What did I do wrong? - High Gold Game Baffling Loss

BluePolarizer·Dec 10, 2014·1 votes·2,810 views

I am baffled by a recent loss I had in high gold/low plat elo. My team didn't troll or rage. Every lane won or went even. I started out 4-0 as Master Yi. Yet the end result was their ADC with a fully stacked sword of the occult and dancing on our nexus turrets after acing us.

I really want to get better. Right now I've hit a wall at the top of Gold 1 and have failed Plat promos several times. Some of them were due to trolls or ragers, but this game shows I was clearly outplayed despite snowballing myself and my team.

http://matchhistory.na.leagueoflegends.com/en/#match-details/NA1/1660350093/213933916?tab=overview

Here is a link to the match history.

Teams: Jax, Yi, Annie, Vayne, Soraka vs. Fiora, Vi, Swain, Ezrael, Azir.

I was playing Yi in the jungle. Annie is bullying Swain. Vi picks up a very early FB on Annie mid, but is unable to snowball the lane further. Annie is still ahead in CS vs. Swain.

Vayne solo kills Ezrael.

I then gank bot along with Annie after Ez gets back and pick up a triple kill on Swain, Ezrael and Azir, along with dragon, and Annie killed Vi. We had zero losses except Jax losing 1v1 to Fiora top. I kill an overextended Swain again. I was thinking at this point - easy game. There is no way for them to come back now - Vayne is big, we have dragon, Jax can come back once I gank Fiora and there's no way for them to stop a 4-0 Master Yi. I was hoping that teamfight would completely crush their morale. The score was something like 10-2, they lost dragon, Vayne is fed, Yi is fed and Jax is keeping up.

Azir and Ez pushed our bot tower while I was healing, I don't know what Vayne was doing at that time, but she and Soraka weren't dead.

Then the downhill roll started.

We were not able to snowball even further and capitalize on our lead. Whenever we tried to push as a group, Azir and Swain would instantly clear the wave and Ezrael would then be able to freely poke us. Vayne couldn't get any shots in because she eats Ez/Azir poke and Swain zoned her out. We had no poke and were not strong enough to dive them, especially with Azir's displacement and Swain's snare. I tried splitpushing but Fiora was too strong and could 1v1 me.

We lost a fight at our mid outer tower.

Every fight afterwards played out in the same way. Azir and Swain would clear the wave. Ez would poke us while minions took the turret. We tried diving Ez several times and each time we were peeled by Azir's ult and by Vi. Vayne couldn't land any hits without eating poke. The only fights we won were when we had Annie flash, but they'd siege when Annie's flash was down, even when behind, and win simply due to poke. Even when they lost fights, Azir and Ezrael would keep getting away with their peel and mobility. If anyone tried to splitpush, Fiora could stop them. We died over and over again either running away from their poke (and getting chased down and killed) or forcing a fight and dying because we get peeled off Ez/Azir and killed by Azir/Swain's sustained damage or Fiora's burst.

I don't know what went wrong. A diamond player who started as 4-0 Yi would almost certainly not have lost. What made my decisions worse than the diamond player's?

28 Comments

Faith BreakerDec 10, 20145 votes

I just wanna point out that I love the OP poster's attitude. He isn't blaming anyone and is actively seeking to improve his game. Bravo sir.

Leti the YetiDec 10, 20142 votes

my credentials: Silver scrublord Well I analyzed literally everything the best I could and I bring you this huge wall of text however heres the tl;dr if you rather not read huge walls of text from someone lower tier than you Your early game lead was not as amazing you thought they had a superior team fight comp and had the means to stall the game long enough for it to show

