Friday, October 24, 2014

League of Legends Hexakill Tutorial

Hexakill is a new game mode available for a limited time as part of The Harrowing event in League of Legends. It uses the 3v3 map, Twisted Treeline, and doubles the amount of players to a 6v6. Chaos ensues.

Champions with an Advantage

There are many champions that are good in the original 3v3 form of Twisted Treeline, but this section focuses on the champions that get a little more oomph out of having more targets available.

List of Champions with Abilities that Benefit from Multiple Champions

These champions have abilities with multipliers based on the number of champion targets available. Not listed here are champions who have abilities that are capped at certain amounts (more on that later). Edit for Clarity: The increase in most cases is usually a very small amount, but relevant enough to mention. For example, Wukong gains a max of 8 more armor than usual from his passive. Poppy, however, gets complete immunity from 5 targets instead of 4 for a medium duration, which is rather exceptional.
  • Galio
  • Irelia
  • Jarvan IV
  • Maokai
  • Poppy
  • Wukong

List of Champions with Resets

These champions have abilities that reset when enemies are killed. They benefit heavily from additional Champion targets, if they get the kill or assist. Edit for New Information: After many matches, the following champions have proven to be deciding factors in getting closest to achieving a Hexakill. (A runner up, without resets, would be a Twisted Fate that my team chased in a straight line through the jungle and he kited them to death. Good times!)
  • Akali
  • Darius
  • Katarina
  • Karma
  • Kha'Zix
  • Master Yi
  • Tristana

Champions with a Disadvantage

These champions have abilities that are balanced around the 5v5 Summoner's Rift map. Their ultimates are capped and are much less effective with more Champions to hit. Edit for Clarity: The following champions are at a theoretical technical disadvantage. In practice, having more targets grouped more closely together in the claustrophobic passageways of the Twisted Treeline can actually cause their ults to benefit more (except Fiora sans Tiamat).
  • Evelynn
  • Brand
  • Fiora
  • Swain
  • Kennen
A notable exception to this is Irelia, who has a target cap on her passive, but 40% tenacity is still godly.

Items

There are many different items on the Twisted Treeline. None of them were changed for Hexakill. It is a good idea to familiarize yourself with some of the major changes.
  • Rabadon's Deathcap and Zhonya's Hourglass are replaced by Wooglet's Witchcap
  • Infinity Edge is replaced by Lord Van Damm's Pillager
  • Bloodthirster is replaced by Sanguine Blade
Additionally there are many more items with a vision ability available. The Active on the items reveals a large nearby area that you target, including invisible enemies and enemies hiding in brush. They also upgrade to reveal enemy traps, like Teemo Shrooms.

There are no wards.

The Map

The size of the map is much smaller than Summoner's Rift, and even Dominion's Crystal Scar. The size allows travel between lanes with greater speed, but all paths are through the jungle. Since wards are not available, control of the jungle can be a major turning point.
Walls are also much thicker in many areas of the map, meaning they can't be jumped or flashed over as easily. Usually, the tips of a thick wall can be flashed over if aiming at an angle, but it is risky business. The back of each minion pit can also be flashed over.
Edit for Additional Information: There is a larger amount of space between the turrets than in Summoner's Rift. This can make ambushes especially deadly and escapes more difficult. If trying to use flash to escape, remember the above information about the walls and how close you will need to be for the flash to be successful. Also, keep that in mind for ganking ;)

Vilemaw

Vilemaw can be taken down much more quickly by 6 people than by 3 in order to take advantage of her buff and gold. There is nothing different about her for Hexakill, but here is a quick rundown.
Instead of Baron Nashor, there is Vilemaw. Vilemaw has a lot of HP and 4 different abilities: a normal attack, an AOE close range smash, a long range fissure attack, and a web attack that pulls all Champions in the pit to the center. Additionally, she has a passive that strips armor and magic resist with every attack.
Vilemaw does have a pattern. Like the Baron, she will focus the closest target. If the closest target is far away, she will Fissure or Web. Sometimes, she will also fissure if Champions stand in a line. Whoever is tanking Vilemaw needs to stand close, and whoever doesn't want to get hit needs to stand anywhere but behind the Tank.
When Vilemaw is slain, she will give your entire team a buff called Crest of Crushing Wrath which grants cooldown reduction, attack speed, and some health and mana regeneration.

GLHF

Wednesday, October 8, 2014

Heroes of the Storm Technical Alpha Final Phase Impressions

After a week of expected maintenance, Blizzard has successfully launched the final phase of the Heroes of the Storm Technical Alpha.

What Changed?

 

There were a few small bug fixes but two very major, very important changes were implemented.

Accounts Reset

 

All Technical Alpha accounts had their gold refunded and purchases refunded to their Battle.net account balances. All levels gained during the previous technical alpha were lost, both hero levels and account levels. However, Blizzard has stated that this is the last reset of the Alpha, meaning all future purchases and levels gained will carry over into the finished game.

Server Regions

 

Previously, the Technical Alpha took place on a server under heavy load to stress test and work out any problems that could happen from server load. After months of testing, they had the Technical Alpha server running stable enough that they could proceed to set up the regional servers.

The Good and the Bad

 

Technical Alpha Headstart and Hero Levels

The Good
Technical Alpha players have a lot to teach new players.
The Bad
Technical Alpha players are going to absolutely murder new players when the game goes full launch.

Players in the technical alpha had a head start in personal experience with the game, and now they will have a clear headstart in levels and heroes acquired in the game. The hero leveling system locks the use of abilities on heroes until a certain level is reached with that hero. Heroes unlock all of their abilities after about 4 games. However, during those 4 games, they are playing as a handicapped version of that hero. There has been a lot of debate about the purpose of the leveling system and whether it is fair to handicap new players off the bat. An argument for the system is that it prevents new players from feeling overwhelmed by choices and presents them with a specific build path for a hero before opening up the whole kit. An argument against the system is that it unnecessarily handicaps the player in a team based game, and thus handicaps the team. Other arguments against the system include: it affects heroes purchased with real money, 4 games is an arbitrary amount to have to play, and the order in which talents unlock does not make sense on some heroes. In the end, the personal experience will matter more than the levels when it comes to technical alpha players having a headstart, and the level issue is more of a fundamental game design decision that may be changed before release.

Server Regions!

 

The Good
Lower latency and more communication between players.
The Bad
People switching regions can more easily disrupt matches.

If you have ever played a game with people who do not speak your language, you know how important it is to have proper server regions. When setup right, players are matched with people similar enough in culture that they can communicate more clearly with each other and work together more easily. If you have played a lot of DotA2, you know that server regions don't always work out that way. It is too early to tell if Blizzard has it set up in such a way that people from other regions aren't forced to switch regions to get a better queue.

More Information

 

Official Blizzard Post :: Technical Alpha is Back Online!

Shameless YouTube Plug

 

I am currently uploading Part 7 of my Clive Barker's Undying playthrough. Check it out on my channel :: SaikoGekido Gaming