League of Legends: Recap from Dec. 28-29, 2012

I’ve been playing a handful of games with my buddies lately on League of Legends, and I’ve decided to go back and do a bit of analysis on the games to see what went wrong (or right).

I was going to do this anyway, so I decided I might as well do this and publish the results publicly so other people might be able to benefit from it as well.

The ordering of the champions are top laner, jungler, mid laner, attack damage carry, and support. The champion I was playing and the score I got is in bold; the [R] before some champions designates they were random people found through matchmaking, and not one of my friends.

Victory: Sion, Nocturne (12/1/8), [R] Teemo, [R] Master Yi and Soraka vs. Pantheon, Amumu, Ryze, Miss Fortune and Nidalee

  • I got at least a kill or an assist every time I ganked a lane
  • I got lucky with an early-game counter jungle, and took advantage of my lead to snowball for the rest of the game
  • It didn’t matter how my allies were doing because I was never farming my own jungle, I was always going from lane to lane ganking and helping them that even the worst players would passively win their lane
  • I was in such a dominating lead that I was building towards Trinity Force after finishing Spirit of the Ancient Golem and Ruby Sighstone

Defeat: Sion, Nocturne (3/6/3), [R] Talon, Graves and Kayle vs. Cho’Gath, Jarvan IV, Katarina, Caitlyn and Soraka

  • My Internet connection randomly dropped at the beginning during initial loading, and I entered the game at 2:31
  • I was about two minutes late starting my jungle route, and got no help from my allies because laning phase had already begun, which put me even more behind
  • All three lanes lost, and there was nothing I could do to help because I was so far behind
  • The enemy team had a quick and relatively dominating victory

Defeat: [R] Renekton, Olaf, LeBlanc (10/3/1), Ezreal and Soraka vs. Nidalee, Shaco, Ahri, Ashe and Sona

  • Our Renekton gave away first blood, then rage quit about three minutes into the game
  • Our jungler did not instantly start covering top, which gave Nidalee a chance to get free farm and snowball in strength
  • I destroyed Ahri in mid lane and literally killed her two seconds after she would return to lane
  • Ahri decided after dying to me in that manner three times that she would instead roam and feed off bot lane
  • Nidalee constantly split pushed and made her way into our base, attacking our Nexus turrets
  • There was nothing I could do because the minions were dealing more damage to me than Nidalee, and I was passively dying trying to kill her; I couldn’t clear the minions because I’m LeBlanc
  • All of our top turrets were down (including the base turret and inhibitor), but our first-tier bottom turret was still up, so it was not absolutely clear to the ADC and support that their help was needed in our base
  • Nidalee pretty much single-handedly won the game for her team

Victory: Morgana, [R] Maokai, Zyra (12/2/5), Graves and Kayle vs. Shen, Malphite, Veigar, Caitlyn and Soraka

  • We invaded their blue and I got first blood off their ADC
  • We did a lane swap that allowed our ADC and support to kill the top turret about five minutes into the game, while Morgana was able to hold bottom
  • I got an early kill on Veigar and took advantage of the lead to prevent him from farming (which is crucial for Veigar in order to get stronger by last-hitting with his Q)
  • I adapted my build and went for early Rabaddon’s Deathcap and Zhonya’s Hourglass, allowing me to chunk down people’s health to half with a single Q
  • We started playing hyper-aggressively and got a dominating and easy victory

Defeat: Pantheon, [R] Maokai, Cassiopeia (8/5/3), Tristana and Soraka vs. Darius, Olaf, Mordekaiser, Teemo and Nunu

  • I have a curse with manaless champions where every time I play them myself, I suck, and every time I play against them, I also suck
  • I was told that Cassiopeia is a soft counter to Mordekaiser, and relied on that too much; I needed to focus more and make sure I was dominating rather than just winning, because Morde­kaiser was able to farm himself back into mid- and late-game
  • Our top laner lost hard, and was 0/5 at the end of laning phase
  • We had no strong tank line, so I was always in the front as the AP carry harassing and poking with my poison
  • In the case that I get pulled by Darius, my allies used me as sacrifice to run away rather than to initiate and fight
  • In one particular case, Darius pulled me in and I stunned all five enemies, threw down my Q and W on all of them, and spammed E, bringing them all down to below 50% health; my allies ran
  • Overall, our team had poor coordination, and our top laner lost too hard so we were deprived of a tanky front line

Victory: Cho’Gath (10/4/9), Shaco, [R] Ryze, Ezreal and Janna vs. Teemo, Xin Zhao, Evelynn, Darius and Zyra

  • We did a lane swap where I went 2v1 bottom lane and enemy Teemo went 2v1 top lane
  • I died early because I got caught by Zyra roots and bursted down under my turret
  • Teemo got a double kill in a four-man turret dive gank and survived
  • We switched back after I respawned and beat Teemo
  • Our team was more focused and on top of grabbing objectives and taking advantage of oppor­tunities
  • I was tanky and powerful enough to be able to fight the enemies 5v1, which distracted them enough for my team to sneak Baron
  • Overall, we had a mechanical victory in the sense that we played the game right, and I played my role disproportionately well

Defeat: LeBlanc (9/8/7), Xin Zhao (4/13/15), Riven, Vayne and Sona vs. Miss Fortune, Amumu, Fizz, Draven and Lulu

  • I did not kill Miss Fortune when I hit level 6 because I messed up my combo; I planned on W Q R E Q, but my first Q projectile did not go off, so my ultimate mimiced Distortion (dash ability) rather than Sigil of Silence (burst ability)
  • After that, Miss Fortune never came back to lane and roamed, feeding off middle and bottom lanes instead, so I couldn’t kill her
  • Our jungler had a bad game
  • Our team fighting was so disorganized that I usually never got an opportunity to go in and burst anyone down
  • Four of the five members on the enemy team rushed Negatron Cloak, most of them upgraded to Mercurial Scimitar or Abyssal Scepter, and Lulu also got Runic Bulwark; this prevented me from even killing the enemy ADC because he would just Quicksilver the mark from my mimiced Sigil of Silence, preventing me from detonating it and blocking a significant amount of damage, as well has blocking a lot of my damage through magic resistance
  • Xin Zhao, Riven, and Vayne were not strong enough did not have enough damage output to take advantage of the fact that the enemy team was itemizing to defend against me (tons of magic resist) and not against physical damage dealers (not much armor)
  • We had no strong initiation or disengage; the enemy team controlled when fights were happen­ing throughout the entire game, and determined for how long the fights would last

Defeat: Cho’Gath (13/6/17), Olaf, [R] Zed, Graves and Sona vs. Renekton, Malphite, Vladimir, Miss Fortune and Taric

  • Pretty much all of our lanes won during early game and we had quite a significant lead
  • The entire enemy team started stacking armor
  • Our Graves didn’t get Last Whisper until he finished three other items, and Zed never got armor penetration at all (he instead chose to buy three Bloodthirsters and a Blade of the Ruined King)
  • Zed was dying so much that his Bloodthirsters never got fully stacked
  • We never had enough damage output to win team fights, and I was the only one dealing good damage because not many enemies built magic resistance
  • I didn’t realize how important of a member I was for our team (as both a primary damage dealer and a tank), and got Randuin’s Omen when I should have either gotten Rabaddon’s Deathcap or Guardian Angel
  • The enemies won the game because they were able to out-survive us in every single team fight

 

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