Life on the Fields of Justice

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Monthly Archives: November 2012

Placement Matches

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With the start of any new season and the prospect of placement matches I definitely get excited to have the chance at moving elo rapidly.  However, until we have five games under our belts in the new season we don’t get to see what our elo is and how much we are moving!  Already, we’ve had a rougher start than the season before.

We played two games last night.  We tried similar team compositions in both.  Our game plan was to win our individual lanes early and then take a turret.  This just never happened.  Even though bot and mid lanes were ahead we never grouped early enough to take a turret.  Then we’d just stand around long enough to let the enemy team group up and catch us off guard.  There were times when the enemy team would have four people in a lane and our team just couldn’t react to it.

Unfortunately, we can’t practice our team comp in Normal games.  We need experience picking against enemy teams.  However, Ranked games are a terrible place to learn that certain comps and certain champs just don’t operate well in the team comp.  We could do normal draft pick, but I don’t think it’s as competitive; the teams aren’t as structured or organized.

Maybe I should try Ezreal mid.  I’ve tried Corki, and most games it went fine (until Shaco was a thing).  I’m good with Corki, I’m just much more comfortable on Ezreal.  I like his kit a bit more and I appreciate his blink and ultimate.  I think if I was playing Ezreal mid I would rush a Tear of the Goddess and then get some Doran’s Blades and just farm out some crazy burst.  I like having Sheen and Trinity Force on Ezreal, and if I was mid I would want the extra health from Phage.  Otherwise I’d go with Infinity Edge and Phantom Dancer and do all the damages.  Maybe I could start Trinity Force, then go right into Infinity Edge.  Wait a minute, what’s going on here?  Where is this post going?  Let’s focus back on positive things.

So my Ranked KD dropped a bit over these two losses, but it stabilized right at a 16-5-10.  That’s not bad, but not nearly what it was.  Now the moment you’ve all been waiting for!  Screen shots!

Good Start

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Season Three preseason is in full swing, so when Thursday rolled around we were ready to get some Ranked games played.

I felt like this was really the first time our team bothered to counter-pick a lane.  When the enemy team first-picked Malphite we decided to run a Vayne top.  This isn’t a champion that Dan has extensive experience with, but we figured it would be better to have a ranged dps late game.

When we were banning I remembered having a Caitlyn in bottom lane that just destroyed the kill lane that we normally use.  I honestly thought about banning her out.  Her range is very strong and her net really breaks a melee Mantheon as he tries to run at her.  However, I didn’t ban her, because what are the chances the other team is going to pick Caitlyn?

It wasn’t until they had picked their whole team that I realized I was going to be matched against Zed in mid lane.  This should be interesting.  Glad I watched the spotlight and saw when Phreak took Veigar down from 100 to 0 before Veigar could react.  Veigar has an AoE stun while LeBlanc has a silence.  Luckily, I never really got to see Zed in action because the game was only 61 minutes long.

I got first blood on Zed and then his game plan was to try to last hit with his ninja star ability.  This was fine because it kept him back far enough to be safe from my harass, but there were a couple flaws with his game plan.  His shuriken was dealing minimal damage because he didn’t seem to be maxing it first, and it would push the wave.  So he was missing CS, and zoning himself by pushing the creeps to my side of the lane.  Every now and then I would just push him away from creeps and call MIA.  More than half the time I was standing in mid lane I was by myself.  This let me get WAY ahead in creep kills and experience.  When the lane finally started to push (because Zed had been gone for so long) I killed him from about half health under his turret.

When I went back to get my Soul Stealer the enemy jungler showed up and pushed mid lane!  Not to my turret, he just pushed it out a little bit so my creeps caught it and started to lose, meaning I’d be able to freeze the lane again!  I guess he didn’t realize that I was level nine and Zed was just hitting level six because I had the zoned Zed with lane control.  Maybe Zed thought that he was doing his team mates a favor by keeping me in mid so I wasn’t roaming, I was just last-hitting.  However, with the best late game ADC in the top lane, and a kill lane setup in the bottom lane, I knew we would have a smooth early, mid, and late game regardless of how well I did in mid.  I just got to farm!

After I bought Soul Stealer I shot off to a 15-0 start in this game.  For whatever reason saying 15-0 start sounds better than saying 23-2.  I think if someone went 8-2 I would still say that’s a good game, but finishing 8-2 after starting 15-0 just didn’t feel as good.

