I just played a Ranked game after a few months and... it went as expected.
I'll just start this off by saying that I realize everyone has bad games. Just recently, I went 1/9 as Zed, a champion that I'm most familiar with, and even if I say that the enemy Lee Sin camped the hell out of me (which he did) and that he and Annie were duo (which they were) and that my ping was jumping from the average 77 to +400 throughout the game (which sucked), my score's still 1/9. I fed hella hard so I understand what a "bad game" is.
All that aside, I'd stopped playing Ranked for months because I dropped 2 whole divisions (Platinum II > Platinum IV) in a relatively short amount of time and didn't want to risk falling completely out of the rank. However, I just recently started playing abnormally well on the majority of my games so I figured I could pull off a few quick wins in Ranked which brought me to this game: https://i.imgur.com/4V0SMhj.png[/img]
Now, like I said earlier, I understand that everyone has bad games. My top lane cooked a buffet for the enemy Garen? Alright, it's still salvageable, I'll just build armor penetration. My bot lane has a combined score of half our entire team's deaths? Fine, I'm an assassin- I can probably deal with a fed ADC/support. My jungler's playing aggressive against multiple enemies within the enemy jungle, all by himself? Questionable, but I'll talk to him. Even with all these deaths, we still aren't losing too hard in objectives so maybe if we slow the game's pace and give ourselves time to catch up- if only a little- we just might be able to make a comeback, something that won't be possible if we keep throwing ourselves in the deep end.
Problem was, none of them made it any easier for me. I told them the things we could or should be doing instead of picking random skirmishes with no vision even after we got our butts slapped to our faces for the third time in a row- they listened.. sometimes. The times they didn't just added another tally to our death score. I was trying so hard not to get frustrated but at that point, even I wanted out of the game. I'm not trying to make any false accusations here but some of them just seemed to lack basic game knowledge. The simple things:
- don't fight with more enemies than you have teammates
- don't pick fights with no vision
- don't pick fights with fed enemy laners if you've already died more than a few* times in a row
- don't face check bushes, especially in the enemy jungle
- don't overextend
- don't overstay
- stop looking only for outplay moments and play the game
- take objectives if they're free
- gank lanes where you can actually make a difference
- make sure to CS properly
- note the enemy jungler's whereabouts to the best of your knowledge
- keep an eye out for opportunities but don't lose focus
I mean, I realize that Platinum isn't some incredibly high elo, but I feel that most of these are things that even Silver players know. Everyone had a negative mindset before 15 minutes, already assuming the game was over. The surrender vote was popping up the instant it came available and "FF" was said multiple times in chat. From what I've read on Boards, lots of other players are experiencing the same things. Teammates feeding and giving up before the early surrender vote is even available seems to be a common thing of games now.
I just wanted to ask what I could possibly have done there. Yes, I was frustrated, but I didn't let that seep into my chat. I told people what they could be doing instead of ordering them around, I pinged every chance I got, gave advice when available, helped whenever possible- I was basically doing macro for my entire team. None of it mattered in the end because everyone on their team was strong, I was strong, my team was weak- and we lost. I did everything I could to try and carry my team to a win. At this point right now, I'm just feeling that some games are virtually impossible to win no matter how good you are because of who matchmaking pairs you up with. It's almost as if the game is decided from the moment you enter the lobby, who's on which team and all that.
Update: My second Ranked game after a few months had a Garen ADC in the botlane who proceeded to feed the flying fuck out of Jinx and then she, with Karthus, melted everyone's faces off. For those of you wondering why I didn't dodge? I thought he and Teemo were swapping. They weren't.
The frustration is real.
