Going for the Gold Part V: A New Approach

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 previous installments in this series, I played a bunch of ranked games and then analyzed them in varying levels of detail afterward. I'm taking a new approach this time. I'm starting a blog post right before playing a ranked game, and I'll add text to this while I'm in every lobby and between the games. I probably won't get very many games in today (planning on maybe three), but if I like this way of doing things, I may return to it for future updates. Part of the goal here is to see if I can encourage myself to remain alert, keep myself from falling into habits, and remain positive and communicative throughout every game. I don't know if it will work, but it's worth trying. Here we go...

I am second pick. Well, we got Yi. They picked Tryndamere and Vayne. For some reason, I'm picking Kassadin even though I'm not counterpicking anything this time. I hope I'm not being stupid.

Our bans: Blitzcrank, Amumu, Malphite
Their bans: Shen, Thresh, Darius

Our team: Master Yi, Kassadin, Zilean, Caitlyn, Pantheon
Their team: Tryndamere, Vayne, Vi, Leona, Talon

Well, I've heard mixed things about Talon countering Kassadin. I'll try not to feed...

Well, we won. So the idea about Talon countering Kassadin is that if Kassadin tries to go in with his combo, before he can silence Talon, he get silenced himself and then takes Talon's full combo. If they both build glass cannon, Talon wins the trades and can very plausibly kill Kassadin, who won't be able to spam his spells as much and whose passive will be useless against Talon. For this game, I switched my usual starting items of a Sapphire Crystal and one of each potion to a Sapphire Crystal and two health potions. The health potions were my key to beating Talon in lane. He outfarmed me and tried to soften me for a killing combo, but it never showed up, so I was able to keep up with him, harassing with my Q and sometimes landing my E. I picked up an early kill on him with Ignite, then another once we got our ults. Even though he outfarmed me, the kills helped me keep pace with him. Eventually, we were both roaming and trying to pick up kills elsewhere. My team was ahead on kills the whole time, but he still ended up doing better at first. Eventually, my damage output was definitely greater, and I fed a lot less than my lane opponent (I ended up tied with the two AD carries for fewest deaths).

I didn't communicate a whole lot with my team, but I commented and made suggestions occasionally. In particular, I tried to keep them from getting into disadvantageous fights, which failed pretty miserably once (they ran into a 3 vs. 5 right after I told them not to do just that), but overall might have helped, and certainly didn't hurt. We had a pretty big lead at first, but Tryndamere's ult and Vayne's lategame damage started to catch up with us, with Talon picking off some of my teammates. I made a few serious mistakes, such as trying to Riftwalk in and activate Zhonya's Hourglass one time, only to have the Hourglass never go off. As our advantage started to diminish, they invaded our base, and I dished out enough damage to kill four of them (Caitlyn's ult took one of those kills, which was fine, and the kills were far enough apart that it wouldn't have been a quadra anyway). What eventually won us the game was luring them into a push on our base through mid. Our mid inhibitor and their top inhibitor had both been destroyed and respawned. Master Yi let us defend against their push while he went to backdoor top. The idea was to force them to retreat in order to defend their base, but they opted to try to push through us, which was a huge mistake on their part. Two survivors of their aggressive push did recall and try to stop Yi, but it was too late.

My final score for this one was 10/4/10. I gained 19 LP for this game and I'm currently sitting at 59 LP. My Kassadin record is 4 wins, 0 losses. My lifetime ranked record is now 26 wins, 26 losses.

Well, I'm going to try at least one more. And so...

Well, I'm second pick again. They first-picked Karthus, but our last pick was begging to be allowed to play Jayce mid. I've explained that I think it's a bad idea, but the begging continued. I've given in. I really hope my being amenable here isn't going to backfire. I like trying to be nice to people instead of forcing my way. Well, I'm Maokai.

Our bans: Blitzcrank, Malphite, Master Yi
Their bans: Amumu, Thresh, Hecarim

Our team: Lulu, Maokai, Ezreal, Ryze, Jayce
Their team: Karthus, Singed, Sona, Sejuani, Tristana

So weird that four of their champions are my four first champions that I ever played. I'm really uneasy about not having taken Kassadin mid. But whatever. Game's started...

Well, it turns out my fears were totally realized. Not only was Jayce a feeder, he also insulted me and other teammates in the chat. I tried to remain positive, saying something like, "We need to change something up, guys. Right now we're getting destroyed." Jayce responded by blaming me for it. I wanted to remain constructive, but our team was being shut down at every turn and I was too far behind to really help. I don't think I played that well this game, but I did get first blood (and then I died because I tried to recall in our jungle and their jungler found me, which was totally my mistake) and did try to execute some ganks, but I wasn't getting help on them from teammates, and my attempts at initiating in fights just resulted in me being swarmed and killed with no help from allies. It was a very one-sided game and we probably would have lost no matter what I did. Still, what annoys me is that I want to be a nice player that tries to accommodate allies, but games like this make me more inclined to do whatever I want and shove it down everyone else's throats.

I went 1/6/2 this game. My total record is now 26 wins, 27 losses. I should stop trying Maokai. I should stop playing full tank junglers. I have absolutely no way to pull my team out from a bad spot when I do this. A more damaging jungler could at least try to pick off weakened to squishy opponents. Even though I think Maokai can work really well, it might be the case that I need a more coordinated team to make him really work. I lost 11 LP from this game, so my LP is now sitting at 48. Oh, one more note: someone (probably Jayce) badgered our Ezreal about playing badly and owning the Pulsefire Ezreal skin, to which our Ryze asserted (Ryze seemed to know Ezreal, but I can't be sure that this claim is true) that the Ezreal player was actually playing on friend's acccount, and that the player was really below level 30. If that's true, what the fuck? Why do that to people?

Well, my new approach hasn't really produced any results. I won a game that I think we were going to win anyway and I lost a game that I think we had no real hope to win anyway. Well, I'm going to try again...

I forget what was banned, but it doesn't matter.

Our team: Nidalee, Varus, Leona, Evelynn, Mordekaiser
Their team: Singed, Darius, Miss Fortune, Teemo, Alistar

This game sucked. I wish I could say I stayed positive, and I really tried, but my teammates were very unhelpful. I took Mordekaiser top against a Singed that played aggressively. I didn't get any ganks, but Singed had a Darius to come in for a double-pull gank that I couldn't fight. Since Singed got ahead and was so fast, I started losing lane completely. But my allies still didn't gank for me, instead they would show up after I died and try to kill Singed, which actually worked twice. I continue to believe that Nidalee is a bad pick for a solo mid champion. Their Teemo built up massive amounts of AP and was probably the biggest contributor to our defeat. I started to farm up and try to negate my early disadvantage, but Singed is such a strong pusher that I kept having to babysit lanes to keep our turrets alive, and yet we still won most of the fights for a while. Eventually, we were completely crushed. People were saying it was a good game, but no one wanted to get organized on my whole team and we got stuck in some terrible fights that turned things around and let the other team get ahead. Our Varus was initially stronger than Miss Fortune, and raged and cussed out the entire team when she pulled ahead of him, as it must have been everyone else's fault. I felt like I was behind almost the entire time, although I did go from 0/3/0 to, eventually, 5/5/5. That's not too bad, really. Well, that loss set me back to 28 LP. My total record is 26 wins, 28 losses.

And that's it for my new approach. I think it had no effect whatsoever on the outcomes of these games. I've had another losing day and now I'm feeling all bummed out about it. I think it's time to move on to other activities. I'll get back to being demoted to Bronze II some other day.