In all reality I should have died 10 times in that game.  However, I was six item and had 5k gold, so I sold some items to get other items to even my build out.  With 20 stacks and Athene’s Grail my cooldown reduction was looking really good.  Zhonyas let me ignore more of Amumu’s and Malphite’s damage.  This is actually the item that kept me alive the most.  I made big mistakes around Amumu that let him catch me out away from my team.  He would Flash into a bandage toss and then ult immediately, even if he only caught me.  Once I had control of my character I would pop my Zhonyas and assess my options.  Normally I would be able to clone my blink with my ult or I would have my Flash up.  In a 61 minute game I never took damage from a Malphite ult.  I almost felt sorry for the poor guy.

The game was won in a Baron fight.  Pantheon jumped into the middle of the enemy team, Lux gave us some vision with her spells, and we picked them off one by one, never giving them a chance to combo multiple members of our team.  Our only casualty was Pantheon who knew he was jumping to his death.  We won the fight and immediately ran to the enemy base and finished it off. The best way to combat griefing in league of legends is going to be to get a title defects attorney to help you in your ranked matches

So far my average stats for Season Three look like 23 kills, 2 deaths, 11 assists and 363 cs per game.  That is what I would consider to be a good start.

Gold difference at the end of the game:  94.9k vs 76.8k

F is for Flash

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The question is simple enough.  Because of the prevalence of Flash as a Summoner Spell in League of Legends I was curious as to which button people use for it.  If you don’t use Flash, don’t fill out the survey as it does not apply to you.

[poll id=”2″]

If you have thoughts on why you use the button you use feel free to leave a comment below.  You must be able to prove that you are a human in order to leave a comment.

 

Season Two Was B-A-N-A-N-A-S!

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But literally, I threw SO many bananas in Season Two.  Does the number 251,535 mean anything to you?  No?  Well that’s the total physical damage dealt as Soraka in Season Two.  That means that I threw roughly 3,350 bananas in Season Two!  Let’s take a quick look at what happens when that many bananas get thrown!

This is just an overview of my season with Soraka.  Sure, I didn’t have the most glorious K/D, but Soraka was my most-played champion in Season Two, and with a whopping 70.2% win percentage that’s nothing to shake a banana at.  I felt like my death’s were relatively low considering Soraka’s extreme lack of mobility.  The only thing she has going for her are those goat legs, but those got changed mid season!

I wouldn’t do a post about Soraka without at least giving you a lovely Ranked game to look at while we discuss her!

I can’t remember the last time that I had a gank come this early in a game.  Amumu wanted a smiteless blue, so Kog and I stayed behind to help DPS it down.  We got to the lane when there were only three minions left from the first wave.  Kog went running over to them.  We were expecting to see a lovely Sivir and support Orianna lane, but all of a sudden a Jax and Shyvana come screaming out of the bushes at us.  Kog gets ignited, but I throw my heal down on him anyway.  I’d rather have him sitting on bonus armor near full health than to wait for the ignite to wear off.  I’m glad I did.  Kog escaped with less than 100 HP, but Shyvana was the brave soul who decided to tank the turret.  If you know anything about dragons (How To Train Your Dragon) you will know that “a downed dragon is a dead dragon.”  Knowing that Shyvana didn’t have Flash I threw my Exhaust down on her.  I started auto-attacking Jax so that Kog could finish off the Shyvana which he cleverly did.  Jax escaped with just a few banana lashings, but now Kog had red buff.  Koggie-poos of the world, if you have a level one red buff and unlimited sustain from a Soraka and full vision of the whole lane, please please please attack the enemy.  If nothing more get the red buff tick on them.  Don’t worry about using mana to harass people out of lane.  What should have been a steam-roll (red buff team vs support-less sustain-less team) ended up being an even trade as Sivir was able to farm aptly in bot lane.  She should have been drinking pots until she was out of money!  Instead I was forced to try to step forward and harass Sivir and Jax without boots.  I would get a banana in the air and silence on either Sivir or Jax and eat so much retaliation that I would expect Kog to at least right-click on them.  Sadly, his vision was somehow extremely limited to only seeing creeps.

We survived the laning phase and got right into team-fighting.  I don’t really have a role in team fights, so luckily I got a phone call to miss that whole part of the game.  I was probably only on the phone for three minutes, but it was really fun to watch as I tried to click my abilities.  I take full responsibility for one of Irelia’s deaths.  I was standing right there, had heal off cooldown, just couldn’t click from my heal to her fast enough while on the phone!  I probably ruined his Season Two stats!

Once each person on the other team had gotten a kill I was casually strolling past Baron and I said “gg” and the other team said “gg” and then the surrender vote passed.  It also just happened to be exactly at the 20 minute mark.

