Going for the Gold Part IV: Expanding My Horizons (of Losing)

After playing League of Legends for over two years and accumulating over a thousand normal games, I finally entered ranked play. In my own, totally objective, assessment, I am skilled enough for Gold. My placement matches disagreed, and threw me into Bronze II. This is the story of my attempt to prove them wrong. This is Going for the Gold.

Well, I had another day in which I played seven ranked games. I could have played more. I had time. I actually was going to, but after that last defeat, I need a break. Today was bad. Well, it could have been worse. I really wouldn't have minded so much if not for that last game. And I'll get to that one soon enough.

In my first game I played Karthus. My opponent was a Talon. I've noticed a strange trend. If I play Karthus and lane against an assassin, my opponent will almost certainly fail to kill me very much, if at all, and I will keep up in CS, eventually leading to my lane opponent roaming and looking for kills elsewhere. If I do an "enemy missing" ping when this happens and even if I also state in the chat that my lane opponent is missing, my allies almost always ignore it, get ganked, and feed my lane opponent. For some reason, they'll fail to so much as take the precaution of warding the river. On the other hand, if I freak out about it, in other words, if I repeatedly warn all my team that my lane opponent is going to try to roam and kill you eventually, maybe not right away, but it is absolutely going to happen, if I ping whenever my lane opponent so much as enters the fog of war, and if whenever I think any lane is overextended, I ping and warn them that my lane opponent is incoming (even if my lane opponent almost certainly recalled or is still near me), my overzealous chatter seems to pay off, and my team doesn't feed the assassin. Today's Karthus game was in the former category. I thought if I told my teammates when I thought Talon would come after them, they'd avoid him. Instead, they fed him hard and then cried about how I should follow him when he roams (I shouldn't). Talon wasn't a problem for me. I killed him a few times. But other than me, my team fed, and they fed Talon the hardest. Well, not the best way to start a session of ranked play, but it could have been worse. I certainly held my own and got some practice against Talon, a mid I haven't faced all that much.

My second game, I was fourth pick or something, and ended up supporting as Alistar (it was me and Ezreal against Leona and Varus). I was not optimistic about it. I had yet to win a single ranked game as Alistar and our lane opponents seemed menacing. I ended up doing what I think was a great job and, although it was looking uncertain at first, we ended up winning decisively, earning me my first ranked Alistar victory.

 Next I tried going mid as Kassadin. Jungle ganks hurt me and I got off to a bad start, but my damage output eventually showed up and I began wrecking the other team. I accounted for myself well enough, I think, but our solo top, a Zed, had an easier lane and snowballed into total dominance. I helped, but it was mostly overkill. That was my least dominant Kassadin game so far in ranked play, since I got fewer kills and actually died more than zero times. Well, I'm still undefeated with him.


I had a rather dominant game as Mordekaiser. Our team simply destroyed their team. Not much to say about it other than that it was an easy win and I felt slightly sorry for the other team.

At this point I was on a hot streak and things seemed to be going quite well. At some point, and I don't remember exactly when I thought of something that I wanted to write about here. It was overshadowed by what followed these wins, but I'll pause here to ponder something. I've noticed that I don't tend to carry a lot of my ranked games. There are some where it happens. Most of the time, either my whole team (or maybe all but one person) or the whole enemy team (maybe all but one person) does well and they win. While I do contribute, I've had plenty of games where I thought I personally performed well, but where our team still lost. Most of my wins are a result of multiple players on my team, and often I'm not even one of them, getting fed and going on to dominate. Now, there aren't very many games in which I do poorly and my team still wins. In fact, so far in ranked play, it hasn't really happened. I am not getting carried. This suggests to me that my "skill" as a quantity is at least slightly higher than the "ranking" I currently have.

On the other hand, I now have just over 50 games, and I've lost more of them than I've won. If it was the case that I was superior to the other players in my games, I'd be carrying a lot more often and my win/loss ratio would be much better. I can think of only a few explanations for this...

1. Bad luck. 50 games seems like a lot, but really it isn't. This could be compounded by matchmaking weirdness. One of my victories today, which was decisive, was supposedly mostly all bronze players against all silver players, although I didn't check myself to confirm the claim.

2. I've fallen into a style of play that makes some strategic sense, but doesn't necessarily synergize with what other people are trying to do. It might be the case that for a coordinated 5 vs. 5 game, the way I'm playing is actually better, but that in solo queue it is worse. I think there's possibly some evidence for this view, but I'm not sure I buy it. Solo queue seems so uncoordinated and chaotic so much of the time that my style would have be very different to really affect things.

3. Bronze players are underrated. I think this is, overall, the most correct explanation. While players that have reached Gold or Silver are likely, on average, better than their Bronze counterparts, the whole mythos surrounding "Bronze baddies" in the League of Legends community is mostly just bunk, and mean-spirited too. Hard as it's looking like it's going to be for me to crawl out of Bronze, if I do make it to Gold, I won't begrudge Bronze players anything, nor assume that they have to be worse than Gold players. I've had games with unranked players, Bronze players, Silver players, Gold players, Platinum players, and even a few Diamond players. I've seen Bronze players that seemed amazing and Platinum players that seemed mediocre. And actually playing ranked is really making me view the classic argument over "Elo hell" in a different way. People oversimplify things about this game way too much. But I've said enough about that for now. I'm not even sure that this is the best explanation. I'll just note that I think a lot of Gold players are probably only a little bit better than a lot of Bronze players, and maybe sometimes a bit worse (I still want the hell out of Bronze).

