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Between Thursday and Saturday I climbed from rank 21 to rank 12, then slipped back to rank 13 after a losing streak of four games and two wins. This ranking jump is the result of 33 games.
I got put on tilt mid way through my run. I played a game where the draft was this:
Garden of Terror
Kharazim
Muradin
Kael'thas (me)
Murky
Azmodan
vs
Leoric
Raynor
Arthas
LiLi
Jaina
This is not the order the draft went in---- I don't remember how that went down specifically. I do remember that murky and azmodan were in a party, and that azmodan wouldn't stop pushing the top lane. At one point we had vision on the enemy team taking a siege camp literally underneath the lane where azmodan was walking to push. I pinged danger on him, he ignored it, he got ganked. My teammate asked him to stop over extending in chat, and his response was, "stop wasting the time I'm giving you by distracting them".
I really hate it when people just throw their lives away like its good play, but it is even more infuriating when it works: we ended up winning easily because their team always either ganked him with all five team members at once or ignored him and let him wreck their base.
I'm in the habit of waiting a few minutes after games with teammates I don't like. The point is to miss them on future games: so I get up, stretch my legs, and get a cup of coffee. I come back, queue up--- but unfortunately it seems they did the same thing, now that murky/azmodan combo is on the other team. Here is the game with the drafting order indicated by spaces:
Battlefield of Eternity
Kael'thas (Previous azmodan)
Abathur
Arthas (previous murky)
Murky
Nova
Our team:
Muradin
Uther
Tyrande
Zagara (me)
Kerrigan
My thinking went something like this: the last pick guy on our team pre-selected kerrigan after seeing the KT/Abathur/Arthas picks. This resulted in tyrande getting chosen by the other person picking during my turn to draft. I saw that we had very little waveclear, but a very strong early game. Conversely, the other team had a very strong lategame. I decided to reinforce our early game with the strongest early game pusher I could think of: zagara.
The game was pretty miserable. I was solo bot against murky and quickly realized that murky is pretty difficult to deal with as Zag. we traded minions and he died a few times, nothing major. But top in the meantime got absolutely wrecked due to misplays by the kerrigan. To make matters a bit worse, nova/murky were both picks which are hard for me to deal with as zagara, and with abathur in play I had very few targets for my maw. We just ended up losing hard with me getting more and more frustrated with every missed kerrigan combo or kerrigan overreach. I get that these things happen to every player, but I kept feeling so helpless that I just got on tilt. I switched to quickmatch afterwards and lost like four games in a row since I was still replaying in my head what I could have done differently in that game.
So I guess the real question is, did I make a mistake picking zagara? was there a safer bet without knowing that nova and murky were going to be the last picks? Should I have gone nydus instead of maw given maw's uselessness in this matchup?
In other news, I have just about given up with abathur in ranked play. Every time I preselect him on cursed hollow (his best map for me) teammates immediately type "this map is awful for abathur". About half the time I preselect him someone immediately preselects thrall or illidan. One time someone firstpicked lili on our team and another person picked illidan b/c of my abathur pick. Looking at lili as our support, I switched to tassadar and immediately got called a fagot for changing off abathur after the guy picked illidan.
Frankly, I love the way abathur plays but I hate the way people respond to him. So I guess I'm just done with that character until I can find a team to play with regularly.
edit-
While I was very negative in this post I want to emphasize that my heroleague experience has generally been amazing since hitting rank 25. Teams that communicate are frequent, and comps are actually somewhat logical most of the time. Not perfect, but at least not five random assassins anymore.
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One last sidethought--
there are a surprising number of people who rage at sylvanas picks on haunted mines. Usually they seem to think she is overhyped on the map, and will start blaming me for any perceived setback in the game. Despite this my winrate with her on the map is still 70%. Checking hotslogs this doesn't seem to match up with reality: she has a 50% winrate on the map overall. Is there something I'm missing here?
Or are people just picking sylv then not turning off the towers for the golem?
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Starting with your Zagara pick:
I would have gone with a AA hero like Raynor, Valla, ... maybe even Jaina seeing your comp has incedible burst heal available and lacks dmg in general, specfically ranged dmg.
All of the above could have kept murky in check pretty easy, and if played careful and with some map awareness Nova wouldn't be a big deal.
On the Abathur:
Sky temple and Cursed Hollow are good maps for Abathur. If a supp and tank have been picked, feel free to pick him. Never first pick him in HL. Never first pick Nova either. You'll have a bad time even if you play like a god.
On the Sylvanas:
Thats a hard one... i usually pick Tass on Haunted cause i think he is even more OP than Syl. ^^
With Tass and Syl most games are done by the 10min mark. With Tass vs Syl games can go either way.
I feel a lot of Sylv picks on Haunted behave like absolut noobs, doing the pushing an get ganked constantly, pushing solo often or at mines time, leaving the team to a 4v5 and needing to retreat, getting less skulls,....
If played right so, i feel she can make the difference
Don't Meta too much, go the easy and reliable way.
EDIT: On the zagara: thinking about it, maybe you played a little wrong there. A 1v1 should go in your favor. Wait until his bubble pops and then hydra him. Should work in theory, gotta test this 
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Well, so--- I didn't know about the murky pick when I was drafting. (Nova/murky got picked directly after my zagara pick)
As far as laning against murky--- his slime gets rid of creep tumors, zagara's basic attack speed is slow enough that unless she is next to the pufferfish when it lands she can't kill it, and hydras do zone out murky, but don't do nearly as much damage in terms of lane presence as they do against other heroes. Maybe I played it wrong, but it felt like every strength I had was countered by murk.
I'll keep that in mind for abathur. I was first picking him on occasion, and found that I preferred drafts where I was later so I could abort out of the abby pick if I felt like the rest of the draft didn't go his way. In general I've been feeling like I strongly prefer games where I am lastpick over firstpick, since it gives me more control over the team's makeup. Maybe I should start tracking that to see if my winrate is different depending on how much control I have over the draft :D
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If you do start tracking your influence on the draft effecting your winrate, don't forget to account for when you have duo queue partner to influence too.
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On November 04 2015 01:51 MotherFox wrote:
Well, so--- I didn't know about the murky pick when I was drafting. (Nova/murky got picked directly after my zagara pick)
that's what i mean. just make some solid picks when you draft at 2-4th position, in this case valla, raynor, ... cause your team had solid tank and supp.
It might not be the most fun experience, but it'll get you wins
On November 04 2015 01:51 MotherFox wrote:
As far as laning against murky--- his slime gets rid of creep tumors, zagara's basic attack speed is slow enough that unless she is next to the pufferfish when it lands she can't kill it, and hydras do zone out murky, but don't do nearly as much damage in terms of lane presence as they do against other heroes. Maybe I played it wrong, but it felt like every strength I had was countered by murk.
I'll keep that in mind for abathur. I was first picking him on occasion, and found that I preferred drafts where I was later so I could abort out of the abby pick if I felt like the rest of the draft didn't go his way. In general I've been feeling like I strongly prefer games where I am lastpick over firstpick, since it gives me more control over the team's makeup. Maybe I should start tracking that to see if my winrate is different depending on how much control I have over the draft :D
ye, killing the pufferfish with Zaga... not the solution. you are definitely right about that.
last option, switch lanes with someone with faster attack speed or sth, in your case Kerrigan. If she doesn't listen or react just go to her lane and stay there until she switches ^^
Winrate tracking like this could really be interesting.
At this point i'm damn sure in win more if i am 4-5th pick but never did the math
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EPT