Srry for bad formatting btw, im not good at that

They have a better team comp than you

you can do well in lane but not so much in a team fight was Azir their support? he cant set up kills for their adc nor peel while soraka is excellent at keeping your vayne alive in lane annie from what i heard is a very strong laner.. i dont even know why top lane, jax counters fiora but their fiora must be more skilled so, that must be why you saw early success IN LANE
your siege ability was bad Azir's absurd range can be used to safely clear waves and poke you, excellent for coping with YOUR siege or sieging AGAINST you Ezreal has a fair amount of range as well as AoE damage from iceborn you guys have 2 melee and an adc with pitiful AA range... also soraka whom has no wave clear melee champs and short range are just bad against and for siege, should not have to explain why overall, this means they are better at stalling time than you are...
they have better team fights due to superior cc and engage Vi ult engages? good fiora ult just rapes team... also good Swain has impressive AoE... good Azir's ult can either trap you to your doom or act as some of the most broken disengages ever on the otherhand... uuh your team yi has impressive AoE.. but if you jump in first, you will blow up and die overall no cc, no hard engages except for annie ult+stun.. Perhaps you thought at the time sending your squishy mage to engage wasnt smart considering their pokes

**Item choice wasnt ideal **

I can see why you would go damage due to your early game lead BUT

they have a good poke/stall/siege comp
no one on your team built tanky items to cope with this
jax should have went tank having noticed he was the most viable tank on your team
annie should have had a build akin to their swain, after all she has to engage...and most annies build fairly not squishy anyway
annie however did build morellos.. good for you annie, thats a good choice

You were doing a questionable job at your roles

maybe it wasnt your fault considering how difficult it would be to do it

as adc or master yi... your job is to deal damage, you can have 0 kills for all anyone cares as long as you deal damage.. attack DAMAGE carry...
looking at the pie graph, despite you having the most skills and vayne being the carry.. your damage dealt to champions was even below Annie's whaaat??

Yeah, im not done yet so keep reading...

The Early game advantage you thought you had might not actually have been there Sorry to break it to ya, but you know you said you were doing well

Botlane

Ezreal and Vayne were near the same goldwise..HOWEVER
11 minutes in, Ezreal has vamp and BF sword while vayne had a cutlass.....their Ezreal was actually stronger than your adc
fun fact, despite that lead you thought you had, Ezreal has the highest bonus AD of anyone on the map at the time

2.6k?

yes your gold lead over them at the most was 2.6k at some point... not as amazing as you thought huh? kills arent everything

Nit picky stuff

that big fight you had around 21 minutes either exemplies their superior team comp OR you guys had focused the wrong champions
Vi went down but she was a semi tank/engage anyway
Swain also went down but he too is abit of a damage sponge due to high regen w/ ult
Ezreal on the otherhand got away free and rekt you guys

-yawn im tired there are probably more stuff

my final advice to you, its not about the kills.. its more about the items, plus cs matters alot true 4/0? yeah diamonds would snowball hard however you had crappy items despite that i am hitting the word limit

BluePolarizerDec 10, 20141 votes

Thanks for the reply. I built bruiser Yi to get out of silver and low gold in less than 100 games. So has several other Yi mains, in fact. I think there's CommandoYi as well who is a diamond bruiser Yi main. I've been stuck in gold 1/2 for 700 or so games, LOL.

Yi already has huge damage. He hits a huge power spike at devourer then another huge one at BoRK. However, if you aren't monstrously fed, you won't get enough gold from jungling to save up for a BF sword and still be relevant in mid-game. I've noticed that unless my team is 15-0 or something and the other team mentally ff's and gives up before the 15 minute mark, mid-game can always turn things around.

For mid-game teamfights, thats when their ADC+support has just enough damage to kill you in the duration of 3 seconds of cc if you built full glass. That is literally 2 stuns - what team doesn't have 2 stuns? Meanwhile, even with just devourer and BoRK, at lvl 12, you still kill the ADC in Q plus at most 6-8 autos which is 3-4 seconds of uninterrupted autoing at the 2.0 attack speed you get with my straight AS build + devourer + bork.

Plus, on my team we didn't have any tanks, so we needed everyone to be at least somewhat tanky enough. Otherwise, without wardens mail and banshees, it is literally impossible to kill Ez/Azir because you can't run up to Ez and start autoing him, you need to Q onto him - but if you Q onto him, he can E away and then Azir can peel with ult, and your Q is on a very long CD if you can't keep autoing Ez. The reason my damage was lower than Annie's was because Annie was our engager and had AOE burst, and was in every teamfight, while I was either trying to splitpush, hold lanes, etc. and I died too fast in mid-game teamfights right after I got BoRK, devourer, boots and cloth armor.

