Tristana – League of Stories

Bot Lane Synergy

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I remember Shushei and CandyPanda discussing the strongest bot lane duos and the best bot lane synergy in Season One. Something they mentioned was Tristana and Sona. I was out into the AD carry role in my most recent solo queue game and we got to try this combination.

I was third or fourth pick in this game. I knew that I would get some kind of carry role, and I have no problem with ADC. Last pick hovered on a couple different supports, but finished on Sona. I told her to run Ignite so I could keep my Barrier. Sona obliged.

Twisted Fate has a hard time against Zed. If Zed times his ultimate perfectly he can get a lot of damage down before TF can get another Gold Card locked. Our Twisted Fate did a good job of just providing pressure on the map and reacting when his lane opponent would roam. I specifically remember getting out of a bad situation in bot lane, looking up and seeing TF close enough to ult in and save me if need be. Luckily, he didn’t need to.

Vladimir had a poor match-up as well. He didn’t have a way to stop Shen’s ultimate, which did prove troublesome at first. Shen would appear in team fights and Vladimir was stuck in top lane. One key time was when Sona and I were going for a kill on Graves. Graves and Alistar matced our aggression and I heard the Shen ultimate start and Graves got a shield. He was already so low that one more auto finished him off. However, the shield that was showing on him was Barrier and not Shen’s ultimate. Shen was warping to Alistar. Rather than run I actually stood still and Shen appeared behind me and missed his taunt because of it. I had minions where I was and I didn’t want to retreat. I finished off Alistar and then started to run from Shen, being very crippled in the fight. I ducked into the bushes, waited for Shen to chase after me. When I was a hit away from death I used my Barrier and we were able to finish Shen off before he had a chance to kill me. Sona followed that up with “I love you so much, man.”

Because we had such control over bottom lane we quickly tried to move around the map and take objectives. I headed mid with my fun items and pressured Zed. However, I felt like my team didn’t want to make a move on mid lane. Any time I stepped forward when the enemy creep wave was cleared, I would look around and see my team just disappearing. I couldn’t make much sense of that. Then we started to throw.

We had just taken a mid turret and it was time to head to Dragon. I ping for it and start walking down and see Sona move up towards the enemy Elder Lizard rather than towards the Dragon. Oh em gee, she is throwing Dragon to get a ward in the Wraith bush. Well Shen and Zed weren’t about to let that happen. This is going to be a ninja threesome that Sona hadn’t dreamed about before.

I have to look away. I write her off and just start to kill Dragon. I’m watching her health bar get lower and lower. Serves her right. She feels invulnerable because she was in bot lane with me and we rolled the other team. Now she… wait… why isn’t she dead? Watching for the Dragon timer I see Sona write in all-chat “LOL!” Uh oh, the other team isn’t going to be happy about that. Sona managed to make both of them use their gap-close abilities and then she positioned next to a wall and used Flash to hop it. Boy those guys looked dumb.

We started positioning for Baron and just caught people out. I got a few lucky last hits and picked up another couple kills. While we sprinted down mid lane after taking a bunch of people from the other team the surrender vote was passed.

It was a fun Tristana game. I know people rush Blade of the Ruined King these days, but I haven’t converted to that build yet. I enjoy seeing the crits from Infinity Edge so much more! I’ll run crit runes and then I can rush Blade. Jk, I’m not doing anything crazy like that until I’ve run the math on it.

Stealth Mode

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I just wanted to apologize for not grabbing a screen shot of our games last night. I did want to discuss things that worked and things that didn’t. If we really want to beat Ernst & Young we’ll have to make sure we get the five that we ended with last night, as well as banning out Malphite. He just gave us so much trouble.

I felt like bot lane struggled a bit. I like the concept behind Tristana and Darius because they fit the style of getting early kills and snowballing and resets, but Tristana is the only one with a jump and she would over-extend. Even though nubehound wasn’t feeding, he was still putting himself in situations that could have gotten him killed. Darius did really well as a “support”. I guess Darius is just strong without items. I think I’d seen Darius support before, but I felt like he was a better match in bot because no one dared to trade with him. When SirSpam Flash pulled both bot lane enemies under his turret and then went oom and couldn’t ult! That was classic!

Kha’Zix jungle was surprisingly fast. I felt like his ganks on mid were lackluster, but he could make a huge difference in top and bot. Also, late game when Czarni was one-shotting poor PBE players, it just made me want to laugh out loud! I guess I wouldn’t want to be on the receiving end of a Kha’Zix and Talon dive either!

Talon was pretty strong mid. He had some decent harass, good enough escape, and I was just abusing that poor Karma. A silenced Karma is a dead Karma. I probably would have fallen off late game with any other team comp, but because we could all commit on kills it worked out. Even though Talon didn’t have resets, his Rake cooldown was still low enough to contribute when people were trying to run away.

