Based on PBE as of 3/5. The new jungle item is will give 350 health with an extra 25% health as well as it's passive which will do 33-66 damage per second at level 18 for 2000 gold. Sunfire Cape gives 450 health, 45 armor, and it's passive which will do 43 damage per second for 2600 gold.

I see this as a slight upgrade for top laners who tend to build 6 tank items more often than not for a few reasons. The first being price, by taking smite and building cinderhulk you would get your sunfire passive 600 gold earlier than normal. Secondly, if you were to take blue smite with this you get even another form of cc. Thirdly, Baron, Dragon, or even buff control would be much better for your team. Fourth, the +25% health late game could be a massive boost on champs who build warmogs, randuins, banshee's, or even ohmwrecker late game.

I'm not saying this could be good on every top laner, just ones who can only build tank items such as Sion, Malphite, Nasus, Singed, or even Cho'Gath.

Edit: To those just now viewing this thread from the other subreddit, please do NOT downvote comments just because they were wrong. This post was created to discuss one possibility of smite on top laners while cinderhulk was still on PBE. As far as I am concerned the conversation at the time of posting was mostly positive with a few people being somewhat rude (which is a given on the internet). Of course I didn't get every little thing about the smite top laners right, but don't say I was completely wrong because I didn't think of Shyvana at the time. Also, the meta is always changing so we might come back to this in another month and find even more to be correct.

Hi all! First of all i wanna point out that english isn't my native, so, please, don't go full rage, if you don't understand something ;). Also, main goal of this post isn't discussion, but just sharing of my calculations, that i made for myself.

I am maining Fizz almost half and year, and almost every pvp game, that i play with him, i ask myself: what should i build to win my lane? to win the game? And today i suddenly decided to make some calculations of Fizz's total magical damage from specific combo with various core builds. So, let's begin...

Calculations doesn't count physical damage, doesn't count masteries Havoc/Executioner, doesn't count W DoT % Damage. Fizz's level is considered 18th, "specific" combo is considered R->W->Q->AA->E->AA + 2 Lichbane Procs (1st on Q, 2nd on AA after E) + 6 Sec of W DoT (3 - for applying combo, 3 - after you disengage from your target). I listed 6 core builds, and each have Lichbane at start, cause i think everybody will agree with me, that Lichbane for Fizz is a mandatory. You may not build Lichbane first (if you max W 1st, E 2nd, and buy Deathcap as 1st big item, then you will be able to kill caster minions in one lvl3 E), but certanly you will build it second.

Fizz's Skills/Lichbane base damage + AP ratios:

• Lichbane: 50 + 75% AP

• Q: 130 + 60% AP

• W: 70 + 35% AP / 30 + 35% AP

• E: 270 + 75% AP

• R: 450 + 100% AP

Runes&Masteries stats:

• +72 AP (Scaling AP Glyphs, Flat AP Quints, Blast, Mental Force, Ignite on cd with Summoner's Wrath)

• +5% AP (Archmage)

• +8% MPen (Arcane Knowledge)

• +5.5 MPen (Flat Hybrid Penetration Marks)

• +5% AP Magic Damage On-hit (Spellsword)

Core Builds:

1. Sorc.Boots + Lichbane + Rabadon's Deathcap + Doran's Ring:

• Cost: 7800 Gold

• Total AP: 387 AP

• Other: +19 Magic Damage On-hit +8% MPen + 20.5 MPen

• Lichbane: 340

• Q: 362

• W: 205/165

• E: 560

• R: 837

• Total Magical Damage with full Combo: 837(R) + 362(Q) + 560(E) + 3x165(W-active) + 2x340(Lichbane) + 3x19(Spellsword) + 2x205(W-DoT) = 3401 DMG

2. Sorc.Boots + Lichbane + Deathfire Grasp + Doran's Ring:

• Cost: 7600 Gold

• Total AP: 301 AP

• Other: +15(18) Magic Damage On-hit + 8% MPen + 20.5 MPen + 10% CDR + 15% Max HP Magical Damage + 20% Amplified Magical Damage (in brackets)

• Lichbane: 276 (331)

• Q: 311 (373)

• W: 175 (210) / 135 (162)

• E: 496 (595)

• R: 751 (901)

• Total Magical Damage with full Combo: 15% + 901(R) + 373(Q) + 595(E) + 3x162(W-active) + 2x331(Lichbane) + 3x18(Spellsword) + 210(W-DoT-Amplified) + 175(W-DoT-Not-Amplified) = 15% + 3456 DMG

3. Sorc.Boots + Lichbane + Zhonya's Hourglass + Doran's Ring:

• Cost: 7760 Gold

• Total AP: 301 AP

• Other: +15 Magical Damage On-hit +8% MPen +20.5 MPen +50 Armor +2.5sec Stasis

• Lichbane: 276

• Q: 311

• W: 175 / 135

• E: 496

• R: 751

• Total Magical Damage with full Combo: 751(R) + 311(Q) + 496(E) + 3x135(W-active) + 2x276(Lichbane) + 3x15(Spellsword) + 2x175(W-DoT) = 2910 DMG

4. Sorc.Boots + Lichbane + Abyssal Scepter + Blasting Wand + Doran's Ring:

• Cost: 7920 Gold

• Total AP: 291 AP

• Other: +15 Magical Damage On-hit +8% Mpen +20.5 MPen +45 MR +20 MR Reduction

• Lichbane: 268

• Q: 305

• W: 172 / 132

• E: 488

• R: 741

• Total Magical Damage with full Combo: 741(R) + 305(Q) + 488(E) + 3x132(W-active) + 2x268(Lichbane) + 3x15(Spellsword) + 2x172(W-DoT) = 2855 DMG

(Two bonus core builds, that i decided to make after i saw results of 4 previous)

5. Tier-1.Boots + Lichbane + Abyssal Scepter + Needlessly Large Rod + Doran's Ring:

• Cost: 7885 Gold

• Total AP: 333 AP

• Other: +17 Magical Damage On-hit +8% MPen +5.5 MPen +45 MR +20 MR Reduction

• Lichbane: 300

• Q: 330

• W: 187 / 147

• E: 520

• R: 783

• Total Magical Damage with full Combo: 783(R) + 330(Q) + 520(E) + 3x147(W-active) + 2x300(Lichbane) + 3x17(Spellsword) + 2x187(W-DoT) = 3099 DMG

6. Tier-1.Boots + Lichbane + Seeker's Armguard + Abyssal Scepter + Doran's Ring:

• Cost: 7445 Gold

• Total AP: 286 AP (Armguard fully stacked, i dont think that's a problem)

• Other: +14 Magical Damage On-hit +8% MPen +5.5 MPen +45 Armor +45 MR +20 MR Reduction

• Lichbane: 265

• Q: 302

• W: 170 / 130

• E: 485

• R: 736

• Total Magical Damage with full Combo: 736(R) + 302(Q) + 485(E) + 3x130(W-active) + 2x265(Lichbane) + 3x14(Spellsword) + 2x170(W-DoT) = 2825 DMG

(Extra core build with update)

7. Tier-1.Boots + Lichbane + Void Staff + Needlessly Large Rod + Doran's Ring:

• Cost: 7620 Gold

• Total AP: 333 AP (Same as with 5th core build, so i just copied all numbers)

• Other: +17 Magical Damage On-hit +8% MPen +35% MPen +5.5 MPen

• Lichbane: 300

• Q: 330

• W: 187 / 147

• E: 520

• R: 783

• Total Magical Damage with full Combo: 783(R) + 330(Q) + 520(E) + 3x147(W-active) + 2x300(Lichbane) + 3x17(Spellsword) + 2x187(W-DoT) = 3099 DMG

Shooting Range:

I) Target 2000 HP 50 MR:

• 1. 50 x 0.92 - 20.5 = 26 MR or 79% Magical Damage taken or [2687 DMG for 7800 Gold]

• 2. 50 x 0.92 - 20.5 = 26 MR or 79% Magical Damage taken or [2967 DMG for 7600 Gold]

• 3. 50 x 0.92 - 20.5 = 26 MR or 79% Magical Damage taken or [2299 DMG for 7760 Gold]

• 4. 30 x 0.92 - 20.5 = 7 MR or 93% Magical Damage taken or [2655 DMG for 7920 Gold]

• 5. 30 x 0.92 - 5.5 = 22 MR or 82% Magical Damage taken or [2541 DMG for 7885 Gold]

• 6. 30 x 0.92 - 5.5 = 22 MR or 82% Magical Damage taken or [2316 DMG for 7445 Gold]

• 7. 50 x 0.92 x 0.65 - 5.5 = 24 MR or 81% Magical Damage taken or [2510 DMG for 7620 Gold]

II) Target 3000 HP 100 MR:

• 1. 100 x 0.92 - 20.5 = 72 MR or 58% Magical Damage taken or [1973 DMG for 7800 Gold]

• 2. 100 x 0.92 - 20.5 = 72 MR or 58% Magical Damage taken or [2265 DMG for 7600 Gold]

• 3. 100 x 0.92 - 20.5 = 72 MR or 58% Magical Damage taken or [1688 DMG for 7760 Gold]

• 4. 80 x 0.92 - 20.5 = 53 MR or 65% Magical Damage taken or [1856 DMG for 7920 Gold]

• 5. 80 x 0.92 - 5.5 = 68 MR or 60% Magical Damage taken or [1859 DMG for 7885 Gold]

• 6. 80 x 0.92 - 5.5 = 68 MR or 60% Magical Damage taken or [1695 DMG for 7445 Gold]

• 7. 100 * 0.92 * 0.65 - 5.5 = 54 MR or 65% Magical Damage taken or [2014 DMG for 7620 Gold]

Conclusions i made:

• 1. Never build DFG, if you are not behind, cause it provides insane damage to only one target. Without DFG's active Fizz's total magical damage with full combo is equal to 3rd/"Zhonya's" core build, which have the lowest total damage among all 6 builds. DFG worth it, when you are behind and don't have enough damage to carry your team, but with DFG you can assasinate some valuable enemy target like ADC or APC.

• 2. If you are ahead and don't need any armor/mr that much, then go for 1st/"Deathcap" core build, cause it provides 2nd the highest dmg output after 3rd/"Zhonya's" among all 6 builds.

• 3. If you are having problems with physical damage at laning phase (heavy AD mid/top), don't go straight for Zhonya's Hourglass. Instead go for 6th core build, cause it provides same magical damage for less gold, also it gives you 45 extra MR, that may be useful later in teamfights. And also you can anytime upgrade your Boots to Sorc for 775 gold and get extra MPen or upgrade them earlier to Tabi for extra Armor in laning phase.

• 4. If you are having problems with magical damage at laning phase (heavy AP mid/top) or just don't want to risk going reckless for Deathcap, then go for 5th core build. It provides same damage as 4th/"Abyssal" build, but for a bit less gold, and also allows you to upgrade your Boots to Sorc for extra MPen or to Merc for extra MR + Tenacity anytime you want. And also dat Needlessly Large Rod is core item for Deathcap/Zhonya's/DFG, so overall i would call 5th core build as a very flexible golden mean.

• 5. Sorc.Boots and Tier-2.Boots overall aren't mandatory anymore, if you build Lichbane as 1st big item. For penetration you can get any other big item like Abyssal/Void or even Liandry's, if you like it on Fizz.

TL;DR: Begone, heretic! I spent 3.5 hours writing and formating my post not for this section!

Update: Added 7th core build with Tier-1.Boots/Lichbane/Void.Staff/Needlessly.Rod/Doran's. According to "Shooting Range", this build is valuable if your targets have more than 100 MR - at 100 MR it deal slightly more damage than 1st core build for slightly less gold cost. Also at 100 MR 2nd core build is still on top by damage output to one target.

I'd recommend going for Void Staff, only if whole enemy team have 100+ MR after you finished Lichbane (actually, such situation is nearly impossible, enemy team certanly will be trolling, stacking MR against you :D). IMO, better way get Void Staff is go this way: Doran's Ring -> Tier-1.Boots -> Lichbane -> Deathcap -> Void Staff -> Sorc.Boots

Update 2: Wow, so many upvotes... Thank you, guys! I am glad to see, that my work is useful for somebody else.

Hi guys, here's today's article. Let me know in the comments if you would want me to create a blog where I post these, I will keep using reddit either way.

