (rather than a flat 50 energy if you affect one)
- Now deals 50/85/120/155/190 damage (+0.5 ability power) to Champions
- Taunt duration adjusted to 1.5 seconds from 1/1.25/1.5/1.75/2
- Shadow Dash now grants Shen 50% physical damage reduction from taunted targets
Stand United
- Channel time increased to 3 seconds from 2.5
- Shield duration reduced to 5 seconds from 7.5
- Shield amount increased to 250/550/850 from 200/475/750

Shyvana

Fixed a bug where Flame Breath could shred the armor of shred-immune units (Dragon, Baron Nashor)
Dragon's Descent allied ultimate HUD indicator will now go grey immediately after using

Sona

Power Chord damage adjusted to 10 per level from 14 + 9 per level

Hymn of Valor passive attack damage and ability power aura reduced at earlier ranks to 4/8/12/16/20 from 8/11/14/17/20

Aria of Perseverance passive armor and magic resist aura reduced at earlier ranks to 3/6/9/12/15 from 7/9/11/13/15

Song of Celerity passive movement speed aura reduced at earlier ranks to 4/8/12/16/20 from 8/11/14/17/20

Soraka

Improved Soraka's basic attack to be more responsive
Starcall mana cost adjusted to 20/30/40/50/60 from 35/40/45/50/55
Astral Blessing mana cost adjusted to 80/110/140/170/200 from 90/110/130/150/170
Infuse
- No longer affects Soraka when cast on allies and cannot be cast on self
- Ally mana restore increased to 40/80/120/160/200 Mana from 25/50/75/100/125

Talon

Shadow Assault's allied ultimate HUD indicator will now go grey immediately after casting

Vladimir

Crimson Pact will now correctly work with all sources of bonus Health (% health runes, Juggernaut mastery)
Hemoplague damage amplification reduced to 12% from 14%
Tides of Blood healing bonus adjusted to 4/5/6/7/8% per rank from 8% at all ranks

Volibear

Fixed a bug where Majestic Roar could reduce minion movement speed to 0

Warwick

Eternal Thirst now deals 3-16 magic damage per stack, and restores an equal amount of health
Infinite Duress damage changed to 250/335/420 (+2.0 bonus attack damage) from 200/300/400 (+1.67 total attack damage)
Base attack speed increased to 0.679 from 0.644

Wukong

Cyclone's allied ultimate HUD indicator will now go grey immediately after using
Fixed a bug where Crushing Blow could reduce the armor of shred-immune units (Dragon, Baron Nashor)

Xerath

Arcane Barrage's allied ultimate HUD indicator will now remain green until all 3 spell casts are used

Zilean

Fixed a bug where Chronoshift could prevent a clone from expiring, allowing them to survive indefinitely until killed

Items

Sight Wards and Vision Wards now have a 0.5 second cooldown
Hextech Revolver spell vamp reduced to 12% from 15%

General

The disconnect notification will now only be shown to enemy players if a player disconnects and remains disconnected for 5 minutes. The message will continue to be shown without a delay for allied players.
Heal and Clarity summoner spells will now restore health/mana to the caster even if they are untargetable when the summoner spell is cast (Fizz's Playful/Trickster, Vladimir's Sanguine Pool, Zhonya's Hourglass).
Baron Nashor can no longer critically strike, but his base damage has been increased 10% to compensate.
Updated Baron Nashor's character stats so that his attack damage reflects how much damage he actually deals.
Kill messages in chat now have team colors and display who was slain.
Added Colorblind colors for Morgana’s spell shield and Spectator pings.
Fixed a bug where some particles would flicker unintentionally.
Fixed a bug where kill indicators were missing golden borders.

Co-Op Versus AI

Improved Ashe's use of Enchanted Crystal Arrow on long range targets.
Sivir will no longer get Sanguine Blade on Summoner's Rift.
Changed the disconnect adjustment to remove the Fighter instead of the Tank on Summoner's Rift.

