Posted: Wed Dec 05, 2012 10:15 am
So the beginning of that second game last night...
I was in lane farming minions, and Stranger was in the bushes to my right. Graves is in lane alone, and Malphite is there, but way back.
I was within attack range of Graves so I auto attacked him twice. He started firing on me, and within a second, he was down about 20-30%, while I was down 70%. I had no chance to escape so I stood there and died.
Coming back to lane, he was still there with 2 bars of health and pushing our turret. Stranger was under our turret, and Cake was at the Golems near our turret. Stranger was calling out Graves as a target, and I said I was going right to him. This was right after I spawned and was walking back. I went around, flashed in behind him, did no damage, and Malphite took me down almost immediately. (Was Malphite's rolling attack doing that much damage to everyone else?)
At that point I was an easy target, and died 1-2 more times early, but once I leveled things got back to normal.
So I got to wondering about those early deaths, and how easily he melted me, while I was doing little damage to him. I know Cake said, "He's got one bar left". and that's fine and dandy, but when I'm hitting him with two unanswered autoattacks, and more Qs than he's hitting me, all things being equal, I should win. Thus, all things weren't equal.
Obviously, I've been looking at the new masteries, but I'm also going to revisit my runes. I don't think all AS did me any favors early game. I know Cake and I have argued for it in the past, but if I'm just last hitting minions early on, why do I need to fire faster? I'd rather hit harder.
So I'm going to redo my runes. I'll drop most of my AS, and go with damage. Had I been hitting harder in that first fight, Graves would have dropped before I dropped.
It also just occurred to me that he had a damage item, and not the standard boots/3 health potions like I did. I'm betting he had a Doran's Blade.
So what's the meta right now? Do I go straight damage runes, Armor Pen, Crit, what?
As for everything else, if I'm being 100% honest...
1. We need more wards. Speaking of that, hey Stranger, did you see that cool new ward item where you buy a pack of four and they regenerate or something? You can only put 2 down at a time though. It's supposed to save supports money.
2. We need more pink eye (That first team won because of wards).
3. We should have won the second game 20 minutes before it ended. They were even saying "GG" in all chat. There were three of them dead, we were pushing with minions, and 3-4 of us pushing into their base. Rather than going right for a Nexus turret, we pulled off and attacked the top turret. That was a mistake, IMHO. We outnumbered them and could have easily held them off while our damage dealers hit their nexus turrets.
This is a key issue we really need to think about. What is more important: taking a Nexus turret or taking a standard turret, and maybe, the inhibitor it protects?
Why are we prolonging the game? Let's drop those Nexus turrets and get the W. Who cares if they have other turrets standing? We had the numbers advantage, minion support, and were standing at the goal line, but we pulled off to knock down other turrets.
Even if we hadn't won there, and just knocked down a turret or both, it still puts us in a far superior position than knocking down the other turret and inhib. For one thing, they MUST protect the lane with open access for our minions to hit their Nexus. That means they can't move as freely. That makes their other lanes more vulnerable. It also means that following another team victory, which we got 1-2 more times, it's game over rather than not really being able to push our advantage because there are still turrets in the way.
4. We were a bit rusty. Saw LOTS of missed skills shots last night. I know I was rusty and kept missing Qs, forgetting potions, etc. Despite that, I thought we actually did pretty good in team fights. Our opponents in the second game even commented on how good our positioning was, which was partly their fault because they kicked my butt so hard early I was playing pretty cautiously.
5. Team comp. We've got to have a better solution for when Hitler takes top. (Hitler wasn't awful last night. Brand was good, and Volibear didn't hurt us.) If Hitler jungles, supports, mids, or carries, we're fine. However, Hitler calling top threw us for a loop. It didn't cost us the game, but we weren't prepared.
I was in lane farming minions, and Stranger was in the bushes to my right. Graves is in lane alone, and Malphite is there, but way back.
I was within attack range of Graves so I auto attacked him twice. He started firing on me, and within a second, he was down about 20-30%, while I was down 70%. I had no chance to escape so I stood there and died.
Coming back to lane, he was still there with 2 bars of health and pushing our turret. Stranger was under our turret, and Cake was at the Golems near our turret. Stranger was calling out Graves as a target, and I said I was going right to him. This was right after I spawned and was walking back. I went around, flashed in behind him, did no damage, and Malphite took me down almost immediately. (Was Malphite's rolling attack doing that much damage to everyone else?)
At that point I was an easy target, and died 1-2 more times early, but once I leveled things got back to normal.
So I got to wondering about those early deaths, and how easily he melted me, while I was doing little damage to him. I know Cake said, "He's got one bar left". and that's fine and dandy, but when I'm hitting him with two unanswered autoattacks, and more Qs than he's hitting me, all things being equal, I should win. Thus, all things weren't equal.
Obviously, I've been looking at the new masteries, but I'm also going to revisit my runes. I don't think all AS did me any favors early game. I know Cake and I have argued for it in the past, but if I'm just last hitting minions early on, why do I need to fire faster? I'd rather hit harder.
So I'm going to redo my runes. I'll drop most of my AS, and go with damage. Had I been hitting harder in that first fight, Graves would have dropped before I dropped.
It also just occurred to me that he had a damage item, and not the standard boots/3 health potions like I did. I'm betting he had a Doran's Blade.
So what's the meta right now? Do I go straight damage runes, Armor Pen, Crit, what?
As for everything else, if I'm being 100% honest...
1. We need more wards. Speaking of that, hey Stranger, did you see that cool new ward item where you buy a pack of four and they regenerate or something? You can only put 2 down at a time though. It's supposed to save supports money.
2. We need more pink eye (That first team won because of wards).
3. We should have won the second game 20 minutes before it ended. They were even saying "GG" in all chat. There were three of them dead, we were pushing with minions, and 3-4 of us pushing into their base. Rather than going right for a Nexus turret, we pulled off and attacked the top turret. That was a mistake, IMHO. We outnumbered them and could have easily held them off while our damage dealers hit their nexus turrets.
This is a key issue we really need to think about. What is more important: taking a Nexus turret or taking a standard turret, and maybe, the inhibitor it protects?
Why are we prolonging the game? Let's drop those Nexus turrets and get the W. Who cares if they have other turrets standing? We had the numbers advantage, minion support, and were standing at the goal line, but we pulled off to knock down other turrets.
Even if we hadn't won there, and just knocked down a turret or both, it still puts us in a far superior position than knocking down the other turret and inhib. For one thing, they MUST protect the lane with open access for our minions to hit their Nexus. That means they can't move as freely. That makes their other lanes more vulnerable. It also means that following another team victory, which we got 1-2 more times, it's game over rather than not really being able to push our advantage because there are still turrets in the way.
4. We were a bit rusty. Saw LOTS of missed skills shots last night. I know I was rusty and kept missing Qs, forgetting potions, etc. Despite that, I thought we actually did pretty good in team fights. Our opponents in the second game even commented on how good our positioning was, which was partly their fault because they kicked my butt so hard early I was playing pretty cautiously.
5. Team comp. We've got to have a better solution for when Hitler takes top. (Hitler wasn't awful last night. Brand was good, and Volibear didn't hurt us.) If Hitler jungles, supports, mids, or carries, we're fine. However, Hitler calling top threw us for a loop. It didn't cost us the game, but we weren't prepared.