Here is game number thirty-four. Seeing as I played this game around a month ago, I don't really remember much about it off the top of my head, so I'm just going to get into the summary. This was a duo queue game with 534N7R0N
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
Hey everybody, here is the first of my freshly written game summaries. I don't know the exact date of when I played this, but it was definitely a day or two after game 32. I continued to be stubborn with my champion selection, but it was met with slightly better results this time. I duo queued with my friend Parkinsonian on this one. He is a couple hundred points above me in ELO, so the players in this game were slightly better (or were supposed to be) than what I was used to.
I was the last pick on my team, with us having first ban:
Vayne, Shen, Amumu, Nocturne
Draft:
Rumble
Corki (Parkinsonian), Garen
Cho'Gath, Xin Zhao
Alistar, Trundle
Taric, Malzahar
Teemo
I liked this team, having two ways to alter enemy positions is nice and it made up for our general lack of hard CC. I also felt like we could have used more magic damage, but I suppose Teemo covers that pretty well. When compared to their team, I liked ours even more. We had nice poke to harass their numerous melees and several ways to break Malzahar's suppression. Our escaping ability was also superior, with only Alistar lacking a way to get out of a fight quickly. As long as we kept Malzahar and Xin Zhao under control, it seemed like we would have the upper hand. That's what we play the game for though, as no one wins at the loading screen, not even against an all support team (lol Rioterz).
Lane Matchups
Top: Teemo vs Cho’Gath
Middle: Corki vs. Malzahar
Bottom: Alistar, Garen vs Rumble, Taric
Jungle: Trundle vs. Xin Zhao
Early Game
Our bottom laners were somewhat ambitious in the early going, getting First Blood within a couple minutes. Alistar planted a
great Clairvoyance near their red buff, spotting Xin Zhao killing his small golems. Alistar and Garen went for a gank, one from each side and were
successful in the surprise attack. Unfortunately Alistar died in the process as he got stunned under their tower, but it probably got Xin Zhao a little nervous about jungling. The laning phase was very uneventful and slow when it came to objectives, but plenty went on in terms of kills. I was hard-pressed to do anything of value against Cho’Gath, so I was forced to just farm away while he whittled my tower down. He was only able to kill me once though, so it wasn’t horrible. Middle was a lot of the same, with either side too scared to engage fully. Even with assorted ganks, there were no real kills between the middle laners. The bottom lane was a different story, there was a lot of action down there. Alistar would find himself out of position many times, subjecting himself to a Taric stun and Rumble’s entire arsenal. Garen was usually there to pick up the pieces though, netting a couple kills.
Mid Game
The odd thing about this game was the pace at which it happened. It was very slow going, resulting in early roaming (early as in before the first turret kill). Alistar and Trundle wandered around quite a bit, with mixed results. The ganking attempts tended not to work due to the enemies’
good presence of mind to stay back in their lane. Xin Zhao didn’t do too much either, as he would often go in alone and allow our guys to retreat at low health. With all of the roaming came opportunities to take out turrets, which Malzahar was the first to take advantage of, destroying our middle turret at the 15 minute mark. After that, the momentum shifted back and forth for a little while. A small teamfight up top got us a turret and a couple kills, and other shortly after got them the same results. Much of the action was focused in the bottom lane though, as they would not give up on taking out our turret down there. Our team was pretty well set up for defending a turret though, with Alistar’s AOE stun and headbutt combined with Corki’s fantastic poking. At one point we were able to catch them out of position, taking a couple of them down and forcing a retreat. They kept sending champs down there to defend their turret, but they had no way to penetrate our defense. The momentum at this point was in our favor, as we knew that they couldn’t stage an offensive, and it seemed like they knew it too, being quite conservative in their play.
Late Game
We gradually staged our offensive here, poking at turrets when we could and catching the enemy champions away from their pack. This snowballing was kind of interesting, as we didn’t really communicate too much during the match. Most of it was actually Garen whining about either me or Alistar, or Trundle whining about having no support. It seems like we just knew to focus Malzahar when possible, with Xin Zhao coming next. Alistar would initiate and pick out a target for us with Headbutt, allowing us to feast on him. Having multiple ways to cancel Malzahar’s ultimate was very important here, as he would then be out of position and quite easy to kill. The event that won us the game was an incredibly close Baron fight. We started attacking him with the enemy somewhat close by, but with a couple Madred’s items it would
go quickly. They caught on to us though, and came stomping in to go for the steal. Cho’Gath could have had it very easily with his Feast, but he blew it way too early to secure the kill. As a result, we were able to snag it and turn the fight around on them. While this was going on, a couple people had gotten killed and more were left at low health. With the added boost from Baron, we were able to get out with 2 or 3 people alive, and 4 enemies dead. We took this opportunity to push all the way to their Nexus, winning the game at 46 minutes.
Post Game Scoreboard:
Replay link: Ranked Game #33 - Teemo
What I learned:
- Cho'Gath seems to be a pretty bad matchup for Teemo, he doesn't have enough burst to even make a dent
- Having Corki makes playing defense so easy, the missles are amazing for poking and forcing retreats
- Malzahar's ultimate leaves him very open to attack, I don't know why I hadn't figured that out before
- Trundle is a funky champion to use it seems...I don't think I've ever seen him built the same way twice
My Score: 2/4/10
My Build: Philosopher's Stone, Mercury's Treads, Malady, Madred's Bloodrazor, Nashor's Tooth
Summoner's Spells: Exhaust, Flash
Current ranked record: 15-18 (0 leaves)
ELO rating: 1185
Thanks for reading.
-Chickenmoo
