Going for the Gold Part XX: My First Season 4 Promo Series

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.

I'm trying that whole "blog my games in progress instead of summarizing them all after the fact" thing again, just because I feel like it. So we have Karma (mid), Mordekaiser (me), Wukong (jungle), Miss Fortune (ADC), and Nami (support) against Malzahar, Olaf, Master Yi, Sivir, and Kayle. Their Yi has Smite, so I'm assuming Olaf top and Malz mid. Don't usually see Kayle supports, but maybe it's happening this time. Well, my lane against Olaf was quite one-sided. I bullied him, denied him CS, farmed easily, killed him multiple times, and took his outer turret early on. The rest of the game was one-sided too, just not in the right way. I warded heavily to protect myself from Yi ganks, which worked very well for me. Everyone else on my team fed Yi as hard as they could. I ended up going 8/6/6 and felt like I was the only competent person on my entire team. Well, sometimes it feels that way, but in this case, I think it was actually true. Blah blah blah, whining about a team full of feeders. I should calm down, look at this differently, and be reasonable. It isn't productive to rage about this. And I think what would really help my attitude would be for matchmaking not to give me four feeders on my team. So yeah, I went 8/6/6. If the kills that I would have gotten with my ult, but that others technically picked off before my ult finished the job count, I could easily say that I got more kills than the rest of my team combined. Well, that brings me down 14 LP, to a new total of 51 LP in Bronze V. Ugh, let's try this again.

They ban Blitzcrank, Vi, and Fizz. We ban Leona, Yasuo, and Heimerdinger. I'm seeing a lot of unusual bans. Is it because I'm in Bronze V? The other team first picks Kayle. Our first pick takes Amumu, and second pick takes Ryze mid. The Ryze player then whines about being counterpicked by Brand, so we ask if he wants to take top instead. He fails to respond, so I hastily pick Mordekaiser to go top. That leaves us with Ryze (mid), Mordekaiser (me), Amumu (jungle), Ezreal (ADC), and Soraka (support) against Brand (mid), Nasus (top), Kha'Zix (jungle), Lucian (ADC), and Kayle (support). Wow, I never used to see Kayle supports, and this is the second one in a row. Also, I'm playing Mordekaiser again. This is daunting. A little advice from my own take on lobby etiquette: if you're going to whine that you were counterpicked, don't sit there saying nothing when people offer to switch lanes with you, then at the last second blurt that you'd do badly in the other lane too. Anyway, Ryze made up for it. Our laning phase was almost appalling. I was against Nasus, so of course he couldn't kill me by himself, but he was able to kill most of the minions despite my attempts to zone him. He stayed alive and tried to stack his Siphoning Strike, while I tried to bully him. Meanwhile, the enemy team racked up kills. Our Ezreal was feeding and constantly apologizing for it. But after the laning phase ended and there were more skirmishes, we made a big comeback, and in the end it wasn't even close. I went 16/1/11. Ryze asked me to duo queue, so that's what we'll be doing for the next match.

So yeah, with that duo queue, there went my "cover games immediately" plan. I went bot with my duo partner, Mclovin2477. We had Heimerdinger (mid), Nasus (top), Volibear (jungle), Vayne (Mclovin2477), and Blitzcrank (me). The enemy team was Ziggs (mid), Teemo (top), Master Yi (jungle), Jinx (ADC), and Amumu (support). Unfortunately, my partner got killed in an early turret dive trying to pick off Jinx, and they pressed the advantage. Our Nasus was, for whatever reason, ineffective. Our Heimerdinger wasn't too bad, but the enemy Ziggs was better. On top of all that, Master Yi got fed. I tried, though. I definitely made things harder for the other team. In the end, I went 9/1/11. But it wasn't enough.

My duo partner wanted to try one more game for the night. This time going Diana mid. Our other positions were Pantheon (top), Wukong (jungle), Vayne (ADC), and Sona (me). The other team had LeBlanc (mid), Malphite (top), Xin Zhao (jungle), Caitlyn (ADC), and Nami (support). This was a weird game. The enemy LeBlanc and Xin Zhao scored a lot of kills, while Caitlyn and Nami both disconnected many times, but not simultaneously. Because we had a 2 vs. 1 bot lane for nearly the entire laning phase, I was able to let Vayne free-farm, which should have really helped us, but Vayne turned out not to be very good. What saved us was that this turned into another one of my "if you want something done right, you have to do it yourself" Sona games, much to the bewilderment of both teams. My allies were worried that the support racking up kills would leave carries underpowered and hurt our teamfight capability, while the other team couldn't believe they were getting wrecked by a Sona. Well, I went 12/5/17 and we won. That takes me to 88 LP. With no clamping in Bronze V, one more win could launch me into a promo series. We'll see.

I queue up for another game, but I already know I have trolls. Two of the players on my team keep whining about my bans and talking about how bad I must be, or whether I might have Down syndrome. It's Karthus (me), Pantheon (top), Jarvan IV (jungle), Tristana (ADC), and Soraka (support) against Fizz, Wukong, Warwick, Ashe, and Taric. Our Pantheon and Tristana were trolling me in the lobby, and I can tell that I'm a bit tense over that. I need to relax: I'm playing my main here. Well, Pantheon continued to insult me once the game started, but Tristana let it go. Fortunately, all of them were fairly competent. Our Pantheon was our worst player, and the enemy Wukong was unskilled, so that didn't matter. My lane opponent wasn't aggressive enough, and I was able to farm well from the beginning, so it quickly became a dominant Karthus game. I went 10/1/9. Sure enough, that game qualified me for a promotional series.

Well, I was considering getting more Ranked games in tonight, but I think I'll take a break, having qualified for this promo series. My current record is 10 wins, 13 losses.