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The Throws

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This game was almost thrown away. We were so far ahead of this enemy team that I was beginning to think they may surrender at 20 minutes. With the help of Czarni I had managed to put Elise in a very dangerous situation top. I was way ahead in gold and kills and was almost ungankable by poor Xin. Mid had done well against Ryze, and bot lane had done very well in their laning phase. This game was in the bag.

The first throws happened when our team started to get caught out of position. We wanted Dragon control, but the enemy team forced mid instead of pressuring Dragon. We didn’t have the man power to fight Dragon, so our team tried to walk into mid. Urgot died. Pantheon walked in to avenge him. Dead. I tried to get by to the turret. Dead. Enemy team gets Dragon for free. Oh well, we still have a huge lead in this game.

Our next throw comes when we are bot lane. We manage to catch Ryze trying to defend his tower. We drop him quickly. Blitz tries to be a hero and we clean him up. Now we’re looking at a turret siege with a potential team fight in a 5v3 situation. This couldn’t be better for us. Now is the time to fight, when we have the man advantage and can pressure the enemy team away from their turret. Urgot commits to the fight, I hop into the fray, Vi starts to charge her dive, but Pantheon and Lux start to retreat. Our 5v3 just turned into a 3v3. Without any man advantage we’re only able to harm the enemy team, while they are able to clean us up. After we lost the 3v3 fight the enemy team just chased down our straggling team mates and killed them anyway. Vi made it out because she’s Vi and can jump over walls and solo anyone on the enemy team. Oh well, not the end of the world because we still have a good lead in this game.

The next throw we had was when we were pressuring mid lane. Ryze had oracles so they were clearing the wards inside of their base so we couldn’t see Blitz grabs coming. Despite Ryze’s ability to clear wards nubehound tried to drop one more over the wall. He was quickly grabbed by Ryze, and a full spell combo with a Graves Buckshot killed him. The enemy team came pouring out of mid lane. I stayed just below mid lane in the jungle and waited for them to push out. They were charging our base. I watched the minions to see that it was safe to sneak across mid lane. I ran to top where Elise was pushing. Using my friendly manatee, Urf, I was able to kill Elise. With her down and Lich Bane in my inventory I quickly destroyed top lane’s inhibitor turret and inhibitor before recalling. The enemy team didn’t even get our inhibitor turret. Oh well, we still have a decent lead in this game.

Our last throw came at Baron. With the enemy defending their base, behind in kills and gold, we pressured Baron. We have five people, we have a super tank in Vi, we have insane damage from Urgot, Pantheon, and myself. Baron will be dead in ten seconds. We’re chunking away at Baron when someone says “they’re coming, stop, get back.” I check the mini map, no sign of anyone on the enemy team. We walked all the way around to the bush behind red buff. Finally, the enemy team starts to trickle in. Baron would have been dead by now. We had it pinked so we knew they had no vision. Now Ryze can clear our ward and leave us blind. Czarni sees that we’re losing our vision so he steps up to ward Baron, but gets hooked by Blitz into the Baron pit. He can’t make it out. Our only tank just got swallowed by the entire enemy team. Oh well, we had a lead in this game.

I start to panic to see how we can salvage this game. I sprint around the Baron pit but keep my distance to avoid Blitz hooks and Elise webs. Ryze walks toward me to zone me out, so I troll poll away toward their blue. However, I don’t want their blue, I want their base.

Super minions are already pushing in, so drop down top lane with the minions. With Lich Bane I’m able to burn through the enemy team’s Nexus towers at an insane rate. When Graves comes to fight me I’m too fed for him to stand a chance. Elise comes flying out with homeguard boots and throws a web that misses me thanks to my troll poll. I’m forced to run out the bottom of their base, but luckily for me the team was chasing me so Urgot and Pantheon took mid tower. I circled around outside of the enemy base and helped to finish up killing Xin and Blitz. We have their base, and I hear the old announcer yell out the familiar “Ace!” The game is ours! We survived the throws!

Too many bad calls and throws almost cost us this game that we should have won easily. At least we walked away with the win!

Laning Versus LeBlanc

Teemo to the Rescue!

Ranked Ladder Climbing

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I was honestly nervous about being second pick and just slamming the pedal down on LeBlanc. I wanted to wait until the enemy team picked their AP mid and then I would choose LeBlanc. I agreed with habasaba to trade me an AP for a support, but when the blue team picked Ahri and locked with their first pick I just said “never mind” and locked LeBlanc. Time for a Soul Stealer!