You've probably seen Yi build full glass and melt a team in silver. I've done that when I was back in silver and I've had it done to me in silver. That's because alot of people see "omg, fed Yi, what do I do??!!". If even one person on the team panics in this case, its gg since Yi will chase them down, kill them in 3 seconds and get resets to kill the rest. In low plat, people panic less, and they will shut you down much more effectively if you build pure glass since they won't panic and throw everything at you to be dodged by Q.

Everything else I agree with. I think one strategy improvement I could've made was getting randuins then getting full damage, forgetting MR and split pushing vs. Fiora, since I could still explode her in 6-8 autos but just needed to tank her autos + have enough to tank her ult with meditate. I should've run ghost or tp over flash, since after killing Fiora, Ez and Azir would come to stop me and my ult would've been on CD, so I needed an escape mechanism or to push another lane when they weren't there. If not, I should've taken Ghostblade over LW after Warden's mail since I would be fighting Fiora. I should've realized that teamfighting them in a lane and trying to catch Ez were futile.

RaemnantDec 10, 20141 votes

Well from my own average silver opinion(Although I dont do much ranked, so I may or may not be higher up, never tried), When an enemy team as a superior poke, wave clear, and siege potential, you have to fight them on your terms, not theirs. That is to say, in jungle, or river. Bait a fight. Let there be bushes and ledges to take advantage of so that the enemy cant freely land harass on you, because they know where you are and theres nothing stopping them. Keep vision on your jungle when theyre sieging, and wait for an opportunity to pick someone off, or when they make a mistake

BluePolarizerDec 10, 20141 votes

This is exactly right. I wish Baron spawned earlier; the 20 minute baron spawn screwed over my team. The old baron spawn of 15 minutes would've allowed our team to use our power spike to get baron then just dive them with baron buff, since we would've taken it extremely fast and the regen would've allowed us to keep up with their poke. However, we gave up a free dragon as well as a free bot outer tower when we were ahead since Vayne and Soraka went roaming - if we kept that bot outer tower while their bot outer tower was down, then we would've had complete map control over bot, then Soraka could start warding their jungle and we'd be able to starve Vi out, since Vi was already far behind.

I think I should've camped bot and kept pushing bot. That way it forces at least their bot lane to deal with me, while Fiora is far away, and our team could win 3v1's mid or risk losing top lane to Jax. It also allows us to keep the bot outer tower, which would be a safe refuge to run to after dragon fights. Vi was already irrelevant except as peel, but with Annie, Vayne and Soraka, it was enough peel to kill Vi and threaten mid if the opposing bot lane was not there.

The best strategy, now that I think about it, would've been to prevent them from grouping by splitpushing bot. For that, I should've taken better summoners and gotten randuins+ghostblade instead of banshees+LW. I also should've gotten red smite to 1v1 fiora better.

FiendOfOneDec 10, 20141 votes

Well, for one: by and large, their team scaled and yours didn't. Even snowballing, champs like Yi and Jax have an upper limit. They're very strong early game, but are ultimately limited in their mechanics and don't scale super well. Meanwhile, Their entire time hits a HUGE mid game power spike and continues to scale up from there. They played their mechanics right; you guys had an all in close range, hard engage and go team comp. They had a poke/peel/disengage team comp. They had better scaling and a comp that directly countered yours, and they used their teams advantages well.

KOREA Blaze 420Dec 10, 20142 votes

except master yi and jax don't have poor scaling, quite the opposite...

FiendOfOneDec 10, 20141 votes

Yi sorta does, with most of his damage actually coming from his E (as his q scaling isn't actually that awesome for AD, it's about on par with most other melee ADer's). Jax's scaling is TERRIBAD, with his only real scaling being his surprising level of tankiness when he pops his ult. His damage falls off the longer the games goes on (his q has bonus 100% AD, his W scales off of AP only, and his E is 50% bonus AD); plus he runs mixed damage (as all of his abilities do magic damage but he relies so much on AA's that he can't ignore physical and it's better to build him that way, other than triforce and maybe like a hextech or something).

