Ranked Game #7

Hey dudes, I played another ranked game last night, but I didn't have time to write the summary, as I had other more important matters to attend to. This was a somewhat balanced game, with several changes in momentum throughout. However, the other team was able to do quite a bit more with theirs, giving them a good victory with little resistance at the end. I went in alone on this one, as 534N7R0N was busy.

For the first time, I was not captain. I had the third pick. We had second ban, so here they are:

Maokai, Rammus, Karthus, none

Yes, they only banned one champion, I didn't even know that could happen. Anyway, here's how the draft went:

Us: Amumu
Them: Twisted Fate, Leblanc
Us: Teemo, Urgot
Them: Warwick, Pantheon
Us: Cho'Gath, Gangplank
Them: Nasus


I was excited about this team composition compared to the enemy's. We had a good amount of bulk, and nice residual damage capability with Teemo and Gangplank. We also had a nice even mix of attack damage and ability power so they couldn't just build one type of armor and brush us off. I also liked that they had three champions that are typically built as glass cannons, meaning that if we could catch them out of position, we could break them very easily. Amumu took the jungle, Teemo soloed top and I soloed mid. That left Cho'Gath and Gangplank to take the bottom lane.

Early Game
I ended up laning against Leblanc, so this part of the game for me was just a lot of harassment between us. We could never quite kill each other without help. The same went for Teemo in top against Nasus, neither got a kill while laning. It was a completely different story with Cho'Gath and Gangplank though, who went up against Twisted Fate and Pantheon (Warwick was jungling). Gangplank gave up first blood off of a double stun, and then Cho'Gath died quickly after. He was able to take out Pantheon in the process though. The rest of the laning phase consisted of Cho and Gangplank dying constantly to the double stun combination, coupled with some ganks by Warwick bottom and middle. As a result, our bottom tower was the first to fall. At this point, the momentum was in their favor and the laning phase had broken down.

Mid Game
Here is where we began to lose towers quickly. They began traveling in small packs, wearing down towers when opportunities presented themselves. Eventually our remaining two outer towers were taken out. Several teamfights occurred in the middle of the map, usually initiated by Warwick's Infinite Duress. This was quickly followed by Pantheon's stun and Leblanc's burst, getting a couple quick kills. At this point Twisted Fate would come in with his stun to take out another, forcing a retreat. After one such fight, they killed four of us, allowing them to take down the inner middle turret easily. There was another one later on that helped us quite a bit though, shifting the momentum in our direction for a short amount of time. Cho'Gath and Amumu caught Twisted Fate off guard, killing him as the rest of our team arrived. The fight broke out, and we were able to take them all down, save Pantheon. While he retreated back to his base, we were able to destroy two towers in the middle, and bring the inhibitor tower down halfway.

Late Game
The hope we had gained from that teamfight was soon flushed down the drain though. They were able to take down four of our team members in a quick teamfight thanks to a poor initiation by me, and some shoddy Rupturing by Cho'Gath. They quickly took out our inhibitor and headed for Baron. By the time we had all respawned and ran over to surprise them, it was too late. The buff and their stuns got them an easy ace in our retreat. Following their super minions, they took out our Nexus at 48 minutes.

Here's the post game scoreboard:

Replay link: Game #7 - Urgot

What I learned:

- Leblanc's Distortion is one of the best escape abilities out there, its deception possibilities are vast

- A Cho'Gath that can't land Rupture is pretty much useless

- Jungle Amumu is indeed a great ganker, I hadn't seen it in action before

- Gangplank just isn't that great of a champion, his early game is fine but after that he's pretty much ignorable

- Pantheon is still the king of steamrolling

My Score: 7/11/9

My Build: Manamune, Mercury's Treads, Youmuu's Ghostblade, Banshee's Veil, Guardian Angel

Current ranked record: 4-3 (0 leaves)

ELO Rating: Unranked

Sorry this took so long to write up, today was a long day. I'll certainly be more prompt with my next game, which will either be Sunday or Monday. Hope you enjoyed reading, comments and suggestions are welcome.

-Chickenmoo

Ranked Game #6

I got around to playing a ranked game this afternoon with my friend, Quexolan. However, it did not turn out at all like we had hoped. It was probably one of the most frustrating games I have ever been a part of. There was also a lot of bickering between the five of us, I just wanted to get out of the game as fast as possible after a while.

I was captain and received the second ban. Heres how they went:

Rammus, Malphite, Shen, Amumu


The draft with my pick italicized:

Us: Singed
Them: Xin Zhao, Nocturne
Us: Miss Fortune, Nidalee
Them: Nasus, Kassadin
Us: Warwick, Akali (Quexolan)
Them: Cho'Gath


While the draft went on, Warwick said that he would jungle, which was promising as he's obviously one of the best jungling champs out there. We decided to have Miss Fortune go mid and Nidalee solo top, as they were the clear choices with their range. That left my friend and I with the bottom lane. I liked the combination of Singed and Akali, as the former can throw champs out of position and into an area that is safe for Akali to blink into and burst the crap out of them. I also had high hopes for the Nocturne (who I assumed was jungling) to be bad and feed us all day long. However, the rest of their team was pretty bulky, save Kassadin, which was a tad worrying as those teams are typically difficult to take out efficiently. When the loading screen came up, my thoughts of Nocturne jungling were confirmed.