You can view the source of the patch notes from Udyr HERE

The Nautilus Patch Preview for your viewing pleasure

The Nautilus Champion Spotlight

SK.LoL picks up a new Jungler!

Sun, 12 Feb 2012 21:33:44 +0000

After having trialled with SK Gaming since IEM Kiev, we can now confirm that PL Filip 'Dedrayon' Romejko will join the team as our new Jungler.

For the full, article please visit the SK site
http://www.sk-gaming...eir_new_Jungler

League of Legends these days...

Mon, 09 Jan 2012 12:57:22 +0000

It has been ages since my last League of legends installment on our site. So much has happened since then (then being September 28th, ouch, since I last wrote an article) and so much has stayed the same.

On the Pro scene Team Dignitas (http://www.team-dignitas.org/) showed up and proved to be a true contender if not the new dominant force in the Western world. They already took home some impressive titles this season. Speaking of which, Season two has been underway for quite some weeks now and has already given away some of that 5,000,000.00 dollars in prize support.

[readmore]

The game itself has changed a bit. With season two came new masteries, now giving more viable options to supports, an incentive to spec up to 21 in more than utility and a harder jungle spec path.
In order to compensate for this and to keep the game fun and evolving, the jungle was changed, mobs are now significantly weaker and all the ‘little’ camps now give you some health back on defeating the ‘big mob’ (this has lead to riots in the golem community).
A lot of the summoner spells got their numbers tweaked, nerfing flash, Clairvoyance and exhaust, buffing heal and ghost.
Dodge is being removed as a game mechanic because Riot has an aversion to RNG when it doesn’t come to crits (feeding the trolls here) and is now somewhat stuck with champions who were concepted around it. Of those, only sivir got a remake so far, Jax and Udyr just got a nerf but I for one am sure this will get fixed.
Ranked finally gets a real team/guild system and people still complain about duoqueuers.

On the other hand a lot of things are still the same. First and foremost, the ‘standard’ laning. We still see AD and support bottom, AP mid, solo top and jungler. But since the jungle is no long a self sufficient source of EXP and gold ganks are now more frequent as are the wards to prevent these. Supports dislike CV lately and are moving over to heal, thus allowing a lot of champions who couldn’t heal to be support players.

The stealth make over is still hiding away in Magma Chamber which will be introduced when they finish project shiny, the 3D graphics overhaul.
And, of course, newer and better champions keep flooding in. Foxy foxes, tricksy fishies, robot freaks, sparky elementals and teddybears galore on the fields of justice. Their balancing seems to be a bit better these days and Riot has shown they are not afraid of throwing out a hotfix here and there. Skins keep streaming out of Riot but hey, they have to get the dough somewhere, right? Might as well be by making Te emo into mini-Superman.

That’s all I have for now but I might be back when a patch rolls along.

Until then, may you never have an AFK’er or feeder,
lSiNl

LoL Skin Giveaway Day 6-13 Winners

Fri, 28 Oct 2011 16:48:33 +0000

The League of Legends Skin Giveaway winners for days 6 - 13 have been chosen! We apologize for the late results, however we are excited to announce the lucky winners! All winning posts were selected using the random number generator at http://www.random.org.

You can view the original contest rules and all submissions HERE - be sure to check out http://www.gaming-quote.com for more fun quotes from competitive gaming!

Day 6: Mazo
Fiddle : Fear me! CAWCAWCAWCAWCAWCAWCAWCAWCAWCAWCAWCAWCAWCAWCAW
Swain : Shut up . Using birds is my thing
Fiddle : I was released first

Day 7: Jarvan6[readmore]

(Nocturne) [All] [00:15:59]: jaja its a game!
(Fiddlesticks) [All] [00:16:00]: Doesn’t matter, the gm’s wont care.
(Fiddlesticks) [All] [00:16:18]: Who says jaja, really?
(Teemo) [00:16:23]: mexicans
(Kog’Maw) [All] [00:16:24]: ja ja binks

Day 8: Parrots

*I am Skype with a friend and I’m at bot lane.”
*I am Pantheon and I am dominating the Teemo and Tristana bot lane*
Friend: Damn, you’re owning so hard. How do you like being fed down at bot lane?
Me: It’s squishy down there. I like that.
Friend: LOLOOLOLOL That just came out totally wrong. Fucking homo. I like that.
Me: *Silence*

Day 9: Rammus

Sivir buying 6 boots of swiftness..
Why you do that sivir?
My brother told me that would make me able to fly..

