Thursday, May 19, 2011
My blog is moving!
Hey everybody, my blog is moving to Elementz's new website, Reign of Gaming! I will be doing all of the same stuff there as I did here, but will no longer be posting on this blog. I will leave it up though so that its content can still be viewed. As for how it happened, I took a shot in the dark and sent Elementz an email a while ago, before his old site went down, asking if I could post content for his blog. He said that he had read my stuff before and liked it, saying that I could come aboard eventually. With his new site in working order, I was given my own section on his website. The link to my blog is here. I hope you all continue to read my posts over at Reign of Gaming!
Monday, May 16, 2011
Ranked Game #32
Hey guys, I played my thirty-second ranked game a couple days ago. My luck continued to trend downward, though I didn't do nearly as bad as I did in my last game. This was a solo queue game.
I had the second pick for my team, and we had first ban:
Amumu, Shen, Nocturne, Rammus
Draft:
Mordekaiser
Alistar, Teemo
Kennen, Kassadin
Malphite, Vayne
Xin Zhao, Ashe
Soraka
Kind of a meh team in my opinion. I'm not a fan of having a new champion being played in ranked the week it was released, as most people can't learn a champion that quickly. Soraka seems to be a bit of a hit or miss champ, she's good if she can pick her spots correctly, but is otherwise pretty insignificant. I also felt like we were lacking in damage output, with only two champions capable of dealing a great amount. The durability and crowd control abilities we had was nice though. As for their team, I am personally not a fan of having Mordekaiser as the main tank, but it tends to work at this level more often than not. Xin Zhao also tends to dominate, making this team a bit intimidating. Kennen's AOE stun was probably the most threatening of them all, as they would be able to wreck us if he was successful in triggering the stuns.
Lane Matchups
Top: Malphite, Alistar vs Mordekaiser, Xin Zhao
Middle: Teemo vs Kassadin
Bottom: Soraka, Vayne vs Kennen, Ashe
Jungle: none
Early Game
The laning phase was pretty good for us in my opinion. We seemed to dominate two lanes and got a healthy amount of kills in the process. First blood happened up top when Malphite and Alistar decided to tower dive Mordekaiser, failing in the process. Xin Zhao came in to try and clean up Malphite, but he managed to get away. Mordekaiser got at least one more kill while laning, but neither tower was pushed too much. I had the upper hand in the middle lane, thanks to some awesome ganks by Alistar. Those kills helped me push to their tower and kill it faster, along with making Kassadin a bit more cautious when he came back. The bottom lane seemed to be won by the enemy, as they certainly had the kill advantage. Soraka would foolishly chase after low health enemies and promptly get herself stunned and killed. However, they were able to get the first tower kill of the game when Alistar came down for a gank and pushed the enemies out of the lane. With no opposition and three champions attacking the tower, it went down in no time. Xin didn't really gank too much, he pretty much just covered for others when they were forced to go back to base.
Mid Game
At that point, I felt like we had a slight advantage and momentum over them. Unfortunately, that all changed very quickly. In response to the tower kill, they bumrushed the three who were walking around its ruins and killed Soraka and Ashe easily. They then pushed the lane with ease and destroyed our bottom turret. Immediately following the kill, a teamfight broke out in the nearby jungle. We didn't stand a chance against Kennen's ultimate and thus we were beaten badly. After that, the action focused on the middle lane. There was a lot of dancing going on for quite a while, with occasional quick advances and retreats just to see if someone would get greedy. Eventually enemy minion waves in other lanes came bearing down on our turrets and so our attention was divided. The enemy team took advantage and engaged us 5 vs 3 at our turret, winning easily. That got them another tower kill. The thing that probably contributed the most to our loss was Soraka going AFK for five or six minutes after she got ganked by their entire team in the bottom lane. I don't really get why she was down there all alone, but I guess thats just what people at this level do. Anyway, the enemy team began parading around, killing towers as the pleased and eventually getting to our inhibitors. Without Soraka, we were unable to challenge them when they went for Baron and so we waited in our base for our ultimate demise. They destroyed our Nexus after brutally killing us in our base at 36 minutes.
Post game scoreboard:
Replay link: Ranked Game #32 - Teemo
What I learned:
- If played correctly, Kennen is a huge force, AOE stun is ridiculously good
- I may be a little too timid sometimes when it comes to finishing people off, I could have had several more kills if I hadn't backed off in some situations
- Vayne is pretty good, though people don't know how to counter her yet
- Going AFK is a pretty dumb response to someone on your team doing something you don't like, especially if you are queuing with someone
- I did not know Xin Zhao could jungle without Smite, interesting
My Score: 3/4/3
My Build: Philosopher's Stone, Mercury's Treads, Malady, Banshee's Veil, Stinger, Amplifying Tome
Summoner's Spells: Exhaust, Flash
Current ranked record: 14-18 (0 leaves)
ELO rating: 1165
Even a dead cat bounces, so I'm bound to get a turnaround one of these days. Thanks for reading, comments and suggestions are always appreciated.
-Chickenmoo
I had the second pick for my team, and we had first ban:
Amumu, Shen, Nocturne, Rammus
Draft:
Mordekaiser
Alistar, Teemo
Kennen, Kassadin
Malphite, Vayne
Xin Zhao, Ashe
Soraka
Kind of a meh team in my opinion. I'm not a fan of having a new champion being played in ranked the week it was released, as most people can't learn a champion that quickly. Soraka seems to be a bit of a hit or miss champ, she's good if she can pick her spots correctly, but is otherwise pretty insignificant. I also felt like we were lacking in damage output, with only two champions capable of dealing a great amount. The durability and crowd control abilities we had was nice though. As for their team, I am personally not a fan of having Mordekaiser as the main tank, but it tends to work at this level more often than not. Xin Zhao also tends to dominate, making this team a bit intimidating. Kennen's AOE stun was probably the most threatening of them all, as they would be able to wreck us if he was successful in triggering the stuns.
Lane Matchups
Top: Malphite, Alistar vs Mordekaiser, Xin Zhao
Middle: Teemo vs Kassadin
Bottom: Soraka, Vayne vs Kennen, Ashe
Jungle: none
Early Game
The laning phase was pretty good for us in my opinion. We seemed to dominate two lanes and got a healthy amount of kills in the process. First blood happened up top when Malphite and Alistar decided to tower dive Mordekaiser, failing in the process. Xin Zhao came in to try and clean up Malphite, but he managed to get away. Mordekaiser got at least one more kill while laning, but neither tower was pushed too much. I had the upper hand in the middle lane, thanks to some awesome ganks by Alistar. Those kills helped me push to their tower and kill it faster, along with making Kassadin a bit more cautious when he came back. The bottom lane seemed to be won by the enemy, as they certainly had the kill advantage. Soraka would foolishly chase after low health enemies and promptly get herself stunned and killed. However, they were able to get the first tower kill of the game when Alistar came down for a gank and pushed the enemies out of the lane. With no opposition and three champions attacking the tower, it went down in no time. Xin didn't really gank too much, he pretty much just covered for others when they were forced to go back to base.
Mid Game
At that point, I felt like we had a slight advantage and momentum over them. Unfortunately, that all changed very quickly. In response to the tower kill, they bumrushed the three who were walking around its ruins and killed Soraka and Ashe easily. They then pushed the lane with ease and destroyed our bottom turret. Immediately following the kill, a teamfight broke out in the nearby jungle. We didn't stand a chance against Kennen's ultimate and thus we were beaten badly. After that, the action focused on the middle lane. There was a lot of dancing going on for quite a while, with occasional quick advances and retreats just to see if someone would get greedy. Eventually enemy minion waves in other lanes came bearing down on our turrets and so our attention was divided. The enemy team took advantage and engaged us 5 vs 3 at our turret, winning easily. That got them another tower kill. The thing that probably contributed the most to our loss was Soraka going AFK for five or six minutes after she got ganked by their entire team in the bottom lane. I don't really get why she was down there all alone, but I guess thats just what people at this level do. Anyway, the enemy team began parading around, killing towers as the pleased and eventually getting to our inhibitors. Without Soraka, we were unable to challenge them when they went for Baron and so we waited in our base for our ultimate demise. They destroyed our Nexus after brutally killing us in our base at 36 minutes.
Post game scoreboard:
Replay link: Ranked Game #32 - Teemo
What I learned:
- If played correctly, Kennen is a huge force, AOE stun is ridiculously good
- I may be a little too timid sometimes when it comes to finishing people off, I could have had several more kills if I hadn't backed off in some situations
- Vayne is pretty good, though people don't know how to counter her yet
- Going AFK is a pretty dumb response to someone on your team doing something you don't like, especially if you are queuing with someone
- I did not know Xin Zhao could jungle without Smite, interesting
My Score: 3/4/3
My Build: Philosopher's Stone, Mercury's Treads, Malady, Banshee's Veil, Stinger, Amplifying Tome
Summoner's Spells: Exhaust, Flash
Current ranked record: 14-18 (0 leaves)
ELO rating: 1165
Even a dead cat bounces, so I'm bound to get a turnaround one of these days. Thanks for reading, comments and suggestions are always appreciated.
-Chickenmoo
Saturday, May 14, 2011
Ranked Game #31
I played my latest ranked game on Wednesday, after all of the server troubles got cleared up. I got to play a champion that I usually dominate with, so I had high hopes. Unfortunately, I played very poorly and was too stubborn to adapt my build to succeed. This was a solo queue game.
I had the fourth pick for my team, which had first ban:
Shen, Vayne, Vladimir, Nocturne
Draft:
Urgot
Amumu, Malphite
Mordekaiser, Galio
Nunu, Teemo
Malzahar, Udyr
Ashe
I feel like some people get too excited when the "standard" bans don't happen. I mean sure, having two high-quality tanks is great, but you only need one...and it takes away from the ability to win multiple lanes. Other than that, we had a lot of possibilities for jungling, with Nunu taking the role to give us complete control. I liked the amount of initiators we had though, especially compared to them. Plus the combination of Amumu and Nunu's ultimates is always intriguing. I thought their team was kind of oddly composed, but pretty balanced. They had a huge amount of damage potential compared to us, so I suppose it was a good thing we had so much bulk.
Lane Matchups
Top: Teemo vs Mordekaiser
Middle: Ashe vs Malzahar
Bottom: Malphite, Amumu vs Urgot, Galio
Jungle: Nunu vs Udyr
Early Game
This part of the game was pretty even in terms of kills, but it seemed like we took the advantage in regards to map control. First blood happened about 4 minutes into the game when Malphite tower dove Urgot for a kill, dying in the process. The kill count was essentially even down there while laning, each side died a couple times, and the towers were pushed to the extremes most of the time. Ashe did okay in the middle, getting a kill or two with some help on ganks, but dying a couple times to Malzahar's suppression. The top was even as well, though I managed to get a slight kill advantage on Mordekaiser. I was not able to push my lane like the others were though, it was backed up to my tower quite a bit. Nunu ganked a lot, and was usually successful. He knew how to pick his spots very well, which helped our lane control. Udyr didn't do too much, he would come in later than he should have, but still managed to get a kill here and there. Their bottom tower was the first to fall after a gank from Nunu pushed Galio and Urgot way behind the turret, leaving it open for the kill. Their middle turret fell a few minutes later when it was left alone for the taking.
Mid Game
Once laning ended, a lot of the action was focused in the top lane and the nearby jungle. Nunu and I went up there to clear a large minion wave, which was soon followed by a 5-man gank. We tried to shelter ourselves with our tower, but it was no match for their numbers, as we both died pretty quickly. By that time, the rest of our team had showed up, but with no real uniform teamfight strategy everyone targeted a different champion, causing us to lose the teamfight and an awful lot of momentum. This was also the part of the game where I started playing like crap, and Malzahar would ult me on sight, melting my health in seconds. I was too stubborn to build magic resist items until it was too late. The onslaught continued in the middle as they pushed relentlessly, taking our towers down without much resistance. Whenever we did engage them, it would be on their tanks and thus, get us nowhere. They eventually got through a couple inhibitors and finally had to retreat to heal and such, leaving us a small opening. We took Baron by the slimmest of margins (they were bearing down on us as we finished) and retreated to our base. Unfortunately, in our ignorance of our base super minions had destroyed one Nexus turret and the bottom inhibitor had died. They came in to finish us off, with our horrible teamfight strategy gimping us until the very end. Our Nexus was killed at 43 minutes.
