If you don’t know what the term means, you may have felt it before. You know that feeling of dread when your team immediately gives up First Blood? Or when you fail a Flash over a wall that you usually land perfectly? You may get frustrated, angry, and become fixated on that unfavorable event. Well, that’s tilt!

Tilt refers to an emotional or mental imbalance that negatively affects your play.

It can occur for a number of different reasons and we’ll be covering them in this article. Although it’s ideal to take steps to prevent tilt before it happens, the goal of this article is to equip you with methods to deal with it when it’s occurring during your match.

Why you Should Avoid Tilt

Before we get to the methods, it’s important to understand why it’s important to avoid tilt. League of Legends is incredibly dynamic and unpredictable – with hundreds of champions, thousands of build path combinations, and regular patches that shake up the game, you’re in a constant state of strategizing and adapting your play to best tackle different situations.

In a vacuum, it’s already a daunting task to continually improve in these conditions. If you’re prone to tilting, however, the road is much tougher because you’re introducing additional variables that can hinder your performance.

Tilt makes it incredibly difficult to make the right decisions and stay consistent mechanically. For example, that First Blood you gave up may make you tunnel-vision on getting that sweet revenge kill to make up for it. As a result, you pushed up aggressively without warding and set yourself up for an easy gank and another death. That Flash over the wall you missed may decrease your confidence and make you play too passive or scared, causing you to lose CS and fall behind in lane.

If these sort of feelings don’t ring a bell, congrats! You may already have some awesome mental fortitude that keeps you steady. If these situations struck a nerve or two, you should definitely stick around!

4 Ways to Reduce Tilt During your Match

1. Acknowledge that you’re tilted

The first step to un-tilting is to accept that you are titled. After all, you can’t fix something that you don’t accept exists. To begin, mentally take note of what may be tilting you:

• Is it a teammate?
  • Did they give up First Blood?
  • Did they die to a gank that you pinged?
  • Are they flaming you?
• Is it something the enemy team did?
  • Did you get counter-picked in draft?
  • Are you getting destroyed in lane?
  • Is your opponent flashing emotes after your mistakes?
• Common symptoms (if you can’t specify what’s making you titled, you can still identify that you are)
  • Your blood starts boiling, you feel yourself getting angry
  • You start to feel like the game is unwinnable
  • You want the game to end already
  • You start to feel like the game is unfair
    • Your champ or allies feel weak
    • The enemy players and champions feel OP

These things will understandably feel bad, but do not lose hope. You’ve already on your way to getting your game back on track. Take a deep breath and consider the following options in numbers 2, 3, and 4.

2. Mute the problematic players (or everyone)

Muting problematic players is one of the quickest ways to cut out the source of your tilt. If you’re prone to getting tilted by chat in general, you may want to just outright start the game with it muted. After all, you can still communicate a good amount of things with pings and you can keep your focus on the minimap.

An effective thought exercise recommended by our analyst is to pretend that the muted players in your game are bots. What do we mean by this? No matter what you say to a bot, it’s not going to change what they do. If a bot is feeding, you shouldn’t get mad at it, it’s a bot. It seems like a funny suggestion but the whole point is to simply focus on your play and what’s within your control.

3. Look for positives to raise your morale

If you fall a little behind, it’s not the end of the world – you can still win! Instead of dwelling on everything that may be going wrong, look to un-tilt by rallying behind the things that are going right.

As we mentioned earlier, League is incredibly dynamic. It has tons of ups and downs and teams make mistakes all the time. Sure, your team may have made some big mistakes first, but that doesn’t mean that the enemy team won’t throw later. If you surrender now, you’re preventing that chance from happening.

For example, a common titler is when your team gives up First Blood or First Turret.This obviously isn’t an ideal scenario but have you considered that the enemy team drafted a team comp that excels in the early game? It’s what they’re supposed to be good at. Your team’s champions will eventually outscale your foes and be able to destroy them later in the game. Use this to encourage yourself and stay the course.

4. Focus on what you need to do next

Sometimes the best thing you can do is focus on what you need to do next. Don’t get frustrated by the last CS you missed, you’ll hit the next one. You may have died to a gank early, but it’s alright, you’ll remember to ward when you’re back in lane.

Here’s a suggested technique by our analyst:

“My advice would be write down your short-term goal, whether it’s on a death or Recall when you’re tilting. Close your eyes, take a deep breath, and look at what you wrote down for your short-term goal. You’ll need to practice it but you’ll have to deal with tilt when it comes and when it happens you’ll have to find your own personal reset button.”

