DimOnion - Halloween

Just in time. Well, not if you actually wanted to actually print them out and play them, but oh well.

Disclaimers and so on at my deviantart page for this creation.

I really just took the fun mechanics of Dominion and very literally and single-mindedly tried to figure out what these famous archetypes would do in this setting.  Smashing things together and smoothing out kinks is 85% of it, and the other 15% is MS paint (yes, I know, I am a ruffian).

Miley Sivir - Riot Plz Don't

You know, I've been absolutely expecting misogynistic trash from Riot's splash team on this one, but this exceeds even my expectations. Congratulations, Riot. You practically made the joke for me:

Riot pls: Don't break Sivir's spine

(The following is about League of Legends. Some of the context is here.)

The visual upgrade for Sivir is up on the PBE. I don't know whether they'll be updating her splash art or not, but I've been very nervous that they might give her the Escher Girls treatment ever since the first announcements several months ago that they were working on her.

Here's her current splash, which looks pretty good to me.

Like most of the male champions, she's shown in the process of doing something in the way that a normal human would. There's nothing wrong with her spine, and her torso appears to have sufficient room for organs. These are things we can't really take for granted:

Miss Fortune. Sure, she's a nympho pirate hunter, but she looks a bit unwell here.

Soraka. She used to be the only adult human female who looked over 35 years old, but then they broke her back and made her into a teenager instead.

Morgana on death's door.

Anyway, I fixed those some time ago in Paint. Sort of. They're obvious Paint jobs, but at least they're not dying anymore:

And one more. I didn't fix this one, but I showed you what Elise would look like standing up.  I can't believe that people fap to this:

Anyway, giggity giggity, spine porn.  It's really freaking weird.  We know you're doing it on purpose.  Please stop it.

- MTaur

Riot Pls - League of Legends needs a Wind Fish

I briefly alluded to The Wind Fish in my previous post.  This guy right here:

The Wind Fish! (in name only, for it is neither - so the saying goes!) (Source photo came from here)

A Google image search for Wind Fish can brighten any day in about ten minutes.

He's essentially a Buddhist humpback whale in outer space. (Comically undersized wings thrown in for good measure.)

What does this have to do with LoL?

The story is right here.  In February 2012, IronStylus had a big post about Leona, his dream job at Riot, and his dream marriage.  He went so far as to say that he was so happy that it sometimes made him afraid that it was all a dream he might wake up from at any moment.  When another commenter speculated about the metaphysical implications for the rest of us, I immediately posted the above picture in the comments (the image has since been deleted from the servers as a part of periodic cleanup), since basically the whole conversation up until then was one big spoiler for the ending of Link's Awakening.

Anyway, IronStylus's reaction speaks for itself:

I... do not have a clue in my brain as to what this may be...However I am sobbing uncontrollably with what I can only describe as "the purest of joys".

Ok, but what does this have to do with LoL?

Alright, so my hope is that the Wind Fish is still vivid in the mind of IronStylus, and that he's been, at the very least, marinating this inspiration for some kind of support champion.  Not necessarily a whale in outer space, but certainly a breathtaking, otherworldly manifestation of cosmic benevolence.

Problem 1:  Riot does not want to promote passive and defensive playing.  Soraka is the closest thing to The Wind Fish that LoL has right now, and she's already in a slightly marginalized spot and facing a bit of scrutiny from Riot, even after she was reworked some time ago to be a stronger CC source and a weaker healing bot.  Finding a way to communicate the "cosmic benevolence" theme within the constraints of Riot's philosophy of active, aggressive, and well-paced gameplay could be a major challenge.

Problem 2: The other issue is that any potential Wind Fish champion would be somewhat thematically redundant with Soraka - she sort of fits the Wind Fish concept, but her Wind Fish factor is about a 6 or 7, while I would love to see it turned up to 11.  Seeing as both Vayne and Lucian both fit the Batman archetype (i.e., the vengeful hunter of dark things in the night), my feeling is that a Wind Fish champion could be sufficiently differentiated from Soraka in theme, role, lore, and the rest.

If Riot were to roll out a Wind Fish champion as the centerpiece of a Support QoL rework, there would not be enough Fry memes to contain my glee.  I know that the process is lengthy and prone to delays and returns to the drawing board, but I can hope The Wind Fish is working his magic behind the scenes even now.

Fingers crossed,

MTaur

SKT wins LoL World Finals

Well, I was wrong.

Here's what actually happened. SKT won, 3-0.

It's hard for me to say what exactly Royal Club did wrong, but they clearly lost the laning phase every game. Apparently I underestimated holes in their laning game. I don't know what exactly those holes are, but they lost almost every dragon - but this may just be another symptom and not a cause in itself.

A few things I noticed:

1)  Royal Club was still clearly one of the best teamfighting teams in the league, even in the 3-0 showing. They even pulled off one of their unlikely aces that had the potential to turn the game around, but SKT kept their cool and didn't let it happen twice in a row.  Royal Club were just leaking gold too much to cash in on their fighting skills.  On the other hand, SKT was clearly was prepared for this, often managing to disengage from dives where other teams would've gotten sucked into an ace before they figured out what was happening to them.  They only got aced that one time.

2)  In between my blog prediction and when the match occurred, I heard several shoutcasters and pro players mention that SKT was playing a bit off at semifinals.  That was the only SKT match I watched very closely at all as of then, so I was thrown off.

It was somewhat odd to see SKT win by taking control of everything but teamfights.  It's an example of the asymmetric outcomes and strategies that can occur in higher-level play.  Winning a game while avoiding teamfights is a bit of a thousand cuts approach, but even then, SKT did win one of the three games in 20 minutes.

All aboard the Korean hype train. I hope Riot starts featuring them as well as China on lolesports.com in Season 4.

(I'm also hoping for jungler and support QoL improvements, as well as a support loosely inspired by The Wind Fish from Link's Awakening... I can dream about that last one, I suppose.)