The Fool's Adventures In Ranked

[quote=Foolamancer]A few of you (READ: no one) will remember [url=http://www.mobafire.com/league-of-legends/forum/competitive-scene/the-fools-adventures-in-scrubdom-24739?page=1]my previous ranked thread[/url], wherein I attempted not only to chronicle my games, but to analyze my own mistakes and learn from them. I was Silver then, and attempting to reach Gold before the end of Season 3. I failed. Came close. Marathon'd [[Lucian]] and went on a rampage, and it actually came down to the absolute wire - I was literally playing down to the last possible game before end of season, and was in a promotion series, but got trolls during the last two games who were deliberately feeding to spite me (apparently they found it amusing to keep people out of Gold). But, in the end, I failed, and that kind of soured me on League for a while. I spent a few months not playing at all, and then made the mistake of trying to jump immediately back into ranked without any normals to get back in the groove. Sooooooo, long story short, I started this season twenty-eight games in the hole. A lot of that negative record is still visible in my win rates with [[Jarvan IV]] and other champions, but once I got back into things, I was able to go on a rampage with [[Vi]] until the latest nerfs hit her. After that, I was still able to use her effectively, but not to the extent that I had before - her damage output has been cut hugely, and with her ult cooldown so high, it's hard to get all the lanes snowballed as reliably. Fortunately, [[Quill Coat]] has brought back some of my old favorites. And, as of last night... [img]http://i.gyazo.com/def13c0920c54e98a33d3f5440f71a0b.png[/img] ...I am officially Gold. And I did it without duo partners. So I'm back, and this thread will be chronicling where I go in ranked from here, now that I've managed to claw my way out of Silver - and finally get into the positives for wins and losses following that massive failure streak at the beginning to boot. [b]GOALS:[/b] Don't get demoted. Plat would be nice, but is probably a ways away for now. [b]MAIN ROLES:[/b] Jungle, Support, AD Carry [i]All roles and champions listed in approximate order of preference.[/i] [b]CHAMPION POOL:[/b] [b]Jungle:[/b] [[Jarvan IV]], [[Amumu]], [[Vi]], [[Nautilus]], [[Maokai]], [[Kha'Zix]] [b]Support:[/b] [[Lulu]], [[Nami]], [[Leona]], [[Braum]], [[Thresh]], [[Morgana]] [b]AD Carry:[/b] [[Tristana]], [[Jinx]], [[Lucian]], [[Caitlyn]], [[Draven]] Top and mid are avoided at all costs, as I almost never play those roles even in unranked games. So! Let's see where this goes, shall we? I'll probably be playing some actual games tomorrow night. As before, rather than just posting screenshots of games, I'll be trying to list ways that I messed up and could try to improve, whether I won or lost.[/quote]

