Twisted Fate – League of Stories

Sweet Lady Luck Smiled

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I have been working to improve my solo queue ranking to get a better idea of how much my skills have changed recently. I frequently see people who were Silver or Gold in Season Two, but have managed to jump to Platinum or Diamond this season. Just the concept of being Diamond and knowing that I’m competing with the top tier of players gives me hope and drives me to improve.

In a recent game as Twisted Fate I had the strange opportunity to have a massive impact in a team fight situation. Normally, I feel like Twisted Fate is ideal for creating an out-numbered scenario, where he coordinates a gank with his jungler and shows up to create a 3v1 or 4v2. Instead I fouls myself using my ultimate to warp into mid lane where we had already lost a team mate.

As I landed I threw the red card I had locked to deal area of effect damage and slow as many members of the enemy team. Immediately after that card landed Taric used his Exhaust to lower my damage output. I still threw my Wild Cards to finish Swain off.

Stepping back I worked on securing a gold card to peel the Rammus off of my poor Vayne that was doing a great job to resist his damage. After we finished off Rammus we poked Taric down.

It was at this point that I heard the announcer call out a Triple Kill and realized it was me. I saw Ezreal was fleeing from Nasus and Tryndamere, but had waning health.

I tried to move into range. My glimmer of hope was Ezreal stepping back towards the fight to help his Irelia. I pounced on that opportunity and used Flash to close the gap. Just as I entered auto attack range with my gold card locked Ezreal used Arcane Shift to distance himself. Knowing that he would think he was safe if I turned to fight Irelia I threw my Wild Cards where he would turn. Without another option I dropped my gold card on Irelia and waited for my team mates to catch up to her. Just as I had predicted, Ezreal turned to fire a Mystic Shot in my direction and ate my Wild Card, taking me up to a Quadra Kill.

I walked Irelia into her own base, securing another gold card and restricting her movement as she tried to escape. The passive proc from Stacked Deck readied as she slipped to beneath 100 life. With over 150 armor but a low amount of magic resistance my Stacked Deck shredded her remaining life and completed the coveted Penta Kill.

I immediately thanked my team. I clearly had not done all the work, but I had assisted in finishing off all the kills. I definitely let out an excited howl. It had been a long time since I had managed a penta in a ranked game. It’s different when your friends or the enemy team assists you. This was earned. I put my life on the line diving into the enemy team with my ultimate when I only had two items.

I’ll post the video link later or you can find it on my twitch channel.

As promised!

Watch live video from adyendrus on TwitchTV

AHGL: Zenimax

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There was a lot of hype leading into this game. People were all waiting for our AHGL match against Zenimax. We had managed to go undefeated, and they had accomplished the same feat until the previous week when they fell to Twitch. This was going to be the clash of the titans, and we were super excited to have such fierce competition in the league.

The first game started with some interesting bans. They targeted Lux, which made sense because we use her a lot. They banned out LeBlanc which does make perfect sense when you look at my ranked stats. The last ban was targeted at Senor Choppes with a Jayce ban. I could see the logic in all of these bans as we normally play a very poke-based comp and try to wear a team down with the poke from Lux and Jayce, and they didn’t want to experiment with LeBlanc’s trickery.

We decided to run double globals. I still wish we would have picked up Pantheon for that triple threat, but with Riven in top lane we knew that we would win that lane for free. I picked up Twisted Fate and Czarni jungled Shen. This gave us the ability to pressure their team regardless of where they were on the map. However, Unit02 got to pick his comfort pick of Maokai, and GoTWooD got to try to counter pick Twisted Fate with Talon. I’m not sure that Talon is a counter to Twisted Fate. Ultimately, I only have one ability that I can’t cast when silenced, and before Talon pounces on me I can lock a gold card anyway. Plus, my ultimate reveals him when he tries to stealth using his own, and his movement speed boost is completed wasted by the fact that I can teleport to his location after he uses his ultimate. Ultimately, Talon was probably a bad pick, but it just allowed him to be aggressive early.

All three games had Maokai camping mid early game. GoTWooD basically got free lane pressure in every game because of his dedicated jungler working to shut me down. It definitely worked early in this first game. I tried to apply pressure bot, but my assists weren’t making my 0-2 score look any better.

We started to fall behind in this first game, but just as we were making our comeback nubehound’s computer died. Complete shut down. When he tried to boot he was greeted with a number of errors telling him that he couldn’t boot back up. We were in a bit of a panic. I called nubehound and he asked “Do you have a computer I could play on?” Sadly, I didn’t. I didn’t have League installed on another machine. However, after another restart his computer booted normally and we went on our merry way. It felt like we were starting a second game, because we had waited more than 13 minutes for him to get back online.

As soon as we unpaused Zenimax disappeared from their grouping in the mid lane. I saw them heading towards our blue. Nubehound must have seen it too, because he walked over there to see what they were up to. His death pushed the score to 7-6, with us ahead by just one kill.