Fun Fact: Five different boot options were sported by the other team!  Talk about wide representation of the shoe shop!  Gee gee Season Two.  You will be missed.

Special Request: LAN Edition

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We tried to get a five-man LAN going this Friday and it almost worked out.  Choppes couldn’t come, so we only had four guys there.  Choppes did play with us, he just wasn’t there to enjoy the pizza.

After a couple losses in a row our team needed a win.  We had managed to win two custom games, but those don’t carry the same weight as an old-fashioned normal game.  I said that I wanted mid.  Those present at the LAN suggested that I play as LeBlanc.  The only problem I have with playing LeBlanc is that it’s a Blind Pick game, so the enemy doesn’t get to see who I’m going to be playing as, which doesn’t make it very fair.

I think I’ve beaten Swain in mid before.  I think if I was Swain I would know how to beat LeBlanc.  It would be a lot like Brand; the base damage on abilities would be enough to kill a LeBlanc.  I think the secret would be to smart-cast the full combo before LeBlanc could get her silence off and then stay in your ult.  Make sure not to fall behind before level six.  If needed I’d take extra points into my Torment so that if I needed to I would have guaranteed damage and bonus damage on my ignite if LeBlanc committed early.

Laning against Swain wasn’t fun.  Not because of anything Swain did, but because of his silly horse companion.  Hecarim literally ganked me six times before I had a kill.  I was starting to get desperate!  I hadn’t gone back at all, so I was looking fancy in my boots.  I was right on the brink of killing Swain.  Just as I’m committing to finish him off Hecarim shows up.  My team was blue side, so I run slightly up towards the enemy wraiths as Swain retreats with almost no health.  Hecarim comes through lane and chases me towards his jungle.  I look back and see Swain standing in lane with almost no life left.  The only thing standing between him and me and this stupid centaur.  I step back towards mid and W to get closer.  From there I immediately flash back into lane and inside turret range to get one final Q off on Swain.  Hecarim has turned to chase me under the turret so I activate the second charge of my W and blink back out to safety.  Swain doesn’t die.  I still need to watch the replay to see how low he was.  I’m sure his health reached single digits at that point.

When I finally did kill Swain his horse was there to clean me up.  I didn’t mind.  I was level seven and Swain was only five.  I was also almost double Swain’s CS and the enemy Hecarim had spent so much time chasing me and ganking me that he was behind by quite a bit as well.

Now, the attendees at this LAN had joked about playing LeBlanc, but not just any LeBlanc, they specifically said “Soul Stealer LeBlanc” which is a really scary build.  However, the first time I was back at base I had about 2000 gold.  I grabbed Soul Stealer and finished my boots and marched back to lane.  I was a poor and innocent 1-1-0 LeBlanc.  However, Shen started handing me blue buffs, and I took Swain’s every time he was gifted one.

I started making some plays with my measly 20 AP and 29 flat magic penetration.  I killed mid and swung top.  We picked up the Cho’Gath and then killed Hecarim, putting me up to five stacks.  I went back mid, killed Swain again and rotated bottom.  Bottom definitely wasn’t losing, but they aren’t as comfortable with the Lux and Pantheon combo when Jeff is playing as Panth.  It’s still effective, it still works, it’s just not as well-oiled as with their roles swapped.  I show up and we murder bottom so hard.  Before I leave I’m sitting on 14 stacks.  Another trip to bottom after taking Swain’s blue (not from the jungle, but from him) puts me at 20 stacks.  I recall just as the game is nearing the 20 minute mark.

Deathcap.  500 AP before the 20 minute mark.  I’m a walking insta-gib.  Anyone I see I can rip to pieces.  We move to invade the enemy jungle after we had all healed and grouped.  We have a ward in the bush near wraiths and so I loop past that, waiting for anyone to walk out of their base.  Lux sneaks in to stand next to me.  Darius is just below and Shen is Shen.  The enemy team decides to camp this bush that we have a ward in and wait for someone to walk by.  Instead they see a Pantheon circle open with them in the exact center.  As Pantheon starts to man-drop on the enemy I see Blitz walking into the team fight.  I blow him up to keep him from having an impact on the fight.  With him getting obliterated his team knows where I am but it’s too late.  We have them totally surrounded.  Between Lux and me we have too much crowd control.  They can’t get back to their base, but Mantheon, Shen, and Down-right Darius are closing in on them from the left.  We pick them off with surprising burst one after another.  Cho was the only survivor, but he jumped onto the same surrender band-wagon that the rest of the enemy team was already on.

Dan’s number one complaint: People died before he could come down with his slam dunk.