Going for the Gold XXIII: Now With More Tristana Failure

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.

For my first game in Bronze III, I had third pick. The enemy team had a Ziggs and no one on my team had even mentioned mid, so I figured I might as well take it. I was tempted to grab Kassadin, but the nerfs combined with the fact that I was undefeated with him last season and hesitate to break from tradition by losing with him caused me to take the safe option instead: I know I can hold a lane against Ziggs with Karthus. We had Karthus (me), Xin Zhao (top), Master Yi (jungle), Caitlyn (ADC), and Thresh (support). The other team had Ziggs (mid), Pantheon (top), Vi (jungle), Jinx (ADC), and Blitzcrank (support). I easily held my lane despite harassment from Vi, but I couldn't snowball with kills using my ult, so I was stuck farming while the other lanes failed. Our Xin Zhao was never really useful, although Caitlyn and Thresh, floundering early on, eventually caught up and did moderately well for themselves. None of it mattered, though. Feral Flare is completely overpowered and our Yi did what Yi always does since the advent of Feral Flare. In my duo queue games with Paul, we were able to, with considerable planning and coordination, stop Feral Flare Yi from carrying. My opponents in the game, however, could not do that. I can see why not: it's pretty tough to pull off. Yi picked up two pentakills and snowballed so much that it was an easy win. I went 6/1/6, which isn't really remarkable. But hey, Yi's practically a mandatory ban again and people should realize that.

I catch a break with Tristana. Well, maybe I would if I played her in games that were more favorable. As soon as I saw the Yi on the other side, I figured my only chance as ADC would be to use Tristana's capacity to escape. It was Fizz (mid), Jax (top), Amumu (jungle), Tristana (me), and Sona (support) against LeBlanc (mid), Jayce (top), Master Yi (jungle), Ashe (ADC), and Lulu (support). I tried. I really did. But the enemy bot laners were actually pretty good, and my support was not. She kept getting caught. She apologized for it, rather than blaming it on me, which was a nice change. And then, of course, Yi snowballed and our team was dominated. I went 3/6/1, with most of my deaths being against the inescapable Yi. I could ult him, Rocket Jump away, and he'd still catch me and kill me. I raged pretty hard.

In my next match, I was fourth pick, but last pick wanted ADC over support, and I accommodated that. I'm such a nice guy! Fortunately, Yi was banned this time (our first pick was smart, and ended up carrying us). We had Kha'Zix (mid), Fizz (top), Nocturne (jungle), Draven (ADC), and Alistar (me) against Yasuo (mid), Aatrox (top), Xin Zhao (jungle), Jinx (ADC), and Soraka (support). I'm not particularly proud of this one. Our bot lane failed hard, although it was actually 3 vs. 2 much of the time and our jungler never showed up to help us. But that meant I was an underleveled tank trying to help turn around a losing game. I did what I could, but I just wasn't strong enough yet. Kha'Zix saved us, jumping onto enemy champions and destroying them. That bought us the time we needed for me to get tanky. It was still a close game, but my initiations gave us an advantage, and Draven was finally catching up too, although Kha'Zix was most of our damage output. Pretty close, but I should have done better. I went 3/4/27.

