What is with all the complaining about Darius?

So I've seen a bunch of threads and people singing their hearts out about how Darius needs a rework or a nerf over the past few days. There's even a dedicated thread that the reds are avidly posting on with their opinions! My reaction is: what the fuck? Darius is not overpowered. If he were to get a rework it should make him more competitive- not less.

Did I steal my friends wraiths? I'm Darius.

Hell, I've already posted about this once already. I'm a little upset after months of Darius we're suddenly devolving back to this. Darius is a pubstomper. Instead of hitting you for a chunk of damage when you make a big mistake, he will probably kill you. Because he punishes people for being stupid and then snowballs them to death just like he did on release- he's suddenly not fair anymore. Right.

If you're against Darius at top, you don't even have to counterpick him. All you have to do is play safe, farm, and buy armor. If he overextends just a little bit, it's an easy gank for your jungler. If you rush an armor or health item, he can't even burst you down.

Did I just kill someone? Maybe I just couldn't find a good screenshot.

I'd even go so far as to say I like playing against Darius top on most champions. I do what every average player can do with relative ease. I don't feed him. He has little sustain lacks health in the laning phase. Sure, he can be trouble- but if you stay on the ball and concentrate you can always prevail. Starve him from kills and he won't become the wrecking machine we all fear.

For clarification I'm not saying Darius should stay the same. The wiser comments on these QQ threads are correct: Darius needs a little more universal counterplay. Something basic, like changing his bleed to physical damage. But in return, he also needs a very minor buff to mitigate the fact that stacking armor will be even more effective against him. That's what I would call reasonable.

Darius vs Tryndamere ends badly for the one who isn't Darius.

Darius can be very lethal in blind pick matches, but you're playing a game of numbers in that arena. Just because he is strong against most conventional tops that you see in a blind game doesn't mean you won't get countered out of your ass in ranked. Even if you last pick him, in ranked your opponent is just going to turtle his lane. Sometimes it's even possible to swap mid and top, because most mid champions can deal with Darius admirably. In fact, just this week I took Ahri top and told Riven to go mid- Darius got equal farm to me; except for the little bit where I killed him 3 times.

I'd like to call out anyone who thinks that our slam dunking champion is imbalanced. Go play 10 ranked matches in a row as Darius. Post your match history here. Prove me wrong. If you do, I will happily concede- I promise you. It will be embarrassing, but I'm very confident about this.

Finally, a new matchmaking system!

So I've mentioned the issues with the matchmaking a bunch of times in prior posts, so I am here today to proudly let you know (if you didn't already); some smart adjustments have been made to the current process in finding you a game of LoL. You may have noticed an extra minute or two on your queue times. This is because the system now tries to put you against opponents with a similar amount of wins, as well as factoring in the usual stuff, like elo.

I am very happy with this change, although I don't think it should be applied to every game mode. Some players have already commented with their concerns on this; because playing 3v3 or dominion queues can already take some time. However, the change is welcomed by me and most of the people I play with. We all have over 1000 wins, and some of us are nearing 3000. Therefore it's rather dull to be matched against people with less than 500. It's not pleasant for the other team, and it deteriorates our skill levels to play against people who don't challenge us.

Here is the official post on the forums:

"In the latest game update, we rolled out a second beta test of a new matchmaking change that is live in all territories. This change will increase your average queue time by about 30 seconds, but we hope the benefits are worthwhile.
--
The matchmaker will now take into account the Number of Wins a player has in every matchmade queue (Normal SR, Normal TT, Ranked Solo/Duo, etc).
This means that for the first few minutes, the matchmaker will attempt to find teammates and opponents that have a relatively similar Number of Wins as you in addition to trying to find teammates and opponents that also have a similar skill rating. However, this does not mean it's impossible to get matched into a game with a large difference in Number of Wins--it's just more rare.
We need your help! Please give us feedback on the changes.
PS - RiotKiddington was the dev that did most of the work."

There are also numerous other red posts in the thread (found here), which reveal a little bit more about the fixes. Apparently, the matchmaking ideally will average out the wins between both teams the best it can. For example, if everyone on your team combined reaches a total of 3000 wins, the enemy team should have a similar total.

As Lyte said, they still appear to be beta testing with matchmaking. Hopefully we'll see some other nifty additions in the near future to balance matches. As a closing statement, I must say Riot are just getting better by the week. I still want some new champions though, it's been a while. Riot pls.

I feel Riot need to improve the matchmaking.

