I had the first pick for my team, with second ban:
Nocturne, Shen, Vayne, Amumu
Draft:
Corki
Mordekaiser, Karthus
Sona, Rammus
Vladimir, Xin Zhao
Cho'Gath (534N7R0N), Gangplank
Jarvan IV
Well, two of my least favorite champions were going to participate in this game...both in the places that I don't want them to be. My dislike for Gangplank on my team has been well documented, as well as my inability to take on Mordekaiser. In my mind, our team was vastly inferior to theirs, as they had 2 or 3 of the more "pub-stompy" champions out there, with us having the wonderfully underwhelming Sona, Rammus and Gangplank. The amount of CC was slightly in our favor though. The combination of Sona and Rammus had potential as well, being able to immobilize someone for about 4 seconds and ensuring their death. Having Cho'Gath jungle isn't my favorite, but that's just a personal preference and i know 534N7R0N is usually decent to good at it.
Lane Matchups
Top: Gangplank vs Karthus
Middle: Corki vs Vladimir
Bottom: Sona, Rammus vs Mordekaiser, Jarvan IV
Jungle: Cho'Gath vs Xin Zhao
Early Game
Laning was somewhat passive to begin the game, though Gangplank seemed to have a good handle up top on Karthus by playing super aggressive. Vladimir harassed me a lot in the middle, pushing the lane at the same time. He was able to get first blood on me when he went for a tower dive at level 6. I had him down to a single bar of health, but his trusty pool got him away just as Hemoplague's damage kicked in. That was the only kill in my lane while laning, but Vlad kept himself busy in the other lanes as well, getting up to 5-0 in no time. Like I mentioned before, Gangplank did better than expected against Karthus at first, but then ended up even with him. The former tended to push way too hard, opening himself up to Xin Zhao ganks. The bottom lane saw quite a bit of action, mostly at our turret. The minions were kept pushed all the way up to it, with no real ganking coming from Cho'Gath to help out. The champions down there traded kills a couple times, mostly on tower dives by the enemy team. This was the site of the first tower kill, as Vladimir and Xin Zhao came down to overwhelm the lane, diving Sona and Rammus hard while only losing one to the latter's taunt. It fell within seconds, but I was able to counter it a few minutes later by taking out their middle tower uncontested.
Mid Game
From there, laning ended and good old roaming began. The momentum seemed to be in our favor when we secured an unopposed dragon kill, killed two champs who were too late to contest it, and take out their outer top tower all in succession. This gave us a slight gold advantage at this point, as the creep scores were about even. To secure the lead even further, Gangplank backdoored their inner bottom tower and forced their team to regroup and refocus. Unfortunately, this is where our luck changed, big time. There was a lot of wandering around by our team, trying to stage pushes against vulnerable towers, only to be met by 2 or 3 defenders, forcing us to back off. One of these times, we were too slow in getting away, leading us to fight on their terms. All of the teamfights were centered upon Sona landing her ult on multiple champions, which didn't happen more than once. It didn't happen this time, putting us into a real sticky situation. We were able to take out one or two of them, but then we had to get out. In our retreat, they quickly took Baron and somehow destroyed three towers, digging us a nice deep hole. The rest of the game was a lot of defending and a lot of Gangplank going out alone and getting killed, crippling our damage output in teamfights. With another Baron buff, they destroyed our Nexus at 47 minutes.
Post Game Scoreboard:
Replay link: Ranked Game #34 - Corki
What I Learned:
- Going off on your own late game is a really bad idea, especially when you can never make it past the river. Deaths at 40 minutes mean so much more than deaths at 5 minutes
- Jarvan's E is fantastic for team pushes (and objectives in general), the attack speed aura is so good
- It's kind of irritating when the other team has three huge magic damage sources and only two people build magic resist, Rammus didn't get any until the very end
- Speaking of Rammus, picking people just because they are common bans doesn't win the game for your team, you need to actually be GOOD at the champ you're using to win
My score: 1/3/4
My build: Manamune, Mercury's Treads, Banshee's Veil, Trinity Force
Current ranked record: 15-18 (0 leaves)
ELO rating: 1166
Thanks for reading!
-Chickenmoo