Day 10: Marry

Heimerdinger : The cosine of “you” root divided by . . .
Veigar : Is that a short joke?
Rumble : Who are you calling little?
Teemo : Yum yum shrooms @_@

Day 11: Obbo

“Where is a secret shop?”

Day 12: Nagaki

Phreak: I play Wukong as a jungler.
Creator of Wukong: But he is really bad a jungling. =/
Phreak: But he is a fcking monkey. How can he be not in a jungle?

and for the special PAX Sivir summoner + skin....

Day 13: Dinsys

(before game, during Champ picking)
Kat: lemme Kat mid
Kat: I’ll mid Kat, will be awesome
(just before the countdown ends)
Teemo: I got mid
(game starts, Teemo is camping enemy Golem before minions)
Gangplank: Teemo, what are you doing?
Teemo: I got mid, gp go away
Kat: I got mid, I called it
Leona: someone leash golem for Nunu
Teemo: I called mid, wtf
Kat: I already said I had mid
Teemo: I called it before the game wtf
Kat: I already said I have mid, I’m awesome mid Kat
Teemo: But I called it wtf
(two of them toegether in mid)
Leona: Teemo come bot
Kat: Teemo go away
Teemo: I called mid wtf
Leona: SOMEONE HELP MEEE
(First Blood, Leona dies)
(Teemo goes bot, Kat ends up sucking in mid, but game is still won by ridiculous GP and Nunu ganks)

Intel extreme Masters New York

Thu, 13 Oct 2011 10:39:12 +0000

IEM New York has started

For the LoL part of the tournament, we have two groups of 4. In each group every team plays the three other, the two teams coming out on top in each group get to play in the play offs for the big money.

Click here to see the groups, cuz they're a doozey...
[readmore]

Group A might as well be called group Juggernaut, with every team having the name and resume to finish well. In group B only SK gaming and perhaps Curse have comparable references.

A little prediction, shall we? For group A I like CLG and Dignitas slipping into the next round. Both teams have grown a lot in the past few month, CLG brushed up on teamwork and Dignitas, formerly RockSolid (most part), well, to be honest, I don't know how to put it other than they seemed to have found their groove right now. On the other hand we have Fnatic who have been somewhat absent lately but that could also mean we're in for a surprise. Team solomid is going through a lot lately, moving to New York as a team and doing a lot of experimenting but I am afraid that will be detrimental in this early stage of their development. I expect them to do very well very soon, though.

In group B SK has something to prove, they are the elephant in the room there. I expect nothing less than a clean entry into the final stage. I must admit I do not know the other teams very well so I will be looking for innovative gameplay from them.

I won't be as bold to predict a final winner though. Too much can happen in a match and I feel we have a few teams here who are very close in power. Who do you think will rise victorious?

LoL Skin Giveaway Day 3-5 Winners Chosen!

Fri, 07 Oct 2011 14:40:33 +0000

The League of Legends Skin Giveaway winners for days 3-5 of our 13 day contest have been chosen! See the winners and their quotes, chosen at random with the number generator at http://www.random.org, below:

DAY 3 WINNER
Blackguard with his quote here:
him: ” omg shen why did u no help”
ally: ”im not level 6 yet”
him: ”omg nob shen doesnt know how to get exp”

DAY 4 WINNER
KnowHow with his quote here:
-dunno how to play him
-ezreal?
-point on enemy… push buttons.

