How I Play: Trundle

This week might be a bit of a surprise to those who know me but I have been having so much fun with this guy, I just have to write one.  Here are some beginner and advanced tips on how I play Trundle, the Cursed Troll.

"Defeat Trundle?  You must be trolling!"

This champion is different then what I usually play but he is a bruiser champion that can jungle and is a very effective tank.

1.  Champion Basics

Trundle has some very unique abilities that make him an asset to any team.  Also, because he isn't popular, there is very little risk of him receiving a ban.

His first ability is his spammable nuke.  Rabid Bite causes Trundles next ability to lurch him forward slightly, do increased damage and steal some of the targets attack damage.  This ability is very useful on enemy physical carries as it lowers the damage they can output in team fights.  It also allows Trundle to dish out some pretty mean damage early game.

His second ability is Contaminate.  Contaminate, well, it contaminates the ground in a large area, granting Trundle attack speed, movement speed and crowd control reduction while I on.  Drop this in a team fight and try to fight on it, as it will make you much stronger.  This ability also makes chasing a Trundle next to impossible.

The third ability Trundle has is Pillar of Filth.  Pillar erects a large stone pillar at a target location which obstructs movement similar to Anivia's wall.  In addition, enemies within a small radius of the pillar will have reduced movement speed.  You can use this ability both to chase and to evade enemies.  In team fights, try and drop this somewhere where it will disrupt the enemies ability to attack you.  Pushing the enemy carry back enough to stop them attacking for 2-3 seconds can win you a team fight.

Trundles ultimate ability is called Agony.  Trundle sunders the target, stealing a base amount of HP and a percentage of there MR and armor.  Additionally, over 6 seconds, this effect is doubled.  Using this on an enemy tank makes them incredibly squishy and also makes you incredibly tanky.

Trundles passive ability is decompose.  When an enemy dies near Trundle, Trundle is healed for a percentage of that units life.

2.  Champion Set-up


Trundle can be played a couple different ways, but I believe his most effective role is that of a jungling tank.

I take Armor Penetration marks, Health / level seals, Mana Regen / level glyphs and Armor Penetration quintessences.  The Mana Regen can be substituted out for CDR glyphs but I don't have any lying around and I don't have to build mana regen items this way.

For masteries I go 0/21/9, taking standard defensive masteries and picking up improved Ghost.  My summoner skills are Smite / Ghost.

3.  Item Build

Since you're going to be jungling, start with a cloth armor and 5 health potions and head to golem.  Pick up boots and get a Wriggle's Lantern ASAP.  Turn your boots into mercury treads and start building towards a Spirit Visage.  After that is completed you should take a look at the team you're against and decide whether you need more MR or armor or a balance.  Generally you'll want a Banshee's Veil for sure as you're next item, as well as a Guardian Angel.  As for the last item, it is mostly personal preference.  I like to get a frozen mallet because of the extra utility and survivability it provides.

4.  Skill Order

The skill order I follow is:
1.  Rabid Bite (Q)        10.  Contaminate (W)
2.  Contaminate (W)    11.  Agony (R)
3.  Rabid Bite (Q)        12.  Pillar of Filth (E)
4.  Pillar of Filth (E)    13.  Pillar of Filth (E)
5.  Rabid Bite (Q)        14.  Contaminate (W)
6.  Agony (R)               15.  Contaminate (W)
7.  Rabid Bite (Q)        16.  Agony (R)
8.  Contaminate (W)    17.  Pillar of Filth (E)
9.  Rabid Bite (Q)        18.  Pillar of Filth (E)

You can choose to finish Contaminate and Pillar of Filth when you like depending on your playstyle.

5.  Early game Trundle

In the jungle you want to start with golem, go to wolves, proceed to the ghosts and then wait a couple seconds to heal from your health pots and kill the lizard.  Return to base, get boots, kill the double golem camp and then start ganking.  You should be level 4 by now and with your speed, slow and damage output, a kill should be rather easy.

6.  Trundle in the later game

As the game goes on, you start dealing less damage and start becoming very tanky.  Your main focus at this point is disruption.  Disrupt the enemy team as much as possible during team fights and stop enemy damage output.  Do this and you should be well on your way to a win.

7.  Conclusion

This champion has become my favorite jungle champion over night.  Follow this guide and you'll be Trundlin' your opponents in no time.

