League of Legends - What.. Why.. Where.. HOW? (Part 3) - Featured game modes.

Hello! Welcome in third part of my post about how to play LoL. Let's go.

So.. You were about to say about special game modes.

Riot sometimes pushes out a Special (or Featured, as you want) Game Mode to League servers. They are just normal games with some modifications. There's what Riot has shown us until today. 

• URF - Ultra Rapid Fire, the most loved, the most wanted. - Game mode made for April Fools' Day. Type of Queue is Blind draft - first you ban as in draft, then you all pick in the same time, as on Blind pick. Here's the buffs we get in 2015 edition:
  - No mana and energy costs.
  - Blood Well (Aatrox's Passive), Fury and Flow generates two times faster.
  - Health costs are reduced by 1/2.
  - 80% reduced Cooldown for Spells, Summoner Spells and items.
  - 2x  more attack speed for melee champions, 1,5x for ranged.
  - +60 Movement speed
  - +25% Tenacity
  - +25% critical strike damage
  - 5x more gold income.
  - All Health pools and damage dealt are multiplied by 1000.
  - On death recap you can see TONS damage except of xxx(for example; 548 damage).
  - Level cap increased from 18 to 30.
  - Decreased healing by 50% at beggining, increasing by time, 1% per 30s up to 100% in 25 minute.
  - Most of shields are reduced by 50%
  - Banned Khartus. Just imagine why.
• One for All - Game mode with Queue type such as Vote Pick. First, Capitains from each team bans 3 champions each. Then every player votes for champion he wants to his team play. If there are 3 or more votes for the same champion in one team, it gets the majority and is automatically picked. If there is no majority champion is picked randomly, every champion has 20% or 40% chance to be picked (depending on that one or two players voted for him). If it's picked, every 5 players in this team have to play this champ. No more changes to gameplay, except.. Well, there are some exceptions..
  I mean, Khartus and Teemo are banned and some effects are stacked up to 3 times, so not every Cassiopeia can poison one Zed. Next change is Stacked buffs and effects to allies. There can be 5 Akalis in one Twilight Shroud (W). And One Lux can deal damage from other 4 Luxes' passives.
  
  Awesome Login Screen of Awesomely Awesome Logging - Click
• Ascension, in other words - How for God's sake do I left fountain?! - Game Mode with classical Blind pick queue type. Game plays on modified Crystal scar with only points and Jungle, without Round lane from point to point. First of all you need to teleport to one of your allied points (2 nearest to your base and top point for both teams). Then, the battle starts. You need to get 200 points with your team. How?
  - Killing enemy champions (1 point)
  - If killer is Ascended, he gains 2 points for his team.
  - Claiming Relics of Shurima (3 points each) - they are small capture points in jungle and have 4s time of capturing. They looks similar to shields on the middle of map in classical Dominion.
  - Killing Ascended champion (5 points)
  - Killind The Ancient Ascendant - Xerath in middle of the map (10 points, gives killer an Ascension)
  After killing Xerath, champion is in stasis mode (similar to Zhonya's hourglass) for about 5 seconds. After that time He comes out from stasis, gets fully Healed, about 20% enlarged and knock away surrounding champions for about 600 units. Ascended chamnpion has no mana and energy cost, bonus Health, AD, AP, +15% magic and armor penetration and +15% Cooldown reduction. Ascended has halved healing effects and is still visible. Small tip: If Azir kills Xerath, he can put a turret with his passive in place of boss. :)
  
  Here You can watch trailer - Click 
• HEXAKILL!! I mean.. Hexakill. Just Hexakill. - If Pentakill is not enough emotions for you, you could have try next time, when Hexakill will be available to play it. The only thing has changed is everything.. Oh, wait, that's Apple's new ad of iPhone 6s. Nevermind. There has changed only two things:
  - You play 6vs6, so 12 players per game
  - You can earn HEXAKILL by killing SIX champions in small amount of time.
  That's all.
• Snowdown Showdown - Merry Killmas everyone! Snowdown was a 1vs1 or 2vs2 featured game mode played on Howling Abyss. There are few goals, Getting any of them gives you victory.
  - Killing an enemy (in 1vs1) or two enemies (in 2vs2)
  - Getting 100 lasthitted minions
  - Destroying enemy turret.
  Queue type is Blind pick.
  
