Hit Plat IV on Novalas. Hype.

Match 1 :

Champion : Kha'Zix

Role : Jungle

Build Order : 

Runes & Masteries :

Notes :  

     Uh, well... This was one of those games we REALLY shouldn't have won. We won this game by stalling hard and waiting for the enemy team to make mistakes. For clarity's sake though, this is basically why we shouldn't have won the game. We're blue team.

     Anyways, I did a LOT wrong this game so I'll start off with that. Right off the bat, I was first blooded at 1:15. This is because I tabbed out really quickly to change a song while not maintaining a ward at the river bush. This resulted in a 5 man invade squad that quickly killed me while I tabbed back in. Luckily, I didn't pop any summoners but it put bottom lane behind because Corki received the kill. Next, I wasted a LOT of time top lane trying to force a gank on a Gnar since I burnt his flash by running into lane. I wasted probably around 30 seconds. After that, mid lane died to Annie 1v1 & Annie popped her flash to initiate for the kill. I missed my W & Q which resulted in her nearly killing me in turn when I jumped in after. I also made a mistake and built incorrectly, focusing on building more damage rather than building tanky despite being set behind. This resulted in me getting nearly destroyed by the Annie repeatedly instead of being able to put out any effective damage. I also didn't build a Last Whisper which was incredibly silly considering their team comp. Lets move on to what I did right and what ultimately won us the game.

     The key thing here is I didn't keep repeating the same mistakes. I quickly realized that being set as far behind as I was meant I couldn't gank effectively so I started to focus on vision control & objective control. The enemy team seemed cocky & loved to chase my team to the ends of the earth for kills so I used that time to put wards deep into their jungle & take dragon. In fact, I believe I soloed 3 dragons which the enemy team graciously gave to us. That helped keep us in the game. If they made sure to take the dragons, we would've been shut down and starved for gold. I told my team to just stall and wait for mistakes since eventually, we'd get ahead in gold and just beat them in a fight. What ended up happening was that the enemy team started baron with wards in the pit. They didn't sweep them so we came in. Morgana wasn't on the same page as the rest of her team & she flash engaged onto our team. We quickly burnt her down & turned to fight the 4v5. This resulted in a quick reset fight for both Katarina & I. We ended up just pushing mid for the win. 

TL;DR : To sum up what basically happened this game, we took advantage of the enemy team being cocky. They didn't bother to secure dragon at all and that gave us around 4-5K free gold. Eventually, we managed to get so much free gold that we overpowered them with our teamfight. To stall, we maintained a lot of vision control to not get caught (though that didn't work as well as it should have) and to get picks. We also poked them hard with Ezreal, Kha'Zix, and Varus so they couldn't effectively engage. Once we were ahead, we waited until they tried to force something unfavorable and quickly aced them. 

     Stalling works. Just make sure to keep vision control.

Match 2 : 

Champion : Darius

Role : Top

Build Order : 

Runes & Masteries : 

Notes :

     So this game was another interesting game. I played Darius which, to clarify, I REALLY don't play often. The main reason I picked Darius over one of my more conventional picks is that I felt like despite my lack of experience, I'd probably shut down Riven hard if I played him. I really am excited to discuss this game because there are a few key things in my laning that won me this as hard as it did. Oh, did I mention that it was 4v5? Warwick had been d/cd for around 7 minutes. :^)

     So I'll start off with what I did wrong this game. The main things are that I could have roamed a LOT more. I was a large portion of my kills but instead of roaming, I chose to apply an incredible amount of pressure top lane. This isn't necessarily something I did wrong but, in some cases, it's better to roam with the kills & help your team get gold. Other then that, I dove a few times in awkward places (e.g. tier 2 turret) and was hit by an Ahri charm while having very little MR. This got me killed a few times quickly. I also missed quite a few CS having only 197 cs at 27 minutes. The ideal cs around this time would be 250+ though that's dependent on how you're playing the game out. I definitely missed a large chunk though.

     How I played this game is interesting though. The main way I played in the first minute or so was lane positioning. I focused on making sure I got every cs in the first two waves while also making sure to position myself in between my minions & Riven. This meant that Riven had to run through me to get to a minion or trade with me. When Riven would run to a minion to cs, I'd hit her with a Q + an auto attack and immediately run into the bush. This would reset all minion aggro and I'd get a relatively free trade. If Riven chose to trade with me, I almost always won trades because of my bleed passive. Eventually, Riven engaged on me when I was level 2 but almost level 3. I quickly killed a minon, hit 3, and turned on her. She flashed but I ignited her and I got first blood. After that, I proceeded to zone her by freezing the minion wave (getting minion aggro as the minions are arriving, dragging them around until they hit my wave, run into a bush to reset minion aggro, proceed to last hit minions). If she went in for a CS, I would kill her. Unfortunately for her, rather than waiting back until her jungler came, she chose to try to CS which resulted in another two-three free kills. At that point, I had a significant level advantage so she really had no chance in the lane anymore. 

     The key thing here that I want to discuss is my build order. Look at what I built. I build a Tiamat for pushing pressure but I also purchased tons of wards. The key thing people forget when they're ahead is that they're worth a LOT of gold so you need to anticipate getting ganked. The wards basically made it so I completely controlled Wukong's top side jungle & I could see ganks coming from a mile away. I maintained vision & kept an extreme amount of pressure top. Because Wukong & Ahri realized I was nearly ungankable due to my vision, they never came top which allowed me to continue increasing my lead.

     Eventually, Warwick disconnected but we had such a huge lead that I just told my team to group as 4 and go mid. We pushed mid, quickly won a teamfight (aced), went back, and the enemy team surrendered. If we had stalled and waited for Warwick to come back (it had been 10 minutes at this point), the enemy team would have outscaled and we would have lost the game. I made a quick call to just push and end instead.

     TL;DR : So the main things to discuss in this game. Matchups are somewhat important but not always. It's more so dependent on your laning. If you know how to lane, you can win almost every matchup. I focused on the first minute or two, securing every CS and getting one-sided trades with the Riven until she made a mistake for a kill. Afterwards, instead of just mindlessly pushing, I focused on denying her farm so she had to get near me to get any farm. After getting ahead, I maintained great vision control to never get ganked while also continuing to deny/kill Riven. With the lead that we had, despite having a disconnect, I called to group and we quickly won the game.

     Alright guys, thanks for reading. I was too tired to play more games today. If you have any feedback, post a comment here or send me a tweet at @Lilnovalas. Thanks!