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.