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    Home Unlabelled LoL Guide When a burst mage like Neeko or Syndra uses their entire combo on you and you're still alive, don't run.

    LoL Guide When a burst mage like Neeko or Syndra uses their entire combo on you and you're still alive, don't run.

    June 11, 2020

    LoL Guide When a burst mage like Neeko or Syndra uses their entire combo on you and you're still alive, don't run.

    When a burst mage like Neeko or Syndra uses their entire combo on you and you're still alive, don't run.

    Posted: 11 Jun 2020 01:57 AM PDT

    So let's say you're playing... Yasuo, why not, against Neeko in mid lane. Both junglers are top and you just made a terrible mistake, resulting in you getting 2/3 of your HP handed to you on a silver plate, and Neeko using all of her offensive abilities on you. Your first instinct might be running away. DON'T DO IT. All of her spells are on cooldown, so she can do nothing to you for at least 5 seconds - she's AP, her attacks won't do anything to you, and you're AD, so attacking her alone is enough to deal a lot of damage, making her at least recall and lose the minion / turret gold along with you, OR maybe even kill her with your sick dashes, tornado and ult.

    ​

    TL;DR if a burst mage uses her entire combo on you try to at least respond with dealing a lot of damage to them since all of their spells are on cooldown. (Unless you're like 50 hp and minions alone can finish you off.)

    EDIT: Neeko is a bad example because of her W passive but you get the point, as long as you know that a mage's full combo is used up, you have a few seconds to attack them.

    submitted by /u/alekdmcfly
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    How a Sona support main hit 1200LP in EUW Challenger just by hyperscaling

    Posted: 11 Jun 2020 07:25 AM PDT

    The art of Sona is still a mystery to many. It's not uncommon to hear "don't pick Sona", or "useless champ, reported" or worse from your teammates.

    But might she be an overlooked gem, with a massive potential? I'm here to convince you she is.

    Those who play Sona actively are probably well aware of Schuhbart. High challenger Sona main & co-inventor of the Sona+Taric strat (thanks for the Sona nerfs...), and peaking at 1100-1200lp+ in both S9 and S10.

    While Schuhbart has written a guide of his own too, I wanted to analyse and reflect on what factors set him so far ahead of other Sona players. There's plenty in diamond/masters/GM - but very few actually end in challenger, much less at the top of EUW soloq.

    Also, if you're not a fan of in-depth reflections, feel free to skip to the end of the post to see the tl;dr conclusions. :)

    So, lets get started with the first of the 3 things that set Schuhbart apart from all other Sonas:

    1. Never lose lane

    -15g behind enemy support on average

    Alright, it's a bold statement. I can already see that some might be prepared to call me wrong.

    However, lets first look at the numbers. From Riot's "Stats" feature ingame, we can see that the average Sona's gold difference vs the enemy support at 15min.

    Diamond Sona: -105g
    Masters: -148g
    Challenger: -209g

    Schuhbart defies these statistics, being a mere -15g behind enemy support on average. (and keep in mind, this is against chall elo opponents too!)

    With a highly scaling support like Sona, going as even as possible is highly desirable. Slow down the game, and by default you outscale every enemy support. And outperforming the enemy supports is one of the best benchmarks to climb the ladder successfully.

    Alright, great - you're on board. But how do we replicate this success?

    Unfortunately, I can't promise a magic formula to suddenly make you a challenger-level laner. However, I'll share some of the key techniques that you can put to use.

    Max range Q's - it might seem like a small thing, but Sona has really consistant poke (with 825 spell range), which also makes her one of the better supports at spellthief stacking.

    Schuhbart uses his Q range effortlessly, which offers safe one-sided trades as well as allows him to potentially earn higher GPM than any relic shield support.

    Minimizing enemy poke - To hyperscale on Sona, you need both gold and XP. Allowing enemy laners to poke you out of lane is a noticable hit to both of these areas. Sometimes this can be as easy as simply baiting or avoiding the enemy laners' skillshots. In other times, it takes high level of judgement to knowing how to take the trade with the least cost possible.

    Control the tempo - You want the lane to progress at your own pace. Schuhbart controls the tempo of the lane both by controlling the minionwave (freeze when beneficial), as well as managing how aggressively he spends his mana pool for trades. It's important to note that this does not mean passive gameplay - I'd consider him more of an aggressive player who very very patiently waits for an opportunity to strike.

    2. Preparing to hyperscale

    a match made in heaven for Sona

    Sona in her very nature is a highly scaling champion. She has a wide range of AP ratios - for her passive chord, for her QWER, as well as her QWE auras. The effect of the auras can also be applied to each teammate, so that's like 5x the scaling if your team groups up.

    For Schuhbart, the scaling already begins in champion select.

