After some time of maintaining a good Rafaela ranked win streak, I finally got a string of losses. The first loss was kind of okay, as I thought I was just going to play one more game to take back my lost star. The second game went poorly as I was forced to mid Uranus vs a good Luo Yi. The Angela support stayed in my lane while our marksman soloed top vs Layla and Khufra. Needless to say, the game ended tragically. It was only our Gusion who fared okay. I actually felt bad for that player as I played really badly. Tried to force unneeded fights. Being forced to build magic def also didn’t help as the Layla got fed.
The third game, I was a bit tilted. I went for Rafaela once again, but I had a bad feeling as our comp lacked damage. I was too focused on babysitting our Miya that I didn’t pay attention to our top Balmond getting stomped by Natan. The enemy Johnson who laned with a Layla got a lot of picks midgame. With our comp, I knew it was over as they marched with the Lord in their last push.
The last game, I was ready to lose a fourth star. I gave up my S1 to a Chang’e, and I ended up S5. It was too late when I realized that we don’t have a jungler that I reluctantly switched battle spell to Retribution. I have already locked Gloo. I felt really bad, especially after I got killed early and gave up two turtles. I tried to focus on objectives and was able to secure most of them. I felt a little better when we won most skirmishes. Turns out the enemy jungler is AFK, so it didn’t really matter if I played badly or not, I guess.
A loss is only a loss if you’re not able to learn anything from it. I got three losses, so I should learn at least three things from them.
First, I can’t always lock Rafaela. It seems that focusing too much on her made me kind of forget how my other heroes play out. Even though Uranus and Gloo are eazy-peezy heroes, I am not mechanically skilled enough to just pick them up after long periods of disuse. The Uranus game, I failed to rotate properly and forced a lot of unnecessary fights, thinking that we’re winning while in fact, we’re not. I have played Uranus mid before vs a skilled player and I was able to do it properly. I am not defending my pick. It actually sucks, but I guess I could have played it properly.
Second, I need to be quite observant. I can probably blame it on the tilt for not paying attention, but I shouldn’t be playing in the first place since I was already tilted. I was too focused on what heroes to use that I was not able to properly adapt.
Third, I need to learn how to jungle. I don’t want to blame my teammates but all three losses, our jungler failed to secure all objectives even though they were playing proper jungle heroes. I guess I’m still anxious after my bad Balmond jungle game, but I think I can probably pick a tank jungler at least that can be flexed to another role if ever. I am considering Baxia or Uranus.
I feel that I need to watch my replays if I want to improve my gameplay some more and avoid these lose streaks. Also, I need to strengthen my mentality some more. Well, that’s if I really want to rank up. Okay, rant over. Time for bed.
Since my device is unable to handle War Robots Remastered, I dabbled into other games. One of the ones that I tried was Strike Royale.
For those familiar with Brawl Stars like me, Strike Royale would be an easy pick-up, having similar style game modes. To those who aren’t familiar, it’s a fast-paced 3v3 action game. The win objective depends on the game mode. There’s the usual team deathmatch, X-item collection, and base defense. Unlike Brawl Stars though, Strike Royale has an escort mode where you’re tasked to move a cargo towards a specific location.
[I guess I took the wrong moment to make a screenshot. My ping is usually okay though.]
After some weeks of playing, I’ve listed some of the things that I liked and didn’t like.
THE GOOD:
CHARACTERS AND CUSTOMIZATIONOPTIONS
Personally, I like the way the characters move compared to Brawl Stars. I can’t blame Brawl Stars though for sometimes feeling slow as it’s really a slower-paced game anyway. Heroes can be bought too and you don’t have to get lucky and get them from chests.
Each hero has one unique ability aside from the ultimate. In Brawl Stars, you need to get a gadget from a chest before you get a unique ability aside from your normal shots and ultimate. As you can see on the screenshot below, there are three buttons aside from the normal attack button.
[A screenshot from Coop game mode.]
Aside from unique hero abilities, you also get to choose a tactical gadget to further augment your setup. I guess the game kind of got it from the usual MOBA skills. Players can choose from an array of gadgets that provide Healing, Shield, Damage, Brush Detection, Cooldown, Reload, or even short invincibility.
Another layer of customization can be found on the Chip system. It’s similar to League of Legend’s and Arena of Valor’s Rune system. For some players, this would be a turn-off since this could turn the game into a grind-fest. The good thing though is you automatically get ALL the chips in the game. The downside is you’d have to level them up if you want to maximize their potential. Still, I feel having all of them unlocked from the get-go is a great help to players.
