Corelli

Members
  • Content count

    138
  • Joined

  • Last visited

About Corelli

  • Rank
    Thumb Tourist
  1. The great thing about the DF controls is that they actually tell you something very important about the game: that the Dwarves are not under your control, that they are their own "things" living their own lives and that while you may be able to direct them, they have no particular compulsion to always follow you. In short, they are emancipated, to a degree. Many other aspects of the game are out of the player's control, and even out of the creator's control, owing to the procedural generation of content. It's not often that the process of learning a game's controls so effectively illuminates what the game is about. I think it's pretty cool.
  2. Yeah, Bengi is a really weird case. Montecristo calls him streaky, and I think it's true. There was a point during the regular season where he was bar none the worst player on SKT and close to being replaced by T0m, but to my eyes he was the best jungler at worlds this year, better even that Clearlove who I thought was maybe the best jungler in the world up until that point. I Just don't know what it is, but Bengi is going to have two champion skins now and the only other person who has done that is Faker, the best player in the history of the game.
  3. Frankly, I think KOO has basically had one way of playing the game that they've been really good at the whole season, which is to play exceptionally passively for about 30 minutes then winning via late game macro and teamfights, and SKT is about the worst team you can play that style against. It doesn't hurt that SKT had arguably the best toplaner, midlaner, and jungler (!?!) playing at worlds. Also, there are only two repeat champions (unless you're counting SKT's coach, kkoma): Faker and Bengi. With regards to Faker in season 3, you have to remember that season 3 worlds was primarily won on jungle/mid synergy. If you go back and watch those games, you'll see Bengi basically camping the midlane and warding for the midlane constantly. Season 5 was much more toplane focused, and not just on SKT - all the successful teams had great toplaners who were given a large share of their team's gold and asked to carry. Interesting Faker stat: Faker actually received the smallest percentage share of gold of any mid on the teams that made it out of groups, but did the most percentage damage of any mid. My take? It may not have been as flashy as season 3, but Faker absolutely dominated.
  4. There are actually two very different thought processes on how to play the early game in LoL in this meta. The "western" laneswap (this is a bit of a misnomer as it wasn't really created by western teams, but w/e) is one where you send 3-4 players to a lane in the early game to take the turret very quickly and "bounce" the minion wave off the turret. Ideally, this deprives the opposing toplaner of a great deal of early experience and gold. You then leave either your ADC or your toplaner in that lane to soak up all that farm. The "Eastern" laneswap (again a misnomer) favors not taking the early turret but, instead, bouncing one wave off that turret to create a "freeze" in that lane and then leaving your ADC in that lane to both get all that farm and to force the opposing toplaner out of that lane. As a ranged champion, ADCs are often able to zone a toplaner off the wave if that toplaner doesn't have someone else in his lane. The Eastern laneswap has a higher potential of depriving the opposing toplaner of farm, but taking down an early turret allows for vision control and invading the enemy jungle on whatever side you've taken the turret. Both of these styles have their strengths and there really isn't an East/West dichotomy between teams that adhere to each respective strategy, although the western style does seem to be performing better in the early stages of groups. Obviously achieving sound results with either of these styles is highly depending on early vision and obtaining accurate information about where the other team is starting. What's interesting to me is how poorly LGD is performing. I really thought they were the 3rd best team in the world, and they likely aren't going to make it out of groups.
  5. Esports Today 9/8/2015

    It's hard to imagine that a Riot-run LPL is going to make it more difficult, though. LPL teams already play billions of games, and they still make it to the third party tournaments which have no effect on LPL standings.
  6. Esports Today 9/8/2015