Post game scoreboard:
Replay link: Ranked Game #31 - Teemo
What I learned:
- I need to learn to adapt as Teemo, I'm usually too stubborn to stray from my build at all with him. That cost me big time here
- It may just be a one time fluke, but it doesn't seem like Udyr is that great at ganking. If you're smart, you can see him coming from a mile away and just run to safety while you kite him
- Just because the "superior" tanks are available doesn't mean you should pick them. You should pick who you are best with
- This is obvious, but no team coordination is a recipe for disaster. We had great potential with our team composition, but it crashed and burned miserably
My Score: 6/9/9
My Build: Eleisa's Miracle, Ionian Boots of Lucidity, Malady, Nashor's Tooth, Banshee's Veil
Current ranked record: 14-17 (0 leaves)
ELO rating: 1181
The losses are continuing to pile up, but I am not going to quit. My goal is still to get my rating back to 1300 and beyond, things are bound to turn around soon. Thanks for reading.
-Chickenmoo
I had the fourth pick for my team, which had first ban:
Shen, Vayne, Vladimir, Nocturne
Draft:
Urgot
Amumu, Malphite
Mordekaiser, Galio
Nunu, Teemo
Malzahar, Udyr
Ashe
I feel like some people get too excited when the "standard" bans don't happen. I mean sure, having two high-quality tanks is great, but you only need one...and it takes away from the ability to win multiple lanes. Other than that, we had a lot of possibilities for jungling, with Nunu taking the role to give us complete control. I liked the amount of initiators we had though, especially compared to them. Plus the combination of Amumu and Nunu's ultimates is always intriguing. I thought their team was kind of oddly composed, but pretty balanced. They had a huge amount of damage potential compared to us, so I suppose it was a good thing we had so much bulk.
Lane Matchups
Top: Teemo vs Mordekaiser
Middle: Ashe vs Malzahar
Bottom: Malphite, Amumu vs Urgot, Galio
Jungle: Nunu vs Udyr
Early Game
This part of the game was pretty even in terms of kills, but it seemed like we took the advantage in regards to map control. First blood happened about 4 minutes into the game when Malphite tower dove Urgot for a kill, dying in the process. The kill count was essentially even down there while laning, each side died a couple times, and the towers were pushed to the extremes most of the time. Ashe did okay in the middle, getting a kill or two with some help on ganks, but dying a couple times to Malzahar's suppression. The top was even as well, though I managed to get a slight kill advantage on Mordekaiser. I was not able to push my lane like the others were though, it was backed up to my tower quite a bit. Nunu ganked a lot, and was usually successful. He knew how to pick his spots very well, which helped our lane control. Udyr didn't do too much, he would come in later than he should have, but still managed to get a kill here and there. Their bottom tower was the first to fall after a gank from Nunu pushed Galio and Urgot way behind the turret, leaving it open for the kill. Their middle turret fell a few minutes later when it was left alone for the taking.
Mid Game
Once laning ended, a lot of the action was focused in the top lane and the nearby jungle. Nunu and I went up there to clear a large minion wave, which was soon followed by a 5-man gank. We tried to shelter ourselves with our tower, but it was no match for their numbers, as we both died pretty quickly. By that time, the rest of our team had showed up, but with no real uniform teamfight strategy everyone targeted a different champion, causing us to lose the teamfight and an awful lot of momentum. This was also the part of the game where I started playing like crap, and Malzahar would ult me on sight, melting my health in seconds. I was too stubborn to build magic resist items until it was too late. The onslaught continued in the middle as they pushed relentlessly, taking our towers down without much resistance. Whenever we did engage them, it would be on their tanks and thus, get us nowhere. They eventually got through a couple inhibitors and finally had to retreat to heal and such, leaving us a small opening. We took Baron by the slimmest of margins (they were bearing down on us as we finished) and retreated to our base. Unfortunately, in our ignorance of our base super minions had destroyed one Nexus turret and the bottom inhibitor had died. They came in to finish us off, with our horrible teamfight strategy gimping us until the very end. Our Nexus was killed at 43 minutes.
Post game scoreboard:
Replay link: Ranked Game #31 - Teemo
What I learned:
- I need to learn to adapt as Teemo, I'm usually too stubborn to stray from my build at all with him. That cost me big time here
- It may just be a one time fluke, but it doesn't seem like Udyr is that great at ganking. If you're smart, you can see him coming from a mile away and just run to safety while you kite him
- Just because the "superior" tanks are available doesn't mean you should pick them. You should pick who you are best with
- This is obvious, but no team coordination is a recipe for disaster. We had great potential with our team composition, but it crashed and burned miserably
My Score: 6/9/9
My Build: Eleisa's Miracle, Ionian Boots of Lucidity, Malady, Nashor's Tooth, Banshee's Veil
Current ranked record: 14-17 (0 leaves)
ELO rating: 1181
The losses are continuing to pile up, but I am not going to quit. My goal is still to get my rating back to 1300 and beyond, things are bound to turn around soon. Thanks for reading.
-Chickenmoo
Friday, May 13, 2011
Ranked Game #30
As stated in my last post, I played another game on Sunday night. Unfortunately this game was clouded from the word go with a leaver right away. He was our jungler too, putting us at a severe disadvantage. We ended up holding on for quite a long time, and probably dragged it out for way too long. I used a champion I hadn't used in ranked before that I've become more fond of recently, for a change of pace. This was a solo queue game.
I had the fourth pick for my team, which had second ban:
Nocturne, Shen, Amumu, Vladimir
Draft:
Rammus
Warwick, Cho'Gath
Sona, Malzahar
Irelia, Swain
Jarvan IV, Miss Fortune
Rumble
I had the fourth pick for my team, which had second ban:
Nocturne, Shen, Amumu, Vladimir
Draft:
Rammus
Warwick, Cho'Gath
Sona, Malzahar
Irelia, Swain
Jarvan IV, Miss Fortune
Rumble
Tuesday, May 10, 2011
Sorry for the lack of posts
I apologize for my lack of promptness when posting my game summaries lately. I've been home from school since Thursday, and have had other more important things to do to prepare to move into my apartment. Once I get settled in on Tuesday, I'll get the game 29 summary written, along with the entire post for game 30 that I played on Sunday night. Sorry once again for being so slow.
-Chickenmoo
-Chickenmoo
Saturday, May 7, 2011
Ranked Game #29
I'm back at home for a few days to relax before moving into an apartment for the summer, so I'll be playing quite a bit of LoL. I got around to playing my next ranked game last night, where my recent run of bad luck continued. I personally did better than I have the past couple games, but its a little difficult to carry as a support champion. This was a solo queue game.
I had second pick on my team, which had second ban:
Rammus, Karthus, Amumu, Nocturne
Draft:
Shen
Annie, Ezreal
Taric, Teemo
Mordekaiser, Nidalee
Warwick, Vladimir
Garen
I gotta tell you, I was pretty excited to have Shen on our team, being saved from out of nowhere can turn the tide of any battle instantly. Teemo is always a solid champion to have, as is Vladimir if he has a good start. I'm not confident in any junglers at this point, so I won't talk about Warwick. Being able to lock down any champion for 3 or 4 seconds with our combined crowd control was encouraging, especially when compared to theirs. They had almost no crowd control, with Annie having the only hard CC, and a sporadic one at that. To sum it up, I felt our significant advantage in that department would get us a solid victory, as long as we coordinated our attacks well without getting into bad situations.
Lane Matchups
Top: Vladimir vs Ezreal, Nidalee
Middle: Teemo vs Mordekaiser
Bottom: Taric, Shen vs Annie, Garen
Jungle: Warwick vs none
Early Game
Nidalee did a little probing in our jungle before minions even spawned, establishing a bit of a presence there to start out. Once the buff golem spawned, she came in to disrupt Warwick, which apparently threw off his groove entirely. It seemed like he was playing the entire game angry, as he claimed Vladimir had a chance to stop her, but didn't (he hit her, but didn't chase). As a result, he played very poorly, and couldn't get any successful ganks going. The first tower kill actually happened before First Blood did, which was something I had never seen before, and probably won't again for a while. As you may have guessed, our top tower was the first to go down after about 6 minutes of relentless pushing from Ezreal and Nidalee, even with a little help on the defensive side from Warwick. The matchup in the middle was pretty even kill-wise, as neither side could get anything going. My lane was one-sided in regards to pushing, as we were consistently sitting at our tower picking off creeps before they got into range. No kills happened while laning down there. First blood happened a minute or so after our top tower fell, when Vladimir caught Ezreal running away from his tower.
Mid Game
By this time everyone had started kind of roaming around where potential threats presented themselves, though not much came of it for our side. There were a few times where a couple of us would get caught with our pants down, and get annihilated. When full teamfights started happening, they were in the middle of the map. Warwick would go ahead and use his ult whenever he felt like, providing a pretty poor initiation for our team. It would be that, or Vlad running in with a faceroll, only to be blasted with their full team right away. It wasn't entirely their fault though, as we never discussed any real strategy for who to target first, which ended up in each person going after someone different and so we got destroyed. Nothing real exciting or at all notable happened for the rest of the game, we just got beat bad by a better coordinated team. They exploited our poor teamwork and took out towers when they could, eventually triggering our surrender at 33 minutes.
Post game scoreboard:
Replay link: Ranked Game #29 - Taric
What I learned:
- I can't trust anyone but myself at this level of play...I need to start playing champions I can take over a game with, and queuing with friends as well
- Vladimir doesn't seem like a good option to go 1v2, though I don't know who would have been better
- No crowd control does not make a bad team, as long as you can coordinate your attacks incredibly well
- Mordekaiser seems to be difficult for a Teemo to bring down, as he doesn't have that much burst
- I need to learn how to use Clairvoyance better, I find it hard to pick my times and areas to use it on
My Score: 2/3/5
My Build: Doran's Ring, Mercury's Treads, Aegis of the Legion, Negatron Cloak, Sapphire Crystal, Ruby Crystal
Summoner's spells: Clarity, Clairvoyance
Current ranked record: 14-15
ELO Rating: 1227
The games continue to get more and more frustrating, but I shall press on in hopes of getting my rating back up to 1300. I'm going to start trying to carry as often as I can, I'm tired of tanking and supporting mediocre players. I mean obviously I will tank if no one else does, but I'm not going to go for a first pick tank anymore until I move up in rating. As always, comments and suggestions are appreciated, thanks for reading.
-Chickenmoo
I had second pick on my team, which had second ban:
Rammus, Karthus, Amumu, Nocturne
Draft:
Shen
Annie, Ezreal
Taric, Teemo
Mordekaiser, Nidalee
Warwick, Vladimir
Garen
I gotta tell you, I was pretty excited to have Shen on our team, being saved from out of nowhere can turn the tide of any battle instantly. Teemo is always a solid champion to have, as is Vladimir if he has a good start. I'm not confident in any junglers at this point, so I won't talk about Warwick. Being able to lock down any champion for 3 or 4 seconds with our combined crowd control was encouraging, especially when compared to theirs. They had almost no crowd control, with Annie having the only hard CC, and a sporadic one at that. To sum it up, I felt our significant advantage in that department would get us a solid victory, as long as we coordinated our attacks well without getting into bad situations.
Lane Matchups
Top: Vladimir vs Ezreal, Nidalee
Middle: Teemo vs Mordekaiser
Bottom: Taric, Shen vs Annie, Garen
Jungle: Warwick vs none
Early Game
Nidalee did a little probing in our jungle before minions even spawned, establishing a bit of a presence there to start out. Once the buff golem spawned, she came in to disrupt Warwick, which apparently threw off his groove entirely. It seemed like he was playing the entire game angry, as he claimed Vladimir had a chance to stop her, but didn't (he hit her, but didn't chase). As a result, he played very poorly, and couldn't get any successful ganks going. The first tower kill actually happened before First Blood did, which was something I had never seen before, and probably won't again for a while. As you may have guessed, our top tower was the first to go down after about 6 minutes of relentless pushing from Ezreal and Nidalee, even with a little help on the defensive side from Warwick. The matchup in the middle was pretty even kill-wise, as neither side could get anything going. My lane was one-sided in regards to pushing, as we were consistently sitting at our tower picking off creeps before they got into range. No kills happened while laning down there. First blood happened a minute or so after our top tower fell, when Vladimir caught Ezreal running away from his tower.
