Riot Games – Page 9 – League of Stories

Honorable Evaine

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During champion select I requested that our first pick leave Ryze up for me to play in mid lane. However, the enemy team banned out Kayle and then immediately first-picked Swain. Not wanting to brawl with Swain as Ryze, I opted for my champion of choice: Evaine LeBlanc.

I was much less calm going into this match up. I don’t know why, but every time I play LeBlanc I get very nervous and shaky. I think it’s the fear of falling behind and being completely worthless in fights later. The fear of missing out on kills in mid lane and watching the enemy mid become the snowball that I longed to be. I hoped that wouldn’t be my fate.

I took Swain’s Flash at level three, but had to use my ignite to get it. I should have known that I could take it. He doesn’t get a chance to respond to my mobility and burst. Once his Flash was down I checked its cooldown: 300 seconds. I knew Swain had no Flash until 8:30. I messaged Shen and let him know that Swain’s Flash was down for a good while.

When Shen came to gank I made a few key mistakes. First, I responded just a second or two too late and had to walk through an army of creeps. Second, I missed my skill shot E ability. Technically I didn’t miss it, but I’ll explain what happened. The creeps proc’d my passive, so I got a clone. I walked the clone down into the river to face-check the Swain while I walked around the back side in case Swain was running. My clone found Swain, which kept me at a safe distance so that I couldn’t get bursted. Shen got to just beat on Swain, but Swain is a durable monkey. I wanted to get in the mix, help Shen, and make sure to pick up the kill on Swain.

You have to understand where I am now! I just looped down the ramp to the river where if I turn right I walk over to the dragon pit and if I turn left I walk into a row of bush that leads to mid lane. I am shooting Swain from that bush. My Q lands and I shoot my Ethereal Chains to hit Swain and A MINION STEPS IN THE WAY!!!!! Why on Earth was there a minion tanking for Swain?!?! Ugh. So Swain ISN’T silenced and proceeds to unleash all of the spells he’d been holding on me. Sad face.

So now I’m headed back to lane and I’m 0-1-1, Shen got the kill on Swain, but Swain is a kill up on me and I didn’t get any extra time in lane to myself. By the time I get back to mid my blue is about ready for me to get. I go and pick it up, it had eight life left, so I was thrilled to get to kill it with an auto attack. I walk back to mid, having just leveled to six, I see Swain using his ultimate to clear the creep wave. He probably knows whats coming. I blink into the lane, get my full combo down on him, and finish him up with another Q when it came off cooldown. Swain is dead, but Ignite and his E are ticking on me. I’m dipping lower and lower. Potions aren’t healing fast enough. I’m going to lose blue buff. Suddenly I’m shielded. By the time Shen lands he’s already walking away to go farm more of his jungle. All he says is “I didn’t know if you’d make it!” What a pal!

I clear out mid lane and run back to buy my first item: Mejai’s Soul Stealer. This has been a pretty core item in my LeBlanc build lately. My decision was based on my belief that if I could kill Swain with just an Amplifying Tome before, then if I got a couple levels and had my Soul Stealer then I would be just fine against him.

I don’t know if Shen saw my Soul Stealer purchase but it seemed like he did because he swung past mid to gank a couple times. Each time he did I netted myself two stacks. Eventually I started to roam bottom because top was winning on his own. Bottom was doing quite well themselves; the enemy bot lane was 0-3 combined at the time. When I went down and snuck through the lane in the bushes the enemy team was too afraid to come out and farm, so I wandered up the river to Dragon and the enemy blue. We were converging on what was beginning to look like our first team fight. The enemy team had a much harder time fighting with us in close quarters. We cleaned up anyone who got too close, stole their blue and took Dragon for free.

By this point we owned their jungle. I was walking towards their blue, chasing Lulu and Miss Fortune when Hecarim started to pincer me from the backside. Hecarim was below half. He must not have realized that I wanted him to chase until he was close enough. He was within range and still charging fearlessly. As soon as I hit the bushes I turned back on him and instantly destroyed his health bar. I was walking towards him as I cast the two spells that dropped him. I walked right through where he was standing to the tune of a double kill. I was left unscathed, but I wasn’t ready to leave.

