On Tanking in League of Legends

Are you ready kids? Here we go!

Now, after we've got the obligatory bad joke out of the way, we can move to a slightly more serious talk about something that has been a source of increasing levels of frustration for me in recent times, and that is the concept of "tanking" in a MOBA game or any other team based game where you are not using a contrived "aggro" mechanic to attract the hurt and pain to your well-armored direction. In essence, this is misleading and lately the more accurate (although still slightly misleading) term of "initiator" is used. This results in kids thinking that a proper way to play a "tank champ" is to stock up their item slots with as many armor, magic resistance and health items they can get their chain-mail mittens on. Admittedly you can get away with this on several champions but if you're doing this, stop. STOP. OH GOD PLEASE MAKE IT STOP.

Unless you have some other voodoo ritual or gosu level strategy to rival that of Gary Kasparov you are simply hindering your team assuming the enemy will attack you first just because you play a "tank"!
"But Dajs...!" I hear you cry across the vast internets, in your SpongeBob SquarePants pajamas
"If I don't get the armor and HP how can I tank?!"
Easy there Tobias, you can still do considerable damage in team fights while maintaining your shrapnel spangled badge of Tankus Supremus... that is you could... if you weren't a COWARD!

Let's face it, being a tank is a tough, harsh and sorrow ridden job, your sole purpose taking the hit for someone else so that they may drive their gold coated fists through the skulls and abdomen of our common enemies, you are there to hold them down while they pummel them into dust in a glorified curb stomp maneuver and expected to gladly give your life to save someone else's. Although noble, this reduces you, the player, into an utter pansy and a mild annoyance to the enemy team. 

Instead arm yourself with mighty steel, single out the meek and charge headfirst into the fray! Drive your spear into the heart of the enemy, brutal, effective, fast, and let them DARE ignore your presence as you make their AD carry shit his proverbial pants at the onslaught of you first strike.

Gist of the whole story is that you MUST be capable to deal enough damage for the enemy to consider you a serious threat and choose to attack you first. More likely than not you will be diving into their spells and attacks aiming to kill their highest damage dealers (most typically the weakest targets). Make them panic, make them fear you and tremble when they see you moving towards them, if they suddenly flash away when you're casually strolling with no intent to pile-drive them into the ground, you know you did your job well.
Things to master to become the World's Numero Uno in all things tanky are:

1. Mastery over champion skill use, his strengths and weaknesses
2. Building your items properly to enhance his strengths, diminish weaknesses, deal enough damage while being resilient enough to kill AT LEAST ONE member of the opposition.

These two things are up to you to discover, as with anything in life personal experience will ultimately beat any guide or text on the subject, ingenuity and clever thinking will win over in most cases. You may still use some guidelines while you're still learning but most of them are just common sense that you will pick up in your first 10-50 games.
A good place to find some good guides is MobaFire, specifically those made by DuffTime, he's one clever boy, he is... hillarious too!

And the next time someone says that tanks deal no damage crush his bones into a fine paste and feed it to Baron Nashor for such heresy!

Until next time, brave warriors, FIGHT THE GOOD FIGHT!

WHY ARGUING WITH YOUR TEAM WON'T GET YOU ANYWHERE

„You suck! Now listen to what I have to say…“

The Problem

Don’t you just hate that stinging moment when you make your first mistake in a game of League of Legends and the announcer lets everybody know that you died. What follows is the inevitable stream of poorly constructed insults and insinuations about your general skill level tossed in your general direction by teammates who feel very clever at that particular moment. At that point you want nothing more than the ability to send 10,000 volts of electricity to every single one of them through their keyboards and fry the mofos into fine hate-filled dust.

You are not the only one, more often than not this happens to everyone on a daily basis and this is no exclusive problem of multiplayer games. Throwing harsh criticism is however much easier to get away with across the internet and because we can’t physically do anything about it is what grinds our gears, maybe even more than the fact that some 13 year old wannabe solo mid just called you a less-than-skilled prepubescent man of questionable sexual orientation.

                How people cope with this actually perpetuates the problematic behavior, because the impulse at the moment is to avenge your hurt ego and strike back at him with an even more insulting remark. This, my friends, is what we call an argument, and it’s not doing you or the team any good.

1.       It distracts you and your team from the game at hand, because you are typing and looking at the chat instead of paying attention to what is going on around you.