[quote=Foolamancer]So I spent the last few hours doing some celebratory duo-queue with my brother (MrDanceMan) in ranked to celebrate my escape from Silver. It... did not go well. Tonight, I had one of the worst streaks of bad luck I've ever experienced. [img]http://i.gyazo.com/4e42f752f9c2801c16544b234c52c640.png[/img] [[Braum]] never went to bot lane. I'm only slightly exaggerating when I say that he spent more time out of lane, simply wandering up and down the river, than in it. At one point, he actually died in [i]top lane[/i], while standard laning was still going on. I got at least one successful gank in on every lane, and didn't die until teamfights began, but it didn't matter. [[Ezreal]] didn't exist, [[Olaf]] and [[Caitlyn]] were fed out of their minds, and [[Braum]] was just hopeless. [img]http://gyazo.com/8b36cfa4875e0cc746e51d134d5c2347.png[/img] Rinse and repeat from last round. This [[Morgana]], like the previous [[Braum]], was [i]never in lane[/i]. Despite [[Pantheon]] invading me at my red buff, I was 1/0/5 by ten minutes - but, again, it didn't matter. The kills I got my laners just got thrown in the garbage. [[Zed]] in particular was just complete garbage, and repeatedly attempted to 1v4 despite the fact that he was more than eight deaths in the hole. [img]http://i.gyazo.com/a4efa7cff745b3602adb208b5eafad1c.png[/img] Aaaand again. I got myself and [[Orianna]] obscenely fed - [[Ahri]] kept overextending pre-6 - but it didn't matter. [[Thresh]] stayed in lane, but was still the reason we lost, repeatedly taking [[Death Sentence]]s into the enemy laners when he was below 1/3 health. And, at the end, he [[Death Sentence]]d the enemy [[Malphite]], [i]who had [[Banshee's Veil]][/i], then [[Flash]]-[[Flay]]ed, [i]hit no one[/i], and then tried to drop [[The Box]] for the engage anyway (also hitting no one). With all of his cooldowns burned, the enemy team knew it was a 4v5 and brute-forced the fight to win. [img]http://i.gyazo.com/a1d5704ac4867e3840e7e1e24e8f29ec.png[/img] Once more, with feeling. This was admittedly much closer than the previous game, but you really shouldn't need to see more than the fact that our [i]support [[Fiddlesticks]][/i] had [[Spirit of the Spectral Wraith]] to see what sort of problems we had this game. [[Vladimir]] and [[Elise]] were likewise useless - Vlad fed the enemy [[Quinn]] [i]ten kills[/i] in lane. In the end, we just couldn't keep up with the [[Twitch]]/[[Quinn]] scaling. Despite some great fights on our part, with [[Ezreal]] as the AD carry for our team, both our solo laners underfed and feeding, and a support [[Fiddlesticks]] with a jungle item, it just couldn't be carried. All of the above games had me getting multiple successful ganks off in every lane, but none of them resulted in victory because the teams involved were just so painfully incompetent. Though you can't see the player data in most of the games (dunno why), every team featured at least two people who went so far into the hole they could see China. THINGS I SCREWED UP: - Honestly, picking [[Nautilus]]. I love [[Nautilus]], and he's by no means [i]bad[/i], but he is limited to being a tank and nothing else. You have to rely on other people to carry you. All you can do is try to enable them to do so. I knew this going in and chose [[Nautilus]] because I enjoy playing him rather than because I think he's particularly good for solo queue. I was hoping that MrDanceMan would be able to do some damage, but he does the same thing with [[Ezreal]] that I do with Naut - that is, plays him because he's fun rather than because he's good. We just kept getting outscaled. Other than that, I'm at a loss for details. I feel like I've worked out most of the obvious kinks in my jungle gameplay at this point. I am never outjungled during the laning phase. I always have more impact than the enemy jungler and usually end up counterjungling them heavily as well - even when I'm Naut. What I think I need to work on is learning to pressure advantages once I've created them, but that isn't something that can be summed up by a few lines.[/quote]

[quote=Foolamancer]So just won a game as Maokai jungle, only to have the server crash immediately afterwards, so I'm taking the time to update this (no screens, unfortunately, due to the aforementioned server issues). Ended it with participation in 35 out of team's 49 kills and only 5 deaths. Basically camped the hell out of mid - our [[Zed]] against their [[Syndra]] - and got four kills for the two of us before the ten minute mark. Went bot, got successful ganks there, took towers. Easy win overall, though we kept taking stupid fights in the mid-game. Basically I need to pay more attention to who on my team is in the area, so I know when to turn and burn. That is my lesson for this game.[/quote]

[quote=Foolamancer][url=http://matchhistory.na.leagueoflegends.com/en/#match-details/NA1/1477688303/34667509]Another.[/url] Had to try super hard this game. Won after an extremely grueling hour of play and a series of extremely well-done teamfights on our part (mostly me, Varus, and Wukong). Mistake: haven't played Janna in quite a while, overestimated my lane presence multiple times. Died twice as a result, had to burn summoners more than that. Most of my deaths were me getting inexplicably focused, though, so I'm perfectly okay with that.[/quote]

[quote=Foolamancer][img]http://i.gyazo.com/53e99d6a03c29651f9d57e47dfd4aa27.png[/img] One more that I forgot. Basically, I camped top and got our Shyvana snowballed out of her mind and Vlad basically completely out of the game, but it didn't matter because both bot and mid died to their lane opponents multiple times without Lee Sin ever having to show his face. With Orianna dead three times before six and both Twitch and Morgana dead twice each, every member of my team was basically out of the game save myself and our top before lane phase even ended. With Lissandra being Lissandra, I couldn't get any ganks there, and with the enemy Blitzcrank and Ezreal fed out of their minds, even when I got a successful gank on their lane, Twitch still died as a result. However, we - that is, myself and Shyvana, my duo partner - made a bad call to go for dragon that turned an unlikely victory into an impossible one. It was a risky call; I was out of mana and Orianna was at half health, but we knew they had no wards on the dragon. Lee Sin happened to stumble in at the wrong time, Lissandra and the rest collapsed, and I missed the Smite as a result of Lee's superior execution damage, so we gave up three kills and the dragon for nothing.[/quote]