Then the game was over. We started winning some pivotal team fights, and we never looked back. We literally didn’t die after that point. We really got to flex our team work muscles. I did have some fun plays and got to do the Twisted Fate split push thing. Once Twisted Fate gets to that tipping point where his abilities clear out a full creep wave he gets very entertaining to try to play against. I actually had Maokai, Darius, and Talon chasing me to stop me from split-pushing, but while they chased me down bot lane my team took middle inhibitor and then I chased Darius down to hear the announcer yell “Legendary!” Oh how I love that sound.

The second game never happened. Katarina got to spiral out of control and pick up kill after kill. It got to the point that we should have just surrendered. We had a few ways to take Katarina out of her ultimate, but Katarina isn’t built around that ultimate anymore. She can lane with just health potions, and she never has to leave lane and Xerath has no kill potential against her because of her Shun Po. Again, GoTWooD got a free counter pick against me after they banned out LeBlanc and Twisted Fate this game.

This game was a total flop. We decided to go poke comp because we had the Jayce and Elise picks both up. I picked a super harassing mid with great poke and then our ADC was Caitlyn, so we had good poke from our AD with good disengage with her traps. For support we probably needed another way to put pressure on the enemy team, like a Zyra, Morgana, Blitz, Thresh, or any other champion that has a long skill-shot ability. Instead, we got Taric, a melee, aura-based champion. It just didn’t fit the play style of poke.

However, Zenimax had the chance to counter pick our poke with WuKong and Katarina anyway. It didn’t look like a game we could win, because we just wouldn’t have the tools to deal with their dunk engage.

This leads us into the third and final game of our best of three series!

Going into the third game we knew the pressure was on. We had to win to keep our undefeated streak alive. For the third game we again saw LeBlanc, Twisted Fate, and Lux bans. They really didn’t want to have any fun with my mid champs! Also, for the third game in a row I let GoTWooD counter pick me. When he picked Orianna I breathed the largest sigh of relief. I don’t know where people are getting that counter pick information, but this wasn’t the first Orianna to get picked against my Malz. Oh and I love the match up.

Of course, Maokai camped mid again. I actually walked over to ward the bushes at level three and thought better of it, so I walked around and warded over the wall. Of course, Mao was standing right there. He eventually left, and just walked around to the other side of mid. That’s when Czarni got sandwiched between Maokai and Orianna and gave up First Blood and gave Orianna Red Buff. Oh fun! This was just the tip of the ice berg for where this game was going. We started spiraling down hill fast.

This is where my lane opponent was when the game was looking most grim. That’s a 6-0 kill stealing Orianna ruining my fun in mid lane. I guess GoTWooD wanted a repeat of the previous game, but we weren’t going to let that happen. It was at this point that we knew we needed to rally together and start putting pressure down on the map to get the global gold lead back in our favor.

We grouped in top lane and started to fight back. Very quickly we got ahead and started flexing our muscles in team fights. The next time we forced a Dragon fight we went into the battle up, 8-13, and left at 8-18. The game didn’t get much closer than that, as we finished 32-10, but in the final moments of the game Choppes called out “SNIPE BLITZA!” which was a request that Caitlyn more than obliged to fulfill. Czarni dodged the bullet to make sure that Blitzcrank would die to the Caitlyn ultimate. It was so funny to watch. It was a humorous ending to a true show of teamwork and rallying under pressure.

Great games, Zenimax!

Qualify for Gold Division

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I told myself that I just needed my first win of the day, but really I wanted to qualify for gold. However, going into the game calmly really helped prepare me for the carnage that was coming.

In Champion Select I saw that we had two “high rolers”. No one else got the joke, but we had a Role King and a Role God. I’m pretty sure it was one person playing on two computers, which is quite impressive, but Olaf had five kills (which I’m positive he stole) and only three assists, for a combined kill participation score of eight. Not only did he not carry his weight in team fights or ganking, but he took every blue. I literally only got blue from taking it from Zyra this game.

First blood actually was a funny scenario. I had warded the enemy team’s wraiths at level one so I would see Fiddle coming to gank. By the time he came around to get me I had an Olaf standing the bush he was about to face check. I snuck over towards him to give him hope that he could gank us. I landed a gold card, threw my Wild Cards and Olaf used his Reckless Swing and Fiddle was gone. No chance to Flash, not chance to silence, fear, and walk away. Dead. Sadly, Olaf stole the kill, so instead of me getting double buffs, Olaf got double buffs, that he already had. Sigh.

I knew that if Zyra got a hook on me that I was dead. That player only picked Zyra because she does so well against Twisted Fate. However, I was pretty sly at dodging her root, and avoided as much plant damage as possible. I didn’t mind pushing her up to her tower because, as I discussed with Czarni, I don’t need anything at the start of the game. I’ve literally been starting two wards and six health potions because I sustain mana on my own, so if I can just stay in lane topped off I will be fine. If my lane came pre-warded I may start boots, because I love the mobility of Twisted Fate.

