The slightest bit of awareness

This is another issue that's been brewing for a while, and while I try to remain neutral in the threads I start, as usual, some anvils must be dropped.

*“If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.” * ~ Sun Tzu

Part of being a skilled player involves being aware of your surroundings, and I'm not referring to vision. What is the enemy building, what are their strengths, their weaknesses, likeliest tactics and build paths. Who might they pick to counter you? How much crowd control do they have? What champions do you most not want to face? What will you do if you have to face them? The same applies to your own team and especially yourself. When you're in the queue, it's important to exercise this, more so than instalocking Yasuo mid because you think you can get a pentakill.

This is why I prefer to be last pick. I can see what everyone else is picking on both teams, and then theorize everything I listed up there. This also ties into why I prefer to be the support. The champion I pick always compliments the strengths or compensates for the weaknesses of our team. If I'm support or jungler, that is. It's more difficult to compensate if you have to go top, mid or marksman. It's possible, but not as easy otherwise.

*“Ponder and deliberate before you make a move.” *

In this scenario, I ended up going top to compromise for the guy before me who wanted to go support; pick orders and all that. The guy at the top of our list, however, gave me the option of going either top or jungle. I told him that would be decided when it came to my turn, as I was still seeing what we were all building. He agreed, and I watched as we stacked up on pure damage while the enemy was composed mostly of mages. Four AP champions with moderate utility for each of them and a Jinx when it came to my turn. The entire time, I'm mulling it over in my head, understanding how they have enormous amounts of crowd control, zone control, bursting power and magic damage. I pick Darius, as we lack any tanks, and knowing that I was going to face Ryze, I concluded that my best strategy was to last through the pain long enough to max out hemorrhaging stacks and ult Ryze into oblivion. I also knew I needed to rush magic resist, and fast, in order to stop Ryze from bullying me out of the lane. I also knew that our Jax would need something to increase his magic resist while complementing his strengths as a basic attack heavy champion. I suggested Wit's End to him and Cait, something neither of them built. Maybe it made less sense on Cait, but it made a hell of a lot more sense on a guy who mostly does basic attacks against a mage-heavy team.

The first three items I built were Mercurial Scimitar, Maw of Malmortius, and Mercury Treads (but not in that order); basically, I wasn't going to be held down by their crowd control. With the assistance of Ahri and Jax on two separate occasions, respectively, I was able to get to 8/0 against Ryze and crush his lane. This wasn't because of skill. I knew that he'd be helpless if he couldn't break through the 140 plus magic resist, the same items gave me an enormous boost in attack damage, I had the natural armor penetration to negate the Frozen Heart I knew he'd build, and I just needed to last through a brief war of attrition long enough to blow him up.

The entire game, I kept reminding everyone else, specifically Jax, to build magic resist. He listened... sort of. The first item he rushed after his jungle item and boots ended up being the Blade of the Ruined King, of course. In this meta, it's what virtually anyone with attack damage will build. The problem is the enemy had far too much crowd control to allow him to sustain himself in a fight, and the percent damage and lifesteal that comes from that item specifically mostly comes into effect if the enemy has oodles of HP, which doesn't really come into play at early levels. He ended up dying. A lot. By the time he got Mercury Treads and Spirit Visage, it was too little too late. He got seven kills, but his total damage to enemy champions was dismal. A Wit's End may not have helped early on, but a Maw or Scimitar would have, especially when he was the jungler, needed to gank at any moment, and there was always a stun or snare waiting for him in every lane.

• “Attack him where he is unprepared, appear where you are not expected.” *

The downfall of our game came when we tried to four man rush the enemy nexus. Right as we attacked the bot inner turret, I noticed the entire enemy team was doing the same to our mid inner turret. I knew we'd lose that race because they had Jinx and Warwick. Even if they didn't, it wasn't worth the gamble. I order everyone to recall and ping our nexus multiple times. Only the support and I recall. Jax, Ahri and Cait continue to push the enemy inhibitor. Ryze recalls, manages to 1v3 them, the entire side of our team who ignored me when I said to build magic resist, against the one champion we had against the ropes the entire game.

The slightest bit of awareness in this game could have created a far different conclusion. So many games I've played have been won or lost because of the tiniest shreds of wisdom, but as what seems to be a very disturbing trend nowadays, people are less inclined to listen or pay attention to their surroundings or the strengths and weaknesses of their enemies or themselves; I once saw a guy in a queue make a trade with another player so he couldn't get counterpicked, and not paying attention to the right side of the screen, ended up counterpicking himself. There's not enough wards in the universe to compensate for that.