Ok so since I got the stream up we have had a plethora of inhouses and J4K has been super active! This is awesome and I wish to continue this with anything I can, SO here's my idea......
J4K Grimm's crossing Inhouse league:
Basically here's how it works, anytime you have six J4K players on you can play an official 3v3 IHL game, send me the match ID when you are done and I will keep a running W/L record for all the individual players.
Games will be the same mode as regular J4K inhouses(BD-AR-Duplicate heroes no swap) and shuffle teams as well. So you CANNOT stack teams which makes it alot more balanced. Because the PSR isn't directly reflective of our skill turn on the shuffle teams option. This shuffles the teams once the game actually starts and I'm not entirely sure but I think it is completely random and not based on PSR.
If there is enough activity with this we could have bi-weekly standing updates or "seasons"! Thoughts everyone? I think this would be another little unique alternative to TMM and standard inhouses.
Friday, December 7, 2012
Sunday, November 25, 2012
Intro to Competitive Thinking (re-post)
I wrote this about a month ago and I posted it to reddit I'm not sure about the HoN forums, but I figured I would throw it on here just so its on my blog, enjoy :)
I wrote this up for my clan(which ranges from 1500-1800) in preparation for HoNtour in hopes that we could get "Competitive" inhouses and such and hopefully get 2-3 teams in HoNtour. I figured this belongs here and could help a few people out! Keep in mind I'm not a pro player, currently sitting on 1780 or something but I have competitive experience and always enjoy helping others understand that way of playing/thinking. Enjoy :)
There are certain things you will see in competitive games that you don't often see in TMM games, laning concepts and such that take organization that you can't capitalize on in TMM with pubs. These include but are not limited to:
Suicide Solo: A situation where you send a solo hero to your long lane(Top lane if you are legion, Bot if you are hellbourne). The purpose this serves is to send a hero that can survive in that lane and get full XP for the most part. This takes away that gimped long lane which is almost always lost 2v2, and gives your carry and other lanes a much better chance at succeeding all the while putting your suicide in a position where they can get levels and not die. This lane takes proper positioning and a hell of a lot of patience, as of now I'm the only one that has taken on this role in J4K 5 locks but I would love for others to learn it. Some heroes that can generally fare quite well suicide are Bubbles, Hag, Plague rider, tempest, wildsoul. Those are some of the BEST, the heroes you will almost never fail with. Other situational suiciders would be Valkyrie/Tremble/Jeraziah....the list goes on its really situational and a matter of versatility of your team make up.
Dual Mid: if you rune a suicide hero this gives you the oppurtunity to run two heroes mid. There are SOOOO many heroes in this game that can wreck mid in a 1v1 situation, throw two heroes mid and they get shut down. Heroes like a tremble/pebbles/devo/blood hunter just examples of heroes that get raped 2v1. Usually a dual mid will be your carry and a strong support, but sometimes you can run a kill lane like a pyro mag. This gives you a safe lane and really easy rune control, just have the carry farm up and the support gets all the runes. In pubs its really easy because most teams won't expect it so if you have two mid they try and counter with a dual mid, but since you purposely picked dual you will be better then them 90% of the time.
Jungler: Yea yea, you see junglers all the time in TMM but competitive jungling is on a whole nother level. Once again, thanks to a suicide lane you now have the luxury of running a jungler, along with sometimes a dual short lane and a solo mid. With this you can do one of a few things, you can have a strong ganker like parasite or ophelia and just rock the fuck out of the short lane giving your carry stupid good farm. Or you can have a defensive farming jungler like Keeper/Legionairee. If you do this it is really hard to gank them since you have a dual short lane so they can get stupid strong farm. Its also really common to run a jungle in the other teams woods to wreck their carry and their mid lanes, this really only works with para/ophelia.The difference between jungling in TMM and jungling in a competitive game is the importance of being an active part of the game (early esp for Para/Ophe) while still maintaining farm and levels so you don't find yourself underleveled and useless if the game goes late.
Carry-based game: In almost every game you have played you have a carry who you try and get farmed. It is REALLY important in games that you build your team around defending your hard carry and giving them the best farm possible. For example if you have like a magebane or a TDL farming short lane, you give them a support to babysit and a jungler on top of that and rape the lane they face! I cannot stress more how much stacking the jungle and ancients just fucking wins games. With a hero like TDL or draconis stacks can add 3-4 levels by mid game.
So after all that, here is a solid list of the really fucking good heroes in lock pick games.
God-Tier: Carries:Magebane/Dark Lady/Draconis/SIlhouette Gankers: Pebbles/Fayde Supports: Glacius/Nymphora/Aluna Suicide: Bubbles/Tempest/PR/Pharaoh/Wild Soul/Keeper of the Forest Solo Mid:Witch Slayer/Tundra/Pollywog Jungle:Ophelia/Keeper/Parasite
Good: Carries:FA/zeph/MQ Gankers: Deadwood Supports:Monarch/Rhapsody/DS Suicide: Tremble/Valk/Scout (Madman)
The list goes on and on, you can really try alot of heroes in dual mids and such.
