malzahar Archives - League of Stories

Solo Lane Priority

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There is a problem with the solo lane priority that some players express when playing in solo queue. If you are first pick you are entitled to play whichever lane you’d prefer. Consequently, this could result in you wanting to play a solo lane and having the opportunity to win the lane of your choosing to beat your opponent and ride the sweet train of victory. This is not always the case, and my last ranked game was a perfect explanation of why.

Our team had first pick. Our player in that position was quiet, didn’t say a word, just banned out champions that generally ruin games (Shen, Blitz, etc) and then picked Sona. Sona is such a solid first pick! Once Blitz and Thresh are out, Sona is not only safe, but she’s also formidable. She has been mentioned in multiple recent blogs and is arguably one of the stronger supports right now. The other team’s reaction to that pick is possibly what won us the game.

The other team had two picks, both from people with high queue priority. They decided to choose Mordekaiser and Gragas. Not only does this lock both solo lanes in, but it tells us where Mordekaiser is going, as he can be played both mid and top.

Our team responded by picking our ADC and grabbing the contested pick of Lucian, and then me picking against Gragas. Malzahar doesn’t counter Gragas, I simply picked a champion that wouldn’t get pushed into its turret against Gragas. I felt confident on Malzahar, and so I picked him up because I could do well against Gragas or Mordekaiser if we needed to swap lanes. Now the other team picked their jungler and ADC. Again, they could have picked their support and ADC and left their jungler for last pick. This was possibly the result of someone’s small champion pool, or someone unwilling to trade in solo queue. Maybe it was just the way we lined up in queue that worked out well for us, but due to our first pick not pushing for a solo lane priority they were able to be a major “support” to our team effort and helped us win.

I picked up first blood against Gragas thanks to a perfectly timed counter gank by Sejuani. I did have to Flash and Ignite for the kill, but Gragas had already used his Flash as well, so it was basically guaranteed. If Lee would have been maxing Safeguard then Gragas may have lived, but that was not the case.

I jumped out to a 4-0 start, wreaking havoc on top lane, mid, and bot lane; I was spreading the love! My double kill in bot lane was what ended my spree. After I had Flashed to finish off Zyra I turned back and finished off her ADC under his turret. I took too many tower shots, and found a fat man waiting for me in the bushes. Further was just a master of metal, so I gave my bounty to Gragas.

I had other opportunities to pick up kills throughout the game, but opted to hand them off to our Lucian. I had a pretty mean combo on Draven, who continued to run towards our base rather than towards his own base. I walked with him, spamming laugh, until my Lucian caught up with us and finished him off with a couple auto attacks.

Sejuani and I were able to do a ton of work to Baron. Lucian came to assist us eventually and we finished off Baron. Middle inhibitor was already down, so we stood in top lane. We actually caught Lee Sin out, killed him, and then just rushed in 5v4. Surprisingly that worked. Lee was pretty upset at Draven, I guess he felt like he didn’t contribute in team fights enough. One kill and two assists may bring some truth to Lee’s statement.

Lucian did get shut down eventually. I didn’t press R on Mordekaiser quickly enough and he was able to ultimate on Lucian. The burn from Morde’s ultimate finished Lucian off after Mordekaiser was dead.

I ultimately believe that the pick order of going for solo lane priority picks first caused the other team to lose.

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!

AHGL: Twitch

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I have good news and I have bad news. The bad news is we lost our first game against Twitch in our best-of-three series. The good news is my client crashed crazy hard which prevented me from saving a screenshot. Sadly, it also crashed my LolReplay, so I have the first game’s replay file, and screenshots of the second and third game. Spoiler, this best-of-three series went to three games.

After miserably losing the first game, we subbed some players out to give Twitch a run for their money. They were a bit skeptical at first, but after some roster checks they saw that our guys were members of our team and the games continued.

We ultimately just wanted to see if we could get Lux and Pantheon in the bottom lane. We knew that if we got that combination we would be set. In the first game Miss Fortune had dominated us with some intense damage and wonderful play. We were not going to let her have that opportunity to outplay our bottom lane again.