Closing Thoughts

Thanks for the read! It was a ton of fun to write. If you’d like to track your tilt and how it relates to your consistency, Mobalytics has a unique analysis score that measures if bad games tend to negatively affect your following performances. It’s a great way to improve your mental resilience in combination with the techniques we covered in this article.

Guest post by Agilio Macabasco, Head Of Content at Mobalytics.com

The post 4 Ways to Deal with Tilt in a League of Legends Match appeared first on Gearbroz.

King Rammus

Bearing an uncanny resemblance to a certain villain of a popular video game franchise, King Rammus was only attainable if one was invited to beta test League of Legends in the late 2000s. Rarely seen lumbering around Summoner’s Rift, this skin was only on a select few accounts before League started skyrocketing in popularity. His availability was eventually spread around to other regions’ beta testing, but ultimately only invited beta testers could obtain this treasure. If one has the opportunity to witness this spiky turtle in action, they should remember that jumping on him will not solve your problems.

Young (Human) Ryze and Black Alistar

Now we are getting into a war that has been waged throughout time from playerbases across any game – Free to Play or Pay to Play. Black Alistar and Young Ryze could have only been obtained by pre ordering a copy of League of Legends, a new and otherwise mysterious game to most consumers. Riot has recently renamed Human Ryze to Young Ryze, albeit both names fit skin quite well. Most importantly, the question of value is brought into the fray considering Riot released its game as a freemium model. Because of the non-necessity to spend money to progress, pre order collector edition sales may not have been as high as they could be. But hey, to those fanatic players that stuck with League for the near decade and have these skins, props to you!

Silver Kayle

Much like Black Alistar and Human Ryze, Silver Kayle came with a paid version of the collector’s edition. However, unlike the other two skins, this edition was not a pre order version and as a result, more copies of this skin can be found. Regal and majestic, this skin definitely symbolizes the early pioneers of League of Legends.

Rusty Blitzcrank

At first glance, one would probably think “Is this just another splash art for regular Blitzcrank from another region?”. The shocking answer is no – this skin was on sale on the Riot store for a few months before behind recalled for its non-unique aesthetics. The in-game model appears to be a darker colored Blitzcrank, which could honestly be mistaken for a chroma skin. But do not be fooled because one man’s trash is another man’s treasure.

PAX Twisted Fate

While Riot was showcasing their new game at PAX in 2009, they were simultaneously handing out codes for the infamous PAX Twisted Fate skin. Being the first large venue event Riot attended, this skin was only available to those who ventured to Riot’s booth at their debut. At its prime, before Riot disabled expired code cards for skins, this skin could be seen on Ebay for hundreds if not thousands of dollars. Still heralded as one of the rarest skins in League, PAX Twisted Fate has been seen as more common than most rarer skins in games due to its wide recognizability.

UFO Corki

Aside from the amazing splash art, UFO Corki stumbled into the spotlight when Riot Games asked its players to vote League of Legends for two reader’s choice awards. Only accounts made before January of 2010 received the skin, so roughly about four months’ worth of accounts since League’s inception.

Riot Singed and PAX Jax

Premiering just a year after their PAX Twisted Fate brother, these two skins were given out during PAX 2010 to attendees. Although less recognizable than Twisted Fate, these two skins used to be on the secondary market for quite a large markup price, but with the disabling of expired codes, only accounts that redeemed these skins prior to 2014 will have them.

Any Victorious Skin

Becoming a recognized sign of a skilled player, the Victorious skin lineup is given to any player obtaining at least Gold V in Ranked Solo Queue. They even include the champion in case the player does not possess the champion beforehand. Theses skins are seasonal only – one cannot purchase or gamble their way into possession of one. Only through the blood, sweat and tears of ranked queue will a player enjoy these merits. Of course, the further back one travels, the more valuable the skin. From the oldest to the most recent skins, they are: Jarvan IV, Janna, Elise, Morgana, Sivir, Maokai and finally, with his cigar back in action, Graves. It is also worthy to note that none of these skins possess chromas except for Graves, where the player had to achieve Gold V in Twisted Treeline ranked queue as well as the standard Summoner’s Rift Flex Queue. Encountering these skins in any queue is not uncommon, but these skins remain account bound and cannot be obtained in any other form.

