Rethinking PvE in MPQ

http://www.d3pforums.com/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=5304

Link specifically for Teddybabes but if anyone else wanders in here it's a good read.

Power house three stars

While all of the three stars are "good", here's the ones that might be a bit overpowered that you should keep an eye out for. These aren't in any particular order.

Captain America: With his blue ability to leave gigantic protect tiles and a 5/5/3 setup (3 in yellow) that lets him replace any tile with a countdown, he's perfect for the PvE events. He also has a really good HP pool.

Daken: He's ridiculous in terms of difficulty to kill. You definitely want to get his black and purple abilities up so that he can make tons of strike tokens and heal. His green and black attack damage are usually enough to tank with those abilities which can make him a very good damage sponge.

Spiderman: By going 3/5/5, he can make any purple match into a giant shield while also nearly chain stunning opponents. Doesn't deal much damage, however.

The Hood: 5/5/3 is what you want with him. Dormammu's aid will keep opponents deprived of resources which is an amazing ability. Also, his twin pistols, while expensive, can be used to generate a ton of tiles during the fight (you do gain the AP when he uses it.

Magneto: 5/5/3 but almost certain to get nerfed. As it stands right no, as soon as you get 5 blues you basically win the game. He can match 5 blues to get 6 back and his red lets him change the board state when he finally gets stuck. It's not a hard lock but, nevertheless, it's a VERY strong combo. Note, while he uses pink abilities he doesn't actually do pink damage (he's really red/blue/yellow).

Black Panther: Not super strong but if you're transitioning from 2 star world, he was very useful at that time for me because he provides a use for black/yellow tiles and can fit in well with OBW and Wolverine (2 star).

Patch: The 3 star wolverine variant is ridiculous. He does a ton of damage and auto-heals. Collect him.

Falcon: His yellow ability can be RIDICULOUS with people who put out a lot of special tiles (like say a Daken / Spiderman team?). He also takes out enemy countdown tiles with his blue so he's another good PvE grind candidate.

Thor: Even more annoying then his 2 star brother. 

Marvel Puzzle Quest

Going to do a series of tips related to the game. There's not much about the game out there that's super reliable so wanted to consolidate it. I've spent ~$15 on the game (maybe ~$20) and been playing for ~270 days so I have a pretty good understanding of how everything works. My knowledge is far from flawless however so if you have a comment or suggestion, please post here.

Some general tips:

1) Don't spend your ISO or your Hero Points on cards. There will be a point relatively early when you'll feel like you're rolling in ISO and you can spend some one cards to allow yourself to level up. Don't do it. Just power through the PVE a little bit more (you can redo missions) and you can get most of the 1 star heroes. Concentrate on Iron Man, Hawkeye, Black Widow and Storm. Venom is okay but not really worth it.

You want to spend ISO exclusively on leveling and Hero Points on roster slots and buying specific skills (1250 per level for 3 star). 

2) Concentrate on getting two 2-stars to level 94. It's tempting to spread it out (and you should just a bit) but, in general, you want to focus on specific 2-stars. Some good tandems (all two stars):

Original Black Widow + Wolverine: Covers every color (though has no use for black and yellow). OBW has great synergy with the strike tiles created by Wolverine. Note: She has to actually be the one doing the matching to get her bonus passive damage. So take that into account when you play her.

Magneto + Storm: Match pinks, profit. This tandem works great and once you hit a critical mass you generally just start blowing up the opposition.

Thor + Ares: These two are sort of your, "I'm done for the night, I don't want anyone to attack me" tandem. It's not that they're good or even that they're hard to beat. It's that you WILL take damage attacking them so most people stay clear (not unlike Juggernaut, frankly).

OBW + Captain America: This is my preferred PvE tandem at low levels. You need Captain America to be 5/5/x for it to really work, however (5 red, 5 blue, x yellow). At that point, PvE becomes relatively easy for awhile.

Daken + Bullseye: Not a powerhouse, admittedly, but can be nice for low level PvP where your only goal is to not lose health.

3) Once you get into the three stars, you need to concentrate on having a wide roster. Work to have two champs in the 120's ish to make yourself tough to attack then try to get a bunch of people over 100 so you can have a good pvp rotation. Obviously, you'd like to get people to 166 but that's a HUGE amount of ISO and the last 30 levels aren't worth (IMO) having nobody else to pair with your one uber guy.

