Going for the Gold Part XXII: Strut That Ass Into Bronze III

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. More recently after failing to climb out of Bronze I, the ladder was reset and I found myself placed lower still, all the down way at the bottom of Bronze V. The Ranked matches I've played so far have clearly marked me as a Bronze player. This is the story of my attempt to prove them wrong. This is Going for the Gold.

I updated my introductory paragraph. Take a look. That my Season 3 placement matches put me in Bronze II, way higher than I am currently, no longer seems particularly relevant. But I didn't want to rewrite the whole thing because Season 3 is where this journey started, even if I took one step forward and four steps back at the beginning of Season 4. It's starting to seem naive to think that I could actually make Gold, since I couldn't make Silver last season and I'm on track to repeat that performance this season. Actually, I should say a little something about that. I have played nearly 150 Ranked games so far, which is a pretty good sample. I've now, through placement matches, landed in Bronze twice. All of my games have been in Bronze. I've been demoted about as much as I've been promoted. Based on all that, it's unrealistic for me to deem myself a Gold player who's just down on his luck. The math doesn't bear that out. And yet, I'm keeping at this. Here's why...

1. I've played with Gold players who I think were worse than me.
2. I have reason to suspect that climbing Silver may actually be easier for me in some ways than climbing in Bronze (but that's a topic for another time).
3. I'm having fun. I see this as a challenge, and so it's something that makes the game fresher and more appealing to me. Ranked games can be incredibly frustrating, but they also provide an environment where I'm challenged to play my best.
4. I'm stubborn and egotistical.
5. I'm optimistic because of the games that happened in this update. Oops, spoiler alert?

So, despite an agonizing second game in my promo series, my last update was pretty positive. I dominated some games as Karthus, and I climbed into Bronze IV. Well, I'm starting this new update continuing that note of triumph: I just won my first game in Bronze IV. Also, I've now played five Karthus games in a row (excluding non-Ranked games), and won four of them. See, this is what happens when people let me play the Deathsinger! I'm happy about this latest match, but I can only be so happy about it, because it was actually a bit much: all of my teammates did well and our opponents weren't very good. I mean, yeah, I still carried: 11/2/10 with by far the highest CS on either team. But our team K/D ratio was 40/15. It went something like this. I had third pick, and our team banned Tryndamere, Amumu, and Blitzcrank, while the other team banned Leona, Jax, and Fizz. Our lineup was Karthus (me), Volibear (top), Aatrox (jungle), Jinx (ADC), and Soraka (support). The enemy team had Katarina (mid), Lee Sin (top), Master Yi (jungle), Ezreal (ADC), and Morgana (support). This was probably the best jungle Aatrox I've ever seen, landing a perfect gank on Katarina right as I hit level 4, so I was able to slow her. She flashed, but I flashed after her and picked up the kill about a second after our Jinx got first blood. From there, I dominated mid, Aatrox continued jumping on enemies and slaughtering them, Volibear got massively fed off of Lee Sin, and our bot lane won handily. Soraka was the only one on our team who didn't get fed, and she made up for it with her well-timed heals and general utility. It was so obnoxiously one-sided that even though I'm thrilled to have another Karthus domination, I'm also annoyed at how bad matchmaking can be. The error was in my favor this time, but usually it isn't.