Mid Game
By this time everyone had started kind of roaming around where potential threats presented themselves, though not much came of it for our side. There were a few times where a couple of us would get caught with our pants down, and get annihilated. When full teamfights started happening, they were in the middle of the map. Warwick would go ahead and use his ult whenever he felt like, providing a pretty poor initiation for our team. It would be that, or Vlad running in with a faceroll, only to be blasted with their full team right away. It wasn't entirely their fault though, as we never discussed any real strategy for who to target first, which ended up in each person going after someone different and so we got destroyed. Nothing real exciting or at all notable happened for the rest of the game, we just got beat bad by a better coordinated team. They exploited our poor teamwork and took out towers when they could, eventually triggering our surrender at 33 minutes.
Post game scoreboard:
Replay link: Ranked Game #29 - Taric
What I learned:
- I can't trust anyone but myself at this level of play...I need to start playing champions I can take over a game with, and queuing with friends as well
- Vladimir doesn't seem like a good option to go 1v2, though I don't know who would have been better
- No crowd control does not make a bad team, as long as you can coordinate your attacks incredibly well
- Mordekaiser seems to be difficult for a Teemo to bring down, as he doesn't have that much burst
- I need to learn how to use Clairvoyance better, I find it hard to pick my times and areas to use it on
My Score: 2/3/5
My Build: Doran's Ring, Mercury's Treads, Aegis of the Legion, Negatron Cloak, Sapphire Crystal, Ruby Crystal
Summoner's spells: Clarity, Clairvoyance
Current ranked record: 14-15
ELO Rating: 1227
The games continue to get more and more frustrating, but I shall press on in hopes of getting my rating back up to 1300. I'm going to start trying to carry as often as I can, I'm tired of tanking and supporting mediocre players. I mean obviously I will tank if no one else does, but I'm not going to go for a first pick tank anymore until I move up in rating. As always, comments and suggestions are appreciated, thanks for reading.
-Chickenmoo
Friday, May 6, 2011
Ranked Game #28
I had some time to kill between studying for exams, so I played my next ranked game. I feel like I need to find someone reliable to duo queue with to prevent losing like this all the time. I mean I do have acquaintances from readers of the blog, but I don't play with them enough to build a good rapport. The friend I usually play with had his computer's graphics card die on him, so he can only play at 5 frames per second, which is obviously far from ideal for any sort of competent gameplay. Anyway, this was a solo queue game.
I was the captain of my team and had first ban:
I feel like that this an ideal team composition at this level of play, it has everything a standard team needs. Having two suppressions is like a dream come true, it can guarantee one kill, or make two incredibly likely. Plus it forces the other team to buy Quicksilver Sashes to counter it, taking an item slot away. I was happy to have Garen, as the majority of the ones I've seen recently have done very well. Their team was somewhat intimidating due to the fact that they were packing three blinks, making their chasing/closing ability amazing. Cho'Gath also tends to be a very underrated tank, his knockup and silence are quite irritating.
Lane Matchups
Top: Malzahar vs Ashe, Katarina
Middle: Caitlyn vs Kassadin
Bottom: Singed, Garen vs Cho'Gath, Xin Zhao
Jungle: Warwick vs none
Early Game
It's not very promising when someone talks the way Malzahar did at the beginning of the game. He seemed pretty overwhelmed by the fact that we wanted him to go top, and he talked kind of strange on top of that. It sounded like he was a little kid, but that's just my opinion. Malzahar just sat at his tower until the enemy got in range, and then he would do something. First blood ended up happening there when Warwick failed at ganking, but stayed in the lane to help push it. He managed to get himself caught by Katarina, with Malzahar dying immediately after. When we told him to go mid, like he wanted in the first place, he refused. Warwick continued with his failed ganks, getting himself killed again in the top later, and then once more in the bottom when he walked in a bush filled with Cho and Xin. Garen got himself killed a couple times in the bottom, but neither side made much progress in regards to towers. Caitlyn did pretty well for herself in the middle, killing Kassadin once and netting the first tower kill of the game. That is where the laning phase broke down.
Mid Game
Our top tower fell pretty quickly when Malzahar decided to leave the top lane without having anyone cover. After that, much of the action was concentrated in the middle of the map at our tower there. The game seemed to move a bit in our favor when we engaged them right after they took a dragon kill and managed to kill two of them while they were retreating. This allowed me to take out the bottom tower uncontested, with the top one going down a couple minutes later. The scale tipped towards their side big time a little while later though, when I made a pretty stupid move. We saw them going for dragon, so we followed and waited in the bushes on our side of the river. I foolishly went on ahead to the small bush in the middle, where their entire team happened to be. Needless to say, we got destroyed and lost three without getting any kills, which lost us two of our middle towers very quickly. While we waited to respawn, they took Baron without trouble.
Late Game
Here is where our team started fighting with ourselves, blaming others for our own failures. We had no plan of action of our targeting order, which came back to bite us several times. Our team engaged in a bad situation near their wraiths where they all targeted Cho'Gath and got their asses handed to them. Most of us managed to escape, only to be confronted at our middle inhibitor tower by their entire team. They took us out pretty easily even with the tower on their side, giving them super minions with the death of our inhibitor and one Nexus turret. By the time they went back to heal and approached our base, we had all respawned. Unafraid, they pushed hard and won the game with a Nexus kill at 39 minutes.
Post game scoreboard:
I was the captain of my team and had first ban:
Nocturne, Shen, Amumu, Rammus
Draft:
Xin Zhao
Singed, Warwick
Kassadin, Cho'Gath
Malzahar, Garen
Katarina, Ashe
Caitlyn
I feel like that this an ideal team composition at this level of play, it has everything a standard team needs. Having two suppressions is like a dream come true, it can guarantee one kill, or make two incredibly likely. Plus it forces the other team to buy Quicksilver Sashes to counter it, taking an item slot away. I was happy to have Garen, as the majority of the ones I've seen recently have done very well. Their team was somewhat intimidating due to the fact that they were packing three blinks, making their chasing/closing ability amazing. Cho'Gath also tends to be a very underrated tank, his knockup and silence are quite irritating.
Lane Matchups
Top: Malzahar vs Ashe, Katarina
Middle: Caitlyn vs Kassadin
Bottom: Singed, Garen vs Cho'Gath, Xin Zhao
Jungle: Warwick vs none
Early Game
It's not very promising when someone talks the way Malzahar did at the beginning of the game. He seemed pretty overwhelmed by the fact that we wanted him to go top, and he talked kind of strange on top of that. It sounded like he was a little kid, but that's just my opinion. Malzahar just sat at his tower until the enemy got in range, and then he would do something. First blood ended up happening there when Warwick failed at ganking, but stayed in the lane to help push it. He managed to get himself caught by Katarina, with Malzahar dying immediately after. When we told him to go mid, like he wanted in the first place, he refused. Warwick continued with his failed ganks, getting himself killed again in the top later, and then once more in the bottom when he walked in a bush filled with Cho and Xin. Garen got himself killed a couple times in the bottom, but neither side made much progress in regards to towers. Caitlyn did pretty well for herself in the middle, killing Kassadin once and netting the first tower kill of the game. That is where the laning phase broke down.
Mid Game
Our top tower fell pretty quickly when Malzahar decided to leave the top lane without having anyone cover. After that, much of the action was concentrated in the middle of the map at our tower there. The game seemed to move a bit in our favor when we engaged them right after they took a dragon kill and managed to kill two of them while they were retreating. This allowed me to take out the bottom tower uncontested, with the top one going down a couple minutes later. The scale tipped towards their side big time a little while later though, when I made a pretty stupid move. We saw them going for dragon, so we followed and waited in the bushes on our side of the river. I foolishly went on ahead to the small bush in the middle, where their entire team happened to be. Needless to say, we got destroyed and lost three without getting any kills, which lost us two of our middle towers very quickly. While we waited to respawn, they took Baron without trouble.
Late Game
Here is where our team started fighting with ourselves, blaming others for our own failures. We had no plan of action of our targeting order, which came back to bite us several times. Our team engaged in a bad situation near their wraiths where they all targeted Cho'Gath and got their asses handed to them. Most of us managed to escape, only to be confronted at our middle inhibitor tower by their entire team. They took us out pretty easily even with the tower on their side, giving them super minions with the death of our inhibitor and one Nexus turret. By the time they went back to heal and approached our base, we had all respawned. Unafraid, they pushed hard and won the game with a Nexus kill at 39 minutes.
Post game scoreboard:
Replay link: Ranked Game #28 - Singed
What I learned:
- Warwick has very little utility outside of jungling and ganking, one who can't do either is a waste of a pick
- Three blinks is indeed quite annoying, makes the enemy very difficult to catch
- Having two strong solos is essential, Malzahar does not seem to be the greatest in a side lane
- Communication is half the battle, as knowing when ganks are coming and where they are coming from makes a huge difference
- I still need to buy more wards, just because I can tell what it means when my teammates are pinging doesn't mean my lanemate does.
My Score: 0/5/5
My Build: Rod of Ages, Boots of Swiftness, Force of Nature
Summoner's spells: Ghost, Flash
Current ranked record: 14-14 (0 leaves)
ELO Rating: 1251
Two games in a row with zero kills is kind of depressing...and sad. I'm not letting that happen in my next game, I need to keep my record over .500. I may consider using Jarvan in my next game, as I've been playing him more lately and he's pretty fun. Thanks for reading, comments and suggestions are welcome!
-Chickenmoo
What I learned:
- Warwick has very little utility outside of jungling and ganking, one who can't do either is a waste of a pick
- Three blinks is indeed quite annoying, makes the enemy very difficult to catch
- Having two strong solos is essential, Malzahar does not seem to be the greatest in a side lane
- Communication is half the battle, as knowing when ganks are coming and where they are coming from makes a huge difference
- I still need to buy more wards, just because I can tell what it means when my teammates are pinging doesn't mean my lanemate does.
My Score: 0/5/5
My Build: Rod of Ages, Boots of Swiftness, Force of Nature
Summoner's spells: Ghost, Flash
Current ranked record: 14-14 (0 leaves)
ELO Rating: 1251
Two games in a row with zero kills is kind of depressing...and sad. I'm not letting that happen in my next game, I need to keep my record over .500. I may consider using Jarvan in my next game, as I've been playing him more lately and he's pretty fun. Thanks for reading, comments and suggestions are welcome!
-Chickenmoo
Tuesday, May 3, 2011
Ranked Game #27
One of my friends that I play LoL with often tends to get angry when he sees another player use one of his favorite champions badly. I never really understood why he did this until this game. It was so frustrating to watch a champion I usually dominate with do so badly, especially with a favorable matchup. This was a solo queue game.
I had the third pick for my team, and we had first ban:
Amumu, Nocturne, Zilean, Shen
Draft:
Rammus
Sion, Teemo
Nidalee, Akali
Taric, Mordekaiser
Caitlyn, Singed
Trundle
I thought this team was going to be great. Huge map presence with mushrooms, a pair of long stuns and the most annoying tank out there. I was also excited to play Taric, as I normally do very well with him. The potential for a double stun lane was also something to look forward to. Unfortunately they happened to have two great tanks, one of which is a great jungler. The rest of the team was pretty darn squishy though, along with easily being countered with focused fire. Given that, I felt like we had the advantage going into the loading screen.
Lane Matchups
Top: Mordekaiser vs Nidalee
Middle: Teemo vs Akali
Bottom: Sion, Taric vs Singed, Caitlyn
Jungle: Trundle vs Rammus
Early Game
The laning phase went the complete opposite way that I thought it would. First blood didn't happen until about 5 minutes into the game, when Akali bursted down Teemo when he stayed in at too low of a health. This happened many more times during the laning phase, it was horrible. It made me pretty angry that he couldn't handle a melee champion as Teemo, who has a long blind. He also never adapted to her by changing his approach, making me even madder. He even tried switching lanes at one point, but Akali followed him and continued to destroy him. Nidalee and Mordekaiser were pretty even up top, trading kills a couple times. We didn't end up dominating with a double stun lane like we originally thought. Getting up close was too risky with Singed flinging and poisoning all over the place combined with Caitlyn's heavy long range damage. So we only managed to get one kill with our stuns when Singed dove us. Trundle hardly ganked, even though our lane was pushed the ENTIRE time. The other lanes did need more help than we did though...not that he did a lot. Rammus came around every once in a while to pull someone out of position with his taunt, netting kills a couple times. Our bottom tower was the first to fall when I left to go shop when I shouldn't have, leaving Sion to hold the tower on his own.