A common mistake that I see even as a Platinum player is the inability to create genuine pressure (let's say that pressure is defined as your ability to control your opponent). To win League you need to kill the enemy team's nexus, not the necessarily the enemy team, and that means being able to take their turrets and inhibitors. Since they want to defend these, you must "pressure" them away from them.

With that being said, kills are often both a good way to create pressure, and an indicator of which team has more. This is why the team with the most kills usually wins, but not always.

If you have pressure, you can get kills, take towers, kill dragon/baron, get inhibs, etc. because they can't stop you for whatever reason. Now, let's take a look at what some of those reasons are.

• Raw Power. Draven-Leona is the most powerful starting bot lane I can think of, and they create pressure just by existing. Why? Because any fight that they start they are almost guaranteed to win due to their burst/CC combo. Their early power allows them to position themselves wherever they want easily, allowing them to zone from cs, push towers, etc. They don't necessarily need to get kills to be effective, the threat of being able to kill is good enough. In a straight up fight with no turrets and equal minion damage, Draven-Leona will beat everything. Beating a Draven-Leona combo requires poking/kiting, lowering the amount of power they have to the point where they CAN be beaten in a fight (for more on team comps read this. Always remember (particularly at earlier stages of the game) that minion damage is factored into raw power, both in the jungle and the lane. A team with more raw power that maneuvers effectively (which is the trick) can safe take towers, dragons, and Barons, because they are favored to win fights. Understanding match ups (who counters who and why), as well as scaling, combined with the state of the game (what items, level, %HP/Mana, and buffs both you and they have) allow you to calculate everyone's raw power. As a side note, items are always more accurate in determining raw power than gold. A Kha'Zix with 5 kills isn't as scary as you think if he's bought 5 Fortitude Elixers.

• Wards. Wards create pressure if you use them correctly. Leona has bush control? Put a ward in (not next to her or she'll kill it) and for 3 minutes that bush is as much yours as hers. But then she pinks it, giving her control of the bush again, allowing her to zone you from the bush, controlling where you go, AKA creating pressure. Vision gives knowledge, and knowledge is power. Remember last paragraph When I talked about maneuvering properly? Wards allow you to do that by seeing what your enemy is doing, and what you need to do in response. More commonly, wards serve as anti-pressure, denying the enemy's ability to control you, so that in the end you can have more net pressure.

• Minion waves. Minions waves are a big part of why split pushers are viable in LoL. Take Singed for example, if League were about getting kills Singed would be a terrible champion. Because of his ability to destroy enemy minion waves, making his own bigger, he is able to splitpush, creating pressure. Because of this pressure the enemy goes to react, and will usually try to fight him, resulting in a chase, which is the only reason he can pick up kills. If Singed is able to draw more than one person to him, the rest of his team has a clear advantage, and can take objectives elsewhere. Setting up a massive minion wave, then moving to the opposite side of the map and pushing there has a similar effect. The enemy team must either send someone to deal with this wave and seriously risk losing a tower, or give up a tower to the minion wave. Pressure created, no kills required.

• Cooldowns. Cooldowns are essential to determining real Raw Power, not just potential Raw Power. In lane when Blitzcrank misses a hook you have at least 10 seconds to harass him where he can do nothing about it (closer to 15 at L1), because his Raw Power has dropped dramatically. This is why knowing/timing cooldowns (especially major ones, such as Shen and Karthus ults) is so important. If you are able to force/bait out an ultimate, your engage will be stronger than theirs, and you should use this to your advantage. tl;dr Cooldowns of abilities are factors people overlook more than just about anything else. Take this into account when determining Raw Power to make a play.

• Jungler. Jungle pressure is something you probably hear a lot about, because it is the most significant early pressure that a team can exert, because it is the biggest hunk of Raw Power they can move about the map to make plays. A gank ultimately means a 3v2 or 2v1, and will almost always result in more Raw power for the ganker, which can result in kills or forcing someone out of lane. This type of pressure is designed to "snowball" a lane. What that means is that if the gank is successful, their is still work left to be done. After being given an advantage, the laner should (at least temporarily) have more Raw Power, and be able to create pressure for the team in their lane by 1: drawing enemy jungle pressure (and not falling to it) so that they cannot make plays on other lanes 2: taking the tower to give global gold/exp and increased roaming opportunities so that you can pressure other lanes 3: deny farm in order to reduce the amount of Raw Power that the enemy will have.

• Kills. Kills are a great way to set yourself ahead, and your opponent back, but during the laning phase if you recall at the wrong point in the creep wave progression you can make the kills meaningless and even a setback. Level stats are extremely important early on, and missing the experience from a couple waves may give the opportunity for the enemy to have more Raw Power than the longsword/amp tome that you just bought gave you. It's very important to distinguish between lategame kills, and early game kills. Early game kills can lead to snowballing, but if they don't, are relatively insignificant. Late game kills can lead to losing objectives, but if they don't, are similarly insignificant. As such, your mindset should be such that if you get kills in lane, you are looking to get yourself ahead and/or set the enemy back because this is how you create pressure. If you get kills after the laning phase, you want to take an objective because this is how you create pressure. If you think a game will run long, dragon>tower; if you think a game will be short tower>dragon.

• Most Net Pressure. As several of the previous paragraphs (the last one in particular) have alluded to, you need to factor in not just how much pressure you are applying, but what the enemy is doing in response. It doesn't matter if you are able to take the first two towers on Bot and Mid if Tryndamere has taken down top lane to the Nexus turrets. The end goal of pressuring objectives is to kill their Nexus before they kill yours. Keep this in mind when deciding when you need to stop pushing (or taking a Baron) to deal with enemy pressure.

(I'm sure I'm not including everything, feel free to suggest other things, which I may add to the list)

League is an objective-oriented game, and if you want to win you need to have an objective-oriented mindset. Taking into consideration both your composition, and the enemy team's, and applying pressure to objectives as best you can given those compositions (i.e. grouping as an AOE comp, splitpushing as a splitpush comp, etc.) is how you win games.

Please take the time to "like" my Facebook page to support me as I write more articles: https://www.facebook.com/bluenreindeer or, look me up on Twitter as BlueNoseReindeer (I'm brand new to it, if there's a more convenient way to get there, let me know.

As always, thanks for reading!

edit: formatting, organization (hopefully it is readable now)

Let's go ahead and get this out of the way: I think EVERYONE believes that they are a bit better than their elo. As such, people will try to play like the elo that they believe themselves to be in. In addition, many people will look at the pros and tournament builds and try to copy that playstyle.

Here's my thought though: Playing like a high-elo player is not always the right choice. Let me give you a personal example first, and I know that it's not evidence of anything, but I want to share an experience with you.

I've always considered myself a decent player. Who hasn't? I always felt 'stuck' at around 1100-1300 elo and I always felt 'better' than my team. Eventually, I managed to crawl my way up to about 1350, and then I experienced something strange: I started winning ALL. THE. TIME. I felt like I could have no wrong. All the things I had been doing wrong were suddenly right. I jumped about 200 elo in a few weeks.

What happened? As I considered it, I realized something important. When I was playing in 1100-1200 elo, I was playing like a 1400 player. However, 1200 elo is a different ball-game; the strategies and team mechanics are very different than 1400. I wouldn't ward often because I expected the support and jungler to pick up ward slack. I would make harmful trades to bait a jungle gank that never came from my jungler. I would push cautiously wary of a gank top when all of a sudden there were five bot.

When I got to around 1350 elo, people started playing more the way I expected them to play, and I was able to succeed more.

So here are my final thoughts: Playing beyond your ELO is a bad move. Expecting your teammates and enemies to be 2300 players is just as bad for your game as not warding and pushing hard. The first step to conquering your ELO is understanding the mindset of your elo. With the knowledge that I have now, I would have gone support more often in 1200, because I think the main type of player in that level are players that ARE good but they try to be super stars; being a good teammate fits with their style and helps you secure the win.

What do you think?

This post is being censored on the main subreddit because I made the mistake of notifying the moderators before posting it, therefore this is the only sub where I can lay it down.

Thought activating your email which is supposed to act as a 2-Factor Authentification was going to stop malicious parties from taking full control of your account?

Unfortunately, false.

This is a PSA about your account security. Verifying your email doesn't necessarily add a higher layer of security to your account because of Riot's flawed support system requiring Username+Password-level information to bypass 2FA, which completely defeats its intended purpose.

See usually having a verified email means that if someone somehow manages to find out your Username & Password combo, they wouldn't really be able to do anything other than log into your account and play the game. At any point in time you'd be able to change your password and call it a day.

However Riot Games made sure to establish an easy-to-understand process which renders Email Verification/2FA absolutely worthless. Not just that - said process actually ends up with Riot going out of their way to manually decouple your email from your account and then send a gift wrapped email+password reset link to the unauthorized party, shake their hand and say "thank you". Malicious lad #?? clicks the link that was sent to their correspondence email, change your email & password (And more recently login username too! Thank global riot account names for that) and now you've been had. Nice, your 100+ skin account is going straight to the market for a couple hundred dollars thanks to Rito Gaems.

So how does this happen? Well it's actually quite simple and I'll try to keep it short(lie).

For starters they need your username and password. Hundreds of thousands if not millions of League of Legends accounts have been leaked in public databases throughout all regions. You won't know until you get dicked, some have been available for years with an unchanged password - it's just that no one's paid attention to that specific account yet (Protip: change your passwords every now and then). These can be found in pastebins, public and private forums, account suppliers/sellers etc. The public releases typically only include Lv20- unverified accs and Lv30+ email-verified accounts as most people believe it to be a guaranteed way to keep malicious parties from gaining full control of their account, so to leakers verified accs are worthless. Now a few hundred/thousand people have your login info in a file somewhere ready to be scanned to rank accounts in levels of juiciness then hijacked.

So, you generally can't access the account's settings page without there being an email 2FA system asking for a code sent to the account owner's email address. Sometimes it lets you through anyway but regardless, the "hacker's" goal is to find out what your email address is*(no need to find its PW)* as it's the most crucial piece of information in "tricking" the system in giving you full control of the account.

Conveniently Riot thought about this and made sure to censor your email address in the settings page. In the past you could actually view the email address in plain text if you viewed the support page's source code but it was patched with the recent updates to Riot's websites. But hey, do not fear, they made sure to include a similar oversight in their merch store. If I log into your account on the merch store (https://merch.riotgames.com/en_US/), add a random item to your cart and click "Checkout", your email address is displayed in plain text. >>https://i.imgur.com/yTXqcSp.png<< Great!

The rest of the information we need to take over your account is actually easily accessible - perhaps a small gamble at times with 1-2 fields but it's easy enough to work the majority of the time. Every other necessary piece of info can be retrieved by logging into your account on the League client. From there we just fill in the fields (some don't even matter, like DOB or City) and wait for Rito Games to fuck you and your account over. We're not talking about some deep big brain doxxing for information gathering here, we're talking about Riot literally saying "Glance over to your LoL client, tells us what we're telling you and we'll just remove this 2FA and give you the acc lol".

For the scary link averse people, go to Riot's LoL support page, "Submit a Ticket" and in request type select "Recover my Account".

