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Nemesis Draft community storytime <3

RiotL4T3NCY·2/26/2015, 2:18:09 AM·3 votes·7,128 views

Hey party people ^_^/

So Nemesis Draft wrapped up on Monday this week and we'd like to hear your stories! This is the first time we'd experimented with a 'pick-type only' game mode that had no other real gameplay changes, so we were excited to see what you guys pulled out. Before we get into that though, there were some popular trends and (as always) surprising outcomes that I want to call out.

Many players perceived giving a 'low damage' champion as the best strat for victory. It seems have been not a terrible idea with many common Supports being extremely popular picks, as they traditionally don't do a lot of damage. Of course, they're also usually sacrificing all their farm for an ADC. With 4+ supports on a team, at least 2 of them got solo farm and could carry hard... as many players learned the hard way. :) Sona & Soraka in particular did very well, yet players constantly handed them over to the enemy team. A cohesive team strat or theme seemed to work better than cherry picking individually 'weak' champions. EG: all ADCs, all glass cannon AP mages, all glass cannon assassins, etc. It made defensive itemisation easier and you could guarantee 2 of those champs not getting anywhere near the farm they usually need to be 100% effective (as oppose to utility Supports that really only require levels to contribute). What did you guys find worked best?

Following on with the popular cherry-picked 'weak' champs, Ashe, Galio & Poppy were also not something you wanted the other team to have. They did really well. Yet people seemed intent on giving them to the enemy team. And then they melted faces. Many faces. :/

Finally, we'll start distributing the Nemesis Draft reward summoner icon from today. Remember it could take up to 2 weeks to reach your account, so don't panic. We experimented with the extended time penalties and rewards around dodging in this mode, but as it turned out, most people who played Nemesis Draft never dodged a single game at all. What we did learn is that "Dodgers Gonna Dodge". :/ 1 dodge impacts 9 other players, so while intentional, repeat offenders were very few in number, they can make large ripples (they won't be receiving the icon though). Most players just wanted to get on with playing the game. :)

19 Comments

Hellioning2/26/2015, 2:19:51 AM4 votes

I distinctly remember telling my allies 'give them bad ADCs' as I gave them Tristana. The next person after me immediately gave them...Ashe.

That, and the last pick deciding to give them Sona, made me realize people are bad at knowing what is actually a bad champion.

ChangelingRain2/26/2015, 3:58:21 AM3 votes

From my experience, the best results came from just giving them stuff so that the pick phase wouldn't run out of time for picking. It was really hard to soloq and actually do a good pick phase because it took too long to come up with bad picks for the enemy, and then there was the one guy who would give them, in a team of four ADCs, a tank or support.

I had a lot of fun getting evelynn and urgot, though, as they wreck face if done right.

Mansana2/26/2015, 5:40:44 AM2 votes

It was a good feeling to play the Zac attack... I missed him so much. Guess I'll have to wait for Nemesis Draft to return one day hopefully.

Tortferngatr2/26/2015, 6:45:16 AM1 votes

One time I got Urgot, landed a grenade on 3 of them, then did 3 consecutive lock-on kills for a triple.

Urgot is amazingly good at punishing melee...

Otters2/26/2015, 8:27:18 AM1 votes

Quadre kill with Shaco (Penta got stolen.. sigh) and I won a game as 5 adc's lol. Played Draven jungle mwuhah. Funny overall! ;)

TerraRising2/26/2015, 9:52:38 AM1 votes

My favorite game of Nemesis (I only had a few, mind you. So much salt in that mode.) involved me getting Sion and no one wanting to trade with me.

Having seen Scarizard in a few of his Twitch streams laning as Sion, I wound up using his techniques to decent effect in the mid lane against a Zilean. I wound up carrying the entire game, even killed four towers with my passive.

Too bad I can't seem to find the game in my match history so I could provide better context.

aperson12/26/2015, 12:35:47 PM1 votes

Once we were given an all melee tank/bruiser team, while we picked all ADCs for them.

Man, that was a total stomp. As soon as we completed our first armor item, the enemy team basically did no damage to us. We dove them with impunity and killed them with our base damages. Was a 20 minutes surrender. I can't even imagine what it must've been like for them...