Mid Game
Laning pretty much ended at that point, and all of the action was focused in the middle from that point on. They pretty much had their way with us the whole time. There were a few instances where we tried to stage offensive attacks, like in their jungle to gank, but it just ended horribly with more than half of our team dying. Teemo continued to be pretty useless and didn't buy any armor or magic resist, and Mordekaiser wasn't able to build up gold to get any either. Sion did ok for himself by getting a few kills when the enemy tower dove, but it obviously wasn't enough to make a significant impact. After a lot of futile fighting at our inner middle tower, we surrendered at 25 minutes.
Post game scoreboard:
Replay link: Ranked Game #27 - Taric
What I learned:
- Akali is pretty good at taking advantage of bad players...it was embarrassing
- Double stun lane is obviously pretty good, but it can clearly be countered
- Being able to adapt to the situation at hand is crucial to stopping an enemy steamroll...but some people are too stubborn to do so
- Junglers need to a have a presence in each lane to prevent them from being pushed, otherwise they can push without fear
My Score: 0/3/4
My Build: Aegis of the Legion, Mercury's Treads
Summoner's Spells: Clarity, Ghost
Current ranked record: 14-13 (0 leaves)
ELO Rating: 1273
I was excited to play Taric...only for a huge letdown. There's nowhere to go but up from here, this was just plain awful. I will play my next ranked game tomorrow night sometime. Thanks for reading.
-Chickenmoo
I had the third pick for my team, and we had first ban:
Amumu, Nocturne, Zilean, Shen
Draft:
Rammus
Sion, Teemo
Nidalee, Akali
Taric, Mordekaiser
Caitlyn, Singed
Trundle
I thought this team was going to be great. Huge map presence with mushrooms, a pair of long stuns and the most annoying tank out there. I was also excited to play Taric, as I normally do very well with him. The potential for a double stun lane was also something to look forward to. Unfortunately they happened to have two great tanks, one of which is a great jungler. The rest of the team was pretty darn squishy though, along with easily being countered with focused fire. Given that, I felt like we had the advantage going into the loading screen.
Lane Matchups
Top: Mordekaiser vs Nidalee
Middle: Teemo vs Akali
Bottom: Sion, Taric vs Singed, Caitlyn
Jungle: Trundle vs Rammus
Early Game
The laning phase went the complete opposite way that I thought it would. First blood didn't happen until about 5 minutes into the game, when Akali bursted down Teemo when he stayed in at too low of a health. This happened many more times during the laning phase, it was horrible. It made me pretty angry that he couldn't handle a melee champion as Teemo, who has a long blind. He also never adapted to her by changing his approach, making me even madder. He even tried switching lanes at one point, but Akali followed him and continued to destroy him. Nidalee and Mordekaiser were pretty even up top, trading kills a couple times. We didn't end up dominating with a double stun lane like we originally thought. Getting up close was too risky with Singed flinging and poisoning all over the place combined with Caitlyn's heavy long range damage. So we only managed to get one kill with our stuns when Singed dove us. Trundle hardly ganked, even though our lane was pushed the ENTIRE time. The other lanes did need more help than we did though...not that he did a lot. Rammus came around every once in a while to pull someone out of position with his taunt, netting kills a couple times. Our bottom tower was the first to fall when I left to go shop when I shouldn't have, leaving Sion to hold the tower on his own.
Mid Game
Laning pretty much ended at that point, and all of the action was focused in the middle from that point on. They pretty much had their way with us the whole time. There were a few instances where we tried to stage offensive attacks, like in their jungle to gank, but it just ended horribly with more than half of our team dying. Teemo continued to be pretty useless and didn't buy any armor or magic resist, and Mordekaiser wasn't able to build up gold to get any either. Sion did ok for himself by getting a few kills when the enemy tower dove, but it obviously wasn't enough to make a significant impact. After a lot of futile fighting at our inner middle tower, we surrendered at 25 minutes.
Post game scoreboard:
Replay link: Ranked Game #27 - Taric
What I learned:
- Akali is pretty good at taking advantage of bad players...it was embarrassing
- Double stun lane is obviously pretty good, but it can clearly be countered
- Being able to adapt to the situation at hand is crucial to stopping an enemy steamroll...but some people are too stubborn to do so
- Junglers need to a have a presence in each lane to prevent them from being pushed, otherwise they can push without fear
My Score: 0/3/4
My Build: Aegis of the Legion, Mercury's Treads
Summoner's Spells: Clarity, Ghost
Current ranked record: 14-13 (0 leaves)
ELO Rating: 1273
I was excited to play Taric...only for a huge letdown. There's nowhere to go but up from here, this was just plain awful. I will play my next ranked game tomorrow night sometime. Thanks for reading.
-Chickenmoo
Monday, May 2, 2011
Ranked Game #26
I gotta start studying for exams today, as it is finals week for me. I got a game in before I hit the books, and it was a good one. I ended up jungling with a champ I had never jungled with in a real game before, so it was bound to be interesting. This was a solo queue game.
I was the captain of my team and had first ban:
Nocturne, Shen, Malphite, Rammus
Draft:
Brand
Amumu, Morgana
Warwick, Dr. Mundo
Tryndamere, Caitlyn
Janna, Xin Zhao
Kassadin
Our team was interesting in terms of composition. We had two AD carries and two AP carries, with me being the only real bulk on the team. It certainly isn't a recipe for disaster, but also not ideal in my mind. Having a Tryndamere also makes me kind of nervous due to the usually horrible early game that they have. Given that though, we had a large amount of damage output, allowing us to easily counter their moderately tanky team. They had no real dedicated source of AD, just a bunch of crowd control and AP damage. The amount of crowd control they had was pretty significant compared to ours though, a suppression and two knock-ups is pretty scary.
Lane Matchups
Top: Tryndamere vs Dr. Mundo
Middle: Kassadin, Caitlyn (yep) vs Brand
Bottom: Morgana vs Janna, Xin Zhao
Jungle: Amumu vs Warwick
Early Game
So yeah, we had two people go in the middle lane. They were both too stubborn to leave, so they just went for it. First blood happened about three minutes into the game when Brand roasted Tryndamere in the top lane. Tryndamere complained almost the entire laning phase about how "OP" Brand is. Soon after that Brand switched to the middle lane. As a result of overloading the middle, their tower ended up getting destroyed at around 6 minutes, which helped us get a bit of momentum and map control early. People started roaming around at that point. The bottom lane got a bit of help, but then the enemy team overloaded it and managed to get their first tower kill a few minutes later. After this, a lot of the action happened in the top lane where each team was trying to take the first tower up there. It was a lot of small teamfighting where we ended up falling behind in kills a bit, as Kassadin and Tryndamere would get themselves killed in easily avoidable situations.
Mid Game
Fortunately, Tryndamere hit his "critical mass" once he got a Phantom Dancer and we started taking back the momentum. An important teamfight happened in the bottom lane where we danced around dragon for a while, and then stepped into the lane to stop a push. We ended up acing them by targeting them in the ideal order of Warwick, Brand, Janna to eliminate as much damage as possible early. With the ace, we took down their outer bottom tower, and half of the inner one. Another great successful teamfight got us the next middle tower, thanks to the incredible presence of Morgana's ult to ruin entire teams. There was a bit of a lull in the action at this point, involving a lot of warding and counter-warding of Baron to try and get an advantage. Eventually another teamfight broke out in mid, where we were able to ace them by picking them off one by one with our AOE snares. This got us their middle inhibitor tower and inhibitor, but we unfortunately got aced in our retreat thanks to Mundo's cleavers. Their kills were spread far enough apart so that they really couldn't do anything with the down time.
Late Game
We launched another offensive on their base, gradually taking down their side lane towers. Upon getting to the base, we managed to secure another ace, getting us another inhibitor and one Nexus tower. We were pretty poor at retreating once again though, as all but one of us died while running away. They took that opportunity to get Baron buff without real contention, forcing us to defend for a while. Upon waiting it out, we made a push bottom and took out all three inhibitors at once. Given that they then had three lanes of super minions to worry about, we took Baron down once he respawned. This allowed us to make the killing blow by taking out the Nexus at 52 minutes.
Post game scoreboard:
Replay link: Ranked Game #26 - Amumu
What I learned:
- Tryndamere isn't the greatest solo laner...but he is also the best at recovering from a bad laning phase to dominate
- Some people are too stubborn for their own good, but it helped us mount an early lead
- Warding may be the most important thing that a jungler does early on
- Kassadin needs to farm to operate at his full potential, as in he needs to be able buy a mana pool
- Dr. Mundo is incredibly irritating when chasing someone
My Score: 5/8/22
My Build: Aegis of the Legion, Mercury's Treads, Banshee's Veil, Sunfire Cape, Null-Magic Mantle (and 7 or 8 wards)
Summoner Spells: Smite, Flash
Current ranked record: 14-12 (0 leaves)
ELO Rating: 1294
So my first real jungling venture with Amumu was successful, and this was a really uplifting game compared to the last few. My next game will come either today or tomorrow. Thanks for reading, comments and suggestions are always welcome.
-Chickenmoo
I was the captain of my team and had first ban:
Nocturne, Shen, Malphite, Rammus
Draft:
Brand
Amumu, Morgana
Warwick, Dr. Mundo
Tryndamere, Caitlyn
Janna, Xin Zhao
Kassadin
Our team was interesting in terms of composition. We had two AD carries and two AP carries, with me being the only real bulk on the team. It certainly isn't a recipe for disaster, but also not ideal in my mind. Having a Tryndamere also makes me kind of nervous due to the usually horrible early game that they have. Given that though, we had a large amount of damage output, allowing us to easily counter their moderately tanky team. They had no real dedicated source of AD, just a bunch of crowd control and AP damage. The amount of crowd control they had was pretty significant compared to ours though, a suppression and two knock-ups is pretty scary.
Lane Matchups
Top: Tryndamere vs Dr. Mundo
Middle: Kassadin, Caitlyn (yep) vs Brand
Bottom: Morgana vs Janna, Xin Zhao
Jungle: Amumu vs Warwick
Early Game
So yeah, we had two people go in the middle lane. They were both too stubborn to leave, so they just went for it. First blood happened about three minutes into the game when Brand roasted Tryndamere in the top lane. Tryndamere complained almost the entire laning phase about how "OP" Brand is. Soon after that Brand switched to the middle lane. As a result of overloading the middle, their tower ended up getting destroyed at around 6 minutes, which helped us get a bit of momentum and map control early. People started roaming around at that point. The bottom lane got a bit of help, but then the enemy team overloaded it and managed to get their first tower kill a few minutes later. After this, a lot of the action happened in the top lane where each team was trying to take the first tower up there. It was a lot of small teamfighting where we ended up falling behind in kills a bit, as Kassadin and Tryndamere would get themselves killed in easily avoidable situations.
Mid Game
Fortunately, Tryndamere hit his "critical mass" once he got a Phantom Dancer and we started taking back the momentum. An important teamfight happened in the bottom lane where we danced around dragon for a while, and then stepped into the lane to stop a push. We ended up acing them by targeting them in the ideal order of Warwick, Brand, Janna to eliminate as much damage as possible early. With the ace, we took down their outer bottom tower, and half of the inner one. Another great successful teamfight got us the next middle tower, thanks to the incredible presence of Morgana's ult to ruin entire teams. There was a bit of a lull in the action at this point, involving a lot of warding and counter-warding of Baron to try and get an advantage. Eventually another teamfight broke out in mid, where we were able to ace them by picking them off one by one with our AOE snares. This got us their middle inhibitor tower and inhibitor, but we unfortunately got aced in our retreat thanks to Mundo's cleavers. Their kills were spread far enough apart so that they really couldn't do anything with the down time.
Late Game
We launched another offensive on their base, gradually taking down their side lane towers. Upon getting to the base, we managed to secure another ace, getting us another inhibitor and one Nexus tower. We were pretty poor at retreating once again though, as all but one of us died while running away. They took that opportunity to get Baron buff without real contention, forcing us to defend for a while. Upon waiting it out, we made a push bottom and took out all three inhibitors at once. Given that they then had three lanes of super minions to worry about, we took Baron down once he respawned. This allowed us to make the killing blow by taking out the Nexus at 52 minutes.