Awesome heroes to have on your team: Moraxus/Magmus/Torturer/Pharoah/Hammer/Behe/Bramble These are really great utiity heroes that can work in multiple roles.
My thoughts on Blitz
As most anybody that has ever played with me knows, I love Blitz. Easily my favorite S2 hero to come out since monkey king and I am yet to play a game where I get to the end and think "Damn, I wish I didn't pick Blitz". So why is this hero so fun? What makes me desire to play him? Well aside from the fact that next to nobody else plays him(lets be honest, this hero is bad), I love soloing mid with him and find it stupid easy against pretty much any other hero.
Reasons why he kicks ass solo:
1. W provides awesome damage potential in the early levels, especially against a melee hero. The amount of slow it compiles is fairly strong +stun=tons of damage at levels 2-5.
2. Despite the fact that he lacks an AOE nuke, he still manages to have strong rune control because of W and E. Unless the hero has a blink mechanism, you can get damn near every rune. Knowing you will win the rune battle gives you the ability to play stupidly aggressive with W and Q making easy kills early.
Typically even if you are facing someone of equal skill, you can kill any hero mid multiple times pre-level 6.
A standard Blitz game starts off with facerolling mid and starting like 7-0.
So why does Blitz suck so much ass?
Well there are multiple reasons why Blitz is seen as awful by the general community.
1. People try to play him as a support. this is just silly because he pales in comparison to every other support hero in the game. Sure he can get the job done in lane but once you get to mid game with shit levels and no gold, you can barely even use all your skills before running out of mana and being utterly useless.
2. Energizer. Inexperienced Blitz players read his skillset and think "Hmm Energizer would synergize awesome with this hero!" In theory yea sure it does, but its un-necessary. Between your E and Phase boots you can manage to almost always be near max movement speed, you don't need to spend the extra 1300 gold on energizer for an extra 60 movement speed. Too often skill builds are generally built around that extra 100 damage you can get from your stun, rather than utilizing the massive levels/gold you gain on your opponent by shitblasting mid.
So how do I make blitz useful past 25 minutes?
What you need to do is build as if you are a carry hero when you have a huge lead. Rather than getting energizer and push book with your gold, get a nullstone. In most games below 1700, if you are destroying early game people are going to focus fire you in fights. My typical blitz build is phase boots/nullstone/shroud/savage mace(maybe dawnbringer if you are feeling risky).
As I stated before it is really easy to stomp mid with this hero, like....too easy. That being said you can pound up an easy nullstone by like 18 minutes and all of a sudden players start to freak out. Now not only are you running around smashing people with your stupid burst damage at 18 minutes, but people are wasting shit on you and ignoring your actual good heroes!
What makes Blitz a more viable carry than say FA/Silh?
Nothing, absolutely nothing. This hero does suck, but there are ways to make him slightly more useful especially in the 1500-1750 range. He is by no means a beast late game, but because of his burst potential you can get a good jumpstart on the other team. I think Blitz is the most fun hero in the game, and it is worth sacrificing a little bit to have a blast. Just make sure you are mid, he is pub-tier sidelane.
Blitz's problems:
What usually happens is you do really well early and come mid game you are still squishy and put out no physical damage. This being said you can be 7-0 and have 3 levels on the entire enemy team and they can still squish you like the feline that you are. However, if you get a nullstone you can be much more tactical in fights and have a blast crushing 1600s, leaving their jaws dropped at losing to a blitz.Now go out there, pick Blitz and make me proud!!!
Reasons why he kicks ass solo:
1. W provides awesome damage potential in the early levels, especially against a melee hero. The amount of slow it compiles is fairly strong +stun=tons of damage at levels 2-5.
2. Despite the fact that he lacks an AOE nuke, he still manages to have strong rune control because of W and E. Unless the hero has a blink mechanism, you can get damn near every rune. Knowing you will win the rune battle gives you the ability to play stupidly aggressive with W and Q making easy kills early.
Typically even if you are facing someone of equal skill, you can kill any hero mid multiple times pre-level 6.
A standard Blitz game starts off with facerolling mid and starting like 7-0.
So why does Blitz suck so much ass?
Well there are multiple reasons why Blitz is seen as awful by the general community.
1. People try to play him as a support. this is just silly because he pales in comparison to every other support hero in the game. Sure he can get the job done in lane but once you get to mid game with shit levels and no gold, you can barely even use all your skills before running out of mana and being utterly useless.