Early Game
The game was quiet for a while, we pushed our bottom lane to their tower to try and get the upper hand quickly. It was risky and didn't end up doing us any good, but it didn't get us killed either. Nocturne never really tried ganking more than once in our lane. Cho'Gath got first blood on Miss Fortune during a failed gank by Warwick. She died while typing to scold him, which was very telling of what was to come later in the game. Warwick did take out Cho while he tried to escape though, for his only kill of the game. Once we let the bottom lane get pushed to our tower, a 2v2 fight broke out with us against Kassadin and Xin Zhao. We miraculously got Kassadin and eventually Xin, but that was probably the highlight of the laning phase. Our middle tower was the first to fall, with the bottom going down soon after.

Mid Game
This is where all hell broke loose for our team. We kept getting caught out of position alone and thus died very quickly. Warwick and I were especially guilty of this, as I would try to initiate at bad times and get myself killed, while he would ult in and die right away. Someone proposed surrendering at 20 minutes, but it got shot down 3-2. At one point they had picked enough of us off to easily take out the outer top tower and our inner mid tower. There was one teamfight in the middle of the map that gave me a little bit of hope for redemption. I flung Cho'Gath at our team while he was alone, and by the time we had killed him the rest of the enemy team had showed up. Eventually, it was down to just Nidalee, Miss Fortune and Xin Zhao alive. Miss Fortune was down to one or two bars of health, so she began to run away when Nidalee initiated on Xin. Nidalee got the kill on him, but neglected her teammate's low health and allowed her to die before getting the kill. So we had aced them, but with only one team member alive, we couldn't push anything. We were unable to stop their steamrolling at that point, so after a bit of defending and lots of dying, we surrendered at 38 minutes.

The postgame scoreboard can be seen below:

Replay link: Game #6 - Singed

What I learned:
- Nasus is quite formidable in the right hands, Wither is a very devastating spell when trying to run away
- Warwick is not a foolproof jungler, as ganking is an art that all junglers need to learn
- Singed is not as invincible as I thought, he needs lots of farm or a bit of time in order to get to that level
- Cho'Gath is probably the best tank that doesn't need tank items, which is why they nerfed him i suppose
- Playing Nocturnes in every game is annoying

My Score: 4/8/8
My Build: Rod of Ages, Boots of Swiftness, Force of Nature

Current ranked record: 4 - 2 (0 leaves)
ELO Rating: Unranked

Guess I jinxed myself in my last post with that winning streak talk. Oh well, each game is a learning experience, even the miserable ones. Hope you guys enjoy the read, comments and suggestions are appreciated. Thanks for reading.

-Chickenmoo

No game today/thoughts on Nocturne

Hey guys, sorry I haven't played a game in a couple days. I've had quite a bit of homework to do, but I will definitely play one tomorrow (Wednesday). Hopefully I'll be able to duo queue and keep my winning streak alive.

I have made a couple champion purchases recently, Singed and Nocturne. I played Singed a lot during his free week last week, so buying him at 1350 IP was an easy choice. But obviously, Nocturne is the more interesting one at this point in time. I bought the Frozen Terror bundle with RP, and have used him in a few normal games so far. The results haven't been good so far, one 15 death game and another 8 death game, each with very few kills. However, I think I'm gradually getting a better feel for him, learning his chasing limits and such.

For those who don't know, he's primarily a melee dps champion, with two skills (Q, R) scaling off of attack damage and one (E) scaling off of ability power. His Q does a nice amount of damage, especially in the laning phase, and the movespeed increase is good for chasing. The attack damage increase while in the trail is also a huge bonus, as 20 bonus damage per attack (at level 1) in the laning phase is huge. His E is probably more useful though, as fear is pretty good CC. It starts pretty short, but gets up to 2 seconds at level 5. The tether range is easily kept by chasing with his Q. The passive attack speed increase with his W is fantastic (20% at level 1, 40% at 5), but I can never remember to use the spell shield in fights.

Paranoia is a great ult and probably overpowered at this point, but I've had difficulty finding good times to use it. It's obviously good for ganking, but it's more difficult to use in a teamfight, as there is a bit of delay from when you take out the enemy vision to when you can trigger the giant blink. To give somewhat of a picture of the blink's range, it is about the distance from your inhibitor to your outer tower in the same lane.

I've been building him with only AD and armor pen, as he gets enough attack speed from greaves and his W. I''ve tried jungling, but I feel like I need some armor runes to succeed at it.

That's all I have to say for now regarding Nocturne, if you have any questions leave them as comments. Once again, I'll be playing my next ranked game sometime tomorrow. Thanks for reading!