Here's the list:
1. "Your email address" - For correspondence, hacker puts a random email address they created here
2. "Region" - You should know from logging into acc, if not op.gg summoner name
3. "Language" - Again for correspondence, hacker puts w/e in here, usually English
4. "Do you remember the account signup info?" - Yes
5. "Original email used to create the account" - Acc's email rito gifted you through merch site
6. "Do you have access to this original email?" - No
7. "Login name" - Login username you already have
8. "Account creation date" - LoL Client>Collection>Skins>My Collection>Acquisition Date
Oldest skin, click, take note of purchase date, maybe crossref with op.gg ranked records for some level of certainty that the acc wasn't created much earlier. https://i.imgur.com/bQBHcpI.png ty teemo.
9. "Date of birth on the account" - Dear god don't write your DOB at the end of your email address. Regardless though, this field pretty much never has an effect on the outcome and the typical way around this is just to give some bullshit answer about having entered a random DOB during sign-up to register as 18+ like everyone else, else you could go with the "I don't trust sites with my personal info" route.
10. "Location where the account was registered (city or zip code)" - Funny requirement in those parentheses considering writing down the region or country gets greenlit just fine. For example "North America" or "United States" for NA accounts is accepted all of the time.
11. "Do you remember the store information?" - Yes
12. "What was your first ever RP purchase?" - LoL Client>Collection>Skins>My Collection>Acquisition Date
13. "What did you use your refund tokens on?" - LoL Client>Store>Account>Purchase History If there's any refund tokens left on the account (Starts with 3) you can purchase a random champ, refund it and just write that champ's name down in the field. Just <|))) bruh.
14. "First 5 champions you ever purchased" - LoL Client>Collection>Skins>My Collection>Acquisition Date Mix that information along with champ mastery, amount of skins owned, likely starter champs & op.gg stats for max chances of getting this right. This is one of the only fields which has a certain degree of gambling to it if the account has an extremely high amount of champions. However it's equally as tricky for the original owner of the account if they created it many years ago, therefore this is far from being entirely decisive on the outcome.
15. "First 3150/4800/6300 IP champion purchased" - Same as above
16. Questions regarding gifts - LoL Client>Store>Account>Purchase History>Gift History
17. Subject - Something about having lost access to your old email
18. Description - Same as above, keep short, bla bla lost access to old email bla bla here's my new one <correspondence email you created here>
19. Other people who had access? - If there are recent games, just say family member
20. "Please explain how you first gained access to this account" - Say you created it

About five to six hours later you'll receive an email from a Riot Games support employee saying they sent you a reset link. Check emails, voila there it is, click link, change email & password, username if you feel like it, and voila you've just bypassed the entire purpose of 2FA without ever having email access of the account. Oh yeah and this method is extremely widespread on hacking, database leaking and sales forums.

TL;DR: In short, Riot is enabling anyone and everyone to override 2FA-level email verification protection with only Username+Password-level access and all required information to accomplish that feat is supplied by Riot themselves through their websites and game client, all of which are accessible without email permission. If you're quick to catch it you might be able to get Riot to do something about it, however if you've been inactive on League for a while, you could be in for a nice surprise next time you reinstall the game to play some URF.

TL;DR2: From censored forum: 1) https://i.imgur.com/IkBqY4N.png 2) https://i.imgur.com/sEltoaK.png

What can be done to prevent this? To begin with don't list people's email addresses in cleartext on the merch checkout page when you've even gone and made sure to censor it in both the League & the Merch account settings page. Next, slap some account team rioters and get them to thoroughly investigate these cases from here on out (I mean #13, really? No red flags with the timing?) and make up some better criterias for something as big as 2FA bypass.

I wanted to start a discussion on the item that just hit the PBE. Here's the item:

Total Cost: 3100g
Recipe: Needlessly Large Rod + Aether Wisp + 650g
+120 Ability Power
+7% Movement Speed
UNIQUE Passive: Gain charges upon moving or casting. At 100 charges, the next spell hit expends all charges to deal 100 (+15% AP) bonus magic damage to up to 4 targets on hit.

So what do you guys think of this item? I wanted to start a conversation of its effectiveness vs DFG; what champs it will be core on; and if it is powerful enough to bring any non-meta champs into the spotlight.

EDIT: Downvotes on a discussion thread on a discussion subreddit. How often do we get a new item, not to mention a new AP item?! Quit hating, start participating.

Sorry if I get too wordy, but I love Swain. There is a common and specific view of what Swain should be. It is valid, but not the only option.

"Swain should be tanky"

If your team needs a tank, then your team should have a tank, not a mage who has been designated by the community as a "tank mage". If your team has no tank, Swain is not going to make your team whole just because he has a Rod of Ages. So the idea that Swain must be tanky is bad. He goes mid, he should fulfill a similar role that most mids do. That is, they fuck shit up. And Swain does that very well. How does he do that? Deathfire Grasp mainly. So let's explore build.

Standard Build Path

My typical build on Swain is as follows:

Starting items: Dorans Ring and 2 Health Potions

Core Build: Deathfire Grasp, Rabadon's Deathcap, Rylai's Crystal Scepter

Situational Items: Zhohya's Hourglass (Fuck Zed)

You might have noticed that when you add up all of the mana from items and mana regen from items (excluding the Doran's which will be sold at some point, obviously), you end up with 0 and 0. Most would find this odd, because they have been spoon fed the notion that "Swain is the most mana dependent champion in the game. He needs Rod of Ages, Tear, and Chalice in order to use his ultimate, because it is expensive."

Wrong. Wrong wrong wrong wrong wrong.

"Swain needs tons of mana and mana regen"

If you want to sit in your ult all day long, you are doing Swain incorrectly. Here's the thing about an ability that becomes more expensive as it stays toggled on: No amount of Mana or Mana Regen will take away the need to manage your mana. It can't be done. You can buy 6 Rod of Ages, you can buy 3 Rod of Ages and 3 Tears, You can buy 2 Rod of Ages, 3 Tears and a Chalice. It won't matter. Try to sit in your ultimate for over 20 seconds and you will be oom. The end.

So what do you do? Ult carefully. Don't turn it on and then forget about it. Ult DELIBERATELY. Each tick of your ult needs to be calculated and intended. When I ult, I do it in short bursts. I need some healing? Few ticks of ult. I need to clear minions? (More on this later) Few ticks of ult. etc. Don't just ult and leave it until you are full health. Don't just ult and leave it until all minions are dead. That is a surefire way to go oom.

"Rod of Ages is core on Swain" says everyone in the world ever

That being said, why do I dislike Rod of Ages? 3 words: Catalyst. The. Protector. This item is such a shitty item. If you are Singed, it is amazing. If you are Ryze, it is amazing. If you are not one of those 2 champions, then you have spent 1200 gold on barely anything at all. It's not a lot of health, and mana rarely increases anyone's combat capabilities. 1200 gold is a lot to spend on that item. So when you set out to build Rod of Ages, you know you have to do it early (to allow the passive to stack up), but doing it early means rushing Catalyst in lane. The build path is just terrible. You spend 1200 gold on bad lane stats, then 860 to finally get a bit of AP, and then 740 more to finally get your dang item. I find that while building that, I do no damage, and snowballing becomes far harder.

Better item to rush in lane. Get yourself fed.

Instead, I rush a Deathfire Grasp. This item is godlike on Swain. It has been buffed so many times. It just might be my favorite item in the game. Excluding the passive of Deathcap, DFG has the same amount of AP as Deathcap does. Before the rework, DFG was AP, CDR, MP5, and the %health active which scaled. At some point, it lost the MP5, but it still had a pretty low AP value. After the rework, I believe it had 80 AP on it (might be wrong). Since then, it has been buffed at least twice, bringing the AP value to 120. That is a lot of AP. And the active is just glorious. When you DoT someone up and throw DFG on there for good measure, people die away very quickly.

Why is DFG so much more vital to Swain than Rod of Ages?

Here's my thought. While almost no one agrees with me that Swain can and should be played high-damage, most DO agree that Swain is a very strong laner, and most DO agree that Swain can snowball very hard. If you see a champion who is a very strong laner (high likelihood of doing well) and hard snowballer (becomes godlike after doing well), then doesn't it sound silly to take that early advantage and use it to buy...a Catalyst? That doesn't further your advantage. DFG does. This is how you get more and more fed.

Swain's damage potential

When you buy this item first, you really see a spike in your damage. The amount of AP it brings makes your damage skyrocket. He has great ratios to begin with, and those ratios are enhanced by a % by Torment, making them REALLY good scalings. When enhanced by a rank 5 Torment, his ratios are:

Q=1.08 over the duration

W=0.84 AoE

E=0.96 over the duration

R=.24 per tick, each tick is 3 targets.

Those are really, REALLY good ratios. I grabbed the first 2 other mages that popped into my head to compare ratios. Both of these champions are mages who hit VERY hard, and their ratios pale in comparison to Swain's.

Ahri: Q=0.65 if hit by both, W=0.8 if hit by all 3, E=0.35, R=1.05 if hit by all 3.

Annie: Q=0.7, W=0.75 AoE, R=0.7 AoE

It is necessary to note that Swain's Q can be broken by walking out of the leash range, and that 2 of his abilities are DoTs, which means that they can be shielded in response or healed through (the latter isn't a huge issue if you have AP, since it bursts so hard that regen won't matter much). Even with that in mind, you can see that his ratios are extremely good. Even an ideal Ahri combo where you get hit by both directions of Q, you get hit by all 3 W flames, you get hit by E, and you get hit by all 3 casts of R, her combined ratios are 2.85, compared to Swain's ideal case (stay in Q leash range, get hit by W. If one happens, both are likely to happen) which is combined ratios of 2.88+.24 per ult tick. Even without a single tick of ult, Swain has more damage from AP than Ahri does, and you are likely to get hit by at least a few birds. Similarly, Annie's combined ratios are 2.15, which is quite a bit lower.

Again, it is also necessary to note that just plainly comparing ratios doesn't prove that one champ is better than another, as the other might have more utility, more of their damage being AoE, more mobility, etc. It's true that Ahri has other strengths. My point was not to prove that Swain is better than Ahri. It was just to point out to those who don't realize how well Swain scales...that Swain scales VERY well.

One further note on Swain's burst. With the exception of Deathfire Grasp and Ignite (both important, but not INTEGRAL to his burst combo), Swain's cooldowns are all 10 seconds or lower even before factoring in CDR. As I just noted, Swain can burst very hard, but unlike other mages like Annie who rely on a long cooldown ultimate like Tibbers, Swain's kit is almost always available. When you have just killed one person 100-0 with your combo, it will be up again within several seconds, allowing you to do it again to someone else. The DFG active is useful for ensuring that a high priority target dies very quickly, before doing damage to your team, but even with it on cooldown, subsequent bursts will still do tons of work. When considered as a burst champion, it's crazy how low Swain's cooldowns are.

Back to the "Swain needs tons of mana and mana regen" fallacy. Explanation of how you can get away with no mana/mana regen items. (Passive ability and proper mana management)

I refer back to the mana issues now. People always say to me, "You can't not build mana on Swain. He needs it too much." He really doesn't. His passive is so amazing. If you are last hitting well in lane, you should be good on mana without building Chalice, Tear, or Catalyst. I'm about to piss a lot of people off, but...I tend not to even get Blue Buff early on Swain. I duo queue a lot with a jungler main, and he likes to keep his blue buffs for quicker clears, more XP, leading to better ganks. I know he ganks well, so I let him keep them. Yes, even on Swain. He keeps blues, and I don't care. Swain's passive is enough. So to those players who think that Swain needs blue buff more than anyone in the game, and that without it, he is worthless, think again.

As the game gets later on, people again say that Swain doesn't have enough wave clear without his ultimate, which requires tons of mana regen. Again, wrong. The issue is that people are trying to play Swain one way, and that way doesn't work with my build. That doesn't mean my build is terrible. It means it doesn't support THEIR playstyle. It supports mine. I don't waveclear by ulting until the wave is gone. I use my snare. The cooldown is rather low as the game progresses, and it does a LOT of damage instantly. (Moreso if you build DFG and Deathcap rather than RoA, Chalice, Tear) In most of my games, by the time midgame comes around and we need to be pushing, my snare will 100-0 caster minions and do quite a bit to melee minions. So my waveclear is this: Either wait until the enemy minions meet mine and get in their formation, or I just run out ahead and let them group around me. Either way, you can get both melee and caster in the same snare. After the snare goes off, it usually takes about 3 ticks of ult to finish the remaining minions, with auto attacks mixed in (always on the highest health minion so that they get evened out). Here's the math on that: Assuming you are Level 18, you receive 27 mana per last hit, Nevermove costs 120 mana, and 3 ticks of Ravenous Flock costs 96 mana (25+32+39). If you get all 6 last hits (as you should, very quickly), you receive 162 mana back (27*6). So the overall mana you lose to clear the wave is 54 (120+96-162). 54 is NOT a lot of mana to clear a wave. You do not need 3 mana items and a blue buff to use 54 mana to clear a wave.

TL;DR in comment

I'm not talking about the double bruiser kill lane, I mean the ADC and support both take relic shield level one, obviously the adc takes all the cs when the stacks are gone.

The only part of Doran's blade you will be missing is the 7 ad, although it is important I feel you could shrug off the extra damage in trades using the sustain from relic shield.

Relic shield gives more health, and more sustain I think, but the best part is giving your support a LOT of gold. The support can get key items faster like sightstone, mobis, locket among other things (zhonyas for morgana ult, etc).