Post game scoreboard:
Replay link: Ranked Game #26 - Amumu
What I learned:
- Tryndamere isn't the greatest solo laner...but he is also the best at recovering from a bad laning phase to dominate
- Some people are too stubborn for their own good, but it helped us mount an early lead
- Warding may be the most important thing that a jungler does early on
- Kassadin needs to farm to operate at his full potential, as in he needs to be able buy a mana pool
- Dr. Mundo is incredibly irritating when chasing someone
My Score: 5/8/22
My Build: Aegis of the Legion, Mercury's Treads, Banshee's Veil, Sunfire Cape, Null-Magic Mantle (and 7 or 8 wards)
Summoner Spells: Smite, Flash
Current ranked record: 14-12 (0 leaves)
ELO Rating: 1294
So my first real jungling venture with Amumu was successful, and this was a really uplifting game compared to the last few. My next game will come either today or tomorrow. Thanks for reading, comments and suggestions are always welcome.
-Chickenmoo
Saturday, April 30, 2011
25 Game Summary/Overview
I felt like 25 was a good number to stop and look back on, so I am writing another summary for all of my games so far. The review will consist of a count of all the bans I've seen, all the draft picks I've seen, along with some miscellaneous stats and my general thoughts on the "metagame" at the ELO I've been hanging around.
Summary of Games
Summary of Games
Game 1: Win as Urgot (30 minutes)
Game 2: Loss as Urgot (1 hour)
Game 3: Win as Singed (46 minutes)
Game 4: Win as Amumu (30 minutes)
Game 5: Win as Urgot (42 minutes)
Game 6: Loss as Singed (38 minutes)
Game 7: Loss as Urgot (48 minutes)
Game 8: Loss as Amumu (25 minutes)
Game 9: Win as Taric (47 minutes)
Game 10: Loss as Urgot (24 minutes)
Game 11: Win as Singed (30 minutes)
Game 12: Win as Singed (39 minutes)
Game 13: Win as Teemo (47 minutes)
Game 14: Win as Singed (49 minutes)
Game 15: Loss as Maokai (38 minutes)
Game 16: Win as Teemo (47 minutes)
Game 17: Loss as Urgot (35 minutes)
Game 18: Loss as Amumu (37 minutes)
Game 19: Loss as Nunu (39 minutes)
Game 20: Win as Corki (40 minutes)
Game 21: Win as Singed (25 minutes)
Game 22: Loss as Urgot (28 minutes)
Game 23: Win as Singed (39 minutes)
Game 24: Loss as Urgot (34 minutes)
Game 25: Loss as Nunu (46 minutes)
This leaves me at a 13-12 record and an ELO of 1271, which is nearly 100 points higher than when I last did an overview
Champions Banned
21 times: Shen, Rammus
19 times: Amumu
16 times: Nocturne
10 times: Malphite
2 times: Vladimir, Zilean
1 time: Brand, Evelynn, Karthus, Maokai, Master Yi, Pantheon, Teemo, Tryndamere
It is clear that Nocturne has become more prevalent as a ban in this metagame, which is understandable as he can be difficult to counter without coordination. The best tanks still reign supreme though, with Shen, Rammus and Amumu taking the top spots, and Malphite following a bit behind them. An interesting absence is that of Singed, who is seen at the next best tank and quite an annoyance with his ability to move enemy champs.
Champions seen (including myself)
12 times: Ashe
11 times: Singed
9 times: Irelia, Urgot, Warwick
8 times: Nidalee, Teemo
7 times: Jax
6 times: Amumu, Cho'Gath, Malzahar, Mordekaiser, Nasus, Nunu, Xin Zhao
5 times: Alistar, Dr. Mundo, Twisted Fate,
4 times: Akali, Annie, Blitzcrank, Garen, Jarvan IV, Katarina, Kennen, Malphite, Maokai, Rammus, Renekton, Taric
3 times: Fiddlesticks, Gangplank, Leblanc, Lux, Miss Fortune, Nocturne, Ryze, Shaco, Tryndamere, Vladimir
2 times: Caitlyn, Corki, Evelynn, Kassadin, Kog'Maw, Lee Sin, Master Yi, Poppy, Shen, Sivir, Soraka, Tristana, Trundle, Zilean
1 time: Anivia, Cassiopeia, Ezreal, Galio, Heimerdinger, Janna, Karthus, Morgana, Olaf, Pantheon, Rumble, Sion, Sona, Udyr
I'm not surprised by Ashe taking the top spot here, as she is commonly known as the best AD carry out there. Having Jax so high up is kind of interesting, seeing as he isn't a "top-tier" champion. Though he is one of the best steamrollers, which tend to dominate at this level of play. The biggest thing I noticed though, was the lack of support champions being played. They don't seem nearly as important here as they do in high ELO play.
Overall KDA
114/142/251
Ratio (kills+assists/deaths): 2.57:1
This number is lower than what I had in my last summary, showing that I need to improve when carrying.
Other stats
24 turrets destroyed
2,570 minions killed
236,709 gold earned
General Metagame Thoughts
It seems that at this level of play it only takes one dominant player to win a game. When one champion gets on a roll, the other team starts trying really hard to end that roll, getting themselves killed in the process more often than not, fueling the steamroll even more. It is much more of a pubstomping game dominated by one or two people, instead of a balanced team game where everyone has an impact on the outcome. The tunnel vision of most players at this ELO is what determines who wins.
The idea of support and roaming champions is not very prevalent, but they do tend to make a positive impact when they are involved. The lanes that have healers tend to do very well, especially with Nidalee and Taric. Those champions will almost always win their lanes due to their ability to sustain without having to go back to base.
My last thought is about junglers. A team with a good jungler obviously can win the majority of the time, regardless of playing level. However, at the ELO I'm at, laners are less cautious when it comes to pushing lanes and leaving themselves exposed, making having a good jungler more important. A dominant jungler will seem to be omnipresent in the lanes, ganking when opportunities present themselves and helping secure global gold for their team.
Well, there you have it, a summary of my first 25 ranked games along with a few brief thoughts on the metagame at my ranking. If you readers have any questions or comments, or would like me to talk about a certain topic, let me know in the comments section below. As always, thanks for reading!
-Chickenmoo
Game 14: Win as Singed (49 minutes)
Game 15: Loss as Maokai (38 minutes)
Game 16: Win as Teemo (47 minutes)
Game 17: Loss as Urgot (35 minutes)
Game 18: Loss as Amumu (37 minutes)
Game 19: Loss as Nunu (39 minutes)
Game 20: Win as Corki (40 minutes)
Game 21: Win as Singed (25 minutes)
Game 22: Loss as Urgot (28 minutes)
Game 23: Win as Singed (39 minutes)
Game 24: Loss as Urgot (34 minutes)
Game 25: Loss as Nunu (46 minutes)
This leaves me at a 13-12 record and an ELO of 1271, which is nearly 100 points higher than when I last did an overview
Champions Banned
21 times: Shen, Rammus
19 times: Amumu
16 times: Nocturne
10 times: Malphite
2 times: Vladimir, Zilean
1 time: Brand, Evelynn, Karthus, Maokai, Master Yi, Pantheon, Teemo, Tryndamere
It is clear that Nocturne has become more prevalent as a ban in this metagame, which is understandable as he can be difficult to counter without coordination. The best tanks still reign supreme though, with Shen, Rammus and Amumu taking the top spots, and Malphite following a bit behind them. An interesting absence is that of Singed, who is seen at the next best tank and quite an annoyance with his ability to move enemy champs.
Champions seen (including myself)
12 times: Ashe
11 times: Singed
9 times: Irelia, Urgot, Warwick
8 times: Nidalee, Teemo
7 times: Jax
6 times: Amumu, Cho'Gath, Malzahar, Mordekaiser, Nasus, Nunu, Xin Zhao
5 times: Alistar, Dr. Mundo, Twisted Fate,
4 times: Akali, Annie, Blitzcrank, Garen, Jarvan IV, Katarina, Kennen, Malphite, Maokai, Rammus, Renekton, Taric
3 times: Fiddlesticks, Gangplank, Leblanc, Lux, Miss Fortune, Nocturne, Ryze, Shaco, Tryndamere, Vladimir
2 times: Caitlyn, Corki, Evelynn, Kassadin, Kog'Maw, Lee Sin, Master Yi, Poppy, Shen, Sivir, Soraka, Tristana, Trundle, Zilean
1 time: Anivia, Cassiopeia, Ezreal, Galio, Heimerdinger, Janna, Karthus, Morgana, Olaf, Pantheon, Rumble, Sion, Sona, Udyr
I'm not surprised by Ashe taking the top spot here, as she is commonly known as the best AD carry out there. Having Jax so high up is kind of interesting, seeing as he isn't a "top-tier" champion. Though he is one of the best steamrollers, which tend to dominate at this level of play. The biggest thing I noticed though, was the lack of support champions being played. They don't seem nearly as important here as they do in high ELO play.
Overall KDA
114/142/251
Ratio (kills+assists/deaths): 2.57:1
This number is lower than what I had in my last summary, showing that I need to improve when carrying.
Other stats
24 turrets destroyed
2,570 minions killed
236,709 gold earned
General Metagame Thoughts
It seems that at this level of play it only takes one dominant player to win a game. When one champion gets on a roll, the other team starts trying really hard to end that roll, getting themselves killed in the process more often than not, fueling the steamroll even more. It is much more of a pubstomping game dominated by one or two people, instead of a balanced team game where everyone has an impact on the outcome. The tunnel vision of most players at this ELO is what determines who wins.
The idea of support and roaming champions is not very prevalent, but they do tend to make a positive impact when they are involved. The lanes that have healers tend to do very well, especially with Nidalee and Taric. Those champions will almost always win their lanes due to their ability to sustain without having to go back to base.
My last thought is about junglers. A team with a good jungler obviously can win the majority of the time, regardless of playing level. However, at the ELO I'm at, laners are less cautious when it comes to pushing lanes and leaving themselves exposed, making having a good jungler more important. A dominant jungler will seem to be omnipresent in the lanes, ganking when opportunities present themselves and helping secure global gold for their team.
Well, there you have it, a summary of my first 25 ranked games along with a few brief thoughts on the metagame at my ranking. If you readers have any questions or comments, or would like me to talk about a certain topic, let me know in the comments section below. As always, thanks for reading!
-Chickenmoo
Friday, April 29, 2011
Ranked Game #25
With no class again today, I played a ranked game this afternoon. It was a fantastic example of why I don't jungle, it was pathetic and I felt useless. This was a solo queue game.
I had the third pick for my team, and we had first ban:
Amumu, Nocturne, Shen, Rammus
Draft:
Ashe
Alistar, Renekton
Rumble, Zilean
Nunu, Anivia
Jarvan IV, Annie
Kog'Maw
I thought we had a pretty decent team here, Renekton is always nice to have with his pursuit ability and teamfight goodness, while Anivia has the potential to be devastating if she gets on a roll. I wish we had a different AD carry though...Kog'Maws seem to do well only on rare occasions. I wasn't really planning on jungling in this game (though I guess I never am), but I took on the role out of necessity. Their composition was pretty good, even though it was pretty heavy in the AP department. Jarvan can tank, but then he tends to be ignorable in terms of damage, leaving Ashe as the only real AD champ on the team. I was also excited to see Rumble on their team
Lane Matchups
Top: Renekton vs Ashe
Middle: Kog'Maw vs Annie
Bottom: Alistar, Anivia vs Rumble, Zilean
Jungle: Nunu vs Jarvan IV
Early Game
The game got started with quite a bang when the other team went for a 5-man gank of me at my blue buff right away. Zilean had me scoped out with his Clairvoyance, and I foolishly went snooping around for them. They caught me and Annie ended up getting the kill for First Blood. Due to that, I had to start my jungling elsewhere, hampering me experience-wise for a while. I didn't get many ganking opportunities, as my team pushed just a bit too much in their lanes and so I died often when I tried. As for Jarvan, he ganked a lot with his flag-pull combo, racking up quite a few assists in the process. Top lane was an even match, no kills went back and forth and the lane never got pushed enough to matter in any direction. The middle lane ended up being a win for us, as Annie went down to the bottom lane to gank quite a few times, giving Kog'Maw openings to wear down the turret. He died a few times to her in the lane though. The first turret kill came in the bottom lane for our side, as Alistar and Anivia did pretty well. There weren't a lot of kills, but they made them count. The tower fell when a teamfight broke out in the middle, and a large minion wave dealt the final blows. Their middle turret was taken down soon afterwards.