For a long day of Ranked games, I did a duo queue with Paul (Lithormane). We hadn't played much Ranked together before, but we'd teamed up a lot in the past for normals and such. Paul was coming off a win and is currently in Silver V. Things started off a bit awkwardly, as some of our teammates made weird and confusing calls in the lobby, but we eventually ended up with a team of Yasuo (mid), Singed (me), Aatrox (jungle), Tristana (Paul), and Leona (support) against Kassadin (mid), Lee Sin (top), Master Yi (jungle), Lucian (ADC), and Blitzcrank (support). I haven't mentioned it in this particular series, but I have a weird position on using Singed competitively. Singed was my first champion ever: I started playing in the summer of 2011, just after Wukong came out, and Singed was a free week champion at the time, then I went on to buy him with IP once he rotated out. Singed was nearly the only champion I played until I bought Karthus, and Singed was still my default. For most of Season 2, I'd have described myself as a Singed main first and a Karthus main second.Eventually, I moved on to other champions and didn't play Singed as much, but I knew I was comfortable with him and I had my build down and everything, so I didn't worry about it. Then they changed items and masteries, and I couldn't make my Singed work. I experimented, but throughout Season 3, I neglected Singed. I never played him in Ranked and almost never played him in other modes. But I never gave up on Singed entirely. He is the mad chemist after all, and I am a mad chemist myself. We mad chemists have to stick together. I have a smurf account (A bad person) on which I only own Singed, and I play him against bots on that account when I don't feel like playing on my main account. So in this lobby, with people whining that we should have champions with knockup effects for Yasuo to exploit, I entered my first Singed Ranked game ever. It went pretty well. Aatrox ganked Lee Sin, and then I got ahead, bullied him, and killed him before taking his outer turret. I then roamed and helped the rest of the team, which was already a bit ahead, so I got them even further ahead. I went 1/0/8. Paul carried, going 11/3/2. It wasn't one-sided the whole time, but it was pretty decisive.

Because Paul is much, much nicer than I am, he tries to actually let people call lanes in Ranked. Because people were trying to call everything, he suggested that I just support him, because we'd have a good duo bot lane anyway. So our team was Katarina (mid), Riven (top), Warwick (jungle), Kog'Maw (Paul), and Leona (me). The other team consisted of LeBlanc (mid), Tryndamere (top), Lee Sin (jungle), Miss Fortune (ADC), and Morgana (support). We did well in our lane and Paul was able to cut through our opponents with Kog'Maw, but there was one big problem: Riven fed the crap out of Tryndamere. Tryndamere would have wrecked our team enough to beat us, but my crowd control and Paul's backdooring were enough to put a stop to that. I went 1/2/12. Paul was 10/7/4.

For our third duo queue game of the day, I was last pick, so I filled, taking Leona support again. Our lineup was Ahri (mid), Poppy (Paul), Master Yi (jungle), Ezreal (ADC), and Leona (me). The other team had Akali (mid), Miss Fortune (top), Nocturne (jungle), Lucian (ADC), and Thresh (support). This match was weird. Poppy is rather atypical as a top lane in competitive matches now, and Miss Fortune as a solo top is just strange. Our Ezreal, who was neither doing well nor doing particularly poorly, flipped out and decided to rage at the rest of the team for making him lose. Akali got fed and nearly carried, but our Master Yi, Poppy (Paul), and Leona (me) were able to coordinate and grind away that disadvantage. A fed Akali is a force to be reckoned with, but, as I told Yi, I am so good at this game. Nah, I'm kidding: it was a team effort—a team effort spearheaded by a skilled Leona. Oh! With that win, I was launched into a promotional series. By winning two out of my next three games, I could get out of Bronze IV (which I'd only gotten into a day ago). Paul said he had time for another game, so we proceeded on, hoping to continue our winning streak.

The next game started out sort of like the last one, with me getting last pick and support while Paul picked up solo top. We had Yasuo (mid), Trundle (Paul), Udyr (jungle), Vayne (ADC), and Sona (me). Actually, Vayne whined about being garbage at the ADC role, but locked in anyway, even though I would have been happy to take it. The other team had Kassadin (mid), Jayce (top), Xin Zhao (jungle), Jinx (ADC), and Soraka (support). Vayne kept overextending and taking damage. I tried to keep healing her, but I'd run out of mana while she waded in, accomplishing nothing. I advised her to take Condemn so she could self-peel, but like all bad Vaynes, she was putting early point into Silver Bolts, which she couldn't proc anyway. So then she'd get ganked because she was overextending, and she'd rage at me for "standing around." For some of those ganks, I was even backing off because I knew they were coming through wards and my Clairvoyance, but Vayne still decided that her deaths must all be my fault somehow. So yeah, that lane went badly. We tried to make up for it in teamfights, and for a while I thought we had a chance, but our Udyr was just as stupid and belligerent as our Vayne, charging into multiple enemies by himself and then blaming the team for it. I ended the game, of course, as a starved support, going 0/3/6. Paul went 5/4/2, but it wasn't enough to hold off the onslaught we faced.

