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