Life on the Fields of Justice

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Monthly Archives: August 2013

Aggressive Support

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We didn’t have four people from our regular ranked fives team so we decided to use a ringer and play a normal game. We had Iggie invite and before we realized what was up we were in a Blind Pick game. I hadn’t done a Blind Pick normal in months and months. They just seem so silly now. In this game our goal was to have Iggie play as an aggressive support with Ignite and see if we could snowball bot lane. Second highest gold in the game? Lux support.

We got out to a pretty impressive start. We did get zoned slightly because the blue side bot lane pushed with Graves’ Buckshot. We had to sit back for a second and get to level two. Once we matched them in levels we were able to even out the lane slightly and get Lux in position in the bushes.

Playing against a sustaining bot lane really means that you have to commit to a fight and count on them having the bonus health and armor from their support. If you try to trade and disengage you will almost always lose just by the nature of the support. If you are using potions while the enemy carry is able to save that 35 gold, as minor as that may seem, 10 potions later you’re really wishing you had finished your Infinity Edge and had that 50% spike in your crit damage. Luckily, we had a comp that could hard engage and then finish people off.

Tristana is a very snowbally laner because of her awkward mobility. If she gets ahead she will always be in range of everyone on the team because of the reset on her jump. Once I was able to get slightly ahead in the lane (thanks to some amazing Lux burst) I was able to jump towards the enemy, finish them off, and then jump away from the jungler coming to assist the lane.

Probably the straw that broke the camel’s back was when Graves and Soraka unloaded everything they had on me and I jumped back to the safety of my turret. Then I baited Graves into using his Flash to try to finish me off. He didn’t have mana for his dash and his Buckshot, so he chose to Flash and then Buckshot. I timed my Barrier to soak up all of the damage from his Buckshot and then turned on him. Lux laser came ripping across Graves as I jumped and landed on him. I quickly moved into the bush, avoiding as much counter-attack as possible. I finished off Graves but was critically low and knew that Soraka could finish me off if I didn’t lifesteal from her. A perfectly-timed Lux shield helped my life total stay somewhere decent as I shot Soraka a few times and managed to finish her off for the double. That moved me to 7-1 and I knew we wouldn’t be looking back.

Another funny part about this game was the lack of assists. Lux and I were the only ones who got assists! What kind of team doesn’t assist their carry?! It felt safe to say that an aggressive support worked well on the first attempt, at least in a Blind Pick game.

1091 Tristana

Power of the Mustache

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Choppes always says “power of the mustache” which has absolutely no meaning. That’s probably why he follows that up with “spirits, chi, karma!” Definitely has no meaning.

However, after months of believing in superstition and bad omens that exist in solo queue, Senor Choppes was able to successfully reach Gold II! Whenever he would try his qualifier games he would tell everyone not to spectate him or it would be bad luck. Well if I wouldn’t have spectated him I never would have had proof that he made it! Here’s the winning game that pushed him over his seven attempt slump! Congrats Jake!

Jake made Gold II

LeBlanc is Back!

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I felt like I hadn’t played LeBlanc in awhile. We were getting into a normal game and I was fairly low on the pick order. This was the time. I needed to see if LeBlanc is still good. You be the judge if LeBlanc is back.

I panicked for a minute because I didn’t know how well LeBlanc would lane against Zyra. I figured that Zyra would have great harass, better range, and wave clear. I hadn’t played this lane match-up yet, so I was a bit skeptical going in. It didn’t help that I hadn’t played LeBlanc in awhile, but that was just like riding a bike.

I definitely had enough misplays in this first game back as LeBlanc that I don’t want to talk about all of them. Just missed Ignites in my combos before I blinked back with Distortion, or badly timed abilities cost me a few kills, but I was picking up steam fast.

I noticed that some of her level one damage was gone, so it wasn’t really worth it to trade even a single ability until level two. I was impressed with her level two burst. I came out about even on the trade with Zyra, but shortly afterwards I got a gank from Maokai and the lane started rolling.

Iggie and I ruled this map with an iron fist. When Kha’Zix came to gank my lane I just killed him and took his buffs, which didn’t make life any easier for Zyra. We snowballed into a really ugly map presence where we could walk through the enemy jungle and do what we liked as we were up double in kills.

1089 LeBlanc

After that game ended we definitely wanted to do another, so that’s getting coupled right into this post. I just had a great LeBlanc game, so why not try it again?

We were doing draft pick again and I saw the other team pick Ahri and knew that I could beat Ahri in mid as LeBlanc. What I didn’t realize was that Ahri was going to help her Twitch get first blood and then pick me up as second blood shortly afterwards. I lost my 1v1 duel with the enemy mid laner. I was definitely kicking myself. I picked LeBlanc to counter Ahri, and she had just beaten me in a direct fight. Bad LeBlanc is bad.

The biggest problem in this game was the Twitch who was eating our bottom lane alive. The fact that he is Diamond I didn’t help nubehound to not get intimidated. However, he had every right to be scared because this Twitch was super scary. I opted not to get Soul Stealer, which I ended up regretting. After starting 0-1-0 against a 1-0-1 Ahri I made a slight comeback.