4. I'm not actually good enough for Gold. Maybe my 50/50 win/loss ratio is an indicator that I'm not cut out for Gold. Maybe I'm right where I'm supposed to be. It's a pretty straightforward explanation and I could make a good case for it, but for obvious reasons, this is my least favorite explanation.

5. I'm doing it wrong. This view requires some elaboration. Another thing I noticed today is that the games in which I'm communicating with my team a lot in the chat are almost always wins. And there might be a bit of a conundrum in this. Do I win games because I'm communicating or do I tend to communicate more in games where my team is winning? It's possible that when I'm in a bad game, most of the chat is taken up by teammates raging and I'm too busy cursing at my computer screen or too focused on trying to pull off some maneuver to take the time to talk strategy, while when I'm in a good game, I get excited and energized, typing more to my teammates who, because they're also winning, are also communicating more. But it's also possible, just maybe, that when I'm dour and taciturn, I don't play as well. If it really is the case that my dour mood is an indicator of worse play, I should try to detect when I'll play worse and avoid ranked games at such times. And if it really is the case that communication wins games that much in solo queue, I should make the effort to communicate as much as I can, perhaps erring on the side of being overly gregarious.

But enough about that: I lost three more games I haven't even talked about yet.

In one game, I was first pick and was considering picking Karthus like I usually do. Someone else wanted mid, which I was taking into consideration. The opposing team first picked Orianna, a champion I've never really won lane against (not while playing mid). I took the opportunity to first-pick Blitzcrank. Initially I was planning to trade with the player that called support, but that player ended up just picking Graves and letting me support, which I was fine with. It was an amusing experience. I threw a lot of low-percentage Rocket Grabs and a few where I expected the enemy Ashe or Zyra to try to dodge and they just didn't. They were actually teasing me in the allchat about my missed pulls. What they didn't seem to notice was that while they were busy dodging my Rocket Grabs, Graves was busy farming. And a lot of the ones I did land resulted in kills by Graves. People don't understand that about Blitzcrank. He gets his Rocket Grab, at worst, every 20 seconds. While I don't usually throw it without the hope of hitting something, missing is no big deal and forcing opponents to incorporate avoiding Blitzcrank into their gameplay messes with them even if it doesn't immediately get them killed. The result was our easily winning lane and pretty soon taking a very fed Graves into teamfights. We were going to win. And then we didn't. My teammates threw the game. It's a cliche I see sometimes and I've almost never used the word "throw" in that particular context, but for this game, I did.

In a lobby where I was third pick and everything but support had been called, I saw that we had no tank and that people were waffling a lot on who would jungle or who would top. I took Malphite, figuring I could play him as a support or as a top, but the person that had last pick finally declared top, so I thought I was the support. And then our last pick, who had stated the intention of going top, picked Annie and said, "support." It was weird. Now, I wasn't going to get mad about this. I've tried Annie support in normal games and she does have a stun. I think some other member of our team were more worried. And I really don't think Annie support is ideal. Annie is supposed to farm. It's how she sustains her mana and gets regular stuns in the first place. Also, she scales really hard with AP. In addition to all that, I knew the enemy solo top was Teemo, and Annie is pretty good against Teemo, where Malphite isn't. And on top of that, I've played Malphite almost exclusively as a support. I don't generally take him anywhere else. Perhaps I'm in the minority on this. Well, when I made it clear that I'd planned on supporting, but that I'd be willing to go top if necessary, the Annie player got all pissy about how I should have said something in the lobby (I actually had, but I wasn't going to argue about it), but decided to go top. That was great for Annie because the enemy Teemo was bad. She got fed. I was stuck supporting a Caitlyn that didn't do damage when I tried to tank for her. When the game started to really turn against us, I became the target of Annie's ire, and there was a bit of it from the rest of the team too. Apparently some players believe that Malphite's ult is magical pixie dust that has no cooldown and guarantees victory. Well, I tried. I filled the tank role as much as I could. But I wasn't getting any backup and we were generally poorly coordinated.

At this point, twice in a row I'd played champions that I'd never played in ranked before, accounted for myself pretty well because of my teammates. Well, I've now expanded my horizons. I've played ranked with twelve champions instead of just ten. And that's good. The bad part is that I've still only won with eight champions. Four of the champions I've attempted so far have only lost. Still, I had three wins and three losses for the day. I wasn't really bothered by the stupid Annie player raging at me. I was ready to try to break the tie and get back to having a winning day.