I camped bot so hard this game. I didn’t want to let Draven and Taric get ahead at all. I’m pretty sure that I used every ultimate to jump to bottom lane and cause some havoc. Akali was holding her own in top lane, so I just went bonkers on that poor bot lane. They hated me. Draven started raging in all-chat. It was really humorous. That is the power of Twisted Fate. His global presence really plays a step ahead of an unorganized solo queue team.

My KD was pretty amazing this game, especially considering I had a kill participation score of 27! That’s 27 of my team’s 34 kills. Varus came in second place at 20, which is still more kills than the enemy team had.

A small note about this game: I really noticed the power of Void Staff in this game. Normally I would go for an Hourglass after I finish my Deathcap and Lich Bane. This game I went for Void Staff and let me tell you what it did. At the end of this game I ported onto Draven where he was fleeing from a team fight. With my insane movement speed I closed the gap on him and thew a gold card. I saw where he would be after my card landed and threw my Wild Cards at him. They didn’t hit him because my gold card killed him from half health. One shot. I shocked myself, but still appreciated my team saying “lol tf”.

A win is a win, but qualifying for gold is really the next step in getting out of this silver prison.

Welcome to Our Humble Adobe

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I was really done for the night, but then I got an invite from Tai Feng to come play with his guys. He had four guys ready to play a draft pick normal. I had turned him down in the past, and really wanted to have a fun game with these guys, so I went for it.

After I joined their party I asked if they had any voice communication methods like Skype, Ventrilo, or TeamSpeak. They confirmed that they had Vent. When I joined their channel they were quick to throw down the humorous: “Welcome to our humble Adobe!” I thought that was pretty fun, and very friendly, so it put me right into the mood to win some games.

Tai suggested that I play mid when we were in Champion Select, so I obliged. I’d be more than happy to play mid, it’s what I do! Looking at their team comp we were pretty sure it would be Kennen mid and Malphite top. Boy did they pull the switcheroo on us!

I had a terrible time mid vs Malphite. At first I was bullying him around because I have unlimited mana and could hit him with blue cards whenever he tried to throw his shard at me. However, his jungler was adamant about killing me. Luckily, I knew that the damage Malphite would be pumping out would have diminishing returns, and if the mummy didn’t build some ability power he would be in the same boat and they would lose late without an AD carry. Time to gank bot.

Ganking bot actually turned out to be a terrible idea. I had a number of times where I would show up in bot lane, teleporting down there with my ultimate, only to be CC locked by Alistar and followed up by a Varus ult. The Adobe bot lane would say, “aw, nice try” and then they would see me Flash under turret, land a gold card on Varus, and finish him off with Wild Cards. I would have made it out, but I thought Taric needed my help, so I stepped out only to realize I was out of mana, had cancelled my recall, and now Kennen had found me. Boo.

We were slightly behind in this game because Malphite was staying pretty even in mid (let’s be real, it’s Malphite in a short lane, his ultimate carries him back to turret, that wuss), Kennen was doing really well in top lane, and bot was only slightly ahead. We needed to make some magic happen to win this game. I decided it would be best to split push.

I shoved out bottom lane while my team grouped mid. When the enemy team tried to transition down to stop me from pushing my team followed up with immense pressure and actually caught some of the enemy team out of position. We were making our comeback! We had a team fight in bot lane after one of those transitions where we aced the enemy team and didn’t lose a single member of our team.

Eventually we were pressuring top lane and Adobe managed to gift me a triple kill to save my KD. The enemy team would throw their ults down, we would survive through them and then have more sustained damage to help us win the fights.

I’m still having too much fun with Twisted Fate. I love his mobility. I may make the switch to Boots of Mobility, but I’m not sure if it would be worth it to sacrifice my spell penetration especially where I’m running movement speed quints. Maybe I’ll try it out for a game or two, but I don’t think I could put the extra movement to good use where my ultimate can already teleport me out. Maybe Boots of Swiftness? We’ll see. GG Adobe!

My Breaking Point

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Czarni and I had really gotten into the habit of playing duo queue in Ranked this season. We had some really early success where we had side lanes that would just not die and we would snowball the game out of control. This game was my breaking point.

The Kha’Zix on this team should never have tried Ranked. He literally didn’t know how to lane. He would just die repeatedly to Darius regardless of any external factors. He didn’t even need to get ganked. I can understand dying to Darius, but not as a champion with immense ranged harass and a jump. It is too demoralizing to shut down mid lane, pressure bot with my ultimate, only to watch top lose because he has no idea what he’s doing.

I would have finished this game at 8/2, but I had to ult into the Baron pit to try to steal Baron away from the other team. People on my team had no idea it was even happening! It sometimes shocks me to the core to see how clueless people are in this game, and that is what pushed me to my breaking point.

I’ve lost too many games in duo queues because the system is matching us with players who can’t function in a PvP setting. I think Czarni will agree that we have had some of the worst team mates that this game could possibly supply. Did I mention our 1/15 bot lane the other game? The Vayne who just stacked BF Swords? Trolling must be fun for these people.

After this game I told Czarni that I needed to solo queue for at least a couple games to get myself out of this rut. Maybe in solo queue I’ll find thinner kids who aren’t as hard to lift.