League of Legends ARAM Queue

A couple years ago my brother introduced me to a game mode that he referred to as “ARAM”, or “All Random, All Mid”.  It was played on the regular Summoner’s Rift map, and the rules were kept by some, and broken by others.  However, after years of waiting, Riot Games recently released the new Howling Abyss map in League of Legends, and along with it came the new ARAM Queue.

I was overly excited to try this new queue out.  The first time I tried it I got stuck as Sona.  I wasn’t excited to get Sona, but I was hoping for a short game, and that’s exactly what we got.  I was having some FPS issues, and so I was thrilled to have a champion that didn’t have any skill required.  We won that ARAM and I got back to work after that lunch break, but I still decided to play this game and even got a big TV, from the best in home theatre service atlanta to be able to play even more games.

However, because the ARAM queue is technically match-making I think it is still trying to place me with people at my same skill level.  While the system works to figure that out I’ve just been massacring teams.  I’ve had a 29 kill Urgot game, a 26 kill Jayce game (I’d never played Jayce before), and a pretty mean Zilean game.

My most recent match was the most impressive victory.  Nubehound and I had time to play one ARAM on lunch, so we got right into it.  I got Teemo and started to get excited.  I’m a huge fan of Teemo, despite how much hate he gets.  During this game I started to realize why people couldn’t stand Teemo.

The enemy team had an immense amount of poke between Caitlyn, Nunu, Gragas, and Cassiopeia.  As soon as someone on our team got low LeBlanc would come zipping in and pick up the kill.  It was deadly.  However, we were sitting back and doing our best to survive, and then Pantheon had enough.  He decided that he would throw himself at the enemy team and see what happened.  Well, he died, and quickly too.  Then he started talking to himself in chat about things not appropriate for my PG-13 blog, so I won’t go into detail.  However, we didn’t know who he was talking to.

The game progressed with us getting bullied.  Nubehound and myself had already admitted defeat.  The enemy team had complete control over most of the map, and every bush.  They could poke us from out of the bushes and we had no way to counter-attack.  However, I finally got my chance to be the stealthy assassin that Teemo can be.  I got behind the enemy lines and started a mushroom farm.

The best part about getting behind the enemy lines is that no one on the enemy team wanted to come looking for me.  If you stay patient people will let their guard down.  I knew I could kill Caitlyn in one shot, but if Nunu gets on me with his slow then I die a horrible death.  Also, LeBlanc could erase me with one combo, so I had to wait to kill LeBlanc, or put myself in a situation where I only had to fight one person.

Now that my mushroom farm was quite evolved I started looking for where the warm bodies were.  I saw my opportunity to pounce on Caitlyn when she was alone.  One auto attack combined with a Lich Bane proc from my Blinding Dart dropped the rest of her health.  Now I knew I was in trouble.  LeBlanc and Gragas were closing in on me.  I darted back into the bushes to the safety of my traps, but as soon as I hit the bushes I used Flash to create distance.  It wasn’t a second too late as Gragas and LeBlanc both bursted the spot on the map where I had just been.  They saw the Flash animation and pursued, but it wasn’t healthy for them.  As they stepped on mushroom after mushroom I turned the fight to them and just avoided Gragas barrels.  It was glorious.  Nubehound said “only down by five kills”.

I was a monster by this point.  I had so much Ability Power and damage over time that I could kill any person on the enemy team quite easily, but I lacked durability.  As long as I could avoid the enemy team’s damage I would be fine.

Pantheon got anxious and just jumped onto the enemy team.  He landed far enough back that Caitlyn actually stepped forward to fight.  I was dealing with Gragas at the time, but managed to take him down just in time to get away from Caitlyn.  Her damage was super intense.  If she hit me one more time I was dead.  I darted into the bush between the first two turrets.  It wasn’t large enough to hide in, and she knew that, so she aimed a Piltover Peacemaker at the back of the bush.  It was so close I felt my bunny ears move slightly from the wind.  However, I knew that if I landed a blind first then I’d win the battle.  With blind faith I stepped out and blinded Caitlyn and auto-attacked her once then darted back into the safety of my bush.  Caitlyn wasn’t dead, but at 200 life she couldn’t stick around.  She retreated right into a mushroom.  I didn’t feel bad for her, she had tried to kill me, I just came out on top.  Noubehound said “only down by two kills.  Are we gonna win this?”

With so many people down we were able to burn through most of the enemy team’s base including their inhibitor.  When I tried to hit the Nexus turrets Gragas came back to fight me.  I side-stepped his ultimate, got a Blinding Dart/Lich Bane auto attack combo off on him, and then side-stepped his barrel and watched him fall.  Nunu came sprinting at me with LeBlanc in the wings.  I went into retreat mode, knowing that LeBlanc would kill me super quickly. LeBlanc and Nunu stepped on a mushroom and we turned and finished them off.

We dropped the base and sighed with relief.  I couldn’t believe that we turned that game around.  Pantheon had two quadra kills in the game, and felt like he was doing all the work.  If only he would have seen what really happened behind the scenes.  The answer: Karma kept shielding me.