In the lobby, I had first pick. I was ready to play Karthus again and try to get a win with him this time. I even banned Kassadin. Well, second pick called mid. Technically, since the other team had the real first pick, I'd be picking at the same time as this player, but still I had priority by pick order. I initially said I'd go mid, then when the time came to actually pick, I said, something like, "Nevermind, you can have it. I'll go top." I took Mordekaiser. The enemy team had only picked Leona at that point. Mordekaiser had been working out well for me. I don't know what made me change, but for some reason I didn't want to go top. I honestly couldn't say what it was, but I said, "Actually I'll go bot." I picked Sivir. Someone, I think it was the player that ended up going top as Vladimir, questioned my choice of Teleport as a summoner spell. I have no tolerance for this, nor do I intend to (if beginner players in bot matches or whatever are taking Revive because they're clueless, that's one thing, but for the most part I believe any criticism of summoner spells, runes, or masteries has no place in a game or in a pre-game lobby). My response is generally something along the lines, "It's my summoner spell. You get to pick your own summoner spells." And that's basically what I said this time. I didn't think anything of it. Last pick asked if Thresh would be appropriate. I said yes. Actually, I've had terrible luck in lanes with Thresh as a support, no matter which side he's been on, but I wasn't even thinking about that at the time. I figured it'd be a decent lane combo. I even said something about how he could CC them and make them vulnerable to my Boomerang Blade. We ended up with Sivir (me), Diana (mid), Vladimir (top), Amumu (jungle), and Thresh (support) against Leona (support), Orianna (mid), Pantheon (top), Quinn (ADC), and Xin Zhao (jungle). The match got underway and I was feeling, if anything, slightly optimistic.

I don't want to be hyperbolic about this match. I'll say that it's one of the few matches that made me truly upset. I wasn't weeping in anguish or anything and I wasn't even shouting or breathing heavily or anything like that. But it did affect me. I was despondent enough that, even though I had time for more games, I didn't want to play anymore. I still feel like I don't want to play ADC at all, and that's even though I think it's my second strongest lane. This game had me dejected. I already whined to Nick about it right after the game ended. I could rehash my reaction there. But like I said, I don't want to be hyperbolic. I don't want to exaggerate anything. I want to be accurate. So I'll just watch the replay and give a condensed play-by-play. What the replay won't show, however, is the chat. I shouldn't let chat shit get to me. But I have. Anyway, on to what happened...

I went with Thresh, Diana, and Quinn to help protect Amumu's blue. Vladimir guarded red. The enemy team invaded through the river. Diana threw her Q and retreated from them. Thresh threw his Q over the wall and missed. Diana threw a second Q from a safe distance, damaging some of them. I threw my Q as they came around the corner, hitting four of them. I began to retreat, but a ward they placed caused me to begin autoattacking it for some reason (I didn't think I clicked on it, but I found myself throwing an autoattack at the ward). I then began retreating Thresh and Amumu began closing in on the approaching enemies, so I turned around to attack, but the enemies were in the brush and I accidentally attacked the blue golem. I quickly realized I'd be swarmed and killed, so I turned to run. I took a Pantheon Q, a Leona E, some autoattacks, an Orianna Q, and an ignite. This gave Orianna first blood. It was largely my mistake for misreading the situation. I should have been more careful.

My team were driven off from the exchange at blue, but Amumu did secure the golem with his Smite almost immediately after I died. I respawned and headed bot to join Thresh against Quinn and Leona. Thresh was caught in the near tribrush and was killed by Leona and Quinn. I tried to save him, but they had a lot of damage focused on him and I was too far away to hurt Quinn much. Leona was badly hurt from the exchange. I moved in to finish her off, but she stunned me and Quinn killed me. I should have immediately backed off when Thresh died. I thought I could kill Leona and I was wrong. My early damage was too weak. I overestimated it.

I used Teleport to save the turret from Quinn and Leona. I knew I couldn't fight them: they were level 3 and I was level 1, but I knew I could protect the turret. Quinn did substantial damage to me, but I did keep them off the turret. Thresh arrived, level 2, while I had just gotten to level 3 and had about a third of my health. We pushed out a bit, my health coming back up from potions. I farmed with my W. Thresh overextended, going into the river to ward the brush near their turret, taking lots of damage on his way back. As I offered covering fire, Thresh retreated. Leona maneuvered to get around Thresh and used her E to attack me. Thresh pulled her toward our turret. Leona and Quinn killed Thresh again as Leona took turret fire. I attacked Leona, but she got away with enough health to survive at least one more autoattack, and probably two. Quinn was waiting to jump on me if I chased Leona, so I didn't do it. That saved my life, but gave Thresh the mistaken impression that I didn't attack Leona at all. I won't go into all the details about Thresh raging, but I'll note that one of the things that drove him over the edge was the idea that I just ignored Leona, let her get away when she was under the turret helping kill him. But I was attacking her. She's a tank. She's resilient. And she got away.

Leona and Quinn backed off and both recalled. I pushed the lane out and farmed more minions. As Thresh returned, I left him to take the lane while I went back to heal and get items. Leona and Quinn arrived, attacked him in the middle of the lane, and killed him. I was alone in the lane with a wave of minions and two enemy champions advancing. They tried one turret dive, but took damage and fell back. The minions kept coming, too fast for me to take them all down. Quinn and Leona did a second turret dive. This time they stuck to me. I knew I was going down. Amumu was on his way, but too far to help. I figured I'd try to get them killed under the turret. The team kill score was 6 to 0 in their favor, and was about to be 7 to 0 once I died, but not if I got one of them killed by the turret. Just after I died, a turret shot was targeted at Quinn. She was very low in health. Right as the shot seemed to connect, Amumu's Q hit first, giving him the kill. Even though I was way behind, I was about to get the first kill on our whole team. It was guaranteed. Quinn was almost dead and had no way to avoid the turret's blast. But the jungler stole my kill. It wasn't a big deal, but getting an assist there instead of a kill (which was guaranteed, so this wasn't just a case of "kill secured") helped keep me down. Making a comeback was looking difficult.

