This time I had the fourth pick on my team, with the other captain having first ban. Here they are:
Amumu, Rammus, Nocturne, Shen
And the draft:
Us: Urgot
Them: Dr. Mundo, Malzahar
Us: Malphite, Sivir
Them: Xin Zhao, Teemo
Us: Taric, Fiddlesticks
Them: Master Yi
Fiddlesticks said that he would jungle, which made me a little nervous because he's slowly sliding into oblivion utility-wise. Urgot took mid and Malphite soloed top, so Sivir and I went bottom. I was excited about our team, as we were able to get Malphite and his sick nasty initiation, along with Urgot's Acid Hunter sniping. I also had hopes that their Master Yi would be bad and thus be easy gold for us. However, the fact that they had Teemo and Dr. Mundo was a little disheartening, as clearly Teemo's mushrooms are the most irritating thing in the game, and Mundo's health regen/movespeed steroid is up there on the list.
Early Game
Early game was tough for me, but that was probably because I was in the mindset of a caster instead of support, which obviously isn't good. We were able to get first blood in bottom lane though, when Xin tried to dive me with half health and failed. Malphite was steady up top against Dr. Mundo, with no real action happening for either side. Urgot dominated Malzahar in the middle, getting at least two kills on him while laning and giving up none. Fiddlesticks somehow died to golem, even with a leash, but it turned out ok in the end. Master Yi was their jungler, and he ganked pretty often. He liked to hang down by Sivir and I though, managing to kill each of us a couple times, and Malphite up top as well. Eventually they started grouping up, and took down all of our outer towers in quick succession, with top being the first to fall.
Mid Game
Things were looking pretty grim at this point, as we had no tower kills and a Master Yi steamrolling us. However, Urgot was on a nice run and had the gold to get a good offense/defense balance, which ended up being key. Their team mostly roamed as a pack, whittling down towers when opportunities presented themselves. The turning point in the game though was a long teamfight in the middle of their map near their tower. We caught Teemo out of position to start it off, and chased him into his own team, killing him in the process. When the enemy engaged, Urgot grabbed Xin Zhao with his ult and we killed him easily. There was then a lot of dancing around while flinging spells, but eventually we were able to kill Mundo and Malzahar. This allowed us to take down two middle towers, and the inhibitor tower halfway while they waited to respawn. This is when Master Yi started backdooring to try and take momentum back, but he was never able to kill an inhibitor.
Late Game
We had a good hold on the game at this point, which was helped by Xin and Teemo constantly going off alone, getting themselves picked off by three or four of us. This allowed us to win teamfights when they happened, as they were either completely away from the battle, or died right away. The enemy team showed a pretty good strategy when we tried pushing mid though, which gave them a tiny bit of hope. They would be off in their jungle whenever we pushed, and so then they would come up behind us and unload once we got into their base. It was successful once or twice, as they usually killed three or four of us. However, we eventually took out their inhibitor tower and inhibitor in separate pushes, securing the all-important super minions. The rest of the game was a bunch of base defense by them, and middle pushing by us, and we were able to kill their Nexus at 47 minutes.
Here is the post-game scoreboard:
Replay link: Ranked Game #9 - Taric
What I learned:
- Saving stuns and knockups for Master Yi is key to shutting down a steamroll
- Tanky Urgot is pretty sweet (he killed Yi with his Thornmail), I'll definitely do that next time I play him
- Fiddlesticks still has some viability, positioning is crucial to doing well with him
- Comebacks are pretty dang satisfying, even when two of the other team's players are awful
- Playing support is fun, I would certainly own Taric if he cost less than 3150 IP
My Score: 4/8/21
My Build: Spirit Visage, Mercury Treads, Manamune, Frozen Heart
Current ranked record: 5-4 (0 leaves)
ELO Rating: Unranked
So my next game will be my tenth, and I will finally get to know my ELO rating. I will probably do a little breakdown of my first ten games, like the champs that I saw, champs I used, my game stats, etc. I know most of this can be found in my summoner profile, but it's obviously more convenient for you guys to just read it here. Plus I kind of want to see the trends in who gets used and banned the most, stuff like that.
Thanks for reading, I'm glad that I'm getting a lot of comments on these posts with constructive criticism. I definitely read and take them all into consideration, so keep them coming!
-Chickenmoo
