Game 25: Kennen vs. Ziggs (mid)
Game date: February 14, 2012
Replay file: http://www.box.com/s/hosymx78nn2oqq403llu
My team: Kennen (mid), Shen (top), Amumu (jungler), Vayne (bot), Soraka (bot)
Enemy team: Ziggs (mid), Garen (top), Skarner (jungle), Caitlyn (bot), Ryze (bot)
We had a lot of beef with Shen, Amumu, my tanky-ish spell vamp build, and Soraka’s heals but I was slightly worried about our damage output going into this game. On the other hand, they had lots of damage, sufficient beefiness, lots of AoE, and a support with annoying CC.
Early game: I was expecting a bit of a noob mid because this is free Ziggs week but he was actually pretty good. I got aggressive on him early and managed to bait out his Ignite. He then burned Flash when Amumu came along to gank. He continued to pressure me so I picked the perfect moment to strike and got a kill with the last or second-last tick of Ignite. I really didn’t want him to get blue buff so Amumu and I tried to counterjungle them at golem around 7:30 knowing Shen could simply teleport in and make it a 3v2. Unfortunately, we were a bit too late and Ziggs got the buff. Fortunately, Skarner foolishly chased me into their golem brush when he had to know Amumu was also there (I’m 99% sure Ziggs saw him come the other way). We picked up another easy kill. Amumu went bot picking up two more kills and I was forced to lane against Ziggs with blue buff… It was annoying, but at least I managed to avoid most of his skillshots and hold my ground.
Mid game: After picking up dragon, the enemy bot lane got out of position and we picked up 2-3 kills. We then began to counterjungle them hard and picked up another easy kill on Skarner. Poor guy! Amumu and I went top and 3v1′d Garen under his tower with Shen. I was feeling especially strong but was actually sitting on 3450g… I got a bit too cocky under their mid tower thinking we could pick up two easy kills. I died instead because I only had Doran’s Shield + Hextech Revolver at the time and ate a Skarner ultimate. I spent all my gold on boots and a Rylai’s Crystal Sceptre and that was pretty much all she wrote. We picked up another kill or two and they surrendered at 20:00 down 10-1.
Late game: There wasn’t one.
Post-game scoreboard:
Lessons learned:
- Team comp doesn’t matter nearly as much as team coordination
- Ziggs will almost always go for blue buff around 7:00 so try to steal it from them
- The new Shen is pretty strong… and having two ninjas on your team is simply OP
Current record: 13-12
Games 20-24: Kennen vs. Xin Zhao, Ryze, Ziggs, Vladimir, and Brand
Game date: February 11, 2012
I played some rapid fire matches last Friday after a few nights off and they didn’t go so well. My first game started terribly, and while I improved my play each game after that, it wasn’t until my 5th game that I finally got a win. I don’t want to play the blame game, but it seemed like I was put on terrible teams four games in a row. Every lane was getting destroyed, including my own on a couple occasions, we had no synergy whatsoever, and everyone’s attitudes were very very negative…
I’m going to write up a very brief summary of each match for you below because I really don’t want to go into too much detail and rehash that nasty experience. I’ve uploaded replays in case you actually want to watch me get slaughtered repeatedly with no chance of victory. I wish I could omit these games from the experiment, but that wouldn’t really display scientific integrity, would it?
Yet another drubbing, but this time it was in my favour. I’m really beginning to wonder about matchmaking in LoL. Five straight games were five straight dominations for one side or the other. In all cases, the losing team barely stood a chance. Anyway, I got paired up against Brand… and well, I’ve figured the guy out. Bait or wait for his W, rush in, put some hurt on him, and back out. Rinse and repeat. When he’s low enough, go for the kill with Ignite and/or your ultimate. I owned my lane and had a couple of nice skirmishes go my way too. They surrendered at 20 minutes down at least 15-1. Yes, I was their only kill.
Oh Vladimir… you are supposed to have a weak early game! He actually killed me early, which came as quite a shock. I came back with a vengeance though and killed him 1v1 at a 1-2 level disadvantage. Then I killed him again… and again! I was winning my lane vs. Vlad! But every other lane was getting destroyed. Like feeding them 0-4 in each lane. Even their jungler was better than our jungler. In fact, Shyvana probably carried them single-handedly. Without her initiations and disruptions in team fights, I think we might have actually won this game. Oh well. I don’t think it helped that my allies basically gave up at champ select and threw in the towel after first blood.