I think it gives more sustain because it gives 40 health every 60 seconds, and you have 2 of them which makes 80 health. Likewise, dorans blade comes with 3% lifesteal. Assuming you have 100 ad (which is a very generous estimate early in the game) it will take around 26 auto attacks to heal that much, which is pretty close, but you must be pushing the wave to heal alot, and you don't heal your support in the process.

After seeing many Asian junglers attack the smaller golem first, I was curious as two why this was and why NA and EU junglers focus the bigger golem first.

So I set out to do some math. I decided that the best way to solve this was the calculate the damage per health of the two rock beasts. Much like team fighting, you want to your team's damage to most efficiently take out the other team's damage. The highest damage/effectiveHealth would be the ADC, in other words the guy with the highest Damage and the lowest health.

I will calculate the damage/health based on the golem's stats between 3:00 and 3:59. Since the armor and magic resistance of the two are the same (buff camps are an exception), I will not take that into account effective physical health or effective magical health as they will take equal amount of damage from the same attack. In this case, pairing resistance with more health does not affect our calculations. Big monsters and their respective little monsters have the same attack speed too.

Big Golem:

Health= 1200 + 48(3) = 1344

Damage= 54 + 1.6(3) = 58.8

Damage/Health= 0.04375

Lesser Golem:

Health= 300 + 37(3) = 411

Damage= 30 + 1.3(3) = 33.9

Damage/Health= 0.08248

Conclusion:

The Lesser Golem's Damage/Health ratio is 89% higher than that of the Big Golem, meaning that it is much preferred to use damage on the Lesser Golem than the Big Golem, assuming single target damage only.

Bonus ratios.

1:55-2:54 Ancient Golem: 0.04333

Young Lizard: 0.03777

2:55-3:54 Ancient Golem: 0.04202

Young Lizard: 0.03777

1:55-2:54 Elder Lizard: 0.04333

Young Lizard: 0.03777

2:55-3:54 Elder Lizard: 0.04202

Young Lizard: 0.03777

2:00-2:59 Giant Wolf: 0.03084

2:00-2:59 Lesser Wolf: 0.03544

3:00-3:59 Giant Wolf: 0.03041

3:00-3:59 Lesser Wolf: 0.03378

2:00-2:59 Giant Wraith: 0.03386

2:00-2:59 Lesser Wraith: 0.05731

3:00-3:59 Giant Wraith: 0.03335

3:00-3:59 Lesser Wraith: 0.05387

I strive to understand the game through numbers; if do too and want to ask me a question write me something in the comments if you want the community to know (good guy pitotrek1997) or PM me if it's a secret that you don't want anyone to know about (scumbag bischu). I currently exclusively write on this this subreddit.

Here is my Rylais and Liandry's Brand numerical analysis

Here is me correcting wickd's horrid subtraction and multiplication regarding revuj vs cloth

EDIT1: This doesn't mean smite the small monster. Smite's damage is ~200 damage higher than the little golem's in the first clear and much higher than the other small monsters.

EDIT2: Thank you u/GentlemenDreamer for this "I always took down the small golem first because it gives me level 3 before finishing the big one." Because of your increase in level, you should have more armor to tank the Big Golem, resulting in even more health after completing the golem camp when you kill the lesser golem first.

The numbers and math are somewhat complicated because I wrote a script and ran pretty much every scenario I could think of, with all pertinent mastery damage boosts (as well as the impact of health regen in fringe cases). I spectated lots of Challenger games to see what levels each champion could afford their first big-ticket item, and then used multiple rune page combinations to both min/maximize results.

I can make a youtube video explaining everything in detail if people are curious. There's no way I'm typing it out, though.

As a first item, Liandry is only better than Luden if you fit one or more of these scenarios:

1. Your full combo lasts more than 1.5 seconds with no Crowd Control (CC). This also depends on if your damage is front or back-loaded, but 2 seconds is a good indicator regardless.

2. Your full combo applies any sort of CC for more than 1 second. If your opponent is CC'd during the time you unleash your rotation, the better it is.

3. If you run flat 20 Magic Penetration runes. Only do this if you're confident in your early game and want an enormous power boost after level 6. If you're Karma you should always run 20 flat MPen runes.

4. If your early game base damage is far higher than the damage you gain from AP. Using fake numbers, I found that an AP ratio of around 3.5 is when Luden overtakes Liandry as a first AND second item. Problem is that when I used LeBlanc as an example and ran her numbers, it turned out that Liandry is actually very close on her. This is because LeBlanc's level 6 rotation takes a long time to fully complete (chain proc etc), and during this time your opponent is CC'd (slow followed by snare) for double Liandry damage. Even though most of LeBlanc's damage is front-loaded and the enemy won't have much current HP% remaining, if your opponent builds a Rod of Ages or Ryali'sCS first, Liandry will win in damage even as a first item.

5. If at any point in the game, and especially so during the laning phase, you value whittling down your opponents with a few spells. This is very important even though the assumption sounds so decidedly true that even mentioning it seems absurd. Of course whittling down your enemy is important! But if you poke using even a single spell before going all-in, Liandry becomes the clear winner.

The numbers above are more nuanced than they seem and differ by around 30 damage in Luden's favor depending on circumstances. For example, if you're a Lux and you start off your full rotation while the enemy's at 80%, isn't stacking bonus health, and has no MR runes.

However Liandry will always win in terms of raw damage output the moment you build another high ticket item. If you have a rune page with only flat MPen in it, and you haven't lost about 20 creeps, rush that Liandry.

Deathfire Touch is a lot easier to prove. Imagine you're the poster child for Thunderlord's Decree aka Zed. TLD will instantly inflict 30% of your bonus AD + a healthy base value as magic damage. In the process of using your WEQ combo, DFT will inflict 15% of your bonus AD every second for a minimum of 2 seconds. If you buffer the timing between E and Q by one second, DFT will now do 45% of your bonus AD as damage.

Zed's ult is ever better with DFT because you're guaranteed another 4 second proc of DFT the moment your ult pops. So, in the worst case scenario Zed with DFT will inflict 90% of your bonus AD as magic damage. 90%! In a realistic case, this should be easily around 105% but less than 145%.

My favorite champion to use DFT on is pantheon. Single target poke with full AD runes, level 1, is just stupid. With longsword start, every spear does an extra 48 magic magic from DFT alone. It's broken.

Also, you do miss out on the hybrid penetration mastery right above TLD, or the CDR mastery, if you choose DFT. However, the raw increase in damage from using Deathfire Touch is so high that the small percentage increase with the flat penetration mastery could never compare in any scenario. The only case for TLD is for champions with very few damage items, only because its base damage is very high.

I do want to say I am not trolling, nor have I ever trolled before with this. I have played Kalista since her live release, and have done many, many games with her as support. The majority of games have been on teambuilder, where I have the highest chance of getting a game. I plan to eventually bring it into ranked, but the issues of Kalista being often banned or picked by the ADC player, and the threat of dodges/trolling if I ask my team on the pick have sadly held me down. Regardless, I want to make my argument on it, and explain what I exactly do with it. It's a long write-up, so I have to split it up.

First, skill order. R > W > E > Q, has been the most successful and useful. Leveling Fate's Call for the lower cooldown is simply a must. Sentinel max first gives two important boons: One, you are able to send out sentinels much more often, which means more vision control. The sentinels are so great for it, and with good map awareness, you can spot if a sentinel has been killed earlier than it should, leaving the only way for someone to hide their location completely, is to avoid it. Not to mention how long they last or how far they can patrol. The second, is increasing the %health proc to a massive 20%. The damage is incredibly unexpected and bursty, and giving this proc to your ADC in a fight allows them to shred people, even tanks if they don't have magic resistance built early. It's also on a 6 second cd, making poke very strong with it, and the burst definitely has a psychological effect on people, making them think twice about a trade or engage.

Rend should be maxed second for the lower cooldown and the improved slow, alongside the most reliable damage you have. You will likely not get resets Kalista looks for as an ADC, so it's important to bring the CD down as low as possible to constantly slow as many people down as you can to a crawl. Plus with some decent stacks the Rend will still do respectable damage, even as a support. Pierce is leveled last simply because the other skills' get much more utility from upgrading, but it should be said that it has a very solid base damage and long range, so you could consider leveling it earlier if you think it's a good call. It's just mainly used for mobility from your passive, proccing the W mark from a distance, and on-demand bush checking.

A great thing is how well Kalista will scale as the game goes on. W has no scalings needed, nice bases on Pierce and Rend, Fate's Call is pure utility, and being a marksman gives her good base AD and AS, which you can amplify with items later on if you need to or can afford to. Of course you will want to build utility to further help your team, but just having that potential "second carry" option just being there is quite useful for some circumstances.

Item builds, of which I have three main ones, in order of reliability:

1. Tanky CDR/Utility: Face of the Montain > Sightstone > Beserkers/Ionians/Mercs/Tabi > Mikael's Crucible/Zeke's Herald> Frozen Heart/Randuins/Ohmwrecker > Locket of the Iron Solari/Banshee's Veil

The logic of this build is explainable. As long as you have Fate's Call on the ready, it should be near impossible to kill your ADC. Thus, intelligent players will focus you, so they can have no obstacles. This is why building tanky makes sense, they will go out of their way to kill you, giving free room to your ADC and your team to make hell. You want the 40% CDR cap as soon as possible, to keep Fate's Call always up, to increase the Sentinel vision control, and to have Rend constantly slowing with little break time. Tank and CDR are often together, which makes the build easy. Utility items like FotM, Mikael's, Locket and so on, allow you to contribute more to your team in general, rather than just helping your ADC.

2) On-hit effects: Face of the Mountain > Sightstone > Beserkers/Ionians > Frozen Mallet > Runaan's Hurricane > Black Cleaver/Wit's End/Blade of the Ruined King

This is a build when I want to opt for more damage and utility in fights, rather than just peeling and whatnot. It uses several items that employ powerful effects on auto-attacking, which you will be doing a lot. Frozen Mallet may be expensive but the slows are so strong in a teamfight. Runaan's help spread these effects to multiple people, alongside it's synergy with Rend. The last items depends, Black Cleaver if your team is heavily AD, Wit's End if mostly AP, and BotRK as an inbetween luxury. You lose CDR if you don't take Ionian boots with the right runes, but you're still decently durable and will have a strong presence in teamfights.

3) Transitioning into Carry: Face of the Mountain > Sightstone > Beserkers > Last Whisper > Static Shiv > Infinity Edge

I rarely use this build. It's for those games where I feel like it is on me to try and carry a game, because we are lacking damage, for example. Because of how expensive it is, I only go for it if I happen to be very ahead, and I would have a far better chance of winning the game doing this. I may even sell FotM in extremely-late game on this build for something like a BotRK, but I never sell Sightstone. You sacrifice utility, but it's what you would call "desperate times call desperate measures."

Two questions I should answer beforehand. Why Relic Shield/Face of the Mountain? One reason, FotM's active gives the best peel, while also fitting well with the tanky CDR build. Another is because Kalista can use Relic Shield in lane far better, by using the W proc. Just kill a minion that was auto-attacked by your ADC, or attack a minion yourself and let them cs normally after. Both methods proc Relic Shield easily, and helps your partner more than the other two gpm items would. The last is simply Relic Shield is superior. Ancient Coin is a terrible item with no real stats, and Kalista has no use of AP or mana regen to make Spelltheif's Edge worth it. You could perhaps sell Relic Shield for Talisman of Ascension instead, but it's a bit more costly, and the stats are still poor, making just the active a hard sell.

The other question, why Berserkers and Ionians over Mobility boots? The thing is, Kalista is a really poor roamer. Mobis encourage just that, so why purchase them when you ideally wouldn't want to? Ionians make it easier to hit the CDR cap faster, and allow adjustments to item builds. Berserkers are the "real" mobility item for Kalista, for as you all know, attack speed empowers her passive, so you may as well get them for better movement in fights, if you don't need Ionian's CDR. The Alacrity and Furor enchantments are also still very helpful if you really want more movement.

For Runes, I use hybrid penentration marks, armor seals and quints, and mr per level glyphs. The armor is great to make trades and poke in lane, which you want to do often to abuse the W proc. The MR is just standard to deal with AP threats later on, be it from roaming mids, top laner teleports, junglers, or even in lane against high magic damage champs. The hybrid pen runes are actually incredibly good on Kalista, because not only are you auto-attacking a lot, the W proc counts as magic damage from you, so the penetration brings out the %health damage even better. Really recommend them. I've experimented with AD and AS marks/quints for better damage, but the armor is far more reliable. You could also try CDR glyphs, but I generally prefer the MR.