    The runes he uses are carefully selected to best synergize with a hyperscaling build.

    • Resolve+Inspiration, Guardian keystone.

    This offers massive innate tankiness, offers chances to survive against engage supports, and still allows him to get 45% cdr in lategame with the Inspiration tree.

    • Sorcery+Inspiration, Aery keystone.

    This runepage is packed to the brim with scaling options. Gathering Storm and Transcendence are well known scaling runes, Inspiration gets you 45% cdr, and I don't even need to mention the boots+manaflow+aery on top. :)

    The build continues with a hyperscaling mindset - is there any other support that runs Archangel's Staff as their first item? As a staple item, when fully stacked it offers ~120+ ap, 1.4k mana and 20% cdr and then a massive self-defence active on top of it. That's like a match made in heaven for Sona.

    Schuhbart often enjoys an early dark seal, for reasons I'll mention later. After Archangels, the typical core item is Athene's. After that, the build becomes situational - you can check his guide or op.gg to read further into it. But I'm yet to mention the key item in all of this...

    3. Scaling mejai's - the cherry on top

    1400g for 125AP 10% ms

    In a majority of his games, Schuhbart actually decides to build Mejai's Soulstealer. What has commonly been deemed as a "risky" item, is actually surprisingly safe and consistent item for Sona to use.

    While other champions typically need to resort to risky playstyles to get kills/assists to stack their Mejai, Sona has the luxury to easily rack up assists by providing auras to her teammates. (in 5v5 fights, you 100% guarantee the assists!) Schuhbart excels at keeping a safe positioning in teamfights, to both provide massive value to his teammates while simultaneously not risking the precious Mejai stacks.

    This is the Mejai hyperscaling.

    When I was op.gg'ing other high elo Sona mains, not one of them was building Mejai as frequently as Schuhbart. You can even 1v9 completely lost games if you're able to get 25 stacks - I've seen Schuhbart do this not once, but many times.

    While it might be hard to copy Schuhbarts decision making prowess and positioning, adopting the use of Mejai's into your games is a very simple addition for Sona players of any elo, whether it's bronze or diamond+.

    Conclusions and tldr

    So in short, these are the 3 main ways Schuhbart sets himself apart that you can also implement for your Sona gameplay:

    1. Smart laning to maximize scaling potential
    2. Highly scaling Sona builds (copy from Schuhbarts op.gg!)
    3. Abuse Mejai's to secure winning games, or to 1v9 in losing games

    You made it all the way to the end and still want to learn more about Sona?

    1. Schuhbart Sona guide for season 10
    2. Join us at r/sonamains for regular discussions
    3. Schuhbart also streams, I won't link it but if you're interested you'll find it easily

    Hope this is insightful for any support players willing to give Sona a shot, I'll also be available to answer all of the questions in comments if you'd like to know anything more.

    Thanks!

    submitted by /u/Jessica_LoL
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    If you're one of these midlaners that always have top damage and top deaths, buy mejaj

    Posted: 11 Jun 2020 07:23 AM PDT

    Now a bit of context here, I'm a mid main who plays mostly control mages (Orianna, Syndra, Vel'Koz etc.) Very often I had top damage in game, even if we were loosing or when I had one of these games where you just can't catch your rythm and die every other minute. But I also had really high death numbers, double digits death numbers were pretty common for me. While I was aware of the problem, I didn't really know how to effectively solve it, if you're one of these people you probabbly already learned that "Just stop dying lol" isn't a way to go about it.

    ​

    So what I started doing was buy mejaj every game. Every game. Even if I had dark seal on 0 stacks. Even if after looking at enemy team Mejaj sounded like a bad idea. Now obviously that's a suboptimal way of playing the game, but I did so anyways, since climbing wasn't 100% my goal. Mejaj made me so much more aware of potential threats. Is it really worth overstaying here for a kill? Aren't you a bit too far forward? Is 1k+ gold worth of stats really worth it?

    ​

    That was much better, effective and less abstract than just "trying to not die to much". It is quantifiable how much your fuck up costed you (obviously there's also map pressence, objectvies etc.), it gives you "something to touch". Often I would be just like, screw it, I go for something risky and die. Mejaj really makes you second guess these mistakes. And pain after loosing the stacks makes it that much easier and faster to learn value of unnecessary death.

    ​

    It works cause I think mejaj plays into what control mages boil down to at their core: playing just at the brink of death. You wanna stay as close to the fight as possible to deal as much damage as possible witohut dying. You should almost always be the last/second last one to die in a fight (adc). Mejaj forces you to grab as many takedowns as possible with dying as little as possible. It taught me how to recognise these breaking points in fights where I should back off f that I couldn't notice on my own and also how silly it is to overstay or try to get a pick alone in the enemy jungle.