KOREA Blaze 420Dec 10, 20141 votes

Jax is a late game monster, he always has been. That's where his strength lies. He becomes too tanky and does plenty of damage with 2 damage items alone that he can carry.

Angry MonsterDec 10, 20141 votes

Who on your team was supposed to get on their ADC? This is a comp issue. Vayne is obviously behind all game compared to the EZ. Jax is a great dueler though but he cannot dive that team. Your CC is almost completely based off Annie. And you have no tank.

Welcome to the limits of Yi.

BluePolarizerDec 10, 20141 votes

I was supposed to dive Ez. Turns out Azir peels very well since Qing onto Ez means he E's away and Azir ult blocks you when you chase him down, and if you run at Ez, same thing happens in reverse.

VarnocDec 10, 20142 votes

In that case you timed your abilities incorrectly, hold your Alpha Strike until he ports away. Azir's ult can be troublesome, but if he completely blocks you off you may as well cut your losses at this point and hit someone else until they return and you can Alpha Strike them again. Fiora sounds like she was a problem as well anyway, so it may have paid off a little to kill her so she couldn't take Vayne out.

In response to the original question, in my opinion you made a mistake when trying to split push initially, and dying to Fiora. At this point in the game the safest strategy to use is grouping up and roaming to take turrets, picking off enemies as you go. Warding their jungle as you take out turrets is vital, as they have a very strong teamfighting composition, you don't want to be caught by more than 3 of them until everyone has heavy defensive items. Vayne and Jax are very, very good at picking people off in the jungle, so if it's warded you can make picks easily.

Later in the game Banshee's would be a blessing to have for everyone, and sweepers to keep knocking out vision is critical so they can't pick you off like you did earlier. Fight in the jungle and pick Fiora off to keep her from obliterating Vayne, she is your top priority.

This is likely not a perfect plan, and this is coming from a gold V player, so everything with a grain of salt :)

BluePolarizerDec 10, 20141 votes

That is actually a very good plan if I had thought about it more deeply. I think this is what distinguishes us golds from diamonds - they would've thought about this in-game, and actually made the correct decisions needed to execute this plan (spam pings on bot turret when it was going down for free; not wasting my pink on our own top jungle when nothing was happening)

The bot outer turret was key. Once their bot outer turret went down, it meant that their jungle safe zone is pushed away from wraiths and red, and towards golems. However, when our bot outer turret went down, it meant that their jungle and river became neutral territory again where neither team had an advantage. This meant they could group safely; so could we but they were better teamfighters. If we had kept bot turret alive, and it was very easy to do since they pushed it for free while behind, we would've kept an advantage of 1000 gold and more importantly, pushed the safe zone for their team away from the river so we could snowball by takng more dragons and picking them off in their own jungle.

City of TorontoDec 10, 20141 votes

I can say a few things right off the bat:

Swain is OP. Yes. He is sleeper OP. He poses a great threat to your team (3 of you guys have to get in range to even hit him)
You have a triple AD/auto attack comp. Azir/Ezreal/Swain/Fiora all counter your team to varying degrees.
Your build path as Yi wasn't optimal. You stacked penetration despite Yi's access to true damage, and you went for on hit. Thus you did fairly low amounts of damage. Do mind that your Q scales with AD and can crit as well. You built no crit.
You were never that far ahead. You peaked at 2.6k ahead, which really isn't anything difficult to make a comeback from.

BluePolarizerDec 10, 20141 votes

From what I've seen from other Yi mains, there's a split between those who build bruiser Yi and those who build full damage, even in diamond. Those who build brusier Yi say that Yi has plenty of damage, he just needs to survive for the 3-4 seconds it takes to deal it, so get 1-2 defensive items after the damage core. The full damage Yi mains think the way you do.

I can't say which is right. I got out of silver and low gold very fast with bruiser Yi though.

Swain is indeed sleeper OP and it was impossible to deal with him. He was way too tanky and could deal substantial sustained damage.

2.4 k at the 13 minute mark is quite substantial, representing something like 20% lead, and in the LCS, results in something like a 80% win rate. Obviously high gold/low plat isn't the LCS, but it is a huge advantage.