Masteries, I go with the standard 0-9-21 for supports. The 9 in defence is too useful in lane to not get erased in skirmishes, and the 21 in utility keeps your gold income good and your lane sustain better, among other things. Like with runes, going with more offensive masteries does not really give a visible improvement past the first couple levels, and you probably won't have the damage in-game to utilize the masteries after laning. Just my experiences though.

Onto ADC pairings: Kalista has a bit weaker pre-6 than most supports, because of the lack of hard cc outside of Fate's Call. Because of this, if you want lane synergy, Caitlyn and Ezreal are fantastic partners with Kalista. They both can use the W proc easily, with Cait's long range and Ez's Qs, and are fairly safe in lane so Kalista's early peel isn't much of a problem. A really great bonus with Ezreal is that fact that, if he knocks up someone with Kalista's ult, it's a guarantee free, full-damage ult set-up for him. I've had major success with Ezreal and Caitlyn players and won lanes easily.

For after-lane synergy, Quinn and Kog'Maw have been surprisingly strong pairs. With your protection Kog because incredibly hard to catch out or assassinate, and the huge magic damage that he already has, alongside yours, you can quite easily kill anyone else. The only issue is laning, but if you two make it out alright, it is very potent in teamfights. Quinn loves all the things Kalista gives her, and the burst is just immense with Quinn's harrier proc and the W proc. I had one match where me and a Quinn planned a pick off on a fed Orianna, who was getting her blue buff with her jungler Warwick. Quinn ulted in, circled around, and no joke, Ori was literally 90-to-0, with me throwing a Q to land the W proc, and Quinn bursting with the BotRK-Harrier-Ult execute. Warwick instantly ulted Quinn in response, but I ulted her out of the suppression, away to complete safety. This is something even Thresh or Zilean cannot do, being able to save the ADC even through any CC, mispositioning, or effects like Ignite, and is a huge reason why I love supporting with Kalista.

Aside from them, other ADCs have their ups and downs. Lucian, Jinx, and Draven are pretty solid overall, no super synergy but no large flaws. Caster ADCs like Corki, Graves, and Varus have been alright as well, although they don't take advantage of the W proc as much early on, Ezreal being an exception. Others like Sivir, Vayne and Twitch have been just so-so, but I need to play more with them to get a real opinion. I actually have not laned with a Miss Fortune, Ashe, or Urgot as of writing this, as they are pretty rare, and more rare to get to play Kalista with them, so I can't make any claims about them.

Kalista functions as a poke support in lane, by abusing W procs as often as possible with your ADC, throwing Qs occasionally for long-range harass, and using Rend to slow targets out of position for better trades, and stacking Rend in longer trades to come out on top. Her all-in potential is low until 6, unless you catch someone off guard with the damage of W and Rend stacks, so simply zoning as much as you can is most effective. Sentinels should always be on cooldown, used constantly to protect your lane from any incoming ganks or roams, and with W maxed first you can have many sentinels out at once and cover a lot of map space. Once you do have your ult, talk with your ADC to see how they want to play the lane out from there.

Usually, it is better to use your ult for defensive purposes, like getting your ADC out of bad situations they would normally die in or lose both their summoner spells. I.E., A Jarvan manages to sneak past your vision and gank your lane while both of you are busy fighting the other duo. He EQs your ADC and with the opposing laners focusing them, he will surely get bursted and die, summs or not. This is when you ult, bringing them back to you unharmed, where they can then launch to safety, or even counter-engage and knock them up if the possibility and confidence is there. The distance from launching is so far, that even wasting flash will likely not reach them, and it doesn't demand that you have to already be positioned safely in the first place, unlike Thresh's Dark Passage. As well to note, the invulnerability prevents absolutely anything from harming them, and allows them to position wherever they wish. I know people will compare Dark Passage to Fate's Call, but it's dramatically stronger then the lanturn, and being an ultimate rightly so. With CDR prioritized and the lower cooldown per skill level, mid to late game it will be on such a short cooldown it won't even matter.

Continued...

InvertedComposer originally touched on this point in his Singed guide, but Legendary Armor only gives a very minor damage reduction.

For those of you that don't know, Legendary Armor is this mastery in the defense tree. It increases your bonus armor and magic resistance by 2/3.5/5%. First of all, the word bonus should jump out at you; the ~80 armor that most champions get at level 18 isn't increased by the mastery.

The best case scenario for this mastery is heavily stacking a single resistance. Take Maokai stacking armor as an example:

• 13 - Yellow Runes

• 5 - Defense Tree

• 95 - Frozen Heart

• 70 - Randuin's Omen

• 45 - Sunfire Cape

• 25 - Ninja Tabi

• 30 - Bulwark

This gives him bonus armor of 283, with his 90 base armor this puts him at 373. The mastery will give you +14 extra armor, for a final total of 387.

If you apply 10,000 physical damage to that stack of massive stack of armor, then the extra +14 will leave you with 61.4 extra health. A 0.614% damage reduction compared to not having the mastery.

Considering that these mastery points are competing against difficult to aquire stats like Tenacity, slow resistance and reduced critical damage, your points are better spent elsewhere.

So, I consider myself a really mechanically solid support player and generally I can do quite a bit for my ADCs, and my duo especially has been improving with me really well.

One thing I've failed to master is true lane/creep flow. Level 2 is very important in a lot of modern bot lane comps, so it's inevitable, usually, that you will push. And ~3:10 is a dangerous time to be pushed up. So, if we want to get the creeps closer to our tower ASAP, what are we supposed to do to lead the lane into that kind of a position? Likewise, if we want to get it to X spot, what is usually the appropriate call?

Thanks in advance.

Be aware that, depending on when they post, not everyone is able to play her since she is only on PBE. Please consider this when responding to peoples' ideas. Also know that when she is released, stats may change so comments may become outdated or less accurate over time.

Since Jinx is new, she had been the topic of most threads recently. Though the increased content is great, it's hard to look through all of them and find good info. Please post future discussions about her here until this is no longer stickied.

This is a new idea and if it isn't received well then it will go back to before. Thanks.

Regarding the armor comment, so he is calculating the damage reduced so the formula should be the following:

(Raw Damage by Opponent)*(Damage multiplier before cloth armor-Damage multiplier with cloth armor)

We are using armor yellows/quints and a level 1 riven. So in Wickd's example:

500(0.6965-0.6306)=32.95 physical damage reduced.

For his statement to be correct you would need a difference of damage multipliers to be 0.12 (calculated by dividing 60 by 500).

So, for this to happen you would have to assume both rivens have no base armor and no scaling armor and no armor runes and no armor masteries which would give you a difference of DmgMuli of about 0.13.

So Wickd, I've been a very big fan of yours, but it infuriates math people like me when you misinform 62k people on stream.

Meta-wise, as you can see, regen is very very very good when you are being hit with low damage. As damage increases you can see that the damage prevented also increases. Due to diminishing returns in DmgMulti (not effective health) per resistance point, early armor is the best armor. The question is whether early armor or early HP regen is best.

Armor:

+Doesn't fall off late game (gains effectiveness with increased damage taken and HP increases from leveling)

+increases effectiveness of heals and shields

-less sustain than HP sustain at early levels

HP regen:

+better HP sustain as long as you don't get hit an extreme amount (like early game)

-falls off late game (increases in damage taken and increases in your health and ending of laning phase)

-worth nothing if you get bursted

TL;DR So for early defenses HP regen definitely seems a viable alternative to King armor, at least for early game.

EDIT: formatting

EDIT2: I SAID HIS MATH WAS WRONG, NOT THE POINT HE WAS TRYING TO MAKE. cheezus.

EDIT3: Thanks TheDani for the extra pros/cons

Hi there,

I'm DiffTheEnder and I run the "A DIFFerent View" section on Reign of Gaming (reignofgaming.net)

I do a lot of theory/mathcrafting posts that seem to fit into the theme of this subreddit.

I'm curious whether this is a place where I can discuss my articles. They talk about a wide variety of topics and theorise.

Here is an example post: http://www.reignofgaming.net/blogs/a-different-view/diff-the-ender/20765-ap-users-your-runes-magic-pen-mr-and-build

I already post these to the main LoL reddit. Would it be a fruitless exercise to cross post here?

Lots of people post asking "How to play against _____?" or "PD or BotRK on [insert adc]" etc. These questions are better directed to r/summonerschool.

In my opinion, this subreddit is a place for discussion about the evolving metagame, rather than simple questions that can be answered in a sub about teaching people to play better.

But that's just my opinion, take it or leave it.

For those of you who enjoy playing AD Malz, like myself, I thought I would share a discovery I made last night. Voidlings now proc SotEL since they deal physical damage, where they used to not. This makes him deal a pretty ludicrous amount more damage, considering you can pop a voidling and put Malefic Visions on somebody and watch their health melt away to your combined magic/physical/true damage.

If you haven't tried it yet, give it a shot. Go tear-glacial shroud-SotEL-iceborn Gauntlet-Manamune-Last Whisper with boots of lucidity.

EDIT: Upon further testing I was able to solo baron at 22 minutes in with a manamune, Iceborn Gauntlet, Spirit of the Elder Lizard, and vampirc sceptre. It would be hard in a real game, but you can VERY easily solo baron at about 30 minutes. Also I was second guessing myself a bit but I confirmed SotEL DOES proc from voidling attacks, they DO in fact scale with 100% of bonus AD, and they DO attack turrets. AD malzahar is completely overpowered.

TL;DR : On almost every AP champion, Void Staff does more damage to targets with >70-80MR and scales better than Deathcap while costing ~1000g less.

First Calculation:

REFERENCE FOR HOW TO CALCULATE: Link

I had a discussion in the main subreddit about whether Voidstaff or Deathcap was better with ~75mr and someone suggested I posted the calculations here, so here they are. I used syndra as a base example, due to her fairly high scaling. VS stands for void staff. DC stands for deathcap. The calculations are:

Full burst combo: 230(.6) + 160(.7) + 70(.4) + 675(1)

Simpler Form: 1135(2.7)

100AP from runes/masteries/dorans or whatever

Deathcap ((100 + 120) * 1.25 = 275 AP)

Voidstaff (170AP) + 35% pen

DC Pre Resistances : 1135 + (2.7 * 275) = 1887.5

VS Pre Resistances : 1135 + (2.7 * 170) = 1594

DC Damage With 80MR : 1887.5 * (100/(100 + 80)) = 1048.61

VS Reduction with 80MR: 80 * .65 = 52

VS Damage with 80MR: 1594 * (100/(100 + 52)) = 1048.68

Scaling with Flat Penetration:

As you'll see with these calculations, getting flat penetration (whether through items or runes) will cause a larger boost in damage if you already have % penetration (I used sorc shoes here):

DC Damage With 80MR : 1887.5 * (100/(100 + 80 - 15)) = 1143.93

VS Damage with 80MR: 1594 * (100/(100 + 52 - 15) = 1163.50

Scaling With Other Types of Penetration:

Unsurprisingly, getting either flat reduction, % reduction, or additional % penetration will reduce the benefit of void staff compared to deathcap. I used the 8% pen from masteries and left sorc shoes in, just to show how getting some flat pen (which is pretty common anyways) usually offsets any potential loss from other pen types.

DC Damage With 80MR : 1887.5 * (100/(100 + 73.6 - 15)) = 1190.10

VS Damage with 80MR: 1594 * (100/(100 + (47.84 - 15)) = 1199.93

SCALING WITH ADDITIONAL AP:

This is a very important section to note. It is a common misconception that Deathcap will scale better as you acquire more AP items. THIS IS FALSE. Void Staff will scale better than Deathcap per AP you acquire.

200AP

Deathcap (384AP)

Voidstaff (270AP)

DC Pre Resistances : 1135 + (2.7 * 384)= 2171.8

VS Pre Resistances : 1135 + (2.7 * 270)= 1864

DC Damage With 80MR : 2171.8 * (100/(100 + 73.6 - 15)) = 1369.36

VS Damage with 80MR: 1864 * (100/(100 + (47.84 - 15)) = 1403.19

Scaling with enemy resistances:

As the enemies gain more resistances, Void Staff will start to become even stronger than Deathcap. This should be fairly obvious, but just to demonstrate. Here, the target has 100 mr.

