Season 5 Jungle Hype ((I'm back!!))

     It's a little awkward. The first game I've posted about in over a month and it's not even a jungle game. He took my role! 

Match 1 :

Champion : Annie

Role : Support

Build Order : 

Runes & Masteries : 

Notes : 

     Hi guys. I'm back. Anyways, to get this one started off, I don't play support very often. This is mainly because I have a lot of trouble playing champions that involve protecting a teammate. I prefer to go very hard onto the enemy team and hope for the best. That's my playstyle. So that's why I picked Annie this game.

     To start off, there were a few things I did wrong this game before I even loaded in. In champ select, I picked the wrong runes & masteries. For one, I didn't pick a very support orientated mastery page as you can tell. That's my standard AP page. Also, for runes, it would have been better to pick a page with a little bit of AD for auto attack harass. I didn't have one of those set up though so I just went with what I had. 

     Generally, when I play Annie support, I try to get off a lot of auto attack harass and then get a level 2 first blood with my flash - q - stun - ignite. I made a mistake, though, and miscalculated in this matchup. The Ezreal had a little bit more health than I thought he did and I couldn't kill him so I managed to waste my flash and ignite early on. Shortly after, I died and Caitlyn couldn't secure a return kill. However, Ezreal flashed in fight after my level 2 all in and I informed the jungler about Ezreal having no summoners. We managed to organize a 4 man gank at level 4 and killed Ezreal. After that, I focused on laning with Caitlyn for a little bit and then left lane at level 6. Once level 6, I 3 man ganked mid lane with Katarina & Shaco on the Diana for a quick and easy kill. I bought mobility boots & some wards. Then I proceeded to make plays around the places where the enemy team had no vision by using my sweeper & pink ward coverage. This resulted in a few more kills that just continued to snowball my team. I concentrated my control around the enemy's bot side jungle to ensure that they couldn't contest dragons each time the dragon spawned.

     I purchased a relatively late sightstone because I felt like I didn't need it with the amount of control my team had over the game. My team had 2 pink wards in the enemy jungle as well as 3 regular stealth wards on their topside jungle. We spent a few minutes just sitting in their jungle, killing people as they tried to clear the pink wards. That's what I find to be the easiest way to carry as a support. Enemy players have an odd tendency to almost suicide or actually suicide to get a pink ward. Or they're willing to waste a flash. Because of that, I tend to buy a LOT of pinks because I bait a LOT of people with them. I think at least 4 out of my 15 assists were from baiting the enemy Vladimir into killing a "poorly placed" pink ward. The key part in executing this strategy is to place the pink in an awkward position but also making sure you weren't seen by a ward while getting into the death bush that you and your teammates are standing it. Despite it being relatively obvious, the tilted enemy team just wanted gold and would die over and over.

     Eventually, after getting picks with my stuns, our team began to just push turrets. We'd proceed as follows. 1) I'd ward the enemy jungle, pink it, and sweep to make sure there's no vision. 2) We'd find somewhere to camp. 3) We'd kill whoever walks by. 4) We'd push a turret. This resulted in a quick and easy win. 

      I feel like the main thing I could have done differently was have a rune page with more AD as well as a more defensive mastery page. I feel like if I were to have those, I would have secured the first blood on Ezreal and I most likely wouldn't have died as much as I did.

Match 2 : Not posting because we had a D/C.

Match 3 : 

Champion : Nocturne

Role : Jungle

Build Order : 

Runes & Masteries : 

Notes : 

     So I managed to snag jungle this game. I was pretty excited so I decided to pick Nocturne because he received a buff where he gains increased movement speed when he fears a target. That sounded pretty absurd and, oh my, it REALLY is strong. 

     To start this off, I'd like to discuss the mistakes I made this game. I'm pretty silly so I made a lot of mistakes, hence why out of my team, I had the least amount of gold. To start off this game, we did a level 1 invade where Nidalee snagged first blood on Ezreal. I ended up soloing the enemy blue buff which left me at really low health. Thinking I was crafty, I tried to "soft reset" the red buff where I basically got the red buff as low as possible and then proceeded to pull back and forth to make it cancel autos while it reset over and over. Uh, it eventually hard reset and healed up. Then it punched me and I died. So I got executed, that was fun. Luckily, it seems that when you're executed, you no longer lose your buffs. So all that resulted from that was that I was behind by about 30 seconds. Because of that single mistake, I was behind for the rest of the game and was level 3 at around 5:40. I hit level 6 around 9 minutes since I couldn't cover anyone's lane for experience. Luckily for me, my laners were all winning incredibly hard. Since I was behind, I purchased a lot of wards and maintained vision control so Jarvan couldn't pressure effectively. It also let Nidalee assassinate Jarvan a few times at his wolf camp & wraith camp.

     So I made a few mistakes that were a little silly and could have potentially cost us the game. However, I did do a few things right which helped my team win the game. One was that Maokai was losing lane hard to Singed which gave Singed free reign over the lane. I managed to get a level 3 gank off on him with my Stalker's Blade + the fear from my E. This resulted in a kill for me and allowed Maokai to farm safely for a few. Afterwards, since I was behind, I focused on maintaining ward control in the enemy jungle which ended up with Nidalee snowballing incredibly hard on the Jarvan. Also, with the ward coverage in the enemy jungle, I made calls for my team to rotate to dragon if Jarvan showed top which allowed us to snag 3 free dragons. I would also use my ultimate to get picks on the enemy team where I'd basically hurdle myself into them and press E on one of their carries. It would've been a lot more effective if I had gone a tankier build but it resulted in a lot of deaths for me. However, my team cleaned up each the fights, for the most part. Each time we won of those fights, we would take a turret and, eventually, the enemy team surrendered once we took their inhibitor.

     The game was a little silly and I think a few people on the enemy team tilted after Nidalee killed Jarvan a 3rd time. However, we almost lost control a few times early on mainly because I was really underleveled. But with proper ward control, picks, and dragon control, we managed to win the game.

     Thanks for reading guys and I'll be posting my opinions on all of the jungle changes in a day or two. If you have a question or have any feedback, post a comment here or tweet me at @Lilnovalas.