I was doing pretty well vs. Ziggs after scoring an early kill in a 1v1 but at the 7:30 minute mark he got blue buff from his jungler and he went into spam mode, quickly making up the difference. Ziggs with blue is very strong because he can rapid fire all his abilitities every time they’re off cooldown and never lose a millimeter of mana. He got blue the next spawn too and things didn’t get any easier for me, even though I never died to him. I think all my deaths came from team fights, and as a team, we were complete garbage. Hence the loss…
I really don’t remember much of this game, but looking at my score you can tell it wasn’t great. I seem to recall both of us holding our own in lane, but Ryze farmed much better than me after grabbing a couple kills on our jungler. I tried duelling him but couldn’t kill him 1v1. I tried to help out the side lanes to catch up, but was unsuccessful. Their team comp was pretty tanky and they pushed hard up the middle lane. We ended up surrendering pretty early.
First game vs. Xin Zhao and let me say, “Oh owww!” He built pure offense with Ignite, which allowed him to wreck my face every time he dashed in with his gap closer. He would wipe out more than 1/2 my HP every combo and it only took two combos with Ignite to drop me the first time. After that I just got zoned and when trying to farm under my tower he simply dove and wrecked me again. I fed him four times in lane and the other two deaths were a result of them having an equally fed Kassadin. Every lane was getting dominated this game and I think we lost 25-5 (or something close to that).
Current record: 12-12
Patch notes: A couple small nerfs to AP Kennen
Here are two items from today’s patch notes (v1.0.0.134) that stuck out to me:
- Thundering Shuriken cooldown increased to 8/7/6/5/4 from 7/6/5/4/3
- Hextech Revolver spell vamp reduced to 12% from 15%
Thundering Shuriken
While one additional second might not seem like much, it’s actually a 33.3% increase in cooldown at max rank, which is pretty substantial when you think about it. I don’t think this will break Kennen in any way, but it will probably hurt his combos a little bit, meaning you won’t get off as many rapid fire stuns as you used to be able to in a team fight. You’ll be doing a bit less damage through harassment and sustaining through Hextech Revolver a bit less as well. On the flip side, it might help with energy management because you won’t be spamming Q as much as before. There have been a few times I wished I’d saved the Q energy for an E escape or chase.
Hextech Revolver
You can read my full thoughts about it on Reddit. After the previous patch when Will of the Ancients was nerfed from 25% Spell Vamp to 20%, I no longer rushed it as my first item. The way I looked at it, 900g was only buying me +40 AP and +5% Spell Vamp in the laning phase. Instead, I started putting that 900g towards my Giant’s Belt (1110g), which really helped out in lane and put me 1/3 of the way towards completing Rylai’s Crystal Sceptre.
This was quite viable because Hextech Revolver gave me all the sustain I needed in lane (24% Spell Vamp with Revolver, runes, and masteries actually). After this nerf, I may consider rushing Will of the Ancients again. I’ll have to see how it plays out because to be honest 3% Spell Vamp doesn’t seem like that big of a deal on paper (3 HP per 100 magic damage).
Game 19: Kennen vs. Veigar (mid)
Game date: February 8, 2012
Replay file: http://www.box.com/s/1y8n95vq0qyox4b365a4
My team: Kennen (mid), Poppy (top), Shaco (jungler), Soraka (bot), Tristana (bot)
Enemy team: Veigar (mid), Irelia (top), Lee Sin (jungle), Blitzcrank (bot), Graves (bot)
I queued up with Poppy and Shaco this match. We didn’t have anyone tanky on our team so having Soraka would be helpful. The enemy team comp looked pretty scary, with a good mix of crowd control, tankiness, and damage output.
Early game: My goal was to harass Veigar as much as possible in the early game because that strategy has worked well for me in the past. Unfortunately, this Veigar was much better at avoiding my harass while still farming up his Q, so it wasn’t working as well as I’d hoped. Shaco spotted Lee Sin coming in for an early gank (level 2 or 3) from the top river brush, so he came in to countergank and we got a kill on Lee. Even though he was tough to harass, I still managed to get Veigar down low enough for a level 6 tower dive. I baited out his AoE stun, knowing it was on a low cooldown and then got my kill a few seconds later when I unloaded on him. Lee came in to gank me a bit later when my ult was down and I almost killed him under my tower but he narrowly escaped by shielding to Veigar.
Mid game: By focusing most of his ganks on the bottom lane, Shaco put our team ahead by quite a bit. Blitzcrank became an annoyance as he was a pretty good player, but he just didn’t have a strong enough team around him to accomplish much. Poppy really started to shine once she joined our team fights as the bursty little yordle tends to do. Tristana was also getting ultra-fed. I died stupidly up top to Blitz because I was baiting for a Tristana who was more content to farm some creeps (was more my bad than hers as I didn’t communicate what I was doing). Veigar was pretty ineffectual for them because Poppy and I were tanky enough to absorb his ultimate, mostly because we didn’t have that much AP for his ult to scale off of anyway.
