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Help with Ranked Intro

BlueBanthaMilk·6/20/2015, 12:05:45 AM·1 votes·806 views

I just hit ranked, started on my introductory games and I have to say, they aren't going too well. Baaaadly, most of them, except for the first. FYI this is going to be a 50% everything I've found different about ranked, what I dislike, etc. and the other 50% is going to be a recap of each game, after which I would like a suggestion for any improvement tips or options you could give. I've lost each of the four intro games so far.

First off, I'm a Top Main (can do above-average in mid as well), and I main... Teemo. Teemo is the bomb for me, something about his kit just works really well with how I play and I do consistently good with him, I'm always trying to improve on a variety of things with him. It's always exciting to see improvement on him, but in the almost never seen eventuality of a ban or Teemo pick, I backup with Kassadin AP/Bruiser or Cho Tank.

Without further ado:

Game 1: Teemo Top, Donger Mid, Panth JG, Thresh Supp, Ezreal ADC

It was a solid game, I finished far above positive in score and our team was dominating almost the entire time. While I did have some trouble with the enemy laner (Darius) who consistently bullied me away, it seemed that neither he nor the jungler knew the MU pretty well, and I was able to continuously poke and harass over the laning phase, building up a solid 6-3 lead.

Endgame comes around, we are five dragons (twice!) and two barons up, all towers pushed to base, when the game just starts to slide. I know why it happened to-both teams were equally skilled, but between the darius/rek/sona ult combo, our damagers just couldn't make it to the back line quick enough. (when we did it was an auto-kill tho) Somehow we throw is from ten kills up, and it just didn't seem right. One big team fight at 1:00:00 where we were caught out of position and that was it.

I really didn't see any room from improvement here besides CSing, which is something I've tried to work on a lot.

If I had to complain about my teammates, it would be that our Panth wasn't really a gamechanging force at all and fell off late game, and my duoqueing brother the Thresh just kept missing hooks. Also Ez didn;t get early kills, but that wasn't his fault. Can't honestly complain though, everyone was really good and nice.

Game 2: Everything goes down the hill

Got stuffed with last pick (three games in a row, too. matchmaking karma), and had to jungle. Knowing that I only had Lee and Kha to choose from, I went with the option that I am a bit more familiar with, but still never saw much success with even in Unranked: Kha.

RANKED HATE: You know its bad when... Riven Top: "LOL garen is such as easy mu" -Enters Game- -Leaves 0-5 or something like that-

This game sucked so bad, and I try not to jungle a lot because I haven't mastered the ganking dynamic (namely, when to do it and for which lane), and yet I still did bad. Dammit, Kha is just waaaay too weak.

So here I am, doing my usual jungle farming up to six, when Riven pings like crazy under her tower-apparently, that bad garen's about to dive her. At half health from rock monster things, I leave them and the gold behind to go help after a bit of watching her panicked pinging. Garen swings by the back, I swing by for a kill, aaaaand nothing. He's at 1/4 health and I can't convert. I felt honestly terrible at that point, and it's a trend for the rest of the game.

From there the game slides into oblivion.

For improving myself, I'd say that honestly, I need a stronger jungler. (Never did choose high ranking picks save for rek sai, who I refunded in order to finish runes and buy enough champs to play ranked. Maybe I should refund kha instead o_0) That, and I just plain need to work on jungling more. I was worst in the team, and just did so terribly.

If I had to blame my teammates though, I would quickly point to the fact that my team sucked just as much as I did, and their scores show it.

Game 3: Cho Top (My team was whining for a tank.... for some reason... I acquiesced)

This game I fed a bit early, and as a result had to camp under second tower after losing the first at 4:00 to their warwick and Irelia. Lategame I tried to tank and help convert, but couldn't escape the mass of crowd control their team possessed and as a result couldn't totally tank for my team. I stacked R early, lost it a bit midgame, but continued to raise it with jungle camps.

Cho is one of my more familiar champs, and even though I played solidly latergame to help secure kills, I still felt like I faltered early on against their honestly very good Irelia. Still felt like I would have done better with Teemo here.

This was a fifty fifty game, but my team wasn't doing great either. I tried to suck it up and keep going, which was what lead to the next game..

Game 4: Teemo Top

Quick summarization here.

It was a long game, we had no tanks, tried to drag it out as long as possible for a lategame comback. CSed well vs a Lissandra but couldn't sustain through pokes enough, went 1-2 early game (so many close kills tho). I really fell off late game, whenever our team had a bad engage )often), me and the only other good player (a Yi JG) couldn't convert enough.

Tbh our ashe built botrk, when 1-7-0, and the morgana never ulted even when the enemy team was incredibly out of position.

Please give any advice you folks have! I want to convert every one of the next six games into a win if I can!

4 Comments

kneel on Ice6/20/2015, 12:57:55 AM1 votes

Best advice : STOP PLAYING TEEMO

COWmanLord6/20/2015, 1:20:38 AM1 votes

Well I got nothing to do for a good 40 mins so I will try to spend a good amount of time with this. I will divide this post into two sections. The first will go over each individual game and try to explain why you probably lost. The second section will just go over some general tips that may help you.

