Going for the Gold Part XIV: Veteran

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.

After I first got into Bronze I, I noticed that some of the other players in my ladder had little green medallions signifying that they had played "100 games in this league." The symbol is labeled "veteran" but I thought of it more as a mark of shame. When I pointed it out to Nick, we both basically said that we felt sorry for those players. With this post, I became one of them. It gets worse than that, though.

I got a message that I was now inactive in Ranked. I hadn't been playing because I didn't want to play with LP on the line when I wasn't comfortable with all the changes to the game. Actually, I hadn't even been playing normals much. Well, with no choice but to either lose LP due to inactivity or to risk losing it due to losing, I tried my first Ranked game in a while. Maybe I'm just feeling particularly cranky, or maybe it's the absence from Ranked, but this time I really feel inclined to recount my irritation at the brain-dead allies matchmaking apparently thinks I should get. So here I go...

Our team consisted for Karthus (me), Lee Sin (jungle), Tryndamere (top), Thresh (support), and Lucian (ADC). They had Ziggs (mid), Ryze (top), Volibear (jungle), Lulu (support), and Sivir (ADC). Firstly, I'll note that Tryndamere was fine. He won his lane and I felt sorry for him. Our Lucian seemed to do well and did get fed in-lane, but I still hate his guts. Once the laning phase ended, he moved around with no real sense of objectives and got himself killed multiple times in the jungle by wandering into obviously unsafe areas. That's not a particularly egregious offense, but he also decided, while we were ahead, that we would lose. Instead of looking for ways to win once the enemies started catching up and beating us in teamfights, he looked for people to blame. For some reason, he settled on me. He declared that I "threw." He never said why. Thresh wasn't as obnoxious, but he was too aggressive and died a lot. And then there was Lee Sin. Or rather, there wasn't. Our Lee Sin repeatedly left and then came back. I was able to hold my lane against Ziggs, but Volibear would steal our blue, give Ziggs the other blue, and attempt to gank me. And in the fashion that I've become so accustomed to with my allies in Ranked, Lee Sin blamed Thresh for some reason. Thresh was kind of bad, but it wasn't his fault that Lee Sin spent half his time on our platform. I went 6/5/6. One of my five deaths occurred when Ziggs and I almost killed each other, then Volibear tried to gank me. I escaped him, but Ziggs caught me with his ult. My other deaths, all four of them, were cases in which I was attempting to defend a pushed mid, alone, and three or four enemy champions converged on me. Not really a lot I can do about that, other than let the enemy team win sooner. So, I've just come back to Ranked, and matchmaking has given me yet another unwinnable game. Maybe it's a way of saying, "Welcome back." Whatever the case, I hate these stupid teammates and want to kick them in their stupid faces.

Coming back for a second Ranked game, I've attained yet another Karthus loss. This time, apparently the first and last picks on my team were a duo, and wanted to trade champions and take the mid and ADC roles, but didn't communicate that to the rest of us. So when I picked Karthus, they raged at me and said they'd report me, and also that Karthus is trash and always loses. Off to a great start. Well, we had Karthus (me), Olaf (top), Vi (jungle), Quinn (ADC), and Sona (support). They had Heimerdinger (mid), Shyvana (top), Amumu (jungle), Varus (ADC), and Soraka (support). I don't have a lot of experience laning against the new Heimerdinger. He has more burst capacity than the old one. But I once I got boots, I was able to dodge his skillshots, outfarm him, and beat him decisively in the laning phase. I had more CS than anyone else by quite a bit, and was starting to pick up kills so that I could carry. As before, my team was initially ahead on kills. I'm not going to attempt to assign blame for this one. We mainly lost because we were repeatedly failing to win teamfights, and there were multiple reasons behind that. Probably the biggest factor was their their Shyvana, who had initially not been dominating lane because Vi pressured her with ganks, started to snowball. Olaf lost lane, but there was more to it than that. I was able to beat Heimerdinger in my lane, but by initially giving up mid, the other team was able to have their Amumu help Varus win bot, which forced Vi to abandon top in attempt to mitigate that, leaving Olaf exposed and allowing Shyvana to finally start getting fed. I'm not sure what I should have done differently, but it's definitely the case that what I did do was not enough. My final score was 7/3/11.

For my third loss in a row in this post, and my fifth loss in a row in Ranked, I jungled as Amumu. I haven't been playing him with the changes, but that wasn't really a factor. Amumu is really easy to play. That being said, I probably shouldn't have been playing him. Our first pick apparently thought that, since Amumu wasn't banned, it would be a good idea to have him on our team. First pick asked if anyone wanted Amumu. We had two people that wanted to duo bot, and another person that wanted top, so I thought, "Why not? I'll jungle." So I gave the first pick Elise, as requested, and took Amumu. Our top was Garen. Our bot laners were Sivir and Taric. The other team consisted of Fizz (mid), Akali (top), Fiddlesticks (jungle), Varus (ADC), and Lulu (support). At first, everything seemed fine. We started falling behind so quickly, I'm not even sure what caused it. My final K/D/A was 2/6/2. Garen fared a bit better at 2/4/2, but the others got killed even more (8 deaths for Sivir, and 10 for the others). No one on our team got more than two kills. We tried to hold them off, but it was a slaughter. I have to say, though, that with all the trolls I've been getting, I can't really be mad at these guys. They didn't do anything wrong. Well, they did push too much when I advised them to defend, as none of the enemy champions were visible, so they were probably setting up ambushes. But hey, I've been seeing so much worse lately that it doesn't seem that bad. These guys were actually all rather friendly, despite how doomed we were. I'd play with them again—just not in Ranked.