Jpdaniel2/26/2015, 12:42:44 PM1 votes

I actually liked the mode, getting to try new things in weird comps is a thing of mine. I also didn't experience any salt. My favorite game was one where they handed us mostly supports. We had no champ to midlane, so I went AP Nami mid. Nami is my favorite champ, what could go wrong? AP Nami mid started wrecking scrubs. Stacked up my mejais, obliterated Heimerdinger, A bubble was enough CC to kill. It was glorious. In fact, out of 5 games with Nami, I never lost one.

My technique for picking was just due to my team never coordinating. So instead of comps, I picked difficult champions like Elise. Not because Elise is wholly awful, but because very very few people could play her. I had a lot of "Elise mains" in my games and they still couldn't play her for the life of them.

I sadly never got Galio or Urgot, two champions I wanted to play. I really love Galio, and people caught on quick that Urgot wrecked face in this mode. I also never got Sona, but after Hexakill and whatever came before it, I knew people had caught on that Sona wrecked face when the meta isn't around.

Lastly, I think the icon wasn't a good incentive. It places a value on not dodging that disappears. So once you do it once it suddenly feels easier to do again because--hey--I'm not getting the icon anyways.

Yodasodabob2/26/2015, 2:33:45 PM1 votes

Firstly, let me say that i really loved the game mode. It was very interesting and forced you to get used to new, and usually terrible champs. Although, my one complaint was getting the same champs a lot (like eve). Also, some people, for whatever reason, thought we were queued in normals and banned normal champs, but that wasn't too much of a bother.

I had this one game where I queued with two friends and they had to leave 2 minutes into the game. The 3 of us left were Viktor (me), Fiddlesticks, and Sion vs nami, poppy, anivia, kayle, and soraka. We won 36 - 18, with myself going 27/9/3.

So, thank you for making the mode! I enjoyed it, even though most of my friends didn't, and i'm looking forward to whatever the next one is (URF pls?)

Skia Asteri2/26/2015, 5:21:09 PM1 votes

Game 1: http://matchhistory.na.leagueoflegends.com/en/#match-details/NA1/1728019847/218693738 Got Evelynn directly and kept her and gave the other team . They lost laning phase and gave us a team comp they could not engage on. They would have needed more damage so they could chuck people before we could disengage. item 3155 would have been a good pick up for Renekton, as we were heavy magic damage.

Game 2: http://matchhistory.na.leagueoflegends.com/en/#match-details/NA1/1733233549/218693738 Got Evelynn directly, gave them Nidalee who got traded. Went mid lane against Nidalee and won lane as AP Eve. They really needed more wards. With me and Shaco picking them off and Trundle constantly split pushing they did not get to really use their sort of decent team comp.

Game 3: (no link, sadly; please fix the match history on the web site to show games from this mode in the list) My team: Rumble Zilean Soraka Shen Skarner Their team: Zyra Kennen Malzahar Urgot Lulu (if the person who gave them Urgot had not been a fool, they could have had an all AP team comp... or all AP + AD malz i guess if he chose to do so) I got Skarner and played jungle, and gave them Lulu . Reason being Soraka counters Lulu's poke in lane pretty well. They had Zyra and Kennen as a duo top and our Rumble was having pretty bad lag problems. 10/1 ADC Shen carry though. (I did some serious work going something like 6/2/5 on Skarner).

Game 4: http://matchhistory.na.leagueoflegends.com/en/#match-details/NA1/1733325010/218693738 Got Mundo, traded for Evelynn (the person I gave him to traded for Poppy). Gave them Garen . The person with Garen declared Eve OP afterwards. I wonder why... ;^) Early on Nunu was the only one doing significant damage, when I reached and killed him we won fights. Otherwise it went poorly. Later on Singed was too disruptive, and we had to kill him and Nunu to make progress. At that point they were finally focusing me. Every one but Singed was fairly easy to kill in a reasonable amount of time for me except Singed after reaching full build. Whoever gave out Singed must have been a masochist.

Sadly I never got Urgot , I had used the last rune sale to get the ones I needed to prep a rune page for him in anticipation.

As an aside, Evelynn is a great pick up for or against teams that lack a damage type to some extent.

Lack magic damage for your team? Go AP and force the other team to either deal with you or itemize magic resist. Lack magic physical for your team? Go AD and do the same. She does well with both, and deals a lot of damage if she itemizes damage.

If the other team only has one damage type, then you can get pretty hard to kill for how much damage you can output. Her main problem is not being able to survive to do damage if she has to split her itemization if she is also building damage, so with that out of the way she becomes very threatening.