[quote=Foolamancer][img]http://i.gyazo.com/8d483c29e8368571520e16c904bae2e0.png[/img] This game was a joke. Like, I couldn't stop laughing the entire way through. It was [i]hilarious[/i] how random all this was. Standard jungle start: red -> blue -> gank top, except this time I'm expecting a gank from the enemy Maokai, so I linger in the lane bushes until he shows his face. I easily claim first blood against him, and Vladimir and I drop Ryze to 100 health. For some reason, he stays, and just as I come out of the lane bushes again to claim the kill, [i]Syndra[/i] shows up, so we kill her too. And then Maokai comes [i]back[/i] for a [i]fourth kill[/i] before five minutes. Lux was my duo partner, in case that name hasn't turned up enough recently, so I got him three kills in mid and just let him snowball to hell. This was helped by the fact that Syndra kept leaving lane. I still don't know where she was going. She wasn't doing wraiths, she wasn't roaming, and there basically wasn't anything for her to [i]do[/i]. She just kept strolling out of lane and coming back a minute later with the same amount of CS and nothing to show for it. [img]http://i.gyazo.com/8ff4c7296102638b1e11ca9d5602191b.png[/img] Hecarim instalocked jungle despite the fact that I had called it, so I ended up supporting this game (he was decent, but nothing special, and was incredibly toxic throughout the game). Completely crushed the enemy bot. Gave Jinx two doubles because their Sona was exceptionally predictable and kept walking into bubbles. Repeatedly killed Caitlyn, turned around several ganks, [i]et cetera[/i]. Got hypercarry snowballed out of control. My job is complete. [img]http://i.gyazo.com/fab78d0fb5761cd2e24590f33e843781.png[/img] THE NAUTILUS CURSE In this case, it was Tristana literally throwing the game. This was easily winnable, but - for some reason that I never understood - Trist was constantly calling surrender votes and saying "gg" in /all. At around the thirty minute mark, she declared she "didn't need the win" and just walked off into bot lane, refusing to group. Not that she was much help regardless - she was abysmal, despite her sort-of-acceptable score. At multiple points during teamfights she simply walked forward into the enemy Rengar rather than autoattacking. So yeah. Incompetent AD carry decides to AFK in bot. Not much to be done, sadly. [img]http://i.gyazo.com/e9a111ece40b9c6d1070fc4a3c3284f9.png[/img] Enemy jungler was a wannabe Weedwick - attempted to farm the jungle without interruption for 20 minutes, came out thinking he was invincible and that he could carry the game despite me having dumpstered all his lanes by that point. He could not. EDIT: Oh yeah. In case anyone's wondering about the constant duoqueues, brother is home from out of state, so the two of us have largely been playing in sessions of about four at the local gaming place.[/quote]

[quote=Foolamancer][img]http://i.gyazo.com/38374df9d1a72aa3ab9e4f192a7a5ad1.png[/img] Nasus ragequit after attempting to all-in Volibear at level six and dying as a result. Veigar gave up first blood in mid, Thresh died multiple times in bot, and since I had to sit in top, I couldn't gank. The enemy team was cool about it, though. We had some hilarious fights that everyone laughed about while we waited for twenty minutes. [img]http://gyazo.com/e4a236bfda1f6d17d060609f64fb57cf.png[/img] Pretty much a stomp. Our Quinn made a couple bonehead plays in lane and died as a result, but Quinn and Leona have a hell of a lot of burst, and even Ezreal can't escape the champion of the Solari, so that was fine. Support Riven, unsurprisingly, did nothing later on. Props to our jungle Kha'Zix. [img]http://gyazo.com/5281353a52851876004f8c381990418a.png[/img] [i]So[/i] much harder than it should have been. I picked first on our team (well, second, but first pick rotation), called jungle, and took J4. Then next pick rotation comes along and the Tryndamere instalocks, refuses to go to lane, the whole nine yards. So we have a double jungle. I end up taking blue buff and just resigning to myself to uselessness for the first twenty or so minutes, as I am underleveled, have no red buff, and have only half a jungle to farm. Tryndamere, to his credit, managed to pull off a very early and successful tower dive against the enemy Rengar, then camped the top lane bush and killed him again when he entered, but that was pretty much it. I just wandered and accomplished nothing of note. Until midgame, anyway, at which point I managed to pull off some pretty impressive (if I do say so myself) plays to save Ezreal, who was being tower-dived repeatedly (including by the enemy mid), along with grabbing some kills elsewhere. Eventually, despite my early gold issues, I was able to go back to the shop and buy Ravenous Hydra straight-up. Despite the (highly toxic) Tryndamere's constant claims that he was "carrying hard", though, this game would have been a [i]lot[/i] easier than it was if he hadn't screwed me and bot over by stealing half the jungle. We eventually managed to win simply through outscaling them, since we managed to survive the early game and snag a few dragons to keep us in it (and they made the mistake of going for Baron). Public service announcement to all players like this: you don't get credit for "carrying" games like this when [i]you are the reason it was so hard in the first place[/i]. [i]Especially[/i] when you aren't even playing particularly well. Everyone on our team (except Fizz, who was abysmal) did very well given the circumstances. EDIT: Oh. Qualified for series.[/quote]