That’s a lot of bot games.

There’s a new League of Legends strategy going around. It’s to have your random top lane Fiora go AFK and get your jungler to play two roles.

It works, I swear.

Told you.

…

So basically, the enemy Teemo wasn’t that smart and pushed all the way under the allied top lane turret, so I got an easy kill on him at level 3 when I had double buffs. I used that lead, as well as the ability to farm both my jungle and a solo lane, to snowball my strength into mid game, where I was 8/1 at one point.

I continued to apply extreme pressure everywhere on the map and allowed my two carries, Twisted Fate and Caitlyn, to farm up and get kills. By late game, the enemy team was so used to me being a terrifying threat that everyone focused me down, which allowed my two carries, as well as my support, to stay alive and deal heavy damage to the enemy team.

So we ended up winning most of the team fights, then pushed into their base to win the game.

If you talked with me at all yesterday, you may have noticed that I was fully immersed in keeping up with a massive electronic attack, manned by a group called DERP Trolling. To keep things simple, they used DDoS attacks to shut down a bunch of different popular game servers. The methodology used to determine which games to attack involved PhantomL0rd.

James Varga, better known by his online identity PhantomL0rd, is a very popular independent League of Legends streamer and online entertainer. During the time of these DDoS attacks, PhantomL0rd was one of the top streamers broadcasting League of Legends. The League of Legends servers went down, and PhantomL0rd’s game disconnected, just like everyone else’s.

PhantomL0rd decided to play different games, but he realized that all of these games were being targeted as well (even a game site as obscure as Club Penguin). After noticing that all of his games of choice were being targeted, he accepted DERP Trolling’s attempts to reach out to him and communicate with him. They hopped around Ventrilo and IRC and had some short broken conversations for as long as they could until someone would attack the Ventrilo or IRC server they were using to shut it down.

This is where things get a little bit confusing, and is the reason why I am making this post to help people understand exactly what happened.

While in the loading screen of a game of League of Legends, PhantomL0rd randomly disappeared. Then, someone else who had possession of his Twitch account’s log-in credentials (likely his brother Nick) signed in and stated that the police were at PhantomL0rd’s house due to a “hostage situation.” Many people believe that DERP Trolling called the police to PhantomL0rd’s house, but that is not true.

On December 30, 2013 at 5:04 PM PST, PhantomL0rd’s personal information was leaked on to the In­ternet through a Pastebin post (which still has not been removed due to the incompetence of the Pastebin staff). The supposed motive behind this posting is because someone was dissatisfied at the fact Phan­tom­L0rd was publicizing DDoSers and “raking in the cash.” PhantomL0rd was labeled as pathetic, and his information was released to the public.

After this happened, a troll called the police, falsely accusing PhantomL0rd of having four hostages in­side his house. Again, this was NOT DERP Trolling who made the call, it was someone else who found out his address through the posting. While this was happening, DERP Trolling was posting from their Twitter account showing their concerns for PhantomL0rd.

PhantomL0rd’s house was thoroughly searched by the police while he sat in the back of a police vehicle. When the police found out that it was clearly a false alarm, they let PhantomL0rd go with no criminal charges. Since then, PhantomL0rd has been constantly receiving text messages, phone calls, and pizzas delivered to his house.

The most ironic part about this stream is that, when he began streaming, PhantomL0rd titled his broad­cast as being a “chill day.” I don’t think he could’ve had a day any less chill.

PhantomL0rd streamed, telling this story from his own perspective. If you’d like to learn more about this with greater detail, you can check out his video replay.

Back in the All-Stars game of 2013, Riot let the viewers preview Magma Chamber, a new 1v1 and 2v2 map coming to League of Legends.

If you can’t tell from the image, Magma Chamber is a map designed to look like middle lane, but much smaller. There is only one turret (because once one turret is destroyed, the owner of that turret loses the game). The rest of the map (including all jungle camps) is also gone.

I was particularly interested and looking forward to the release of Magma Chamber because in 5v5 games on Summoner’s Rift, I always get set back by the enemy jungler. I can have complete, dominating con­trol over my lane, then the enemy jungler shows up and makes me instantly lose my lane. I play extremely aggressively, so I usually don’t get much help from my own jungler because I am pushed up so far.

In Magma Chamber, I wouldn’t have to worry about another random person interfering with my winning lane, so I felt like I would excel at it. Unfortunately, I found out today that the 1v1 and 2v2 map they released was not Magma Chamber, but instead a modified version of the all random all mid (ARAM) map.

The worst part about this map is that the lane resembles top lane, with two bushes placed inside the actual lane. I tried playing 1v1s on the map, and my only two losses so far have been when the enemy player bush juked me about 6 times in a row before I finally died to enemy minions. The worst part is that you can’t even buy wards on this map, so the only real counter play for bush juking is gone.

Overall, I’m extremely dissatisfied with this update. I think it’s literally so rushed and bad that Riot was better off just not releasing this update and delaying it some more. Some might claim that I’m being harsher than I should because I have a bias in favor for mid lane, seeing as I’m a mid laner and I ba­si­cal­ly got ripped off by top lane, but either way, this isn’t up to par with the quality I hope from League of Legends.

The patch notes for 3.13 recently came out, and one of the champions changed was Zyra. Being a Zyra main, a bunch of people asked me about my opinions on her changes. I am personally fine with the changes, and feel like Zyra somewhat deserved them, but this is coming from a middle laner. Someone who mains Zyra as a support will probably say that she was significantly nerfed.

In the middle lane, the first and most significant change to Zyra is her ability to dominate melee champions in early levels. Zyra’s Deadly Bloom (Q) + plant combo was so powerful that after hitting it twice, most early-level melee champions wouldn’t have enough health to go anywhere near Zyra to harass her. If they did go in to harass her anyway and fail to kill her, they would continue to get poked to death by plants and auto attacks as they’re retreating.

To reduce her power, Riot reduced the range on Deadly Bloom and reduced the early-level base damage on her plants. According to the current numbers, her plant damage is the same as pre-patch at level 6, and has increased damage after level 6.

This allows melee champions to have more counterplay to Zyra – the amount of poke damage will be slightly reduced during levels 1-5, and Zyra needs to get a tiny bit closer to harass. The damage at level 6 is the same as before, but this is acceptable as, by that time, the melee champions will have their ultimate abilities and be able to fight back.

The next noticeable change is that Zyra can now safely initiate with Stranglethorns (R) and not have to worry about losing the attack speed bonus to plants. This is because Stranglethorns was changed such that plants spawned inside the area while it is active will still get enraged. This allows Zyra to better chain her crowd control upon a catch, as she doesn’t need to wait until her plants spawn to place her ultimate on top of them.

The biggest changes to Zyra come with playing her as a support. The base damage on her Deadly Bloom was reduced, but her ability power ratio was increased. In order for Deadly Bloom (at rank 5) to deal the same amount of damage as prior to the patch, a Zyra must have 500 AP. Zyra with more than 500 AP will deal more damage with her Deadly Bloom compared to before the patch.

One of the reasons support Zyra was so powerful was because of the very high base damages on her abilities. Normally when I play Zyra as a support, I usually deal significantly more damage than my AD carry due to the initial burst, then the constant pummeling of the plants. This change ensures that if Zyra players want to continue dealing heavy damage, they must itemize to do so.