This article exactly sums up my feelings on the issue

http://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2013/04/10/philadelphia-abortion-clinic-horror-column/2072577/

Whether you're are pro-choice or pro-life should be irrelevant to the discussion. Late term abortions have a significantly higher moral threshold because of the viability of the baby. If the process (ostensibly done to save the mother's life) in essence requires delivering the baby then there would seem to be no moral argument (or a very, very, very, very thin one) to support the idea that the abortion is legitimate.

Not meant to start an argument or persuade anyone but simply to point out my point of view and a great article.

Time for "Skill Level Analysis" time

Having now played ~50 games of ranked, I think I'm capable of a fairly sober assessment of my skill level. The following scale is based on my overall personal scale. 10 being "the best I'm mechanically capable of playing"... I'm only including the ones that I would even consider playing in a game. My champion pool (owned) is much larger than my champion pool (competency).

Ahri: 7

Akali: 4

Amumu: 8 (although I may be rusty on him because he's frickin' always banned)

Blitzcrank: 7 (I'll hit that one kill pull in the game, however)

Darius: 4 (I can play him competently and I want to start jungling with him but haven't yet)
Diana: 8 (both jungle and mid lane)

Elise: 3 (I'm not horrible with her but this is mostly a function of her skill curve being high... I think, with some practice, I could get a lot better with her quickly)

Hecarim: 10 (my go to jungler... by no means am I perfect with him but I will carry a game if even one of my opponents is less skilled then me)
Jayce: 3 (Unlike Elise, I don't fully get him... I essentially just play in ranged mode which is not good)

Kassadin: 9 (haven't actually gotten a chance to play him in ranked but mechanically I'm pretty solid with him in Dominion and the only difference would be in scaling back the ability spamming)

Katarina: 7

Kayle: 4

Kha'Zix: 4

LeBlanc: 7 (though I wouldn't play her in ranked because she tails off so bad late game)

Malphite: 9 (another "never get to play" champ)

Mordekaiser: 5

Nami: 6
Nasus: 6

Nocturne: 8

Nunu: 9

Shen: 3 (really need to practice him more... he's so boring though... all tank... no damage)

Skarner: 7
Sona: 10 (my best support by far... I feel like I play her well enough that even against really good opponents I don't embarass myself... I'm still a bit too vulnerable to pulls from Blitz/Thresh but that's a specific thing to work on... against anyone else, I just crush people)

Talon: 4

Taric: 4

Teemo: 4

Tristana: 3 (ugh... Still suck at ADC)

Udyr: 5 (been practicing him jungle... I think I'd be fine with him but have NO idea how to build him... no consensus online either)

Urgot: 4

Vayne: 3

Veigar: 5

Vladimir: 4

Yorick: 7 (played a game last night where, despite giving up an early first blood to an invade, I managed to stabilize at 0/3/0 and carried late game... who knows how well I'd have done without the early screw up).

Zac: 7 (haven't gotten to play him in ranked yet but he'll be my goto AP jungler after Amumu... He's so tanky if built right and a ton of fun to play).

Zilean: 8 (still don't like him but yet to lose a game with him... he's SOOOOO bursty early on that it always catches people by surprise).

Another excellent sale (for me at least)

Up to this week, I'd been missing Caitlyn, Miss Fortune and Graves, the three ADCs that are probably best for my play style. Earlier this week, Caitlyn went on sale. Tomorrow, MF goes on sale. With any luck, I'll pick up Graves next week!

Caitlyn in particular is a good purchase for me as her range allows her a certain farming edge and she really encourages the "attack from range" concept very well. My problem is that I tend to want to jump in and focus on someone. ADCs really need to stand back and hit whomever is in range and kite if need be. I tend to want to get that one last hit on the Carry I'm targeting but, frankly, that isn't the role of the ADC. Let the bruisers do that. I should focus on the best target of opportunity while staying safe.

Miss Fortune brings an ult with a ridiculous range and AoE so she also really works for that particular play style.

Also excited about picking up Lulu. She's a really fun support with a great variety of abilities and an Ult that can really change a fight (plus looks awesome on a fully pumped up Cho'Gath).

Still stuck in Bronze II but haven't really played much. Got trolled in one game and then just got beat in another (played with a friend in Silver IV so played "tougher than normal" opposition). Still playing a fair amount of Dominion.

Finally some new champs to buy

You know me. I'm an alt-asoraus. A strange animal with a need to play lots of different characters in any game I play. Currently, of the 111 champions available in League of Legends. I own 86 of them. I've been "smart" about the purchases. I've purchased two champions with IP. One champion at full price. 40 champions through champion bundles (total cost ~$30) and the rest when they've been on sale. All told, I've put about $140 into the game and I've gotten far more out of it than that.