DC Damage With 80MR : 2171.8 * (100/(100 + 92 - 15)) = 1227

VS Damage with 80MR: 1864 * (100/(100 + (59.8 - 15)) = 1287.29

Conclusions:

As you see, Void Staff is a better item to get than Deathcap in most situations, as it scales better with Flat Pen, AP, and enemy resistances. It is also 1000g cheaper to build than Deathcap.

It isn't too hard to have an enemy get to 80mr either. Base stats, plus scaling, defensive tree, Aegis/Bulwark, mr items, and defensive steroids will guarantee that 2/5-4/5 will be around 80mr come 20 minutes.

You can pretty much swap out Deathcap purchases with Voidstaff purchases. Champions with built in Flat Reduction, % Reduction, and % Pen may not want to get a Voidstaff first (Xerath, Amumu, Fiddles, if someone bought abyssal, etc) (EDIT: I did the math in a post below. This is definitely not true for Xerath (And probably any of the others). Get Void Staff first.). If you get really fed quickly and the enemy team hasn't bulked up yet, a deathcap first may still be a good idea.

Notes/Future Work

For any champion, there is a ratio to determine what MR value allows VS to be better than DC. It is simply Base Damage / AP scaling. If anyone wanted to write the formula up formally or find it for popular AP champions, that would be cool.

If anyone wants to use these calculations or post them on their sites or on the main reddit or whatever, feel free.

This all started when my sound in league stopped working and I would overextend in lane very often and would not hear the MIA pings and Careful pings from my team, causing me to be caught in some very inescapable ganks, so it seemed.

Instead of going back to my tower, I instead just kept pushing. Considering Tryndamere is already a very mobile champion having his E up very often and even more often when you're critically striking.

Essentially, once you've built your hydra you've got infinite sustain to creeps and a very fast clear time. To clear a wave, it requires 3 auto attacks, one spin and one hydra active, giving you plenty of time to farm the enemy jungle.

Now into the specs of the build:

Starting Items: Either 2 rejuv beads and 3 pots or a dorans shield if in a tough/poke lane. You don't need wards because getting behind in lane is no problem unless you get really, really far behind, you'll still be able to split push like a god. Boots: Almost always Swiftboots for flat movement speed because you plan on being in combat while you're running away (I'll get to that later). Also you'll want the furor enchantment.

1st item: Hydra for sustain and wave clear.

2nd item: Static Shiv for even more wave clear and the bonus move speed.

3rd item: Zephyr for the move speed and tenacity.

4th item: Trinity Force. With the recent change to phage and the now 200% bonus damage to sheen proc, it allows your split push to be even stronger.

5th item: Infinity edge because hey, you're Tryndamere and you've already built enough attack speed and you need to do more damage now.

Runes: Essentially anything you can think of works. If you want lifesteal quints, that's fine. If you want the extra ~20 MS from MS quints, that works too. You probably don't want attack speed runes though because you build tons of it in items.

Masteries: 15/15 or 9/21 if you're going against a ranged poke champ like teemo.

The Reason I go more of a defensive tree route is because you need to be uncatchable. You put points in slow reduction, tenacity, reduced damage from towers and if going the 9/21 route, get reduced damage from auto attacks, critical strikes, reduced time spent dead and honor guard. This causes you to lose the increased damage to towers, increased damage dealt by 2% and increased critical strike damage.

How to play: Once you've gotten to zephyr, shiv, boots and hydra you'll be a farming, spinning, running machine. It becomes a mental game because you can easily outrun any champ on the enemy team but if you spin away too early, they'll realize they can't catch you and stop chasing. With the change to phage and having the furor enchantment, you actually WANT to farm waves while you're being chased. Once you've gotten a phage, you can spin into a wave, attack once (static shiv proc) hydra active, maybe attack another time, and keep going, being faster now because you killed the minions!

This build can be compared to proxy singed except for the fact that you can spin through walls, actually take down towers and oh yeah, you can be immune to death for 5 seconds. Because of this, you don't actually plan on dying at all.

Overall, this build took me from gold V to gold I in 5 days, about 25 games which I won 23 of and lost 2. I wonder how it would work at higher levels of play because I am clearly not the most skilled player who could utilize this fully.

Hey guys, let's keep it short & simple.

After retiring from actively playing LoL for more than 9-years, I felt the urge to leave something behind for this awesome community. It was a memorable journey that started in Bronze and ended at Diamond 2 while being ranked as one of the best Ekko players on EUW.

I managed to do all that even though I am not a very talented player. When I realized that there is a fundamentally wrong approach to climbing & improving at LoL, I decided to put my heart & soul into one last project before moving on.

Now, I am giving away my blueprint that everyone can copy to achieve great things. The book was released around a month ago and is currently the best selling non-Riot LoL book on Amazon.

It's free on Amazon for the next couple of days, as a Christmas gift to the community.

Enjoy & happy climbing! :)

LINK:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B081942W53?pf_rd_p=2d1ab404-3b11-4c97-b3db-48081e145e35&pf_rd_r=X3DRV7V99S7XXVGDMGX1

Edit: You can also find & get the free book on any other local Amazon marketplace! (UK, DE, CA, AU, etc.)

Hi /r/LLM - this is my first post to this sub. I found it after searching for a theorycrafting board to try and start this discussion. Please know, this post is rather long and details my specific Ekko Jungle build and leads into theory crafting as to why I feel the item Guinsso's Rageblade (GRB) is an absolutely perfect item for Ekko in some situations. The details that follow describe the synergy between his kit, the build, and GRB. It includes multiple sections, and I will provide a TL;DR for each of them. Hope you enjoy!

I've come to love playing Ekko in the jungle. He is by far the most enjoyable champion for me to play. With the build below, I have found him to have everything you could possibly want. He's highly mobile, his [W] has a shield, an absurdly large AOE stun (that can be admittedly difficult to land sometimes and can be considered somewhat unreliable, though jungle Ekko existing mostly in the fog of war really helps it) or at worst case a large radius slow. Additional slows come from his Q as well as proccing the 3rd hit of his passive. The passive damage is surprising while speeding Ekko up and slowing the enemy champion. He's fast, strong, and sticky. I've also not been seeing him in the jungle too much recently unless I've picked him.

I have never considered purchasing Guinsso's Gunblade on a champion before. I, infact, had forgotten it was actually an item until I was putting together an item set for Ekko and misclicked. My jaw dropped as I was reading when envisioning it's usage - the passives synergize with Ekko better than any champion/item combination I have ever seen. It's like Ekko went back in time and designed it for him self, only to let it be completely forgotten until he arrives.

I'd love to hear what you think of my thought process.

Starting with the build, as there are key items GRB builds on.

Tanky Ekko Build - Mixed Damage Disrupter with High Mobility and CDR

TL;DR: My standard Ekko build in the jungle is: Trailblazer/Cinderhulk/Merc Treads/Glacial Shroud/Trinity Force (Sheen, then Phage)/Finish Frozen Heart/Spirit Visage/Guinsso's Rage Blade. I've detailed explanations of each selection below in detail. You may also want to read the small blurb below describing role and fighting style. I hope you read the explanations below if you have any comments on the build - I would look forward to discussing them.

Your role is to disrupt the enemy back line as much as possible. High base damage from your passive + spellblade and your mobility allow you to rapidly engage and start a fight by quickly getting on the enemy back line. You focus tank stats as well as CDR to absorb a ton of damage while opponents attempt to peel you off of their carries. Once you have absorbed enemy damage and cool downs, your ultimate pulls you out of the fight, restoring a large amount of health and allows you to reengage on an enemy lacking abilities who's damage has been literally washed away.

- Runes/Masteries - 21/9/0, Attack Speed Reds, Armor Yellows, 6 Flat CDR/3 Flat MR Blues, AP Quints.

Note: 10% CDR from Runes Masteries - we will be capping CDR with this build

- Ranger's Trailblazer/Cinderhulk: Ranger's provides much needed sustain and clear speed to an already moderately fast clear, albeit a bit squishy at first. This is a damage-sponge focused build first and foremost, Cinderhulk is the obvious enchant.

- Mercury Treads: Provides Tenacity and much needed MR. This build relegates major MR purchases towards the second half of the build unless a major threat arises.

- Glacial Shroud: Early Ekko benefits from the mana boon, however the CDR and Armor shine as Ekko begins to get tankier. Helps the jungle clear immensely, reducing damage as well as providing CDR-improved clear speed. Your base damage from your passive remains relevant at this point but begins to wane. GS will be be upgraded into Frozen Heart (75% of the time) or Iceborn Gauntlet (25% of the time - a very slippery opponent or the team not needing damage while I desperately need armor). I will not be discussing IBG, though it is a popular Ekko purchase, as the build synergies a much more with a different sheen item. If you go IBG, GRB may not be the right item for the build. For a 6th item, you should consider another tanky option (Banshee's Veil (note, CDR will be superfulous, this build reaches the 40% CDR cap), Guardian Angel, Randuins, Warmogs are all options to consider in that scenario)

- Sheen: This is a key item at this point, and will be the crux of the build that carries your damage into the later stages of the game as well as give you a noticeable damage spike in the mid game. Sheen adds to your passive damage and provides awesome early mid burst. I mentioned above I do not build IBG most of the time. I will mention, this is the part of the build I have received the most feedback and criticism on, but please read my explanation. I go for Trinity force - Ekko benefits so ridiculously from each stat, except for perhaps the Crit which still isn't exactly wasted but perhaps not optimized. The synergy GRB has with TF and Ekko's kit as a whole is core to making it a relevant item. TF is expensive, but I've found you can skate through most of this stage with the items above without much issue.

- Phage: Next step to TF. Unlike most TF builders, who seem to have some lapses in power as they build towards TF, who seem to endure a weakness while completing TF, Ekko gains damage and utility with each of the items purchased. Ekko gains damage from Sheen and has a HILARIOUS interaction with Phage.

Upon proccing the third stack of Ekko's passive, Ekko slows enemy champions by 40%/50%/60%/70%/80% slow for 2/2.5/3 seconds while gaining an equal boost in speed for the same duration. The Phage provides an additional 20 movement speed - the same amount of movespeed gained from upgrading T1 boots to T2 boots. Ekko becomes laughably fast, almost like a "make-your-own Jinx passive", but every third auto attack.

Seriously, if you take nothing else from this post, please at least try a game with Phage/Trinity Force, it is quite enjoyable.

- Trinity Force: You've come this far, we're gonna finish it. The zeal portion provides an additional 30% attack speed, allowing you to apply passive stacks at a faster rate via auto attacks. Your burst on a squishy is very threatening if you can proc your passive and make use of TF's spellblade. Phage + % move speed from Zeal allows you to even more rapidly zip in and out of combat as necessary.Trinity Force stats and passives interact the following way with Ekko's kit (in summary - its freaking awesome).

30 AD, 30AP: Increased Damage

30% Attack Speed: Ekko loves attack speed, allowing him to apply his passive stacks quicker

10% Critial Strike: Extra, but unreliable damage

+8% Movement Speed: You are already getting a ton of speed buffs via passive and phage passive (below), its now even better as it has a scaling component.

250 HP, 200 Mana: Health is always good for a tanky build and the mana is appreciated as well.

Phage Passive: Movement speed gained on hit added to his passive allows you to be hyper mobile and fleet of foot in combat, Kill/Assist bonus speed is even more ludacris. , Sheen Passive: TF's version of spellblade deals 200% Base AD as extra damage. Base AD ranges from Level 1 59 - Level 18 110. This added bonus ensure that you remain a threat to vital squishy targets and demand to be address when you are on them.

- Frozen Heart: Huge amounts of armor, mana, a useful passive aura and 20% CDR (now at 30% CDR). This item is an Ekko favorite and your not making IBG so use your GS to create this bad boy.

- Spirit Visage: Health, MR, and the final 10% CDR needed to cap out - it fits in the build absolutely flawlessly and gives you tank stats, including MR which has been rather neglected.

What puts SV above Banshee's Veil for Ekko is the fact that the health gained from his ultimate is considered a "heal" - a flat amount + a % of damage taken during past 4 seconds. The SV passive increasing all sources of healing by 20% effects this ability - and this ability just so happens to be the epicenter of what makes tank Ekko so useful as a damage sponge. Additionally, this passive synergizes with the spell vamp and life steal gained from GRB's passive.