New Ryze

Today I want to talk about the changes that have recently gone through with Ryze.  They changed Ryze to have less burst damage but more sustained DPS.  I personally really like the new changes which are as follows:

Ryze

• Overload
  • Cooldown reduced to 3.5 from 11/10/9/8/7
  • Base Damage reduced to 30/55/80/105/130 from 50/90/130/170/210
  • Mana cost changed to 70/70/70/70/70 from 30/65/80/95/110
  • Missile speed increased to 1400 from 1200
  • Ability power ratio decreased to .2 from .45
  • Range increased to 675 from 600
• Rune Prison
  • No longer deals damage per tick and deals 60/95/130/165/200 damage up front (down from 80/120/160/200/240 over the duration)
  • Ability power ratio changed to a flat .6 from .4/.6/.8/1/1.2 (depending on snare duration)
  • Now deals 5% of Ryze's maximum mana in bonus damage
  • Cast range increased to 625 from 600
  • Duration reduced to 1/1.25/1.5/1.75/2 from 1.2/1.5/1.8/2.1/2.4
• Spell flux
  • Ability power ratio per hit reduced to .35 from .38
  • Cooldown increased to 14 from 9
  • Mana cost reduced to 60/75/90/105/120 from 60/80/100/120/140
  • Cast range increased to 675 from 625
  • Base damage reduced to 50/70/90/110/130
• Desperate Power
  • No longer grants ability power but now grants 15% spell vamp
  • Area of effect damage percentage reduced to 50% from 65%
  • Cooldown changed to 70/60/50 from 50/50/50
  • Duration changed to 5/6/7 from 8
  • Now grants a passive 75/150/225 mana
• General
  • Reduced base magic resistance to 30 from 35
  • Fixed a bug where Ryze's base mana regen did not get updated properly during the previous patch's revamp

Some of these look like massive nerfs to him, but because of the mana scaling, he hits very hard.

I'll do a complete write-up for Ryze later since I've been having a lot of fun with him.  His Q is very powerful now.  Early game harassment is very strong with Q spam.  Throw an overlord, run back a bit, immediately run back in and throw another.  Most people don't know about the extremely low CD and will not even think about the lowered CD and will think you won't have it up.

Even though they lowered his "burst" he still has the potential to put out a lot of damage really quickly in fights.  Especially early game he hits very hard.  Q and W create a very potent combo and can easily make someone think twice about running at you.  His E ability, atleast for me, feels lackluster.  In team fights though with your ultimate up it becomes very power.

His ultimate is slightly weaker now, but the additional survivability added by the spell vamp is nice.  I use it mostly to push his ability cooldowns 1 second forward.

Building him is also different.  Mana becomes one of his best stats so what I like to do is pick up Tears and then a Rod of Ages.  Banshee's Veil is also one of his most powerful items.  RoA + Bveil gives him a lot of HP and makes him incredibly tanky for his damage output.

All in all I really like this new Ryze.

How the pineapple f*** do i have 22 assists... oh, Cuddly, ugh...

Standard Masteries

Today I'm going to go over several general mastery builds I use.  I find masteries to be pretty straight forward, but I wanted to show people why I use certain mastery builds on certain champions.  I also don't have the time to make a How I Play: Champion today so I'll do one tomorrow.

I have about 4 standard mastery builds and I'm going to talk about all of them and some small variations depending on the champion.

1. Standard Caster

This is the same build I use for Veigar.  9/0/21 works for most spellcasters, moving a couple points around in mid-utility depending on who you're playing.  The biggest choice in this set-up is the 2 points in neutral buff duration which can be dropped into the % mana mastery if you feel you would rather have mana then a longer blue buff.  I also tend to take ignite / flash so I get improved Flash.  You can take improved exhaust over the crit point if you feel like using exhaust.  Ghost can also be used instead of Flash.

2.  Standard physical carry

This build is generally used for carries like Sivir who, while being primarily physical damage, do have a lot of magic damage.  The points can be shuffled around the offensive tree and you can take more points in attack damage if your champion has an AD scale factor.

3. Physical carry w/o magic

When the carry you're playing doesn't have any magical abilities, or very few, like Ashe, I'd suggest something more on the lines of this.  I prefer to take the defensive masteries because the armor / MR help early game laning a lot.  If you want though you can take the utility masteries shown in the previous page.

4.  Standard tank

I don't tank a lot, but when I do, I prefer to play Galio and such, so I take utility.  However if you're playing someone like Rammus, going into offense could be very beneficial.