Grey Warwick and Medieval Twitch

Once upon a time, Riot had decided to implement a referral system in order to help advertise the game while offering two extremely rare skins as rewards. Unfortunately, the fairy tale turned into a nightmare when people realized they had to refer 50 friends for Grey Warwick and 350 friends in order to obtain Medieval Twitch. After considering player input, Riot then lowered the threshold from 50 and 350 referrals respectively to 3 and 5. Although the referral system is over, Riot has graciously given us Honor Capsules to bridge the gap. Upon reaching Honor level 5 in the Honor System, the player is guaranteed one of the two skins. This change has been implemented in 2018, so these two skins may decrease in value in the near future.

The Honorable Mentions

There are certain skins here that need credit for being valuable but in a different respect. Hextech Crafting has given us an array of champions that are locked behind a ten gemstone gate. Annie, Darius, Kog’maw, Vayne, and Hecarim all require ten gemstones to unlock, and getting them was a rare occurance. Before the Essence Emporium, ten gemstones would average somewhere around $200 to $300 to obtain. However, gemstones have since been more available, thus lowering the price of each skin. UrfWick, PAX Sivir and Championship Riven were formerly extremely exclusive skins, but there has been a re-release of each one – Urfwick in the Essence Emporium, Neo PAX Sivir with a different color, and a borderless Championship Riven. Granted, the original of each skin provides indicators of the first edition status and is worth considerably more, but having a skin reprinted as recent as last year gave all the new players access to the limited supply.

All image sources are from Riot Games

The post The Rarest League Of Legends Skins And How To Get Them appeared first on Gearbroz.

“The unseen blade is the deadliest.”

Zed has been the favored assassin of choice for the majority of the League of Legends metagame – to no surprise at all!

Since his addition to the champion roster by the end of the 2nd season, Zed has seen prominence in Solo Queue to the highest-level of Competitive Play. With his high skill ceiling, unrivaled outplay potential, and undeniable flashiness, the Master of Shadows has been the poster champ for many of the game’s decorated pros, such as Bjergsen, xPeke, and the Unkillable Demon King, Faker himself. Even producing one of League’s most-famed outplays in its history when SKT Faker 1v1’d KT Ryu in the OGN Champions Season 3 Summer Finals.

Now, although Zed may be a sinister counterpart in the mid lane, that doesn’t mean he’s unstoppable. Let’s breakdown the shadow assassin’s core gameplay and lay down the strategy needed to deny Zed of his success.

KIT:

 Preface

Zed is an energy-based assassin, which means that he can repeatedly spam his abilities without worrying about losing mana. The Master of Shadows utilizes his kit to deceive and outplay his opponents, turning the worst of situations into his favor at a moment’s notice.

 Passive: Contempt for the Weak

Zed’s passive, Contempt for the Weak, is his core ability to execute his enemies. Whenever an enemy is at low health, he is able to quickly finish opponents off given the % maximum health damage applied to his basic attack. Thanks to his passive, Zed is able to rush in, swiftly execute his foe, then jump out of harm’s way. Be wary when you are hovering below half of your hitpoints, as with Zed’s kit, he can easily eliminate you from a distance.

 Q: Razor Shuriken

Zed’s bread and butter ability, Razor Shuriken. A mid-range projectile that deals physical damage to all enemies it passes through. With his shurikens, Zed can safely farm during the laning phase and whittle enemies down through the ability’s extended range from Living Shadow. Skilled Zed players are masters of landing the skillshot from the most peculiar angles, even possibly landing a triple-shuriken combo when used with shadow + ultimate resulting in puns of damage. Although, even a double-shuriken combo coupled with his ultimate is enough to take out the toughest of carries.

 W: Living Shadow

Living Shadow serves as Zed’s primary mobility ability that can simultaneously serve as a means to stack damage to his combo. With Living Shadow, Zed produces a stationary shadow that dashes forward which he can swap places with and is able to mimic his damage abilities in Razor Shuriken and Shadow Slash. Given a target range of 650 (half more the distance of a Flash), Zed can use Living Shadow to deal further damage, retreat from an already-accomplished assassination, get away from unfavorable situations, or even dodge skillshots.

Moreover, whenever Zed lands abilities on the same target as the shadow does, he restores a flat amount of energy to be able to continue his pursuit of his upcoming victim.

In order to avoid these instances of damage, you must be aware of how Zed utilizes his shadow. Staying out of range or potentially anticipating where he’s going to throw his shuriken through the shadow’s extended range.