I remember Choppes and I tied at kills at 11, but then I stopped letting him have kills and just gave him some assists. Renekton actually fit in really well in this comp because if the enemy team didn’t focus me I could do some serious work, and Renekton makes enough of a mess in a team fight that he has to be respected. I would see people Flash away from Renekton and just go pick up an easy kill that couldn’t juke.

I made Twitch’s head spin a couple of times when I would catch him and just evaporate him off the map. Two different times I had to hit him with a blind snare to finish him off when he had used stealth.

I had a very near-death experience, but luckily I caught some footage of it. Just enjoy how many summoners and abilities were used to make sure that I die!



  That game definitely went longer than we ever wanted it to. We eventually sealed the win. I did my best to prevent Choppes from getting any more kills.

1090 LeBlanc

 

Undefeated With Teemo

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Normally I wouldn’t expect to have a season where I had a champion without a lost game. However, so far this season I am undefeated with Teemo.

Teemo undefeated

Of all the champions I play I have never felt like Teemo was my strongest. However, he is my go-to champion when I’m headed up into top lane. I like the vision that he gets from his mushrooms. I like his passive. I like that you can build whatever you want on him and he does just fine. This game I decided to try a different build and see where it took me.

One of the strange things about my latest game was how my lane opponent acted. I picked Teemo because I felt like it would be a solid pick against Tryndamere. I was correct; he never even came to lane. He swapped Fizz for mid. I warded early because I’m a big believer in the ganking power of Zac. Zac still just jumped over the wall outside of my vision and, with the assistance of Fizz, killed me pretty quickly.

I’ve always viewed Fizz as one of those champions who is easier to bully in lane, but if they get ahead they can snowball and just make you pay. Now that Fizz had a kill up on me I figure he would play aggro and force me out of lane. I was darting back and forth, not daring to get last hits because at any moment this Fizz could just kill me. However, this Fizz was playing like we were in Diamond. Instead of just playing aggro and trying to snowball the lane he was just calmly letting me farm and minding his own business. If I didn’t shoot him, he didn’t stab me.

Now I have seen players play like this, and like just goes on and on. I remember a game where I was Mordekaiser against a Pantheon in top lane (that tells you how long ago it was) when I was able to walk PAST this Pantheon to last hit creeps and we would intentionally not harass or hit the other person. The game was insanely comical. However, if you are playing in solo queue and trying to climb and you get ahead, you should take full advantage and do what you can to keep that lead. I guess that’s just my opinion.

I managed just fine in my lane. I would get bored of pushing Fizz into his tower so I would wander down and shroom up in the enemy jungle and in mid lane. It was extremely effective because the deeper I got my mushrooms the better the chance was that I would see Zac, and not only coming to my lane, but going to gank mid as well.

Ultimately, I was a tiny furry creature on a large map. My impact in this game was extremely limited. I’ve considered running Teleport on Teemo because the ability to teleport to a mushroom seems extremely powerful at every stage of the game. However, instead of having that global presence I instead took Ignite so I can do better in trades with my lane opponent.

One of the memorable parts of this game was watching from top lane as four members of the enemy team shoved down mid and killed three of my team mates, leaving only Graves and myself in top lane. We came walking backwards up mid lane, moving towards the safety of our purple base, but the four members of the enemy team were standing between us and salvation. I started to hesitate. Could we 2v4 these guys? I definitely wasn’t big yet, but my Graves had a couple items completed. I didn’t know how much he had left in the tank as him and I had just killed Tryndamere.

The enemy team sees they have a numbers advantage and they have us trapped away from our base. The mistake they made was not committing to the fight all at once. They saw the low-hanging fruit of two easy kills and they each wanted to take full advantage of that. Graves killed them all. I popped Zac’s passive, but then let Graves get the last hit as I just laughed. This game was over.

Graves finished at a whopping 16-3, more kills than the enemy team. I was just along for the ride. It was funny to watch one man just pick a whole team apart. Now I’m one game into my qualifier and that much closer to Gold III.

40-32 solo ranked Teemo

New Master Yi

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This was my first experience with the new Master Yi. The game was more than long enough to get a taste of what he could become.

One of the problems I foresaw at the start of this game is that if I’m playing Ezreal against a Tristana then I can win laning phase rather easily, but when the game goes late my Muramana and Iceborn Gauntlets don’t stand up to her Infinity Edge and Phantom Dancer combo.

In all reality we didn’t deserve to win this game after it went this late, but Tristana was only five items and, due to the recent popularity of Blade of the Ruined King, didn’t have maximum damage output. I felt like Tristana needed one good team fight to clean up late and then shove down a lane and win the game. Even though Tristana was never the one to clean up a team fight, we did lose a number of fights, but the enemy team wouldn’t just shove and win, they would dilly dally around and waste time. We deserved to lose this game more than once, and the enemy team didn’t check death timers, they just left, or avoided a 4v1 fight.

At the end of the game my Master Yi noticed that I couldn’t go toe to toe with Tristana any more, but I could easily handle anyone else. In the best interest of his teammates he engaged the enemy team as they were standing outside of our base. As the dust settled I walked away with a double kill and Yi finished with a triple kill, and we sprinted down mid and ended the game.

As a side note: Syndra was hitting like a truck. If she stunned me, she could DFG and press R and I would die. It was scary crap. I’m just glad we won!

39-32 solo ranked Ezreal