Game #1

I would probably say this game was a failure to end before the enemy team inevitably outscaled you. Teemo and Donger are both very lane centric champions. They can be very strong early on, but suffer from some pretty heavy fall off points later on. Same with pantheon. He really needs to get an early lead and use it to crush the enemy team or he starts to get weaker and weaker the longer the game progresses. This was the kind of game where you team needed to get and early lead and be brutal with taking the enemy down. Ezreal typically has a very strong late game, but not with the build he went with.

Your team only took 6 towers throughout the whole game despite getting 2 barons and the fifth dragon twice. This probably meant you simply were not pushing enough, and were not getting as much out of those buffs as you could have. When you grab either of those buffs you should typically just go to a lane (maybe even split up and push several) and starting forcing towers down. The other team will have no choice, but to either fight you while you are empowered by the buff, or lose their towers.

The last thing I notice from this game is that the average kill participation (percentage of teams kills that they either got or assisted in) is higher than your teams average. This probably means that their team grouped up more efficiently than yours did. This is probably where their team comp really came into effect. They had a comp which could very reliably protect twitch and karma as you team was fairly lacking in hard engage.

Summary: This loss was largely due to team composition and inability to end. Your team had several weaknesses that he enemy team was able to exploit while you were not able to use your lead to its full potential.

Game #2

Don't have a whole lot to say here as it was a very short game. The main reason your team lost was simple that each enemy player performed better. It seems like a lot of the credit goes to their lee sin, but overall this seems like a simple example of one team just performing better.

Game #3

Wukong did quite poorly this game and that seems to have been the largest factor contributing to the loss. Even if you had a rough time early it seems like a lot of it started with him trading 1 for 1 with irelia. This would be equal for the team, but would also have made it easier for irelia to fight you while laning. It also looks like either mid lane roamed bot and got kills there. Again it was a fairly short game, but it basically looks like it can be summarized as Wukong being a bit of a burden and bot getting screwed over by roams.

Game #4

This seems like another case of team comp. The enemy team just had a very well rounded and very strong comp. Vi supplied heavy initiation, Liss had large amounts of CC, Xerath could poke people down, Trist would handle the ad damage, and zilean could do what he needed to do to support the others. Bot lane in particular had a rough time, but it doesn't look like anyone else did much better.

I would like to have provided a bit more feedback on the games themselves, but there doesn't appear to be a huge amount that I can point out without having actually seen the games themselves. Hopefully you will find the second section more useful.

General Tips

  1. Champion Pool: You don't have many games, but this seems to be one of your larger weaknesses. I would recommend having at least 1 or 2 champions that you can play reliably for each role. This is probably one of the most important things you need to do before you can really succeed in ranked. I would also recommend choosing someone other than teemo to be one of your mains. He is fine if you really want to play him and can do well, he just has a few weaknesses that good players can exploit pretty easily (Squishy, tends to fall off late, only escape is a movespeed steroid). However if you do want to keep playing him go ahead. You improve the most by playing what works for you. Here is a quick list of some decent choices for each lane. (This focuses on champs that are not to difficult and are also pretty good for solo que if you want more options look at this tier list. Just remember that it provides a good base, but don't worship it too much.)

http://www.nerfplz.com/2015/06/2015-champion-tier-list-solo-queue.html

Top: Irelia, Hecarim,

Jungle: Volibear,Udyr, Warwick

Mid: Xerath, Ziggs,

Adc: Caitlyn, Graves, Sivir

Support: Alistar, Soraka, Sona

  1. Csing: This is the most basic of all basic skills, but is simultaneously likely the most important. If you want to improve go ingot a custom game alone (no people no bots) turn off all runes and masteries then try to last hit with an ap champ using only your autos. Do this until you can reliably get 70ish cs by the 10 minute mark. This is a very boring training exercise, but if you can get to this point and emulate the same cs scores in actual games where you will have runes, masteries, and abilities then you will have a huge advantage over other low ranking people.

  2. Pushing: Remember that once the laning phase is over you typically want your minions waves pushing towards the enemy base. This will make it a lot easier to apply pressure and take objectives, especially after winning fights. This is also a good reason to take tp over ignite in many scenarios, because you can get back to your team quickly.

You don't seem to be having to much trouble. You kda and wards placed, generally are not too bad, at least when compared with some of your team, but in the end you still may just want to put off going into ranked for awhile longer. I would say finish your last 6 games before the season ends and maybe play some ranked to try your hand at the ladder (the games may be easier for you. provisional games can have some wacky match making involved), but if you have lost your first 4 you probably won't place very highly. If you enjoy the competitiveness in ranked go ahead and play more, but if you just want to climb as high as you can you may want to avoid ranked for awhile. I know I started ranked before I was really ready, and that I have learned a lot since I began.

However remember if you are really interested in playing ranked go ahead, have fun, and I wish you good luck. Hope some of this super post can help. (dang I actually spent a whole hour on this without even noticing lol)

Oh and as a side note, if you want help getting better at jungling here are a few youtube channels that have some information that could help.

https://www.youtube.com/user/foxdropLoL

https://www.youtube.com/user/luigidragon

https://www.youtube.com/user/ScrapComputer (this guys actually has a lot of good information for things outside the jungle that are worth looking at. Be warned though, this guys videos are frequently close to an hour long or longer, so you may want to space out how much you watch at once)