Going for the Gold Part XIX: The Return

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.

 It's not that I didn't want to play Ranked anymore, just that I was in the perfect position for a hiatus. LP decay couldn't bother me while I sat at the bottom of Bronze V. I had other things to do and wasn't playing League of Legends much, so not playing Ranked, given all the circumstances, just made sense. Previously, I'd played placement matches with Nick, and it turned out to be disastrous (not that it was Nick's fault). I had 3 wins, 7 losses, and nowhere to go but up.

After my placements, I took the rest of January off. I took February off. I took March off. I told myself I'd eventually get back to Ranked. What did it was being invited to duo queue by another player, Scott, who goes by IMLRG.

In my first return match, we had Fizz (mid), Cho'Gath (Scott soloing top), Hecarim (jungle), Twitch (ADC), and Leona (me). The other team consisted of Heimerdinger (mid), Teemo (top), Dr. Mundo (jungle), Miss Fortune (ADC), and Blitzcrank (support). Unfortunately for the other team, their Miss Fortune was a no-show, so we won easily. I went 3/2/11 and helped get our Twitch fed, but it wasn't hard to do that, as it was 5 vs. 4.

After that first game, I went back to playing Ultra Rapid-Fire mode, but I returned to Ranked play with Scott again a couple of days later. This time, I jungled. We had Annie (mid), Kayle (top), Amumu (me), Jinx (ADC), and Sona (Scott). The other team was Orianna (mid), Zac (top), Nocturne (jungle), Twitch (ADC), and Leona (support). Annie and I both got fed, but our Kayle seemed determined to lose and our Jinx really was determined to lose. She fed constantly, raged at the rest of the team, and eventually disconnected. I still ended up going 7/5/14. Every time my teammates stayed behind me and let me initiate fights, we killed the other team and gained ground. But those fights were outnumbered by other fights, in which Jinx and Kayle overextended before I could help them, the enemy Leona initiated, and their team subsequently won the 5 vs. 3 teamfight. It was frustrating, but we reported Jinx and moved on.

Then it happened again. Well, not in exactly the same way, but it was pretty bad. We had Lux (mid), Cho'Gath (Scott), Kha'Zix (jungle), Jinx (ADC), and Sona (me) against Akali (mid), Wukong (top), Aatrox (jungle), Varus (ADC), and Alistar (support). I noticed that our Jinx was obviously deficient, but I kept her alive and used her as bait to pick up first blood for myself. Then they started putting more pressure on our bot lane. Jinx was terrible. She'd stay back when she needed to attack and she aggressed at all the worst times. I worked hard to let her escape, but then she'd stay in the lane with less than 50 health, even while I pinged her to retreat multiple times and we even had players in other lanes urging her to go back. Even if Jinx had been competent, it might not have mattered. The other lanes were shut down too, and Akali snowballed. It was a complete route. I went 1/8/15, which is about what I'd expect given my description.

Having just lost two Ranked games in a row due to a toxic ally Jinx, Scott decided that we should force bot lane for our next match. He took Kog'Maw, then we also got Ziggs (mid), Tryndamere (top), Evelynn (jungle). I picked Alistar and we traded. The other team had Akali (mid), Renekton (top), Shaco (jungle), Vayne (ADC), and Soraka (support). Scott was able to protect me against Soraka and Vayne, although not against all of the Shaco ganks, but still, we won lane. So did Akali, and we experienced another Akali snowball game. Evelynn disconnected. And then Tryndamere also disconnected, leaving us in a 3 vs. 5 against a team that included a fed Akali. I was pretty sure we'd lose, but Kog'Maw does not go down without a fight. We held them off for a while. Akali was able to jump me and kill me before I could attack her a couple of times, but I also caught her sometimes, and the rest of their team couldn't handle me. Eventually, Tryndamere reconnected, cursing Windows updates. That was all it took. He was way behind, but he was another body. I kept killing enemy champions, having a full build, and we were able to push and win the 4 vs. 5.

 I tried a solo queue Ranked game. In my first queue I had the chance to take mid and picked Malzahar, but it was not to be. Someone dodged and I was requeued as last pick. It was Ziggs (mid), Akali (top), Evelynn (jungle), Ashe (ADC), and Alistar (me) against Zed (mid), Fizz (top), Malphite (jungle), Ezreal (ADC), and Leona (support). I guess I did what I was supposed to and supported. I ended up going 0/1/9. Our Akali snowballed, but the enemy Fizz was really bad. While we were in their base, killing two of their inhibitors, Fizz was in our bot lane, pushing down our outer and inner turrets. When the other team raged at their Fizz, he responded by point out that he got two turrets, while they accomplished nothing. Technically correct! So yeah, I reported Fizz as unskilled. And anyway, we won by quite a bit.