I got to hang out with djWHEAT in mid lane this game. I really didn’t know it when it happened. We had figured that because he plays Ori so much it would be a smart ban. We left it up for him this game, and he did quite well with it. I would venture to say that laning phase was a bit rough for him. I started Flask, so I had slightly higher mana regen in the earlier levels, so I abused that to harass him down. Once I saw him drop to 100 HP and stick around a quick Flash Ignite auto attack combo finished him off for First Blood. I didn’t want to cause death by Space AIDs. No, I’d save that for next time.

We jumped out to a comfortable lead and realized it around the 13-4 mark. They were seeing our team’s full armada right now. We were synced up and playing well together, however the game was not yet over.

We realized too late that our lack of an AD carry was a very poor pushing option against their area-of-effect comp. We would need to pull something trick out of our sleeves.

Our opportunity arose when SirSpam and I were pushing top lane. The enemy team made a five-man siege down mid lane, expecting to take a turret or win a fight. They vastly underestimated Malzahar’s ability to push. I spawn minions! My spells are all area-of-effect (technically) except for my ult. My minions not only tank turret, they also help to push waves and turrets. The enemy team fights mid. Choppes picks up a kill in a 3v5. The enemy team tries to retreat and my team chases them out to stop them from getting back. Our push took the second tier turret, inhibitor turret, inhibitor, and both Nexus turrets uncontested. While I was trying to kill the Nexus they finally got back to defend their base. By this point the game was mostly over.

Our next objective was bottom lane. We picked up Dragon, and while doing so we found our old friend, djWHEAT. First we could only see the Orianna ball poking its head around the corner. Shortly after that we saw him walk around to get his blue buff. A Malphite Unstoppable Force stopped him where he stood. That was followed up with a Pantheon Aegis of Zeonia, a Lux Light Binding, and a dead Orianna. Now was our chance to push!

We are already pushing up bottom lane. Pantheon goes for a kill on a person right on the turret. I’m still sprinting to get to the action, so I cut through the jungle to the outer wall of the team’s base. I’m pinging for Choppes because he’s now between three enemy players. I call out and say “If you can get to this point I’ll save you!” He doesn’t respond. He doesn’t react. He doesn’t even walk towards me. He turns to the next enemy player and chunks them down. Double kill. Ok, Choppes, it’s ok, I’m almost there buddy, hold on! He still hasn’t turned. Jarvan is the only one left. Choppes fears no man, especially a Jarman. TRIPLE KILL! I just stop walking. It was one of the sexiest things we had ever seen. Aced. Mantheon strikes again. Welp, 13-1, he just earned himself a ban.

We tried to prep for a third game, but without knowing what bans were going to come out we just hoped we could replicate our bot lane from the game before, but we were almost certain that Pantheon would be banned out. After Pantheon was banned we picked up Kha’Zix to fill his shoes. We knew the Mantheon would live on in our hearts, but Kha’Zix would have to win bot lane.

They picked Kayle, and we concluded that Morgana is one of the stronger counters to Kayle, so I was taking Morgana mid. In the loading screen we were all scratching our heads. They had already switched up lanes on us once, but now we were lost. Picture this:

Kayle: Barrier Flash

Xin: Barrier Flash

Anivia: Heal Flash

Jayce: Ignite Flash

Vi: Smite Flash

We were pretty sure that the super annoying bird and her heal were coming back mid, and that Vi was going into the jungle. Other than that, we were completely lost. We eventually decided it was probably a kill lane in bot. The combined slow of Kayle and Xin would be enough to make anyone miserable. Their burst damage and sustain would be a huge bully, and if you thought you were about to win a fight, they would Barrier and beat you. Panic ensued. We didn’t know how to play against this because we had never seen it before.

They sent their Kayle and Xin Zhao kill lane to bot with that double Barrier comp. I would say that maybe they had never seen Choppes and Iggie before, but they had just dealt with them in the game before. Resilient players wanted a second chance at playing against Choppes and Iggie in the bot lane after they took away the Pantheon pick. I should upload more replays so that people could watch Choppes and Iggie do their magic dance.

I only played Morgana because we thought it would be a counter to Kayle. It actually did decently well against they cryophoenix as well. Eventually, Anivia was pushing me to my turret, but she loved to harass me after she cleared the wave, and we baited it a couple times to allow my jungler to sneak in behind her. This really allowed me to roll in mid lane and roam.