2. Energizer. Inexperienced Blitz players read his skillset and think "Hmm Energizer would synergize awesome with this hero!" In theory yea sure it does, but its un-necessary. Between your E and Phase boots you can manage to almost always be near max movement speed, you don't need to spend the extra 1300 gold on energizer for an extra 60 movement speed. Too often skill builds are generally built around that extra 100 damage you can get from your stun, rather than utilizing the massive levels/gold you gain on your opponent by shitblasting mid.
So how do I make blitz useful past 25 minutes?
What you need to do is build as if you are a carry hero when you have a huge lead. Rather than getting energizer and push book with your gold, get a nullstone. In most games below 1700, if you are destroying early game people are going to focus fire you in fights. My typical blitz build is phase boots/nullstone/shroud/savage mace(maybe dawnbringer if you are feeling risky).
As I stated before it is really easy to stomp mid with this hero, like....too easy. That being said you can pound up an easy nullstone by like 18 minutes and all of a sudden players start to freak out. Now not only are you running around smashing people with your stupid burst damage at 18 minutes, but people are wasting shit on you and ignoring your actual good heroes!
What makes Blitz a more viable carry than say FA/Silh?
Nothing, absolutely nothing. This hero does suck, but there are ways to make him slightly more useful especially in the 1500-1750 range. He is by no means a beast late game, but because of his burst potential you can get a good jumpstart on the other team. I think Blitz is the most fun hero in the game, and it is worth sacrificing a little bit to have a blast. Just make sure you are mid, he is pub-tier sidelane.
Blitz's problems:
What usually happens is you do really well early and come mid game you are still squishy and put out no physical damage. This being said you can be 7-0 and have 3 levels on the entire enemy team and they can still squish you like the feline that you are. However, if you get a nullstone you can be much more tactical in fights and have a blast crushing 1600s, leaving their jaws dropped at losing to a blitz.Now go out there, pick Blitz and make me proud!!!
24 Hour Pikastream
The end of the semester is approaching and I just invested in a new computer so be on the look out for lots of good J4K content in the near future! I should have my computer up and running by December 1st, and my stream will be going live shortly after. I finish school on December 17th and plan to do a 24 stream immediately following my last final. Details to come soon! I am calling all J4K members/fans to come together to make this 24 hour stream a giant success. Clear your schedule, skip your finals, do whatever you have to do to be there because it is going to be epic. 8=========D--,O:
Keep calm and J4K on.
As of now, I finish my final at 2 PM CST on Monday December 17th and Will probably start the stream around 5-6 PM, depending how long of a nap I take. All J4Ks are welcome to participate in the streamathon which will hopefully include not only 5 man J4K tmm but also playing/casting J4K inhouses!!!
Stream Channel: Twitch.tv/pikastream (going live approx. December 3rd)
Wednesday, February 15, 2012
crazedPIKA's Solo Queue guide!
crazedPIKA's guide to solo queueing for people that believe they are in the wrong MMR bracket!
If you are blue you are generally going to be much higher than everyone else meaning you are facing shit ass 1500s who don't ward or listen to MIA's. Pick a mid ganker such as pebbs hag DR devo, someone you can win mid with and also get double taps in sidelanes. Also TP gank from mid so the sidelanes won't see you, even with wards. *free kills*
If you are teal/purple then you are right in the middle of the MMR bracket that you are supposedly better than anyway, pick a carry hero that is useful early game but is also disgusting late game, such as magebane/swiftblade/Silhouette/FA/valk and go to the short lane, even if your dumbass OJ player picks flint and lanes with you it doesn't matter, if you are truly better than him you should have no problem outlasthitting him and carrying the game against supposed baddies.
If you are yellow/OJ get a hard support hero and support the hell out of the game.Now, people tend to say "Pubs are unsupportable" which is true to an extent, but a good support player can generally win their lane with even a brazilian lane partner. Basically, if you are an average support player your chances are 50/50 pretty much a crapshoot. However, if you are a good support player, giving all the farm to the carry, setting up proper ganks, warding and always stacking jungle. Then it is more like 70/30. You are still gonna have some unsupportable dumbfucks that can't take advantage of good support but, get over it shit happens.
GENERAL RULES
1.No matter what hero you are, WARD. Even if you are carrying as magebane, if your team isn't warding it is definitely worth it to drop 200 G for map vision and safe farming.
2. From 5 min on ALWAYS have a TP scroll, TP ganks are too easy especially against pubs that won't have lane wards, also pubs will tend to be slow to react to TP's against their lane which usually results in free kills.
3. In general do your best to pick AOE style heroes especially if you are going mid. Single target heroes in solo queue are generally a recipe for loss since you need to rely on yourself to control teamfights.
Following all of this, if you think you should be higher MMR than you are, yet still only win 50% of your games. Then quit blaming others and get better.
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