Ranked Game #25

With no class again today, I played a ranked game this afternoon. It was a fantastic example of why I don't jungle, it was pathetic and I felt useless. This was a solo queue game.

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

Amumu, Nocturne, Shen, Rammus


Draft:

Ashe
Alistar, Renekton
Rumble, Zilean
Nunu, Anivia
Jarvan IV, Annie
Kog'Maw


I thought we had a pretty decent team here, Renekton is always nice to have with his pursuit ability and teamfight goodness, while Anivia has the potential to be devastating if she gets on a roll. I wish we had a different AD carry though...Kog'Maws seem to do well only on rare occasions. I wasn't really planning on jungling in this game (though I guess I  never am), but I took on the role out of necessity. Their composition was pretty good, even though it was pretty heavy in the AP department. Jarvan can tank, but then he tends to be ignorable in terms of damage, leaving Ashe as the only real AD champ on the team. I was also excited to see Rumble on their team

Lane Matchups
Top: Renekton vs Ashe
Middle: Kog'Maw vs Annie
Bottom: Alistar, Anivia vs Rumble, Zilean
Jungle: Nunu vs Jarvan IV


Early Game
The game got started with quite a bang when the other team went for a 5-man gank of me at my blue buff right away. Zilean had me scoped out with his Clairvoyance, and I foolishly went snooping around for them. They caught me and Annie ended up getting the kill for First Blood. Due to that, I had to start my jungling elsewhere, hampering me experience-wise for a while. I didn't get many ganking opportunities, as my team pushed just a bit too much in their lanes and so I died often when I tried. As for Jarvan, he ganked a lot with his flag-pull combo, racking up quite a few assists in the process. Top lane was an even match, no kills went back and forth and the lane never got pushed enough to matter in any direction. The middle lane ended up being a win for us, as Annie went down to the bottom lane to gank quite a few times, giving Kog'Maw openings to wear down the turret. He died a few times to her in the lane though. The first turret kill came in the bottom lane for our side, as Alistar and Anivia did pretty well. There weren't a lot of kills, but they made them count. The tower fell when a teamfight broke out in the middle, and a large minion wave dealt the final blows. Their middle turret was taken down soon afterwards.


Mid Game
While laning had mostly broken down at this point, pretty much everyone took a turn manning the top lane while the rest put down roaming offenses in the other lanes. The majority of the battles took place in the middle of the map and near dragon. By now I felt we were in pretty good shape. I mean, we were behind in the kill count, but we were ahead in towers and they couldn't seem to adequately defend them all at once. Our team laned pretty well, but unfortunately we did not discuss a strategy for teamfights, and it came back to bite us in the ass big time. We would never target the same champion, resulting in our quick deaths in the big cluster, and then getting kited by Ashe when we tried to run. One battle near dragon got us running far enough away that they were able to get their first tower kill in the middle. We were able to retaliate with a small offensive attack in the bottom lane to get their inner tower, but that was the last positive event for us in this game.


Late Game
The sequence that lost us the game started as a 4-man gank in the middle where we destroyed Zilean, but the rest of them ran away. We proceeded to go after their inner middle tower, when they came back at us and mauled us with no mercy (we were probably too focused on the turret to react). As a result, four of us died, and they were able to get a free Baron kill. We played defensively from here on out, as our loss was inevitable (though I was stubborn). They gradually wore down turrets from all sides with their superior firepower and made it to our base with only a casualty every once in a while. For their game winning push, they aced us in our last-ditch effort, and took out our Nexus at 48 minutes.


Post game scoreboard:

Replay link: Ranked Game #25 - Nunu

What I learned:
- I need to find a new jungler. I have plenty possible ones and have tried them out, but I need to buy armor runes to make it all the way
- Renekton is pretty monstrous in teamfights with his ultimate, he turns into a whirling dervish of damage
- Ashe is so good at kiting, it's absolutely ridiculous
- Philosopher's stones on a caster with no health? Very dumb idea
- Zilean is very good with his saves, I don't know why he isn't played more often

My Score: 0/8/5
My Build: Mercury's Treads, Doran's Ring, Aegis of the Legion, Abyssal Scepter

Current ranked record: 13-12 (0 leaves)
ELO Rating: 1271

The 25 game overview will be coming soon. If there's anything specific you readers would like to see, let me know in the comment section below. Thanks for reading.

