Once again, never surrender in ranked.

At 12 minutes it was 2 to 12.

At 17 minutes it was 4 to 23.

At 23 minutes it was 14 to 32. Blue team was up by 15 400 gold.

23 minutes later, they lost.

http://database.stumpnet.net/lolranked.png

(You can look this up if you're interested in the finer details.)

(edit: that pic is shit, here's a better one of the scoreboard.)

http://database.stumpnet.net/lolrankedzoom.png

Do you know why they lost? Because they were terrible, obviously. They got a MASSIVE early lead and turned it into an even bigger midgame lead, and then they blew it.

Do you know why we won? Our team wasn't happy, of course. They were also kind of shit. The only person in this game I'd accept a duo invitation from would be Jhin. But we weren't doing two things- one, we weren't raging. We weren't raging at our Yi, who was still powerfarming well past 6. We weren't raging at our Talon, who was feeding Yasuo hard. We weren't raging at our Wukong, the one member of our team (other than me) who had a chance of protecting Jhin, and who was doing a shit job of it. And perhaps more importantly, we weren't surrendering. I don't recall even seeing the surrender box pop; if it did it was literally once. If even ONE member of this underperforming band of scrubs had thrown up their hands and said "we are down 18 kills this is impossible", we would have lost then and there.

Our base was gone, all three inhibs and both nexus turrets down, before we even got our first turret. We won. They had four dragons to our EVENTUAL two. We won. They got baron with our nexus exposed. We won. Everyone on my team, shit as they might have been, was playing to win. And we won.

It's impressive what you can do when nobody's crying like a little bitch, eager to get to the next game and praying to be carried to a win they don't deserve or want. Because that's the short of it. You can be as good or as shit at this game as you like, if you aren't playing to win you are your team's anchor. And if you're the sort to spam surrender votes because you've lost four towers to their one, you are not playing to win, you are playing to get carried and treating this game like the giant slot machine that it sometimes is. "Comebacks are impossible now", say the people who are hellbent on making sure that that is true. No. You are just bad and I don't want you on my team. You lose 100% of the games you surrender, and more to the point, you lose 100% of the games ONE SINGLE ALLY wants to surrender. Don't be the reason your team loses. If you aren't confident enough to try to win every game of ranked you play, why are you wasting everybody's time? Get better and come back!

Surprisingly, they wanted to report Yasuo once we got to endgame chat; their hero who was 12/2 at one point. They were bickering and blaming each other. Surprise surprise. Turns out that someone can get massacred in lane and still do work later; Talon was the main reason why we were losing and became one of the reasons why we won.

Tangentially, always buy Mejai's on Janna (also Lux) once you've got your core gear. Either your team is going to get their shit together long enough for you to make use of it or you're going to lose regardless of what you buy. Finished that game with full stacks for the last ~10-12 minutes or so, and we were nowhere close to winning when I started it. Did it help? I'm sure our dive team didn't mind the massive shields and ad bonuses they were getting! Once they figured out how to play their champs, of course ¬_¬