Shen was standing in bottom lane while the enemy team grouped to stop his push. He wasn’t afraid of them, but couldn’t exactly engage them either. I was in their jungle, but got as close to the lane wall as I could and waited patiently. The enemy team grew tired of Shen taunting them and they slowly pushed forward. I blinked over the wall and instantly wrecked Lulu then blinked back. Nothing left. The enemy team tried to chase but they were met with chains of ethereal. Shen and I walked out, laughing.

At the 20 minute mark the surrender vote came out. I could be considered a feeder this game, but I prefer to be called the feeder that helped force the surrender vote. After all was said and done I was honored by each of my team mates for achieving 16 stacks in a matter of 20 minutes. They all thought that was pretty special.

Poke Comp: Sivir Style

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Last night’s ranked games were a learning experience for all of us. Jack probably got to learn the most because he got to experience solo mid twice!

In retrospect I think that Jayce would work better in our team comp, especially where we want to clear waves and pressure turrets. His kit works so much better against dive comps and hard engage. He has his gate which the whole team can use, he can smack someone away with his hammer, he can shoot three fast shots at the turret, and he can shock blast either a full creep wave or a large chunk of the enemy team. If we have good snare from mid and bot then I think Jayce works perfectly in this comp.

I tried Sivir out in this game to see if she fit well into the comp. I was too scared of facing Caitlyn and Nunu in bot as Kog because I knew I wouldn’t have an escape. I didn’t want to play as Ezreal because I wanted higher sustained damage to the turret. Sivir seemed like a solid pick because of her long poke range and insane wave clear. What I didn’t realize was that her spell shield blocks so much of Caitlyn’s and Nunu’s damage. This allowed me to play extremely aggressively in the lane. Also, that same shield blocks all of Master Yi’s damage, and a good deal of Akali’s burst. Sivir’s wave clear trumps Kog’s without a doubt. Kog has more range on his sustained damage, but Sivir has higher poke potential on a target that can’t move.

This game turned out in our favor thanks to us grouping early and taking towers. The only scares were when we would get flanked by the enemy team. Vi had enough engage to destroy about anyone on our team before the fight started. This would sometimes result in Master Yi getting a reset. Akali is also benefits from those same resets. Caitlyn had a surprisingly good game, but in the final Baron fight she only attacked me, which meant that I got to attack her back, and with the extra health from Frozen Mallet and bonus lifesteal from Bloodthirster I came out ahead. We squeezed out of that fight and pushed down the enemy base before they could respawn.

This turned out to be a much closer match than we wanted it to be. We won all of our lanes and had decent pushing power. I think our lack of focus and vision resulted in some of us getting picked off early in fights which really hurt us. If the enemy team was able to flank us then they normally would win the fights.

AHGL: Poking Down Zappos

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In our third and final game against Zappos we decided to run a poke comp. It was a slight deviation from our regular poke because I was playing ADC instead of mid, but we had a good idea and we wanted to run with it. To replace Morgana we decided to pick up Kayle. We figured Kayle would have solid range, good poke on her Q, and provide a bit of sustain, which is something we’re normally lacking.

We discussed on the Skype call that we would lane until the side lanes were level six, and then we would immediately group. We won our lanes (despite watching Corki escape with two HP), and then called to group at level six. The first tower that we sieged was bot lane’s. However, while we were pushing bot lane down, Vladimir started to push top. Luckily for us our team pushes quite a bit better than a Vlad does!

After we had taken the second turret we returned to base to stop the Vlad push, but not before picking up Dragon. We marched down mid and started to siege the enemy base. We took tower after tower, just brute-forcing down the enemy team. At one point I got caught where Ashe and Blitz were between myself and my team. I was doing my best just to avoid the Blitz hook and Ashe volley, but I knew they would eventually catch me out. Just then Jeff said “Come towards me!” I stepped into range of Jeff and he landed his ult on me. I turned and started pumping out the damage. I knew I was still going to die, but at least this time I got to DPS and then use my passive to contribute towards the team fight a bit more. We cleaned up easily, going four for one.

