Tales From ELO Hell

League of Legends (NA & PBE) Reverend Zeratul (op.gg) & (lolskill) Top/Jungle main

[reverendzeratul]

Now I see why people ban Shaco

[reverendzeratul]

I almost got a penta

why

[reverendzeratul]

Why did I start playing again? I don’t know. But today I’m back in Gold after doing placements + 2 games.

I didn’t play any ranked in season 8 and skipped most of season 9. Maybe I’m just lucky.

[reverendzeratul]

A thorough stomp. Not much to say about this game. Seven of the 10 players, however, were Gold level. The others (not including me) were Silver 1 and Unranked. I imagine if I played more games I’d easily get out of Silver 3. I've played 20 games as a jungler and have a 75% winrate.

My team was actually off to a bad start. The other team got early kills and a 6-minute dragon. But we managed to snowball after all that.

[match history link]

[reverendzeratul]

A bit of a wonky game, but it was consistently in our favor (for the most part). It was full of typical low ELO shenanigans.

There’s a replay on op.gg

[match history link]

[reverendzeratul]

Not a ranked game, but definitely a fun one.

[match history link]

[reverendzeratul]

I did what I could, but my team was doing poorly. Some people tried, and some people were slightly toxic, but eventually it didn’t matter how things went. The other team ended up too far ahead. (You can see just from gold and EXP levels.) One bad fight at dragon allowed the enemy team to take dragon and baron, then my team surrendered as the enemy team pushed for the win.

Someone on my team claimed to be high. I wasn’t really paying attention so I don’t remember who. It was probably the Tristana, who was Platinum last season but couldn’t beat a Silver 3 Miss Fortune in lane.

Anivia and Miss Fortune both had triple kills.

[match history link]

[reverendzeratul]

A slaughter.

If the game kept going, I would’ve secured our third Infernal Dragon and built a Randuin’s. Maybe a Frozen Heart after that, for the CDR, or a GA for lulz. The entire enemy team was AD except for support Sona. Itemization was easy.

[match history link]

[reverendzeratul]

Easy game, to be honest. Not much to say about this one: the score was 26 to 5. 

I was essentially handed a free promotion. Thanks, Riot! (No sarcasm this time.)

[match history link]

[reverendzeratul]

This game was harder than it needed to be. The Udyr did some serious work this game, and Jhin got somewhat fed - it just wasn’t enough. My team was slightly better with taking objectives.

You can see from the gold advantage graph that this game went back-and-forth a lot.

It’s disappointing to see how Brand support didn’t buy a Sightstone, but I guess we needed the damage. Bard was surprisingly bad at warding considering how he did have a Sightstone, which might have helped even things out.

[match history link]

[reverendzeratul]

Another “every lane lost” game. This sucked. 

I did fine in the early game, aside from one major mistake, but our bot lane was incredibly toxic. I had to mute them pretty early on. After I took dragon (about 12 minutes in) the game went really poorly for us. Didn’t take long before there was literally no chance of winning.

I’m pretty sick of playing against players that are way higher than my rank. The entire enemy team had Gold/Plat borders. This is my third season in Silver, so WTF am I supposed to do against Platinum players?

Matchingmaking hasn’t seemed quite right for season 7. So I checked my past 10 games (including this one) to see if it was more perception or fact. Distribution of players in my games according to S6 rankings:

Unranked: 7

Bronze: 1

Silver: 24 (with 1 person Gold in S5 and S7, and another who has been Plat every season except S7, so I wouldn’t really classify them as “Silver players”)

Gold: 49

Platinum: 9

[match history link]

[reverendzeratul]

One of the rare games where I had a large impact and might be able to say I carried.

This game was a clown fiesta. Everyone on my team (except me) was behind in farm compared to their counterpart on the enemy team for most of the game. Darius was losing hard to Nunu but still went balls-to-the-wall aggressive and went all over the map. Ryze wouldn’t stop complaining. Bot lane was... pretty even, for the most part. MF outfarmed Ezreal by a ton - fortunately he didn’t die much, at least. Alistar kept roaming and spent probably the first 10 minutes of the game in my jungle just waiting for me to show up (or so it felt). Cho’gath started to roam a lot in response. I don’t think Cho really wanted to play support - he farmed both jungles and KS’d with R when possible.

