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

Howldoom·11/7/2015, 3:37:40 AM·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

ValyrianBlade11/7/2015, 3:52:39 AM2 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.