Mid Game
While laning had mostly broken down at this point, pretty much everyone took a turn manning the top lane while the rest put down roaming offenses in the other lanes. The majority of the battles took place in the middle of the map and near dragon. By now I felt we were in pretty good shape. I mean, we were behind in the kill count, but we were ahead in towers and they couldn't seem to adequately defend them all at once. Our team laned pretty well, but unfortunately we did not discuss a strategy for teamfights, and it came back to bite us in the ass big time. We would never target the same champion, resulting in our quick deaths in the big cluster, and then getting kited by Ashe when we tried to run. One battle near dragon got us running far enough away that they were able to get their first tower kill in the middle. We were able to retaliate with a small offensive attack in the bottom lane to get their inner tower, but that was the last positive event for us in this game.
Late Game
The sequence that lost us the game started as a 4-man gank in the middle where we destroyed Zilean, but the rest of them ran away. We proceeded to go after their inner middle tower, when they came back at us and mauled us with no mercy (we were probably too focused on the turret to react). As a result, four of us died, and they were able to get a free Baron kill. We played defensively from here on out, as our loss was inevitable (though I was stubborn). They gradually wore down turrets from all sides with their superior firepower and made it to our base with only a casualty every once in a while. For their game winning push, they aced us in our last-ditch effort, and took out our Nexus at 48 minutes.
Post game scoreboard:
Replay link: Ranked Game #25 - Nunu
What I learned:
- I need to find a new jungler. I have plenty possible ones and have tried them out, but I need to buy armor runes to make it all the way
- Renekton is pretty monstrous in teamfights with his ultimate, he turns into a whirling dervish of damage
- Ashe is so good at kiting, it's absolutely ridiculous
- Philosopher's stones on a caster with no health? Very dumb idea
- Zilean is very good with his saves, I don't know why he isn't played more often
My Score: 0/8/5
My Build: Mercury's Treads, Doran's Ring, Aegis of the Legion, Abyssal Scepter
Current ranked record: 13-12 (0 leaves)
ELO Rating: 1271
The 25 game overview will be coming soon. If there's anything specific you readers would like to see, let me know in the comment section below. Thanks for reading.
-Chickenmoo
I had the third pick for my team, and we had first ban:
Amumu, Nocturne, Shen, Rammus
Draft:
Ashe
Alistar, Renekton
Rumble, Zilean
Nunu, Anivia
Jarvan IV, Annie
Kog'Maw
I thought we had a pretty decent team here, Renekton is always nice to have with his pursuit ability and teamfight goodness, while Anivia has the potential to be devastating if she gets on a roll. I wish we had a different AD carry though...Kog'Maws seem to do well only on rare occasions. I wasn't really planning on jungling in this game (though I guess I never am), but I took on the role out of necessity. Their composition was pretty good, even though it was pretty heavy in the AP department. Jarvan can tank, but then he tends to be ignorable in terms of damage, leaving Ashe as the only real AD champ on the team. I was also excited to see Rumble on their team
Lane Matchups
Top: Renekton vs Ashe
Middle: Kog'Maw vs Annie
Bottom: Alistar, Anivia vs Rumble, Zilean
Jungle: Nunu vs Jarvan IV
Early Game
The game got started with quite a bang when the other team went for a 5-man gank of me at my blue buff right away. Zilean had me scoped out with his Clairvoyance, and I foolishly went snooping around for them. They caught me and Annie ended up getting the kill for First Blood. Due to that, I had to start my jungling elsewhere, hampering me experience-wise for a while. I didn't get many ganking opportunities, as my team pushed just a bit too much in their lanes and so I died often when I tried. As for Jarvan, he ganked a lot with his flag-pull combo, racking up quite a few assists in the process. Top lane was an even match, no kills went back and forth and the lane never got pushed enough to matter in any direction. The middle lane ended up being a win for us, as Annie went down to the bottom lane to gank quite a few times, giving Kog'Maw openings to wear down the turret. He died a few times to her in the lane though. The first turret kill came in the bottom lane for our side, as Alistar and Anivia did pretty well. There weren't a lot of kills, but they made them count. The tower fell when a teamfight broke out in the middle, and a large minion wave dealt the final blows. Their middle turret was taken down soon afterwards.
Mid Game
While laning had mostly broken down at this point, pretty much everyone took a turn manning the top lane while the rest put down roaming offenses in the other lanes. The majority of the battles took place in the middle of the map and near dragon. By now I felt we were in pretty good shape. I mean, we were behind in the kill count, but we were ahead in towers and they couldn't seem to adequately defend them all at once. Our team laned pretty well, but unfortunately we did not discuss a strategy for teamfights, and it came back to bite us in the ass big time. We would never target the same champion, resulting in our quick deaths in the big cluster, and then getting kited by Ashe when we tried to run. One battle near dragon got us running far enough away that they were able to get their first tower kill in the middle. We were able to retaliate with a small offensive attack in the bottom lane to get their inner tower, but that was the last positive event for us in this game.
Late Game
The sequence that lost us the game started as a 4-man gank in the middle where we destroyed Zilean, but the rest of them ran away. We proceeded to go after their inner middle tower, when they came back at us and mauled us with no mercy (we were probably too focused on the turret to react). As a result, four of us died, and they were able to get a free Baron kill. We played defensively from here on out, as our loss was inevitable (though I was stubborn). They gradually wore down turrets from all sides with their superior firepower and made it to our base with only a casualty every once in a while. For their game winning push, they aced us in our last-ditch effort, and took out our Nexus at 48 minutes.
Post game scoreboard:
Replay link: Ranked Game #25 - Nunu
What I learned:
- I need to find a new jungler. I have plenty possible ones and have tried them out, but I need to buy armor runes to make it all the way
- Renekton is pretty monstrous in teamfights with his ultimate, he turns into a whirling dervish of damage
- Ashe is so good at kiting, it's absolutely ridiculous
- Philosopher's stones on a caster with no health? Very dumb idea
- Zilean is very good with his saves, I don't know why he isn't played more often
My Score: 0/8/5
My Build: Mercury's Treads, Doran's Ring, Aegis of the Legion, Abyssal Scepter
Current ranked record: 13-12 (0 leaves)
ELO Rating: 1271
The 25 game overview will be coming soon. If there's anything specific you readers would like to see, let me know in the comment section below. Thanks for reading.
-Chickenmoo
Wednesday, April 27, 2011
Ranked Game #24
I was feeling good from my last game and I had some free time, so I decided to play another ranked game right afterwards. Unfortunately, it didn't turn out so good. I probably made a mistake in my champion selection, which I regretted immediately after making it. This was a solo queue game.
I had the last pick for my team, and we had second ban:
Amumu, Nocturne, Zilean, Malphite
Draft:
Shen
Evelynn, Rammus
Trundle, Leblanc
Teemo, Mordekaiser
Twisted Fate, Urgot
Ashe
What I learned:
- Junglers need to gank to be at all worthwhile, end of story
- Warding the key entry points into a lane via the jungle is crucial, especially when there is a Rammus in play
- Vision wards counter Evelynn hard, too bad we didn't buy any
- Cottontail Teemo is too damn cute
- Trolls are obnoxious...along with people who rip into others about quality of play when they aren't contributing much themselves
My Score: 2/6/4
My Build: Manamune, Mercury's Treads, Aegis of the Legion
Current ranked record: 13-11 (0 leaves)
ELO rating: 1292
It seems like every game that I have lost in the past couple weeks, we get absolutely destroyed and take out no towers. I never lose close games, just huge blowouts. It's pretty frustrating that it's always like that, I'd be happier if these were contested losses. Anyway, I bought Rumble and Taric today, so I'm giving them some run now. I would like to play Taric in my next ranked game, but obviously who I choose depends on the rest of my team. After the next game, I will do a summary like I did after my first ten games. If there's anything special you all would like to see in the summary, let me know. As always, thanks for reading!
-Chickenmoo
I had the last pick for my team, and we had second ban:
Amumu, Nocturne, Zilean, Malphite
Draft:
Shen
Evelynn, Rammus
Trundle, Leblanc
Teemo, Mordekaiser
Twisted Fate, Urgot
Ashe
I should not have picked Urgot. I should have picked someone bulkier, someone like Jarvan or Maokai. However, I just kind of made a pick on a whim and didn't really think about it like I should have. As a result, our team was pretty disappointing. Three super-squishy champs and a mediocre jungler (Trundle) doesn't make a good team. Having Shen was nice, but that was the only real strong point. Their team on the other hand, was pretty daunting. Huge map control with Teemo, death from out of nowhere with Evelynn's stealth and Ashe's giant arrow, and the ever annoying Rammus with his powerballing-taunting goodness. It appeared that we were overmatched from the loading screen.
Lane Matchups
Top: Urgot vs Mordekaiser
Middle: Twisted Fate vs Ashe
Bottom: Leblanc, Shen vs Evelynn, Teemo
Jungle: Trundle vs Rammus
Early Game
The amount of talking before minions even spawned was troubling. There was a lot of trashing each other and arguing; it just didn't bode well for the game to come. First blood didn't happen for a while, when Rammus and Trundle decided to go to the bottom lane at the same time. A small fight ended up happening under our tower, and Trundle was Rammus' first victim. The lane itself did ok, Leblanc died a couple times, but Shen stayed alive. They didn't get any kills though. Twisted Fate did pretty bad in the middle, he fell victim to Ashe a few times without getting any kills in return. A couple of his deaths were aided by ganks from Rammus and Evelynn. I feel I did fine against Mordekaiser, though I couldn't ever push the lane at all. I died once when Evelynn came to gank me. The jungling difference was huge, as Rammus ganked all the time, and Trundle ganked pretty much never, allowing them to push however much they wanted. Twisted Fate and I switched lanes at one point, which left me exposed to even more ganks and thus, more deaths. Our middle tower was the first to fall when no one covered it after I died one time.
Mid Game
This game was pretty horrible for us, there weren't too many, if any, strong points. When the first tower fell, we lost all semblance of laning and coordination, and just kind of wandered around wherever we felt like. As a result, there was always one of our towers that was under attack by minions or a champion, leading to their gradual destruction. I feel like Twisted Fate was trolling the entire time, as he would get caught in really stupid situations, and he also built a Sword of the Occult. It seemed like he wasn't trying at all. Anyway, the event that lost us the game was when some of our team decided to go challenge their Baron kill, but got caught with their pants down when the enemy initiated. They all got killed except for me, and so their team stormed into our base and started tearing down our towers. We ended up surrendering at 34 minutes.
Post game scoreboard:
Replay link: Ranked Game #24 - Urgot
What I learned:
- Junglers need to gank to be at all worthwhile, end of story
- Warding the key entry points into a lane via the jungle is crucial, especially when there is a Rammus in play
- Vision wards counter Evelynn hard, too bad we didn't buy any
- Cottontail Teemo is too damn cute
- Trolls are obnoxious...along with people who rip into others about quality of play when they aren't contributing much themselves
My Score: 2/6/4
My Build: Manamune, Mercury's Treads, Aegis of the Legion
Current ranked record: 13-11 (0 leaves)
ELO rating: 1292
It seems like every game that I have lost in the past couple weeks, we get absolutely destroyed and take out no towers. I never lose close games, just huge blowouts. It's pretty frustrating that it's always like that, I'd be happier if these were contested losses. Anyway, I bought Rumble and Taric today, so I'm giving them some run now. I would like to play Taric in my next ranked game, but obviously who I choose depends on the rest of my team. After the next game, I will do a summary like I did after my first ten games. If there's anything special you all would like to see in the summary, let me know. As always, thanks for reading!
-Chickenmoo
Tuesday, April 26, 2011
Ranked Game #23
The first of the two games I played on Monday night was very exciting, momentum shifted several times and we really came together as a team throughout the course of the game to do everything we needed to do to win. This was a solo queue game.