These are the masteries I use.  You may use different ones and that's fine, there are many different ways to play the same champion.  Play the game however you can be successful.

First Impressions: Maokai

I watched the Champion Spotlight on Maokai last night and here are some of my first impressions on Maokai, the Twisted Treant.

This hero looks rather interesting, but I don't know where he's going to fit into the current meta game.  I suggest watching Phreak's spotlight to give you an insight into his abilities and play style.  I think he is going to be played like a tank version of Teemo during downtime and during team fights he is going to function as a fight disturber, similar to Malphite.  Instead of giving him a heavy CC though, they opted to give his ultimate a defensive feel with offensive potential.

This champions skill cap is going to be fairly high.  Knowing where to put saplings, knowing where to drop your ultimate, when to break your ultimate.  These are very crucial things that will all effect how well he is played.  Disrupting the enemy carries day will be the easy part of playing him, the hard part will be effectively defending your team while you do it.

All in all, I will probably pick up this champion and try him out.  He looks like he won't need that much to become tanky so he may be opted as an AP champion.  We'll see how things pan out though.

How I Play: Veigar

Here we go, time for some beginner and advanced tips and tricks on how I play Veigar, the tiny master of evil!

Very scary.

I love AP champions and Veigar is simply one of the most powerful AP champions in the game.  Naturally, he is my favorite champion.

1.  Champion Basics

Veigar is a burst anti-caster caster.  His first ability is Baleful Strike.  He launches a small ball of energy toward a target enemy and deals magic damage.  This is your basic nuke though it has a secondary effect and a passive.  If a target dies to a Baleful Strike, Veigar gains 1 AP and if Veigar slays an enemy champion, he gains 1/2/3/4/5 AP (depending on the level of Baleful Strike).  This ability should be used as often as possible to last hit minions.  Early game it is rather weak so I don't bother to harass enemy champions until it is level 3.

His next ability is Dark Matter.  Veigar targets an area on the ground and summons a meteor of dark matter to land after a short delay.  It takes about 1.2 seconds from the cast of dark matter to the meteor crashing into the ground, this means you have to aim it.  The way around having people move out of it is to use this with Veigars next ability, Event Horizon.  This ability scales 1:1 with AP and hits very hard.

Event Horizon is Veigars last basic ability and is, in my opinion, the most powerful and potent.  Veigar creates a medium sized cage at a location and enemy targets passing through the cage limits are stunned for 1.5/1.75/2.25/2.5.  You can drop the cage limits directly on an enemy champion, forcing an immediate stun which can be followed by a sure-fire dark matter.  This combination is extremely deadly later in the game.

Veigars ultimate ability is Primordial Burst.  Primordial burst launches a large burst of anti-energy towards an enemy champion, dealing large base damage, plus Veigars AP, plus the enemy champions AP in damage.  Now knowing that, you would think the best is the use this on enemy casters.  While this is technically correct, Veigar hits so hard that many times, any target is viable because you just overkill casters anyways.

Equilibrium is Veigars passive and it increases mana regen by 0.75% per 1% of mana he's missing, identical to Chalice of Harmony.

2.  Champion Set-up

There are several ways to play Veigar.  I prefer to build him to his weaknesses with my pre-game set-up and build to his strengths in my in-game items.

For runes I take Magic pen marks, health per level seals, mana regen per level glyphs and straight AP quints.

For masteries I take a standard 9/0/21 build, picking up improved buff durations and improved flash.

I take ignite and flash for summoner skills, though ghost is a solid choice as well.

3. Item Build

My play style with Veigar promotes a rather odd build but because of his insane amount of control with his Event Horizon.  I build almost entirely damage with very little regard for my own defenses.

I start the game with a meki pendant and 2 health potions.  This allows for high usage of Q stacking AP very quickly.  I cannot stress this enough, to make this hero powerful, you must learn to last hit effectively with Q.  Any mobs you cannot last hit with Baleful, you must attempt to last hit with your standard attack.  This hero snowballs very quickly out of control if you have a good start so you must learn to do everything in your power to have a strong lane and make a lot of money quickly.

Depending on your situation in the lane, I like to rush chalice, as the mana regen allows you to play very aggressive with the combination of stun control and Baleful harass.  Next up is Sorcerer's shoes.  The magic pen plays nicely, and you're up to 28.5 base magic pen, turning whoever doesn't have any MR into an incredibly easy target.