So I've been a bit disappointed the last few weeks that none of the champions I've wanted to buy have been on sale. Then, I open up my browser today and low and behold. Not one. Not two. But three shiny on-sale champions for me to buy!

Caitlyn: The three ADCs that I'm "best" with are ones I don't own (Caitlyn, Graves, Miss Fortune). That changes tonight. Hurray!

Maokai: Another jungler for me to play with. Maokai has a completely different jungling style so this might take some getting used to but it'll be nice to have a good AP option since Amumu is basically perma-banned in ranked.

Vi: Another champion I've been dying to play. Everyone loves a crazy, dashing, ganking, punching monster. Vi delivers.

So I'll be dropping another $35 tonight to buy some more RP for these champions. This should be the last I spend on a game that I've loved more than any other game (I can't think of a game that's held my interest for 6 months like this, ever). I have no real intention of buying any skins and the few champions that are remaining (plus new releases) will easily be purchasable with IP.

Woot! Bronze II

Played two games last night and crushed in both to get my promotion to Bronze II easily. That puts me at 6 straight wins and 9 of the last 11. I was a bit disappointed to not get vaulted to Bronze I, especially since the second game consisted of me being the ban selector (indicating that my MMR was the highest on my team) but everyone on my team was Silver V or Bronze I/II. Seems a bit silly to me.

The first game, I played as Hecarim and had the mid Akali and top Fiora so happy that they were pledging to have my little horsey babies. It was just one of those games that felt like everything was going right. I made a couple mistakes by getting too aggressive at one point but overall just flat dismantled the enemy team. The highlight for me was when I ghosted through the top tower to chase down a fleeing Singed and then ran into a Jarvan jungler who I soloed from half health, picking up two kills and certainly causing the enemy team to go nuclear on each other. Fun game. The ending was especially funny. We were planting ward coverage in the river after the last team fight and Akali and Fiora were with me (with our support/adc close by). I went ahead and checked their blue buff to see if it was up and started it. Jarvan jumped across the wall into me and the rest of his team followed on. I clobbered Jarvan and Fiora got a quadra kill for the ace. All because we baited them into a stupid attack (at that point, I had Iceborn and Randuin's... so Jarvan was a non-threat to me anyways... but his team probably thought they were picking up a quick kill on the annoying horse... lol).

The second game was less dominating by me but, playing as Sona, I had some really clutch Crescendo's that locked the other team down hard. The best one was near the tower on bot early on. Cait and I were struggling a bit against an MF who had managed to get fed (partly by us and partly by bad Shaco ganks). Shaco said, "Sona, Ult" and I thought, good idea. So I flash ulted into MF just as she hit her own ult trying to get four of us (dumb luck). I locked down 3 of them and we proceeded to annihilate them under tower. They killed me but we got 3 kills and pushed down two towers giving us a huge pushed lane and a huge gold lead. Focusing the support is such a stupid idea in most situations. There's always this temptation to shoot at the person that is charging you but oftentimes, the more dangerous opponent is the girl with the giant rifle BEHIND the scary keyboard lady. It was a really good game but we were ahead in kills but behind in towers for much of the game until we got a bit geared up. I'm also learning to love the power of Aegis of the Legion + Locket of the Iron Solari. These two items make your team ridiculously more resilient in team fights.

One other thing about the second game that was interesting was that it was a chance to fully implement my banning strategy. In most drafts, Malphite/Shen/Blitzcrank/Amumu get banned out of sheer momentum. What I've started doing is "forcing" one of them if I have first pick. So I'll ban something like Elise first and if they ban one of the "power 4" then I'll just skip banning the really good champs (instead banning Darius and Miss Fortune). This guarantees that I'll get one of the power 4 (all of which I can play... though I'm not great at Shen). Worst case scenario, they figure out what I'm doing and leave a 2nd one open so that we both get one. But even then, I'll get to choose first so that's okay too.

So in the second game last night, I forced Malphite and they got Shen. But the only person who knew how to play Shen played him as a jungler and that's not exactly optimal (he has horrendously slow clear times). It's a strategy more people should employ. On a side note, the counter strategy for the purple team is to ALSO not ban a power 4 champ. This forces the blue team to have to ban a power 4 or risk giving the purple team 2 of them.

Having said all that, this is a low league strategy. These champions are powerful not because they're just inherently OP but because they're very good against less skilled people (and, conversely, relatively easy for low skilled players to play).