I was the captain of my team, and had second ban:
Amumu, Nocturne, Shen, Rammus
Draft:
Singed
Mordekaiser, Lee Sin
Trundle, Maokai
Nasus, Akali
Caitlyn, Lux
Jax
I felt our team was kind of meh when it came to firepower, but we had all of the components of a good team, at least at this level of play. Good tank, good jungler/off-tank, decent AD carry, serviceable AP carry and a supportish/tank guy. I don't think I've seen Trundle jungle before, but I figure his ganks are pretty good with the pillar, it can be so devastating to trap people with it. As for their team, I thought it was pretty poorly put together. Lee Sin is pretty bad, and Akali and Jax are pretty limited in their utility, especially when put together. The lack of a ranged attacker was also pretty significant.
Lane Matchups
Top: Singed vs Mordekaiser
Middle: Lux vs Jax
Bottom: Caitlyn, Maokai vs Nasus, Akali
Jungle: Trundle vs Lee Sin
Early Game
DISCLAIMER: LoLReplay is bugging out right now...so the summary will be light on detail
The first bit of action came in the bottom lane, where Maokai got First Blood on Akali a few minutes into the game. They had a pretty good matchup down there against Akali and Nasus, being able to harass from range all day. They ended up dominating the lane and let them nowhere near their own tower while laning. Lux did ok in the middle, she was killed by Jax a couple times, but she was able to keep him at bay otherwise. The top lane was uneventful, just a lot of pushing back and forth with no kills being exchanged at all. Lee Sin came to gank once or twice, but really didn't do anything while the rest of us were laning. Trundle didn't do a lot either, he basically covered lanes when people needed to go back to base. Caitlyn decided to switch with Lux about halfway through laning for a better matchup with Jax, which allowed for the first tower kill in the middle. After that everyone but me and Mordekaiser started roaming, and eventually the enemy bottom tower was taken out in a 4-man push.
Mid Game
Eventually I joined in on the roaming as well, so we went for the top turret with our entire team. We were able to take it down when they were only defending with two, but then the rest of them showed up. This caused a teamfight by their small golems, and we got ripped to pieces thanks to a lack of strategy. We hadn't discussed beforehand who we would kill first, but that fight certainly triggered the topic. That battle gave them the momentum and lessened the kill count gap, even though we had a large tower kill advantage. Another teamfight happened in the middle shortly after where we weren't really coordinated, and initiated poorly. As a result, three or four of us got killed, as did our middle two turrets. We all thought we were screwed for sure at this point, as they seemed to be on an unstoppable run and we couldn't stop them.
Late Game
They continued their push to try and take our inhibitor turret, so a lot of dancing and spell flinging happened, which was to our advantage due to having two ranged attackers. As a result, we were able to catch a couple of them out of position and kill them, forcing a retreat. In their retreat, we pushed to their middle inner turret and took it down easily. In an incredibly bold move, we went for a Baron kill, carefully warding so we would know when to back off if necessary. They showed up just as we were about to finish him, with Jax poorly timing his jump to try and steal it. As a result, we smoked him on the spot, along with Lee Sin who had also come to play. We retreated to get away from the rest of the enemy team and to recover. For some odd reason, they started trying to attack our other towers alone, allowing us to easily pick them off and get a numbers advantage. In the ending sequence, we took out their middle inhibitor, and then moved on to the top one, picking off the enemy champions as they showed up to contest us. We destroyed their Nexus at 39 minutes.
Post game scoreboard:
What I learned:
- I finally learned how to lane against Mordekaiser, that was a huge bump for me, so now I won't auto-lose a lane against him
- No ganking from the jungle is pretty lame, it can help control a lane immensely
- A Mordekaiser with Rylai's is quite annoying, I didn't know that Children of the Grave would apply the slow on every tick
- Stealing Baron is hard without a ranged attacker...as is laning in the middle
My Score: 3/5/13
My Build: Rod of Ages, Boots of Swiftness, Force of Nature, Giant's Belt
Current ranked record: 13-10 (0 leaves)
ELO Rating: 1314
Games like this are always fun, even if you don't win (but winning makes it 100 times better). Unfortunately this game was followed by a pretty awful one...the summary is coming soon. Thanks for reading, comments and suggestions are always welcome!
-Chickenmoo
I was the captain of my team, and had second ban:
Amumu, Nocturne, Shen, Rammus
Draft:
Singed
Mordekaiser, Lee Sin
Trundle, Maokai
Nasus, Akali
Caitlyn, Lux
Jax
I felt our team was kind of meh when it came to firepower, but we had all of the components of a good team, at least at this level of play. Good tank, good jungler/off-tank, decent AD carry, serviceable AP carry and a supportish/tank guy. I don't think I've seen Trundle jungle before, but I figure his ganks are pretty good with the pillar, it can be so devastating to trap people with it. As for their team, I thought it was pretty poorly put together. Lee Sin is pretty bad, and Akali and Jax are pretty limited in their utility, especially when put together. The lack of a ranged attacker was also pretty significant.
Lane Matchups
Top: Singed vs Mordekaiser
Middle: Lux vs Jax
Bottom: Caitlyn, Maokai vs Nasus, Akali
Jungle: Trundle vs Lee Sin
Early Game
DISCLAIMER: LoLReplay is bugging out right now...so the summary will be light on detail
The first bit of action came in the bottom lane, where Maokai got First Blood on Akali a few minutes into the game. They had a pretty good matchup down there against Akali and Nasus, being able to harass from range all day. They ended up dominating the lane and let them nowhere near their own tower while laning. Lux did ok in the middle, she was killed by Jax a couple times, but she was able to keep him at bay otherwise. The top lane was uneventful, just a lot of pushing back and forth with no kills being exchanged at all. Lee Sin came to gank once or twice, but really didn't do anything while the rest of us were laning. Trundle didn't do a lot either, he basically covered lanes when people needed to go back to base. Caitlyn decided to switch with Lux about halfway through laning for a better matchup with Jax, which allowed for the first tower kill in the middle. After that everyone but me and Mordekaiser started roaming, and eventually the enemy bottom tower was taken out in a 4-man push.
Mid Game
Eventually I joined in on the roaming as well, so we went for the top turret with our entire team. We were able to take it down when they were only defending with two, but then the rest of them showed up. This caused a teamfight by their small golems, and we got ripped to pieces thanks to a lack of strategy. We hadn't discussed beforehand who we would kill first, but that fight certainly triggered the topic. That battle gave them the momentum and lessened the kill count gap, even though we had a large tower kill advantage. Another teamfight happened in the middle shortly after where we weren't really coordinated, and initiated poorly. As a result, three or four of us got killed, as did our middle two turrets. We all thought we were screwed for sure at this point, as they seemed to be on an unstoppable run and we couldn't stop them.
Late Game
They continued their push to try and take our inhibitor turret, so a lot of dancing and spell flinging happened, which was to our advantage due to having two ranged attackers. As a result, we were able to catch a couple of them out of position and kill them, forcing a retreat. In their retreat, we pushed to their middle inner turret and took it down easily. In an incredibly bold move, we went for a Baron kill, carefully warding so we would know when to back off if necessary. They showed up just as we were about to finish him, with Jax poorly timing his jump to try and steal it. As a result, we smoked him on the spot, along with Lee Sin who had also come to play. We retreated to get away from the rest of the enemy team and to recover. For some odd reason, they started trying to attack our other towers alone, allowing us to easily pick them off and get a numbers advantage. In the ending sequence, we took out their middle inhibitor, and then moved on to the top one, picking off the enemy champions as they showed up to contest us. We destroyed their Nexus at 39 minutes.
Post game scoreboard:
Replay link: Ranked Game #23 - Singed
What I learned:
- I finally learned how to lane against Mordekaiser, that was a huge bump for me, so now I won't auto-lose a lane against him
- No ganking from the jungle is pretty lame, it can help control a lane immensely
- A Mordekaiser with Rylai's is quite annoying, I didn't know that Children of the Grave would apply the slow on every tick
- Stealing Baron is hard without a ranged attacker...as is laning in the middle
My Score: 3/5/13
My Build: Rod of Ages, Boots of Swiftness, Force of Nature, Giant's Belt
Current ranked record: 13-10 (0 leaves)
ELO Rating: 1314
Games like this are always fun, even if you don't win (but winning makes it 100 times better). Unfortunately this game was followed by a pretty awful one...the summary is coming soon. Thanks for reading, comments and suggestions are always welcome!
-Chickenmoo
Monday, April 25, 2011
No game tonight *UPDATED*
Hey guys, I didn't really have time to play a ranked game tonight. It will definitely come tomorrow, maybe two to give you all something to do during the server downtime on Tuesday. On an unrelated note, I'd really appreciate any feedback regarding the formatting and such of my game summaries. Like do you guys like what I write about? Are there certain things that you would like to see mentioned that I don't talk about? Any general questions regarding my thought process or playstyle? Don't be shy, I want to know what you all think.
EDIT: So I did end up playing two games tonight, the first was a pretty exciting win, while the other was another depressing loss. I will do the write-ups first thing tomorrow, hopefully I'll get them done by the time the servers are back up, as I need to get some action in with Rumble.
On an unrelated note, here's a drawing of Singed surfing that I did for a few Riot Points
-Chickenmoo
EDIT: So I did end up playing two games tonight, the first was a pretty exciting win, while the other was another depressing loss. I will do the write-ups first thing tomorrow, hopefully I'll get them done by the time the servers are back up, as I need to get some action in with Rumble.
On an unrelated note, here's a drawing of Singed surfing that I did for a few Riot Points
-Chickenmoo
Friday, April 22, 2011
Ranked Game #22
Ugh...this was a horrible game. This is the first ranked game I've played where I genuinely got mad at my team. I was pissed off, and it affected my play as I starting playing way too aggressively. Hopefully my next game is fantastic, as I need to get this one off of my mind. This was a duo queue game with my friend 534N7R0N.
I was the captain of my team, and I had second ban:
Shen, Nocturne, Rammus, Amumu
Draft:
Urgot
Morgana, Singed
Sona, Lee Sin
Garen, Xin Zhao
Warwick, Cho'Gath (my friend)
Ashe
I didn't like this team composition very much, setting up a wonderful prelude to the game to follow. Sona and Lee Sin did not communicate with us at all...they pretty much just said "i'm gonna pick x" and didn't really contribute much to the team composition discussion. Sure, we had a tank, jungler and support, but having two AD-central champs is not ideal, especially when one is Lee Sin. Did I mention I hate people who are dead set on playing a certain champion? Anyway, their team was pretty scary, it was incredibly balanced and quite bulky. Garen is always irritating with his giant sword from the sky, and Singed flinging everybody all over the place. Fortunately, it looked like that I would lane against Ashe, which is a matchup I should win every time.
Lane Matchups
Top: Cho'Gath vs Morgana, Singed
Middle: Urgot vs Ashe
Bottom: Lee Sin, Sona vs Garen, Xin Zhao
Jungle: Warwick vs
Early Game
The bottom lane was a huge disaster for our side, Lee Sin and Sona were outmatched from the word go. Sona died for first blood pretty early after getting exhausted. Each of them died several more times without getting any kills themselves. I did ok in the middle lane against Ashe. I didn't get any kills, but she didn't get any either. As the laning phase went on, they tried ganking me a few times from the side lanes, but were only successful one time when I stupidly walked into Xin and Garen in the river bush. I wasn't as aggressive as I should have been in the early going, as I easily could have gotten a couple kills by burning my summoner's spells. As a melee champ going 1v2, Cho'Gath was at a disadvantage in the top lane. He was backed up to his own tower constantly only getting some relief when Warwick ganked once or twice. He was able to get a couple kills in those situations, but obviously he couldn't push at all. Warwick didn't gank much, he mostly had to cover for the bottom lane when they failed spectacularly. When he did gank, he was usually able to make an impact and get a kill. As a result of bottom lane getting dominated, our tower down there was the first one to fall.
Mid Game
We fell apart even more at this point. When the tower fell, most of the fighting moved to being concentrated at the middle tower. There was a lot of dancing around for a while, pushing and counterpushing back and forth. From time to time one or two of them would split off to try and push another tower, so we would have to go defend it. We tended to be able to pick them off when that happened, but our resulting pushes went nowhere. Our team was too hesitant when it came to teamfights and we also had no real solid plan of who to kill first. As a result, we pretty much got destroyed whenever one happened. At one point, we got ourselves aced in front of our middle tower, resulting in its quick destruction but a failed surrender. Our poor play continued until another huge loss in a teamfight in the middle, where we voted to surrender at 28 minutes.