  Snowy, Snowy Login screen - Click!
• Legend of the Poro King - It replaced 2013's Showdown in 2014 and 2015. It's played on the Howling Abyss. Goal? Throw poros and win!
  In this mode you have only 2 summoner spells - Poro thorw and To the King. The first throws a poro for long distance. If you hit a champion, it counts on your team's account. Hitting 10 points summons Poro king, Tanky siege minion who throw poros and don't let you get hit by enemy poros. When you hit an unit with poro you can dash to it. Second one - to the king works only when Allied poro king is summoned. It just dashes you to it.
• Black Market Brawlers - Shh, Do you want to buy some cool death fo enemies? - Featured game mode where you can hire special minions and buy special items and upgrades for gold and Krakens - special money.
• Doom Bots of Doom - Even more scary than Lollipoppy.. Oh, OK, I lied.  - OInly featured game mode with no PvP and just the CooP vs AI. In this mode you play against Greatly overpowered bots with changed skills, effects and tons of damage. Only Lollipoppy is more scary. You can choose three difficulities. 1 bomb, 2 boms, and.. Jesus Christ, 5 bombs. Just imagine a 5 bombs difficulity mode. Do you know why it's description is "Good Luck. ^_^"? I know. Doom bots can kill dragons, Doom Blitzcranks will laugh at you when you will miss a skillshot, holy mackerel, what a world..
• Nemesis Draft - Noooo, I have no idea how to play Udyr! - A regular draft, but only thing has changed that you pick a champion for your enemy and your enemy picks a champion for you. 

So.. I told you everything about Featured game modes, It's a bit long post, so about other things I will tell you in the next ones. See you soon in the next posts! :)

Source of Data: League of Legends Wiki
Link 1
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Source of image: Image from Link 3

//TheTamamario

League of Legends - What.. Why.. Where.. HOW? (Part 2)

Welcome in the second part of my post about playing League of Legends.

So let's continue.

Next skin price is 1350 RP. These skins are sometimes called imperial (mostly in Polish). They are advanced skins that changes everything in champion appearance, often changes voice (mosty by filters), quotes, sometimes dance.

One before last are 1820 RP skins, called Legendary. They are totally changing champion, his voice, quotes, animations, spells and everything else. They are releasing average once per 3-4 months.

And the last, the most expensive skins are priced at 3250 RP, called Ultimate. They are determining champion all over again. They are most advanced in a game. They have everything changed, evolving model and they are intervening to an interface (e.g. changing champion icon in HUD). There are currently three Ultimate skins - Pulsefire Ezreal, Spirit Guard Udyr and DJ Sona. They are releasing once per a season (one Ultimate skin per year). If you buy an Ultimate skin you will also unlock an unique Summoner icon. If you'll set it, banner on your profile will change from "classic summoner" to skin that is on your avatar. If you'll set Pulsefire Ezreal avatar, you will have Pulsefire Ezrealbanner on profile, If you set DJ Sona's Kinetic form you will have Kinetic DJ Sona on profile, etc.

There are also special skins, but I want to say about it in the other post.

Wait, wait, wait.. You said about DJ Sona, but not about "Kinetic" DJ Sona.

Oh, sorry. I forgot to say that. 

• Pulsefire Ezreal has only one form, but evolving model based on his level and his abilities' levels.
• Spirit Guard Udyr has both evolving model based on levels of abilities and four different forms based on his actual Stance. So he has:
  -Five levels of Tiger stance
  -Five levels of Turtle stance
  -Five levels of Bear stance
  and -Five levels of Phoenix stance
  By the way - on classic game modes you have max. 18 levels. Udyr can unlock every level of every stance only in URF mode.. But about that later. 
• DJ Sona hasn't got an evolving model, but she can switch (by pressing Ctrl+6 in deafult) between her three forms:
  -Kinetic-Concussive-Ethereal
  Every of her forms has different look, spells appearance and music. She and her allies can feel like on real concert and listen to her music. So.. Let's listen!
  Kinetic DJ Sona
  Concussive DJ Sona
  Ethereal DJ Sona
  Do you like it too? ;)

Okay, I know everything about queueing, champion select and skins. Let's talk about playing on.. On.. On what..? 

Playing on Fields of Justice, of course!

There are currently many game modes:

