TheLastBaron

It's a huge part of the game, if you're going to learn the game you're going to have to learn about last hitting and laning. Unless you jungle/roam it's a factor for you in in every game you play . I would say that SK is an easy hero, and having only one active ability makes him easier to pick up because it's one less thing to have to focus on. Also, it's not just that it's only 1 active ability, it's that it's a simple ability. It's a damage + a stun and slow so mechanically it's very unambiguous. It also has a super low cooldown so you don't how to worry about wasting it like you would with something with a 30+ second cooldown or a huge teamfight cooldown, and it's not a skillshot so aiming/positioning isn't really a factor outside making sure to be in the range which is like 500 or so so it's pretty easy. I see no reason not to recommend SK to a beginner.

You can abandon for free, if you're just starting out and trying heros who you have obviously never played before you can practice in an environment where you wont have other people calling you a faggot and telling you to uninstall for 40 minutes/ go back to LoL if you feed. Also bots are a lot better at last-hitting and denying than most people so it's good to practice when you're trying to get better at it, though they are pretty bad at a lot of stuff so using them for real practice won't help that much since a lot of things wont carry over since humans don't play like bots at all. Skeleton King is a super good hero to start with, he only has one active skill which is a stun and then has 3 passives, his ult being basically a free Aegis. Veno is also good, he's a support hero with some slows and DoTs and he has wards you can place. Play around with him and try to place wards, it'll help you get a hang of how much positioning and vision can impact the game. Having one off to the side if your team is pushing can save you a lot of the time when the other team comes to engage. Most supports are good for beginning players, obviously since they're not very farm dependent you don't need pro last hitting skills to do well. CM is another support hero who is super easy to pick up, she has awesome utility with a slow, a interrupt/root, and a global mana regen aura.

Wow I'm an idiot, I'll edit that. I think the writing in Blacksad is very good, obviously the art is a bigger draw, but imo it's not a book with A+ art and a passable story, its a book with incredible art and writing that is also very good. Another fantastic book that I'd recommend that people read is Too Cool to be Forgotten, by Alex Robinson. It's definitely on the "graphic novel" end of the spectrum, as opposed to the "comic book" side, as it's a normal book about people. All I can say is that after I read it I felt like I had been punched in the chest.

Same. It'd basically allow you to end the game when you are already going to anyways. There are plenty of games where the other team has such a large lead that the whole team agrees to just let them push in and win. There's also the times where the other team haas already won but won't take the ancient because they would rather spend 15 minutes killing you in fountain. In cases like this a concede function would be good.

Has anyone been playing Dawnguard? I didn't look at it at all really since I've only ever put a couple hours into Skyrim (I tried it out, but like all Bethesda games I put it back on the shelf to wait for good mods and haven't gone back yet). How big is it, I've heard people say it has more content than SI did in Oblivion, which would make sense since it costs 20$.

I also was thinking and one problem that League inherently has that contradicts the comparison I was trying to make with fighting games, is the unlocking champions. What makes fighting games work is that sure they're incredibly unbalanced, but you dont have to pick bad characters. In League if you haven't unlocked the good champs and they aren't free, you do.

Oh, okay I can definitely see what you're saying. It's definitely true, and that was always something that I found kind of dumb, how ping pong riot were with nerfs and buffs. For me personally I guess it wasn't as big of a deal, coming from a fighting game background (I haven't played anything in MANY years but 7-8 years ago was very into the scene and went to Evo every year, ect.) I don't follow the scene anymore so I don't know how SSF4 or MvC3 are, but most of the fighting games 8ish years ago only had a few characters that were played at the highest level (though some people were known for using non standard teams, an example being Clockw0rk). Some games even basically had one character. In Guilty Gear XX, EVERY top player played Sol. In Tekken 4, EVERY player played Jin. 3rd strike was basically only Chun-li and Yun. This is of course only at the tournament level and everyone still knew all the characters inside and out, and at arcades people would play non top-tier characters as a means of handicap, or just play fun lineups that were good, but not broken like the couple of top characters. Obviously this is basically irrelevant because they're completely different genres and fighting games aren't balanced after release (you can't patch a cab), plus fighting games are always going to have top tier characters because when you analyze every move literally to the level of individual frames, which is what happens, things will never be balanced. That was a stupid and long way of explaining it, but my point was that even if the game is incredibly unbalanced, it can still be super competitive and interesting. The constant nerfs and buffs in annoying/stupid and I totally understand where you guys are coming from, I hope Valve doesn't do anything like that once everything is done, which I am positive they won't. One thing to keep in mind is that a LARGE factor is also just players learning to adapt to the flavor of the month champs and that ends up making a bigger difference than the actual patches, which are usually pretty minor, but very frequent. This already kind of happens in Dota 2 when new heroes are added and people do well with them for the week and some people complain they're imba, but then they learn how to deal with them and move on. TLDR; You guys have valid points.

