Kinen's Aimless Wander through Rankedland

[quote=Kinen]This is an unnecessary rant. I've stated a billion times why I feel confident in stating that I'm silver, nevertheless I thought this game was interesting to talk about. [spoiler=Last Game of the Season][IMG]http://i.imgur.com/Xf8jB8Z.jpg[/IMG][/spoiler] That was a normal game, and somewhat abnormal. It's unusual for there to be more than 2/3 golds a team in my normals even with premades in them. Obviously, their normal MMR might be sub-gold. Still, I usually see a mix of mid-high silvers, a couple of golds and the odd bronze and the normals show a marked difference in skill from ranked (the number of ADCs just standing in melee range and making no attempt to kite is shocking, for example, although it's admittedly pretty shockingly high in the normals as well). As said, that was an abnormal normal, definitely more golds than usual, although not massively, but how did I cope playing in it? The short version is I played below my par, mechanically I did well against a moderately experienced gold Ahri, lack of frontline, vision and the presence of some extremely bronze decision making made it exceedingly difficult to do much out of laning/roaming. The enemy team did seem to be making an effort, at least. I'd say I'm certainly outclassed, but not massively. Reckoning myself to be mid silver is a conservative approximation. What I really need to progress is confidence (I hesitate too much) and better leadership. I tend to be pretty good at recognising the bad decisions going on in my team (including my own, so I can improve) however I don't do much about it. If I can take control then I should be able to progress a bit more. [spoiler=Long Version]Well, for starters I'm Syndra, so it's certainly not representative of my best. I'd be vastly more comfortable with Orianna or Ahri, but that's why I played a normal. My lane with her is a little iffy, but often goes well, however I tend to fall off late-game when playing her because I find myself unsure of how to progress. I won my lane, getting out-poked but out-CSing, going on to outplay Ahri post-6, then had my usual loss of relevance. Although this game was a bit special. Namely because we had absolutely no frontline (something I find vital on Syndra) and practically no vision coverage. Annie went full AP and only eventually bought wards when she sold off her Philo when the game was long over. The enemy team on the other hand had tonnes of vision. Fiddle was left buying Oracles so he had any chance of making plays with his ult (alas, to no avail) and I was left warding. Still, the lack of vision and frontline absolutely crippled me (my positioning and stuff was admittedly crappy, although with no frontline, there isn't much to do in positioning. That said, having vision, getting off a fiddle ult into Annie ult + my stuns and AoE would have seen the comp vaguely work). Meanwhile Draven went yolo and ran off. Actually that was pretty much the sum of the game. Most of the time everyone was off in their own world and getting picked off in the heavily warded jungle, the rest of it we were grouped but completely vulnerable due to no vision. Clearly the game isn't representative of what I'd expect of gold players in ranked (I really hope), people don't always give normals their all and my team certainly was not (unfortunately the enemy team did not seem to share that lack of effort). Nevertheless, it shows a big difference from what I see in my ranked games, at least from observing the enemy teams mechanics and decision making. This game was actually pretty torturous, specifically because of being completely deprived of vision and constantly seeing my teammates run off somewhere on their own and get splattered because they traipsed through a bajillion enemy wards.[/spoiler] I'm beating on a dead horse here, but it makes me feel better. And after that atrocity of a game I really need it. That said, Syndra is still miles off being a valid choice for playing in ranked, although mechanically I was playing worse than usual. This game made it exceedingly hard to do well outside of the laning phase, but I still need to get out of that rut of losing relevance after the laning/roaming period is done.[/quote]