Going for the Gold Part XXX: Stagnation

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.

In solo queue, I found myself second pick. Our first pick took Kayle mid. Two more people were arguing over support, so I avoided the whole mess by picking Singed top, which was a risk. We ended up with Kayle (mid), Singed (me), Udyr (jungle), Caitlyn (ADC), and Braum (support). Our opponents had Annie (mid), Vladimir (top), Rengar (jungle), Jinx (ADC), and Alistar (support). I had to give a lot of ground against Vlad. Udyr came top to help, but didn't bother coordinating with me and I was often unable to support those gank attempts, due to being out of mana or having recalled. Annie got fed and our bot struggled, while Vladimir killed me and Udyr in a teleport gank as I was finishing Rengar off, then pushed and took my turret. Things were looking grim, but we stuck it out. I never died the rest of the match, and I disrupted enemy push attempts, buying us time. My Singed finally farmed up enough to tank, and I got myself fed, then Udyr, then Caitlyn. Up until Caitlyn got really fed, it was back and forth. Most of my teammates died in a fight, then the enemies went for Baron, getting it, but I killed two of them as they took it and made two more of them vulnerable as they fled, so Rengar was the only one to keep the buff. Our late game was better and we weren't far enough behind for them to keep us down. Annie raged and wanted everyone to report the feeder Rengar. In the end, I went 10/1/21. That win got me 18 LP, so now I'm up to 47.

I was last pick, but mid was open and I was up against a ridiculous team composition. We already had Caitlyn and Braum for bot lane, with Rengar jungling and Gangplank top. The other team had Yasuo (mid, I guessed, and he was), Varus (ADC of course), Fiora (turned out to be top), and Master Yi (jungle). So I took Karthus. Last pick on the other team was Leona. We were up against a team with almost no magic damage and not much crowd control, but the potential for extreme physical damage. Gangplank was trounced in lane and I was slow to pick up kills, but eventually our relatively sane plan of bringing a combination of disruption, burst damage, sustained damage, and utility to fights won out over the all-in physical damage our opponents brought. I went 11/2/16. Our opponents were bickering and wanted to report each other, but really, they have themselves to blame for that comp. I get another 18 LP, taking me up to 65. Not bad, but I'm a little worried. I used to be getting more LP for wins. My MMR might be too crappy for me to keep climbing. This match did even out my overall win/loss ratio, so I'm at 43 each. Hopefully that improves the situation.

I tried another match. I feel sorry for our Ashe, but only our Ashe. We had Malzahar (me), Quinn (top), Udyr (jungle), Ashe (ADC), and Thresh (support). Our opponents had Annie (mid), Rengar (top), Malphite (jungle), Lucian (ADC), and Blitzcrank (support). I was able to bully Annie, but she farmed very well and I was wary of ganks. Eventually, Malphite circled through our jungle (which had no wards, of course), and shot in for an ult gank on me. I was annoyed at this point, but I was still only slightly behind. Then he did it again. That's the point at which I started complaining to my team that mid was a problem. No response. Even after she was ahead two kills, I was still keeping up with Annie. Confident that Malphite wasn't coming for me, I pushed out again, only to have Rengar and Blitzcrank both show up to gank me. Ashe was struggling to keep bot lane under control, and doing a pretty good job of it, but my other teammates let the enemies group up and murder me again, putting me far enough behind that I didn't have enough damage output to win against anything. Then, for the rest of the match, Quinn, Udyr, and Thresh all whined about wanting everyone else on the team to focus Annie. The Annie that they'd ignored and that was now massively fed and protected by a wall of other champions. Yeah, that wasn't happening. I couldn't get close to Annie and neither could they, but they still couldn't shut the hell up about it. Each of the three was wholly convinced that if only everyone else would magically kill Annie, our problems would go away. This whole match was some bullshit. Aside from how frustrating my teammates (except Ashe, who was fine) were, I also had numerous instances in which my spells got enemies to just a tiny sliver of health, but couldn't finish, and other instances in which my spells were easily killing someone, but Thresh or Udyr was run in and steal the last hit, keeping me from using kill gold to climb out of the hole I was in. I was considering swearing off Malzahar in Ranked play, since I haven't had much success with him. But that's not fair. This was not a reasonable test. I was doing fine against Annie when she was alone. But she got help from her teammates and I got none from mine. Woe is me. Blah, blah, blah. I might have been able to do more with Karthus in this one, but I wasn't about to pick Karthus into a very possible enemy Kassadin. So yeah, I went 5/9/10. It was just a bad game and I'll move on. By the way, it was Loss Prevented. Ha! Yeah, there were server problems last night, but apparently there were still issues, although I didn't lag myself (Udyr was claiming to, now that I think about it). So, no drop in LP for me there, but it might have hurt my MMR?

