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Why Can't I Win Games Mainly In The Way I Want To Win Them?

Howldoom··1 votes·390 views

Now, I'm not talking about trolling, here. I look through guides, I build runes/masteries and get itemization based off of them too.

It's more about the little things. Never mind the performance of allies, this also isn't a post that dumps on the "AFKs/leavers/feeders/ragers/trolls" likely keeping you from advancing in LP. What bothers me is that lately it feels like I really, REALLY have to micro-manage every little thing that I do in order to win and climb. Forget about having a life, minute-by-minute plot out separate build paths for all opposition in lanes or team comps, when to ward, even where I am located across all positions and mobility cooldowns. It's more that I try, I get better, but I always, ALWAYS seem to lose hard because of that "one little thing" that the enemy exploited, that completely screws over the game because they got ahead and utterly snowballed, if not off of me because I'm careful, then by roaming around and wiping everyone else out. And don't get me started on playing in solo queue vs duo queues, teams, or plat smurfs. Why can't Riot just create separate queues for them instead of having them crush face because of the disparity in opposition skill?

This is more of a post I made after losing in this week's FNM Standard (hence the location in Misc). I spent weeks wanting to make a good deck out of things that I had pulled in Drafts, and then got my ass handed to me by some weeb who bought multiple copies of rares and mythinc rares, clogging his deck with overkill. Personality-wise, I don't want to win because I hand-picked and bought every card in my deck from a store for tens or hundreds of $. I wanted to win and crush face with something that I made with what I had, and not necessarily spend $15 a week hoping for good draft picks. Likewise, I want to win and do well and climb with what I wanted to main and play square with, without churning half the season in custom games perfecting reflexive positional champs like Riven, Zed, or Lee Sin. The amount of energy I put into my Heimerdinger I SHOULD BE WINNING MORE (again, nevermind the enemy team snowballing off of a game-spoiler).

AND, AND, I don't like or want to hear people nasally complain about how I'm some kind of soft pansy living in Dreamland where everything is fair in the world and everyone gets what they want because of the heart of the cards or some crap. Nor do I like it when people try to soften the impact of me just not being able to win by trying to tell me that I AM doing good, I just need a little more X, good luck next time. Nor do I like it when people tell me to give up, or swear at me when they offer professional help and I turn it down because I still want my winning to be something I did myself and not anyone else's. Or the people who tell me to play other games, why I'm even playing competitively - these and others are kinds of responses that, if I am incensed, would make my want to say or do things that would get me permabanned because real world ethics still apply.

SO - probably leaving readers confused because my general negative mindset leaves little room for rational discourse. TL, DR. Read it, leave something, and go.

3 Comments

ValyrianBlade2 votes

Well, Heimerdinger has had one of the highest win rates in the game (at all levels of play below Master) for a very long time (all of season 5 and back a fair bit in to season 4 - his win rate has been north of 52.5% the whole time, frequently over 54%, and occasionally spiked over 56% - heck, he's 56.3% top and 55.6% mid win rates right now - http://champion.gg/)

So to say you can't win by mastering Heimerdinger and need to spend a lot of time to learn Riven/Zed/Lee Sin (win rates of 51.8%, 49.7%, 47.6% respectively) seems awfully inaccurate. You can do a lot better on Heimerdinger with a lot less work than people on these other champions.

To try to help: It sounds like you're lacking a lot of what I will call "game sense". You shouldn't be memorizing builds for each scenario, you should be actively picking the most appropriate item to build at each point in time. Likewise, you shouldn't be memorizing when to ward, you should be selecting when it's important to ward and warding in the appropriate locations. Etc...

It's like taking a test. If you memorize all the study material, you'll get all of the straightforward questions right, but you'll get all the questions that require an understanding of the material to apply to a new situation wrong. Likewise here, if you memorize what to do you'll get the little things right and will win the 'normal' games where the most meta picks are chosen and people play predictably, but you'll lose every time the enemy makes an unusual play (really early dragon/baron, early turret dive, early gank, heavy trade, different build, etc...) because while you know they shouldn't be doing that you don't know how to punish them for making the wrong move.

