Life on the Fields of Justice

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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

First Time Champion in Ranked

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Last night I was playing with a friend who said “I’ve only played champion X twice, but both times were in a Ranked game…” which raised some alarm for me.  I thought that people who did that were the minority of the League, a small population of trolls and perturbed fanatics who wanted to inflict pain to others.

I don’t have stats on how often this happens, but with the popularity of sites like lolking.net it seems like the ability to see if someone has played a champion before is at our fingertips.

I don’t feel that players should be allowed to play champions that they have almost no experience with in solo queue.  I feel as though this isn’t giving the summoner ample opportunity to learn different match-ups and how to operate as part of a team as that champion.  I have a lot of experience with many different champions and I would be one of the first to argue that most spell mechanics are the same.  I would say that if I was trying a new champion in any game I would want to see how they operate in team fights and against different lane opponents.

I think Riot should instigate a rule that players need to finish a certain number of Normal games with a champion before they can use them in Ranked.  It would almost be like unlocking the champion again.  When you completed three to five games as each champion you would get a pop-up, much like the new Honor pop-ups, that would tell you that you may now play that champion in Ranked.

What would this do for the community?  This would encourage players to actually learn each champion they wanted to compete with in Ranked.  This would encourage players to play in Normal games and see how a champion operates in a team mechanic.  This could help people re-discover champions that may have been forgotten, helping us move away from Flavor of the Month champions.  Sometimes I forget about champions only because there are more than 100 to choose from.  If I was forced to go back and play each champion to prove that I’m capable of using them in Ranked I would learn a lot more match ups, and have experience playing each champion in up to five different match-ups.

Before I ramble too long I want your insight.  Should Riot implement something like this or do you feel it would be too restricting?  If good players would just do this anyway, wouldn’t making each player do this make them slightly better?

First Ranked

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We made a new ranked team!  This was a massive undertaking that took weeks of planning and thought and emails and team crafting and theory crafting and…  You get the idea.  Well, we didn’t like where that took us, so yesterday we just said “screw it” and jumped into the ranked queue!

We told ourselves that we would ban Ezreal if we were second pick and pick him if we were first pick.  We were second pick, but the other team banned Ezreal for us, so  we didn’t have to.  Let’s go through the pick stage though.

First pick Varus.  I guess with Ezreal out the other team felt very comfortable on Varus.  We picked up Tristana and Nunu.  Nunu was going into the jungle, but the other team didn’t know that.  The other team picks Sona and Vlad.  Silly kids, they thought we wouldn’t have any sustain in bot lane.  Well, we out-smarted them by conforming and picking support Morgana and Lux for mid.  The other team countered with Amumu and Darius.  Oh no.  I hate Darius.  I don’t like his kit.  I hate that if he hooks you, you burn flash.  That drives me crazy.  He’s too dangerous without damage items.  Oh well.  We’ll send Steve up there anyway.  Best of luck, Steve!  Steve picks Nasus.  It actually worked better than I thought it would.

Level 1 we’re just minding our own business in bottom lane when Amumu, Varus, and Sona come walking in behind us in river.  Game on!  Our first instinct is to run once we see three.  However, Sona is already low from helping Amumu steal our blue.  I ignite and start hitting her with autos.  I flash to match her flash.  One more hit, but she’s under tower.  I get the first blood on Sona, and turn to see Amumu and Varus.  Then a wild Nunu appears.  We had helped him steal the enemy red, so he was in the bottom jungle, ready to wreck some kids.  He helps to DPS Varus so even though Varus used summoner heal we still kill him before he can get out.  Amumu is crying at my feet, probably because of the double kill I just got, but that double kill, combined with the creep wave that I got to soak up before they showed up ticked me up to level 2.  I quick level into my rocket jump and away I go!  See ya, suckers!  Double kill for the ADC?  What a great way to start the game!  Blood Boil OP!

I won the race to Infinity Edge, then got my Phantom Dancer, and was going to get a Last Whisper, but the crits were too much.  I was somewhat frustrated with my mid-game because I kept getting bullied by Sona and Varus.  Their combined poke burst was too much for my small health pool.  I guess I was too used to playing as Ezreal and having Dorans and Phage.  I also prefer to just sit in bot lane and farm until I’m huge and then team fight and get my kills that way.  I felt like the way that bottom lane was going I kept missing lots of experience and gold from waves that I had to miss because I was too low.  I would have Varus and Sona tower dive me if I was at or below half health.  It was VERY annoying.  However, the feeling of just mowing stuff down later was priceless.  I haven’t felt like that on Ezreal because I don’t get as much crit through Trinity Force as I would with Infinity Edge and Phantom Dancer.

Graves, I’m New

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Graves isn’t new, I’m new to Graves.  I unlocked him the day I played this game, so 9/25/2012.  However, I have multiple ranked wins with Graves.  He used to be my favorite AD carry.  I loved harassing with his Q, dodging with E, and shutting down strategy with his W.  The burst from Q and R are scary enough to win trades bot lane.  His E lets him abuse lanes and has almost no cooldown with a friendly jungle Nunu and Phantom Dancer.  This happened to be extremely convient, because I had both!

We dominated bot lane by baiting both of Trist’s summoners.  Once she didn’t have ignite or heal, we knew she wouldn’t have flash.  It was nubehound’s first time on Taric, but he did a great job knowing when to stun and when to run.  Tying for fewest deaths in your first game as a champion is pretty admirable.  Also, I told him to max W first, and I don’t think the enemy Taric followed suit.  This gave us a huge armor advantage in the bot lane, combining Grave’s passive with Taric’s passive made us a bursty, tanky bot lane combo.  Tristana’s magic damage from her E was still quite effective without extra MR, but I knew that if things got ugly and she jumped, used E, and ignited me, that I could just flash away and it would be k.  After I was 7-1 we decided to wander to mid lane to find other stuff to kill.

The other team’s top and mid were doing very well.  We were in a stand-off mid, and were afraid of getting poked down by Syndra and Cho.  I had just gone back to finish my Phantom Dancer and said “I wish we could get to that Syndra.”  Nubehound, not understanding the dangers of a fed mid, said, “Here, she’s stunned” and proceeded to stop forward and just dropped a stun on Syndra.  I unloaded everything.  I’m assuming my team did the same.  Syndra melted and was nothing but a greasy spot on the road.  A team fight broke out where we aced in exchange for our Cho’Gath (if I remember correctly).  It seemed like a fair trade.  We shoved so hard mid that the game was basically over.  The enemy team just stuck around to let me get my Guardian Angel, then they gave up.