Socks and Puppets, the comic

This post won’t make any sense unless you play LoL. Best to ignore it.

So, I’ve been playing some League of Legends in my gaming time for about half a year, and while the game has terrible support and implementation from its creators, it’s pretty fun to play. I often find it funny just to watch what goes on – it serves as a tremendous example of the worse end of internet culture. The interaction between players largely consists of a cesspit of insults, and a complete failure of teamwork.

As funny as this is, it does sometimes get wearing. A few of my friends who play suggested that I try ranked games instead, as in a ranked game environment, you can usually count on people playing seriously and actually trying to work as a team. So I tried it out. The following is a quick summary of a ranked game I played recently, and while it is on the more ridiculous end of the scale, it’s a pretty good example of how Ranked is going for me.

PREP

Given that I figure Ranked is fairly serious, I make sure to have practiced a bit before playing ranked games. I’ve played approximately 200 matches against bots, to learn champions, and 80 or so games against real people. In most of these games, I’ve teamed up with friends of friends who have played thousands of games, and listened to their advice on how to build decent champions and how to play the game. I’ve also played several hundred games of ARAM, which is excellent practice for the mechanical aspect of teamfighting, and useless for everything else. I’ve also watched a lot of pro matches, to see how the game is “meant” to be played (if the players are good) and tried to learn from what I’ve seen which matchups are good.

I figure it’s time to try some soloqueue ranked at the point that during PvP play with my experienced friends-of-friends, I’m contributing fairly equally with them to the game.

CHAMP SELECT

Bans happen, I’m fairly happy with them. Our first player locks in Graves as an ADC. I’m fairly happy with this, he’s not terrible on the 4.6 patch. Opponent team locks in Nasus and Ashe. Fine, whatever. The picks pass to us again, and our second player locks in Nidalee (who heavily skews your ideal team composition towards the siege and poke tactics) then proclaims that they will support Graves. Nidalee isn’t a support, but with Graves’ waveclear potential I’m not too worried they’ll throw the game. I’m third, so looking at this I have to pick a champion.

Given what I know, it’s best to choose my primary role (mid) – and pick a fairly safe champion who has some siege potential. I expect a Graves/Nidalee lane to occasionally get lucky and land a spear and/or some poke from Graves. This is likely to result in occasional champions backing away from botlane on low health. I gleefully choose Ziggs, who not only fits our composition well, but also can occasionally support the botlane with a long range bomb, and maybe snipe a kill or two.

Opponents lock in Morgana and Master Yi. Not great champions for me to be up against, but not the worst. Picks pass back to our team, and our fourth instantly locks in Nami, and demands that they are the support for botlane. An argument breaks out between Nidalee and Nami over who is support, and this argument does not resolve. Both are adamant that the other should go mid, and that I should play top, and that our last player should jungle. He locks in Pantheon (a decent Jungle champion, and it’s good to have some more AD in the team) but then refuses to take the Smite spell, which is pretty much a requirement for Junglers. Their team lock in their final pick of Talon, and we’re off.

GAME

My team isn’t looking good early on. Nidalee spends a third of her time in mid, a third of her time dead, and a third of her time in botlane. Pantheon abandons the top jungle entirely, because he doesn’t have the clearspeed to actually take the camps, and spends most of the game camping botlane. The only exception to this is that he takes the blue buff whenever it respawns. I’m laning against Nasus, who has too much HP to push out of lane, but fortunately Ziggs has enough waveclear for me to just hide and take the farm. I can’t really help out across the map like I’m meant to because I’m stuck miles from the action.

While Nami and Nidalee spend the first 15 minutes of the game arguing, and Pantheon spends all of his time in bot, the Graves finds himself often laning 4v2, and as such gets a huge number of kills. He does however, argue profusely that he’s unable to teamfight, because his FPS is stuck at 5, and he can’t see what he’s doing. He also spends a huge amount of time in chat flaming Nidalee and Pantheon for “trolling”, which seems unfair on the Nidalee, given that she was forced out of her chosen role into a hideous matchup by the other support. Pantheon feeds continually around the map to Master Yi, and by 15 minutes in he is 0/10/3, and 5 levels behind his counterpart.

Talon gets a lot of kills on Nidalee as well. So while I can hold top against Nasus, I’m faced with continual visits from very fed Master Yi and Talon, who’s getting bored in an empty midlane. in the first 15 minutes of the game I die 3 times to 3-man tower dives, but my huge CS score keeps my gear ahead of Nasus, and I’m not too upset. Graves decided that 3 deaths constitutes “Trolling” and adds me into his continual tirade.

