Going for the Gold Part IX: Attack of the Trolls

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.

For some reason, LOLReplay never captured the first three games that followed my last update, but I remember them to some extent...

First there was a Sivir game. I can remember this one because I whined to Nick about it. The last pick was going to support. At the last second, the person who had volunteered to support picked Shyvana and took Clarity. Shyvana rushed Aegis of the Legion and charged aggressively into our lane opponents, feeding them. Before that could really get going, our jungler, Lee Sin lost a close fight in our jungle and immediately left, never to return to the game. On top of all that, our solo top was apparently playing Nasus for the first time, asking the team questions about what skills to prioritize and what items to build. My gripe was that the Nasus player, someone who apparently plays champions in Ranked to try them out, the Shyvana player, someone who played a non-support champion as a support and took Clarity on a manaless champion and seemed to have no clue how to play at all, and the Lee Sin player, who left the game early on, probably didn't have a history of playing particularly well. Maybe Lee Sin just had a sudden, severe connection problem. Our mid, a Lux, seemed convinced that he ragequit, but I can't prove that was the case. If the matchmaking program had enough information to determine that these players would be dead weight, and that does seem kind of likely, why throw two other people in with them against a team of five that all seem to be competent? We had an unwinnable matchup, and that's no fun.

My next game, I played Karthus against an Annie mid. I was apprehensive about it: most times I see Annie, the person is either very good or very bad. Annie can outfarm Karthus early on and threaten him with her burst, although eventually he becomes stronger. That's what happened this game. She got an early kill on me with Ignite, then got fed off my teammates, but eventually I started killing her. It didn't matter though, because two of the players on my team trolled hard. Our first pick had already taken Cho'Gath solo top, I took mid, and another person took support. These two players, who were probably working together, both insisted on going top. At the last second, one of them, a Master Yi, switched to jungling. The other took Warwick. They threw the game, feeding my lane opponent and two other enemies. I ended up going 4/3 or so. It was another unwinnable game.

My next game was an easy win as Kassadin. I actually had a final score of 2/3/7. My first negative Kassadin game in Ranked so far, although that was only because my teammates kept barely taking kills I was about to get, and I sacrificed myself to get the two kills I did obtain. I forget what was wrong on the enemy team. I don't think they had an AFK, but I guess they had a feeder or two. They surrendered early on, preventing me from improving my K/D ratio. I won my lane against a Viktor, outfarming him and killing him, but the game was practically won for me by our bot lane. I now have 7 wins, 0 losses with Kassadin in Ranked.

I have more information on the following games, as LOLReplay did record them.

I was forced into a support role as Sona. We had Varus ADC, Mordekaiser top, Tryndamere jungle, and Annie mid. They had Caitlyn and Nami bot, Jax top, Volibear jungle, and Orianna mid. They outclassed us everywhere and won every lane. I couldn't stop our Varus from overextending, so bot was lost pretty quickly. I ended up going 0/4/6. I felt like I was at the mercy of my team's incompetence. I could heal, speed them up, and try to save them with my ult, but ultimately, I couldn't stop them from being overpowered.

I took Karthus against a LeBlanc and actually ended up being a bit proud of myself. LeBlanc is a very dangerous lane opponent. This one wasn't worse at roaming and killing my teammates than the assassins I'd faced in previous games: if anything, she was better at it. She used her passive and her combos. She teleported onto wards to pick up double kills in bot lane. But try as she did, she couldn't kill me and she couldn't stop me from farming. Their jungler, Jarvan IV, tried to trap me in his ult so LeBlanc could kill me, a scandalous instance of Noxus and Demacia working together, but I always escaped. The game was pretty even for a while, but we had Nasus, Kog'Maw, Amumu, and Karthus, all very strong lategame champions. My final score was 6/0/7 and I had the highest CS. Basically, I carried this one, although I can't take credit for that, really. What made this game work, unlike so many of my other Karthus games, was having teammates that didn't feed aggressively at the first sign of trouble. We had a team that actually worked together to win fights, and we were more coordinated than they were.

Knowing that I'd be bot lane and that my lane opponents would be Tristana and Zyra, I took a risk and picked Kog'Maw. Our last pick asked me which support I wanted, and then listed a bunch of champions that weren't supports at all (Kayle was one of them and is potentially a support, but the others were all bruisers with no support functionality). While I was typing, my non-support instalocked Jax anyway. It turned out that Jax support worked about as well as anyone would think: he fed. I was overwhelmed, so then I fed too. Our whole team, other than our solo top Nasus, was dominated from the beginning. To make matters worse, the enemy mid was a Kassadin, which quicky became a fed Kassadin. We lost. I went 2/8/4. Not a great showing for my first Ranked Kog'Maw game.

In my most recent game, I was assigned to jungle. I took Maokai. Our bot was a Tristana/Leona combo that did quite well. I did well too. We thought that we were going to win, but our Diana mid had other plans. She lost lane to Fiddlesticks, then raged at my temerity by stealing the enemy blue buff that she wanted. Diana quit, leaving us to fight a 4 vs. 5. Since we had three champions that were all still doing well, we were actually handling the game adequately (although it wouldn't have lasted) without a fifth person. Diana then came back and threatened to quit again if she didn't get all the blue buffs. I said, "The United States does not negotiate with terrorists" at some point. Diana started intentionally feeding, giving the enemy team eight easy kills. Our Tristana raged at Diana, but of course that didn't help either. Just before the end, one of our opponents called it a "6 vs. 4." My final score was 4/2/9. Not bad for a tank, but irrelevant since our mid decided to make us lose. I really hope that player gets permabanned.

My current total is 38 wins, 42 losses. I am at 21 LP, the lowest point I've been at since I initially started climbing this ladder. These games have been a pretty blatant attack of the trolls. Not only did I mostly lose: I mostly lost specifically because I had teammates that actively caused me to lose.