FREE-TO-PLAY FRIENDLY
As previously mentioned, Heroes can be easily bought with Gold (the basic currency) or Hero Shards. The game is very generous with gold that I was able to buy most of the heroes, even those purchasable by shards that I no longer have any use for Hero shards (which is a downside for me as I have no use for Hero shards now). In three weeks of playing four to five games a day, I only have 6 heroes left to unlock. I have enough gold to unlock two of those, but the other four are unlocked either by topping up (top-up bonus), spinning Gacha, and through an event (not sure if I got this one right). Of those four, only one is a meta choice, I believe.
Special weapons can only be purchased to further augment your hero choice. Each hero has access to a gold weapon and an ultimate weapon. Both of which add a small bonus damage plus a special passive that boosts a skill, adds damage, or gives extra ammo clip. I think of it as an Aghanim’s of some sort. Gold weapons can be bought with Gold weapon shards that can be gotten through daily quests, events, and achievements. Ultimate weapons can be bought with Ultimate weapon shards or could easily be obtained in certain events. As a matter of fact, I’ve gotten three Ultimate weapons through events in my casual gaming sessions.
HERO BALANCE
[The yellowish weapon icon denotes Gold weapon while the reddish one is for Ultimate weapon.]
Personally, I find heroes to be very well-balanced. I’ve seen complaints about a certain artillery hero, but I believe that hero strengths can easily be counteracted by their weaknesses. Heroes are categorized into Tank, Fighters, and Shooters, and I feel they’re like Rock, Papers, Scisssors. Shooters are the usual glass cannons and can be quickly bursted down by Fighters which play like assassins or bruisers, while Tanks can usually survive bursts from Fighters and can reverse the tide of battle depending on how one plays a Tank hero. Team composition still plays a huge factor in games and a well-balanced team can destroy DPS spammers.
MULTIPLE GAME MODES
The game features multiple game modes. Skirmish is the traditional team deathmatch. Sabotage is similar to Brawl Star’s Heist, where the objective is to destroy the enemy core. Rogue is like Brawl Star’s gem grab, where you need to gather energy bars and hold onto them for a certain length of time. Escort is where you try to “push” a cart to a certain point. Unbounded Skirmish has multiple objectives and you gain points by killing neutral camps, controlling an area of the map, and killing enemy heroes.
Aside from these modes, the game has an Arcade mode which has a number of rotating games, depending on the day of the week; Coop mode where you team up with players to kill waves of insectoid monsters; and Extreme Battle mode, which is a regular survival type game.
THE BAD:
LOW VOLUME OF PLAYERS
For a game that is good, I am surprised by the lack of players. To speed up matchmaking, you could end up playing with bots to fill in for missing players. This could sometimes lead to bad experiences, although there are times that bots play even better than humans, so I guess you could call it even. Still, it would be good if the game picks up in popularity, so you’ll get matched more with human players rather than AI.
CURRENCY
Aside from the regular gold, the game has coupons, which can be used to open gacha for Chips; shards for hero and skins; and other sorts of shards for weapons and chips. Honestly, I got confused at first by the amount of currencies. Gold can only be used to buy heroes and once you get all, you’ll have no use for it. The same goes with shards. I just wish there is some sort of a way to exchange resources, so you won’t have tons of them lying in a pile that you won’t use.
SKIN STATS
Similar to Mobile Legends, skins provide 2% damage boost. Although this would seem miniscule, this is a turn-off to some players since between two players with equal skills, that 2% would still be an advantage. I guess having an option for skins that could be purchasable by gold could solve this at least.
GRINDINESS
I mentioned earlier the grind factor that could be associated with Chips. I believe that could be a turn-off too for other players. Also, Heroes can be leveled up to 10 and I guess some players won’t like this either. Still, getting a hero to level 8, is just a breeze.
FINAL THOUGHTS
“Give the game a try” is all I can say. Even with the occasional bot matches, I find the game fun and could be casual and competitive at the same time. It’s sad that such a fun game has low player volume, and if you like the game, share it to your friends so that the community could grow.
Welcome to my walls_of_texts.doc sort-of gaming blog. Just a disclaimer, I don’t consider myself a hardcore gamer in the usual, um, hardcore sense. I mean, I could end up doing nerd stuff, like keeping a notebook for builds or making an Excel sheet for item comparison in League, but nothing in the likes of real heavy grinding (although I do that too sometimes). I did this mostly for hobby and for the love of the game(s), I guess. I started out with Arena of Valor, and you’d find different guides of sorts from way, way, way back. After that, I think I picked up War Robots and played it until the game demanded more smart-mojo, which my phone was unable to give. I think those two games are the ones that I did a lot of guides. Currently, I am sort of retired from gaming, although I recently just picked up Gods Unchained, and before that, played some Legends or Runeterra. I guess I am kind of missing Magic: The Gathering, but lacking motivation to pick it up. I’m not sure if I will be updating this blog. Heck, I don’t even know if the guides that I made are still applicable. Maybe I’ll just treat this as a journal or diary as I’m probably the only one reading this anyway. I mostly just drop by from time to time to look back into the stuff that I’ve created.