DAY 5 WINNER
Mazo with his quote here:
Fiddle : Fear me! CAWCAWCAWCAWCAWCAWCAWCAWCAWCAWCAWCAWCAWCAWCAW
Swain : Shut up . Using birds is my thing
Fiddle : I was released first

Seven more days of our contest remain - with a winner chosen each day for a Riot K-9 Nasus Character/Skin or a PAX Sivir Character/Skin. See the rules of the giveaway on BLGaming HERE to get your entries in!

A Second Winner is Chosen! 11 to Go!

Mon, 03 Oct 2011 14:29:56 +0000

Congratulations to Widunder for winning a League of Legends Riot K9 Nasus Skin on day 2 of our contest! With a roll of 6 at http://www.random.org, the Winning Quote was:

Vlad: “Yeah, sure we can turn this around. We’re down 20 kills. I’ll transform into Optimus Prime and turn this around for us in no-time!”
Garen: “Why didn’t you do that from the start?”

11 more days remain, so be sure to head over to the Contest Rules and get your entries in to win more great prizes!

1 Winner Chosen - 12 to Go!

Sun, 02 Oct 2011 17:58:14 +0000

Congratulations to Acidace for winning a League of Legends Riot K9 Nasus skin on day 1 of our contest! With a roll of 9 at http://www.random.org, the winning quote was:

Hotshotgg barely escapes with 1 hp as Zilean
-Hooooo!
-1hp!GG!
-That’s called calculations

12 more days remain, so be sure to head over to the Contest Rules and get your entries in to win more great prizes!

Win a League of Legends Skin!

Fri, 30 Sep 2011 16:04:08 +0000

PAX Prime has been over for a number of weeks, however the excitement from PAX did not end on the last day of the event.

From October 1st - BLGaming and Gaming-quote.com will be giving away one Riot Nasus Skin per day for 12 days! On the 13th day, we will be giving away a PAX Sivir Skin and the Sivir Champion!

How to Enter

1. Visit http://www.gaming-quote.com and enter a gaming related quote from in-game, skype, ventrilo, IRC, etc... (Note: Posts take between 1-4 hours to pass the approval queue)

2. Make sure your post has the tag 'Skin Contest' (the last option when posting a quote).

2. Reply to THIS ARTICLE with a link to your post.

It is that easy! You can enter as many times per day as you like. Each post counts as one entry. A winner will be chosen at random at 8am EDT each day (from Oct. 2nd) using the random number generator at http://www.random.org.

IMPORTANT

Spam or irrelevant posts will result in disqualification from this tournament. Please post responsibly!

Good luck! We look forward to your submissions and will announce winners daily!

Final teams for IEM Global challenge Guangzhou

Wed, 28 Sep 2011 13:47:29 +0000

From October 1st until October 5th the Intel extreme masters has it's next stop. This time descending on China's Guangzhou and bringing a host of pro players for Starcraft 2, Counter strike and of course League of legends. The final teams have been released. These will play in 4 team groups, in these groups each team is paired with the other 3 teams after which the best two teams from each group meet up in a new 4 team play off. Click the link below to go take a peek at ESL world where the info was released:

http://www.esl-world...

Noticeably missing in these pools are American Teams Solomid and Epik and European teams Fnatic and AaA, who have been performing decent in the summer. Looking at the groups SK seems to be the only team in group A with the resume although one must admit Asian teams are catching up. My bet would be on SK going through and looking forward to more unknown teams playing each other looking for some new strategies. In Group B CLG is the elephant in the room, closely followed by Millenium. Aeon has some top experience from Dreamhack where they demonstrated some very innovative ideas and so I look forward to seeing them in action again.

Talon Enters the Fields of Justice

Wed, 24 Aug 2011 09:45:36 +0000

In addition, images found on a russian site are going around, showing splash art for several unreleased skins. Talon and his skins were included in the leak package.

[readmore]

The Great Sustain Nerf

Wed, 24 Aug 2011 09:38:44 +0000

League of Legends' Riot announced it a while ago, but now it is upon us. The sustain rework, where almost all targeted heal spells got nerfed (except Kayle's but that one sucked enough already) should change the metagame somewhat. This is mostly directed at bot lanes with a ranged AD and a support that could survive ganks AND stay in lane through this sustain, causing twenty minute long farm fests until something happens.