Thresh came back. Amumu and Thresh chased Leona around, but couldn't kill her. I came back. I pushed the lane out a bit, but Leona used her E to initiate against me. My E probably blocked the stun, and I escaped, going behind the turret to recall. I teleported back and there was a skirmish between our bot lanes with both junglers showing up. I was cautious enough that I managed to escape, despite some focus on me, including Exhaust. I had to retreat through the jungle and recall near the inner turret. Amumu went into the jungle. Thresh went back to the outer turret and was killed by the three enemy champions. The score was now 9 to 1. I was 0/3/1. The situation was looking grim. I noticed that I was keeping up with Quinn on CS. I resolved to try to make something of that, if I could. I thought if I farmed up enough, I might be able to outdamage her, despite the fact that she was 5/1/1.

I started beating Quinn on last hits and kept the lane frozen. Thresh isolated himself, pretty far ahead of me, for seemingly no reason (he overextended). They jumped on him and killed him. Amumu came to my aid, damaging both enemies with his ult. My attacks damaged them, but they were retreating quickly enough that I couldn't stick to them. Amumu killed Leona with his Q. I continued hitting Quinn and chasing her, my passive letting me keep up with her. Amumu killed Quinn with his E. He was now 3/0/0. I found myself wishing that I'd gotten the kill on Quinn again, but I had to admit Amumu did a good job there.

I got back to laning. They pushed us to the turret, then killed both of us under our turret. Quinn was fed and they had superior power at that point, so really there wasn't a lot we could have done. I attacked them under the turret, but my damage simply wasn't enough. Quinn got a double kill. The total score was now 13 to 4. I figured we probably lost, but I was going to try everything I could to turn things around.

I went back to farming, this time without an outer turret to hide under if things got dangerous. Leona tried to harass me, but I was getting stronger and had Thresh to back me up. Quinn showed up and we retreated. The junglers and mids moved in, causing a 4 vs. 4 teamfight. I was finally able to make my damage count for something. I killed Quinn and helped Diana kill two others. Only Orianna escaped for their team, and only Thresh died on our team. Things were looking a bit better: we'd won a fight and I'd gotten a kill.

Unfortunately, the situation in the top lane was still looking bad. Pantheon was up 4/0 against Vladimir and took the outer turret right after we'd won our teamfight. I teleported bot again and quickly cleared some minion waves. I went too deep, but only because I was up against a Quinn. She and Leona chased me, but I used Ghost, widening the gap and making it to the inner turret. Quinn's ult lets her move really fast. She killed me with the hail of bolts at the end of her ult, just as I'd reached the inner turret. Thresh showed up, and they would have killed him again, but he was already 0/7 and Diana was trying to contest their team's dragon attempt, so they left Thresh alone, took dragon, and killed Diana.

While the enemy team was pushing our mid, I returned bot and picked up more CS. I pushed the lane to their outer turret, ran to the brush, and recalled. Their whole team took the mid inner turret, then moved bot to gank me and stop my push, but I was already gone. Successful covert ops by Sivir.

The enemy team pushed bot, but we showed up and they backed off. While they were coming back from their base, I snuck bot and pushed the lane yet again. They changed course from mid to bot, and approached to attack bot again. The fight moved into the river where they retreated. I'm not really sure why. At this point, the score was 19 to 8. Clearly they were dominating the match. But they let us drive them off for some reason. I used my Teleport for a rapid attempt to push and destroy the bot outer turret. Leona showed up after I'd landed a few hits on it, some of her teammates closing in behind her. So I retreated. Master Yi is the best melee turret pusher, but Sivir is the best ranged turret pusher. I recalled, got some items, and ran back down to the empty bot lane to try pushing it. Persistence can pay off sometimes. Both teams gathered mid for a fight.

Amumu got a kill with his ult just before my autoattack was about to land. I was seriously in disbelief about how good this Amumu was at stealing my kills. I almost got another kill, but Diana took that one. Pantheon killed me. Well, at least I was helping! I was 1/6/8. Not picking up kills, but I was getting assists.

While I was dead, my team took the mid outer turret and dragon. Nice. Then we all went bot and finally took out that pesky outer turret. Unfortunately, Orianna decided I had to go first, so I did. She killed me with her ult and then chased down Amumu, but the rest of my team managed to escape, albeit with very low health. I was now 1/7/10. The team score was 25 to 14 (with the enemies having a one-turret advantage). We were behind, but it wasn't looking unwinnable.

There was a bit teamfight mid, with them sieging our inhibitor turret. Diana eventually initiated with her ult, then activated Zhonya's while the rest of us attacked. I picked up three kills and we aced them. I'd like to think that a big contribution to this was the massive physical damage I was now dealing on account of having farmed signficantly more minions than anyone but the two mids, both of whom still had a lot more than me. This teamfight allowed us to destroy the enemy mid inhibitor turret, although they respawned and pushed us back before we could destroy the inhibitor itself. We were still behind on kills, but now we were ahead on turrets, and it was looking like we might actually win. We even took dragon before they had a chance to contest it. The battle for objectives, at least, was turning to our favor.