    ​

    After playing like that for a longer while I don't buy it anymore every game, but good habits that I learnt stayed. This is obviously applicable almost exclusively to mid lane control mages, but I thought I'd share this "trick" I did since I very often end up seeing people who deal lots of damage but they also end up dying very very often. It sure made me finally see uptime as a resource and play around it.

    ​

    EDIT: Idk why it has "Top Lane" flare, I couldn't eidt them and didn't chose this one.

    submitted by /u/Qaktus
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    How do I improve my mechanics?

    Posted: 11 Jun 2020 03:00 AM PDT

    I know people say mechanics aren't too important in League and that knowledge is, but I find it really difficult to actually have any mechanical skill.

    I've been playing for six-ish months and I still struggle with moving my champion, controlling the camera and being accurate when trying to react (for example, when playing Braum wanting to quickly use my W or even Q, I miss it so easily; or trying to hit Senna's W.)

    My in-game sensitivity is 50 and mouse DPI 1200 (this is the lowest/highest I can go, anything over or under is either too slow or too fast.)

    I also unintentionally move the camera when trying to move my champion, which is annoying as hell and makes me lose focus all the time.

    I have experience playing mechanically intensive games (CSGO, Apex Legends, etc.) and I do fairly well, but League... Sigh.

    Are there any tips y'all have for improving my overall mouse movement for League?

    submitted by /u/paxvan
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    Jungle Clear Speed

    Posted: 11 Jun 2020 03:50 PM PDT

    Hey guys,

    As I started exploring more junglers out of my confort zone, I started wondering somethings about some champions.

    I started wondering in any of these champions (Zac, Gragas, Sejuani and Skarner) could clear 5 camps under the 3 minute mark.

    I tried them out in a custom, but as I was leashless and may not being the best clear. I am almost positive that none of those can except maybe Gragas.

    Can any jungle mains tell me? This question has really bothered me and I would be happy if someone could answer

    Notice that it is 5 camps, not necessarily a full clear

    submitted by /u/Ninjelo
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    Dark harvest vs electrocute vs hails of blades for assassins

    Posted: 11 Jun 2020 05:53 AM PDT

    I mostly play assassins jungle champs. I was always under the assumption that electrocute works best for AD champs and dark harvest mostly on AP. I never really used hails of blades except for when I play Xin. But multiple guide use electrocute on Ap champs and Dh om AD.

    But I am trying to understand when which of these three are most suited for which situation. The goal for all three is of course burst damage.

    Dark harvest seems like the end game time because the stacks need to be build and make you better at end game killing. Also it doesn't have a long cool down after a kill. While electrocute seems like the burst early game way to go, but end game team fight sucks because he can't kill multiple targets. Limiting your teamfight potential. Hails of blades seem like the middle ground for AD champs and seems useless for AP champs.

    Is this pretty much it of is there more layers to it.

    submitted by /u/superbros6
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    How should I approach the draft in soloQ from a jungle perspective?

    Posted: 11 Jun 2020 10:07 AM PDT

    Should I be banning who counters me, or who counters the champs my laners declare they're playing?

    Should I be looking to fill in the lack of CC/burst or should I play who I want? (Of course I know when climbing it's best to go with comfort picks but I'm not asking about climbing.)

    What specifically should I be looking for in an enemy comp, that I can capitalize on in the draft, like if I'm last 2 pick?

    I remember reading a post a while ago on being able to predict the outcome of a game based solely on the draft alone, and I would like to educate myself on team compositions as a whole. When to pick x and why etc if that's makes sense.

    submitted by /u/Liteboyy
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    Understanding mid lane matchups and what I should do and focus on generally.

    Posted: 11 Jun 2020 11:19 AM PDT

    Silver ADC player learning to play mid asking for help.

    I like to play syndra, veigar and qiyana (it's more focused on syndra for a better understanding) and I'm having a rough time understanding what I should do in certain scenarios and match ups. Every little bit of advice helps

    Even though I'm asking help for every kind of lane, assassins are the most problematic. When I'm facing an assassin (let's say Talon/Zed), should I freeze the wave? Should I hard shove and get plates? Or should I push the wave and back off under my turret? What's my game plan?

    When should I focus on scaling/surviving and when should I be oppressive? Is there ever a time when I would be able to roam as an immobile control mage?

    What should I do against other mages? Is it just a skill match up or is there something I could do to be in a better position than the enemy mage?

    If you wish to add any other information I haven't asked about, feel free to let me know.

    submitted by /u/SooWh4t
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    So I (bronze 1) went up against a diamond flora today. Here's what I learned.

    Posted: 11 Jun 2020 02:02 AM PDT

    1. Everyone starts the game even. Even though she counters me (jax) I was still able to stay toe to toe with her and almost killed her at level 3.

