Monday, March 21, 2011

How to Counter Physical Damage Dealers (DPS)

I have played a few games this week in which my teammates played some unstoppable physical damage dealers. Master Yi, Ashe, Miss Fortune, and Tryndamere were among the top damage dealing champions in those games. Our team literally stomped on the enemy team, with our damage dealers acquiring quadra or penta kills from each battle!

What I noticed about the other team is that no matter how long the game went on, the only champion on their team buying any sort of anti-damage items was the tank. Everyone else on the team played as if our powerful damage dealer did not exist - as if he posed no threat to them! They would definitely have stood a better chance if everyone on their team bought some anti-damage items.

Here are some tips to remember when your team is fighting a strong physical damage carry:

1- Reduce their damage!

If an enemy carry is getting tons of kills, you will need to resist that carry's damage type. This means that, in addition to your normal item build, you would have to add in some armor. It does not mean that you have to drop all of your plans in order to buy a 300 gold cloth armor, heavens no! Just one armor item will suffice. Your goal is to survive just enough hits from their carry that your tower or teammates can come to your aid (and even better, destroy their weakened carry!).

2 - Never go anywhere alone. Ever!

One of the major strengths of a strong physical carry is that they can solo any champion 1v1. If you are ever caught in the jungle by yourself with no one around, and an enemy physical carry finds you, you can kiss your safe trip home goodbye! The enemy carry will make short work of you, as he/she will be incredibly formidable in auto attacking to a point where it would be silly to think that you could escape (or let alone, survive).

You will need to make friends with your teammates so that if you ever encounter an enemy carry, the two of you could possibly snare, stun, or slow just enough that the two of you could make it out alive!

3 - Focus Fire their Carry!

Your team can turn the tide of battle by focusing him/her when the battle starts. Once their carry falls, the others will only follow suit and fall, too! Always, always, always focus the enemy carry and use disabling spells such as Exhaust and Ignite when you're in a big team fight! He/she should not be able to survive much, since carries typically have very little survivability. Take advantage of this and destroy their carry in one fell swoop!

4 - Buy Anti-Carry Items! (When you're tank)

An extremely useful item to buy when you're a tank is the ultimate anti-carry item, Thornmail. This handy dandy item not only gives you tons of armor, but it also reflects a percentage of physical damage done to you back to the attacker as magical damage! Another extremely useful anti-carry item for tanks is Frozen Heart, which gives you tons of armor, some mana, cooldown reduction, and reduces all surrounding enemies' attack speed! Lastly, Warden's Mail severely handicaps any auto-attackers by reducing their attack/movement speed when they attack you!


Thank you for reading my post!  Please don't forget to tell your friends about my website, Gosu League of Legends @ Blogger.com, or otherwise known as How to win League of Legends games!(http://gosuleagueoflegends.blogspot.com/)

9 comments:

  1. Funny how you post some things on this site, and I end up in similar situation the very next game I play. Thing is, my teammates think their too pro for armor, and tryndamere destroyed us all. The most pro was the Veigar who said I can't build armor, because Veigar is an AP, and that just won't work, since Veigar isn't suppossed to tank. Similar excuses came from the rest of my teammates, who must of been premade or something, (A cluster of noobs this large is seldom naturally occurring..), They seemed to think that if they got more damage the would kill Tryndamere. Well, I got news for them... You have to SURVIVE Tryndamere in order to KILL him, basically by cc bombing the hell out of him, since you can't just "kill" a fed Trynd. I tried explaining to my team that trynd will kill them they won't kill him. Basically Trynd killed the all over and over every group fight until we lost.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Wow just had a match like this lol.
    Tell em Remmix tell the whole world how to play smart.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Glad you guys liked it! Tune in for some more helpful insights!

    ReplyDelete
  4. a very usefull item to caounter melee dps carrys is warden's mail.
    buying it as an AP oder range dps will always, along with some other slow keep the carry away from your ass just unable to do something. The most important thing about melee dps exspecially like tryn is that they DO a lot of dmg if they get near you. So the safest way to deal with them is to use slows and cc to completely outrun him.

    ReplyDelete
  5. you havent posted in awhile

    ReplyDelete
  6. wow.. really helpful. those dps champs are all pain in the ass :). this might help me when i encounter those champs

    ReplyDelete
  7. ok then. I got a challenge for ya. How do I kill a Sion who is using the following items: zerkers greaves, Bloodthirster, Black cleaver, phantom dancer, nashore's tooth, and infinity edge?
    I could not kill him ever because his ult healed him for 140% of his melee damage and he was critting for nearly 1000 every three hits or so.