25 minutes in, our team is losing 30/10, with all 10 of our kills on Graves. Only Graves and myself have bought any complete items. Nasus and Talon turn out to be excellent players, but the saving grace of our team is that Ashe and Morgana are awful – and so we’re just hanging in there, until a 3-man gank in top takes down my tower. Nasus Yi and Talon all roam to botlane and promptly ace the team. I respawn and start heading up top to clear my wave, but as I get near the blue buff area I spot Master Yi doing one-on-one battle with the golem, and losing to it badly. I wipe him and the golem with a super bomb, and head to mid, where the wave is destroying the tower. As I clear that wave, a ward someone left in the dragon pit spots the other 4 members of the team taking a dragon. Thinking there’s not much to lose, I waddle over to the back of the dragon pit, and throw a Q-bomb over the wall which kills the dragon in one hit. All-chat fills up with flaming from Nasus and Talon that I’m cheating, and Graves starts demanding that I “Stop Swagging”. I have no idea what Swagging is, but according to Graves I’m doing it a lot.

At this point Master Yi publically announces that the game is already over and he’s bored, so he’s going to “AFK to go eat a sandwich”. There follows a 10 minute period or so where Talon and Nasus just wander around the map killing people, Nidalee and Pantheon feed quite a lot, and Graves cites lag for every death. A number of times Talon and Nasus interrupt their kills to wander off, because they think it’s funny to show off how far ahead they are. I sit in the base clearing the waves before they reach our turret. Eventually I manage to buy pen boots and some bits of a death cap am suddenly happy that 0/3/0 Ziggs has at least some damage output.

Yi finishes his sandwich, and Botlane throw another fight. As they respawn, the opponents start up a 5-person siege on our mid turret. Nami throws out a tidal wave that hits their team pretty well. Nidalee decides that her spears are pointless, and goes tiger form (never a good plan in siege situations), and Graves charges in as well. Pantheon wanders off to kill some minions in top lane, and is refusing to talk to anyone. He’s level 9, whereas most of the other players are between 15 and 18. Graves does a lot of damage, and I throw another super-bomb, and between us we end up acing their whole team, with three of us standing (not even counting Pantheon), so we go rush a quick Baron. Graves demands everyone group up mid and push, to which Nami refuses, and Pantheon ignores entirely, clearing some minions in the bottom lane. I push the lane with Graves up to the inhib, and manage to snipe it just as they respawn. Graves dies to their respawns, and I then take a bit of a scenic route back to base so as not to be picked off – then I finish my deathcap, and buy a void staff outright in the same purchase, thanks to the huge amount of money accumulated in one trip up the map.

We’re around 50 minutes now, and the death timers are at 60 seconds, Baron has worn off, and it’s looking like Talon and Nasus can just end the game whenever they want.

I turn around to find the enemy team once again on our doorstep. The game score is now 18/42, with Graves on 15 kills and me on 3. Talon and Nasus have 40 of their kills. A complete mess of a fight happens around the turret, in which Talon mostly dances around spamming his laugh because he’s convinced they’ve won. Graves and I manage to hit all 5 people in their team with our ultimate attacks simultaneously, and as the dust settles, I find that I’m the only player standing on either team, on full health. I waddle up the mid lane and end the game.

As the game ends, it transpires that Talon and Nasus have spent as much time flaming their team as Graves has spent flaming ours, and their Ashe/Morgana combo both claim that they were playing the champions for the first time.

So, looking at the ranked game outcome we had:

Blue team:
Top: Ziggs (me) – forced out of chosen lane in champion select, and playing 1v3 under turret all game, only manages to affect the game through incredibly lucky shots.
Jung: Pantheon – Refuses to take Smite, or communicate with the team, or take part in any group fighting. Repeatedly takes the Blue buff away from a team with both Ziggs and Nidalee in it.
Mid: Nidalee – roams support for half of the time, and dies over 20 times.
Bot: Graves – claims to have 5fps, flames whole team continually for whole game.
Support: Nami – deliberately sabotages the team in champion select, rather than choose a role that supports the group.

Purple team:
Top: Nasus – flames his team for the whole game. Several times deliberately throws away kills by duelling a champion below 100 HP then walking away rather than finishing the fight, because he thinks it’s funny.
Jung: Mr. Yi – leaves the game to eat a sandwich.
Mid: Talon – flames his team for the whole game. Throws the game by dancing rather than fighting in the decisive battle.
Bot: Ashe – has never played ashe before.
Support: Morgana – has never played Morgana before. Doesn’t own any runes or have any masteries selected.

Conclusion.
Welcome to the internet.