    Yeah I hear you re: relegations. I'm honestly not sure where I fall. Some teams, like CW, clearly deserve to be out of the LCS, either because they simply lower the level of competition too much or because their management/organization is so bad (CW players were living without furniture and internet at the beginning of the split, which makes no sense for an org that has been in the LCS before and which has plenty of experience running teams in other games as well). But yeah, I would have been disappointed to lose a C9 or Gambit gaming or somebody like that. The reason I'm glad SK is gone is because now SK's very capable players can go to a better org and play on better teams. Sven and freddy, for instance, should have no problem finding capable teams to go to.
  7. Esports Today 9/8/2015

    I think it's really important to remember that the LPL regional finals were played on 5.16, a new patch that literally no other competitive regions have played on. Thus, you saw things like super-broken pre-hotfix Skarner, Gangplank, etc. dominating those games. Also, Riot has explicitly stated that they do not plan to remove third party tournaments in China: https://www.reddit.com/r/leagueoflegends/comments/3k4omm/riot_games_in_talks_to_assume_control_of_lol/cuuwoil "This isn't about getting rid of some of the aspects that make the LPL unique as a league. The local team will be the judge of what local esports fans want (e.g. cosplay opening ceremonies). This isn't about killing third party tournaments in China - Demacia cup is coming back in 2016." I agree that Riot's competitive bans for some players and other people (Forgiven, Chris Badawi) has been pretty bad and I do think that they have a lot to learn. I don't think that there's anything wrong with SK being relegated - they have had a really bad internal team atmosphere for a long time and have made some abysmal personnel decisions.
  8. I play both. If I'm short on time - which seems to be often lately - I also choose LoL because it takes 30 seconds to get into a normal game instead of 5 minutes. But a ranked game of LoL takes just as long to get into as a game of DOTA, it seems.
  9. LoL used to be incredibly stagnant, just a long drawn out game of farm and protect the carry. But it's changed a lot. And your intuition is correct about Korea - a lot of the innovation has come from there. Even though there are still "roles" in the way there used to be, they have changed a lot. Mid and top don't really exist anymore - rather, you have two solo lanes, and they can be mid or top or bottom. The other big change is that, even though there is still always a jungler, most of the time there is a 2 v 1 lane swap with the ADC and support facing up against a solo laner. Then the jungler often joins the 2 v 1 lane to make it 3 v 1 (or 3 v 2 with the other jungler's help) for fast tower pushes and objective (dragon early game, Nashor late game) control. There are lots of interesting wrinkles in the meta right now - fast push, poke comps, the Chinese steamtrain comp, lane freeze comps, etc. It's really very interesting. League has progressed a lot competitively as a game. I think League could be a bit boring in season 2, when games lasted at least 50 minutes and it was always a rush to end game teamfighting. It's much more interesting now, I think.
  10. Honestly, I don't think anyone who has watched pro LoL in the last few months would say this. It's completely not true. However, I actually think Riot *wants* to move League in the direction you're presenting. While it's not true right now, unfortunately by next season I think it might be.
  11. I disagree with the idea that League has been "solved" by the competitive scene. Things are really in flux competitively right now, maybe a bit more so than DOTA. The meta in DOTA has been a lot more stable, I think, especially from watching TI3. I think a lot of this is because League's meta is comparatively younger than DOTA, and also because the Korean scene is so innovative and DOTA doesn't have that yet. Edit: It cracks me up how hard everyone is trying not to insult League/DOTA fans. Like watching ninjas tip-toe over a floor strewn with bells.
  12. I couldn't agree more. Saints Row (basically since the second one) is smart and funny in a way that GTA has never been (at least not since San Andreas, and even that game has a cringe-inducing story line that's only saved by its myriad nods to the actual open-world insanity of the game).
  13. The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway

    Hemmingway is fucking amazing and so is this book.
  14. Chris: Have you read any Graham Greene? I really, really recommend it as a counterpoint to Le Carre (the two are by far my favorite authors in that "genre", although I think they both escape the genre at times). The Human Factor is a great place to start - it's a book that's ostensibly about espionage but feels much more like a character piece. It helps if you know anything about Kim Philby. Also, I agree that Spy who came in from the cold is probably a better book than Tinker.