So my sister told me to blog, so here I am, blogging.
Yea, a lot has happened these past few weeks. Its hard for me to think that my 1st Semester of college is just about over. I just got here, and already I'm nearly 1/8 of my way through a four-year degree. Scary!
I could rant about my registration woes, but I think I'd rather just you know... not do that and save your time. I register tonight and I'm going to have to be creative in what classes I take, cuz several classes I wanted are now full. I'll see if I can't get around that though.
Anyway,s my main topic is another rant: How stupid people are and why they shouldn't read Elementz tier list.
Who is Elementz? Well he's one of the celebrity LoL players these days, he's part of CLG, the team that holds the title of WCG Champions and is thus considered one of the best players in the world when it comes to League of Legends.
Now, because he likes doing it, Elementz has a public tier list. What is a tier list? Well see, LoL has dozens of champions, and in a game with that many heroes it impossible for them to all be equally viable and powerful. So Elementz arranged all the heroes into a list from Tier 1: Must pick/Must ban to Tier 5: Never pick.
However, there are a few disclaimers about this list. First of all, its an opinion. What does that mean? That means Elementz is human and only 1 of the many good top tier players and only has limited experience. A good example of one of his mistakes was when he underestimated Twisted Fate for a good long time. At one point, Twisted Fate was stupidly imbalanced until they reworked him. Then, for a long time, he was well... meh... as far as Elementz and the American players thought. Then, suddenly, WCG came along and Europe started playing Twisted Fate. A lot. They owned with Twisted Fate till the point where The North American team just said, “Screw this, we're BANNING twisted fate.” Basically, they realized that Twisted Fate was a powerful enough hero in the hands of the Europeans to use one of North America's two bans on him. As a note, this was a key move in North American beating Europe. So yea... :D
Now, Elementz is human, he messes up. BUT there is a reason why his tier list should be considered generally accurate for most champions, and that is because Elementz is really, really good. However, you have to remember that his list also expects a certain level of... skill.... with some champions. For instance Anvinia is a really good champion, but is really hard to play, so if you don't know what you're doing, you're liable to actually hurt your team more than anything. On the other hand, Annie is stupidly easy to play well. She also happens to be really good... so yea... she's awesome.
Finally, people don't understand what the Tiers actually mean. For instance, Teemo is a tier 4 champion. Now, when you consider there are probably two dozen or more champions that are higher tiers than him, this sounds like he isn't very good. However, that's not entirely true. Teemo is very good at what he can do in a specific team composition, especially given a certain enemy team composition. Teemo's problem is that what he does is really specific. Teemo counters auto-attack, physical DPS champions that are really powerful. What does this mean? This means you don't pick Teemo until the enemy has picked a hero like that. Someone like Kog'Maw or Tristana is a good example. Now, the thing is, both Kog'Maw and Tristana, while perhaps Ban-worthy are not, as far as I know, 1st picks. This means that Teemo is at minium a 3rd pick, at minium. Now mind you you only get 5 picks and if the enemy gets first pick (something that isn't ideal, but let's role with that), this means that you're going to actually want to pick Teemo as your 5th pick. If you are picking 2nd he is a 4th or 5th pick. Why is this? Because there are more important heroes to pick! Lots of them!
Teemo rocks. Teemo is a final last grab when its apparent that the enemy has a strong DPS hero like Kog'maw.
This is what people don't understand. Teemo is VIABLE!!!!! Teemo is not a 1st pick or a ban or a 2nd pick or probably even a 3rd pick. That might happen if the enemy pulls out Ashe, Kog'Maw, and Olaf right away, then you can pick Teemo, but a smart team won't do that.
So yea, what does this mean? Lemme recap really quickly:
Tier One: Very powerful, game-changing heroes. So powerful they require new strategies to counter them. Sona is a good example. Sona is the best darn pick in the game. She is so powerful that you should probably just ban her if you know the enemy has a good Sona player. Sona has a good damage output, decent heal, and a small AoE stun
Tier Two: like the about, but not necessarily Ban-worthy. A good example might be Zilean. Zilean is pretty awesome because he lanes like a boss and this his ultimate is soooo freaking good that is pretty much changes how a team battle is fought. His ultimate is basically a free Guardian Angel. This is huge. Now you have to either kill Zilean first and deal with the fact that Kog'Maw and Warwick and Garen are hitting you for a lot of damage, or you kill Kog'Maw and have Zilean use his ulti and then kill Kog'maw again. So yea, that's Tier one and Tier two
Tier Three: This is going to be the heroes that are good, but not 1st Picks. This is where you are going to start counter-picking or taking a champion that covers a specific role. For instance, Mordekaiser. Morde is a good hero, but he's pretty limited and relies on a very specific line-up to be effective. You can get this line-up, but its a specific line-up and you need to play a specific way to role with it. Morde is a fine hero, but if you are being really serious, you won't pick him unless you have the right line-up in mind already. To pick a Tier 3 Hero to be effective you need a specific team line up or fill out a role that your team is simply not interested in much. A team with 2 strong early gamers can hope that their early game will outplay the enemy late game and take a weaker carry that has more early-game strength.
Tier 4: These are counter-picks. See Teemo example above. These guys are limited in their roles, more so than Tier three. But they are good at what they do assuming the right team comp on your team and the enemy team. You won't see them all the time, but they are still viable.
Tier 5: Generally useless in a competitive match. There are exceptions, I admit. But these guys are pretty much never used.
So that's the Tier List. Yea... I know, really technical and not very useful unless you play LoL, but its a thought that's been going on in my mind these days.