 I feel bad about this Ranked game. I queued with Scott (IMLRG). He had first pick, and took Jax. Mid was open, and I saw the enemy team take Fizz, so I picked Karthus, knowing I could probably survive to carry. Our full lineup was Karthus (me), Jax (Scott), Vi (jungle), Draven (ADC), and Lux (support). Our opponents had Fizz (mid), Garen (top), Jarvan IV (jungle), Vayne (ADC), and Sona (support). Before minions spawned, I warned my allies that Fizz would try to roam, and to be ready for it. When I started laning, it turned out that my opponent didn't know what to do. I thought maybe I was up against a really bad Fizz. He seemed to be trying to make me extend for a gank, but really he just let me farm. I was well-positioned to carry, but unfortunately, things were a disaster everywhere else. Garen was destroying Scott, and the enemy Jarvan helped win bot lane. I didn't have enough items to start carrying, but I fought anyway because there was too much pressure for me to be able farm safely. It was looking like I was our team's only hope, and a slim one at that. I was 5/0/0 and easily outfarming everyone else on both teams. But the total team K/D ratio was 9/19 in our opponents' favor, and three of our turrets were down. Just after I'd picked up a double kill, between mid lane and the bot river, I backed up to recall, hoping I could help my allies, who were trying to fight a push by the other three enemies on our top inhibitor turret. And then I disconnected. My internet completely cut out. That was about 20 minutes in. I tried resetting the modem repeatedly, but we have no internet service now, for whatever reason. It's after midnight, and I couldn't call the ISP anyway, because it's not my account and I don't even know the number. So now I'm typing this, about 45 minutes into the game, seeing everything frozen in the state it had been in when my internet abruptly shut off. My team has long since lost by now. So yeah, for the first time, I've been that guy who disconnects in a Ranked game without returning. It was bound to happen eventually, I suppose, since no internet connection is 100% reliable 100% of the time. But yeah, this sucks. Sorry, Scott. I tried, but nothing worked. It turned out that Comcast had a service outage: I was without internet for about twelve hours.

I later queued up with Scott again for some more Ranked games. In the first of these, we had Morgana (mid), Akali (top), Master Yi (jungle), Tristana (me), and Alistar (Scott) against Malzahar (mid), Lee Sin (top), Pantheon (jungle), Ezreal (ADC), and Volibear (support). Scott had trouble against Volibear, but he managed to protect me and I did get ahead on CS initially. We were camped by Pantheon, though, and our own jungler turned out to be useless (I'm used to thinking that Yi is easy to play, but apparently it's possible to fail dramatically with him). Our AD Akali solo top fed Lee Sin harder than I've seen anyone feed in a while, and Lee Sin easily carried the game. I ended up going 2/4/0. Three of my deaths were to Lee Sin. Poor Scott went 0/8/4.

Then we got an even more messed up game. Someone declared "mid or AFK." Well, another person took mid and then the troll picked Sona, but still went mid. That meant we had a duo mid and I was left to solo bot as Tristana, which is a depressing circumstance. I did what I could with it, but that's only so much. Our lineup was Karma (mid), Sona (mid), Jax (Scott), Fiddlesticks (jungle), and Tristana (me soloing bot). The other team had Akali (mid), Warwick (top), Kha'Zix (jungle), Sivir (ADC), and Morgana (support). Our Fiddlesticks was a very toxic player and not particularly helpful, but got fed because our opponents tried to duel him and then failed to focus him in teamfights. Ultimately, I went 14/11/11. Scott was ahead at first, but ended up going 7/17/16.

For the third game in a row, I found myself filling the ADC role. I used to think it was one of my better roles, and I've commented on that before. I can't really justify that right now, considering my 80% loss ratio with Tristana this season. Yes, we lost again. This one took me down to 0 LP and demoted Scott. Frustrating. Our team was Ahri (mid), Jax (top), Vi (jungle), Tristana (me), and Alistar (Scott). The enemy team consisted of Xerath (mid), Olaf (top), Warwick (jungle), Corki (ADC), and Lux (support). I held my own, but Xerath got fed and nuked my team. I went 8/7/5 in this one. Scott went 2/8/9. Although it wasn't as egregious as the previous matches, it was another case of mid and jungle both failing hard and fast enough that I couldn't do anything about it. So yeah, three Ranked Tristana losses in a row and my record with her this season is 2 wins, 8 losses.

We tried one more Ranked game. This time, I got first pick. Free LP, guys. It was Karthus (me), Teemo (top), Nunu (jungle), Sivir ADC), and Blitzcrank (Scott) against LeBlanc (mid), Xin Zhao (top), Nocturne (jungle), Lucian (ADC), and Alistar (support). I was pretty annoyed at the fact that, despite not letting LeBlanc kill me while also occupying her attention so she couldn't roam much, my lane opponent got fed anyway because everyone else on the team underestimated her damage. Don't worry: I still wrecked them eventually. After all, I was playing Karthus. I went 11/5/11. Scott went 2/12/12 (our bot lane struggled the whole time, but I won't complain, as they demanded enough attention that Teemo and I could use the opportunity to get fed). That win took me back up to 25 LP.