League of Legends: Doom Bots of DOOOOOOOOOM!

The newest short term game mode has come out in League of Legends, and it's running with the twist that it's a coop vs AI game mode instead of a normal player vs player game mode. This means you're on a team of 5 humans playing against a team of 5 bots. This is a normal game mode which is great for people learning the game, or for people who are not very good at this type of game, or for people who are good and want to pick up a free win or try a new champion. The twist with the Doom Bots game mode is the bots are not your regular ordinary bad at the game bots. They do still make bad decisions, but all of their abilities have been buffed to be ludicrous.

I played a game with Robb and some online acquaintances to try the mode out and it was pretty great to see the bots use an ability that we know and understand and have it do something stupid on top of what it should do. The first game I played featured an enemy champion who normally puts out a little area of effect around him that does percentage max health damage. In this game mode every enemy unit on the map near him also used this spell! So the enemy minions all had a brutally powerful damage debuff. I faced off against an enemy champion that throws out a spell that roots anyone it hits... Only this time if it hit someone it rooted them and then launched out a ring of projectiles that would themselves also root anyone they hit! So the bot would be stupid and throw it out at the minions, but then the entire area would be covered in things that root you. It was crazy, and it was pretty fun.

We beat the bots pretty handily despite their abilities being buffed. That's ok, Doom Bots is ready for that. Beating them once unlocked a harder mode where every enemy champion also picked up a random powerful ability from another champion in the game. Maybe they get a second life when they die. Maybe they summon whirlwinds around them to constantly knock people up. Maybe they cause a ghost of Garen to spawn in a nearby bush and spin on anyone who comes near. And then each time they died they'd respawn with a different ability! So you never really knew what was going to be coming at you.

We beat them too, but Riot was ready once more. You beat Doom Bots 1? You beat Doom Bots 2? Fine. Face off against Doom Bots 5! Now the bots get super charged abilities, and they get 2 random powerful abilities, and they take a page from the Civ V AI and cheat to earn tons of extra gold. It was insane! (And then we won, because we were 5 humans using voice chat who are pretty good at the game and they're still bots.)

This game mode is certainly crazy, but it's very fun. Definitely worth trying out if you play the game.