Tuesday, May 17, 2011

A Wild Poppy Guide Appears!

Dundly dundly dundly dundly dundly dundly, Whomp Whomp!  Yes, that is the verbal version of the pokemon wild encounter music. Yes, it does suck. As for the continuation of the video series from yesterday, well, you will just have to wait, for today, we have... the start of a Poppy guide!



First things first with Poppy. If you want to play her as a tank, you have completely the wrong idea about poppy. She is a pro movement speed assassin whose job is to tower dive and wreck carries or support chars before the fight even gets started. If you are really good, you will scare the other team into dumping their ults into you while your Ultimate is still activated, rendering them completely useless. But before I get too much into that, let's talk about poppy.

Passive- Valiant Fighter -  Any damage dealt to Poppy that exceeds 10% of her current health is reduced by 50% So what does this mean? It means the lower in health you get, the harder you are to kill! This plays really well into my item strategy, which we won't talk about here, but basically, if you are getting nuked at anything less than full health, then your opponent is going to be sitting their wondering why your big bombs did so little to someone with next to no MR or armor. Oh, and this DOES NOT work on tower damage, so don't be stupid.

Q Skill - Devastating Blow - This is one of the reasons why Poppy is such a beast late game. While early on, it's cooldown keeps you from spamming it as much, this burst will help you get over a lot of champions passive regen talents (fuck you garen) and blow through heal effects. For the technical bloggers, it is extra damage plus 8 percent of the target's MAX health as magic damage. Yes, magic damage. There is a cap on this damage based on Devstating Blow's level, but when you are fully built, you will be hitting for around 1k damage per swing. Ouch.

W Skill - Paragon of Demacia - They should just rename this skill run instantly faster and hit harder, it would be more clear. Passively, whenever poppy attacks or is attacked, she gains a stack off this ability and it increases her armor and damage, stacking 10 times. When activated, she gains max stacks for a short duration and increases her movement speed. Yeah, you know what to do with this. Chase people down, crushing them, then using it to book it away.

E Skill - Heroic Charge - The dick move of all dick moves. It's an escape, a stun, a positioning effect, and, best of all, it dishes out the damage. That is, of course, provided that they hit terrain. What qualifies as terrain,? Obviously walls and such, but also turret, inhibs, and all sorts of crazy buggy stuff. Another champion diving at you with a jump ability? Hitting them at the same time frequently counts as terrain! Hell, I have had people get stuck pathing on creeps and get stunned when I smash them against creeps. I still have no idea why this happens, but I won't complain!

R Skill (Ultimate) - Diplomatic Immunity - Poppy's ult  is a single target debuff that makes it so that the only thing that can damage Poppy is the target she ults, as well as increasing damage against Poppy's target by a percent based on level. (20, 30, 40) What makes this so stupid overpowered? It effects things like Death Fire Grasp (35 percent of your health? Try more like 60) and ignite. You see where this goes. Use Ult, Death Fire Grasp, Ignite, Slam them against a wall, and burst them with your Q. They trying to get away? Instant super speed poppy! Yeah, it's totally wrong to waste someone with 3.5k health in like 4 hits, but who cares? Oh, and banshee's veil will block this, so don't be stupid and waste your ult on a target who has it up!

For summoner skills I take ghost and ignite. Ignite to obviously scale with Poppy's ult and take care of those pesky regen or heal champs, and ghost because, well Poppy needs to get in position, and flash just doesn't cut it a lot of the time. You can try flash, but you will be dissapointed.

As for runes, I go either solid Arm Pen reds or Arm Pen/Magic Pen hybrid, depending how my team looks for composition. For yellows I go health runes (meh do whatever you want here), for blues I go cool down reduction (yet again, not written in stone), and for Quints I go two movement speed quints and one health quint. Essentially, my job as poppy is to get into position, kill something, and get out. If I don't get out, I don't give the incredible advantage to my team that I should.

For masteries, I recommend going light into offensive masteries, getting just enough for the magic penetration talent, and then the rest into utility, grabbing improved ghost, increased EXP, greed (gold problems suck, if you don't like greed, skip it, but it makes a difference), movement speed increase, and of course, the bottom of your tree, decreasing your summoner skill cooldown timer. If you want, you can swap the utility tree for the defensive tree, but you aren't a tank, and your ult should keep you alive if used right, so you should focus on keeping yourself mobile, higher level, and in ganking position with your summoners.

As you would expect, I only lane with Poppy, and I really, really, try to avoid going into a solo lane. Poppy sucks at farming and even if I pay attention, their solo is going to out-farm me. There is just not much you can do about Poppy's farming, so get used to it. Actually, this is one of the greatest problems with Poppy is her farming ability. Want to know how I get over this? Well, you will have to wait until part 2, where I will talk about item builds, strategy, and other fun activities!

32 comments:

  1. i just came from a party where 2 of my best friends had a really strong pokemon argument... and i;m still interested!

    ReplyDelete
  2. give me pokemon or give me death!

    ReplyDelete
  3. What a well designed character o_o

    ReplyDelete
  4. Great interpretation of the Pokemon battle music, lol.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Very nice guide, man! Thanks for taking the time to write this down, cause I usually just go all tankytank with her >.<...

    ReplyDelete
  6. This system is way better than dota, I'm glad they improved it :D

    ReplyDelete
  7. I just deleted LoL today. Makes me too aggressive

    ReplyDelete
  8. She was actually the last tank I've needed and in over two years I've never played her.

    ReplyDelete
  9. Be careful, pokemon argues can get to serious business!

    ReplyDelete
  10. HAHAHAHA im liking the verbal version of pokemon wild encounter

    ReplyDelete
  11. excellent information! thank you!

    ReplyDelete
  12. can't wait for a Pokemon MMO

    ReplyDelete
  13. The first paragraph to this made me lol ;p

    ReplyDelete
  14. nice, but you should do some reviews or guide about other games!

    ReplyDelete
  15. haha nice introduction and very nice guide :D

    ReplyDelete
  16. terrible pokemon sound impersonation lol

    ReplyDelete
  17. *Run away* Best thing ever :P

    ReplyDelete
  18. hehe great rendering of the music!

    ReplyDelete
  19. i thought the song you were trying to immitate was pacman dying. hahaha

    ReplyDelete
  20. More Rammus...more rammus :D

    ReplyDelete
  21. I like your guide, very thorough

    ReplyDelete
  22. Awesome guide ;D Me <3 pokemon.

    ReplyDelete
  23. i need to give this a try sometime. my internet is really crappy though

    ReplyDelete