In my next game, I wound up on a team that needed a jungler. I was going to be Maokai, but I switched to Udyr at the last second because Feral Flare is still OP. I was already building Udyr as an on-hit champion anyway. Now it's just crazy. We had Teemo for mid and Yorick top. Our bot laners were Jinx and Morgana. The other team went Akali mid, Cho'Gath top, Vi jungle, and had Draven and Taric for bot. Akali tried to invade near blue buff and hit Teemo while he was acting as a ward. I gave chase, but couldn't catch her. Yorick and Teemo killed her anyway, then leashed blue for me, so we were off to a good start. Cho'Gath held his own, but raged far too much for me to feel sorry for him. Our other lanes won, so I was able to farm the jungle and do what Udyr does best. Wriggle's Lantern took some time, but once I had it, Tear of the Goddess was easy to acquire. I stacked both and moved on into Wit's End. I stayed out for a long time, relying on blue buff for sustainability as I stacked Feral Flare and helped my teammates pick up kills. Akali eventually caught me as I was recalling under a turret (because of her stupid ult). But then I got Muramana and Iceborn Gauntlet simultaneously, allowing me to walk all over our opponents. I went 9/3/9 and had so much gold. Just so very much. I'm pretty tempted to try Skarner in Ranked. On-hit is so good now. Anyway, I guess the Loss Prevented in the previous match might have affected this one, because I only gained 9 LP for winning. I'm up to 74. I just hope that my MMR doesn't keep me down.

Well, the following game was a rather uneventful win. We had Ahri (mid), Darius (top), Fiddlesticks (jungle), Kog'Maw (me), and Taric (support) against LeBlanc (mid), Renekton (top), Master Yi (jungle), Twitch (ADC), and Morgana (support). Taric kept me mostly safe and I was able to outfarm Twitch, so things were going well for us early on. But no kills were happening bot, while top and mid both snowballed in our favor. Eventually Taric screwed up while trying to recall and Morgana was able to come in and murder both of us. I later picked up a kill. LeBlanc left at some point, and my teammates aggressively pushed mid. I farmed bot alone for the rest of the match, scaring Twitch off when he tried to share the lane. The other team surrendered while I was still farming. My score was 1/1/1. That was an unnecessarily easy win, and it gained me 22 LP, taking me up to 96.

I was going to close out the weekend with a promo series in sight, but I was invited to duo queue by someone I'd played with back in Bronze V, right before my first promo series. I tend to duo with people if they ask me, but sometimes I get burned and find myself with people I can't believe I ever added. This was one of those times. My partner picked Diana jungle to start with. So far, so good. Second pick took Ryze, but wouldn't answer me when I asked which lane. Since my duo partner had said something about tricking them into thinking Diana was mid and then countering their mid pick, I thought maybe Ryze was going mid. I took Singed top at the last second. Our bot laners were Tristana and Braum. The other team had Malzahar (mid), Fiora (top), Jax (jungle), Vayne (ADC), and Morgana (support). Fiora's early damage isn't that great, and she has limited range for her attacks, so I was able to farm from the beginning. I think my Singed has gotten to be pretty good again, maybe better than ever before. But it is not guaranteed to work. In this case, Jax harassed me by camping my lane early on, and then Malzahar, after beating the crap out of mid, roamed and camped me as well. I fell a bit behind on CS, but Fiora still wasn't much of a threat. Ultimately, our loss was a group effort. Tristana was constantly disconnecting. Ryze stayed away from the team and then raged when we didn't wait for him (even though he obviously wasn't following us). Diana and Braum watched me initiate for them, then waited to fight until after the enemy team CC-juggled me and killed me. For how bad my allies were, I'm surprised that it lasted as long as it did. There were some minor blunders on my part (like running right into the Jax I knew was probably hiding in a brush), but mostly, I did my job. My teammates simply didn't want to let me tank for them. Diana wasn't the most toxic of players, but did turn out to be very bossy and said stupid things like, "Singed, stop running around." Lesson learned about playing with that person, I suppose. I went 4/8/7. This match lost me 18 LP, so I'm down to 77.

I played some duo queue games. I hadn't recorded anything about these matches and was relying on LOLReplay to remind me about them, but it is glitching out badly, so I have limited information. I might not be getting these next ones quite right. There was one with Scott (IMLRG). We had Ziggs and Renekton in the solo lanes, with Warwick jungling. Scott and I duoed bot with Braum and Kog'Maw, respectively. Our opponents had Diana (mid), Jax (top), Lee Sin (jungle), Lucian (ADC), and Pantheon (support). This match was a disaster. Every lane failed and the enemy Lee Sin got fed very quickly. I don't remember why things went so badly, other than the enemy Lee Sin, but they sure did. My final score was 0/5/1, which was terrible, but I had no time to get going and my teammates weren't interested in protecting me (except Scott, who tried to, but could not). My teammates fed even more. The total team score was 42 to 8. The whole thing was over in 27 minutes. Disastrous. That should be 45 wins, 46 losses at this point.