Check out the entire patch HERE.

The goal here is making that lane much more [readmore]susceptible to ganks and especially repeated ganks from the jungle or mid. I doubt the effect will actually go as far as introducing a completely new metagame but I dare say an innovative team like Team Solomid will use this to their advantage. A lot of team setups will have to change, a lot of people are anticipating a lot more Janna and a lot less Soraka and Taric specifically.

On a completely different topic, the graphic updates preceding Dominion are seeping in and some general bugs are fixed that caused quite some grief. However, still no jungle and stealth remake.

League of Legends and $5 Million in Prizes

Mon, 15 Aug 2011 20:15:09 +0000

In the midst of recent announcements for $1 million tournaments in Call of Duty: Black Ops and Dota2, Riot has upped the ante once again by unveiling a staggering $5 Million prize pool for Season 2 of League of Legends. The $5 million will not be awarded to a single team or during a single tournament, however beginning this Fall, Riot will be hosting and streaming local, national, and international tournaments for League of Legends with prizes pulling from this pool.

Love it or hate it, League of Legends is doing great things for eSports by supporting their players to this degree. You can certainly expect to see more companies offering sponsorships, more competitive involvement from players, more viewership, and more hype than ever before! eSports as an industry has grown exponentially over the past few years, and with this announcement it is clear that eSports is here to stay.

From the official League of Legends forums: [readmore]

Quote

Summoners!

With League of Legends fans setting viewership records in the Western world for the League of Legends Season One Championship, we're as excited as you are to kick Season Two off in style. As you've helped us become one of the most popular online titles to date, we thought it was only appropriate that League of Legends Season Two should boast the largest prize pool in eSports.

The League of Legends Season Two prize pool will feature a record setting $5 million prize pool!

The thriving eSports community surrounding League of Legends continues to grow at an incredible pace, and it's the enthusiasm of competitors from across the globe that has engendered this special opportunity. And with League of Legends featured as an official title in such landmark eSports organizations as Major League Gaming, Electronic Sports League, and the World Cyber Games, this substantially increased prize pool is just the first glimpse into what we have planned for the upcoming season.

The money will be funding prizing for local, national and international tournaments to foster and grow the League of Legends eSports scene. For starters, the new season will feature weekly livestreams of our ongoing regional tournaments in North America, and across both European environments, so stay tuned for more information on these broadcasts and to see a lot more of League of Legends enthusiasts like Phreak, Rivington III and Nikasaur.

League of Legends Season Two is coming this fall, summoners! And with $5 million on the line this time around, the League of Legends eSports scene just got even more exciting!

A deeper look into League of Legends: Dominion

Tue, 09 Aug 2011 11:47:41 +0000

Riot released a video showing more gameplay and displaying the sleeker UI, including examples of the 'quests'. Go take a look at what Riot calls:

Quote

We wanted League of Legends: Dominion to feel drastically different than our classic gameplay while still capturing those same elements that make League of Legends fun and exciting to play.

Another video was released with more content, revealing buffs for defenders and health drops.

League of Legends: patch v1.0.0.123

Tue, 09 Aug 2011 09:59:18 +0000

Just a day after the preview the actual patch is out and it is a beauty! Filled to the rim with buffs and clean-ups. Most notably:

- Skarner, the Chrystal Vanguard enters the arena

- Automatically attacking after using a dash-like ability like Katarina's Shunpo or Amumu's Bandage Toss. This change will make convoluted combat just a tad more smooth and reduce the amount of 'OMG, misclick' remarks in the chat.

- Added new key bindings for "Self+Smart Cast" for abilities and Summoner spells. Casting with these binds will first try to Smart-Cast the ability; if there is no target or an invalid target under the cursor, it will attempt to Self-Cast the ability. This change will open up some higher lvl [readmore]gameplay for people who gave up after screwing up too many self/smartcast moments.

- General bug removal, most notably spells with a duration staying after the death of a champion, Nasus' wither-tenacity problem, the reduce (only base) magic resist and armor for Kayle and others.