The enemy champions began closing in on our bot inner turret. I arrived to defend it, but I wasn't going to win a 1 vs. 4, not even under a turret. I pinged for help, but my allies were too slow to arrive, and the turret was destroyed. But they did show up in time to stop me from being swarmed. I picked up a kill on the enemy Xin Zhao as they retreated. Here's one part where it got pretty weird. I was heavily damaged and so were some of my teammates. Most of them were trying to chase, but Thresh and I both went into the brush to recall. Diana was pinging to fall back and even said something in the chat like, "OK we won. Go back and heal. Don't chase them." Well, I was the only one that actually recalled. Thresh aborted his recall for some reason, and followed the others. Diana veered off into the jungle. I went top to push away the minion wave that was advancing on our inner turret. I'm mentioning these circumstances because what happened next was that all three of my teammates that elected to chase the enemy team were killed. The enemies turned around and charged our bot inhibitor turret. Diana died trying to defend the inhibitor turret. I wasn't there. Both in-game and now, watching the replay, my behavior makes perfect sense to me. But this was a very sour point for my teammates: they blamed me, and only me, for what happened.

With only me alive and four enemies attacking our base, we lost the bot inhibitor. As my allies respawned, we lost the mid inhibitor turret. The enemy team harassed our top, but were driven off. This bought them time for their super minions to show up and begin invading our bot. I drove those off, and kept the minion waves from advancing on our mid inhibitor. The enemies probably assumed we'd be all be busy doing that, but Sivir is a great base defender. She just might be the best base defender in the game (I think Kayle probably deserves that title really, but Sivir is one of the best at it). I defended the base alone while my team contested the enemy attempt at baron. I was telling them to defend the base and that it was too risky, but they didn't listen. Amumu used his Q and ult to initiate on them, stealing baron. But then they lost the fight. This was another point at which my team was angry with me. They believed that my failing to accompany them resulted in a 4 vs. 5 teamfight, which they lost. This is true, but the teamfight was a choice they made. They didn't go in with the illusion that I was there. I had a perfectly good reason to be in the base (it was being pushed by waves of minions from two lanes, one of them super minions), and I said so. But they wouldn't hear it.

With only me alive again, the enemy team was able to destroy both of our remaining inhibitors. My team were convinced that we'd lost and that it was all my fault. The enemies took dragon and let the super minions advance in all three lanes, then chose top as their approach. I was there clearing a wave, so I took some damage, but managed to escape by using Ghost. I quickly returned to the battle in our base, throwing blades and weakening the enemy champions. I didn't kill any of them (Diana picked up a triple kill), but got assists on all five. We'd just aced them. We weren't done yet. I was getting more gold and almost had a full build. I cleared the minions pushing the nexus turrets and went back to complete my build. Even thought I was only 5/7 at this point, I had 18 assists, more than anyone else in the game, and almost as much CS as our Diana.

We needed our inhibitors back up before we could try to advance our position. I was pretty adamant about that. With all three inhibitors down, the super minions cold build up very quickly. I was such a strong farmer by this point (and I needed to stack my Bloodthirster anyway) that I was able to keep the minion pressure back by myself, but I didn't want my teammates wandering off and getting killed. And they didn't! Well, not exactly. What did happen was that two of our inhibitors had respawned (top and mid), and the enemies were looking to take out the mid inhibitor again.

Top was still swarmed by super minions, so I alternated between throwing blades at the enemy champs as they sieged the mid inhibitor and killing the super minions that were attacking the top inhibitor. I did err in doing this, as I wasn't doing enough to keep the champions back (I destroyed all them minions though). My teammates compounded this error by failing to fall back when they were taking damage. As I cleared the last of the super minions and saved the top inhibitor, I ran completely out of mana. I rushed back to restore my mana and join the defense of our nexus, but none of my teammates fell back to the nexus turrets. They stayed clustered around the mid inhibitor. They managed to kill Orianna, but Vladimir and Diana both fell and Amumu escaped with barely any health. Thresh, who was terrible, followed Amumu back to heal even though he wasn't hurt. And so four enemy champions destroyed our mid inhibitor and advanced on our nexus turrets with only me to stop them. I stopped them by killing them all. Yes, I got a quadra kill.

My teammates respawned, but kept going too far out, leaving me to clear most of the minions. I had long since surpassed the mids as having the highest CS in the game. I was 9/7/18 with well over 400 CS. But it was looking pretty grim again, at least to me. If my allies couldn't calm down and defend our base, they'd get caught and killed, and it would be the last time. We couldn't take any more of this. When it finally happened, it wasn't quite what I expected.

Our team was holding our opponents off at the edge of our base in the mid lane. Top was fine, but the minions were advancing on us bot. Our top and bot inhibitors were both still up. Mid was down already, and the enemies knew it, so they weren't eager to push mid: they needed kills, not the inhibitor they already had. As they retreated, I rushed bot to clear the advancing wave so that we could have time to fight them off without minions coming in from any lane. My teammates all chose a different approach: pursuing the enemy team just outside our base, where there were no objectives and where there was no reason to be. I ran back to try to help, but all of them besides Thresh died outside our base and the only enemy champion that fell was Pantheon (Amumu killed him right before they finished Amumu off). They chased me down, hit me with CC and killed me, then took out Thresh and won.