-Chickenmoo

Ranked Game #5

Hey guys, I played my fifth ranked game earlier today, using Urgot. It was a good victory and an interesting game, a real back and forth battle. We also had quite a character on our team, a Blitzcrank with the new Piltover Customs skin (very jealous). He made a lot of silly comments kept the mood light at the beginning of the game. There was also quite a bit of trash talking between the teams, which was good motivation. In this game I duo queued with my friend 534N7R0N again.

I was captain again, which is getting a little ridiculous at this point, and I had first ban. Here's how the bans went:

Rammus, Amumu, Shen, Malphite


And the draft:

Them: Alistar
Us: Urgot, Kennen
Them: Dr. Mundo, Nidalee
Us: Kog'Maw, Blitzcrank
Them: Katarina, Ashe
Us: Irelia (my friend)

As he did in my previous game with him, my friend decided to jungle with Irelia. They didn't have a clear jungler, so we had to decide who would 1 v 2 top and who would mid. My friend pointed out that Urgot would probably do better in the 1 v 2 situation out of our three potential solo laners, so I took top. We left mid to Kog'Maw kind of arbitrarily, but it didn't really matter to much at that point. That meant that Kennen and Blitzcrank would take bottom. The enemy team composition was a little worrying, as they had three healers, one of them being an AOE healer (Alistar), so Irelia vowed to get Executioner's Calling at some point to cut that down. When we went into the loading screen, it was confirmed that they did not have a jungler.

Early Game
This portion of the game was mostly quiet, at least for me. I drew Alistar and Ashe in my lane, so with the former's heal and latter's Volley harass, I was backed up to my tower pretty much the whole time. Kog'Maw went up against Nidalee, and the Kennen/Blitzcrank combo got matched up with Katarina and Dr. Mundo. Nidalee was the target of Irelia's first gank, resulting in first blood for her. However, she got herself and Kog'Maw killed in the process, as Dr. Mundo came around at about the same time. Irelia tried to gank my lane at one point to relieve the pressure of the 1 v 2, but it failed, luckily without getting either of us killed. Kennen and Blitzcrank did pretty well for themselves, killing Katarina and Dr. Mundo several times. However, at this point the enemy team had the upper hand, as Kog'Maw and I could not prevent the middle tower from falling first. Soon afterwards, Alistar Pulverized and Heabutted me out of position and got me killed, which resulted in the top tower falling.

Mid Game
Mid game was where we began to gain the upper hand. There was one teamfight in the middle of the map that ended well for us, I initiated with my ult to nab an easy kill, and then we mopped up the rest pretty effectively thanks to Kennen's AOE stuns. This allowed us to push down their middle tower, and then catch Ashe who had escaped from the previous fight. Minutes later their bottom tower was killed by a minion push. With the tower kill count even at 2, the map control was back in balance. We took the opportunity of the lull in the action to grab some global gold by killing dragon. They had it warded/Nidalee trapped, but they deemed it a mistake to engage us again. After this there was a lot of roaming around, trying to push down towers and such. We were able to catch Dr. Mundo out of position in our jungle several times, punishing him for it each time.

Late Game
A crucial teamfight occurred at our middle inner tower that shifted the momentum of the game largely in our favor. They were trying to take out our tower, but were quickly met by the full force of our team. I switched places with Ashe with my ult to get her killed and exhausted Nidalee to prevent her escape and ultimately kill her as well. My teammates did most of the work here though: Kog'Maw with his Living Artillery sniping, Kennen with his super stunning ability, and Irelia with her huge burst. Blitzcrank's knock-ups were also crucial to whittling down their tanks. This fight resulted in an ace, allowing us to take out their inner and inhibitor towers in the middle. We also ended up taking out the inhibitor while in their base. They soon respawned and came at us hard, forcing a retreat. Another teamfight happened in the middle where i ulted in (and got myself killed) and eventually got them to back off after taking out their squishies. This allowed us to take Baron and make the game-winning push. We took out the enemy Nexus at 42 minutes.

The postgame scoreboard is shown below:

What I learned:

- When played correctly, Alistar is quite good, as he has one of the few AOE stuns, and can throw anyone out of a fight

- Chasing Nidalee is almost as difficult as chasing Singed, exhaust or another heavy slow is mandatory to take her out

- The new Blitzcrank skin is way too awesome, I love it

- I still need to learn how to effectively use Urgot's ult, I got myself killed almost every time using it this game

- A Kog'Maw that sits far away from the fight and bombs it is a good Kog'Maw

My Score: 5/4/9

My Build: Manamune, Mercury Treads, Brutalizer, Banshee's Veil, B.F. Sword

Current ranked record: 4-1 (0 leaves)

ELO Rating: Unranked

I just got back to school after having spring break last week, so the games may begin to get a little further apart. Thanks for reading, comments and suggestions are always appreciated.

-Chickenmoo