In the subsequent game, I was going to play Swain, but changed it up and went with Ryze. We had Gragas (mid), Ryze (me), Jarvan IV (jungle), Varus (ADC), and Volibear (support). The other team was comprised of Ziggs (mid), Riven (top), Xin Zhao (jungle), Ezreal (ADC), and Karma (support). I was actually able to bully Riven in lane, but Xin Zhao showed up multiple times to help her. Jarvan could never gank for me, not even when both of them were pushing my turret, for some reason. But I still held on for a while and farmed more than anyone else on my team. Bot failed, though, which was the beginning of our demise. It was a long, slow defeat. They took our mid inhibitor before we had taken a single turret, then they worked on the other inhibitors. Four of us were trying to make a comeback, but Volibear wouldn't have any of it, and repeatedly charged in alone, feeding. When asked to stop, Volibear responded that we'd already lost, so it didn't matter. We went on to win several teamfights, while losing all of our turrets and barely holding the enemy minions at bay. I went 9/8/16, dying a lot because Ryze has no mobility and I was stuck defending doomed objectives or jumped on after my allies overextended and left me alone. Volibear will almost certainly go on to ruin games for plenty of other people.

I should have titled this post "Every Jinx Player Sucks." I got last pick, also known as forced to support, again. We had Annie (mid), Wukong (top), Kha'Zix (jungle), Jinx (ADC), and Sona (me) against Syndra (mid), Teemo (top), Warwick (jungle), Tristana (ADC), and Leona (support). As per tradition, our Jinx cost us the game. She overextended against Leona and got jumped on by Tristana and killed before I could do anything about it. She did this early, and she did it often. Because she was doing it so much, I was stranded alone and had to recall a lot. At one point, while I was on my way back, she did her thing again, running in front of brush with no vision into it, and then getting ambushed by Leona and Tristana again. Then she said, "omg sona." I asked what that was about, and she whined that it was my fault somehow, so I immediately muted her. She was apparently complaining the rest of the game, as I saw other people telling her to shut up. Warwick also got fed somehow, and we got destroyed by the fed Tristana and Warwick. My final score was 4/6/7. Not bad, considering how one-sided this game was. I don't want to be arrogant, but I think I'm actually pretty good with Sona. The problem is that I hate supporting in solo queue, because crap like this happens so often.

If I won my next game, I could still break even on games played since my return. And finally, I got mid. Well, none of my preferred bans had been made, so I went Malzahar, just to see what would happen. We had Malzahar (me), Shen (top), Master Yi (jungle), Miss Fortune (ADC), and Nami (support) against Kayle (mid), Wukong (top), Lee Sin (jungle), Jinx (ADC), and Thresh (support). At first, everything seemed pretty even. Lee Sin ganked me multiple times, but I picked up a couple of my own kills and was outfarming everyone, with our Master Yi right behind me on CS and no one else even close to us. They took my turret by having four people gank me, while my allies sent no one to help. So we fell a bit behind, but we had some advantages. Master Yi was dealing a lot of damage to them and picking up kills. Also, I knew when I saw that I was laning against AP Kayle that I'd be able to outscale her. Oh, and Shen is overpowered (which I why I ban him if I can). They won the laning phase bot, lost it top, and ended it mid by grouping up on me. Teamfights didn't work out as well for them, and once I got fed, we pulled ahead on kills and objectives. My teammates kept inexplicably falling back when we could have pushed their mid inhibitor, but then Master Yi would split push and keep the pressure on them. I know we could have won earlier, but I was the only one that seemed to want to. Kayle got blamed for the loss, which was completely unjust: she was trying to stop Yi from split pushing, and then their team lost the subsequent 4 vs. 4 teamfights. My teammates apparently agreed with the other team, and acted like Kayle threw the game. I pointed out that I was fed and was dominating, but apparently that doesn't count for much. Look at that silly 10/3/7 Malzahar: he thinks he mattered! The fact is, even though they game ended with our team very slightly behind on kills, it was never even close, and was closer still than it could have been if we'd pushed harder as a team. We destroyed 8 turrets to their 4. We won fights whenever objectives were on the line. Also, I carried. Cool.

So yeah, I'm back. My record for the season is now 7 wins, 11 losses. I'm at 65 LP in Bronze V. Gold is looking just about as far away as possible, but I'll be changing that soon.