When I respawned I sprinted down mid to join the push. It was only a matter of time until we had their middle inhibitor. The push continued. We pressed our advantage further and further.

Finally we were pressuring top lane. We had a wonderful idea. The only person who had been helping to counter our poke composition was Blitzcrank, because if he lands a hook on an important team mate, then that really shuts down what we’re able to do in our pushing. We decided that Mundo should try to get hooked intentionally, then pull tower aggro, and then we would use Kayle ult on Mundo. This happened over and over again. It got to the point we could almost hear the enemy team saying “Ugh, not this guy again” as Mundo would go flying into enemy territory, turn on Burning Agony and pop his ultimate and start to tank the world.

It was in our final push in top lane that Mundo got hooked into the enemy team, they scattered like mice, and we cleaned up for the win. We were ecstatic to come back against such a strong team and win two games in a row! We had survived against one of our stronger competitors! Our poke comp actually netted us a better KDA than our OP champ picks! I was really impressed by that performance! Excellent work, team!

PS: I think Jake helped us all to see the truth. Thank you, Jake. We all realize now that Elise is OP.

AHGL: The Zappos Scare

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As part of our After Hours Gaming League we played against Zappos this past Sunday. At the very last minute they agreed to a best-of-three series. It’s a really good thing they did!

Our first game could not have gone worse. That’s all I will say about that game.

Our second game we knew the pressure was on us to win or suffer a loss. None of us wanted to ruin our untarnished record, so we played our most OP combination: Lux, Panth, LeBlanc, Mundo, Malphite!

I “accidentally” stole red buff from our Mundo at level one. It hurt our Mundo a lot, but it was a necessary theft. Well, actually it was 100% unintentional. I was auto-attacking red buff and Steve used smite and red had a few hit points left, so my super strong auto attack stole it. Whoops. However, I did hit level two almost immediately in lane, which helped me pick on Kassadin more than I normally would have.

I never hit 20 stacks in this game, but I still felt like it was a strong LeBlanc game. The highlight of this game was when I dove Kassadin and then outplayed Xin with a huge juke. We did goof off a bit at the end of this game, but it was still a solid win that set us up for our next game… but that’s a story for next time!

Typical Pick

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They recently upgraded match making to take into account the number of games played. To me, this means that I’ll be playing with more people around 1000 wins.

The first thing I hear after getting into this game is the other team complaining about my Ezreal pick. They are saying that it’s FOTM and cliche. That’s all well and good, but I’ve been playing Ezreal for longer than some of these people have even been playing! It’s not fair for them to attack my champion pick unless I turn out to suck with him! Time to prove all the haters wrong.

0/6/1 Vayne speaks volumes about how bot lane went. I would have killed to have a Nunu support, but Taric ended up doing just fine.

Our mid lane got really fed, so not as much responsibility was left on my shoulders to deal all the damages, and Kayle was also building ADC, so I decided to go Frozen Fist and Static Shiv, which is what I like to call “the fun build”. It’s honestly not so much about dealing sustained damage. However, you still have a considerable amount of damage. This build is about kiting with Q. If you land one Q then the whole enemy team is slowed. That means you get another one for free. However, landing the first Q drops your cooldowns by one second. Chaining multiple Qs means that your abilities have no cooldown. With the cooldown reduction from Frozen Fist, combined with each Q landing lowering the cooldowns, it feels very spammable. You can escape from anyone chasing you except for Riven. She’s still broken because she doesn’t have to walk, she just uses abilities to catch you. If Cristina Vee wasn’t so cool I would hate the guts out of Riven.

I had a really sick snipe this game too. Lee Sin got away from Diana with just a speck of health. I shot my ult from bot lane at their middle inhibitor and saw as it tagged Lee Sin. He started to rage about how that hadn’t hit him. Later, he wanted to report me for “hax” as I was able to hit him with Q three times blindly as he ran in the fog of war. I love it when people think I cheat. It makes not cheating that much better.

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