    2. Knowledge of matchups is very important. She was able to predict my E and play around my cool cooldowns very well. This comes from reading up on the way some champions interact with your main as well as just getting a lot of games under your belt.

    3. CS and plates are so much more important than kills. We've all heard it said over and over again, but it's crazy when you see a completed tri force after you barely finish your tiamat even though you're only down one kill.

    4. Macro is super important. The D4 fio was able to make impact plays across the map. She didn't sit in lane and farm after she tore down my turret, she shoved lane, forced mid back, took drag, bought, and tp'd bot to get all her other lanes snowballing. It's a team game, and when you help your teammates get fed early, you don't have to carry them so hard come mid game.

    5. There's always going to be someone better than you, so learn from every loss and improve on your weaknesses. Ok, I get it, you always stomp lane and it's the 1/14/3 yi's fault you're hardstuck in bronze. You're winning now, but move up a division and all of a sudden you're outmatched. There's more to carrying games than getting yourself fed. If you're always winning lane and losing game, you're probably pretty bad at some other aspect of League. Take note of when fights went bad for your team and try to figure out what YOU could have done differently there. Maybe you should have traded a tower when the other team took drag instead of walking across the map and dying after your team lost a 3v5 in the pit. Once every aspect of your game improves, you'll climb.

    6. CS better. This doesn't mean split push in mid game to improve your creep score at the end of the game (though that does help). It also doesn't mean getting every single minion. This means while you're in lane, work on wave control and last hitting to maximize the gold you earn while limiting the gold your opponent earns. Get better at freezing. Get better at posturing. Get better at breaking freezes. Get better at back timing. Get better at punishing roams by staying in lane.

    All this being said, I myself am still bronze. I know a lot of the things I have to work on, but I have a lot of room to grow. If you have any advice that might help me or someone else reading this, or corrections to any of the above points, please let me know. This is a fantastically complicated game, and there are many things I still don't know or have yet to master.

    submitted by /u/redavhtrad95
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    why should i unlock my camera

    Posted: 11 Jun 2020 09:39 AM PDT

    i've been playing with locked camera in lane for years (per-side offset) and i haven't encounterd any issues
    i only move the camera when checking up on my teammates (sometimes i just use f keys), when trynig to make a pick or land a long range skillshot, or when playing bot on redside (i'm main mid btw), etc ...
    yet nearly everyone is recommending to play with unlocked camera
    what are the advantages that i am not seeing ?

    submitted by /u/Dragonox24
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    How to improve macro and game knowledge?

    Posted: 11 Jun 2020 07:10 AM PDT

    Ok so I think I'm at a pretty good mechanical level (I can manage waves correctly, manage the opponent cd on the skills and understand matchups correctly) and now I want to start improving more my macro game, but how to actually do that? Some people told me to do vod reviews on pro games and on my owns and, if so, how to actually do a vod review on my own?

    submitted by /u/richtier
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    Transitioning to Mid from Jungle, having a lot of issues.

    Posted: 11 Jun 2020 12:47 PM PDT

    So I've been transitioning from Jungle to Mid. I've played a very long time, but I went inactive for years. Prior to my last bout of inactivity, I was consistently gold as Support or Jungle on my accounts. I had been Platinum in season 2/3, but fell off with all the inactivity periods and changes. I am no where near that good anymore, but I have a decent amount of game knowledge and all I really have now is my macro to win games. I usually get to gold or help friends get to gold then quit from burn out.

    My friends group all switched roles and I'm playing mid now, but I can't win the lane. I'm staying ahead in CS until lane phase ends, but I am not performing very well outside of that and roaming. In the lane itself is where I'm really struggling. It seems like no matter what I pick I get countered. I get camped very often, as well.

    Is it just an experience thing and not knowing the match ups or my champions limits that well? I haven't consistently lost early game in a long time.

    Are there any good resources or teaching tools for mid lane centric knowledge or laning knowledge anyone can suggest? Ones that are still relevant are harder for me to find, all my preferred educational streamers and youtube channels seem to have changed styles, games, or quit.

    Attached are the images of my champion stats for champions I've played Mid Lane, removing any that I don't. Normals First Half, Second Half and Ranked First Half Ranked Second Half Ranked -- I know I need to trim my champion pool, I just haven't found it mid. (Yasuo is the most fun, but seems to have the worst lane phase and just got nerfed)

    submitted by /u/Siduakal
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    How to have late game presence as jungler?