The loss didn't really irk me. Our opponents even seemed to think it was a great game, as there'd been a lot of back-and-forth and some close calls for both sides. What did bother me, and I've hinted at it, is that I was harassed constantly by my teammates. Thresh was the worst, and I reported him. He kept saying "wtf sivir" every time something happened. He whined when I let him get killed. He whined when I used Teleport to save our turret. He whined and he bitched and he moaned. He said in the allchat to report me for "trolling." I didn't take his bait, but told him I didn't care for his play either and to just shut up and try to win, but he kept at it. Eventually, the others started joining in, except maybe Vladimir. I can't positively confirm that he joined in. Amumu didn't like my build and was mad at me for recalling before the fight he forced that resulted in us losing our first inhibitor. Diana, despite having specifically instructed the rest of us to go back, complained about that one too, and some others, but didn't get really aggressive toward me until the last teamfight, insisting that I threw the game and that I had no map awareness and was a bad player, etc.

From my perspective, I took a game that was going poorly and turned it around. I overcame having a terrible support and being crushed in lane and became the most powerful single force in the game. I bought items with a long game in mind, and I was right to do so. We were way behind and made a big comeback, in no small part due to me. I kept minions off our nexus turrets despite having three inhibitors down. I did the most damage. I got a quadra kill. None of that got a word of recognition from my teammates. Not one word. To them, I was a bad player that lost them the game. I didn't save the chatlogs, but I'm not exaggerating this point: they said things along those lines in-game and in the post-game chat. At one point I pointed out that the ire seemed misdirected, that surely Thresh was the worst person on our team (0/12 and really his biggest contribution in fights was probably letting them surround him so that he could ult while they killed him), but no, I was told (by Diana) that Thresh was a support, and therefore was supposed to have zero kills. I actually did get recognition from one enemy player for my quadra kill, which helped remind me that I wasn't just hallucinating and that I really did do things in that game and not just "troll" as Thresh was saying or "throw" as Diana was saying.

It was depressing and I've written too much about it. Look how long this stupid post is.

Going for the Gold Part III: A Little Progress Is Better Than None

After playing League of Legends for over two years and accumulating over a thousand normal games, I finally entered ranked play. In my own, totally objective, assessment, I am skilled enough for Gold. My placement matches disagreed, and threw me into Bronze II. This is the story of my attempt to prove them wrong. This is Going for the Gold.

Well, since my last update, I've played seven ranked games and won five of them. For those keeping track, that puts my total record at 22 wins, 22 losses. I was behind last time and I didn't pull ahead on my win/loss ratio, but I did tie it up, and that's certainly better than falling further behind. Like the title says, a little progress is better than none.

My two losses were both, coincidentally or not, games in which I played a ranged AD carry. I know I can excel in this position, but the circumstances have to be right. I think that my preferred playstyle bot lane is something that makes it harder for me to help my team come back if we're losing. This is speculation and perhaps some of it is unfounded: I am actually pretty adaptable for this role, making myself very hard to kill. Both of these games were essentially shut-out losses. Our whole team was dominated, more or less. In one game, I played Vayne. In the other, I played Sivir. These were bad games and they make me hesitant to play bot lane, but the rest of my games went much better.

While playing duo queue with Nick, I had a win as Udyr. I think I got first blood with my first gank, and although I did make several mistakes and the enemy jungler started to catch up to me, the early lead I helped my team establish never really went away. By the end, with Muramana and Iceborn Gauntlet, I started to pull ahead again, having tremendous damage output with Tiger Stance. I still need to work on Udyr: there are some serious weaknesses to the way I play him, but it was a good game overall. Nick played Shen, supporting our Tristana and getting her fed, which contributed to much, if not the majority, of our advantage.

I had a solo top win as Mordekaiser. I accidentally picked the champion that our mid wanted (he was ahead of me in our roster, but we were both picking at the same time) and didn't realize it until the last second. Our mid chose Kassadin. Since I've had great luck with Kassadin so far, I offered to trade, but our mid declined. My lane opponent was a Renekton. Initially, I was able to completely bully Renekton and outfarm him. Their jungler's repeated gank attempts wore me down. I pinged and asked for help, but my requests were ignored. I tried to keep Renekton off the turret, but was killed by Nocturne twice, and then once by Renekton. All this despite my enthusiastic efforts to protect myself with wards. Our bot lane was going pretty well, so I figured I'd make the best of it. One reason I listed Mordekaiser in my highest tier of champions, and the reason I've taken him into ranked games as my default top-laner over Singed and other champions, is that I know I can come back from an early beating. At one point, my score was 0/3/1. Even so, I was farming adequately. I decided to keep as much pressure on the lane as I could and to look for gank opportunities when the enemies pushed mid. It might not have worked in every game, but this time it worked perfectly. I never died again for the rest of the game and I picked up seven kills and six more assists. I took out two inhibitors singlehandedly and farmed more minions than anyone else by a wide margin. Our team had a few players that did quite well, but my contribution was pretty big, and definitely not bad considering my poor initial performance. Mordekaiser rules.

My three other wins were as Karthus. My Karthus is back to having a winning record. One of the games turned into a 5 vs. 4 in our favor, so it was over quickly and easily. Not my favorite way to win, but I really did need a win at that point. The other two games were ones in which my Karthus did exactly as he was meant to do. I died once per game and picked up at least six kills per game. It was a very good day for Karthus.

I now have 43 LP in Bronze I. It's not the highest I've been on this ladder (I think I was at 73 LP before I went on a losing streak), but it's the highest point at which I've concluded a post. Finally accumulating some LP in this division was an important step. Hopefully I don't lose it right away. More important than the LP is the MMR. Or at least, I think that's the way it works. Since I had a losing record, I was gaining less LP for my wins. Now that my record is neutral again, if I can pick up some more wins, the LP gains should be bigger and a promotional series in the near future is looking realistic.