    ReplyDelete
  8. Hi Zebransika,

    A Sion with Berserker's Greaves (920 gold), Bloodthirster (3000 gold), Black Cleaver (2865 gold), Phantom Dancer (2845 gold), Nashor's Tooth (2465), and Infinity Edge (3830 gold). Hm... That is one fed Sion!

    It seems to me that this is about an hour long game for someone to accumulate about 15,925 gold. And if it hasn't been an hour yet, then someone sure must have let him feed and farm his butt off! But fear not. Even the seemingly unstoppable has their weaknesses... and here it is:

    This is actually easier than you think, but it does have something to do with your champion... were you a dinky little Janna? Or were you a tougher champion who could stand toe-to-toe with this beast Sion, someone like Irelia or Xin Zhao?

    If you were that dinky little Janna trying to stand against an overfarmed and overfed Sion, then there is no hope. The solution to this is as follows:


    As a dinky little champion that cannot out-dps a fly:

    1 - Have your team gank Sion and unload everything on him! This is the only way a support-type champion can ever "fight" a massive dps on the enemy team. You have to keep an eye on the map and find out where his favorite spots are to hang out. Players will often hover around your blue or red buffs, so ward there and get ready to rock him!


    As other champions:

    1 - Find his weakness. This Sion's items tell us that he has no resistances whatsoever. He only has the following: damage, attack speed, critical strike, lifesteal, movespeed, and bonus HP due to his "Enrage" ability (an hour's worth of bonus HP to boot!). His weakness? Burst damage, slow attack speed, resistance shred (remove his armor and magic resistance), stuns/suppression (prevent him from attacking), and remove his lifesteal.

    2 - Counter his weakness. Since he has no resistances and only HP, then he is widely susceptible to MAGICAL AP BURST DAMAGE, especially the likes of Veigar/Annie. At 60 minutes into the game, these AP champions become the anti-dps that can melt any damage dealer. In addition, a big bad tank like Mordekaiser with Warmog's Armor / Thornmail / Hextech Revolver combo would take him down fairly quickly even with those items and buffs. DPS champions will have to "out dps" this Sion... but champions with their own passive lifestealing/healing abilities do best here: Xin Zhao, Irelia, Warwick. Lastly, a guy with lots of HP is begging to be brought down with the infamous tank-defeating item, "Madred's Bloodrazor".

    3 - Resist his damage type. He does physical damage, so stock up on armor so that you can last just long enough to kill him first. Guardian Angel works well, but you can also do Thornmail, Frozen Heart, or Randuin's Omen. More HP helps also.

    4 - Remove his healing ability. This is a veteran's secret that all of the more experienced players know: use the summoner spell "IGNITE" to get rid of his lifestealing ability altogether! At that point, you must follow up and destroy him throughout the duration of the ignite... don't let him live, or you will have a harder time engaging him later. Thornmail also counts as an "anti-lifesteal" item since it returns damage to your attacker. Also, the summoner spell "Exhaust" counts as well, since it reduces his attack power altogether, which in turn reduces his lifesteal capabilities.

    5 - Involve your team. Why are you trying to fight this behemoth alone? Get your team involved! Focus the snot out of him!

    6 - Fight at your tower. Your tower is a great aid to victory against this dps giant, but it's not a necessity.

    7 - Other notes. You might also consider getting a Banshee's Veil, Quicksilver Sash, or summoner spell "Cleanse" to remove his initial Stun Gaze. This will greatly improve your chances of successfully fighting him.



    Alright kiddies, that's all for now. Hope you liked this post, and good luck in your gaming!

    ReplyDelete
  9. I was actually playing a fairly tanky skarner at the time. Usually, my skarner rips the sh*t out of DPS champs. However, my top teamate (3v3) fed him badly and let his CS get to almost 300. I watched, helplessly, as he teleported with less than 200 health, only to bait my teamates in and kill them with lifesteal.

    I suppose the best way to fight such a horrifyingly fed creature would be to spread the word on fighting tanky-DPS characters. Noobs dont realize that sion is one of the few chars that must be treated as a threat no matter how low his HP is. That is how he solo'd two of my teamates at less than 200 hp. Just like it says in the build above: everyone must focus their intentions on the goal of killing the fed DPS. Usually I get paired up with randoms who figure that their build is the best and changing it would make them suck, or something to that effect. Thank you for the tips, I will definitely apply more of these in the future.

    ReplyDelete

Due to spam issues from anonymous commenters, our comment system now requires you to login with your OpenID. Please leave constructive feedback here.