    Posted: 11 Jun 2020 12:36 PM PDT

    My champion pool is: Vi, Evelynn, Shaco, Amumu. Everytime i play jungle i always stumble on the same problem: i just stop being relevant when laning phase ends and everyone is just playing only for objectives. I am trying so hard to stop both teams araming (splitpushing, baiting them) but the effort is worthless. I can't backline because i will just get one shot. I can frontline (as Amumu or Vi) but i lose majority of teamfights. Another problem is that enemy jungler always stomps so hard. They usually get some kills on lane or they get lucky and find me in the jungle when i am sitting on 200 hp after i clear several camps. Smite showdown when killing dragon is so obnoxious because i can never smite the drake correctly even when i have advantage (Enemy Sylas e's through a wall then e's drake and instantly smites. Me as Amumu have no time for reaction and i get flamed by my teammates that i didn't smite drake). Ganking feels terrible. it's so hard to hit combos like Evelynn charm or Shaco w. Sometimes it Feels like everyone just has infinite flashes (i know i should baby sit the lane when enemy wastes flash but they instantly start playing safe and combined with when i play shaco, they are just too afraid to leave their turret range and constantly make my laner vulnerable to enemy jungle gank). Another big problem is falling behind enemy jungler and having somehow less farm than them. And when this happens i get constantly hunted by junglers and midlaners and get my camps cleared and when i go to enemy jungle i meet 3 guys who just happened to be there just passing through. Basically my fucking problem is that i am just glorified minion when game hits 25 min mark. I know the problem is with me, maybe i play these champions wrong maybe i shouldn't be playing jungle. I am already tired of seeing those chilling smite spams and jungle diffs in the chat i need help.

    submitted by /u/Fakecabriolet342
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    Advise to low elo toplaners that get camped.

    Posted: 11 Jun 2020 02:21 AM PDT

    Hi,
    Im play mainly toplane and I had always problem with my jg just dont giving sh*t about me when I get hard camped. I would be totally ok with it, if jungler used this info for taking objectives/drakes, but scenario where i get hard camped and enemy gets dragon soul as well is too much often to this being justifiable. So my advise to you is: take your jg camps on your way top or when you cant farm, cause you are camped. This solution results in 3 scenarios-> 1. you get ahead of your opponents and you can steam roll toplane 2.jungler starts helping you cause he is afraid of falling behind 3. jungler starts ganking more everywhere cause he dont have camps to clear, so he change to global support. Before I started using this strategy i was hardstucked in silver this season, but after I started using this strategy and learned the timing, so i can decide worth of minions vs camps I got to gold 2, which is pretty solid progression from my point of view.
    Have a nice day and enjoy your games at least as I do now :)

    PS: Sorry for my english

    submitted by /u/peageon112
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    Making an impact Top as the controller?

    Posted: 11 Jun 2020 12:30 PM PDT

    If playing LoR taught me anything about the way Riot designs their video games, it's that knowing who's the aggressor and who's the controller before the enemy is a huge advantage.

    I began to play Top because I like that dueling skill translates to victory potential more efficiently there than in any other position. I am an OTP with over 600 games on Urgot and 800 total; my "who-the-FUCK-bans-Urgot??!" champions are Teemo, Nasus, Karma, and recently Darius.

    When I take an offensive lead with the crab, I almost always go on to tank-carry. I struggle very severely with playing from a disadvantageous position, though; champions such as Darius, Swain, Fiora, Tahm Kench, and Aatrox give me massive trouble because Urgot is far from equal in power to those units until he has reached level 9 or has secured a significant item lead.

    Urgot loves to all-in at level 1; champions like Renekton, Riven, Garen, Yasuo, and anything that dares go "squish" get removed from lane if not killed if they are caught by Bushcrab E.

    Fighting a war of attrition from the backline is also a diagnosis I frequently make as Urgot; champions such as Teemo, Gnar, and Jax become susceptible to an all-in play after only a few slightly unfavorable trades.

    Then there's Darius, Swain, Fiora, Kench, and their ilk who can just walk past my minions and tower dive me out of the gate because I crossed the immovable, invisible line denoting their kill range. All inning sustained-burst champions like Darius is never an option, while Battlemagi do the epic kite thing.

    In ranked, however, I know I need to figure out how to do literally anything to fight back against the likes of Swain, Darius, Aatrox, etc. When I choose to focus CS and go 0-0-0 until midgame, I'm reminded that these champions are 100% lethal to me unless I forfeit the ability to CS.

    Is shoving the lane then trying to set up a from-Top or TP gank really the only way for a crab to get the upper hand it needs to box a Darius or similarly-dominating champ for CS comfortably until midgame?

    tl;dr what do I do if choosing to outfarm them defensively leads to even worse losses than trying to 1up the 90% of my health that Darius' rotation takes at level 2? I just don't have the stats to take even a single hit VS some champions because if there's even a drop of CC to go with it I'm turned into crabcakes.

    submitted by /u/gxxx_thekingofgames
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    How to carry games in low ELO as a botlane duo?

