There are things that you see in Solo Queue that you know will result in a loss. This last game had almost all of those things. I will try to recount every aspect of this game that caused me to doubt, but overall the game outcome was against all odds.
In Champion Select I was first pick, and I kept my mouth shut because I had just suffered two losses in a row. Second pick called mid. Third pick called mid. Last pick called ADC. Well, I don’t get to play mid, but I’ll just play top. Maybe I should ban Lee Sin, he counters Teemo with his ability to see stealthed units for absolutely no reason. I left Lee up because Blitz and Thresh are larger threats.
I first pick Teemo. The enemy team picks Lee Sin. Maybe it’s jungle Lee. The enemy team picks Maokai. Our team picks Xerath and then Cassiopeia. Both players lock in. Great, now we have a top and two mids! We round out our picks with a Sona support and Caitlyn ADC. After Caitlyn died first blood to Vayne and Sona said “you are bad” I thought she was exaggerating. This was not the case.
I actually laned really well against Lee Sin. I felt like I had the advantage for most of the laning phase. I took top tower, my duo mids took mid tower, and so I rotated to bot lane to help them take a tower. This is when I found out just how terrible my Caitlyn really was. Caitlyn just right-clicks on champions. She is super easy to use. She has one skill-shot ability. If someone runs towards you, you shoot your net at them and it pushes you to safety. This Caitlyn was a total bronze player. She would walk right next to Lee Sin, regardless of where he was standing. It was like she had a bot controlling her and it was going haywire.
We were already taking turrets, which was really the only thing keeping us in the game, so we just didn’t stop doing that. We had Xerath split top, Caitlyn would push bot, and the rest of us were shoving mid. When the enemy team didn’t respond we just found ourselves getting free money. Eventually we started winning team fights despite being down the whole game.
Karthus had gotten real big despite being 1v2 in mid lane. Now we had to respect his damage. However, he was never able to get all the way to the middle of a team fight and do his work. Because of this we would kite Maokai and Lee until they dove on one of us, and then we would barrage them (literally thanks to Xerath) to death.
We had a ton of CC in our team, but when you experienced it, you experienced it to death. I saw multiple times where Lee Sin or Maokai would be CC’d from full to dead. Sometimes it was Sona ult, or Cass ult, into a Caitlyn trap, and a Xerath combo, and they would melt.
When the game went late we had all three of their inhibitors down, so we started to pressure Baron. We realized that we didn’t have Smite, but I just wanted to wait it out and let our super creeps win us the game. We started fighting Baron, but before we could kill him Lee Sin came flying in over the wall with a Resonating Strike. Without the summoner spell Smite I feared that we would lose the Baron to Lee’s damage. However, Sona locked him down with her ultimate and then actually got the last hit on the Baron! Of all the people in this game to get the Baron kill, it was Sona.
A team fight ensued. I started to bounce around, avoiding tanks and supports, looking for Vayne and Karthus, but they were being rather elusive. I managed to land one Blinding Dart on Vayne, but then I had to retreat in order to avoid getting pinned to a wall. I followed Karthus as he ran towards his base where super minions were pressuring the Nexus turrets. I caught him in the bush near Wraiths. He tried to Ignite me, but I finished him off and then used Flash to escape his range. I sprinted for the base. Maokai, Janna, and Vayne appeared to defend. I tried to distract them, but even my distraction wasn’t necessary. Too many creeps were in the Nexus. They would need Karthus to come back from the dead, and that wasn’t going to happen this game. I auto-attacked the Nexus twice and sat there stunned as I realized we had just managed to win.
Against all odds we had come back in ridiculous fashion. We actually were still down in gold when the game ended. Down Six kills and over a thousand global gold, we had managed to win against two late-game carries. The only reason I can start to think we won is that instead of a support jungler we had an AP carry. I know this sounds like justification for Cassiopeia to pick a role that had already been taken, but in the end having a Xerath and a Cassiopeia was much better than having a Karthus and a Maokai. Maokai’s damage dropped off so hard late game, and so we were left with one support, two physical damage dealers, and two magic carries. In team fights we could melt through tanks with a surprising amount of damage. What a crazy game.