I don't intend to make a post for every single day in which I play some ranked games, but I'm still getting a feel for this and trying out different ways to summarize my little journey. I think seven games is enough for a post. I'll try some different approaches for future updates.

Going for the Gold Part II: Going Nowhere

After playing League of Legends for over two years and accumulating over a thousand normal games, I finally entered ranked play. In my own, totally objective, assessment, I am skilled enough for Gold. My placement matches disagreed, and threw me into Bronze II. This is the story of my attempt to prove them wrong. This is Going for the Gold.

Well, since my last update, I've gone nowhere. Actually, I've gone a bit worse than nowhere, having lost more games than I've won, my MMR is worse, so climbing the ladder is getting harder. At first, I thought nothing of it. I lost three games in a row while sitting at the bottom of the ladder, but that didn't lose me any LP. What it did do was weaken my MMR, as I soon found out.

My first two losses in this update were as Alistar. I've lost every Alistar game I've played thus far. It's not going well for him. Then I jungled as Maokai, but like my other Maokai attempt, lost the game. I tried to get tanky. I tried to initiate for my team. It failed miserably and we were dominated in all three games.

I won a long, challenging game by supporting as Sona for some strong late-game champions. It was my first win in Bronze I. I finally had some LP. But it was really late and I went to bed.

My next three games were victories as Karthus. I now had more wins as Karthus than losses. Things were looking a lot better. I had over 70 LP and I was on a hot streak. Promo series, here I come. Well, not really. Not yet, anyway.

I lost my next Karthus game, then another Alistar game, then another Karthus game, then a Mordekaiser game, then yet another Karthus game. Five losses in a row. And with the last of those, I lost all of my LP. I'm currently back down at zero.

So yeah, my total record is now 17 wins, 20 losses. I'm at the bottom of the ladder, right where I was in my last update. The only things that have changed are that I now have more games played and my win/loss ratio is now worse.

Edit: Well, I'm not even done for the night, but this seemed like a good place to make a new update. I had some downtime anyway. Might get to duo queue with Nick again soon. Oh, I guess I should mention that I had a duo queue partner (but it was never Nick) in four of those games, all of which were losses. I don't think this says anything about duo queue, just that we had bad luck.

Going for the Gold Part I: It's a Long Way to the Top If You Wanna Rock 'n Roll

I made a post on my personal blog that was partially about starting ranked play. I indicated there that I believed it was a mistake to begin my foray into ranked games when I did, but I won't belabor that point, nor do I think it's a particularly interesting one: I'm doing ranked now and the placement matches are out of the way whether I like it or not (I still don't). Anyway, I concluded that post by noting that I wanted to move League of Legends content off my personal blog. This will be my new home for all writing on the subject of League of Legends. At the time of that post, I had won four placement matches, lost six, and then gone on to lose two more games. That was, and for some time will probably remain, rock bottom for my experience in ranked play. I had lost two thirds of my games. I was sitting at the bottom of my division, protected by the "new to this division immunity" from falling into a lower division. That was my first twelve games. I didn't talk about them in any detail, but they were, in part, the inspiration for that post. Oh, I should probably link to it. That seems like the appropriate thing to do. Fine, here you go. From there, I went on to play twelve more. And that's what this post is about. It's also the beginning of a series: I'm documenting my attempt to reach Gold. Seems like the posts in this new series I just now made up should have their own little preface. Let's see...

After playing League of Legends for over two years and accumulating over a thousand normal games, I finally entered ranked play. In my own, totally objective, assessment, I am skilled enough for Gold. My placement matches disagreed, and threw me into Bronze II. This is the story of my attempt to prove them wrong. This is Going for the Gold.

As noted in my perfunctory remarks, my first twelve matches brought me to an impressive low: I had only been able to win a third of my lifetime matches. One cannot reach Gold with that kind of capacity for winning! While my play had been far from ideal, I was so plagued by trolls, leavers, feeders, and clueless teammates that doing better, even against low-level competition, seemed impossible. Had things continued at that rate, this would be the story of my journey into Bronze V. Fortunately, that was not the case.

After coming back to my rock-bottom one-third winrate, I played twelve more games in two days, or I think it was over the course of two days. Anyway, I won two thirds of them. Basically, my initial ranked binge consisted of twelve games, with four wins and eight losses, while the next two days consisted of eight wins and four losses. This rather neatly inverted my previous performance, while giving me a lifetime total of exactly twelve wins and twelve losses. But I intend to do better. To reach Gold, I'll need to.

So far, I've played ranked games with Karthus, Sivir, Amumu, Mordekaiser, Kassadin, Vayne, Udyr, Maokai, Alistar, and Sona. When I listed that champions that I was confident enough with to give myself a ranked stamp of approval, most of those champions were on the list. Alistar and Sona weren't, but they were on my "borderline" or "almost ready" list. Amumu and Udyr have made it into my ranked games a bit prematurely, but in Amumu's case, the choice has been vindicated. I'm apparently more comfortable mixing things up when I'm the jungler. My lane positions are better defined, although I did play Mordekaiser mid in one game, instead of top like I usually do. Malphite and Tristana are the only champions on my "approved" list that I haven't touched yet. In Malphite's case, it's mostly because he's a popular ban, and also because I tend to play him as a support, and have generally avoided supporting, as it's a somewhat weak role for me relative to what I can do elsewhere.

