As the finishing packing for my trip to Gen Con this week has gotten a little boring I decided to stop for a few mins and get up part two of my LoL NOOBS Diary. Hope you enjoy!

So as we heard in the last episode of The Geek Allstars, my mentor Josh Augustine, has chosen Singed, and Twisted Fate for me to use exclusively for the next few months. He has also given me a bunch of pointers in game play and also told me how to allocate my rune slots in the player set up.

Singed is an alchemist themed Champion (good for a pharmacist huh?). He’s a  tank-y type who does AOE poison damage per second, can slow opponents, has an ability which can toss someone over his shoulder (perfect for throwing a hurt champ back into your friends or behind a turret to be shot down), and a buff ultimate ability which pumps up everything he does (attack, run, defend etc).

Twisted Fate is themed directly off of X-Men’s Gambit (He even looks like the Gambit as he looked in the first Wolverine movie. He throws cards for damage, throws random better cards for damage, has a big passive buff you can level, and his ultimate ability is a gate to any far off portion of the map. In Summoners Rift it can cross roughly 1/2 of the map or so. In some others (Dominion) he can go just about anywhere on the map.

For the first few days I hadn’t had much time to read a bunch of write ups on these champs so I was basically wining it on my own wiles. I have been slowly picking the hang of lanes up a bit and have been more effective at leveling. Yet my main problems remain that I am consistently a few levels behind everyone in the matches and also fairly clueless at what items to buy.

I figure the leveling could be some b/c of both getting killed way too much and also spending time trying to figure out what to buy in the in game shop. So I have reverted a bit more as I play to what the mentor has said, “just focus for now on buying the recommended items”. Seems like a good idea, I never really thought it was that important to listen to them but hey they are the game designers so I am sure they know what they are talking about. Now I focus a ton more on picking a couple of helpful items up early and some consumables and then focus on one BIG item to work towards after this. But more on items a bit later.

So I ventured forth on my first few games with Singed. I liked the idea of being able to throw other champs over my shoulder into my turret or more importantly my teammate to land the killing blows. I think this, paired with my play-style will mean more assists then kills, but hey I just want to see if I can get some kills and see more people on the other team die and not me. My first few games were as usual, 5v5 vs beginner bots. Getting the hang of his aoe on movement and the slow wasn’t easy at first and I admittedly died a few more times then I prolly should have, and for that I took a TON of abuse from a human player on my team. I explained that it was the 1st time I have played Singed and I was trying to get the hang of him. I didn’t get any “oh sorry” from him but he did shut up for the rest of the match so it was a win win in a way. I started to get the hang of him a bit more and soon it was time to quit for the night. More iP earned and another Level achieved in game. I was feeling like I was progressing so this is a good thing.

The next day before playing I was able to peruse some forums and guides on Singed. There wasn’t a whole lot that was novel or real new BUT I did get a bit more of purchase order and some play tips. That night I met up with a couple of the regular guys in my 10 man playgroup and a ton of progress was had. See IMO Singed can shine early and level quick with his AOE poison that he puts down as he runs (ability 1). My matches I played with strangers I was lagging behind b/c all 3 of them I ended up with strangers with me on the lane and they were kill stealing like mad. This hurt my leveling and money quite a bit. Tonight, I was on teamspeak (TS) with Alan, quite a vet LoL in our group, and was able to co-ordinate much much better. We took a lane together leveled well and I was able to utilize the toss back and slow to near perfection. We were quite the force in the land and pushed easy, taking out turret after turret. It was a very successful night and I now found out how much I am starting to love this game. Not only did I learn the value of co-ordination over TS but also how much fun teamwork is in this game.

Now it was time to hit up playing Twisted Fate vs bots, so I could get used to his abilities and strengths and weaknesses. Josh had mentioned how he’s got some great attacks and the ultimate ability to teleport  nearly 1/2 way across the map. In addition to this you reveal the location of everyone on the map. Both can come in quite handy in a tense 5v5 SR match. Another big thing to learn how to do is to time the “random” card select ability to get it to be the stun attack.

My first couple of bot matches are a disaster as always for me. Well by disaster I don’t mean I died a ton, but with TF I mean I didn’t manage to contribute much of anything. Sure I was killing some minions in the lane but I just was not able to make any headway at all vs other champs. It just felt like throwing chopsticks instead of knives in battle. I was going to need more practice with TF to be effective.

Lastly for this entry today I will talk about the next weekly meet up with my group. We had a fairly full group this night, so we were able to get in some 5v5 with it being all of our group. Alas, I am still a punching bag in the group. I am starting to realize the other team is regularly targeting me and feeding on me to get money and levels quick. My team sometimes pair me with the perfect match or best player but sometimes just use the other teams salivating to make progress elsewhere. I end up with a 2-2 record on the night but little of it is because of me. I even get moved around a bit in one match, and I can hear the frustration in the one guys voice when talking to me. He even tells me how bad Singed and TF are to play b/c neither does anything particularly well. It seems he must be tired of babysitting me and doesn’t want to try teamwork, which worked REAL well with me and Alan, and just wants the kills. I am sure my day will come tho, as I level more and as I figure out better and better strategies.

One thing I am starting to learn is that a bunch of people out there, and even to a decent degree in my group, don’t care about winning the match. Nope they care more about kills of other players in the match, and winning is secondary. Not me. I want the win first and the kill count second. Sure, I would love to see 2 and 3x the amount of kills plus assists to death ratio on my guy. But to me Ill take a 2-4-7 with a win any day of the week.

How about you? Do you want to win the match or would you take a loss every time if you got 10 kills? Send me your thoughts or comment here.

GeekJock

–Next time: I get some play time with Josh in game and start to have more success. Also, my first DOMINION matches. How will Singed do in there?

Trackback URI | Comments RSS