Our game plan was to sprint to the enemy blue at the start of the game, but despite moving as quickly as humanly possible we only tied the other team to mid. They spotted us out as we dropped into their jungle, so we had to retreat. We didn’t want to be seen again, so we cut down river and hooked around to their red. While waiting for that to spawn Leona came walking through the jungle. I guess it is her jungle, but no one was going to get away from that gank. Luckily for me one of my auto attacks picked up the kill, securing me First Blood!

We leashed red for Shyvana and I wandered to mid. Ahri started Crystalline Flash, which made her easy to pick on. She figured she could trade and just heal up using that. Sadly, she didn’t get to trade because she was silenced the whole time. After I chunked half of her life at level two she started to play back a little bit. However, the damage was already done. I had lane advantage, I just needed mana. This is always a conundrum for me as LeBlanc because I don’t build any mana items. Honestly, her mana pool is good enough late game, and I do end up picking up cooldown reduction through my 20 stacks and blue buff. However, this game, when I hit level three Shyvana started pinging our blue buff. My dreams were coming true: Shyvana was giving me first blue.

One interesting part of this game was that we had an AP-tank top in Singed and I was a super fed AP carry in mid lane, but the enemy team bought minimal Magic Resistance. Maokai literally had none. Vayne eventually got a Negatron, but it was too late at that point, and Zed only had Mercury Treads and Hexdrinker. Ahri started to build MR, but she was so far behind that she ended up with 95 AP in her two items, while I was at 500 before 20 minutes.

I had just ran top to help Singed dive Zed. The idiot in me made me tank tower, which left me just about half health by the time Zed was dead (around level seven). I was walking back to mid and made sure I had vision of where Ahri was. Just as I was getting back to lane she shot her charm at me and tried to follow it up with all of her spells. I stepped back to make the charm miss and just blew her up. She didn’t make it halfway back down the lane because of silence and my root.

Something I didn’t realize before was that Soul Stealer gives 16 Ability Power for each kill, which means that even if you’re killing a target that is worth less and less gold it still is granting you money. Depending on which money tier you use 16 AP is worth different amounts of gold. If you spend 435 for 20 then 16 is worth 348 gold. If you spend 860 for 40 then 16 is worth 344 gold. Lastly, if you spend 1600 for 80 then 16 is worth 320 gold. So each kill I get is worth an extra 320-348 gold. Even with this knowledge I was still careful to make sure to spread the love and hunt down each person on the enemy team, and that’s why they were all within one death of each other!

Their Zed did the best on their team in terms of gold, and he was still lower than our support. This game was very one-sided. However, I went to split-push top lane to get some free turrets. I could escape from anyone on the enemy team, or I could duel anyone if they came 1v1. Zed was pushing. He ran away when I got to lane. I pushed in and took the turret. I walked up, cleared the creep wave and started hitting the next turret when Zed came charging out at me. He must have back up because he’s committing to fight me. He ulted on me, and as soon as he came back up I QRW’d him. Dead. His ultimate timed out and I looked up and saw the other four members of his team in mid lane. That means I get top inhibitor tower for free, that’s nice.

The funniest part of this game was the enemy team’s desire to kill me. When we were doing a Baron dance, the enemy team hid on one of our wards in the diagonal bush right at the mouth of river opening to mid lane. I stood right outside of their gap-closing distance on a ward and watched as they drooled. While they were standing there wishing they could pounce on me we sent in Shyvana and Singed to disrupt. Singed flung Maokai my way. Zing, dead. The enemy team tried to retreat, but you can’t escape this team. Shyvana was fast, Nami was fast, Singed was ridiculously fast, and LeBlanc can keep up with blinks and snares.

After our final battle we were attacking inhibitors and the enemy team surrendered. I felt like we had earned it 11 minutes before, but they felt defeated. I’m hoping that I can keep winning these games to make sure I get some awesome placement. If I get seven more of these games I’ll be a happy camper!

AHGL: Raytheon

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I was worlds away from having most gold on my team, but I was still a contributing factor thanks to the stacks from my trusty Soul Stealer! I always doubt myself when I buy that item. It does set me back quite a bit of money, that I have to make up somewhere else.

800 gold is the equivalent of 40 Ability Power. That means I need to break five stacks to make it even. Two kills and an assist just to not be upside down on a purchase in a video game! That’s a lot of work!

Laning against Kha’Zix was not an enjoyable experience. Despite harassing him early, taking his Flash, and beating him in CS, he was still able to pressure mid successfully. His Void Spikes just out-ranged any of my abilities and moved so quickly that I couldn’t dodge them effectively. I normally stand up far enough to zone the enemy mid player, but against Kha’Zix I didn’t feel like I could stand up far enough because I would take damage from his spikes for free.