• Classical 5v5 - game on Summoner's rift. How does the map look like? Let's see. 
  -Blind pick - after everyone accepts the match, they start to pick champions. Everything. Everyone has 80 seconds to pick a champion, and bonus 10 second to pick runes, masteries, summoner spells and skins. Then the game begins.
  -Draft - First of all, people who are picking their champion first are banning champions from all available to play by both teams *It's about to change, but it's currently how I'm describing it. After both teams have banned  3 champions per team, picks begins. But there is no free as in Blind pick. Everyone can see your pick, not only your team. One champion can be picked in only one team, not as in Blind pick in both (it's called mirror, there is special game mode that.. Later about it..). And there is a sequence of picking. First person picking is the first pick in Blue team. Then two first people in red team. It makes 1-2-2-2-2-1 sequence. Then you have bonus 30 seconds to set everything.
  -Ranked draft - the same as normal draft, but you can earn League points. Later about that.
  -Team builder - First of all you select you want to create a new team or join to existing. Then you pick a champion, position and role you want to play. Then you start to search other players (if you're captain) or a existing team for you (if you're single player). When team is complete and everyone is ready, systeam starts to search opponents for you.
• Classical 3v3 - game on the Twisted Treeline map. It looks like that. 
  You can play Blind pick, draft or ranked team draft there, but sequence of picking in draft is 1-2-2-1. 
• ARAM - shortcut from All Random, All Mid. There you play on Howling Abyss map. It looks like that.  There's only one lane. every champion is picked randomly. If you have enough Reroll points you can have up to two more draws. You can also trade champions with other players who have them. 
• Dominion - in this mode you play on the Crystal Scar. There's how it looks like.  This game mode is much different. Killing other units is second-rated. Main quest there is to capture more points than your enemies. As you can see, on the map there are five points. So uneven. If you control more points than enemy team, ther nexus is losing health. And vice versa. To capture the point you need to stand next to it and "connect" with it. Point can have 3 phases: Ally, neutral or enemy. Enemy point are similar to turrets on other map. They can hurt you or your team and minions. when you're capturing it it's stunned and can't hurt anyone. After few seconds of capture it's switching to neutral. When it's neutral both teams can see invisible units (for example - Teemo's Mushrooms) near to it and it won't hurt anyone. When it's neutral you and your team can see invisible units near to it, but your enemies can't. Your team needs to secure this point. On the middle of the map there are two shields of the storm. one per team. One person from both teams can capture it to deal bonus damage once per about 10 seconds, has shield and is enlarged. It regenerates after few minutes. 

Do you want to know more about League of Legends? In the next post I will tell you about Featured Game Modes (FGM) and more! See you soon!

Source of picture: Reddit

//TheTamamario

League of Legends - What.. Why.. Where.. HOW? (Part 1)

So.. What is League of Legends?

League of Legends is a strategy game. It's category is MOBA that means Multiplayer Online Battle Arena. So as it says, you have to fight on virtual arena (map) with other champions controlled by other players. 

Do I have any goals?

Goal in League is to work together with rest of your team and destroy enemy nexus in their base before enemies will do the same. Maybe that sounds straightforward. Yeah, destroy it is, but getting to the enemy base isn't. 

Maybe some basics.

Sure. You start a game by choosing a type of queue. Then you must wait, average 20-40 seconds to matchmarking can find a players you can play with. It looks at your hidden MMR (Match-making rating) points, your league and division (if you have played 10+ solo/duo ranked matches or 5 3v3/5v5 team ranked matches in current season) and some other things. When it finds a 9 missing people (or less if you are playing with friends) you all have to accept a match. Then you need to select a champion. There are currently about 130 champions you can select. Every champion has unique abilities, strenghts and weak points. There is a champion for everyone. You can find Supports, Marksmen (known also as ADC - Attack Damage Carry), Mages (APC - Ability Power Carry), Tanks, Assasins.. All of them are ranged or melee. 

Typical Supports:

- Sona

- Janna

- Lulu

- Thresh

- Zilean

- Soraka

- Braum

- Bard

Typical Marksmen:

- Ashe

- Miss Fortune 

- Twitch

- Lucian

- Tristana

- Draven.. I mean.. DRAAAAVEN.

Typical Mages:

- Ahri

- LeBlanc

- Veigar

- Orianna

- Cassiopeia

- Anivia

- Vladimir (Note: Not Vladimir Putin)

Typical Tanks:

- Leona

- Rammus

- Amumu

- Renekton

- Volibear

- Zac

- Shen

- Sejuani

Typical Assasins:

- Fiora

- Master Yi

- Yasuo

- Zed

- Riven

- Irelia

- Kha'Zix

What's next?

After everyone selects his champion you all must wait for all players to load. On loading screen you can see your teammates' league in last season, and everyone's Summoner icon (Avatar), champion, nick and skin.

Wait, what? Skin?

Yup. Every champion has min. one skin. Skins changes how champion, his abilities, and sometimes his voice, quotes and animations looks like. You can buy skins for Riot Points, that you can buy for real money. 

Skins prices:

• 390 RP
• 520 RP
• 750 RP
• 975 RP
• 1350 RP
• 1820 RP
• 3250 RP

The cheapest skins change only champion model and splash art. Some of them have little changes to abilities appearance. No longer created. 

Next price category are 750 RP skins. They change only champion model, splash art and sometimes animations. 

975 RP skins are the most occuring. They change champion model, splash art, sometimes ability effects, newer 975 RP skins also have sometimes changed sound and graphic effects. Some of them have new Recall animation too.

Do you want to know about 1350, 1820, 3250 RP skins, and much more? I hope you do. Next post soon. See you!

Based on: What is League of Legends? - YouTube

Champion Skin - League of Legends Wiki

Skórki Bohaterów - League of Legends Wiki [PL]

Image Source: Click

//TheTamamario