But somehow we were able to win. The game was very even until about the 30 minute mark, then things began to snowball in my team’s favor. We won some fights, had some nice picks, and annihilated objectives.

My last item probably should have been Spirit Visage instead of Guardian Angel. By the time I bought GA the item didn’t matter anyway. The CDR and HP would have helped more (if the game kept going). I wanted an MR item either way, since everyone on the enemy team did magic damage. (Miss Fortune doesn’t count because I could usually delete her in fights before she could do significant damage to me.)

I think the Annie might have been cheating. Or maybe my game was bugging out (visually). I saw her get a Courage of the Colossus shield after a stun, and saw her use a Protobelt. Except she took Thunderlords and never bought Protobelt. She also had Tibbers up every 30-60 seconds despite having no CDR. Again, maybe it was Riot’s spaghetti code freaking out... but it was really weird and suspicious to see.

#JustSilverThings - no one on my team broke 200 CS (except me) in a 40 minute game. RIP

[match history link]

[reverendzeratul]

This game was tilting. First thing: our mid laner picking Xin into Ahri. Predictably, he couldn’t lane effectively, and was quickly worth almost zero gold. The second tilting part was the Master Yi. He was a cancer and it was almost impossible to stop him. Yet somehow Poppy was #1 in the game for damage to champions. She could easily 1v1 anyone, even after not doing so well in lane.

The final tilting thing about this game was the matchmaking. Everyone on my team was Gold or Platinum. FFS if I’m in Silver 4 can I not play in Silver games? I keep seeing Gold/Plat players. Half my games (at best) are with mostly Silver players on both sides. Riot pls, stop stacking the deck against me.

I tried to clear side lanes - but Tristana raged about that, and my team would die in fights anyway. Even though we were behind in every regard. At one point I was 3-4 levels behind Yi. Fortunately I was catching up, but my team didn’t notice that everyone was underleveled.

Black Cleaver isn’t a usual buy on Vi, but I didn’t think I’d be able to afford the Trinity Force. I was building Thornmail next, because screw Yi. (A Randuin’s might have been slightly better, but it’s more expensive.) Next was likely an MR item. Maybe a QSS for Morgana bind and Ahri charm.

This is my first loss with Vi all season. Disappointing.

[match history link]

[reverendzeratul]

The game was fine for the first half. Then Ryze started being toxic. He’d do things like rage in all chat, teleport into the enemy team when other people weren’t around to help, and walk into areas when we pinged him not to. He intentionally gave up mid lane (and said so in all chat), allowing the enemy team take all the mid towers. They would’ve gotten the inhibitor too but the game ended via surrender.

The Volibear was pretty good. A huge nuisance. The enemy team’s bot lane was manageable even though I missed some impossible-to-miss hooks. Viktor and Tryndamere mostly afk farmed their lanes.

At any rate, it’s not fun to lose a game after one of your teammates decides to intentionally throw.

[match history link]

[reverendzeratul]

A fun game. Somewhat easy, but with tense moments. Nothing too crazy, fortunately - we were able to win without a problem. Things went well for my team: you can tell by the gold advantage graph in the match history.

Two of my deaths were completely preventable (being too aggressive in bad spots). I’m not sure about the third. It was likely preventable too. I did kill Fizz before dying, so that was something.

Poppy was overconfident. We were off to an amazing start in top lane. We killed Hecarim 3 times within 10 minutes, plus took the first tower of the game. But then Poppy couldn’t keep up the good KDA.

[match history link]

[reverendzeratul]

> 98 LP > Thanks Riot

I split-pushed for a large part of the game. We had a lot of bad fights and I died way too many times. We needed objectives to win.

This game was a lot more even than it should have been. You can check the match history graph to see exactly how much of a back-and-forth this was.

[match history link]

[reverendzeratul]

The other team was always too far ahead for us to really do anything. Sometimes we made good plays, but not enough. We messed up more than the other team did.

The Pantheon screwed me early, but I was able to come back through farming. I was #3 for most gold in the game. Unfortunately, this was kind of a “all lanes lost” game (again). I’ll have to check the replay for more details.

[match history link]