Velivolo2/26/2015, 6:12:32 PM1 votes

As a support main, I ADORED that so many supports were given out.

If I got a support (or a champ I could try to play as one) I did incredibly well, including a first- time Poppy 3/1/6 (support- Woulda had more assists but they surrendered :3) and something like a 0/4/22 Skarner support (Second or third time Skarner, but I'd only played him on arams.)

And OH, THE TARIC GIVES. I mained Taric as my tank support before I learned more meta tank supports (Leo, Thresh), so I play him really well. One game, the FIRST champ the enemy team gave us was Taric, so we gave them straight AD. OFC I built straight armor and was disgustingly tanky. I actually felt a bit mean for that game. >:) Additionally, if I saw that the enemy team was giving us all AP, I'd always give Taric if I could. xD

Perhaps more interesting to me was that my teammates would ask me NOT to run support in a duo bot lane where there wasn't a traditional one. I had a teammate tell me to build straight triforce and skip support items on my previously mentioned Poppy game. I built support anyway, though. The sustain off the relic shield was nice, as was having the vision that we needed for objective control.

Also I saw a lot of silly support teams buy gold items in lanes where they probably shouldn't have (Including two-support bots, each of them with a gold item). Saw a Janna mid take a spellthief, too.

One game I played a first time Annie support and my lane buddy wandered off, but so did theirs. I started building AP and farming and went on to wreck faces. It was beautiful.

On the sad side, I derped and was half-paying attention one queue and accidentally dodged, so I won't be getting the icon :( In the future, it would have been really nice if the pick phase were a bit clearer. It was confusing the first few times.

Aneventhorizon2/26/2015, 7:41:36 PM1 votes

One of my funniest wins was seeing the poor enemy Mordekaiser try jungling. They probably hadn't tried jungle morde before (I have, so I was a bit disappointed in them), got beat up by the jungle, didnt even buy chiling smite, and got slowly ground to metal dust.

One of my best times was when the enemy team gave us morde .... I took him and flash/ghost, 2v1 ed the top nami and their jungle, and proceeded to huehuehue my way into their entire team. At one point I had around ~50 cs while the Nami had 9.

Best thing to give the enemy team for me: All AP and/or Elise.

Worst thing I gave to the enemy team: Shen. I had to go up against him top as skarner... and skarners Q range is quuuuuite a bit lower than shen's Q. Can't really harass with it while he whittled me down.

Dont be Hasty2/26/2015, 9:45:12 PM1 votes

This gamemode allowed me to try ADC Janna, ADC Soraka. They worked very well, despite not having much scaling. An adc Janna is apparently a thing of horror, since she has godly self-peel and is so hard to catch. Her auto attack animations don't scale very well at high AS.

One time the enemy team gave me Viktor for some reason. I laned against a Nami.

The results were absolutely disasterous for the enemy team.

Dantilq2/27/2015, 7:07:26 AM1 votes

I played a draft, and we made a strategy "All ADC to enemy team", no one protested and we made plans which champs to pick. We was a 3 man premade, but the two other people on our team refused to listen to the plan, didn't say what they were doing and gave enemy team Nunu and Yorick, which is REALLY REALLY good champs to play together with 3 ADC.

Someone dodged last second, and the two dissidents was was placed on enemy team. We gave them 5 ADC, they gave us a bunch of "weak" champs, but a mixed and well balanced team comp. Game was then over in 15 minutes, we stomped them so hard they didn't get more than 3-4 kills to our 20-25, while taking all the dragons, losing no towers. It was really satisfying that people that refused to communicate or follow the plan then got to taste the fully brunt of the plan right to the face.

Another favorite is to give enemy team 5 low winrate hard to play mages. Give them LeBlanc, Elise, Azir, Syndra and like Eve. Most people will flail about and not be very useful, and you can stack MR. Even if they play some of them as ADC, they are not very good ADC champs(unless you meet one of the guys that specialized in AD LB :X).

CamaHa2/26/2015, 2:19:53 AM1 votes

Sry didn't play Nemesis mode.

Why don't u have "Riot" in front of ur name??

Cure Dreamless2/26/2015, 3:13:10 AM1 votes

Haha there was this one game...we gave them poppy because she was a "bad champion" and it ended up in the hands of a poppy main. That did not end well. There was also another game, where we had a Voli Soraka botlane, Voli ended up getting REALLY fed and carried us until the enemy gragas pentakilled us. Ya...