Ranked Game #29

I'm back at home for a few days to relax before moving into an apartment for the summer, so I'll be playing quite a bit of LoL. I got around to playing my next ranked game last night, where my recent run of bad luck continued. I personally did better than I have the past couple games, but its a little difficult to carry as a support champion. This was a solo queue game.

I had second pick on my team, which had second ban:

Rammus, Karthus, Amumu, Nocturne


Draft:

Shen
Annie, Ezreal
Taric, Teemo
Mordekaiser, Nidalee
Warwick, Vladimir
Garen


I gotta tell you, I was pretty excited to have Shen on our team, being saved from out of nowhere can turn the tide of any battle instantly. Teemo is always a solid champion to have, as is Vladimir if he has a good start. I'm not confident in any junglers at this point, so I won't talk about Warwick. Being able to lock down any champion for 3 or 4 seconds with our combined crowd control was encouraging, especially when compared to theirs. They had almost no crowd control, with Annie having the only hard CC, and a sporadic one at that. To sum it up, I felt our significant advantage in that department would get us a solid victory, as long as we coordinated our attacks well without getting into bad situations.


Lane Matchups
Top: Vladimir vs Ezreal, Nidalee
Middle: Teemo vs Mordekaiser
Bottom: Taric, Shen vs Annie, Garen
Jungle: Warwick vs none


Early Game
Nidalee did a little probing in our jungle before minions even spawned, establishing a bit of a presence there to start out. Once the buff golem spawned, she came in to disrupt Warwick, which apparently threw off his groove entirely. It seemed like he was playing the entire game angry, as he claimed Vladimir had a chance to stop her, but didn't (he hit her, but didn't chase). As a result, he played very poorly, and couldn't get any successful ganks going. The first tower kill actually happened before First Blood did, which was something I had never seen before, and probably won't again for a while. As you may have guessed, our top tower was the first to go down after about 6 minutes of relentless pushing from Ezreal and Nidalee, even with a little help on the defensive side from Warwick. The matchup in the middle was pretty even kill-wise, as neither side could get anything going. My lane was one-sided in regards to pushing, as we were consistently sitting at our tower picking off creeps before they got into range. No kills happened while laning down there. First blood happened a minute or so after our top tower fell, when Vladimir caught Ezreal running away from his tower.

Mid Game
By this time everyone had started kind of roaming around where potential threats presented themselves, though not much came of it for our side. There were a few times where a couple of us would get caught with our pants down, and get annihilated. When full teamfights started happening, they were in the middle of the map. Warwick would go ahead and use his ult whenever he felt like, providing a pretty poor initiation for our team. It would be that, or Vlad running in with a faceroll, only to be blasted with their full team right away. It wasn't entirely their fault though, as we never discussed any real strategy for who to target first, which ended up in each person going after someone different and so we got destroyed. Nothing real exciting or at all notable happened for the rest of the game, we just got beat bad by a better coordinated team. They exploited our poor teamwork and took out towers when they could, eventually triggering our surrender at 33 minutes.




Post game scoreboard:

Replay link: Ranked Game #29 - Taric


What I learned:
- I can't trust anyone but myself at this level of play...I need to start playing champions I can take over a game with, and queuing with friends as well
- Vladimir doesn't seem like a good option to go 1v2, though I don't know who would have been better
- No crowd control does not make a bad team, as long as you can coordinate your attacks incredibly well
- Mordekaiser seems to be difficult for a Teemo to bring down, as he doesn't have that much burst
- I need to learn how to use Clairvoyance better, I find it hard to pick my times and areas to use it on

My Score: 2/3/5
My Build: Doran's Ring, Mercury's Treads, Aegis of the Legion, Negatron Cloak, Sapphire Crystal, Ruby Crystal
Summoner's spells: Clarity, Clairvoyance

Current ranked record: 14-15
ELO Rating: 1227

The games continue to get more and more frustrating, but I shall press on in hopes of getting my rating back up to 1300. I'm going to start trying to carry as often as I can, I'm tired of tanking and supporting mediocre players. I mean obviously I will tank if no one else does, but I'm not going to go for a first pick tank anymore until I move up in rating. As always, comments and suggestions are appreciated, thanks for reading.

