Vainglory Forums

Roam is effectively the team captain yet, when you try to coordinate your team with pings, no one listens, EVER.

I personally think "captain" is a poor choice of terms for that position, just as "roam" was. I think Support is a much better term for that position. Rarely is there going to be a "Captain" when there are random players matched on a team. In my opinion the captain (as they are now calling it) is there to help the carries be successful.

Having a true "captain" requires an understanding of player preferences and tendencies. Few things are more annoying to me as a jungler than when that position thinks they get to tell me where to start my rotations. That would be like the PG on a basketball team telling the scoring guard where to shoot from. No a perfect example, but it makes the point.

The only thing pings are good for if it's not with a well organized team, it making suggestions and being annoying. Frankly too often those who ping fail horribly to be map aware. For example: If i'm a laner and I'm fighting off a wave of minions and battling back and forth with the opposing laner I can't drop everything I'm doing to go help in the jungle at the moment just because the captain and jungler decided to pick a fight, to do so may end up in my death. A good "captain" has to be aware of what situation each player is currently, know when to avoid fights, and when to engage, etc. Frankly there is rarely going to be that type of trust between players who are randomly matched in solo queue.

I'm with BLG3RNT on this. When I play a Captain I do my best to roam between Jungle and Lane. But I understand the frustration that comes with having someone play that role and babysit one side (it's usually lane in my experience).

As for pings, I think the issue comes down to people sorta tuning out because they're playing a game on their phone or tablet which has a notification system that usually pings. But I could easily be mistaken as I most frequently am.

Because it's probably the hardest one. I mean, you're the on making sure your teammates don't die. If there is a team fight going on, and someone dies, people will just give you a weird look through their devices. I usually just take roam because it's the first position I ever played (Fortress) and so it has become my main.
As for dem pings, they don't really work. They just don't. An in-game chat works waaaaaaaaaay better, so some people just won't bother. If you are playing in a party, tell everyone to respond to pings with "ok" and to use pings. That way, they know.

Honestly it's tough to play support when you're not playing with a coordinated team. Big ults are usually wasted because of a lack of communication (eg. I use Flicker ult to save teammate but he fails to notice and continues to fight, breaking invis and wasting my ult and he dies) Also impossible to advise on item choices when you can see your teammates buying wrong things but you have no way to tell them. Just use Skype/Discord and play with friends if you want to have maximum impact as a support/captain. The problem with pings is that different people can intepret pings differently, and they are also limited in their use. Example: There's no cooldown ping to warn your teammates that your important spells are not ready. Usually I use the yellow/danger ping on myself to indicate I have no mana left/cooldowns are not ready, in the hopes that people will understand, but they may not necessarily pick up on these things.

Those are some good points. I've always interpreted pings as such:

Warning ping: Either means disengage or enemy is hiding in those bushes. Use in context.
Green Target: Attack this person or objective.
White ping: Rally here
Question mark ping: Means the person using it is an *******.

However I've had people tell me that they use the White ping to indicate they want a scout trap placed there. I've had people tell me a target on themselves means they want an ability cast on them IE Flicker's Ult. The danger ping to indicate no mana as mentioned above is a new one on me and I'd have no clue what they meant. Point is there is no universal code so pings are kinda worthless. The smiley faces are even worse beyond the thumbs up to tell you I approve of what you did (usually happens when my roam saves my *** or a player makes an awesome play for an ACE).

I'm tier 6 now and team plays are worse then tier 4
My team still doesn't know what a team is.
No one ever synergies or know how to follow up and they hesitate so much with no trust. Like Ringo players like they don't know they're (A) ability is a slow and it makes gank go from 10% to 100% gank able. They just wait for their roamer to go in and gank fails you'd think they'd learn by now it's so frustrating playing roam when you have a brain dead team. I only play roam because of all the selfish instalocks.

I personally use the ? Ping as just that, a question, like when we start I ping near gold mine asking, "are we going to group up for a fight?"

I also use it to be an ******* as well so...

The Captain is not in charge. I hate that name, I wish it remained roam. It's the carry that really runs the game, the roamer can initiate fights, but not if your carry isn't ready. I listen to my carry and jungler hard core as a roamer, way more than I think they need to listen to me. I support them in what strategy they are trying to initiate, way more than I'm trying to initiate my own. THEY deal the damage, they know HOW they want to deal it, and I'm there to help.

I feel like it's because you have the least amount of control over how the game will play out. Even if you do "lead your team" (as the title of Captain would suggest), if your damage dealers fail to do their work, you're left just sitting there. I think players feel like they can have a larger impact on winning/losing if they take jungle or lane roles, since they build damage and such. As a roam, I feel that to have any sort of carrying potential, you need to perform very, very well, using the right items/abilities at the right times, initiating at the right time, and when you fail to do so (particularly later in the game), you can lost matches very easily. On the other hand, I think with jungle and lane roles, it's significantly easier to be able to carry the game and have a large impact, since, you know, you do tons of damage. While good roam play is many times very helpful, and sometimes necessary, without good carries you will be hard pressed to win. I think it's really that simple.

Also, it's pretty boring to be completely honest. Would you rather pop a bubble and sprint madly at an enemy carry hoping that your teammates come with you, so that you could tap on them and stun them, or be seeing big red numbers flash up as you do tons of damage and kill the entire enemy team? I don't know about you, but the latter seems more exciting to me.