FIRST RANKED GAMES and LCS

Over the weekend, I played my first four ranked games– I won two and lost two. Although I was super anxious at first, I calmed down and it felt like a normal game. I actually queued with my friend (who got us the roles we wanted by claiming his original account was a Diamond rank and by threatening to leave the game). I played very passively, and I feel like that’s why we lost the last two games. Hopefully I’ll win the last six placement games and be placed in middle or high Silver.

Currently, the League Championship Series are going on (LCS). I was really upset when Team Solo Mid (TSM) lost 3 out of 5 games to Cloud9 (C9), because Bjergsen, their mid lane player, was focused and he couldn’t carry the team. Although they lost, they still managed to place second in playoffs. A few days ago, the community receieved shocking news that Xpecial, TSM’s support player, was benched, but not because he was lacking in performance. Because of their loss, TSM’s management has decided to change up the team composition to see if they can get better. As for the new support position alongside WildTurtle, the ADC, there are just some hints so far. He has recently been duo queueing with Cloud9’s Gleebglarbu.

Here’s just a highlight of TSM vs CLG (Counter Logic Gaming) and proof that Bjergsen is a god.

On another sad note, C9’s Bischu has not been put on the LCS team so he has decided to retire and start attending school at UCSD (but he’ll still continue streaming).

What is League

I realized that several people reading this blog may not understand what I’m talking about since they don’t play this game. First of all, there are three lanes and a jungle on two sides on a map called Summoner’s Rift. There is a top lane, a middle lane and a bottom lane. There are 5 players on a team and they fight it out while destroying towers to get to the enemy nexus, a building-like structure, which the enemy team destroys to win. There is a top laner, a mid laner, two bottom laners and a jungler. The top laner is usually a tank or a bruiser, who stays in the front lines and attracts attention away from the squishier champions. The mid-laner is usually a mage or an assassin, who deals lots of damage. They also try to push out his or her lane to roam to other lanes and help them out. The bottom lane consists of two roles: the Attack Damage Carry (ADC), who also deals lots of damage and the Support, who helps get kills and saves other champions. The jungler clears out his jungle minions in the jungle and ganks other lanes to help them win.

In order to be stronger than your opponent, you need to win in creep score and kills. Your creep score is the number of minions you kill in your lane- last hitting these minions and killing them gives you gold to buy more items to be stronger. Having kills also makes you stronger than your opponent.

When your team is winning lane, the bottom lane and jungler can kill the dragon, which gives extra gold. Later on in the game, your team can kill the Baron Nasor, which gives a buff that makes you stronger. This buff can either help you finish the game if you are winning or help your team win by a comeback. There are other buffs, like the blue or red buff that help.

In order to win the game, there are three towers per lane, three inhibitors, and then two more towers guarding the nexus that you need to destroy. A team can be losing in kills but winning if they have more towers. Although this is only the basis of the game, it is much more complex and relies on plays, skill and luck to win.

URF?

As much as I love the Ultra Rapid Fire mode, it really messed me up in the long run. Ultra Rapid Fire mode, or URF, is a mode in the worldwide popular game, League of Legends. In this mode, champions do not use up mana and have reduced cooldowns on their skills and spells. It all sounds great until you try to go back to normal modes and accidentally end up going on a suicide mission. It’s hard to make plays when you’re out of mana or when everything is on cooldown. What can you do then? Auto attack for days?

Despite this disadvantage, URF is pretty fun. Currently, there is a petition to keep it, which has reached 30,000 signatures–looks like permanent URF could be a possibility.

This mode really brought out the potential in several champs. Several support champions, like Sona and Soraka, began to be played as strong AP based laners. Because of the reduced cooldown, several champs, such as Maokai could one or two shot others, and even the Baron Nasor, a monster that gives a buff to the whole team (which also usually takes several champs to kill).

Playing URF is really fun, since you can spam everything without any worries. Watching URF is also fun; Bjergsen from TSM, one of the best mid lane players, is like a god with his plays (both in URF and in normals).

The two best teams on the NA server, Team Solo Mid and Cloud9 also faced off immediately when this new mode came out.
To watch the whole game play out, click this link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0yBfXLI_pmw

-Aileen