Obviously I think Dota 2 is a better game, more fun to watch, and a higher skilled game (positioning is much more important, lanes aren't set in stone, there are a lot of heros with skill caps that allow for incredible levels of individual skill, ect.) but I still think League is a good, competitive game and I don't get your analogy. The top teams are better than other teams, and who wins games isn't just luck, it takes skill at the game. It's not like every single player is at the skill cap, even at the highest level some players out-play other players. The fact that so many people watch streams means there is a huge player base that is willing to watch it means a lot for something trying to be a sport. It's gotten to the point that the prize pool for the Season 2 finals is 3 million dollars. I just find the idea that it wouldn't be an "e-sport" ludicrous. I'd imagine that it has more followers and funding than some real sports. I guess well just have to have this be an "agree to disagree" thing. Regarding PL: I hate playing against him, if you can't shut him down early and he makes it into mid/late-game farming and pushing mode it's just no fun. I want Medusa asap, one of the best PL counters.

What? This doesn't make any sense, why would it be ridiculous. It's a competitive video game that has a large player base that can support a tournament scene, why would it not be an e-sport? Edit: BTW the thing about spectator mode being a 6th teammate is true, but the thing about global ults killing them is false.

What do you mean, what happens in a matter of minutes that decides the game? Also ad carries do way better late game than ap champs.

The only way to decide who the Great American Novelist is, is to have America vote via texting numbers in. To have it any other way is a disgrace.

Well when you unlock something new it gives you a sense of accomplishment, so there's always incentive to play, vs. dota where it's basically a chance at a cosmetic item drop and battle points which eventually give you a cosmetic item. To a lot of people earning a new champion is a lot more rewarding than getting a chest or a hat. Also there's the whole ELO system where you can feel like your getting better by raising your ELO. One of my friends always tells me when he gets to some milestone ELO, he actually Skype called me to tell me he got to 1800 even though he knows I don't care. I know among my friends a lot of them played way more than they normally would because the elo system was addictive. A lot of the meta game stuff is probably what makes LoL so popular and I don't see Dota drawing the people that are super into that away. There's also the people that just play every once in a while with friends and for them what game they're playing isn't a big deal since the enjoyment they're getting just comes from playing with real life friends. Also, similar to how there are tons of people who play WoW, but aren't gamers in any way and don't play a single other video game, there are the same sorts of people who play League. There are kids I go to high school with that are the types of people who spend all their time going to parties/raves and doing drugs, but they still play LoL. I don't see them finding Dota 2 more fun. There are also just people that prefer LoL, I hope I didn't come off as a condescending Dota douche who hates on LoL all the time because it's not a bad game at all, and there are people that just like it more. I have a friend who played tons of DotA on WC3 and was really good, and plays SC2 and is in master's league so he's clearly good at video games. He just prefers League, and he's pretty good at it (2100 elo last I checked which was a while ago). He even has Dota 2 (he's actually who gave me my key), but he just doesn't feel like playing it over LoL, and that's cool.

I doubt dota 2 will ever top League in terms of popularity, League is just way more accessible.

I read BlackSad yesterday, and it's fantastic. It's a detective comic, and a really good one, but I think there are some people that would be turned off because all of the characters are anthropomorphic. If you let that deter you from checking it out it's really your loss because it's such a good book, and the fact that everyone is part animal imho makes it better. It's basically normal people that are represented as animals, i.e. a lot of the cops you see gathering evidence are dogs, there's a white supremacist character who is an arctic wolf, there's a character who is a rat and even in a normal context you would still basically think of him as a rat. It just makes everything more expressive, and on top of that Juanjo Guarnido's art is already incredibly expressive. It's also just plain amazing. The art in this book is better than any other graphic novel I have ever read. It's just amazing. There's so much goddamn detail in each panel. Check out http://blacksad-gallery.blogspot.com/ to look at some of the pages and get a feel for it, it's just fantastic. Another book that is completely different but equally awesome is Afrodisiac. It's a design masterpiece and a love-letter to 70's comics, the production quality is amazing, there's so much time and effort put into it, the pages are aged and really look like you're reading a comic from the 70's, there's even things like crayon drawing on some of the pages so it feels like you're reading a comic that some kid had. As for what the actual book is about, Wikipedia sums it up pretty well. "The book is a detailed pastiche of 1970s "trash" culture, especially the blaxploitation heroic archetype. The titular hero is an over-the-top '70s-era, kung fu-fighting pimp character depicted in adventures that cross multiple comics styles, from space aliens and flying saucers to dinosaurs to Richard Nixon to Hercules to giant monsters to Dracula. Afrodisiac's production design faithfully evokes the visual style of old comic books, down to faded color schemes and wrinkled, creased covers." Definitely recommend.

People who are into video game soundtracks should check out Top Score podcast. It's part of Minnesota Public Radio and hosted by Emily Reese who also hosts classical music stuff I think. Each episode she has a composer of a game that's come out come on to talk and there's been a huge assortment. Darren Korb (Bastion) was on one of the most recent episodes, and Austin Wintory (Journey and Fl0w) was on a recent one too. Ron Fish, who did Arkham City/Arkham Assylum was on it one time, so was Bear McCreary who did Dark Void (as well as the Battlestar Galactica and The Walking Dead, but those aren't games) and Bill Elm who did the music for Red Dead Redemption which I thought was amazing. All the episodes have been great, even ones where she's talked to a person who composed a score for a game I didn't play. One of my favorite podcasts, I'd recommend everyone check it out. http://minnesota.publicradio.org/radio/programs/top-score/

Hmmmm, maybe I should check out the comics then. I was sort of put off of the idea after watching the show, but now I think there's a good chance I would still like the series.