Overall I'd suggest focusing on what the champion you're playing is supposed to accomplish in a game, and make sure you accomplish that. This varies by champion. LeBlanc for example is supposed to get a lot of kills and snowball and blow up the enemy adc whenever she sees them. Tahm Kench is supposed to get incredibly tanky and save any ally that's out of position.

If you're set on Heimerdinger - he's supposed to constantly pressure turrets and push lanes in. He's supposed to rush Zhonya's so he can lay down his mega-turret and go untargetable whenever he gets ganked. He's supposed to force attention on to him to prevent him taking an inhibitor at 15 minutes so that his allies can take advantages elsewhere (and he's supposed to take lots of turrets to get his team global gold). If you're playing Heimerdinger and getting lots of kills and few deaths, but you aren't taking lots of turrets, you're not going to win. That's not how Heimerdinger wins games - if you want to do that playstyle pick a champion that works well with it (like LeBlanc). If you want to win with Heimerdinger, you do what he's good at - pressuring turrets.

Then again, you probably know this. So then perhaps it comes down to how to pressure turrets. Small mistakes like you said. In which case, since I don't play Heimerdinger I won't be much help. Just take the first point to heart - focus on understanding why you're making decisions rather than memorizing them. You want to select the right decision, not choose a play from memory.

Howldoom1 votes

Okay, example - http://matchhistory.na.leagueoflegends.com/en/#match-details/NA1/2001865691/203289894?tab=overview. Where was my lack of game sense here? Getting jumped on and stunned before I could use my Zhonya's, Kat getting fed off of roaming (I managed to zone her out in lane, at least)... Let's assume I have no game sense at all here.

I wasn't asking in terms of "when" to do things, but what to do. I can't control a lane if my opponent roams off and kills people in spite of pings. Nor can my turrets do much if their Panth/Caitlyn/Kat are poking and smiting them down. And when I go in to ult my turret, they all jump on me and cc me before I can Zhonya's. WHAT do I do then? No pick Heimer at all?

ValyrianBlade2 votes

It's hard to tell just from looking at a match history (you need a full replay).

Anyways though: First, 2 of your 4 deaths were to Kat in mid lane near your tier 2 turret. Those look like solo deaths - if you're dying 1v1 in lane (even to ganks) that's preventable (ward and don't over extend, Kat and Pantheon don't exactly have the most CC even though they have loads of damage).

More importantly, Kat got an early roam and kill on Graves. I know that sucks. I know you said you pinged, so I'll believe you. Sometimes your teammates just suck and ignore the pings and die, nothing you can do. Sometimes your ping isn't good enough (you notice 15 seconds later that mid is missing, you ping MIA, but you don't have any idea whether she's headed bot or top). You can't just ping MIA on lane and make 4 other teammates give up their advantage because you weren't tracking the enemy. You need to notify your team where they're headed at minimum, and ideally you FOLLOW the roam to countergank if possible. The only excuses for not following are:

  1. You were based when they went to roam (probably part of the reason for the tp mid meta) - in this case it just sucks for your teammates but you were ultimately outplayed if you had to base and the enemy mid had enough health to safely roam bot.
  2. You're sufficiently low on health that if you follow they can turn and 1v1 you easily (although there's an argument to be made here that you can follow through the safety of your own jungle rather than down river).
  3. Your teammates in that lane don't have any advantage to press and you can take a turret while they retreat to their turret and are safe from a dive (if the enemy is good at diving, you should follow to help deter the dive or get kills if they dive).

In order to prevent the opponent roaming you need to get more out of it than they do. That means you need to be able to take the turret (or get good damage on it at least), you need to get an xp advantage from her missing minions, etc... That way it becomes high risk for her to roam, if she doesn't get a kill or two she'll be quite far behind. Also that way your team won't mind retreating on the ping, because they can see how the team is getting a net advantage out of the play.

I suppose the last point is to use Zhonya's as you're about to get CC'd. As soon as pantheon shows drop your mega turret, when he starts his leap forward, Zhonya's. That's probably a reaction-time thing.

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