-Chickenmoo

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

Ranked Game #27

One of my friends that I play LoL with often tends to get angry when he sees another player use one of his favorite champions badly. I never really understood why he did this until this game. It was so frustrating to watch a champion I usually dominate with do so badly, especially with a favorable matchup. This was a solo queue game.

I had the third pick for my team, and we had first ban:

Amumu, Nocturne, Zilean, Shen


Draft:

Rammus
Sion, Teemo
Nidalee, Akali
Taric, Mordekaiser
Caitlyn, Singed
Trundle


I thought this team was going to be great. Huge map presence with mushrooms, a pair of long stuns and the most annoying tank out there. I was also excited to play Taric, as I normally do very well with him. The potential for a double stun lane was also something to look forward to. Unfortunately they happened to have two great tanks, one of which is a great jungler. The rest of the team was pretty darn squishy though, along with easily being countered with focused fire. Given that, I felt like we had the advantage going into the loading screen.

Lane Matchups
Top: Mordekaiser vs Nidalee
Middle: Teemo vs Akali
Bottom: Sion, Taric vs Singed, Caitlyn
Jungle: Trundle vs Rammus


Early Game
The laning phase went the complete opposite way that I thought it would. First blood didn't happen until about 5 minutes into the game, when Akali bursted down Teemo when he stayed in at too low of a health. This happened many more times during the laning phase, it was horrible. It made me pretty angry that he couldn't handle a melee champion as Teemo, who has a long blind. He also never adapted to her by changing his approach, making me even madder. He even tried switching lanes at one point, but Akali followed him and continued to destroy him. Nidalee and Mordekaiser were pretty even up top, trading kills a couple times. We didn't end up dominating with a double stun lane like we originally thought. Getting up close was too risky with Singed flinging and poisoning all over the place combined with Caitlyn's heavy long range damage. So we only managed to get one kill with our stuns when Singed dove us. Trundle hardly ganked, even though our lane was pushed the ENTIRE time. The other lanes did need more help than we did though...not that he did a lot. Rammus came around every once in a while to pull someone out of position with his taunt, netting kills a couple times. Our bottom tower was the first to fall when I left to go shop when I shouldn't have, leaving Sion to hold the tower on his own.

Mid Game
Laning pretty much ended at that point, and all of the action was focused in the middle from that point on. They pretty much had their way with us the whole time. There were a few instances where we tried to stage offensive attacks, like in their jungle to gank, but it just ended horribly with more than half of our team dying. Teemo continued to be pretty useless and didn't buy any armor or magic resist, and Mordekaiser wasn't able to build up gold to get any either. Sion did ok for himself by getting a few kills when the enemy tower dove, but it obviously wasn't enough to make a significant impact. After a lot of futile fighting at our inner middle tower, we surrendered at 25 minutes.

Post game scoreboard:

Replay link: Ranked Game #27 - Taric

What I learned:
- Akali is pretty good at taking advantage of bad players...it was embarrassing
- Double stun lane is obviously pretty good, but it can clearly be countered
- Being able to adapt to the situation at hand is crucial to stopping an enemy steamroll...but some people are too stubborn to do so
- Junglers need to a have a presence in each lane to prevent them from being pushed, otherwise they can push without  fear

My Score: 0/3/4
My Build: Aegis of the Legion, Mercury's Treads
Summoner's Spells: Clarity, Ghost

Current ranked record: 14-13 (0 leaves)
ELO Rating: 1273

I was excited to play Taric...only for a huge letdown. There's nowhere to go but up from here, this was just plain awful. I will play my next ranked game tomorrow night sometime. Thanks for reading.

-Chickenmoo

Ranked Game #26

I gotta start studying for exams today, as it is finals week for me. I got a game in before I hit the books, and it was a good one. I ended up jungling with a champ I had never jungled with in a real game before, so it was bound to be interesting. This was a solo queue game.