My first trip to bottom lane resulted in me ulting and us picking up two kills, but then I didn’t leave. I just hung out and laned while I waited for Choppes and Iggie to return. As soon as they did I had my ult back up and figured why not kill this bot lane again? We had enough CC and burst that the enemy team didn’t stand a chance. Vi came to counter gank and something amazing happened. She tried to use her ultimate on me, but I quickly self-cast Black Shield and Vi zoomed over to where I was standing, popped herself up in the air, and then slammed herself into the ground. I took damage, but I was free to leave. I had forgotten how broken Black Shield really is. I had no idea it would counter Vi that hard. The only thing that breaks Black Shield is magic damage and it expiring, so all of Vi’s CC was blocked because she couldn’t get the shield down.

The best was after I left bot lane I was pretty beat up. I was probably down to 400-600 HP and just walking from blue side’s bottom jungle up to mid. Vi saw me just waltzing through and saw how low I was. I knew the bird couldn’t be far. Vi tries to gap close and just presses R on me. As she gets closer I pop my Black Shield. I block all of the CC. I snag her in a snare as she tries to do her charged dash. I walk away almost unscathed. Again, I’m abusing poor Styles. The worth of his champion in this game was just fractured. It’s nothing that he did wrong, we really just got lucky!

The final push didn’t happen in a lane. We caught Twitch in their jungle near Wraiths and a fight started. Before anyone could react, Czarni went charging in like a hero. The enemy team started to scatter, but it was too late. We egged Anivia, and then just walked away from her. People started freaking out in our Skype call saying “hey guys, we gotta kill this bird!” We turn our attention to Eggnivia and finish her off. We switch from her to the next enemy and chase and chase and chase. Eventually we pick up the last kill on Vi to hear the announcer call out the Ace. At this point I started laughing out loud. I looked around me and saw all four of my team mates standing with me next to the enemy team’s inhibitor in mid lane. We had dove past two turrets in mid lane and were all standing in the enemy team’s base. The clock said 24 minutes, and the surrender vote was passed immediately.

It was such a good feeling to dive as a team and follow each other up as we pushed into the enemy team’s base. At times our team will split when trying to work together which usually results in a free death or an objective lost. It was great team work. After the game we were complimented when shiftkeyisbroke suggested that our team be in the A League. He had played in the A League the AHGL season before and felt that based on the way we played we could hold our own in the A League. This was such a huge compliment because our team isn’t all gold and platinum players, we just have games where we are able to work well together, communicate, strategize, and do well. Keep up that good team work, SecurityMetrics!

Tie Goes to the Prophet

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This game sucked.

I hate games that go well for me yet are miserable for everyone else on my team. This was one of those games.

It makes it very difficult to snowball a game when I am stuck playing mid but bottom and top both keep dying. When I would try to gank for bot Kennen would just zip away and when I went top Jayce died for free in a three-man dive on Garen. Jayce, just step out, no need to tank turret! That’s what your two team mates are for!

Kennen knew I was trouble, and I knew that Kennen was going to be a problem. Kennen acknowledged this in the game and said “gj Malz” one time after I caught him and killed him. “You can carry this game” is all that he said after that. I wasn’t quite sure. Jayce was way behind to the point that he was just about useless. Bot lane had fed Kennen to the point that he could just press R and be immune to me because I would be forced to run away. Luckily, AD Kennen has to pick his targets, he can’t melt a full team like AP Kennen does with his ultimate and his burst damage.

As this game went longer I started getting closer to a finished build. I was very fed. Malefic Visions has this way of picking up kills because of how it ticks. I didn’t mind. I loved having the gold. Better me than Jayce in this game. I knew that if I could just get ahold of that silly rat Kennen I could win this game.

We had won a small team fight that gave us the advantage we needed to push up and take a tower. We were still clawing our way back from being behind this enemy team. They were down a man or two which meant that we would probably get the inhibitor for free. I let my team know that I was going to grab Kennen the first chance that I got. My opportunity came so I Flashed in and grabbed Kennen with Nether Grasp. His health bar was melting at an intense rate. Hecarim ulted to close the gap and get on Kennen and disrupted Vi and Garen’s attempts to stop my channel. Kennen was dead, the inhibitor was down, and the game was too late to salvage. The enemy team had no way to battle my Rylai’s slow and the sheer damage output of being down their most fed carry.

Even though the game was a tie, in this case the tie goes to the prophet!