2.       Your state of mind is more aggressive, you are more likely to act impulsively without thinking our actions through

3.       Subconsciously you are less inclined to help someone who insulted you, thus undermining teamwork.

Should you reason with the person? No, again it will distract you and others from the game. What you should do is ignore the whole thing. Yes, I know your pride is telling you otherwise, but your pride is the thing that is currently standing between you and victory. Just shrug the whole thing off like grit from your coat, walk it off, take the high road and do your best no matter what and be graceful about it. In the end-game chat, if you feel like it you can unburden your soul as much as you please, game is over, and you have nothing left to lose.

The Solution

                Now, as you may imagine this is a very tough trick to pull off at first, depending on your personality, so I will share with you a trick which I use on a regular basis to be completely unaffected by my teammates or the opposition.

              

  Are you ready? Here goes!

                

At the start of the game I press ENTER, which opens the chat input, and displays a bar on top of it to relocate the whole window. I click on that bar and drag the window all the way under my screen. Yep, that’s right, I hide the entire chat away from the screen.
               

“But Dajs, you insufferable dolt, won’t I miss the important information? Like people calling MIA or important strategic info?!”

A fair point… if you play ranked. I asked myself the same question and analyzed the game chat across 20 games and realized that I only get a line or two of useful information every 3-4 games. As with people calling “miss”… if you aren’t looking at the minimap and ensuring your own safety it is your own fault for getting ganked, also pings are more effective notifications than typing in the chat. In a non-competitive environment you generally lose nothing of importance by ignoring the chat entirely, and if you easily get angry at people this little tip could actually increase your in-game performance.

I hope this has been helpful to you and I would like to know if you have any tips to share about dealing with agitating, inflammatory teammates.

Until the next post, have a good time!

10 reasons why I love my girlfriend

In no particular order:

1. Humor. She laughs at my jokes, and I laugh at hers. Sometimes we spend several hours doing nothing but goofing off for no reason, just having fun by spending time with each other and sharing whatever comes to mind at that moment, how ever silly or meaningless.
2. Cute voice. I know that nothing can replace her voice. It just melts me when I hear it, she doesn't even have to try and I am like a little kitten in her hands.
3. Intelligent conversations. One of very few people I can really hold a conversation with about more abstract, personal or philosophical topics. We respect each other's opinions and try to find a common ground to our theories, some of the best times I've had were spent talking to her about religion and the meaning of life.
4. Loves me for who I am. I don't think this needs explaining, it's just such a wonderful feeling that I don't have to be ashamed of saying anything in front of her and that I don't have to pretend to be someone I am not, as I have to do most of the time to conform to the society (as we all have to conform to it).
5. Is a gamer. Seen that situation before? A guy who is clearly big into this video game business and a girl who couldn't tell a D-pad from an analogue stick often quarreling about him spending too much time with the screen instead of her. The only thing we quarrel about is whether she missed her healing spell rotation or I pulled to many mobs. And I love it.
6. Loving and supportive. I love her because she loves me. I also love her because she will support me in any decision I make to improve or advance my life, and will never hesitate to stop me from doing something outright stupid that looked like a good idea at the time.
7. Great people skills. God knows I am not good at people, but she is. She can read them and treat them a lot better than I can, where my fuse quickly burns and I am prone to being very spiteful and direct, she is like the calm water that keeps everyone communicating easier. I'd say we compliment each other very well.
8. Stubborn and moody. Some would put this as things they don't like about people, but in this case, I love my girlfriend's stubbornness. We both are stubborn, just to be clear, and it doesn't work out beautifully even half the time, but in the end we always learn something we didn't want to admit, and we learn that we aren't always right and that is a very important lesson to learn.
9. A bit lazy. Yes... but just a bit, just the right amount of lazy not to be considered a workaholic. Sometimes we both just lounge around just not feeling to do the dishes, or cleaning, or studying, or anything. It shows me she is as human as I am, and a wonderful human being she is.
10. Beautiful. I can't help it! I am vain! Shoot me now, if you will, but I love how she looks, everything about her. Her beautiful long hair and how it falls, her nose, the eyes, the way she smiles, the way she cries, the way she is angry, her neck, her shoulders, her hips, her waist and her legs. Sometimes it drives me crazy, sometimes it gives me peace, but it always gives me love for this woman, this wonderful woman that has fallen in love with me.

I love you baby.