 E: Shadow Slash

Shadow Slash, a close range area-of-effect slash, is Zed’s sole melee ability that pads his damage in face-to-face fight and assists Zed’s waveclear ability. When used alongside his Living Shadow, Zed applies a 1.5s slow that enables him to precisely land his Razor Shurikens and catch up to reach his opponents to apply a proc of Contempt for the Weak. It is noteworthy to remember that for each Shadow Slash that hits an enemy champion, Living Shadow’s cooldown is reduced by 2 seconds – effectively aiding in Zed’s escape and damage ability when Living Shadow gets back up for use.

 R: Death Mark

The iconic, Death Mark. One of the highest-tier 1v1 ultimates in the game’s history.

By casting Death Mark, Zed enters a state of untargetability for three-quarters of a second and thereafter, appears at the back of the targeted champion, gains the ability to walk through units, spawns a Living Shadow that remains for six seconds, and applies a mark that stores a part of all primary-type damage Zed deals to his target, which detonates at the end of three seconds to deal enormous damage.

Sounds tricky right? That’s because it is.

Death Mark offers the Master of Shadows a flexible timeframe wherein he can cast pace his damage output in the timing he prefers, striking anytime favorable during the mark’s duration. Alongside the damage he’s already dealt with his primary abilities, Death Mark’s mark detonation is the nail in the coffin to secure Zed’s execution. For added outplay potential, Zed can utilize his ultimate to dodge incoming abilities such as Fizz’s Chum the Waters, Syndra’s Unleashed Power, and incoming crowd control or skillshots to buy that sliver of time needed to pull off the assassination.

To add to that, Zed can choose to blink back to the cast location of his Death Mark, swapping places with the Living Shadow he casted during the first cast of Death Mark, providing Zed with newfound opportunities to escape and confuse his enemies.

Champion Counters:

Zed predominantly counters immobile control-mages such as Syndra, Ryze, Taliyah, Azir, Zoe, and the like, with the special inclusion of Kassadin, as the Void Walker’s abilities focus on negating Ability Power damage and with no means to counter Zed’s kit. To counter Zed, on the other hand, champions with innate sustain, invulnerability, and durability such as Vladimir, Kayle, and Malzahar thrive against the Shadow Master, as these champion picks have ways to negate and sustain through Zed’s burst-type damage.

Summoner Spells:

Coming into the laning phase, the majority of Zeds will be running the quintessential Flash and Ignite to boost their assassination ability. That said, it’s crucial to come into the matchup with Flash and either Exhaust, Barrier, Heal, or Teleport to sustain through Zed’s onslaught later on in the game. Depending on the circumstance, it can be said that Exhaust is more effective in shutting down Zed all-throughout the game, significantly reducing his damage output during the crucial moments when his Death Mark procs. Heal is prioritized over Barrier because although Ignite reduces the healing effects brought about by Heal, Barrier will only negate two-fifths of Ignite’s damage while Heal will be able to negate more of Ignite’s damage all throughout the game (77.1% by Level 1 to 50.5% by Level 18) whilst giving a brief movement speed buff. And also, health gained through Heal stays for longer compared to Barrier’s 2-second duration.

However, if you want to negate more of Zed’s damage later in the game, especially if Zed does not bring Ignite, Barrier is a considerable option as it will cover around 115-455 damage based on level, compared to Heal’s 90-345 heal value.

Runes:

In building defensively towards countering Zed, a few noteworthy runes come to mind.

If you’re playing a Sorcery primary-tree mid laner, for your secondary tree, choose Resolve. Given the recent health bonus alongside the combat stats the Resolve tree provides, Iron Skin (provides +5 armor and enhances heals and shields and provides increased armor), Second Wind (mini-doran’s shield), and Conditioning (provides increased resistances after 10 minutes in-game) are viable options to consider when wanting to mitigate Zed’s effective damage throughout the laning phase.

Special mention, however, goes to the Inspiration tree’s Perfect Timing, which gives you a free Zhonya’s-like stasis item in Stopwatch by 6 minutes and reduces the cooldown of Guardian Angel or Zhonya’s Hourglass by 15%. With Perfect Timing, around the time mid laners reach six minutes into the game, you’ll have a defensive tool against Zed’s ultimate to negate its damage in the earlier stages of the game. Biscuit Delivery also seems like a viable alternative for those who want sustain against Zed in the early game, as you are given Total Biscuits of Everlasting (which restore a significant amount of missing health and mana) every three minutes. Since Perfect Timing and Biscuit Delivery are on the same branch, you could opt for additional gold-effective stats in Magical Footwear, Future’s Market, Cosmic Insight, etc. which are additional perks when considering the value you get from either of the two runes.