-Chickenmoo

Ranked Game #19

Well, it appears that I still have some work to do on jungling. Maybe I need to find another jungler to learn, like Shaco or Cho'Gath. I mean I would go for Amumu, but he's banned too often to rely on. So yeah, I just got done with a game where I jungled. It was in solo queue, and I went alone.

I had the fourth pick for my team, and we had second ban:

Nocturne, Shen, Brand, Amumu


The draft went like this:

Rammus
Malzahar, Nidalee
Vladimir, Nasus
Warwick, Jarvan IV
Nunu, Miss Fortune
Alistar


My thoughts on this team can be summed up with the following: Meh. Rammus is nice, but the guy only took him because he didn't want the other team to have him. I would have rather him have been someone he could jungle with (he listed a few, but not Rammus) so then I wouldn't have to, and do something I'm a little more comfortable with. Vlad is nice, always a good steamroller if he gets a couple early kills. Nasus and Miss Fortune are not my favorites, seeing as their CC is very limited. The Miss Fortune guy  was insistent on playing her, so our options were kind of limited. I always get a bad feeling when there is no real discussion on who's playing who, when everyone is just like "I'm playing X" and stops talking, or just locks in without a word. Anyway, as for their team it was clear that stopping Malzahar and Warwick's ults would be a priority, along with keeping Nidalee out of the action.

Lane Matchups
Top: Nasus vs Nidalee
Middle: Vladimir vs Malzahar
Bottom: Rammus, Miss Fortune vs Jarvan IV, Alistar
Jungle: Nunu vs Warwick


Early Game
This was a pretty weird game in terms of momentum, they did a lot of the killing, but we did a lot of the pushing. First blood occurred in the top lane, when Nidalee managed to chase Nasus quite a ways past his outer tower to take him down. After that, not much really happened there, though Nasus managed to push quite a bit more. The matchup in mid was pretty even, if only because of Warwick's constant ganking. Vladimir was able to get kills by being extremely aggressive and pushing as hard as he could to back Malzahar up to his turret. He died a few times trying to retreat though, which greatly aided Malzahar and Warwick later on. The bottom lane produced little action in the early going, and was the target of a few unsuccessful ganks. I tried ganking a few times, but wasn't really able to do anything worthwhile. All of the lanes were pushed hard in our favor, and their middle tower was the first to fall. A few minutes later, we took out the top one, and also their bottom tower.

Mid Game
At this point, I thought we were in pretty good shape. We had three towers down to their none, though we were a bit behind in kills. The one teamfight we were victorious in happened in the middle lane, near where their outer tower once stood. We took out their bulky guys and forced a retreat, enabling us to destroy their inner middle tower for even more momentum. The troubling sign at this point was the fact that we had half as many kills as they did, suggesting that their gold advantage would eventually win over the tower advantage. The turning point in the game was the next big teamfight in the middle of the map. We initiated on Alistar (dumb idea) and killed him, but by the time we did that, their big guns were in there firing away. Warwick ended up getting a quadra-kill, and we got aced. Luckily the kills were far enough apart that they didn't do anything with the downtime, but it changed the momentum all the same.

Late Game
The steamrolling began here, and boy it was rough. Our team continued pushing at various towers to try and take back the momentum, but we were met by their team every time and were forced to retreat with casualties. They rolled around in a pack, taking towers as they pleased and smashing whoever stood in their way. At one point they took Baron, and were able to reach and destroy our middle inhibitor with ease. It was all over from there, as we had to scramble to protect our base from large minion buildups from each lane. They came back at full strength, and beat us handily in our base, getting us to surrender at 38 minutes.

Post game scoreboard:

Replay link: Ranked Game #19 - Nunu


What I learned:
- I need to learn how to jungle better, I just don't have a real good strategy in regards of how and when to gank, when to farm in the jungle and when to go out into a lane.
- Picking a champion just to keep them off the other team isn't the greatest strategy...just ban them instead
- Carries need to stay in the back of the pack, as over aggression hurts the team greatly
- Alistar should never be focused, ever. His ultimate is just too good
- Double suppression team is pretty sick

My Score: 3/5/7
My Build: Mercury's Treads, Banshee's Veil, Rod of Ages

Current ranked record: 10-9 (0 leaves)
ELO Rating: 1271

So my first shot at jungling didn't go so well. Anyone have any suggestions or tips regarding jungle Nunu. I think I'm going to give Amumu some test runs in customs and normals while jungling to see if I can do better. Thanks for reading.

-Chickenmoo