City of TorontoDec 10, 20141 votes

From what I've seen from other Yi mains, there's a split between those who build bruiser Yi and those who build full damage, even in diamond. Those who build brusier Yi say that Yi has plenty of damage, he just needs to survive for the 3-4 seconds it takes to deal it, so get 1-2 defensive items after the damage core. The full damage Yi mains think the way you do.

I can't say which is right. I got out of silver and low gold very fast with bruiser Yi though.

Swain is indeed sleeper OP and it was impossible to deal with him. He was way too tanky and could deal substantial sustained damage.

2.4 k at the 13 minute mark is quite substantial, representing something like 20% lead, and in the LCS, results in something like a 80% win rate. Obviously high gold/low plat isn't the LCS, but it is a huge advantage.

I'm not talking about your defensive item choices, I'm talking about your offensive item choices. You didn't go skirmishers, and you went last whisper. You should have gone with ghostblade instead. All you need on Yi is ghostblade, skirmishers, and bork. You can then go tanky and maybe add an IE if you can.

Indeed 2.4k gold at 13 minutes is big, but it looks like you guys did nothing with that gold lead. In fact they got more objectives and kills than you guys did with that lead.

BluePolarizerDec 11, 20141 votes

{quoted} I'm not talking about your defensive item choices, I'm talking about your offensive item choices. You didn't go skirmishers, and you went last whisper. You should have gone with ghostblade instead. All you need on Yi is ghostblade, skirmishers, and bork. You can then go tanky and maybe add an IE if you can.

Indeed 2.4k gold at 13 minutes is big, but it looks like you guys did nothing with that gold lead. In fact they got more objectives and kills than you guys did with that lead.

Agreed. Now that I think about it, I should have indeed gone Skirmisher's and ghostblade.

We couldn't seem to find a good strategy with our lead.

LamfiraDec 10, 20141 votes

The problem is you didn't have anyone to set it up for you. If your top laner picks somebody like Jax, as a jungler you should probably be grabbing a jungle like Jarvan IV - not a character who is a duplicate of Jax with slightly different mechanics.

Jax and Yi both outscale most every other character in a 40 minute game but they rely on either 1v1 split pushing or flanking to the backline. That means you need somebody to hard engage in order to be effective, either you playing a tank jungle or the top laner playing somebody like Maokai or Malphite. You can't run from poke/engage comps who are chasing your team, as a general rule. Once that domino starts your team is going to be wiped.

BluePolarizerDec 10, 20141 votes

I'm not too good with j4 - went on a huge losing streak with him in low gold and don't feel confident enough to hard carry with him since I don't have the best mechanics. I like junglers with few skillshots - my previous go-to tank jungler was Warwick, and he's now permabanned. Maybe I should start picking up Maokai, since he's extremely tanky + decent clear speeds and damage + easy mechanics?

LamfiraDec 11, 20141 votes

I don't think jungle Maokai is the best. I know there is a Maokai prodigy out there who's gonna disagree with me (hehe), but I feel like you would be underutilizing his passive by not having another champion nearby for a lot of the game.

Nasus is the big dawg but I don't think it would have helped too much in that game. The problem was you didn't have a wombo combo to drill into their team to start a fight. If you could have slowwalked (positional pressure) into their front line and popped ult/withered Ezreal it might have worked, but Ezreal is a kiting machine and Azir can throw you right back out with his ult after you've popped yours. Nasus counters AD hard, though, so it's a possibility.

I'd lean towards somebody like Aatrox or Amumu, to combo with Annie's Tibbers at the start of a fight. Tank Aatrox is more like Warwick/Yi than Amumu (who plays like a mage), and if the game is going well you can add some AD/AS stuff instead of just more defenses.

FHMarshyDec 10, 20141 votes

I'd say it's the team comp.

There is no tankiness on your team, only damage dealers. With a Vi on their team, the hard engage can take our either you or vayne in just mere seconds.

You guys don't have hard engage unless Annie made a good flash ult stun combine, but even after that, if they survived even with only half HP, you have barely any form of cc to peel for vayne.

Team comp :)

GoldenfishyDec 10, 20141 votes

I despise Yi mains. Q dodge spell then right-click all day. I hardly ever seen a Yi that doesn't have a positive score after early game (where he farms). Can't fight him 1v1(Tryn can't win if you don't all-in him and just atk atk and make him use ult then run around) during split push and gotta hope that your support knows how to peel in teamfights.

