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, the season is officially over. Since my last update I've made, well, let's see...
Progress! Kind of. I mean, not really. But I did pass 100 total Ranked games. So there's that. But on with my recaps.
Well, I had an Udyr game that I wasn't happy with. I didn't feed or even die early on at all, but I couldn't pick up kills or keep my teammates from losing early engagements and we lost too heavily in our side lanes. The enemies snowballed and I couldn't get close enough to make an impact. I went 0/4/7. Udyr is one of my favorite champions and can be really fun to play, but if he falls behind, his nonexistent range makes it nearly impossible to accomplish anything. Also, I think I'm generally weak in two roles, and those are jungler and support. When I'm mid, top, or bot, I can almost always keep up by farming minions and freezing my lane. Playing a role that doesn't have that option, even if the option wouldn't win the game anyway, I feel like my gameplay is nerfed. I have had games where I've done well as a jungler or support, but I never go 0/4/7 and feel helpless when I'm solo mid.
My 100th Ranked game was a rather one-sided affair. I was playing Karthus, if that's any hint. Actually, I found this one really amusing. I had first pick, and the other team captain banned Kassadin and Fizz. I banned two more problematic champions and picked Karthus. In response, our last pick made some remark like, "Ew, first pick Karth" to which I replied, "Fuck you" or something like that. That player then exclaimed "counterpicked" when the enemy team took Annie as their mid. I think I said, "Shut up." But I didn't mute my heckler, who ended up taking Poppy as a jungler, something I've usually considered too risky. In truth, Annie really is kind of problematic. I've noticed that Annie players in Ranked tend to be either very bad or very good. And the good ones can kill me if I'm not careful. Annie gets massive burst damage way before Karthus can get going, and combining that with her stun makes her really dangerous to lane against. This Annie wasn't terrible (she let me farm too much, but she did prove herself and pick up several kills eventually), but I avoided her pretty easily and outfarmed her. She got underfarmed. The enemy jungler, a Rengar, was too aggressive, so our top (Udyr) and jungler (Poppy) started to control the game, right before I got enough AP to begin snowballing. And then our Poppy, who was 6/1, said something in the chat like, "Karth, you're 5/0. I apologize for my earlier comment." Maybe it shouldn't seem that novel, but I was impressed because I've been playing this game for two and a half years and I've scarcely ever seen someone apologize like that. And in Ranked? Never. I said, "Aw, thanks" and Poppy said, "Thank you for proving me wrong." We went on to get even more fed. I ended the game going 12/1/11.
Back at the beginning of October, I mentioned that I queued with what appeared to be a Caitlyn-only player. Well, I had mostly forgotten about that person, rejected a few invitations to Ranked games because I didn't feel like playing Ranked anyway. Well, this person had apparently played a lot of Ranked games in the interim. Seriously, it must have been well over 200 games, most of them with Caitlyn. Well, today I got another invitation to play Ranked. I figured I might as well. I got first pick, and went with Karthus, of course. I won't call out this individual by posting a summoner name, but our Caitlyn, my duo partner, was extremely toxic. Most of it was directed toward our Mordekaiser solo top, who seemed to have connection issues. But Caitlyn raged at the entire team, insisting that we were all throwing the game and that it was obvious from the start that we were going to do so. Our jungler, playing Vi, tried to calm Caitlyn down and focus on winning. So did I. But the chat was filled with Caitlyn's useless raging. Mordekaiser, offended by Caitlyn's personal attacks, lashed out, so it got even uglier. And because this was going on from just about the beginning of the game and it ran long, we had to endure it for over an hour. All of our turrets were destroyed. They got Baron at least once. Vi's suicidal initiations combined with my massive damage eventually won us some key fights. We killed most of them and had the remaining enemies slowed down, so we could catch them and ace them. We pushed into their base and won. I went 15/7/16. Caitlyn whined that we should have lost. Vi and I both decided to report Caitlyn and we added each other as friends. And then I got another invitation from Caitlyn. Hilarious.
My next two games with done in a duo queue with a friend (Vladmir the Hand). I was last pick in both. First, we needed a jungler and I saw that the other team was much tankier than ours, so I took Amumu to compensate. Our Kennen mid declared the game lost because we had a Sivir bot, and then Sivir and Kennen decided to spend the whole game raging at each other instead of actually playing the damn game. My duo partner, playing Ryze solo top, did well. I was doing OK, but eventually our doomed mid and bot lanes became too much, especially once they got a fed Vayne. I went 4/5/6.
In my latest Ranked game, I was Sona, supporting Quinn (Vladmir the Hand). In the laning phase, we seemed to be doing well, but both mid and top were completely zoned. I shouldn't be too hard on them. The other team had strong mid-to-late damage output and they simply overpowered us. Yet another game in which someone whined about my Clairvoyance. And yet another game in which I saw Nidalee mid fail against a real mid-laner. Also, they were the same person. But I wasn't so great myself this game, either. I tried to save teammates with my ult and failed too often in the endeavor. It was a rather brutal game. I voted no on the surrender, but I can't really blame the team for outvoting me: we were losing every fight. I went 1/5/4.
Lifetime W:L: 48:53
Current LP: 24
That's right. I had 22 LP for my previous update. I've climbed the ladder a little bit, despite the losing record. Progress?
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