Ranked 5s – League of Stories

Trinity Force on Corki

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We had the chance to play some ranked fives this past week and I opted to build Trinity Force on Corki. I hadn’t played Corki in quite a few months just because he had fallen out of favor with the meta gods. However, this game he felt completely dominating.

We opted to run the AD carry and support in mid lane. We have wanted to get better at keeping the carry in the short lane to allow us to zone the enemy, catch people off guard, and farm safely. We honestly hadn’t seen much success come from it, but we want to keep practicing it because it could give us the upper-hand if people aren’t expecting that meta.

This game was Lux and Corki against a Lissandra. Lissandra must have thought that I was AP Corki based on the items she built. I didn’t jump out to a ridiculous lead, but thanks to some effective ganks from nubehound and some amazing snares from Iggie we were able to get me a few kills in mid lane.

Eventually I did get shut down after I had six kills. I was shocked that I was actually that far ahead. I had a lovely play after dueling the enemy Lissandra in bot lane. I returned to base after a Dragon, and came right at the end of a bad team fight. The best I can do is embed the entire game, and tell you to jump to 27:10.

After that triple we stopped the enemy team from getting Baron and just chased them into their base to finish them off. After a valiant chasing effort by the entire team, Choppes managed to Slice and Dice to finish off Twitch!

What a ridiculous score for a ranked game. My Corki stats are so good this season. Now I won’t be able to play Corki again until the season is over.

Space Lane and Frenchies

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I started telling this story tonight to triktanesta and then realized that I had never done it the due diligence of blogging about it. This will be a fond memory for myself and four others, and probably a painful remembrance for five people. For those five I’ll preface with this; they played hard, they were cheerful, respectful, and friendly in all-chat. They didn’t r-r-r-r-rage quit at 20 even though the game was slightly one-sided. They did spout some stuff out in French (Pas l’temps de niaiser!), to which we all scratched our heads, but didn’t let them confuse us too much.

Before this game started our team really needed a win. We had suffered two dis-heartening losses in the team ranked queue, and we needed a way to get our spirits up. I was tired of getting stuck in bottom lane playing as AD carry, so I said “we can play whichever champions we want, and lanes will be decided later.” SirSpam suggested that we do the Space Lane in bot. There was a video on YouTube and the League sub-reddit about the astronaut bottom lane of Teemo and Nautilus. I would highly recommend it, as there is a very touching moment near the end when the music changes and… it will take your breath away.

We ended up with a complete troll team composition. AP Teemo and support Nautlius in bottom lane. We had Pantheon go mid, Jarvan IV in top lane, and a Xin Zhao jungle. That’s really just what we wanted to play. I love playing AP Teemo, but I don’t do really well in top lane, so we made it work in bottom lane.

We were not excited to see Caitlyn and Leona. That’s just an obnoxious bottom lane. If they can just poke you out early, or commit and win an early trade they can bully the lane for the rest of the game. Luckily for us, the enemy team didn’t get a kill until we had 30. We were so freaked out that this would be our perfect game, but we dodged that bullet!

It has been awhile since we played this game, but I just remember getting caught in the bushes, having Vi collapse in on me, I was trying to escape from Caitlyn and Vi, but as I sprinted up through their jungle I ran into an angry Galio. I was literally one hit from death, but I watched as he flashed the wall to get into melee range and then missed his Resolute Smite. SirSpam lands an excellent Nautilus hook as I sprint towards the rest of my team and to safety. Here’s a quick clip of it going down.

My memory of the last team fight is very foggy, so I’ll let you enjoy it from a spectator’s view.

This was probably a few minutes after they should have surrendered, so I just sat in bot lane and made sure to finish with most CS. I still didn’t finish with most gold, but how would I keep up with a 14-1 Panth?

Best part about this game: SirSpam’s reaction when he saw I was a cute bunny rabbit instead of an astronaut because I don’t own the Astronaut Teemo skin, despite it being one of my favorite skins. I always thought it was cool, just never thought the price point was right. Maybe now that the price has been reduced I’ll look into it.

IMMABUR!

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I really hate picking LeBlanc before the enemy team picks their mid. There are so many champs that can go mid, and I’m always curious which will be a strong counter to LeBlanc. This game was no different. When the enemy team picked Blitzcrank, Cho’Gath, Xin Zhao, and Volibear, I was scratching my head pretty hard. I was hoping Cho’Gath mid, because I had recently matched up against one, and did really well to avoid his skill-shots and beat through his passive by simply zoning him from creeps. No such luck.

Volibear mid. Who plays Volibear mid?? I swear this is the result of Volibear showing up in the Euro LCS. Blast you, Gambit Gaming! When Volibear killed me really early in lane all I could hear echoing through my head was “IMMABUR!” Ya, I got baited by his silly passive. After that I knew that I could win lane just by using ult to make his passive start healing him, then backing off and going again when I got my ult back. Also, I knew I would be too slippery for a clumsy old bear. The lane turned into a breeze. I had my Soul Stealer, I just spent the rest of the game looking for kills to put all the other lanes behind.

Choppes man-handled top, Iggie dominated as AD carry, Czarni still hasn’t learned how to die in ranked games, and nubehound died just to make me feel better. Even though we were up like 20-2 at one point we were unable to take objectives with how hard the enemy team could initiate. After their team made a big stop and forced us away from an inhibitor Xin Zhao actually had the gall to say “we can win” to which I replied “I believe” referencing the document on HotshotGG’s desktop before the Season Two World Championships. I made sure to crush his dreams. Here’s a very brief run-down of what happened:

I see Xin Zhao walking from mid towards bottom lane. You can see our whole team gathering in their bottom jungle just after we stole their red. This is late in the game, just about a minute or two before we destroyed their Nexus. I see that he’s going to walk to defend the bottom tower. We already have mid and top inhib down, and they just had five players mid clearing out the creeps. Going into this blind was a bit risky, but I was hoping that I found Xin and no one else.