This is in Plat so I think I know what I'm talking about.

BluePolarizerDec 10, 20141 votes

Yes, this game is in plat, but your elo is low silver. Please don't comment on what other champs ppl play - there are diamond Poppy mains out there.

LamfiraDec 11, 20141 votes

Why post? This is in "Tips & Tricks" there's no reason to flame him like it's GD and he asked to nerf your favorite character (a squishy ass mage it sounds like).

GoldenfishyDec 10, 20141 votes

I mean they don't even have any stuns and you still can't carry.

Ungrateful ThugDec 10, 20141 votes

Your team has: Zero initiation. Zero disengage against Fiora/Vi. Not much reliable CC outside of Annie stun. Compared to the enemy team, you don't have much wave clear either. If your team got engaged on by Vi or caught by a Swain snare then you all are done. You all have a lot of damage but are lacking synergy or anything that compliments the other members of the team. Overall just a bad team comp.

BluePolarizerDec 10, 20141 votes

Yeah I think I need to deepen my champion pool. Right now I almost exclusively play damage based jungle/top and AP supports; my most played are Master Yi, Nocturne, Nasus, Xin Zhao and Annie. That means that if I need to fill a tank role, all I can pick is Nasus, Warwick or Udyr, and Warwick is now permabanned; all 3 are also damage-tanks, rather than CC-tanks.

My mechanics aren't good, so I like to play "easy" champs and win through strategy, rotations and being good at farming, rather than flashy plays. Maybe I should start learning Maokai, since he is extremely tanky, has alot of CC, but also deals decent damage and is easy to play with? Or maybe start learning Jungle Nasus?

rth2Dec 12, 20141 votes

Heya BluePolarizer! I have a few suggestions based on the match history. I have seen a lot of talk about issues with the team comp, and honestly I don't think the comp differences were insurmountable. Especially in solo queue.

{quoted} Then the downhill roll started.

We were not able to snowball even further and capitalize on our lead. Whenever we tried to push as a group, Azir and Swain would instantly clear the wave and Ezrael would then be able to freely poke us. Vayne couldn't get any shots in because she eats Ez/Azir poke and Swain zoned her out. We had no poke and were not strong enough to dive them, especially with Azir's displacement and Swain's snare. I tried splitpushing but Fiora was too strong and could 1v1 me.

This is the point you identified as the downhill roll. This is shortly after getting 4 quick kills and a dragon, putting your team almost 2k gold ahead. In your description you mention how it was almost impossible to siege, however it seems like that is what your team tried to do. You will eventually have to break their siege, but not this early in the game.

This summoners rift has some pretty good tools for breaking sieges, and they come through objective control. Your team took the first dragon at just after 8 minutes. That means the next dragon should come up at 14 minutes (just after). However, at just before 14 minutes your team gets in a few fights (I assume this is attempting to do this siege you are describing) and lose a little ground. The 2nd dragon isn't taken until just before minute 16. This dragon should have been where your team was looking. Looking at their team you won't be able to take any major turrets without a pick or by splitting.

This would allow you to set up vision, look for picks, and put you on path to get your jax, vayne, and yi to later game status where they are all stronger. You don't have to work extra hard to push turrets when you have a good late game and strength on the map. Warding to get picks, or using dragon as a spot to force the enemy to fight you can be used to your advantage. As a late game advantage you can always go for baron (who is great for breaking siege comps), or try to get more dragon stacks.

Although it is hard to siege the enemy team early, you have a team that does scale incredibly well with Vayne, Jax, and Yi. Annie is strong late game. The only person getting outscaled hard damage wise is Soraka vs Azir. However, Soraka provides sustain and can use her silence/snare to zone a team away from turrets when you do force that baron and are ready to break their siege.

Tl ; Dr : I think you could have controlled the game better by trying to focus objectives such as dragon early instead of trying to take turrets with your early lead. Ward up the jungle, farm devourer / get picks, and get objectives as they come up. You have a strong late game team and can break that siege hard with the early game your team had.