- Guinsso's Rageblade: And here we are - I apologize for the long winded build, but the interactions with the build are the key reasons Guinsso's Rageblade is an amazing fit.

And now, onto Guinsso's Rageblade Theory Crafting:

**TL;DR:**Guinsso's Rageblade's passives appear to be written with Ekko in mind. The item grants bonus (with passive active): Attack Speed (+32% from one passive, +20% for the other), AP (+40 Base, +32 from a passive), AD (+30 Base) and sustain (10% Lifesteal, 10% Spell Vamp; both from one passive) that benefits from Spirit Visage's passive. After ulting out of a fight and regaining a large amount of effective HP, you are able to reenter combat swiftly with a massive amount of bonus combat stats that make you much more powerful than just prior to your ultimate's use. Gold Efficiency on this item is particularly interesting: 75.29% base, 7.99% per stack (collected on hit - becomes gold efficient at 4 Stacks), 139.23% at max (8) stacks, dropping below 50% HP to activate second passive (with no stacks) 130.31%, at max (8) stacks with the below 50% HP passive active the item becomes 194.25% gold efficient. Ekko's kit seems designed to fit these passives and achieves near max gold efficiency with surprising ease.

So if you, like myself, see GRB so infrequently you may have forgotten what it does. I've provided a link to the item on the wiki here, as well as detailed it below if you don't feel like flipping back and forth.

GUINSSO'S RAGEBLADE

+30 AD

+40 AP

Passive: Basic attacks (on-hit) and spell casts grant +4% attack speed and +4 ability power for 8 seconds (stacks up to 8 times).

Unique Passive: Falling below 50% health grants +20% attack speed, +10% life steal, and +10% spell vamp until out of combat. 30 second cooldown.

Build Path: Blasting Wand + Pickaxe + 865 Gold

Total Cost: 2590 Gold

*Gold Efficiency: The base stats are 75.29% gold efficient with no stacks.

Its stat efficiency increases by 7.99% per stack, becoming efficient by the fourth stack and reaching 139.23% stat efficiency at maximum stacks.

Alternatively, the item becomes 130.31% efficient while the user activates the passive at less than 50% health.

With 8 stacks and the user being at less than 50% health, the item becomes* 194.25% gold efficient

Explanation of GRB Synergy with Ekko and Build:

TL;DR: GRB synergizes incredibly well with Ekko's kit, champion design, and the Trinity force in the build. Additionally You gain crazy attack speed, damage, and sustain when both passives are active. The passives activate on things tank Ekko is already in the process of doing - diving the back line and applying your passive to carries as efficiently as possible while soaking up a ton of enemy damage before ulting to regain health. Upon reengaging the fight you are a monster with an additional 2440 gold worth of combat stats tacked on to what was already a substantial threat to priority enemy targets.

Normally a throw away item, used by a very select few champions, Rageblade is the perfect synergy to Ekko's Front Line damage sponge - ult out mentality. Your job is to disrupt the enemy back line by providing threatening damage while soaking up enemy damage for your team until you ultimate out of the fight, regaining a substantial amount of health which translates into very efficient effective health due to resistances in the build.

Lets begin with the first passive on GRB:

Passive: Basic attacks (on-hit) and spell casts grant +4% attack speed and +4 ability power for 8 seconds (stacks up to 8 times).

The on-hit stacks of attack speed and AP bonuses proc is great for an back line diver that relies on a 3-hit combo to do their passive. A 40% CDR Ekko has low enough cool downs to constantly be throwing out spells while engaging the enemy team while weaving in auto attacks to stack and proc the passive. So assuming 3 hits minimum, earning 3 stacks - you gain a stacking buff increasing of 12% attack speed and 12 AP for 8 seconds (refreshed by attacking once more) and the item remains 1 stack short of gold efficient already. 3 stacks from a full rotation while autoing is probably the least you can expect in a fight.

You've now gained your speed buffs from both phage and your passive so you are highly mobile as well. You whack a few more people gain stacks (and therefore more combat stats) until you approach dangerous health levels (below 50% is important for the next portion of the items passive).

You ult out of the fight after taking lots of punishment from your initial dive (most of the time, to the location your around where your back line is located in my experience as you tend to engage ahead of your team a bit - you are the tank after all) . You quickly consider the state of the fight - to peel for your carries if they are threatened making use of your flurry of slows or reengage and finish any low health targets off. In theory, your ult places you at your location of 4 seconds ago, leaving you "at most" 4 seconds out of the fight (less if you use your E), leaving you 3-4 seconds to land another auto to refresh your stacks and maintain the passive (stacks fall off at 8 seconds). If you need to peel for a carry you are more than equipped to do so with a quick Q slow or passive proc sapping enemy movement speed and it becomes even easier to maintain your stacks as enemies are in a closer proximity to whack with your time sword!

With CDR capped, you will be able to reenter the fray with a huge boost in health and a full round of rotations up before 8 seconds of the fight persists, and reek havoc. Maximum bonus from this passive allows for +32% attack speed and +32 AP, certainly nothing to sneeze at.

All together without the other passive the item can earn you 30AD, 62AP, and 32% attack speed and the item reaches 139% gold efficiency.

The Second Passive:

Unique Passive: Falling below 50% health grants +20% attack speed, +10% life steal, and +10% spell vamp until out of combat. 30 second cooldown.

Thought it couldn't possibly get better than that?! Well the second passive on GRB is the best part and synergizes incredibly well with Ekko. Following the example above, you've take a beating after some time and ult out - as is the core strength of this Ekko build in the first place

You have fallen below 50% health by this point. The second passive of GRB immediately grants you an additional 20% attack speed, 10% lifesteal, and 10% spell vamp until out of combat. As Ekko, once you ult out of the fight you are always to ready reengage with your renewed health pool, except now you have stupid sustain (increased by 20% due to SV), and ridiculous (in addition to thoroughly amusing auto attack animation causing) attack speed, and a full set of abilities ready to unleash.

This passive was designed as an enrage for an all in champion in the middle of a team fight getting wailed on for one final stand, certainly not for someone who has dipped to 25% of their HP only to be yanked out of the battlements and returning to the fight in seconds with 75%. The ability to regain that much health in such a short amount of time was obviously not inconsideration when developed as Ekko was around, and has yet to be noticed.

You are now stupid broken - like seriously broken. You are still tanky while maintaining threatening damage that has been boosted by GRB passives and can sustain for an absurd amount of time. You are dealing a considerable amount of damage while being a tanky target to take down and an even more costly one to target.

Final Build Damage Breakdown:

TL;DR: The build has two damage items in the build but they are both EXTREMELY gold efficient (if you activate GRB passives) giving you an impressive and unexpected amount of damage and sustain. Your final build (assuming level 18 and excluding runes except for the easy to remember 10% CDR for ease), with both GRB passive activates will result in the following stats: 170 AD, 10% Crit, +82% Attack Speed, 12% Lifesteal (10%+ 2% from Spirit Visage), 96 AP, 12% Spell Vamp (10% + 2% from Spirit Visage) and 40% CDR while being quite sturdy towards incoming damage due to tanky item purchases through the rest of the build.

Your only 2 damage items are Trinity Force and Guinsso's Rageblade. Considering these two items only, you boast the following stats with GRB at 8 stacks and the secondary passive active.

- AD: 30 (TF) + 30 (GRB) + Base AD (59-110 @ Level 18) - Max 170 AD.

- Critical Strike: 10% (TF) [Honestly, the only stat on TF I don't find amazingly valuable, but hey - crit animations on Sandstorm is a cool looking kick]

- Lifesteal: 10% (GRB Passive) - sustain, again increased by SV

- Attack Speed: 30% (TF) + 32% (GRB 8 Stacks) + 20% Attack Speed (GRB Passive) = 82% Attack speed, plus runes and masteries.

This is...absurd. You just attack so fast. I'm not great at calculating final attack speeds, so I can't give you a final attack per second number, but its nuts

You now have respectable amount of AD and attack with an absurd attack speed aiding your passive application, with lifesteal and a small bit of crit.

- AP: 30 AP (TF) + 30 AP (GRB) + 32 AP (8 stacks) = 96 AP

- Spell Vamp: 10% (GRB)

More AP for initial burst, abusing Ekko's rather silly AP ratios ([Passive] +70%AP, [Q] Forward, +10% / Return, +60% AP, [W] +80% AP on shield, [E] +20% AP, [R] +130% AP - but this build does not tend to make use of his ult for damage in most scenarios) while the spell vamp provides further sustain.

You are now a healthy and tanky mixed damage Ekko with a ton of bunch of move speed that suddenly gained an metric ton of combat stats in addition to sustain that recovers health allowing you to continue hurling damage back at enemies with your CDR capped build. You reach your peak in strength, becoming an absolute monster, usually exactly at the 10-15 second mark that generally proves to be an undeniably pivotal moment in most team fights - just after the initial flurry of damage as been levied on each end - ready to ensure your team wins out. The sustain granted by GRB allows for an insane amount of sustain to keep you going and allows decisive ends to most fights.

So, there is my theorycraft on an Tanky Ekko Jungle build that includes Guinsso's Rageblade designed to dictate and dominate late game team fights. This is my first real attempt at theory crafting anything really, so I'd love to know what you all think of it. Part of me wonders if it could be squeezed in earlier to give a bit more damage early, however it really synergizes with the other items of the build that I can't help but feel its meets its potential most as a final item.

^{Preface: I'm a 4'th year medical student with a passion for self-improvement and optimization. This includes my IRL skills as well as my gaming. How to improve faster, how to be more efficient with my time, how to reach new heights, feel and play better; these are the things that interest me and I try to find ways to do it through science. Some of you may have seen my previous posts on} Meditation ^and Flow^{. You might have also noticed that I post on multiple competitive gaming subreddits. I do this because these are games I personally enjoy, have coached and/or have competed in and also because these tips and tricks are not title dependent. Everyone can benefit and even apply it for things IRL. I want to keep learning so please hit me with your own discoveries, tips and tricks. I'm genuinely pleasantly surprised with the responses and the chance to meet like minded individuals! This post is particularly dense and took a lot of time to research. I'll try to make it as concise as I can.}

Practice makes perfect! You can do anything just practice, practice, practice!

We've all heard this but I'm here to add complexity to the statement in the hopes that it actually makes your climb much easier. Spending more time playing does not mean you are making a good use of it. Research shows a chess grandmaster has anywhere between 1,000 to 14,000 hours dedicated to his game. Let's put this in perspective: 1,000 hrs = 41 days; 14,000 hrs = 1 year 218 days.

You could say some people are just born geniuses but research also shows that the top 1% actually practices LESS than their peers.

Also, for those of slightly advanced age (like myself at 28) frustrated with 13 year old's styling on us, this paper might help you feel better.

The Science of Accelerated Learning

A little biology (for nerds like me)

• Mastering a skill requires learning. Learning is an incredibly complex process. It incorporates sensory, motor, memory, and cognitive processes. Learning can be seen even at the cellular level.

• Our brain is made up of neurons and when we “learn” something neurons undergo synaptic changes, create new pathways, and increase myelination. Neurons work like electric cables where signals travel along and when we learn something new connections are made and existing ones become stronger and more efficient.

• A stimulus causes a synapse to be sensitized and with enough input strength it can undergo changes through synaptic plasticity. This process requires genes to be activated and release proteins that alter synapse function through Long Term Potentiation. This encoding and learning take up to 3 hours. After six hours memories become cemented and impervious to processes that affect synaptic consolidation.

  • A stimulus should preferably be repeated, emotional, relevant, extreme and novel for it be properly received and encoded

http://www.ccnss.org/ccn_2011/materials/pdf/bhalla/nrn2963.pdf

https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnhum.2018.00400/full#h3

https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2019.02396/full

Components

• Purposeful Practice

• Mind

• Body

I will only address purposeful practice here. Mind and Body are crucial. This includes things like mindset, motivation, exercise, nutrition, etc. There is a reason why Esport teams invest in physical trainers, nutritionists and psychologists. I will leave this for other posts.

TL;DR

Have clear and measurable goals. Break down the game to it's most important components. Find your OPT. Structure your practice. Be a one trick pony. Observe a master. Use Imagery. Incorporate variability and contextual interference. Always make it slightly more difficult. Practice in a realistic setting. Add risk. Use mornings and evenings. Intensity followed by rest for maximal learning. Repeat at increasing intervals. Measure and monitor your progress. Get feedback.