If you’re playing a Precision primary-tree mid laner, Fleet Footwork, Overheal, and Legend: Bloodline all are viable options for increasing your sustainability throughout the laning phase.

In Lane:

Throughout the laning phase, you have to be wary of a few key factors, (1) Zed’s Living Shadow position and cooldown, (2) Summoner Spell cooldowns, (3) Kill pressure, and (4) Jungler assistance.

In order to beat Zed, you must be able to effectively farm while dodging his abilities in Razor Shuriken and/or in conjunction with Living Shadow and Shadow Slash. Zed’s Razor Shurikens deal more damage when it hits the first target, therefore, it is important to stand behind ally minions if you are not able to dodge the skillshot completely.

When Zed uses his Living Shadow, he has a number of choices at his disposal, it’s either he’s there to kill you alone or alongside his Jungler or he wants to poke you with Q and E. Be wary of your own healthbar when he does this, if you are nearing ~half your hitpoints, you have to watch out for any all-in opportunities as he can finish you off if you take his abilities to the face with Ignite and Contempt for the Weak.

Make sure to always have vision around your side-bushes, as Junglers with potent crowd control or kill pressure such as Elise, Lee Sin, Jarvan IV, etc. will want to snowball the Zed ahead in favor of his team. If you cannot call for your own Jungler for assistance, remember to respect the enemy laner’s damage and all-in potential. If you are hovering over ~200 health with no anticipation of his coming moves, you might be surprised he flash autoattacks you to proc Contempt for the Weak and leave you for dead with Ignite.

To be able to turn the tides against Zed, you must take advantage of his Energy system and ability cooldowns, as that is where Zed gets the majority of his strength. Poor Zed players will ineffectively manage their energy, spamming abilities without leaving energy in reserve to pull out of unfavorable situations. Unskilled Zed players will pointlessly use their Living Shadow and combo whenever they can, take the time to analyze the enemy’s movements and trade patterns, then strike when he is most vulnerable (with abilities on cooldown).

Since Zed is melee, take advantage of the opening created when he basic attacks a minion to farm – that’s because, in that moment, the opponent will be unable to react to your advances.

However, there will be crafty Zeds that will be able to take advantage of your knowledge on these weaknesses. It is absolutely vital that you think on your feet and adapt to the moments on-the-fly, as skilled and creative Zed players do. Zed’s kit can be used defensively while being on the offensive side of the trade, even when a Zed is running away from you, they will try to turn it around through bursting you down with a quick double-shuriken, shadow slash powered, living shadow.

Zed has the potential to tower dive and strike you down from half-across the map as well. In these potential situations, you have to anticipate the coming attack and either respect their kill pressure and recall or prepare for an ensuing 1v1 duel.

Items:

As a mage, stacking another Doran’s ring or upgrading a Refillable Potion buy into a Corrupting Potion would give enough sustain throughout the first few minutes of the game (especially if you brought Teleport).

Additionally, for extra durability, you can opt for a first-item Seeker’s Armguard or Stopwatch to build into Zhonya’s Hourglass/Guardian Angel later on. If the shadow ninja’s lethality proves to be too much, building Ninja Tabi could also help mitigate a significant amount of armor penetration present in Zed’s damage arsenal.

In Teamfights:

In order to effectively counter Zed, you must know how his abilities function and how these abilities interact and complement one another.

Zed thrives on chaos. In teamfights, Zed’s objective will be to either eliminate priority carries on-sight or deal as much area-of-effect damage with his Living Shadow staple. To prevent that, you and your team must assess who is Zed’s pick priority for each teamfight (which could possibly be the enchanter Support, marksman, or mage). Then, you must devise a strategy to expect the Zed’s angle of attack and peel back for the said carries when the moment arises. Prepare your Exhausts, key crowd control to lock the assassin down, and cut him down when he comes in unprepared for your team’s in-sync teamwork.

In the mid-game and late-game, it is recommended to avoid 1v1 situations with Zed, unless you have a teammate that can handle the assassin head-on. As an assassin, Zed has a harder time accomplishing his role when teams start banding and grouping together.

And of course, vision control is crucial to avoid pick-offs that Zed excels at given the slightest of opportunities. Having optimal vision control will remove potential blindspots to your team’s teamfight formation and will prove it harder for the Shadow Master to go in and out unnoticed.

Remember to wait for crucial Summoner Spells in key teamfights, as they may be the separating factor between a carry living or dying by the blade.

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