I'm sure the message in this post may be flawed, but I stand behind it just the same. I've done a little reading and Riot's matchmaking system is designed to keep you at a ratio of 1:1 in wins and losses. Obviously, an exemplary player will be able to retain more wins than losses. On paper, this process sounds very logical. In reality, I find the matchups you can get often turn out to be unfair for both sides.

Wondering whether I'll get a balanced game or not.

I find myself in more games where we either crush the enemy team, or they crush us. It's guaranteed that one team will always outplay the other; the main variable being the champions picked and how they work against each other. However, what I find myself incredibly frustrated with at the moment is the lack of LoL matches that are closely contested. To illuminate, I mean there are few games that are completely even on both sides. This is due to one team usually having distinctly worse players on one team, whilst the other has exemplary co-ordination and teamwork.

The problem is simple. Once you start to pull ahead in victories, in ranked or normal- the players you get matched with start to get considerably worse until you start losing again. You may notice this especially after a win streak. Suddenly, all the teams you get are either incompetent. Either that, or the enemy team is superior.

There are too many deciding factors that affect a LoL game to recite reliably. Player skill, champion selection, summoner spells, how well each player is feeling; to name a few. Anyway, despite this I still cannot commend the fact that once you win enough, the system tries to force some losses on you.

Sometimes the only way is to play with 4 of your friends.

I cannot provide any reliable solution to this issue, but I do believe Riot could implement a better matchmaking system. One that doesn't allow you to win and lose by mixing up the teams you play with, but one that tries to more frequently give you a fair shake. A system that tries to create equal teams every game. Ultimately, there's no way it could be entirely trustworthy; but it would mean you would get a fun and contested game more often.

My opinion is based on the fact that I would prefer a LoL match where it's close, instead of winning or losing by a landslide. Obviously since the nature of League of Legends is to snowball, unfair matches are always going to happen. I'm even impressed by how little snowball there is in comparison to all the other Moba games. However, my experience on other games is you get a better chance at having a fair shot at victory.

To everyone reading this post, please comment with your opinions and ideas on the matter, whether you believe my observations are accurate or not. I would like input on the matter myself, since I'm not really too sure if I have all the facts straight.

Welcome back, Okairinasai

Yeah yeah, I've been gone for a week, I've been very busy with personal issues in real life, therefore I wasn't able to post. Also, I have been working on revamping my hilarious images blog entirely (changes will appear soon). I apologise for the delay, but now the blog will be back on track with plenty of updates and information on the league. This is not a lie fabricated by me because I was watching anime and playing LoL all week (the last few episodes of Bleach were awesome, shame about the filler).

So what do we have since I last posted? There's a new champion out and about, Jarvan IV.

From my experience so far (around 40 games with Jarvan in them), Jarvan is a very strong hero with some excellent utility. He is essentially a tankier version of Xin Zhao. I have fought him 1 on 1 as Xin, and  I lost most fights unless it was late game.

I expect there to be a fair amount of complaining about his ultimate, because trapping 3+ people in a ring while Fiddlesticks or Katarina AoE stomps them is practically GG. For those of you who want to see a video of Jarvan, here is HotshotGG playing his first games with him (skip the first few minutes to get to the game).

Whilst I'd love to chat about Jarvan all day, I'm going to move on to something more important, that was announced today.

League of Legends has been officially confirmed as a title in the 2011 World Cyber Games. This is great news for casual and hardcore player alike, since the League will be featured among some of the greatest games that have ever been produced. Here is a list of the 2011 games:

WCG 2011 Official Game Titles:

Fighting

    * Tekken 6 (Namco Bandai Games)



FPS (First Person Shooting)

    * Counter-Strike 1.6 (Valve)
    * Crossfire (Neowiz Games/Smilegate)
    * Special Force (Dragonfly)



MMORPG (Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game)

    * World of Warcraft®: Cataclysm™ (Blizzard Entertainment)



RTS (Real Time Strategy)

    * League of Legends (Riot Games)
    * StarCraft® II: Wings of Liberty™ (Blizzard Entertainment)
    * Warcraft® III: The Frozen Throne™ (Blizzard Entertainment)



Sports

    * FIFA 11 (Electronic Arts)

WCG is the longest running esports event in history, so with coverage like this expect a fair few new players ingame. Last year League of Legends was only presented as a promotional title in WCG, so they've managed to take a step up the ladder this year. I am personally looking forward to this, considering it's a step towards more competitive play.

On another note, I've been on an incredible win streak this week, I can't remember the last time I've lost more than one game in a row. Touchwood. If you wish to play with me on the US servers, add my summoner name: ByakuyaYO. I know the Yo on the end makes me look like a pleb, deal with it.