    Posted: 11 Jun 2020 11:50 AM PDT

    Me and my friend decided we want to play ranked and get better at the game, but we find that our team lets us down a lot. I know this sounds like a cop out reason, but for example, we just played a game where we were Ashe and Zyra into Trynd (wtf) and Yuumi. They received many ganks from Lee Sin while we had 2 tops from Kayn. On top of this, Annie fed Fizz to the point where he could one shot anyone while under tower. We built Grievous Wounds to try counter Yuumi's healing, but we found that I could burst Trynd about 1/3 health at a time but he'd leave for a few seconds and come back healed. Any advice on what we could have done to prevent/make the most of this situation and how we can carry future games would be greatly appreciated, thank you!

    ​

    Edit: I play Zyra, Swain, and Senna, but my champ pool also includes Pyke, Thresh and Morgana.

    submitted by /u/CrymsonChaos
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    Does riven take skill?

    Posted: 11 Jun 2020 03:35 PM PDT

    I'll cut to the chase. Basically does riven take skill to play and get good on? I've heard alot of mixed reactions about her mostly one or the other of "shes braindead, low-medium skill cap" or the complete opposite of her being pretty insane to play and has one of the highest skill caps in league.

    If u can, can u just briefly say why she does or doesnt take skill to play or master.

    Edit: thanks alot guys! :D

    submitted by /u/Theycallmehooky
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    LDR, MR, and Crit: an itemisation guide

    Posted: 11 Jun 2020 03:38 AM PDT

    One quick point before diving into the post. While this post is using Caitlyn as our item carrier (in response to someone asking about this for her), the values broadly hold true for all crit building ADCs. The exact point where one item should be bought over another will vary, but the overall trends remain true.

    Also, there are a bunch of big images of big spreadsheets, went for detail and easy to follow logic over being compact. The spreadsheet itself is here if you want to poke around at the numbers yourself.

    Two Swords make a Bow

    For any of you bitter veterans out there, you might remember a time when Crit ADCs built armour penetration in the form of Last Whisper, a statistic which modern builds are often suspiciously lacking in given that the main task of ADCs is to kill people who build a lot of defences in a reasonable time span. The items for this still exist, but past patches pushed them out of builds and build inertia means they never really crept back in again. Or maybe the items are just bad now compared to the alternatives. Let's have a look at the numbers.

    Lord Dominik's Regard (LDR from here on) gives you 45 AD and 35% total armour penetration for 2800 gold. This is pretty much what Last Whisper used to be, just a bit more expensive.
    Mortal Reminder also gives you 45 AD, but provides 25% total armour penetration and grievous wounds on damage, costing 2800.

    Essentially, you are trading pre mitigation damage for damage multipliers in the form of reduced armour and reduced healing. You can boil this down to a simple maths problem, for a given itemisation which item should we add next to maximise the relative damage we're outputting.

    Damage Maximising

    If we are going to be doing a damage comparison we need a default build to compare against, preferably whatever the damage maximising build for your champion is (without the items under investigation of course). For crit ADCs it's rather straightforward: buy all the AD/Crit items, Berserker Greaves, and Static Shiv, topping it off with a last item BT. In a practical game you are unlikely to go for this build, you want utility effects and more defences, which cut into your damage output

    https://imgur.com/Nq1xRhd
    https://imgur.com/7ANSoyd

    These are the stats for Caitlyn at one item to four + boots. The rune page is one AS shard, one AD shard, and no other offensive stats or damage multipliers, mostly so I don't have to worry about game time and combat patterns interfering with the tests, in a real game you might want to take offensive keystones or gathering storm. Levels used are level 8, 11, 13, and 15, which roughly correspond to when you hit a new item without any significant influxes or losses of gold.

    On a total damage basis the results are pretty straightforward, you get IE first, then SR, then ER, then Shiv. Once you factor in the differing costs of the items and resists of the target then you can make arguments for SR first and Shiv third, but it's close enough that we will go with the original order.

    The value of LDR

    Now we have our default build order sorted, we can compare it to LDR. Which looks like this.

    https://imgur.com/dZaQ1aO
    https://imgur.com/imuEdPu

    The resist values given here are those of a Jax at levels 8, 11, 14, and 18, with Tabi at 8 and 11, and an additional GA at 14 and 18. It's a pretty typical bruiser statline, the popularity of Deaths Dance means you see GA less often now but you end up much the same ballpark as far as resists are concerned. Also included are the break even values, where LDR starts to do more damage then the alternative item on a slot basis.

    As you can see, below 50% crit LDR is not a worthwhile buy. You need an unreasonable quantity of armour to make the pickup good, if you run into a Rammus then maybe grab Last Whisper but at least get an additional crit cloak before even thinking about turning it into LDR.