After I blink over the wall I see that I have found myself a lonesome Xin Zhao. I think if he would have been expecting this he could have ulted me back over the wall, which would have been really suck for me, but instead I do the best combo a LeBlanc can do while blind. Led in with W to get over the wall, pegged him with my DFG, and my QR finished him off.

He had just been responsible for the shut down on me before that, so it felt really good to get a clean kill like that, with my chain fastened securely to one of his team mates to keep them from chasing me too far. I got two people on my team a level without them even getting an assist. That’s the real team player right there! *shakes head*

That freaking bear finished with Youmuu’s, Shurelya’s, and Homeguard Boots of Mobility just to make life awkward. When he wanted to chase you, he would catch you unless you went over a wall. Did I mention Ghost instead of Flash? It was ballsy, but didn’t quite work out the way he would have wanted.

Crazy Diving in Ranked

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Where better to practice some crazy global strategies than in Ranked Fives? We ran two globals out of bottom lane with Pantheon and Lux, and then a Twisted Fate in mid lane. This gave us great potential for catching people out of position in the late game. The problem was the early game.

I was laning against Malphite in mid lane which is the dumbest cheese strat I’ve ever seen. People honestly said “report Malphite for playing Malphite.” Honestly, go back to the shadow… of top lane. It was very annoying to eat his silly shard and get slowed only to see Udyr running out of the bushes. Before you can do anything you’re CC’d to death and Malphite walks away with full health. I swear, it doesn’t get much more annoying than that.

Nidalee was giving our Cho’Gath a bit of a hard time, so we decided to swap lanes. However, my global isn’t quite as global in top lane, so I was thrilled when I saw Nidalee switch back to mid lane. We ended up swapping lanes a bunch of times. Finally, we get to the good stuff!

Late game we had so much fun. We got to just port in on people. If we timed it perfectly Jeff would be falling right behind where we were chasing and they wouldn’t be able to focus anyone. This worked surprisingly well. It was awesome to be able to dive one turret and know that your team could follow up because they could jump or laser further than we had already dove. One specific time I ulted to bot lane to gank Kog’Maw. I caught him before he could get to his turret. He was playing Kog’Maw without Cleanse so he deserved to die. I start to burst him and realize that I’m not going to finish him off, but a giant red circle opens up behind him. I turn and walk away. BOOM! Pantheon’s ultimate landing kills this poor Kog’Maw! It was like a scene out of the movies. I would include a screenshot, but League Replays is acting up with some of the Season Three changes. If I can get a replay to work I’ll include it. For now, this is the best I could do. After this screenshot Kog burned Flash to be more directly below the middle of that circle. It was quite daring, and ultimately stupid.

Most of my deaths were worthless. My last death especially. I was split-pushing bot lane and keeping Malphite from recalling. When the team fight broke out I stepped forward as quickly as I could but I wanted to stay out of Malphite’s ultimate range. I used Destiny to see the enemy team and saw that Malphite was making his way there quickly using what the Hungarians would call a “leg bus”, also know as “walking”. I try to beat him to the fight with my ultimate, but wind up rushing my Gate and watch as I teleport to the enemy base while the fight goes on right outside of it. I ended up burning my Flash just to get into the middle of a team fight! Needless to say, I didn’t last long.

Placement Matches

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Just like millions of other gamers out there I have been working on my placement matches for Season Three. This stage of the game never feels easy. I always dread losing, but when a loss has such a large impact on where you are placed it can really mean the difference between Gold, Silver, and Bronze.

On the flip side, wins bring so much more satisfaction; it is such a sigh of relief when the win has been secured, the enemy team has lost, you are riding on to the Victory screen! It’s those moments that we all wait for.

There are always going to be reasons that you don’t win. I had games where people didn’t understand basic concepts of the game. I had games where people raged because I banned Xin Zhao. I had games where last pick said “AD or feed” and then picked LeBlanc. I had games where bot lane went 0-X and later said “mid can’t carry”. I had games where people picked champions they had never played before because they are “OP”. I could go on for days. There will always be reasons that you lose games.

There are always going to be reasons that you win games. The secret weapon that we used to win a number of those games was a Twisted Fate and Vi combo. I would play TF mid and have my jungle Vi gank side lanes all day. It was so devastating to have four people show up in bottom lane. It was so easy to coordinate. It was so easy to execute. Bot lane wouldn’t even try to fight, they would just run into a Twisted Fate gold card.

In one of our games we actually had someone request to play as a jungler. When they saw me pick Twisted Fate they pounced on Nocturne. This got me really excited because I figured it would be awesome to coordinate global ultimate ganks with Nocturne! I would only use my ultimate after Nocturne used his and I would get to show up right with him anywhere on the map! However, this Nocturne would rather be a hero and fight 1v4 than go with the team and pick off the straggling fifth player. Sigh. We still managed to win.

I’m going to include screenshots of all my placement matches so you can see how my wins and losses went. Some were sad. Some were happy. I’ll let your imagination decide which was which!

I did notice that my fourth game is missing. I played LeBlanc and dominated a Twisted Fate mid and a Xin jungler. I was the only one on my team with kills at the 10 minute mark. Nidalee lost to Singed top. Corki and Lulu lost to Miss Fortune and Sona in bot lane. It was a pathetic show from my team mates. I couldn’t believe that I went positive in such a bad game, but someone on my team had to! Other than that one game that is missing all the others are accounted for. This blog has really kept me accountable. I guess that could help explain my ranked KDA of 10.1/5.5/8.5 over 30 games, 18 wins, 12 losses. Our ranked team is currently 11-8, and I’m currently 7-4 in solo queue.