Ranked Game #8

Hello everybody, I finally had the time/desire to play a ranked game tonight. It did not go very well and ended pretty quickly, my fastest game yet. I certainly thought that we would do better based on team composition. This was in solo queue.

I had the third pick for my team in this game, the other team had first ban. Here's how they went:

Nocturne, Shen, Rammus, Teemo


They strayed from the classic tank banning, but those are both valid choices in my mind. Here's the draft:

Us: Xin Zhao
Them: Shaco, Jarvan IV
Us: Ryze, Amumu
Them: Maokai, Twisted Fate
Us: Warwick, Ashe
Them: Annie


Now I don't have the runes to jungle with Amumu (or at least haven't tried in a while), so Warwick said he would jungle. Xin Zhao took top solo, Ashe took mid and so Ryze and I took bottom. At first glance, this looked like it would be an interesting jungle struggle, as two of the best in the game were going head to head (the other being Shaco). The amount of crowd control between the teams was essentially even, though they had two stuns while we had one, Ashe's ultimate. I thought our chances would be good though, given the steamrolling capability of Xin and Warwick. The amount of bulk between the teams was also pretty even, with us having a slight advantage. This would all turn out to mean nothing in the game though.

Early Game
After protecting Warwick at blue buff, we headed to our respective lanes. Ryze and I pushed pretty hard right away, keeping Maokai and Jarvan at their tower for a while. At one point, Jarvan came out of the shadow of the tower to engage us, resulting in himself getting killed for First Blood, and me dying to Maokai immediately after. Ashe fended off Twisted Fate pretty well in mid, with no kills happening between the two. Xin was at a disadvantage against Annie due to her large range and stun capability, and it showed in the head to head as she was able to kill him twice while laning. Warwick didn't do too much from the jungle, but Shaco got involved a bit. There was one fight where Shaco had come to try and gank bottom at half health, and we ended up chasing him into the river. Ryze was able to kill him, but Maokai and Jarvan followed from bottom, and Twisted Fate and Ashe joined in as well. This resulted in Twisted Fate dying, but Ryze and I fell as well.

Mid Game
Laning broke down when our bottom tower and top tower were taken out in quick succession. Warwick also disconnected for about ten minutes at this point, which mostly crippled us. There weren't too many teamfights as it was quite a short game, but a few happened near our wraiths and in the middle of the map. Annie and Twisted Fate were pretty much dominating us at this point, though we were at least able to kill him a few times. The only highlights here for us were catching Shaco being an idiot and having us all chase him down and kill him. All the teamfights consisted mainly of a stun from Annie, a root from Maokai and large amounts of damage from Twisted Fate and Jarvan. We didn't really stand a chance, so we surrendered at 25 minutes.

Here is the post game scoreboard:

What I learned:
- Xin Zhao cannot solo a ranged carry, he does not have the damage dealing capability to pull it off
- Annie is a monster when she gets kills, that bear is just sick nasty when its used as her stun
- Jarvan's ult combined with Tibbers/stun is a great combo, that will kill pretty much anyone in seconds
- Maokai's snare is better than I thought, I'll have to give him some run in the next few days
- ELO hell is real, lol

My Score: 3/5/7
My Build: Philosopher's Stone, Mercury's Treads, Heart of Gold, Aegis of the Legion

Current ranked record: 4 - 4 (0 leaves)
ELO Rating: Unranked

This is now a three game losing streak for me, so hopefully I can get out of it in my next game by queuing with a friend. As always, thanks for reading, and comments/suggestions are appreciated!

-Chickenmoo