Now the next item comes down to choice and play style.  I pick up Mejai's because Veigar thrives on kills and can pick them up very easily.  If you get a Mejai's and pick up a couple kills early, your AP will skyrocket so high that enemy champions will be forced to get MR just to live through your stun.  The other choice is just straight rushing a Rabadon's Deathcap, which is your item after Mejai's anyways.  Try both, see which play style fits you.

After the Rabadon's Deathcap, take a look at there team and look for two things.  Is there a lot of physical damage that you can't avoid and how much magic resist are they getting.  If they can't get to you, get the void staff and continue destroying kids in seconds.  If they have champions like Pantheon and Caitlyn, I'd suggest getting your Zhonya's Hourglass first however.

At this point, you should have a Chalice, Sorc boots, Rabadons and Void staff.  You may also have Mejai's and Zhonya's.  If the game lasts this long and you don't have inventory space, sell your chalice and pick up an Archangel's Rod.  If you aren't using your Mejai's as much as you should be (over 10 stacks) sell it and pick up a Deathfire Grasp.

A note on the Deathfire Grasp by the way.  You can pick this up instead of the Mejai's early game if you are pro-active in using it.  It is also very useful against Cho'gath / Vladimir.

4.  Skill Order

My traditional skill order is as follows:
1.  Q (Baleful Strike)      11. R (Primordial Burst)
2.  E (Event Horizon)     12. E (Event Horizon)
3.  Q (Baleful Strike)      13. E (Event Horizon)
4.  W (Dark Matter)      14. W (Dark Matter)
5.  Q (Baleful Strike)      15. W (Dark Matter)
6.  R (Primordial Burst)   16. R (Primordial Burst)
7.  Q (Baleful Strike)      17. W (Dark Matter)
8.  E (Event Horizon)      18. W (Dark Matter)
9.  Q (Baleful Strike)
10. E (Event Horizon)

You may find you want more damage or have a lot of team stuns and don't need yours in which case you can get more W and less E.  Though for the most part the E is the single most broken spell in the game currently so I like to max it earlier.

5.  Playing Veigar: The early game

Soloing on Veigar is very awkward.  Most solo champions can hold there own in the first couple levels but Veigar is at the mercy of his opponent.  Learn to read your opponents.  Are they zoning you out?  Are they playing passively?  Are they playing defensively?  These are extremely important to notice.  A passive opponent allows you to get a lot of last hits with your melee as well as your Q.  A defensive opponent will usually only attack you if you attack them.  If this is the case, ignore them until level 5.  At level 5 you have the tools to outplay most champions.  If you are getting zoned out, there isn't anything you can do.  Sit at your tower and do not die.  Grab last hits whenever possible and call for a gank.

If you are playing in a duo lane, reading your opponents is just as important, but reading your ally is also important.  At leveling three, you can do decent damage with Q and your stun will lock someone down, allowing for very easy first bloods. 

6. The All-Smash

One the greatest features of Veigar is that he can catch someone in an incredibly long ranged stun, run up, instantly kill them and run off and be completely safe.  If you can't nab the kill, just don't use your ultimate.  Save your ultimate for secure kills and use ignite whenever you go for a kill.  Knocking an enemy out of the fight instantly is so useful for your team so kill whenever you can.

The All-Smash combo is as follows.  Stun -> Dark Matter -> Baleful Strike -> Primordial Burst -> Ignite

At 500 AP, this combo will do about 2000 magic damage on top of the true damage of ignite.  500 AP is even low for Veigar though.  You'll have up to 1200 AP some games, and maybe even higher.  A full Veigar combo at 1200 AP will smash a non-AP target for upwards of 4000 damage.

7. Conclusion

If you have any questions about my Veigar build, please put them in the comments and I'll do my best to answer them.  I should also point out that I have been streaming my games recently so I might put the stream URL somewhere if you guys are interested.  Also, this is how I play him, you may have other strategy's which work and I encourage you to make any adjustments you need to to make Veigar work for you.

New Blog

I've noticed I always want to talk about League of Legends in my ZeMo gaming blog but that isn't really what that blog is for.  This channel will be dedicated to all things LoL.  From my opinion of the current meta game to builds for certain champions, I'll look into it all.  Another thing I wanna try is viewer feedback.  In the comments, leave a comment on what you want for a topic on the next post and I'll choose one and talk about it.  If you want me to show you my build with that champion, want my opinion on item builds on champions, just leave a comment.

The first post will be tomorrow and I will start the blog off with an in-depth guide(to an extent) of "How I Play: Veigar"

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