Wukong the Monkey King and League playerbase increase

I'd like to address a couple of things in this post: Wukong first, and then the recent press release of the growing LoL playerbase and population.

Wukong spotlight:

Several hours after his release, the forums are already raging with underpowered, overpowered, and balanced threads on this guy. What is your opinion so far?

More custom made skins

Recently I've been getting lots of free skins for my characters. I thought I'd post some more epic custom skins incase you guys are getting tired of your vanilla champions and want some variety.

It's a true shame that some of these models are designed with more detail and quality than Riot can be bothered to put in. I'm not trying to dig Riot games, but they really do slack sometimes. Please bear in mind I'm not affiliated with the people who make these in any way, I just came across them on Leaguecraft.

Leona Valkyrie Moon V2 

Thought I'd start off with a Leona skin, since she's new and very, very annoying. There are already a hell of a lot of skins out for her, I chose this one because it looks less tacky than the others. Looks a little Tron which is just fine with me. I also saw a blood elf skin, wtf?

Download: Link

Monkey King

So, here's proof that HoN designed their Monkey King in 2009, albeit under a different name. Riot have stolen yet another character design?

Heroes of Newerth has always been similar in some champion abilities and such, but never to this extent. Not that I'm complaining, mind. It's pretty win they steal ideas, it's what the best companies do.

HoN devs have explained they did concept designs for Monkey King before LoL was even in open beta.


Proof of Monkey King concept art for HoN in 2010.

HoN Monkey king 2009

LoL Monkey King 2010

Thank you to the anonymous who provided a link with evidence that shows HoN had the idea first (after ancient mythology that is).

Five of the best ultimates

When I find myself playing a LoL game every so often I will illogically shout 'WTF OP' to my friends on skype when encountered with a problematic enemy Champion in the lane. While I don't really believe said Character is actually overpowered, frustration gets the best of me.

This very same frustration could affect you. For example lets say you decide to solo lane as Mordekaiser, usually pretty easy right? But upon stepping into the lane at level one you find Xin Zhao and Pantheon who melt your face before you can take a single step towards the tower. In that moment of frustrated summoner spell mashing before you die, I'm pretty sure you thought 'WTF OP' yourself. Oh, and 'I'm a jackass' for not waiting at the tower in a solo lane.

Since the majority of Champions get their ultimate at level six, that gives them justification to be downright badass. Some champs like Kassadin and Tryndamere are built entirely around their ulti, and are pretty useless without it. You could be winning against them in the lane up until six, but when their superior ultimates come into play you can do nothing but say 'wtf op =('. Oh, and there's the dying part of course.

Awesome custom skins

Some people don't like to pay money for skins from Riot, and use custom skins to change the look of their champions for their own client only. This is a list of some of the best skins in terms of quality and design. Please note that I didn't make any of them, just use them every now and again.

For those of you interested, I custom skin a lot of my characters, because I couldn't care less how the others in the game see my character. Giggety. Right now you may have some trouble getting the models to work, but that's Riots fault. Read about it here.

If you're looking to change your characters around a little bit to make the game more interesting, then try downloading a couple of these wonderful skins, they are perfect to spice up your League of Legends play!

Tryndamere - Cloud Strife

FINAL FANTASY LEAGUE OF LEGENDS SKIN WTF?!

I'll start with a skin for all you Final Fantasy fanboys, since it's just plain awesome and actually surprisingly well designed. I bet there's gonna be a few secret Cloud worshippers downloading this one on the sly. I remember some scrub spamming the forums for this skin a while back, guess someone delivered.

Link: Download Tryndamere - Cloud skin

RPG index

Hey folks short post today!

Just looking for a few more people to critique one of my other blogs.

If you guys have the time, please check out my RPG blog sometime, it's good if you're searching for a single player RPG to kill time.

http://rpgindex.blogspot.com/

Guide to map awareness

Introduction
This guide is for people who want to get better at League of Legends, but please don't come here knowing nothing about the game. Map awareness is not something you should learn until you are fairly competent. Bear in mind, most of this guide assumes you already use wards. If you don't use them, please read this warding guide first.
 

About server downtimes and Riot patching

So as of late, the EU servers have been down for almost a fortnight, and the US servers delayed patch downtime was extremely frustrating to those left waiting for it to come back up. Even when the servers came back up the next day, Leona and Yorick, the two most likely to be played characters were not available for play. This has been the worst patch in a long time, and yet I don't see any IP boost on any of my accounts, nor do I see any apology other than "sorry for the delay" scrawled hastily at the bottom of Average Gatsley's post on the LoL forums.

Although Riot were bought recently by Tencent for a whopping $300 million, it certainly hasn't changed much at headquarters. They managed to put up the thread on the forums yesterday explaining how they were working on the problem: 3 hours too late. As with most people I am not really as upset about not being able to play as I am annoyed at Riots terrible customer service.

How to win your lane

Introduction:

Getting harassed out in the lane? Trouble getting last hits or experience? Then this guide about lane dominance may help you. Winning in League of Legends can be broken down into many factors, controlling your early game is one of them. In any match there is a constant battle that decides which team wins and controls the minion/creep waves in their lane. Taking dominion over the lane is one of the most important contributions to your mid and late game, therefore it shouldn't be taken lightly.

Guide to warding properly

One of the most lethal yet subtle tools at your disposal on League of Legends is wards. Say you buy 3 for 225g, and place them correctly. You spot an enemy coming in to gank, and avoid dying. The warding has already more than paid for itself. Even though they have a fairly short duration, they can give you easy ganks. It's not uncommon to see teams grab aces because of a single ward at the Baron. This is a short guide on how to use your little buddies efficiently.

Here is a comprehensive image with warding locations I found in the backwater pages of google. You may have to save the image to see it properly. :

How to get better at League of Legends

Since I have played LoL for a year now, plus DotA and HoN before that; I believe I am appropriately seasoned to write a guide with tips and hints on how to get better at the game. If you have reached a point where you are having trouble improving, reading this will definitely help you. Even advanced players could pick up a trick or two, so give it a browse.

Underpowered Champions of 2011

In League of Legends, some smart people like to say there are no underpowered Champions, because any character played right can succeed. Of course, that's not entirely true. Some are better than others and have less counters.