- All round buffs to Pantheon and Nasus. The buff to Pantheon was announced when they reduced the range on his ult but Nasus seemed like a forgotten stepchild left in the corner. Now he gets all round buffs without reducing the gain on Siphoning strike, as implied in the patch preview.

Take a look at the complete notes to see what goodness came to your favorite champions:

http://euw.leagueofl...e-notes-v100123

League of Legends Patch 1.0.0.123 Preview

Mon, 08 Aug 2011 13:11:09 +0000

Phreak over at Riot Games has posted a new video presentation for the upcoming League of Legends 1.0.0.123 patch. Check it out below!

To quote him,

Quote

This time, we'll be discussing some long-awaited changes to Nasus, Pantheon, Garen, Fiddlesticks, and more!

Source

Dominion Released as New LoL Game Mode: Featuri...

Thu, 04 Aug 2011 17:05:11 +0000

Earlier this week some people at Riot, the company behind League of Legends, announced that this week they would blow us away. Immediately griefers came to battle the excitement. But now there is this:

http://euw.leagueofl...dominion-coming

In this announcement the game play is described as fast paced, with games not taking more than 20 minutes. On another site there is more information about the map, the objectives and innovations.

http://www.joystiq.c...minion-preview/

in short:
The map is composed of two lanes making a circle around a central jungle. These lanes will be fully visible, only the jungle needs warding. In these lanes there are 5 control points that [readmore]can be controlled by channeling a spell while near it. The more champions present, the faster this will go. Controlling a point will drain nexus health from the other team. As usual, you win the game by destroying the enemies' nexus.

You start the game at level three with 1300 gold, in addition, passive gold generation will be faster and both minion and champion kills will generate more gold.

Once you capture a control point minions will spawn for you from it.
In the center of the map are two relics, buffs that can be taken by channeling a spell for a while. In addition there are movement speed buffs from 'speed shrines' and healing runes you take by just running over them.

Controlled points defend themselves, so they can be treated as towers once taken.
Some items are removed from the game mode for not suiting the game play while other, dominion specific items, are added.

Fortify and Teleport are replaced by Promote, an 'old' spell that empowers one of your minions, and Garrison, a summoner spell that buffs your minions and towers or debuffs theirs.

The user interface has been adapted to be more objective and team oriented. There is also a personal score implemented that rewards you for doing well in the game besides killing.

Team quests will be popping up, encouraging certain actions and rewarding extra 'damage' on the enemy nexus.

Some things, like the adapted User interface, will be implemented into Other maps and are more general updates than Dominion specific features.

The timing on this release is interesting, to say the least, coming right after HoN declared they are joining LoL in the Free 2 Play category and DOTA2 making its arrival known by announcing a tournament giving out the largest prize pool for a MOBA (by far). This is clearly Riot showing they have more up their sleeve by shaking up what MOBA's have been about since DotA. It remains to be seen who will survive the coming competition and who will come out on top.

I hope you are as excited as I am...

On the Jungle Remake

Fri, 29 Jul 2011 12:49:22 +0000

The jungle remake and what it means.

Over the past couple weeks Riot's Guinsoo has been making tweets about a jungle remake. Originally the jungle, the area between lanes containing neutral monster of which some give buffs upon slaying them, was a rather hostile environment to get your early experience and only a small number of champions could afford time and money to dwelling there. The advantage this gives is having one team member be 'invisible' (because he is outside enemy vision) and assist lanes that are having a hard time or even securing early kills. The most interesting tweets are collected here:

One of the biggest changes in this tweets concern to gank time. Because there are little to no variables in jungling, professional gamers soon become adept at predicting where a jungler is, where he needs to go and where and when he can gank. [readmore] For example, most junglers finish their first run in 4 minutes, after which they can gank mid or the lane where their little golems are within 15 seconds. If no gank is available, they can pretty much only invade the other jungle (which should be empty as well) or go back to town and shop (but without a gank shopping would be minimal). Of course here are exceptions to this, Jarvan can gank at lvl 2 and Nunu is quite the threat at lvl 3.