The one time I did flirt with death was when I knew Olaf was waiting in the wings. I stepped ahead of my creep wave and ate a full Kha’Zix spike right in the face. It dropped me critically low. Let me walk you through it.

In this first picture Kha’Zix’ spikes had just dropped me to 187 HP, but he was mid-jump ready to end me.

Luckily for me my Distortion was available, so I flew over the wall to safety with plenty of hit points left! All 47 of them!

With two people chasing me I saw the perfect opportunity to bounce back to my friendly Nautilus who had made his way to mid lane.

The enemy team saw that I would be trapped if they circled around me, so that’s just what they did. Olaf doubled back down through lane and Kha’Zix circled around above me, but not before sending me a lovely parting gift of SPIKES!

I figured that since I had only regenerated to 55 HP it may be wise to avoid those spikes or suffer the consequences. With those narrowly missing me I walked back to the edge of that bush in safety and waited for the enemy to close in.

Seeing them this close I knew my time was now. I couldn’t afford to have Kha’Zix hit me with one auto attack, ability, or summoner spell; my time was now. If Olaf had time to land a Wreckless Swing or Undertow then I knew I would be dead. It’s time to Mimic my Distortion to blink over the wall.

It was seconds after this escape that Kha’Zix showed his sportsmanship and wrote “really well done lb” which made me smile. The casters could appreciate some clever juking skills as well!

For my next trick, I’ll make their life bar disappear. At the time of that juke I was merely 1-0-0. By the time I got around to juking again I was 5-1-7 and sitting on 11 Soul Stealer stacks, which rounded me out to 728 Ability Power.

I made the mistake of seeing their red buff up and thinking “Oh goody! We’re going to get this for free!” However, I walked right through a ward to get to my current location so Raytheon knew exactly where I was.

I had no idea anything was going wrong. However, when the support is willing to run at a LeBlanc with 728 Ability Power you start to think you’re in trouble. Here’s a glimpse at what I saw that set me into a panic.

That Dazzle mid-air means anything but harmless. For a champion as squishy as myself it means to make like Tom and cruise. Here is what my spidy sense were tingling about:

I knew I was in trouble so I did what any person would do in a panic, I used Distortion to separate myself from the serious pain I was experiencing.

Even at this distance I was still eating auto attacks from Miss Fortune and at serious risk to eat one Undertow from Olaf and get slowed into my death. I needed more room. So I Mimicked Distortion to push myself further.

Then the realization set in that this was warded. Of course it was, that’s how they knew I was coming in the first place. I needed to disappear. I needed somewhere to go to escape. Turning left honestly seemed like the best option in the moment. If only there was somewhere else I could go.

A picture like this is a priceless gift to a LeBlanc player; when you see that they have committed to chasing you the direction that you double blinked. Thank you, Riot, for changing LeBlanc to allow plays like this. While my champion stepped left, possibly into the fog of war, I blinked back to that beautiful yellow spot on the ground.

Miss Fortune actually auto-attacked me on accident after I snapped back, dropping me to 56 life. Out of shock I obligatorily used Flash to widen the gap between her and myself. It was in vain as after auto-attacking me once she began to channel her ultimate exactly where I would have been if I hadn’t blinked back to my original point.

I quietly slipped out to the river and recalled with the safety of my team members creating a meat shield around me. Thanks, meat shield!

At the end of this game Caitlyn and I were recovering from this battle of epic proportions. We were walking down mid while the other three members of my team were in bottom lane. I could see super minions flooding in from top and mid where we had already taken the inhibitors. I made the call; force a fight with the enemy team to hopefully bait Shen out and we would take their base.

Caitlyn and I were walking up the stairs into the blue base, and Nautilus threw down his ultimate to get the attention of the enemy team. Each member was tied down with some form of crowd control, preventing them from retreating back to help their poor ally, Shen, who fell almost instantly to the burst of LeBlanc and critical strikes of Caitlyn. With Shen down we quickly took the Nexus turrets and stepped back to prepare for the battle that was surely going to follow.

I fell dangerously low, and had to step back and out, allowing my clone to scout and bait for me. In the meantime, Caitlyn actually fought Miss Fortune one on one and beat her, eating through her health, forcing her Guardian Angel to save Miss Fortune, and then continued to battle her. At the last minute Nautilus swooped in to assist with that kill.

Luckily, Olaf, being a good guy, walked back into Caitlyn at the very last second to let her finish him off to improve her score slightly and make the score screen that much prettier. It was a battle well-fought, but SecurityMetrics prevailed in the end.

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