We tried again. This time, I was jungling as Udyr and Scott went Braum again, supporting an Ashe. We had Rumble to solo top and an AP Tristana mid. Our opponent had Zed mid, Nasus top, Olaf jungle, and their bot lane consisted of Draven and Heimerdinger. I know that I've said before how I'm pleased with the development of my on-hit Udyr, but I'll continue to do so. I was having some trouble getting my Udyr to be reliable, but the advent of Feral Flare has really made the build come together. Scott had a lot of trouble, though, mainly because the Ashe he was trying to support was quite bad. Aside from my Udyr getting fed, other factors turned out in our favor: the enemy Zed was bad and fed our Tristana early on, Rumble was (initially) able to keep Nasus pinned down, and the enemy Draven was also bad. Heimerdinger did get fed, though, and Nasus eventually got out of control (for people who weren't Udyr), so it wasn't a total shutdown. I went 12/2/6. This one would have, I think, put me at 46 wins, 46 losses.

Something is off. I had five more Ranked games, all of them in duo queue with Scott, and I played Karthus in all of them. But my total record is 48 wins, 52 losses. I'm missing three losses somewhere, and I think they all happened in a row, in duo queue with Scott, between the the Singed match (duo queue with a jerk) and the disastrous Kog'Maw match. I'll see if I can correct this error once the improved official match history tool comes out. At the moment, I can't remember anything about those three losses except that I think I know when they happened. However, the Karthus spree I remember quite well. The abbreviated version is that I did a duo queue with Scott and went Karthus in every game. I got fed in every game. But three of them were beyond my power to save. My impression was that my teammates were all too eager to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. I was kicking ass and taking names (except not taking names so much, because that takes time away from kicking ass). But I still lost three of the five. Let's see, as for some details...

First game my allies were Shyvana (top), Xin Zhao (jungle), Varus (ADC), and Sona (Scott). We were up against Talon (mid), Fiora (top), Amumu (jungle), Vayne (ADC), and Morgana (support). Scott was frustrated that he kept getting jumped on and killed, but he did a good job of supporting our Varus. Xin Zhao and I both got fed anyway and carried. I went 12/2/7.

Second game my allies were Aatrox (top), Pantheon (jungle), Varus (ADC), and Braum (Scott). We were up against Ziggs (mid), Kayle (top), Udyr (jungle), Lucian (ADC), and Annie (support). This one was incredibly stupid. Our Aatrox was toxic from the beginning. Initially it was all about one of the bans Scott chose (without this person having said anything beforehand), but really Aatrox was ready to troll over anything. Bot lane was fine, but top and jungle were actively trying to lose. I reported both. I went 19/7/15 this time. We were easily ahead and would have won if either Aatrox or Pantheon, let alone both, had decided to contribute. They refused.

Third game my allies were Shyvana (top), Evelynn (jungle), Jinx (ADC), and Braum (Scott). We were up against LeBlanc (mid), Kayle (top), Fiddlesticks (jungle), Ashe (ADC), and Lulu (support). I distinctly remember that LeBlanc was a good sport (even though I was able to outscale her and murder her) and that Lulu was incredibly obnoxious. I snowballed pretty hard in this one, getting full build and elixirs, then accumulating a hoard of even more gold that I couldn't even use. It just seemed like a good game for me. I was convinced that I'd be commending LeBlanc for keeping me pinned down initially, even if it didn't work out in the end. I went 21/3/16. My teammates had other plans, but I didn't think it would enough to stop me from carrying. Eventually, after we got the worst of an engagement, they wanted to push mid. I agreed, but told them to wait for my ult to come back up. I told them exactly how long it would take. I thought they were fine with that, so I soloed the dragon to get my teammates some more gold as my teammates spread out and shoved the side lanes. I recalled in our jungle and told my teammates that my ult was back up and that I was ready to group up. What I didn't notice was that while I'd been recalling, all four of them overextended without me and ran into an ambush. Scott told me that he was following them to try to protect them. Well, that was terrible, but Jinx did escape and we cold still have held out and recovered, but Jinx inexplicably turned around and tried to fight the entire enemy team by herself. That left me alone against all of them, which was too much, so they pushed and took our nexus. I get that these things happen, but I explicitly told them the amount of time it would be until I would be ready to group up with them. They appeared to be waiting. And then, in the last few seconds, they charged in without me. What more could I do?

Fourth game is a perfect example of why I still main Karthus. My allies were Nasus (top), Pantheon (jungle), Kog'Maw (Scott), and Blitzcrank (support). Scott was initially unhappy with his support, but Blitzcrank eventually proved himself. Pantheon went in for a gank on Yasuo, but Lee Sin counterganked, then attacked me under my turret, giving Yasuo a double kill. Yasuo pressed that advantage, farmed up, and Lee Sin continued to put pressure on me. Oh no! "Hi, I'm Yasuo. I'm a highly mobile, manaless, crit-based AD caster. I got my lane handed to me on a silver platter by Lee Sin. I have 400 CS. And Karthus still beats me." Yeah, despite my early disadvantage, I got full build and wrecked the enemy team, even Lee Sin. I went 11/3/24. We won.

Fifth game my allies were Pantheon (top), Lee Sin (jungle), Sivir (ADC), and Leona (Scott). We were up against Lux (mid), Nasus (top), Tryndamere (jungle), Caitlyn (ADC), and Nami (support). We were ahead up until the last few minutes, when my teammates suddenly collapsed and let Nasus, Caitlyn, and Tryndamere run all over them. I went 11/4/6. That puts me at 53 LP.