It is dubious but it seems that only the creeps that have no buffs will get shorter spawns. That, to me, is a good thing. If the spawns would be shorter, the buffs would have to get nerfed considerably and as tweet 4 indicates, this is not desired. Not only for the Lizard's reb buff, which promotes early game aggro, but also the importance of blue buff for mid game casters.

Tweet 5 is very interesting in that it repromotes a metagame that has died a little since Dreamhack. The trilane (three lanes with a single champion) with a jungler and a roamer. Now these roamers would be able to get some EXP and gold where they usually starve themselves for the greater good of the team. Secondary, if the current metagame with a ranged DPS and support bot remains, the support would be able to farm up a little in the jungle from time to time.

Tweet 6 brings us into a world where a slew of possibilities opens up again. A lot of heroes that were falling off a little could get back into the game through a more hospitable jungle. And the fact that you will be able to jungle without the perfect champion/runes/masteries will allow more people to learn this valuable part of the game earlier on.

Making Smite optional will likely never happen because Smite is as much about securing kills on Baron, dragon and buffs as it is about surviving the early jungle.

The rest is mostly obvious changes that make jungling just an all round better experience and I for one am looking forward to them.

League of Legends: A Deeper Look

Wed, 27 Jul 2011 14:39:36 +0000

(Note from Editor: This story is a submission from a potential BLG writer. Leave some comments if you would like to see more from this writer!)

Marc 'Tryndamere' Merrill, president of Riot games, which brought League of Legends into this world, made a statement on Tuesday July 26th entitled 'You've Grown League of Legends into a Massive Game'. In it he thanks the community for what has been a very successful first season. On of the most striking parts of the statement are the numbers.

Quote

As of today, 15 million people have registered to become League of Legends players. Each month, over 4 million people log in to play. And on each day, 1.4 million summoners play League of Legends together.

When we’re at our busiest, over 500,000 people in North America and Europe are in game at the same time. On average, more than 10 games of League of Legends start every second of every day.

(Marc 'Tryndamere' Merrill)
[readmore]
But numbers are just numbers, so lets see what these mean. League of Legends, or LoL, came from a Warcraft III mod called Defense of the Ancients, released at around the same time, albeit a bit earlier as Heroes of Newerth, which is also called the successor of Defense of the Ancients. A quick google scan found that Defense of the Ancients is so popular that it is the most played variant of Warcraft III, exceeding all other game modes combined. As impressive as this sounds, "only" 5 million people play the map. Heroes of Newerth, or HoN, hasn't released any confirmed numbers so far, or at least not in public media, the only hard number popping up is 1.3 million, which dates back to just after its release in 2009. As far as these data go, LoL is winning the market.

But lets look a bit farther, lets be adventurous and compare these numbers to a gaming titan with a somewhat comparable game play. Lets look at world of Warcraft, or WoW... Their last press statement about the number of players dates back to the release of cataclysm in 2010, state 12 million active subscriptions, and that 16 million quests are done each day.

LoL has 15 million players, which would break Wow's record. But we don't know how this number was created and with WoW only counting ACTIVE subscriptions compared to LoL players' tendency to 'smurf' (creating low lvl additional accounts) since making an account and playing the game are free this could easily be a rather subjective number.

What is not subjective, however, is the number of games played each day. Ten per second means 864000 games each day (10*60*60*24), most of these games having 10 players in it. That is 8,640,000 players playing an assignment in a game, or should we call it a quest? This statistic is a somewhat more objective way to compare LoL to Wow. 16 million quests in WoW vs 8 million quests in LoL.

So no, I would not say League of Legends is breaking any records just yet, but for a game and a company so young and, by their own admission, still growing and experiencing childhood issues, these are very promising statistics.

How Do I Get Better At League Of Legends #1

Fri, 22 Jul 2011 00:53:52 +0000

How to get better at League of Legends: Part 1
Preface:
Who are you?