Broken Liandry’s

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In a recent patch by Riot Games they announced that they were removing the diminished effect of Liandry’s Torment for area-of-effect and damage-over-time spells. This was an instant buff for champions like Malzahar and Swain who have multiple damage-over-time abilities. I hadn’t gotten a chance to play since the new patch, so I found some time this morning to get a game in. My mentality going into the game: get my first win of the day bonus.

I was fourth pick, which is low enough that I could end up not getting the role I want to play. However, I ran into a spot of luck. As our team captain was choosing bans I started writing “I would like TF mid please” and just as I pressed Enter to send that message he banned Twisted Fate. Now the team quickly assumed I would be playing mid or raging because the guy had banned the champion that I wanted. This actually worked out well because we had three champions picked and the enemy team showed who their mid lane would be before I was forced to pick.

The enemy mid picked Lux. I had played a game recently as Malzahar where I was against a Lux and I felt like I had done rather well against her. With the recent changes to Liandry’s Torment I wanted to see how it would play. Based on the opening to this game I would say “very well”.

Xin ganked my lane fairly early and got red buff down on Lux. After Lux used Flash I made sure to land as many spells as possible and threw down Ignite. I watched as it ticked and ticked. She hadn’t put a point into her shield yet. You know, that shield that is designed to prevent damage-over-time damage? Ya, she hasn’t put a point into that yet. At the last second Lux used Ignite on me under the tower and I put my Malefic Visions on her. Lux disappeared from view and I escaped tower radius with enough health to survive the Ignite. Lux, however, was not as fortunate. First Blood!

Lux comes back to lane with a second Doran’s Ring, no wards, no boots. I should also mention at this point that her Flash is on cooldown for another three minutes. I tell Xin Zhao and we just auto-attack Lux to death. I pick up the kill and listen as bot lane dies. I wanted to reprimand them for dying, but I knew that would just cause our team to spiral out of control.

After I recalled from mid I see bot lane engaging the enemy again. I start running. I actually bought upgraded boots to make it to the tower faster. Xin was down there helping them, but Vi counter ganked, eliminating the advantage that Xin was providing. I watch as Twitch falls, then Taric, and the enemy team is throwing everything they have at Xin. Xin sees his opportunity and pounces back on Miss Fortune. He drops her, but puts himself out too far. I Flash into range and drop my silence across the other two remaining enemy champions. My Visions picks up the kill on Vi, and I still have enough in my arsenal to finish off Thresh. Double kill. I’m 4-0 and just getting warmed up. The next time I double kill in bot it puts me to 8-0 and I’m Legendary.

When I get back to mid lane I was level nine compared to Lux’s six. I was able to bully her so hard. The only thing I missed out on was Xin kept taking my blue buff. He tried to hand it off twice, but both times he managed to steal it from me. It actually just got humorous near the end of the game because my team could see that I was beast-moding this game, but I kept running out of mana! Xin felt so bad for taking blue! My second death came when all of my abilities were off cooldown, but I just didn’t have enough mana to cast anything and Miss Fortune’s auto attacks were hitting harder than mine. OP.

We were grouping around Baron, but the enemy team knew we were there as Vi started to run back from top as soon as I got close to her. I threw my silence at her, which took her Flash and put us in a better position for taking Baron. However, my team had reacted correctly and were invading the enemy team’s top jungle. We caught Miss Fortune and Nasus as they tried to transition to top lane. We easily won the team fight and swung over to pick up a free Baron. This was the first time I got blue buff because I actually pinged Xin away and said “I’ll solo it, thanks” to which everyone just laughed.

Now that I had Baron and blue buff I called for everyone to push out bottom lane. We had them group in the bush at blue buff while I pushed bottom lane solo. The enemy team was in the lane, but they were playing back. Thresh was the only one manly enough to step forward. I see him trying to get in position to land a hook. I throw my silence down so he won’t have that option. Drop my pool. I get Vision and my ultimate on him and watch as his health melts to nothing. Dominating!

At this point my team just about shrugs their shoulders and comes walking out of the bushes. With Thresh down they have no threat of catching us out, especially with Xin Zhao on our team. They also lack a way to peel for Miss Fortune. We walk up, melt the turret and take the inhibitor for free. We rotate mid and do the same thing. Our creeps are there, so we push up and take the Nexus turrets. The gg’s start rolling in and the game is over. Taric thanks me for carrying and gives me honor. What a nice chap!