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.
No comments:
Post a Comment