My name is John, I'm the average gamer. I've played WoW, TF2, SC2, COD, CS, etc etc. I started playing League of Legends last October, when my friend introduced me to the game. My solo queue ranked rating right now is 1355, with the max at 1385. I have over 650 wins in normal games. I was the first one of my friends to reach level 30. Doing so, I could not resist that shiny 'ranked' button. Through the ups and downs of ranked and League in general, I learned a few things that I would like to pass on to you guys.

Tip #1
“A game is structured playing, usually undertaken for enjoyment.”

The first thing you have to realize is that games are for fun. If you’re not having fun, the game is not worth playing. This is partly the reason I don’t play ranked. When in such a competitive environment, the game simply isn’t fun anymore when your teammates say ‘omfg feeder noob GG’ after you get first-blooded. Remember the game is to have fun, but at your own expense. This means that you shouldn’t sacrifice other’s fun just for your own fun, i.e., trolling. The more fun you’re having, the happier you are. When you’re in a good mood, you tend to perform better!
tl:dr : Have fun while playing the game!

Tip #2
The common factor between all your losses is you.

Before you can improve and win more. You have to have the right mindset. Many-a-times players will just shrug off their failures on other people. This is the wrong attitude to have. The only thing you can improve is yourself. Record yourself playing, and watch yourself play. See where you make mistakes, and where you can improve. Every death is because you made a mistake. See where you can improve.
[readmore]
tl:dr : Try to improve your game instead of blaming it on others!

Tip #3
You can catch more flies with honey than vinegar.

Stop raging at your teammates! It doesn’t help at all. Instead of being aggressive and confronting, i.e., ‘OMFG YOU F**KING NOOB OMG WHY U FEED AGHH GG SCRUB NO HELP ME AT DRAGON’, try to be nice and suggest ideas to your teammates, instead of commanding them. ‘We should do dragon right now. We’re stronger and more farmed then they are, plus their Corki is top so it would be a 4v5,’ sounds so much better than ‘HURRY UP U F**KS DRAGON RITE NOW OMFG *PING**PING**PING**PING*’

tl:dr : Positive attitudes win games.

Tip #4
The ultimate goal is to destroy the enemy nexus.

Situation: You just won a 5v5 fight at dragon, with your team only losing 2 people while the enemy team lost 4. You got dragon, and you are pushing mid with 3 people. All 3 are pretty low health while their Corki is at half health trying to defend the tower. You have time to either dive the Corki and kick his Yordle a**, or you could just kill the first middle tower. What do you do? If you wanted to dive the Corki, you’re wrong. Let’s look at the math for a second.

When diving Corki, the best result is that Corki dies and all 3 of you live. Worst result is that Corki kills all three of you while still living. The best result would be around 300 gold for the kill plus around another 150 in assist gold, which in total is 450 gold. The worst result would probably give Corki 1000 gold while you don’t get any.

When killing the tower, the best result is that you kill the tower. 150 gold times 5 for your team is 750 gold plus the map control.

Killing the tower gives you and your team a guaranteed advantage, as opposed to the risk involved with diving Corki. This is the same as laning to get creep kills versus laning to get champion kills. League of Legends isn’t a Call of Duty Team Deathmatch game. Kill-death ratios don’t matter as long as your team wins. Creep kills give guaranteed, safe income, while champion kills are harder and riskier.

tl:dr: The whole objective of the game is to kill towers and eventually, the nexus. Champion kills are icing on the cake, but don’t ignore the cake just to get the icing. Work on the cake (minion and turret kills), and eventually the icing will come to you. Bad analogy, I know.

Conclusion and Tip #5
OMFG 2500 ELO NAO YAY!!

The best way to improve your game is just to play more. Simple as that. Practice makes perfect. If you play frequently, and follow the above 4 tips and mindsets, you should gradually evolve as a League of Legends player. Thanks for reading this guide, and if you would like to see more of this kind of stuff in the future, leave a comment! However, if you would prefer champion guides or just other content in general, please suggest it in the comments as well!