    When we get to 50% crit we have a reasonable breakpoint, 199 armour. This is easily obtainable by tanks at this stage of the game, and bruisers with resist steroids can also hit this (think Jax ult, Nasus ult, Garen passively with W, maybe WuKong or Graves). Against our Model Jax there isn't that big a dps gap between LDR and 75% crit, and if we are looking at things on a cost adjusted basis LDR is actually better due to costing 500 gold less then ER.

    With 75% crit the breakpoint is even lower, down to 113 armour. Bruisers hit this without even trying, and squishy champions get there too: a Varus with GA tops out at 125 armour, and even Xayah (the adc with the lowest armour) hits 116.

    Additionally, remember that this is only looking at auto attack damage. If you have abilities then the value you gain from armour pen is higher since few abilities scale off AS or Crit.

    RNG and You

    So looking at the values there you might think that LDR is pretty good, you get a dps boost at achievable armour values, and potentially some extra cost efficiency. There is however a catch to consider, Critical Strike variance.

    The values we used here are smoothed out, while in reality you end up with bigger and smaller packets of damage mixed together. Against tanks and bruisers combat lasts long enough that paper dps equals practical dps, but against squishy targets your Time to Kill (TTK) is short. How short exactly depends on how much you crit, say you are able to kill a target in four autos if they all crit, but if hits two and three don't crit then suddenly you might be looking at five or six autos, maybe more. This matters at the 75% to 100% breakpoint, the difference between perfectly reliable damage and some variation.

    Additionally, the dps difference between builds isn't that massive. If we push our armour values up to 300 (tank levels, though they can hit higher in the late game if they don't need to care about MR) we are still only talking about a 10 DPS difference at the 50% to 75% breakpoint, and 25 DPS at the 75% to 100% breakpoint. 4% to 6% difference in damage. As a comparison, switching out an AD/Crit item for PD results in about a 9% drop in damage output.

    That said, given the shear quantity of damage an ADC outputs at three and four items, crit variance often doesn't matter against squishes, and can potentially even be turned into an advantage because crits with LDR strike harder then the 100% crit build. Even if you miss a crit your TTK is often still low enough to be in the "whoever hits first wins" category against squishy targets, and the higher damage on crit can push you from four crits to three (or in the case of Caitlyn and Jhin, two crits, maybe even one with a bit of help from abilities or missing health), resulting in a lower practical time to kill.

    RNG screwing can happen. But it's just as likely that you messed up. Try not to blame RNG, but maybe also don't rely on it.

    Mortal Reminder, Executioners Calling, and Phantom Damage

    Grievous wounds (GW) is one of those stats that can be essential to the team, but everyone seems loath to buy it. Tanks get Bramble vest and Thornmail (great against people drain-tanking off them, not so good against mages or if being ignored), Magic Damage gets Morellonomicon (good against low MR squishies, horrible against anyone with resists, can be cooldown gated, bursty champs can maybe outburst healing), and Physical Damage gets Executioners Calling (EC) and Mortal Reminder. As ADCs we get reasonably cheap access to the utility and reliable application, but it does come at the cost of damage output. How much damage (and so how much healing does it need to negate)? Well that depends on your target's armour.

    https://imgur.com/eRaxuLv
    https://imgur.com/sd7jeNC

    The broad trend is that the more resists you have, the less healing needed for GW to be valuable. A tank may only need to heal 40 health per second (HPS) without GW over their TTK, while a squishy or semi squishy such as Vlad or Katrina needs to heal 80 to 100 HPS. Given the TTK difference between classes these values end up condensing together to a pretty similar total healing needed, a tank might take 8 seconds (320 health at 40 hps) while a squishy needs only four (also 320 heath at 80 hps). 300 health makes a good rule of thumb for an early pickup, it's a bit conservative but it's better to pick up the utility slightly too early then to miss the window and get snowballed on. Vlad, Maokai, Soroka, Mundo, and Yuumi all hit this (though yuumi needs to either be fed or get multiple E casts off), but lots of lifesteal bruisers and other conqueror users won't get there, at least initially. If you're looking for a threshold in the mid to late game to get it then maybe bump that up to 400 or a little bit more.

    You also probably don't want to go straight for Mortal Reminder. EC along with a crit cloak and a BF sword comes out to a little more then Reminder does, and at our three item mark you need 193 armour before Reminder starts to out damage it, about the point where you would consider LDR in the absence of healing. When it comes to builds that already have 75% though you probably want to build Reminder, as you have some pretty serious slot crunch otherwise, it locks you into a full offensive build, and against almost all targets Reminder does more damage anyway.

