Going for the Gold Part XXIV: Getting Back to My Roots

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.

On the 23rd, I queued up for some Ranked games with Paul (Lithormane) again. First match, we had Vel'Koz (Paul soloing mid), Yasuo (top), Amumu (me jungling), Lucian (ADC), and Leona (support). The enemy team consisted of Ziggs (mid), Mordekaiser (top), Udyr (jungle), Varus (ADC), and Sona (support). We got off to a good start fighting off an attempted invasion. Paul had some setbacks, but came back stronger and won his lane. The enemy Mordekaiser was terrible and our fed Yasuo ended up carrying anyway. It still took a while and the enemy Ziggs, Varus, and Udyr held their own. But Mordekaiser's feeding gave us a lead and we used that lead to win decisively. I went 4/4/11. Paul went 10/9/9. This game launched Paul into a promo series.

We tried a duo bot lane. It was Vel'Koz (mid), Poppy (top), Shyvana (jungle), Jinx (Paul), and Leona (me) against Talon (mid), Olaf (top), Xin Zhao (jungle), Caitlyn (ADC), and Annie (support). Unfortunately, this was one of my worst Leona games and also one of Paul's worst Jinx games. To make matters worse, our other lanes failed too. Talon roamed bot and helped them beat us up even more. Poppy raged and ended up going AFK, but our whole team was thoroughly trounced. My final score was 1/6/2. Not a good way to start a promo series.

We attempted duo bot again. The lineup was Nidalee (mid), Lulu (top), Volibear (jungle), Kog'Maw (Paul), and Sona (me) against Morgana (mid), Kassadin (top), Jarvan IV (jungle), Twitch (ADC), and Thresh (support). This was a very weird game. We were fine at first, but fell behind bot lane as the laning phase progressed. Lulu won lane, but Nidalee lost lane badly. In skirmishes, we finally started to catch up. Well, I did. I began picking up kills and managed to avoid dying. In fact, I scored more kills than anyone else on our team, and had fewer deaths. Paul got some kills, but we couldn't protect him in teamfights and he couldn't catch up. I should have played Alistar like we'd originally planned. He opted to split push, knowing he'd just get killed in fights. As a team, we were behind and it was looking bad, although not hopeless. With everyone alive, Lulu snuck top lane with Paul to help backdoor while the other three members of our team engaged all five enemies in our bot lane. They took our inner turret and tried to back off, which I thought was in attempt to save their base from Paul. We pressed them, killing Thresh, but losing Nidalee and Volibear. Instead of trying to recall and save their base in a 4 vs. 2 fight, they chased me. By this point I had Muramana and Zhonya's Hourglass, so I was able to make it into our base, where they struck the final blow to kill me just before Paul destroyed their nexus. I went 7/3/7. Paul went 6/10/6. He was annoyed that we won by enemies being stupid, but hey, it worked. My Sona is just so irresistible that people would rather use four champions to kill her than recall and avoid losing.

Paul needed just one more win to advance into Silver III. He wanted to ADC again, but not to play Kog'Maw after what happened in the last match. So we wound up with LeBlanc (mid), Malphite (top), Wukong (jungle), Tristana (Paul), and Sona (me). Our opponents were Kassadin (mid), Lee Sin (top), Evelynn (jungle), Ezreal (ADC), and Nami (support). Paul enjoyed trying to bait our lane opponents into diving, but it was a stalemate bot lane until Wukong helped us, after which we easily took the lead. Our mid failed pretty badly though (people are way too flippant about not banning Kassadin anymore), so it was a close match for a while. We lost an inhibitor, fell behind on kills, and started losing more objectives. But I was Sona, so I took matters into my own hands, killed some people, and we pushed into their base and won despite having been behind on kills and objectives. I went 5/2/14. Paul went 9/6/11. He's now in Silver III. I'm at 85 LP in Bronze III, so I'll have to see what the next few matches hold, as I may or may not get a promo series before filling in this post.

I tried a solo queue game, hoping to win and get a promo series. My teammates were weird in the lobby and didn't make much sense most of the time, but none of them seemed to want to jungle and I was far down in the pick order (fourth, I think), so I grabbed Udyr and decided to try the new Wriggle's Lantern on him. Yeah, experimenting in Ranked. I know, I know. But it worked pretty well. I cleared camps very quickly and I got fed. So did the other team. We had Katarina (mid), Shen (top), Udyr (me), Draven (ADC), and Thresh (support) against Malzahar (mid), Renekton (top), Jax (jungle), Vayne (ADC), and Alistar (support). Actually, in this match, the bot lanes were bad on both sides, so they cancelled each other out. But our mid and top were beaten badly, and that was enough. Fed Udyr is strong, especially with Feral Flare, Muramana, Iceborn Gauntlet, and Wit's End. Fed Renekton, Jax, and Malzahar all working together are even stronger. I went 8/5/10 and prolonged the inevitable by becoming such a bruiser, but it wasn't nearly enough. That's dropped me 15 LP, down to 70.

