Ranked Game #19

Well, it appears that I still have some work to do on jungling. Maybe I need to find another jungler to learn, like Shaco or Cho'Gath. I mean I would go for Amumu, but he's banned too often to rely on. So yeah, I just got done with a game where I jungled. It was in solo queue, and I went alone.

I had the fourth pick for my team, and we had second ban:

Nocturne, Shen, Brand, Amumu


The draft went like this:

Rammus
Malzahar, Nidalee
Vladimir, Nasus
Warwick, Jarvan IV
Nunu, Miss Fortune
Alistar


My thoughts on this team can be summed up with the following: Meh. Rammus is nice, but the guy only took him because he didn't want the other team to have him. I would have rather him have been someone he could jungle with (he listed a few, but not Rammus) so then I wouldn't have to, and do something I'm a little more comfortable with. Vlad is nice, always a good steamroller if he gets a couple early kills. Nasus and Miss Fortune are not my favorites, seeing as their CC is very limited. The Miss Fortune guy  was insistent on playing her, so our options were kind of limited. I always get a bad feeling when there is no real discussion on who's playing who, when everyone is just like "I'm playing X" and stops talking, or just locks in without a word. Anyway, as for their team it was clear that stopping Malzahar and Warwick's ults would be a priority, along with keeping Nidalee out of the action.

Lane Matchups
Top: Nasus vs Nidalee
Middle: Vladimir vs Malzahar
Bottom: Rammus, Miss Fortune vs Jarvan IV, Alistar
Jungle: Nunu vs Warwick


Early Game
This was a pretty weird game in terms of momentum, they did a lot of the killing, but we did a lot of the pushing. First blood occurred in the top lane, when Nidalee managed to chase Nasus quite a ways past his outer tower to take him down. After that, not much really happened there, though Nasus managed to push quite a bit more. The matchup in mid was pretty even, if only because of Warwick's constant ganking. Vladimir was able to get kills by being extremely aggressive and pushing as hard as he could to back Malzahar up to his turret. He died a few times trying to retreat though, which greatly aided Malzahar and Warwick later on. The bottom lane produced little action in the early going, and was the target of a few unsuccessful ganks. I tried ganking a few times, but wasn't really able to do anything worthwhile. All of the lanes were pushed hard in our favor, and their middle tower was the first to fall. A few minutes later, we took out the top one, and also their bottom tower.

Mid Game
At this point, I thought we were in pretty good shape. We had three towers down to their none, though we were a bit behind in kills. The one teamfight we were victorious in happened in the middle lane, near where their outer tower once stood. We took out their bulky guys and forced a retreat, enabling us to destroy their inner middle tower for even more momentum. The troubling sign at this point was the fact that we had half as many kills as they did, suggesting that their gold advantage would eventually win over the tower advantage. The turning point in the game was the next big teamfight in the middle of the map. We initiated on Alistar (dumb idea) and killed him, but by the time we did that, their big guns were in there firing away. Warwick ended up getting a quadra-kill, and we got aced. Luckily the kills were far enough apart that they didn't do anything with the downtime, but it changed the momentum all the same.

Late Game
The steamrolling began here, and boy it was rough. Our team continued pushing at various towers to try and take back the momentum, but we were met by their team every time and were forced to retreat with casualties. They rolled around in a pack, taking towers as they pleased and smashing whoever stood in their way. At one point they took Baron, and were able to reach and destroy our middle inhibitor with ease. It was all over from there, as we had to scramble to protect our base from large minion buildups from each lane. They came back at full strength, and beat us handily in our base, getting us to surrender at 38 minutes.

Post game scoreboard:

Replay link: Ranked Game #19 - Nunu


What I learned:
- I need to learn how to jungle better, I just don't have a real good strategy in regards of how and when to gank, when to farm in the jungle and when to go out into a lane.
- Picking a champion just to keep them off the other team isn't the greatest strategy...just ban them instead
- Carries need to stay in the back of the pack, as over aggression hurts the team greatly
- Alistar should never be focused, ever. His ultimate is just too good
- Double suppression team is pretty sick

My Score: 3/5/7
My Build: Mercury's Treads, Banshee's Veil, Rod of Ages

Current ranked record: 10-9 (0 leaves)
ELO Rating: 1271

So my first shot at jungling didn't go so well. Anyone have any suggestions or tips regarding jungle Nunu. I think I'm going to give Amumu some test runs in customs and normals while jungling to see if I can do better. Thanks for reading.

-Chickenmoo