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 #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 #9

My ninth ranked game is now in the books. It was a hard fought battle with somewhat of a comeback involved. Though it was also aided by a couple of pretty bad players on the other team. This was a solo queue game.

This time I had the fourth pick on my team, with the other captain having first ban. Here they are:

Amumu, Rammus, Nocturne, Shen


And the draft:

Us: Urgot
Them: Dr. Mundo, Malzahar
Us: Malphite, Sivir
Them: Xin Zhao, Teemo
Us: Taric, Fiddlesticks
Them: Master Yi


Fiddlesticks said that he would jungle, which made me a little nervous because he's slowly sliding into oblivion utility-wise. Urgot took mid and Malphite soloed top, so Sivir and I went bottom. I was excited about our team, as we were able to get Malphite and his sick nasty initiation, along with Urgot's Acid Hunter sniping. I also had hopes that their Master Yi would be bad and thus be easy gold for us. However, the fact that they had Teemo and Dr. Mundo was a little disheartening, as clearly Teemo's mushrooms are the most irritating thing in the game, and Mundo's health regen/movespeed steroid is up there on the list.

Early Game
Early game was tough for me, but that was probably because I was in the mindset of a caster instead of support, which obviously isn't good. We were able to get first blood in bottom lane though, when Xin tried to dive me with half health and failed. Malphite was steady up top against Dr. Mundo, with no real action happening for either side. Urgot dominated Malzahar in the middle, getting at least two kills on him while laning and giving up none. Fiddlesticks somehow died to golem, even with a leash, but it turned out ok in the end. Master Yi was their jungler, and he ganked pretty often. He liked to hang down by Sivir and I though, managing to kill each of us a couple times, and Malphite up top as well. Eventually they started grouping up, and took down all of our outer towers in quick succession, with top being the first to fall.

Mid Game
Things were looking pretty grim at this point, as we had no tower kills and a Master Yi steamrolling us. However, Urgot was on a nice run and had the gold to get a good offense/defense balance, which ended up being key. Their team mostly roamed as a pack, whittling down towers when opportunities presented themselves. The turning point in the game though was a long teamfight in the middle of their map near their tower. We caught Teemo out of position to start it off, and chased him into his own team, killing him in the process. When the enemy engaged, Urgot grabbed Xin Zhao with his ult and we killed him easily. There was then a lot of dancing around while flinging spells, but eventually we were able to kill Mundo and Malzahar. This allowed us to take down two middle towers, and the inhibitor tower halfway while they waited to respawn. This is when Master Yi started backdooring to try and take momentum back, but he was never able to kill an inhibitor.

Late Game
We had a good hold on the game at this point, which was helped by Xin and Teemo constantly going off alone, getting themselves picked off by three or four of us. This allowed us to win teamfights when they happened, as they were either completely away from the battle, or died right away. The enemy team showed a pretty good strategy when we tried pushing mid though, which gave them a tiny bit of hope. They would be off in their jungle whenever we pushed, and so then they would come up behind us and unload once we got into their base. It was successful once or twice, as they usually killed three or four of us. However, we eventually took out their inhibitor tower and inhibitor in separate pushes, securing the all-important super minions. The rest of the game was a bunch of base defense by them, and middle pushing by us, and we were able to kill their Nexus at 47 minutes.

Here is the post-game scoreboard:

Replay link: Ranked Game #9 - Taric

What I learned:
- Saving stuns and knockups for Master Yi is key to shutting down a steamroll
- Tanky Urgot is pretty sweet (he killed Yi with his Thornmail), I'll definitely do that next time I play him
- Fiddlesticks still has some viability, positioning is crucial to doing well with him
- Comebacks are pretty dang satisfying, even when two of the other team's players are awful
- Playing support is fun, I would certainly own Taric if he cost less than 3150 IP

My Score: 4/8/21
My Build: Spirit Visage, Mercury Treads, Manamune, Frozen Heart

Current ranked record: 5-4 (0 leaves)
ELO Rating: Unranked

So my next game will be my tenth, and I will finally get to know my ELO rating. I will probably do a little breakdown of my first ten games, like the champs that I saw, champs I used, my game stats, etc. I know most of this can be found in my summoner profile, but it's obviously more convenient for you guys to just read it here. Plus I kind of want to see the trends in who gets used and banned the most, stuff like that.

Thanks for reading, I'm glad that I'm getting a lot of comments on these posts with constructive criticism. I definitely read and take them all into consideration, so keep them coming!

-Chickenmoo