If you’re reading this, you are probably me or (if not) you’re really, really bored. Anyway, thanks for the time, kind stranger, and may your mana pools stay full.
There was this story that I’ve seen many times in social media about a guy (or a girl in other versions) telling a priest/pastor that he does not want to go to church anymore because he is disgruntled with the other attendees. The priest/pastor asked him that before he totally leave the church, to try and carry a glassful of water and walk around without spilling it. The guy did so and upon returning to the priest/pastor, he told him that he didn’t lose a single drop. The priest/pastor then asked him, if he noticed the people around him, to which he replied, No.
I won’t be talking about religion here so I’d stop at that. I just thought that this could be applied in our games. How many times have you tunnel-visioned in raging on your troll teammate that you didn’t notice your large minion wave doing the fighting for you?
Focus on the glass.
The “glass” contains your main goal, which is winning (unless you have other things in mind), and with this comes stuff that you can control, not just your hero but objects and occurrences in the map. The other stuff that you have no control like teammates, lag, etc. are the “people around” you.
For example, from my experience where I mostly play support, there are times when a laner roams all too often or decides to just leave the lane and play second jungler. In this case, I can’t control my teammates to clear the waves and save the turret unless they will listen to my pings. But what if they didn’t?
In cases like this, I take matters into my own hands and clear the waves. I would then quickly go back to supporting the teammate that needed it the most. Sometimes I would even get Heart of Incubus in order to speed up my clear. I will also try to get items that can boost my MS. This way, I can go for a very quick sweep and scoot. From this, the pseudopush tactic was conceived. Why not go push then? I actually would if I am using a hero with decent turret takedown capability like Omega. If not, just clear the waves as forcing a turret will do more harm than good if your hero lacks turret takedown potential.
In the end, it’s still a matter of focusing on what your hero does best. Always play to your strengths even though you have to do stuff outside of your role. Don’t force a push if your hero lacks tower takedown potential. Chances are you’re just herding a creep wave for your opponents to slaughter. If you’re playing a hero who excels in splitpushing and sucks in teamfighting, avoid teamfights and observe the waves while planning for a splitpush. If you’re a teamfighting hero, don’t go solo. All it takes usually is one good fight to come back to a game. Focus on controllable stuff and don’t blindly grasp on things that you have no control of. In the end, you’ll only get miserable if you tunnel on uncontrollable factors and miss on things that really matter.
As always, observe, formulate, adapt.
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For more guides, visit the Academy. Also, everyone is welcome to join the Squirrel Nation, a discord server where players motivate one another to improve, plus coaches to analyze gameplays, correct mistakes, and give helpful advice.
Credits to BK Yung Rocks for the info and tips. What was originally intended to be a quick guide turned out to be a not-so-in-depth-but-about-to-get-there guide. I tried to make it not as lengthy as the other guides I’ve made before and focused more on stuff that BK Yung contributed as injecting my thoughts would turn this into a roundabout writeup of novelesque lengths. Anyway, I hope you’ll enjoy reading this. For questions, you can drop by the Oak Tree Lodge in our Squirrel Nation discord and ask away. Perhaps you’d even find BK Yung online and the other helpful guys too to respond to your query. Their fund of AoV knowledge has helped many confused and beleaguered players see the light.
WHY TEEMEE?
TeeMee can bring a lot of stuff to the table — poke, harass, initiate, peel, dive, tanking, invade. They can only be limited by the user’s and team’s skills.
TeeMee are perfect in aggressive comps thanks to their very strong initiation, their tower dive abilities (stuns + revive meaning it doesn’t matter if someone “dies” because of the tower), and top notch early invading power (S1 broken in invades).
They can also shine in defensive comps as well thanks to their ability to counter tower dives. Since the main objective of a tower dive is not kill itself but the objective after it (usually the tower), having the defender respawn after 2 seconds somehow defeats this purpose and puts the divers at risk from tower shots. Sidenote: Wiro is almost impossible to dive because of this.
TeeMee , with their ult and having lots of CC make them fantastic in peeling. Their passive also helps speed up the item power spikes of teammates. Thus, TeeMee can help a teammate just by being present.