Fully half of my games have been played with either Karthus or Sivir. I can carry pretty effectively with these champions. The manner in which I play them, although I do think it's solid, emphasizes attrition, farming, and lategame dominance. My runes, masteries, and items are all designed to help me excel in long games. I've noticed that in many ranked games in Bronze, one or more members of a single team begin snowballing quite early, sometimes so early and so strongly that they make the outcome of the game a forgone conclusion. When I play Karthus or Sivir, I'm not likely to be one of those people. Even though these are possibly my two strongest champions, I've lost just as many games with them as I've won. I do think that eventually, those numbers will improve. But I am a bit worried about my inability to more prominently influence the outcome of a game earlier on. With Karthus in particular, I've had three losses in which I got fed, but my team was thoroughly dominated. Once I have more data to work with, I'll have to look into this problem some more.

Kassadin has been a sort of MVP for me. I only have a fraction of the experience playing him that I do playing Karthus, but I was comfortable enough with him to list him as my secondary "approved for ranked" mid-laner. Kassadin is a strange champion, and I'll probably expound on that in a later post. There could be a variety of reasons for picking Kassadin in a match, assuming he isn't banned, but the simplest is that he is an effective counterpick to a lot of mages. I've only played Kassadin twice in ranked, but both times I carried. Those two wins are a pretty significant portion of my lifetime games at this point. Also, uh, I didn't die. I haven't died yet in ranked play as Kassadin. My lifetime K/D/A at this point is 17/0/6. I think part of this is just random luck and that I had inferior opponents when I happened to play Kassadin. But also, he's kind of OP.

For both Amumu and Mordekaiser, I've earned two wins and a loss. Those Amumu wins represent my only ranked wins as a jungler, although I think the small sample size is wholly responsible for that. Well, also the games in which I played Amumu had to be ones in which he wasn't banned and ones in which I thought something about my team's composition made him a better choice than Maokai, my strongest jungler. Still, I've done quite well with Amumu and I'm pleased with him. Mordekaiser is trickier. I need to be careful because I make myself vulnerable to ganks. Mordekaiser can push a lane so hard and so quickly that he's virtually asking to be ganked. I've been relying on Flash to mitigate this, and eventually ward coverage solves most of the problem.

All other champions I've played have, so far, only been for one game. With the exception of Sona, those games were losses. None of that is particularly interesting and it's definitely not statistically significant. I think the Maokai and Alistar games were good performances by me. The Sona game definitely was a good performance by me. I should have done better with Vayne. The Udyr game I'm unsure about. In a way, I held my own as much as was possible. Perhaps I should have tried my more reliable Maokai. I don't know.

Several of these matches were done as a duo-queue with Nick. I forget how many. Nick is currently in Silver III, still a bit ahead of me (he actually was in Silver I, but LP decay due to inactivity dropped him by two divisions). I plan to duo with him a lot more, and I'll say more about that later. We'll both make Gold. He has a bit of a head start on me, being up for promotion to Silver II. Good luck, Nick!

While in duo queue with Nick, a win as Karthus (Nick played Leona, supporting a Caitlyn) propelled me into a promotion series. We played another game, this time I was Amumu and Nick was Alistar. It was hectic and looked shaky at first, but our team gradually developed a strong lead over the course of many skirmishes. As things progressed, we got tanky and helped the rest of the team secure objective after objective. That gave me my first win in a promotion series. A bizarre game as Karthus in which my lane opponent ragequit concluded my series. That game, which put my record at the aforementioned twelve wins and twelve losses, moved me from Bronze II into Bronze I. It will be a while before I can leave "Hecarim's Elementalists" entirely, and even longer before I'm within reach of Gold, but I'm on my way there, and I've gotten my first promotion. One down, six to go. It's a long way to the top.

Edit: I'd been misremembering when I wrote this post or I miscounted or whatever. I thought my second win in the promo series gave me my twelfth win. It was actually my thirteenth. My record is actually thirteen wins, twelve losses, so that's cool.

From Silver 1 to Silver 3 and beyond!

I am not good at League of Legends but I'm getting better. I made the mistake of playing almost no PvP while getting to level 30. In fact, my next normals win will be number 100 for me and I joined almost 3 years ago (I think).

100 normal wins is significant because I promised myself not to play anymore ranked until I at least got to 100. I feel as if I was placed way too high before the switch over to the division ranking system from elo and didn't understand the game very well. My LP decay has put me around the bottom of silver 3 and I've only played 25 ranked games including placement qualifiers.

14 for 25 isn't a bad record but I've really needed to work on my KD ratio. I've always been a fairly decent support so my assists are generally pretty high. I like playing strong initiators and feel like I'm on the border of being too aggressive and just the right amount of aggressive but with a passive team/carry. I've been working on how to read that better.

I'm also fairly comfortable in any lane. I still mostly fumble through jungling and lose bottom lane almost every time I adc but it's a lot better than it used to be mostly because of my roster being limited.

So, we'll see. My minimum goal is to reach gold. I think I have the capacity to hit diamond if I really grinded at it but I have no interest in challenger. I need to get better with my transition to late game and counter picking (And adjusting to my team's aggressiveness while still pushing them to capitalize more often on misplays).