I'm interested to see what they do with techies. I can't really see them not getting a major change if they get put in at all.

The Andrew Ryan makeup? So a few weeks back I finally decided to watch The Walking Dead, I read the first issues of it years ago btu didn't get into it so I stopped and didn't remember anything. I watched the first season and maybe 5 episodes of the second season, and I really don't like it. I really liked the first episode when it was just Rick by himself waking up and the world had gone to shit and he was trying to find out what was going on. That was awesome but as soon as other people showed up I didn't care any more, partly because group drama isn't what I really wanted out of the show (hence why I liked episode 1) and also I hate literally every character, except maybe Glen, though I have no idea why I like him because I find Steven Yeun's acting pretty bad. Everyone else on the show though I would say I absolutely don't care about at all, except that I do care about them in the sense that I literally hope they all die. Especially Rick's wife, I can't stand her. I still haven't seen TDKR, despite being a huge Batman fan (I've read pretty much every issue of Detective Comics and Batman, as well as all the other stuff) and being a Nolan fan, I really don't feel that interested in the movie, despite thinking the first two were good, because I can't stand Christian Bale as Batman/Bruce Wayne. I'll of course see the movie at some point and I think every other actor that's been in the movies has been awesome, but I hate Batman and it makes it hard when he's in a large part of the movie.

They aren't going to add all the heroes for TI2, in fact they aren't adding any more until after it so that teams can practice with a consistent player pool. I'm pretty sure IceFrog has states at some point that there will be new heroes after everything is ported, and even if he hasn't straight out said it I don't see how that won't be the case since new stuff is still being added to DotA. That being said there's still quite a few heroes that need to be added to Dota 2 before it becomes relevant (there's 108 in DotA) to center on your character double tap F1, or rebind it to something else (I have 1 select my hero, 2 select my courier, 3 select my minions, and 4 as a control group. So for example if I'm playing Syllabear if I have him on 1 my bear on 3 and I can switch between them quickly, and I can also set them both to 4 so if I want them to walk somewhere together or am using them both at the same time I can just hit that and tab between them).

Anyone with the ability to summon minions or control neutrals can jungle very well. This includes Nature's Prophet, Chen, Enchantress, Enigma, or Lycan. A lot of people jungle Lone Druid for some reason, but imo he's much, much better in lane.

Desktop Dungeons and Dungeons of Dredmor are the only ones I play these days, but 10 years ago or so I was super into Nethack.

Yeah, Saga is very good indeed. Another series by Image that's completely different but equally excellent is Chew.

It's not modern day, it's turn of the century western with vampires. Think Red Dead, but with vampires (which after reading the comic makes me wish they did a vampire expansion instead of the zombie one). One thing that I like is that it's not just like there's people and then theres vampires, there's American vampires (hence the title) and European vampires, and they're different and don't get along with each other also. Also the art is fantastic, The first 5 issues are split into two halves with the fist being Scott Snyder's ongoing story and the second half being Stephen King's and Rafael Albuquerque does the art on both, but each has it's own style. Like I said, I've only been following Animal man really as far as current DC goes, but I might check out Justice League dark now that Jeff Lemire is on it (if it wasn't already obvious I love him). I mostly just read non Marvel/DC books (Mostly ones from Vertigo, Image, or IDW) or old series' I haven't gotten around to these days however. Also speaking even more of Jeff Lemire, everyone should check out his book Essex County, even people who don't read/like comics. In my honest opinion I think it's the best graphic novel that has been published within the past 10 years. It's not about a bunch of crazy stuff like most comics, it's just about the family lives of people in rural Canada. I don't really know what to say about it other than it's a must read.

At first I was thinking the wierdest thing about that Sherlock Homes book was that it cost 8 pounds, but then I remembered that not everyone owns a Kindle/eReader and can get public domain books for free. In other news, I finally got around to reading the whole Night of the Owls story line that DC has been running in their Batman series' since they did their New 52 reboot almost a year ago. I stopped reading any of the DC books that weren't Animal Man, after most of the ones that weren't Animal Man were, at least imo, not very good. I read all the tie-in books from the various Batman books along with the main line which ended up being something like 23 total issues, and did not care much for it, though I respect the balls it took for Scott Snyder to fuck with Batman. I still much prefer his work on American Vampire though, as it's really good and one of the only things the past 10 years that had to do with Vampires and didn't suck.

It's also worth noting that TA is very good vs burst damage but very bad against damage over time. Venomancer is a good counter to her as he melts her shield. Leshrac especially is another person who destroys her, and if you try and meld he's just going to stun you and kill you.