Akali top was the icing on the cake! Her mobility in team fights was so unparalleled. It was awesome just seeing her wreak havoc on poor kids. Choppes, I honestly didn’t know you could play Akali, but I guess that just goes to show that Choppes can literally play every champion! I still remember when one of the teams tried to ban Choppes out. It did not end well for them. It just seemed like we had the confidence that if we dove, we would get a kill and Choppes would get another ult stack.

The best part about this game was that it didn’t show up in our match history! We played Akali, Kha’Zix, and Talon, three champions who can stealth, and we played it in a realm that keeps us stealth! E&Y will never be expecting us to change the game this late in the season.

I honestly thought that Leona would have made more of an impact against our team. I think she will definitely be a ban in Sunday’s game. Leona, Malphite, and then a wildcard for third. We can look over their match history and see what they would like to run and ban something along those lines. Regardless, it is going to be a glorious game on Sunday!

Pantheon Mid

Bi-Polar

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I swear our team was bi-polar last night. We had two games in a row where the other team made some plays when it counted. We couldn’t get on the same page. We missed objectives, we didn’t team fight, we didn’t communicate. Everything went wrong.

Going into the last game of the night I was upset. Like most people I abhor losing. Dropping two games in a row was unacceptable, especially after a 5-1 start with this ranked team. This was a huge motivating factor for me. I wanted this third game to be perfect.

We leashed blue for Hecarim and I missed some creep experience in lane because of it. However, Trist can beat Miss Fortune, and Taric can help beat Leona. We had a really good chance in this lane. Miss Fortune let me shoot her in the face a bunch and I landed my E on her a number of times while she was using a health potion. With no sustain and her potions wasted we quickly pressed our advantage in bot lane. Leona kept trying to stun my Taric, which resulted in her over-extending and eating a bunch of free damage from my creeps and me. It was pretty cute watching Leona stun and then Taric stun and then Leona stun again and then Taric stun again. Neither support went for the enemy carry. It was a 1v1v1v1 lane! If that’s the case then I’m glad I’d been attacking Miss Fortune so much!

Leona realized too late that she had been harassed too low. A quick jump, E, and ignite finished her off for First Blood. It’s just what I needed after the last two games.

There was a strange lull in this game where I thought we were grouping mid, but I showed up late and my team had rotated top. I got caught by Wu Kong and Amumu. They both blew ult to kill me 2v1. I just shrugged, and went back to bot lane. I just farmed and farmed to get ahead. Hit my Infinity Edge and Phantom Dancer. At that point I knew I’d be safe in bot lane because I could just shoot anyone who came to fight me.

We did have one big team fight where things went a little strange. We were fighting over dragon. I came from the bottom side while my team was all above. Unfortunately, this meant that I ended up fighting 1v2 against Leona and Wu Kong! With nowhere to run I fought them. Just as I was about to die I dealt a killing blow to Leona and got another jump from it. I jumped away from Wu Kong. I called for help, but my team had moved down into blue side’s jungle, fighting just below Wraiths. I ran from Wu Kong as best I could towards my team. Just as I’m getting near the team fight I’m using attack move, and I get in range of Amumu and auto attack once. Oops. Welp, I got kill credit for that! Oh well! This means I get another jump!

My team turns and finishes up Wu Kong and I live to see another day! Did anyone else notice how much gold Iggie ended with? Second highest! This is especially impressive considering Jake held Wu Kong to the lowest gold on the enemy team. A good game for Security Matrix!

Fierce Competition

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This game was full of the fiercest competition! Not against the other team, they weren’t really good enough to compete against. I was in competition for the title of “Most Kills” with Jake.

The picture is below, so the secret will be out very quickly that I won, but there was a time in this game where I figured I was going to lose. Jake was steam-rolling top lane. Bot wasn’t even showing up to lane, so I had nothing to kill but creeps. Now, don’t get me wrong, I love me some creeps, but they only help me win the competition by giving me money which makes me get items which makes me do more damage later. I told myself that as long as I was the one with most gold at the end of the game I would consider it a personal victory.

Then Ketsuyume happened. He was the sleeper. When he was 0-2 he wrote in all-chat “Ok, I’m not dying again this game!” and I groaned. Out loud. On Skype. Don’t make ridiculous bold statements like that! It just entices the enemy that you’ve fed all game to kill you some more! The champion he played against mid had 10 of the enemy team’s 12 kills and was tied for fewest deaths. Yet the silly mechanic that is Katarina’s passive allowed her to get back into the game. If he could have mashed buttons faster he probably could have had a quadra kill. It was still a lovely clean-up to the team fight that started out poorly for us.

Even though I won the title of “Most Kills” I managed to lose the personal goal of most gold. It was probably that one time that I didn’t get the last hit on dragon. Or when I missed out on First Blood. Sure, I got assist credit, but what good is assist credit when I could get 400 sweet gold for kill credit!