I had the fourth pick for my team, which had first ban:
Shen, Vayne, Vladimir, Nocturne
Draft:
Urgot
Amumu, Malphite
Mordekaiser, Galio
Nunu, Teemo
Malzahar, Udyr
Ashe
I feel like some people get too excited when the "standard" bans don't happen. I mean sure, having two high-quality tanks is great, but you only need one...and it takes away from the ability to win multiple lanes. Other than that, we had a lot of possibilities for jungling, with Nunu taking the role to give us complete control. I liked the amount of initiators we had though, especially compared to them. Plus the combination of Amumu and Nunu's ultimates is always intriguing. I thought their team was kind of oddly composed, but pretty balanced. They had a huge amount of damage potential compared to us, so I suppose it was a good thing we had so much bulk.
Lane Matchups
Top: Teemo vs Mordekaiser
Middle: Ashe vs Malzahar
Bottom: Malphite, Amumu vs Urgot, Galio
Jungle: Nunu vs Udyr
Early Game
This part of the game was pretty even in terms of kills, but it seemed like we took the advantage in regards to map control. First blood happened about 4 minutes into the game when Malphite tower dove Urgot for a kill, dying in the process. The kill count was essentially even down there while laning, each side died a couple times, and the towers were pushed to the extremes most of the time. Ashe did okay in the middle, getting a kill or two with some help on ganks, but dying a couple times to Malzahar's suppression. The top was even as well, though I managed to get a slight kill advantage on Mordekaiser. I was not able to push my lane like the others were though, it was backed up to my tower quite a bit. Nunu ganked a lot, and was usually successful. He knew how to pick his spots very well, which helped our lane control. Udyr didn't do too much, he would come in later than he should have, but still managed to get a kill here and there. Their bottom tower was the first to fall after a gank from Nunu pushed Galio and Urgot way behind the turret, leaving it open for the kill. Their middle turret fell a few minutes later when it was left alone for the taking.
Mid Game
Once laning ended, a lot of the action was focused in the top lane and the nearby jungle. Nunu and I went up there to clear a large minion wave, which was soon followed by a 5-man gank. We tried to shelter ourselves with our tower, but it was no match for their numbers, as we both died pretty quickly. By that time, the rest of our team had showed up, but with no real uniform teamfight strategy everyone targeted a different champion, causing us to lose the teamfight and an awful lot of momentum. This was also the part of the game where I started playing like crap, and Malzahar would ult me on sight, melting my health in seconds. I was too stubborn to build magic resist items until it was too late. The onslaught continued in the middle as they pushed relentlessly, taking our towers down without much resistance. Whenever we did engage them, it would be on their tanks and thus, get us nowhere. They eventually got through a couple inhibitors and finally had to retreat to heal and such, leaving us a small opening. We took Baron by the slimmest of margins (they were bearing down on us as we finished) and retreated to our base. Unfortunately, in our ignorance of our base super minions had destroyed one Nexus turret and the bottom inhibitor had died. They came in to finish us off, with our horrible teamfight strategy gimping us until the very end. Our Nexus was killed at 43 minutes.
Post game scoreboard:
Replay link: Ranked Game #31 - Teemo
What I learned:
- I need to learn to adapt as Teemo, I'm usually too stubborn to stray from my build at all with him. That cost me big time here
- It may just be a one time fluke, but it doesn't seem like Udyr is that great at ganking. If you're smart, you can see him coming from a mile away and just run to safety while you kite him
- Just because the "superior" tanks are available doesn't mean you should pick them. You should pick who you are best with
- This is obvious, but no team coordination is a recipe for disaster. We had great potential with our team composition, but it crashed and burned miserably
My Score: 6/9/9
My Build: Eleisa's Miracle, Ionian Boots of Lucidity, Malady, Nashor's Tooth, Banshee's Veil
Current ranked record: 14-17 (0 leaves)
ELO rating: 1181
The losses are continuing to pile up, but I am not going to quit. My goal is still to get my rating back to 1300 and beyond, things are bound to turn around soon. Thanks for reading.
-Chickenmoo
