ELOBUFF

I found out earlier today that there's a League of Legends related website which is really serious about tracking stats for the game. It's called ELOBUFF and it sounds like it does everything I'd want in a stat site. Avid readers with a good memory may remember my post about positional statistics from a few months ago where I looked at the lolstatistics site and lamented a lot of glitches in their data. It was counting my Akali games in my jungler stats. It wasn't counting my Graves games anywhere. I play Ezreal both AD and AP. In both 5s and 3s. I had no way to possibly glean relevant data from what it was giving me.

ELOBUFF sounds like it solves those problems. It doesn't just look at the end result of a game. It looks at the items you built and the summoner skills you used in an attempt to more accurately determine your role. It claims to have a bajillion filters. It tracks most games, not just your games, and can give actual statistical 'counter-picks' based on the results of hundreds of thousands of games. It stays on top of current trends to let you know how the metagame may be shifting in terms of roles, rules, and items. It sounds fantastic.

Unfortunately there is no free lunch. They're running a subscription model with a $6 per month fee. It doesn't seem to have any sort of free trial which seems a little odd. I'd think letting everyone check out their data once would make sense. It did let me look up the info for the games played at the last MLG. There were 88 games played and Janna was played in 53 of them!

I found out about ELOBUFF because they're running a promotion with MLG for the Summer Arena. Anyone who buys an HD pass to the arena gets a free month on ELOBUFF. That pass is $10 ($8 for gold members) so it's really not much more than the ELOBUFF fee itself. I was planning on buying an HD pass anyway... Except the summer arena for LoL is during WBC. The internet in the hotel was really terrible last year and I can't imagine watching an HD stream would be feasible.

On the other hand I want to support MLG and I really want them to think League of Legends is a game worth supporting. So maybe I'll buy a pass anyway and just watch the VODs on the civic holiday Monday after WBC?