ARCANA
TeeMee can utilize either the regular support set or the AP set. If going with AP, take advantage of TeeMee’s incredible damage potential to cheese the early game, and abuse their poke. Movespeed is a must and you should aim for least 4%.
ITEMS
Item build isn’t set in stone especially with supports as you have to build accordingly since you have to get the most value from items.
Support items will depend whether you’ll be roaming or duo laning. Still, going with the duo lane support item doesn’t mean that you’ll be staying forever in lane. Use the cooldown window to do a quick roam.
For the wind items, Ring of Fiend currently provides a significant amount of stats and can overshadow the Essence of the Wind. Also helps with revealing Quillen especially now that he’s rather popular. For water items, Tidecaller’s Mark is generally a good pick and useful in most situations. Just remember to “touch” your teammate to trigger the aura. Purifying Bracers can be used in niche situations when the enemy team is loaded with CC.
Gaia’s Standard not only provides MDef and some regen but also movespeed as well. Helps a lot with mitigating early magic damage. The regen and MS helps a lot with early skirmishes.
The Aegis gives a lot of needed stats for support. The big chunk of armor helps with tanking while the CDR allows you to maintain skill uptime. Also helps some with mana.
For boots, Gilded Greaves and Sonic Boots are good choices for combating MDef and physical damage, respectively. Sonic Boots can also help against AA heavy heroes while Gilded Greaves helps shorten CC time. Hermes’ Select is perfect for heavy roaming.
Because of his good AP scaling, TeeMee can utilize Tome of the Reaper as anti-heal. Also helps give a lot of ooomph to his skills.
Against a heavy magic damage team, Medallion of Troy is a good buy. Also helps some with CDR.
Mail of Pain can be picked up for more armor and against AD assassins.
Rock Shield boosts survivability when engaging.
SKILLS
Following is a quick rundown of TeeMee’s skills (thanks to Samurai Gamers) along with some notes/tips regarding their usage.
While most supports take care to let all the farm to their carries, TeeMee can actually “leech” because of this passive without compromising the carry’s gold income. Can even generate a lot of gold advantage and one of TeeMee’s strengths.
Spam this. High damage, AoE, and low cooldown makes TeeMee an early game monster, especially in invades.
Accuracy is A MUST with this since this along with fart makes his engage combo. If you can’t be accurate with this skill, then you will be relying on Flicker which is bad.
Do use it on allies to escape. Requires coordination on their part, however. You can also hook Lindis’ wards (not sure about Elsu’s).
Always use this on allies, never on self.
Just like the revive item, it doesn’t count the ally as ‘dead’, meaning Quillen, Butterfly and Veera CAN’T REST on it (which actually makes TeeMee a good Quillen counter). The target will be resurrected with a set amount of HP and then healed depending on TeeMee’s AP. The set amount of HP is NOT AFFECTED by anti-heal.
When facing a TeeMee, always check if he doesn’t go full AP. If he does, DO NOT camp the dead body. The Ult has ridiculous AP scaling and can kill you easily.
GAMEPLAY
ROAM: Great invader, great midlane harasser thanks to their S1 which can also help clear the wave very fast. Stealing some mid farm doesn’t really hurt the midlaner much thanks to the passive. Lategame, he suffers some from being a bad facechecker, which can be mitigated by the vision support item. Early game, he can facecheck with a preloaded fart. The shield item helps him control the moment when he’ll ult.
DUOLANE: Go blue support item and feed your ADC. The gold advantage you’ll generate is often enough to win the game alone. It’s not unusual to have a TeeMee game where everything seemed to be balanced — same amount of kills, 1 drake vs 1 tower taken, but with your ADC at 2K lead over the opposing ADC.
COUNTERPLAY
TeeMee offers little to no counterplay. However, the fact that the ult is bugged can be abused, and TeeMee often cannot ult while stunned. TeeMee can also be CC’d and killed before they can even cast their ult. Also, refrain from killing an ulted target. Just let the ult duration end and then kill it. TeeMee’s hook is also tricky to land. Oftentimes, the ease of playing against TeeMee will depend on their user.
FINAL THOUGHTS
TeeMee offers a lot of stuff to the team and is a highly recommended pick. Their only limits are the skill of the user and the team, but with good coordination, TeeMee will wreak havoc to the enemy ranks while also providing good peel for the team.
To those who will pick TeeMee up, I’d advise to master the rats’ skills. It might be tricky at first but I’m sure it will be worth it.
For more AoV-related stuff, visit AoV Academy. You can also follow me on Facebook. Would appreciate to hear comments and suggestions from you. Thanks!
The Omniscientist 