Paul didn't want to go out on that note, so we queue up for another game, agreeing that we should duo bot again, rather than letting some random screw it up. But once again, things got weird, this time with our first pick taking Brand as a jungler. It worked about as well as I thought it would, which is to say it did not. Once it was understood that apparently Brand was jungling, the person who had called mid wanted Katarina, but decided that Paul or I should pick for her and that she'd trade (Paul doesn't own Katarina, but I do), concealing the Katarina pick from our opponents initially. Of course, this person didn't actually let me pick my own support for the trade, so I got Blitzcrank, and the enemy team took Thresh, which I really wasn't liking. The teams ended up being Katarina (mid), Shen (top), Brand (jungle), Tristana (Paul), and Blitzcrank (me) against Zed (mid), Ryze (top), Evelynn (jungle), Caitlyn (ADC), and Thresh (support). Blitzcrank isn't one of my specialties, but I guess I consider myself to be an adequate Blitzcrank support. This match actually has me toying with the idea of trying it more, as I just think it requires some patience to work, waiting for the right opportunities to make the right plays, and I think I can do it. I still wouldn't want to play Blitzcrank against certain matchups though, and Thresh is one of those. Anyway, Brand being useless held us back, and Paul gave up some early deaths that made things harder for us bot, but we were able to get him caught up eventually. When laning stopped mattering as much and it came to skirmishes, Shen's ult is overpowered, and the combination of Blitzcrank's skills and Tristana's skills helped us kill enemies despite their efforts to escape. That gave us the edge we needed to help Katarina snowball, and then, even though we had been pretty badly thrashed early on, we got way ahead on kills and pushed for a big teamfight ace and victory. Paul came back from being shut down early to go 9/6/6. I went 1/0/12. Can't kill Trollcrank.

I had one more left in my series, and Paul decided that he had time for just one more game after all. This time, we got the duo bot we actually wanted I switched from my elegant Silent Night Sona skin to the much flashier Arcade Sona. This time,  I was determined to have a good Sona game. Our team was comprised of Zed (mid), Darius (top), Jax (jungle), Kog'Maw (Paul), and Sona (me). Our opponent had Kassadin (mid), Shyvana (top), Master Yi (jungle), Miss Fortune (ADC), and Leona (bot). This game started off beautifully. We controlled bot lane and got a nice early lead for Kog'Maw. Our other lanes weren't faring badly either. It was the jungle that nearly ruined things. The enemy Yi was everywhere, murdering all of us. It started to be the case that in most of the fights, he'd do so much damage that we couldn't handle it. We were rapidly losing our lead and at least one person on the other decided the game was over, spouting that obnoxious "gg" in the allchat when it is assumed that the most recent teamfight has decided the outcome of the match, even when it might not have, which in this case it had not. We respawned in time to defend our base. A lot of factors made the difference, the raw damage output of Paul's Kog'Maw being most prominent, but also our Zed and Darius being fed enough to contribute their own damage in fights was important. Still, it might not have been enough, and Yi might have carried his team, if not for the support who decided that, instead of killing her team, the Wuju Bladesman was going to dance, dance, dance for her. Oh yeah. I rule. I went 1/4/21. Paul went 18/7/4. And with that, I have earned my second promotion of the season.

Matchmaking is going to have to step the bullshit up a notch if it wants to keep me from climbing out of Bronze. Uh, that's not a challenge or anything. Please don't actually do that, matchmaking.