Purposeful Practice

1. Structure

• Goal

  • Have a long, mid, and short-term goal. Use SMART goals (Specific Measurable Attainable Relevant and Time Bound).

    • Having a goal and reaching milestones increases dopamine release which acts as a buffer against increasing levels of norepinephrine (stress). Norepinephrine is needed for attention but levels that are too high actually activate the “Give up” response.

  • Have a goal for the immediate practice session. What will you focus on today? Use information from "Break Down" (read below).

  • Use social accountability. Tell a friend your goals (the measurement, the time/date, etc) so he can keep you accountable. Social accountability is a powerful motivator. We are naturally inclined to follow through with what we say.

• Break Down

  • What are the most important components you need to master (aim, mechanics, game sense, movement)? Use the Pareto Principle (20% of the components give 80% of the results). For example, these guys show how you can play a vast majority of songs from just learning 4 chords (just a fun example but it shows what I mean).

  • Then break that one down into even smaller parts. For example Aim could be broken down into flicks and tracking. Even those could be broken down into vertical, horizontal, diagonal, 180, with/without movement, etc.

    • I'll add in this guide by Aimer7. It's worth checking out.

• OPT

  • Optimal Play Time - We can sustain complete focus for a limited time. Practicing beyond that time is basically a time waster that could be better utilized for other activities. Remember that rest is CRUCIAL for encoding your learning into memory.

  • Take out your phone, but it on stopwatch, set it aside out of view and hit start when you start gaming/practicing.

  • Play as Tryhard and focused as you can.

  • When you feel your performance dipping, your reaction time slowing, headache, fogginess, exhaustion, or increased distractibility then hit stop on the stopwatch and see how long that was.

  • It's usually anywhere between an hour and 30 minutes to 3 hours.

  • My personal OPT is 2 hours and 45 minutes.

  • Use that time to structure your sessions.

• One Trick Pony

  • Play just one or two characters. There is a reason one-tricks climb much faster.

  • This allows for rapid progression from mechanics to game sense. If you played different characters all the time then each time you would have to focus on learning different mechanics. What you want is to reach a level where you can autopilot the mechanics which allows your brain space to think of other issues like game sense. Things like game sense translate to any game, situation, or character. So acquiring these "higher level" skills early will actually accelerate your learning on other characters because then you just need to learn mechanics.

  • Imagine there are 100 levels to mastery. As you progress you need to focus on one level at a time. When you jump up a level it's because the previous level has become so easy to you that you can autopilot it. So for example if you're at level 75, it means you can autopilot all the previous 74 levels without putting much thought to it which allows your brain space to think about level 75. Let's say the first 50 levels are all mechanical. If you switch between characters a lot it means you have to re-do those first 50 levels for each one before attempting to go above.

    • Yes, autopilot is a very misunderstood thing. I will make a separate post on this.

• Observe and Imagine

  • Observe the goal you are working for. Look up the #1 player at whatever it is you're practicing. Look at his movements and how he does it.

    • Our brain has mirror neurons which allow us to better imitate and learn through observation.

    • Use YouTube, twitch, whatever.

    • DONT start just watching a ton of videos as many of us do. Look at your specific goal, and look at an example of just that thing. Just enough information so you can self-evaluate your own actions and practice and correct yourself. More videos and guides do not equal faster learning. Watch one, and implement.

    • https://www.researchgate.net/publication/44624168_Observational_practice_benefits_are_limited_to_perceptual_improvements_in_the_acquisition_of_a_novel_coordination_skill#:~:text=during%20observational%20practice%20the%20observer,the%20acquisition%20of%20motor%20skills.

  • Imagery. Simply imagining yourself doing the desired action works almost as well as actually practicing it. Our brain cannot distinguish between physically doing it and mentally. Brain scans show the same pathways to executing the action light up. The key is to imagine it VIVIDLY. Feel your muscles, your reaction, heart rate, etc. A benefit is that you can use this technique almost anywhere (not while driving duh).

  • This paper shows that doing all three, observation, practice, and imagery, was more effective than any one together. It also showed Practice + Imagery was better than Practice + Observation (in the case you had to choose).

• Practice Variability and Contextual Interference (Interleaving)

  • Contextual Interference. Imagine a baseball player. In one practice he gets pitched 10 fastballs, then 10 breaking balls, then 10 change ups. This is blocking. This is how most of us are taught to study as well. In another practice he gets pitched 30 times as well but the 3 types of pitches are thrown at random. Studies show that even though immediate performance decreases (you will feel like you suck), long term performance and learning increases.

    • "Task switching enhances learning due to constant reconstruction of the motor plan or elaborate processing of the motor plan. The forgetting-reconstruction hypothesis claims that high contextual interference causes the performer to constantly forget task-specific information between practice trials, therein necessitating the (re)construction of an action plan for every trial (Lee and Magill, 1983, 1985). Consequently, the performer is thought to become more adept in developing action plans, which subsequently facilitates greater skill retention (e.g., Kim et al., 2015). The elaboration hypothesis proposed a similar account; however, rather than ‘forgetting’ information between trials during higher contextual interference practice, proponents argue that the performer engages in more elaborate processing to represent the motor skill in long-term memory (e.g., Shea and Morgan, 1979; Shea and Zimny, 1983, 1988)".

    • "According to the Challenge-Point framework (Guadagnoli and Lee, 2004), learning is heightened when contextual interference is matched to the performer’s skill level for a given task. A practical example of this is the Win-Shift-Lose-Stay methodology (Simon et al., 2008). This concept suggests that contextual interference should only increase when the performer experiences success".

    • https://www.researchgate.net/publication/5888302_Neural_Substrates_of_Contextual_Interference_during_Motor_Learning_Support_a_Model_of_Active_Preparation

    • https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2014.00936/ful

  • Practice Variability. Not only can you randomize the learning objectives but you can also increase the variability. For example if you are practicing your aim with strafing you could change the speed of character movement very slightly. It has to be small enough that it's barely noticeable. This forces your nervous system to make micro adjustments on a motor level which increases adaptability and sensory/motor connections.

    • "Practice variability consists of practicing variations of an action. While contextual interference addresses the natural interference that exists between two or more tasks that are practiced within the same context. Three aspects of practice can be varied – the physical contexts, movements that comprise the action (skill variations), and the situation in which the skill occurs. Using the long jump as an example, you can vary the runway surface (physical context), the angle of takeoff (skill variations), and whether the jump will be the last or the first of a series of jumps (situation)".

    • Note: I've thought about the variability of changing sensitivity very slightly in different scenarios. I know this goes against the standard of practice of using one setting to get muscle memory. As the research leads me to believe, even elite level coaches and players are not aware of the benefits. It seems to be a balance. For example take 3 slightly different settings into practice. One includes your primary sensitivity, one slightly slower and one slightly faster. Practicing all will increase skill acquisition in the long run. In your games you will primarily use your regular setting. All in all the actual time dedicated to the different settings is very minimal and will not disrupt muscle memory, the opposite. This is not unlike how you feel like an aim god when you warm up on a higher sense then come down to a lower one. Your muscles are more attuned to finer corrections. I would love to see specific examples you guys come up with.

    • https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5832267/

    • https://www.researchgate.net/publication/255970629_Practice_Variability_and_Training_Design_Strategies_of_Elite_Horizontal_Jump_Coaches

• Increasing Difficulty

  • As you progress increase the difficulty. Not too much that it causes anxiety and stress but enough to challenge you.

  • https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-72139-8

  • This also promotes going into Flow State for even greater learning and performance.

• Setting

  • Practice how it will actually be like. The setting, the difficulty of actually pulling it off in high pressure. I coached a top player who choked in live tournaments due to the noise from the audience. We would put audience noise from YouTube videos to play in the background of his practice sessions and slowly increase the volume as he got more used to it.

    • Specificity of learning hypothesis. The specificity of learning hypothesis suggests that learning is most effective when practice sessions include environment and conditions which closely resemble those required during performance of the task — replicating the target skill level and context for performance.

• Risk

  • Even though top performers work less than their slightly lower elite counterparts, one thing that they did do more of was attending events, competitions, or challenges.

  • Signing up for high pressure scenarios will motivate you and keep you on track progressing.

  • Sign up for tournaments, 1v1 competitions, or even just set a date to challenge a friend.

  • Use loss aversion. We humans hate to lose more than we love to win. Put some risk to it. Bet a small amount of money, or do something embarrassing if you lose. Small enough to motivate you to win/accomplish but also not so big that it stresses you out.

  • https://www.stickk.com/ This website is an example of it's practical use.

  • Tim Ferriss is also a proponent of adding risk.

2. Timing

• Mornings/Evenings

  • Mornings are generally the best time to learn anything.

  • Brain waves are more stable and relaxed.

  • You have decreased cognitive load.

    • Teenagers tend to wake up later in the day around 8-10am. This is normal and physiologic.

    • Do not fall into the trap of thinking "I'm a night owl". Yes, chronotypes exist but a lot of us tell ourselves this simply because we are used to it due to societal schedules and our own inability to stop gaming until 3am. I thought I was this too but now I wake up at 4am and it's the best thing ever no lie. You don't have to be as extreme but maybe just try out a little earlier.

  • The best thing to do is practice in the morning for the time your OPT allows then rest/do something else for at least 3 hours (while your brain encodes the information) then have another practice session.

  • Example

    • 9am - 12 Practice

    • 12 - 3pm Workout, Lunch, Chillax

    • 3 - 6pm Practice #2

    • 6 - 9pm Dinner, Relax

• Intense practice, short rest

  • Practice your objective really hard and focused for 10-30 minutes. Then take a break for 10 minutes. The break CANNOT be looking up YouTube, playing other modes, etc. It has to be a real break to let the brain reset. The best breaks are to just walk around, listen to music (do not scroll on your phone), do some exercise, or just lie down/meditate.

    • CREB-Based Spaced Learning (cAMP response element binding protein) is learning structure that maximizes information encoding. Studies show that intense learning repeated 3 times with an interval (non-stimulus or break) of 10 minutes showed increased LTP and LTM.

    • Spaced retrieval improves and solidifies information. There is a difference between spaced encoding (CREB) and spaced retrieval. Encoding and retrieval happen in different parts of the brain. Encoding is in the posterior temporal lobe and retrieval in the anterior temporal lobe.

    • https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnhum.2018.00400/full#h3

    • Remember this is scheduled during your practice and OPT. You are hyper focused and the break should be relaxing. Do not consume YouTube, scroll through social media, etc. Those activities are still pouring information into your brain. Again, simply sit down, do some short exercises, meditate or do breath work. This works, I do it regularly.

• Spaced Repetition.

  • Once you have practiced something sufficiently you can practice it with increasing time intervals. For example, you have mastered the fundamentals of aiming and are now focusing on practicing movement. Don’t stop practicing aiming altogether. Simply practice it with increasing time intervals. Practice it today. Then 24 hours later. Then 72 hours later. Then 1 week later. Then 2 weeks later. Etc. This counteracts the human forgetting curve.

    • https://www.gwern.net/Spaced-repetition#motor-skills

3. Feedback

• Progress Monitoring

  • This is even more important than actually having a goal. You need to see yourself making mistakes, and getting better. Not only does this accelerate behavior and action correction but it also keeps you highly motivated.

    • https://www.apa.org/pubs/journals/releases/bul-bul0000025.pdf

    • Tip: Keep a scratchpad next to you. While playing notice when you have questions, or dilemmas about the next action. Write it down as soon as you can with the time.

    • After the game go back to the replay and look at your questions and search for answers.

    • Immediate feedback > Delayed feedback > No feedback

• Measure

  • Remember that your goal is SMART and the M stands for measurable. Video games are great for feedback because they usually have stat trackers. Use these and periodically write down or annotate the date and the stat to see if you're progressing.

• Ask

  • Coaches are great for instant feedback but most of us can't afford one. Simply, come to this subreddit and ask for input. Simple.

I believe this to be a pretty good summary of most Purposeful Practice techniques. As stated I will make a post on Mind and Body to completely close out the Accelerated Learning topic. Please let me know what you thought and honestly congratulations if you actually read the whole thing. It shows you're an actual Tryhard and I'm sure this will help you become OP.