Well, my next game broke the losing streak. I was last pick, but I got to ADC, so whatever. We had Yasuo (mid), Fizz (top), Kha'Zix (jungle), Tristana (me), and Taric (support). They had Teemo (mid), Lee Sin (top), Volibear (jungle), Lucian (ADC), and Leona (bot). Things seemed fairly close overall in the laning phase, but I was outfarming Lucian and picking up some kills, so I was pretty confident we'd win (fed Tristana usually does). We started pulling ahead a bit, and it turned out that their 9/6/1 Lee Sin had left the game. He never came back, and we won the 5 vs. 4 pretty easily. Not the way I'd like to win, but I did finally pick up a Ranked victory as Tristana. She's apparently my new default ADC, replacing Sivir. I went 9/3/8.

With some renewed confidence coming off my victory as Tristana, I tried another. This time I was third pick and it looked like we needed a solo top, so I went with Mordekaiser. Our team was Cho'Gath (mid), Mordekaiser (me), Nasus (jungle), Lucian (ADC), and Leona (support). The other team had Akali (mid), Garen (top), Shyvana (jungle), Jinx (ADC), and Taric (support). Things weren't going too badly for me at first, but I got no help from our jungler in the entire laning phase, while the enemy jungler and mid helped Garen pressure me. At first, he couldn't do anything, but after I died three times, I stood no chance against him. And still, I got no help from our jungler. To be fair, our jungler was being destroyed too. So was bot. So was mid. It was looking like a complete shutout, until eventually Akali was too aggressive and got picked off by Lucian. Still, we had one kill, and they had a lot. Garen decided to troll our team by trying to "proxy" farm top while his team pushed the other lanes. It would have ended pretty quickly, but two of us, Cho'Gath and myself, started to pick up kills. The rest of our team couldn't do much but try to piggyback off us. They were kind of bad. Actually they were really bad. Especially our Nasus, who had a silver border, but was completely incompetent. It sounds like I'm especially bitter, but there was a very evident gulf in skill between three of our players (Nasus, Leona, and Lucian) and the other two (me and Cho'Gath). I really don't see why matchmaking would do this, or how it's supposed to actually place people properly in ladders. Cho and I tried really hard to win, but this was yet another unwinnable game. My final K/D/A was 11/7/7. I should note that despite the fact that I had the most kills, fewest deaths, and highest CS, I was unhappy with my own performance in this game. I had too many early deaths, even taking into consideration the amount of help the enemy Garen had to get in order to take control of the lane. I do not believe that I could have changed the end result, but I could have done a better job anyway.

I've tried another Karthus game. This one is, yet again, putting me perilously close to demotion. I'm at a loss here. Our team was Karthus (me), Garen (top), Vi (jungle), Jinx (ADC), and Leona (support). Their team was Ahri (mid), Riven (top), Udyr (jungle), Vayne (ADC), and Fiddlesticks (support). I held my lane and outfarmed everyone but the enemy Riven, but it quickly stopped mattering. Garen and Riven got fed off each other and off both junglers, while our bot was destroyed. The fed enemy Riven and Vayne proceeded to demolish our team repeatedly. I tried to hang on, but I couldn't do a thing. The game lasted long enough for me to become reasonably powerful, but a Karthus with 6 kills is no match for a Riven with 20. My final score was 6/5/8. Bad for a Karthus game, but I consider myself fortunate to get any kills at all in a game like this one. My team was completely outclassed. This was just a bad, stupid game. Our Jinx, Vi, and Leona were noticeably unskilled. Yet another instance of matchmaking giving me what amounted to an automatic loss.

For my last game of this post, I'm down to 0 LP. Yay. I took Karthus against a Pantheon mid and killed him once. It probably sounds like I keep making excuses for my losses, but the dogs here all went crazy, distracting me exactly when Fiddlesticks showed up to gank me. I probably overextended anyway. Whatever. So I gave up one death and was 1/1/0. Then I got back into the swing of things and continued holding the lane and outfarm Pantheon. So far, not great, but not bad. And then my whole team raged at me because they lost their lanes, allowing the other team to roam. Since I still held my lane, the enemies were eager to put an end to that, so they harassed me and tried to kill me, but I was cautious and avoided it. My team surrendered, as I was the only no vote. Frankly, I'd prefer to have 20-minute surrenderers booted from Ranked play entirely. I know it's part of the game, and I've surrendered myself in Normals, particularly when my team had leavers. But to just give up like that in a Ranked game? What's the point? Go play Normals if you want to surrender at 20. Not that I harbor delusions that I was going to carry this particular game. All four of my teammates were feeding. But I still wanted to try, dammit. Also, I find it absurd that four players, all of whom are feeding, would decide that the reason they are losing is the one non-feeding player on their team. No matter the details, that's just specious. Where does matchmaking find these blockheads? I mean, I always hear about how terrible the League of Legends community is, but personally, I've always believed that to be mostly hype.

So that's it, then. I've finally dropped all the way to the bottom of the ladder. I want to say something here about how I could improve my gameplay and turn things around. I want to say something about how maybe I've underestimated just how much skill Gold takes. But I'd be kidding myself. Petty as it seems, I have to be honest with myself and admit that I absolutely, totally, completely, utterly, conclusively blame the teammates that matchmaking is saddling me with. I'd be happy to take responsibility for my actions in these games. I'll gladly own what I've done. It isn't enough, and shouldn't be expected to be enough.

Well, I now have 49 wins and 61 losses. I'm at 0 LP in Bronze I. It's entirely possible that my next update in this series will be about my demotion. I'm going to try my damnedest not to make that the case, but really, I have no say in that. Matchmaking will either screw me over yet again or it won't. I guess we'll find out.