For my next match, I was last pick, and forced to support as usual. That's not so gloomy as it was last season: I am now apparently a wrecking ball with Sona. My team was Katarina (mid), Nasus (top), Master Yi (jungle), Lucian (ADC), and Sona (me). The enemy team consisted of Lux (mid), Tryndamere (top), Xin Zhao (jungle), Miss Fortune (ADC), and Leona (support). Our lanes got stomped, and Yi got killed a few times in the jungle. With the enemies all getting fed, my teammates whined that it was "gg" early on (because people can't seem to remember what that actually means). And so I adopted my typical Sona approach of "if you want something done right, you have to do it yourself." This actually caused Yi to rage, because even though he had no kills before I started picking them up, he somehow thought every single one I was getting while he was anywhere on the map was stolen from him. He said he was quitting. Repeatedly. But he stuck around. Katarina had a different outlook, asking me to carry the team. We kept fighting, and eventually Katarina snowballed, while Nasus and I tanked. It was actually a pretty incredible comeback. With a fed Trydamere and exposed nexus turrets for so long, I wasn't sure we'd actually pull it off, almost up until the very end. But we did. And I mean "we." I don't want to be cocky about this. If Katarina had been bad, she wouldn't have been able to snowball. Nasus was competent enough to tank for us in the end, compensating for having fed Tryndamere. Yi is overpowered and that damage did help us in fights. And even Lucian managed to chip in. It's not like I could have done this if my allies had been complete feeders the whole time. And I build Sona more as a tank than as a dedicated killer. All that being said, I did go 8/1/36. This win has given me 24 LP. Now I'm up to 94, so I still need another win to secure a promo series.

After a break, I logged on and joined Scott (IMLRG) for Ranked games. As fourth pick, I grabbed ADC and went Tristana. That gave us Anivia (mid), Cho'Gath (Scott soloing top), Malphite (jungle), Tristana (me), and Leona (support) against LeBlanc (mid), Garen (top), Kha'Zix (jungle), Lucian (ADC), and Thresh (support). I was worried, especially when Leona stayed behind our turret, unmoving until well after fighting had started. She kept standing around, doing nothing while I struggled against two opponents. Garen overwhelmed Scott, and LeBlanc devastated our Anivia. Malphite did well, though. Leona inexplicably raged at me for not being able to easily solo bot, so she abandoned me and went top, to the consternation of our team. Scott helped me survive bot, and I did get fed, but Leona fed enough on her own to make up for that. I had the damage output we needed, but my teammates refused to protect me, because apparently losing was a more attractive option than helping me help them. I went 9/7/4, with almost all of my deaths coming late into the match from LeBlanc bursting me down. Scott went 2/7/9. I forget how many times our Leona died and I'm not inclined to watch the replay to find out, but it was a whole hell of a lot. I think our whole team reported her, as it was really out of hand. After the last bit of barely intelligible rage before ditching me, she stopped communicating with the team and fed constantly, so that seems pretty egregious. This loss bumped me down to 78 LP. I just can't catch a break as Tristana.

We tried again, this time with Nidalee (mid), Singed (me), Master Yi (jungle), Jinx (ADC), and Annie (Scott supporting). Our opponents had Ryze (mid), Renekton (top), Evelynn (jungle), Caitlyn (ADC), and Lulu (support). Renekton, especially with an Evelynn jungler to back him up, had me worried, but I survived and eventually outfarmed him and took his outer turret when he tried to roam. We spent a lot of time just farming top and holding the lane, as neither of us could kill the other. His team was doing better without him than mine was without me, so I was annoyed, but couldn't think of a solution. The problem solved itself: a farmed Singed is a late game monstrous tank that can force-feed his teammates. So I did. My final score was 0/0/12. Scott went 2/9/11, loyally supporting our struggling Jinx to the end, with her finally getting fed thanks to my disruption of the enemy team, which was good because Yi wasn't really doing that well for us and we needed more damage in fights. Kills? I don't need them. I pushed lanes, controlled objectives, wiped out minions, and brought the CC. So glad to have my old Singed back. He could become one of my default Ranked champions. It's actually kind of amusing for me to think about it, but last season I relied heavily on champions like Sivir, Kassadin, and Mordekaiser, but struggled and didn't get anywhere. In contrast, although I've started out a lot lower this season, I'm falling back on some of the first champions I ever had, Singed, Tristana, and Sona. I'm getting back to my roots and, other than the horrible luck I've been having with Tristana, it's working out very nicely. That victory did it. I now have another promo series. If I win two out of my next three matches, I'll be in Bronze II.