I was the captain of my team and had first ban:

Nocturne, Shen, Malphite, Rammus


Draft:

Brand
Amumu, Morgana
Warwick, Dr. Mundo
Tryndamere, Caitlyn
Janna, Xin Zhao
Kassadin


Our team was interesting in terms of composition. We had two AD carries and two AP carries, with me being the only real bulk on the team. It certainly isn't a recipe for disaster, but also not ideal in my mind. Having a Tryndamere also makes me kind of nervous due to the usually horrible early game that they have. Given that though, we had a large amount of damage output, allowing us to easily counter their moderately tanky team. They had no real dedicated source of AD, just a bunch of crowd control and AP damage. The amount of crowd control they had was pretty significant compared to ours though, a suppression and two knock-ups is pretty scary.

Lane Matchups
Top: Tryndamere vs Dr. Mundo
Middle: Kassadin, Caitlyn (yep) vs Brand
Bottom: Morgana vs Janna, Xin Zhao
Jungle: Amumu vs Warwick


Early Game
So yeah, we had two people go in the middle lane. They were both too stubborn to leave, so they just went for it.  First blood happened about three minutes into the game when Brand roasted Tryndamere in the top lane. Tryndamere complained almost the entire laning phase about how "OP" Brand is. Soon after that Brand switched to the middle lane. As a result of overloading the middle, their tower ended up getting destroyed at around 6 minutes, which helped us get a bit of momentum and map control early. People started roaming around at that point. The bottom lane got a bit of help, but then the enemy team overloaded it and managed to get their first tower kill a few minutes later. After this, a lot of the action happened in the top lane where each team was trying to take the first tower up there. It was a lot of small teamfighting where we ended up falling behind in kills a bit, as Kassadin and Tryndamere would get themselves killed in easily avoidable situations.

Mid Game
Fortunately, Tryndamere hit his "critical mass" once he got a Phantom Dancer and we started taking back the momentum. An important teamfight happened in the bottom lane where we danced around dragon for a while, and then stepped into the lane to stop a push. We ended up acing them by targeting them in the ideal order of Warwick, Brand, Janna to eliminate as much damage as possible early. With the ace, we took down their outer bottom tower, and half of the inner one. Another great successful teamfight got us the next middle tower, thanks to the incredible presence of Morgana's ult to ruin entire teams. There was a bit of a lull in the action at this point, involving a lot of warding and counter-warding of Baron to try and get an advantage. Eventually another teamfight broke out in mid, where we were able to ace them by picking them off one by one with our AOE snares. This got us their middle inhibitor tower and inhibitor, but we unfortunately got aced in our retreat thanks to Mundo's cleavers. Their kills were spread far enough apart so that they really couldn't do anything with the down time.

Late Game
We launched another offensive on their base, gradually taking down their side lane towers. Upon getting to the base, we managed to secure another ace, getting us another inhibitor and one Nexus tower. We were pretty poor at retreating once again though, as all but one of us died while running away. They took that opportunity to get Baron buff without real contention, forcing us to defend for a while. Upon waiting it out, we made a push bottom and took out all three inhibitors at once. Given that they then had three lanes of super minions to worry about, we took Baron down once he respawned. This allowed us to make the killing blow by taking out the Nexus at 52 minutes.


Post game scoreboard:

Replay link: Ranked Game #26 - Amumu


What I learned:
- Tryndamere isn't the greatest solo laner...but he is also the best at recovering from a bad laning phase to dominate
- Some people are too stubborn for their own good, but it helped us mount an early lead
- Warding may be the most important thing that a jungler does early on
- Kassadin needs to farm to operate at his full potential, as in he needs to be able buy a mana pool
- Dr. Mundo is incredibly irritating when chasing someone

My Score: 5/8/22
My Build: Aegis of the Legion, Mercury's Treads, Banshee's Veil, Sunfire Cape, Null-Magic Mantle (and 7 or 8 wards)
Summoner Spells: Smite, Flash

Current ranked record: 14-12 (0 leaves)
ELO Rating: 1294

So my first real jungling venture with Amumu was successful, and this was a really uplifting game compared to the last few. My next game will come either today or tomorrow. Thanks for reading, comments and suggestions are always welcome.

-Chickenmoo