    Also, a big assumption being made here is that all the damage being done to the target is done by you. Even a little bit of extra damage from someone else can make quite a difference here, and in a scenario where both you and a mage are hitting a target, and a decision needs to be made as to which one of you gets the grievous wounds, it's almost always better for the ADC to pick it up. The value of oblivion orb (and so the majority of the value of 'nomicon) kind of drops off drastically with only a tiny bit of MR itemised, while the value of Mortal Reminder only gets better the more resists are on the field.

    Conclusions

    Looking back at everything, we can safely say that both items have their place. Lord Dominik's Regard is a small damage boost against even lower levels of armour that doesn't mind being sacrificed for extra utility, while Mortal Reminder is an indispensable utility pickup that doesn't hurt your damage output too much. You should strongly consider picking one of them up in many games, but they are not mandatory in the same way that IE+Crit2 is, and there are trade offs compared to other offensive, defensive, and utility orientated items.

    submitted by /u/shrouded_reflection
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    Should I main Akali or Katarina?

    Posted: 11 Jun 2020 09:31 AM PDT

    Hi everyone,
    I've been getting back into league after a while and I'm having a character crisis on who to main for SoloQ. I played both champions fairly frequently so I'm decent at both and I left right after Akali got reworked. The reason I'm asking this question is because I heard Akali got put in the dumpster while I was away and Katarina just got nerfed. Is there any reason I should play one champ over the other?
    Thanks for any advice or opinions that y'all could give.

    submitted by /u/PointyCrayon
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    How to outplay Diana?

    Posted: 11 Jun 2020 03:24 PM PDT

    Diana is a champion I permaban whenever I play ranked - she is literally the only champion I can't seem to counter or outplay. Even against worst player, I get hit by her poke and then she presses the rest of her buttons and I die. Her cooldowns are super short, her manacosts are tiny its so easy for her to stick to you even if you have a disengage and then you can't 1v1 her because she's got a shield.

    I mostly main Syndra, Fizz and Yasuo mid. What am I doing wrong?

    submitted by /u/pasinduthegreat
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    How do you balance CSing and KP?

    Posted: 11 Jun 2020 03:22 PM PDT

    I'm pretty new to the game and I've spent most of my time playing Draft Pick and URF. I usually play mid (Ekko, Qiyana) or ADC (Ezreal) and I can't seem to find a balance. When there aren't any objectives up mid game I go to the lanes and shove out waves, take buffs (with my JG's permission) and put pressure on the map. Recently I've tried focusing on my CS but I've noticed that I trade CSing for KP, as my damage is insignificant. I know that when a fight breaks out to give up a wave to help but other than that I can't find a happy medium.

    submitted by /u/imaaaginaaation
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    If you’re going to go to a lane in mid/late game to kill a big enemy wave, please stack that lane in your favor.

    Posted: 11 Jun 2020 03:21 PM PDT

    If you recall after a fight and want to take out a big wave real quick before it gets to your tower, make sure you make it so your lane can do the same damage to their tower. It's so easy to do. All it takes is killing one extra wave to make sure you have more minions than the enemy the next time the wave clashes.

    So many times I see people go to save a tower from a big wave and they just leave once they kill the initial wave instead of stacking their lane. You're wasting your time. You're just gonna have to go back there in a few minutes if you just clear one wave and leave.

    I want to add on to this though... don't stay in lane too long if your team is trying to fight or get objectives, because then you're abandoning your team and leaving it open for the enemy to 5v4 you. This also goes for if they enemy team is trying to fight or take objectives.

    submitted by /u/Melssenator
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    Need help with side wave collecting.

    Posted: 11 Jun 2020 09:20 AM PDT

    I've been really focusing in the mid-late game clearing side waves and it's definitely been helping my CS.

    One issue I have is I look at a lans where the enemy's wave have more minions than mine and I'm like "great it's slow pushing toward me, I'm gonna go pick it up"

    By the time I get over there my wave is actually slow pushing away so there's not as many creeps and it's a more dangerous situation and sometimes the opposite side lane will be the one I should have farmed.

    How can I better identify these situations and make the right choice?

    B2 Mid

    submitted by /u/MyNamesGrizzly
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    Why does Maokai top go Aftershock?

    Posted: 11 Jun 2020 03:12 PM PDT

    I understand why Maokai support or Maokai jungle would go Aftershock, but Grasp is the tank top rune because of just how it facilitates your trades. Why is Aftershock the most played rune on Maokai top? The cooldown is very easy to play against too.

    I got autofilled top and tried it, and your trades are just so bad. Yeah, with Aftershock you don't take much damage for 2.5 seconds but against most top laners, this doesn't mean anything because most do their damage over a long period of time (where Aftershock is best against burst)

    submitted by /u/WizardXZDYoutube
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