The post game scoreboard:
Replay link: Ranked Game #22 - Urgot
What I learned:
- Urgot is meant to be played aggressively, which I did not do. That was a factor in my failure to do anything useful in this game
- Lee Sin is horrible, he has very little utility. Sure, two blinks are nice, but only if you can do damage along with it
- Garen is pretty freaking dangerous when damage is built on him, he turns into a whirling dervish of death and destruction
- Junglers need to be able to gank to be effective, plain and simple
- Morgana seems to be pretty underrated, her ult can be devastating if coordinated well with the rest of her team
My Score: 0/5/4
My Build: Manamune, Ninja Tabi, The Brutalizer, Cloth Armor, Null-Magic Mantle
Current ranked record: 12-10 (0 leaves)
ELO Rating: 1291
Yep, that was my worst and most frustrating game so far. I promise that I will do better next time, it was just inexcusable. Comment if you would like, thanks for reading.
-Chickenmoo
I was the captain of my team, and I had second ban:
Shen, Nocturne, Rammus, Amumu
Draft:
Urgot
Morgana, Singed
Sona, Lee Sin
Garen, Xin Zhao
Warwick, Cho'Gath (my friend)
Ashe
I didn't like this team composition very much, setting up a wonderful prelude to the game to follow. Sona and Lee Sin did not communicate with us at all...they pretty much just said "i'm gonna pick x" and didn't really contribute much to the team composition discussion. Sure, we had a tank, jungler and support, but having two AD-central champs is not ideal, especially when one is Lee Sin. Did I mention I hate people who are dead set on playing a certain champion? Anyway, their team was pretty scary, it was incredibly balanced and quite bulky. Garen is always irritating with his giant sword from the sky, and Singed flinging everybody all over the place. Fortunately, it looked like that I would lane against Ashe, which is a matchup I should win every time.
Lane Matchups
Top: Cho'Gath vs Morgana, Singed
Middle: Urgot vs Ashe
Bottom: Lee Sin, Sona vs Garen, Xin Zhao
Jungle: Warwick vs
Early Game
The bottom lane was a huge disaster for our side, Lee Sin and Sona were outmatched from the word go. Sona died for first blood pretty early after getting exhausted. Each of them died several more times without getting any kills themselves. I did ok in the middle lane against Ashe. I didn't get any kills, but she didn't get any either. As the laning phase went on, they tried ganking me a few times from the side lanes, but were only successful one time when I stupidly walked into Xin and Garen in the river bush. I wasn't as aggressive as I should have been in the early going, as I easily could have gotten a couple kills by burning my summoner's spells. As a melee champ going 1v2, Cho'Gath was at a disadvantage in the top lane. He was backed up to his own tower constantly only getting some relief when Warwick ganked once or twice. He was able to get a couple kills in those situations, but obviously he couldn't push at all. Warwick didn't gank much, he mostly had to cover for the bottom lane when they failed spectacularly. When he did gank, he was usually able to make an impact and get a kill. As a result of bottom lane getting dominated, our tower down there was the first one to fall.
Mid Game
We fell apart even more at this point. When the tower fell, most of the fighting moved to being concentrated at the middle tower. There was a lot of dancing around for a while, pushing and counterpushing back and forth. From time to time one or two of them would split off to try and push another tower, so we would have to go defend it. We tended to be able to pick them off when that happened, but our resulting pushes went nowhere. Our team was too hesitant when it came to teamfights and we also had no real solid plan of who to kill first. As a result, we pretty much got destroyed whenever one happened. At one point, we got ourselves aced in front of our middle tower, resulting in its quick destruction but a failed surrender. Our poor play continued until another huge loss in a teamfight in the middle, where we voted to surrender at 28 minutes.
The post game scoreboard:
Replay link: Ranked Game #22 - Urgot
What I learned:
- Urgot is meant to be played aggressively, which I did not do. That was a factor in my failure to do anything useful in this game
- Lee Sin is horrible, he has very little utility. Sure, two blinks are nice, but only if you can do damage along with it
- Garen is pretty freaking dangerous when damage is built on him, he turns into a whirling dervish of death and destruction
- Junglers need to be able to gank to be effective, plain and simple
- Morgana seems to be pretty underrated, her ult can be devastating if coordinated well with the rest of her team
My Score: 0/5/4
My Build: Manamune, Ninja Tabi, The Brutalizer, Cloth Armor, Null-Magic Mantle
Current ranked record: 12-10 (0 leaves)
ELO Rating: 1291
Yep, that was my worst and most frustrating game so far. I promise that I will do better next time, it was just inexcusable. Comment if you would like, thanks for reading.
-Chickenmoo
Thursday, April 21, 2011
Ranked Game #21
I have no class tomorrow (hooray!) so I got around to playing another game. I hated our team composition big time going in here...but it turned out pretty darn well for us. We had complete control almost the entire game, they only threatened us for a short amount of time, and were quickly shut down. This was a solo queue game.
I had the third pick for my team, and we had second ban:
Rammus, Zilean, Shen, Amumu
Then the draft:
Taric
Jarvan IV, Lux
Nocturne, Singed
Warwick, Ryze
Jax, Irelia
Tryndamere
Uhh....we had no ranged champs, and no real mid laner, so I was pretty worried about how we were going to do. It was another one of those situations where someone didn't talk at all (Jax), and another decided who he was going to be way before he picked (Irelia). Fortunately, we were able to secure Nocturne as a great jungler, and the best support in the game (in my opinion) in Taric. Their team was certainly constructed better, but not much so. Three offish-tanks is nice, but having one dedicated tank is always better. The one thing that scared me about their team was all the traps they had, with two-ish snares and a suppression to enable Tryndamere to destroy those who were immobilized. Other than that, the key to beating them would be shutting down Lux and Tryndamere to avoid a steamroll.
Lane Matchups
Top: Singed vs Jarvan IV
Middle: Jax vs Lux
Bottom: Taric, Irelia vs Ryze, Tryndamere(ish)
Jungle: Nocturne vs Warwick, Tryndamere(ish)
Early Game
Our bottom lane had a pretty good laning phase, which was encouraging for the rest of the game. Taric was able to secure First Blood on Ryze with a stun as soon as the minion waves met. They pretty much dominated down there, as they consistently got kills on Tryndamere when he overextended, and Ryze when he was left alone. The weird matchup between Jax and Lux in the middle went mostly our way, as whenever Jax was able to land his jump and stun, Lux was toast. She did get some help on occasion from Warwick and Tryndamere, killing Jax at least once. I had a pretty lackluster laning phase, as it was just a bunch of last hitting and poisoning minions for me, with an occasional fling to keep Jarvan at my health level. I was able to get a kill on Warwick when he ulted me under my tower, but that was pretty much all my action up there. Nocturne attempted a few ganks in the middle and bottom, but didn't really do much in the process. The same went for Warwick, he ended up getting himself killed more often than he killed others.
Mid Game
This game was so short that I'm going to put the rest of the laning phase into the mid game section. A nice little teamfight in the bottom lane where we picked them off one by one near their tower allowed us our first tower kill. They got theirs at almost the same time when they took out our top tower that was left alone when we had four in the bottom lane. Another teamfight followed immediately after that I wasn't a part of because I had gone back to base. It started at their blue buff, and they actually did pretty well, killing two of our team members while losing either one or none. This was their one glimmer of hope, but we shut it down pretty quickly. There was a series of dancing and fighting in the middle of the map where we were able to roll them easily with our stuns and slows, netting us another tower kill. The finishing blow was an easily won teamfight in the top lane, where we actually tower dove to take out two of them after killing two others. Jarvan had gone AFK right before this, so they surrendered at 25 minutes.
Post game scoreboard:
Replay link: Ranked Game #21 - Singed
What I learned:
- Two junglers on the same team...not the best idea if you aren't going to counter-jungle
- Taric is awesome, I need to buy him eventually. I suppose he'll be next after Rumble
- Jarvan isn't really someone to be afraid of if he builds no damage items, as the only significant damage he will do is with his passive every 6 seconds
- Farming well does wonders for a build, glad I finally got a nice game in that sense
- All melee team isn't horrible, just gotta catch the ranged enemies out of position first
My Score: 2/1/6
My Build: Rod of Ages, Boots of Swiftness, Giant's Belt, Chain Vest
Current ranked record: 12-9 (0 leaves)
ELO Rating: 1316
This was a really nice game to end the day on, I had a pretty frustrating hour long normal one earlier where we defended our base for almost half an hour uselessly. Like I said earlier, I have no class on Thursday, so I will probably play another one then. Thanks for reading, you should post comments or suggestions for the blog if you have any!
-Chickenmoo
I had the third pick for my team, and we had second ban:
Rammus, Zilean, Shen, Amumu
Then the draft:
Taric
Jarvan IV, Lux
Nocturne, Singed
Warwick, Ryze
Jax, Irelia
Tryndamere
Uhh....we had no ranged champs, and no real mid laner, so I was pretty worried about how we were going to do. It was another one of those situations where someone didn't talk at all (Jax), and another decided who he was going to be way before he picked (Irelia). Fortunately, we were able to secure Nocturne as a great jungler, and the best support in the game (in my opinion) in Taric. Their team was certainly constructed better, but not much so. Three offish-tanks is nice, but having one dedicated tank is always better. The one thing that scared me about their team was all the traps they had, with two-ish snares and a suppression to enable Tryndamere to destroy those who were immobilized. Other than that, the key to beating them would be shutting down Lux and Tryndamere to avoid a steamroll.
Lane Matchups
Top: Singed vs Jarvan IV
Middle: Jax vs Lux
Bottom: Taric, Irelia vs Ryze, Tryndamere(ish)
Jungle: Nocturne vs Warwick, Tryndamere(ish)
Early Game
Our bottom lane had a pretty good laning phase, which was encouraging for the rest of the game. Taric was able to secure First Blood on Ryze with a stun as soon as the minion waves met. They pretty much dominated down there, as they consistently got kills on Tryndamere when he overextended, and Ryze when he was left alone. The weird matchup between Jax and Lux in the middle went mostly our way, as whenever Jax was able to land his jump and stun, Lux was toast. She did get some help on occasion from Warwick and Tryndamere, killing Jax at least once. I had a pretty lackluster laning phase, as it was just a bunch of last hitting and poisoning minions for me, with an occasional fling to keep Jarvan at my health level. I was able to get a kill on Warwick when he ulted me under my tower, but that was pretty much all my action up there. Nocturne attempted a few ganks in the middle and bottom, but didn't really do much in the process. The same went for Warwick, he ended up getting himself killed more often than he killed others.
Mid Game
This game was so short that I'm going to put the rest of the laning phase into the mid game section. A nice little teamfight in the bottom lane where we picked them off one by one near their tower allowed us our first tower kill. They got theirs at almost the same time when they took out our top tower that was left alone when we had four in the bottom lane. Another teamfight followed immediately after that I wasn't a part of because I had gone back to base. It started at their blue buff, and they actually did pretty well, killing two of our team members while losing either one or none. This was their one glimmer of hope, but we shut it down pretty quickly. There was a series of dancing and fighting in the middle of the map where we were able to roll them easily with our stuns and slows, netting us another tower kill. The finishing blow was an easily won teamfight in the top lane, where we actually tower dove to take out two of them after killing two others. Jarvan had gone AFK right before this, so they surrendered at 25 minutes.
Post game scoreboard:
Replay link: Ranked Game #21 - Singed
What I learned:
- Two junglers on the same team...not the best idea if you aren't going to counter-jungle
- Taric is awesome, I need to buy him eventually. I suppose he'll be next after Rumble
- Jarvan isn't really someone to be afraid of if he builds no damage items, as the only significant damage he will do is with his passive every 6 seconds
- Farming well does wonders for a build, glad I finally got a nice game in that sense
- All melee team isn't horrible, just gotta catch the ranged enemies out of position first
My Score: 2/1/6
My Build: Rod of Ages, Boots of Swiftness, Giant's Belt, Chain Vest
Current ranked record: 12-9 (0 leaves)
ELO Rating: 1316
This was a really nice game to end the day on, I had a pretty frustrating hour long normal one earlier where we defended our base for almost half an hour uselessly. Like I said earlier, I have no class on Thursday, so I will probably play another one then. Thanks for reading, you should post comments or suggestions for the blog if you have any!
-Chickenmoo
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