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:

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