Late game: We had a pretty commanding lead by the mid game, which carried through to the late game. There wasn’t much they could do to claw back as we played pretty safely and let Poppy do most of our heavy lifting. Just look at the scoreboard. Two of us had 5 levels on their jungler…
Post-game scoreboard:
Lessons learned:
- I didn’t punish Veigar but I didn’t feed him either, which made him a pretty low threat in team fights
- Tanky support Blitz is really good, but he can’t carry worse or underfed teams
- Shaco is a really annoying champion to fight against… like I didn’t know that already
- A fed Tristana is just nasty
Current record: 11-8
Game 18: Kennen vs. Kog’Maw (bot)
Game date: February 8, 2012
Replay file: http://www.box.com/s/0rz6q9ov59oj1u83r15a
My team: Ziggs (mid), Heimerdinger (top), Udyr (jungler), Poppy (bot), Kennen (bot)
Enemy team: Katarina (mid), Mordekaiser (top), Rammus (jungle), Taric (bot), Kog’Maw (bot)
This was a 3-man premade with Poppy and Ziggs. Ziggs really wanted mid and Heimer top, so I figured it might be a good time to give AD Kennen a try! It’s the new big thing, right?!?
Early game: The enemy invaded our blue right away and nearly killed Ziggs who wasn’t paying attention. Luckily he got away with Flash and Udyr’s distraction. They stole our blue but they were pretty low and we managed to kill two of them, with both kills and blue buff going to me. Our lane went pretty well, but my inexperience as an AD carry reared its head a few times. I was 5/5/4 while Kog’Maw was 3/3/2. I simply ate way too many Taric stuns and Kog’Maw would put out loads of damage, plus Icathian Surprise when we killed him. Top and mid, unfortunately, were getting crushed with Rammus ganks being the primary issue.
Mid game: I was pushing my lane solo and got Taric quite low when Rammus came in to gank with me around 40% health. I could have easily escaped him with a simple brush juke (hindsight is 20/20), but I froze, which gave him an easy kill. Being so used to weak autos as an AP, I had no idea how much his shield would hit me for… Morde was also becoming a big problem here. In team fights I would have to get in close for my ult, but that put me very close to Rammus taunts, Kat ults, Taric stuns, and Morde AoE. Of course Kog could just happily plink away from super range… It just wasn’t working out for me. AD Kennen melts so much faster than AP Kennen and after 17 games as AP, I was not used to the super squishiness.
Late game: Morde es #1 huehuehuehue. Seriously, it got to the point where we’d try to 3-man gank him and he’d Flash into the middle of our ranged carries SOLO, burst me down instantly, and take the other two below 50%. He was absolutely untouchable in team fights yet put out so much damage with his WotA + Rylai’s + Abyssal. Udyr did what he could (double FoN + Wriggles build, really?) but they were simply too tanky, too bursty, and had too much CC to insta-gib half our team within seconds of a team fight starting. We could have surrendered at 29:00, but given that my friends never surrender, we let it play out. Thanks for helping make my average KDA plummet! 
Post-game scoreboard:
Lessons learned:
- I think the Ghostblade was a bad item choice… I should have rushed Bloodthirster after Black Cleaver
- An AD without crit and/or lifesteal is kind of a joke – again, bad item choices on my part
- AD plays completely differently than AP – you get punished so much harder for bad positioning
- Their team comp wasn’t the best learning environment for a guy with < 30 AD carry games under his belt
- Morde is no joke when he’s able to farm that hard and build AP
Current record: 10-8
Game 17: Kennen vs. Riven (top)
Game date: February 8, 2012
Replay file: http://www.box.com/s/dks5qo3drymnojdzb3gc
My team: Kennen (top), Morgana (mid), Shyvana (jungler), Maokai (bot), Graves (bot)
Enemy team: Riven (top), Kassadin (mid), Nasus (jungle), Sona (bot), Ashe (bot)
This match was draft mode, so I figured I’d be going up against Nasus. In a bit of a twist, Riven went top and Nasus jungled instead. I liked our team, except Maokai and Graves weren’t running any escape summoners, which had me slightly worried. I took Exhaust over Ignite this game because it could be used defensively to avoid top lane ganks as well as offensively to counter Kassadin.
Early game: My goal was to harass Riven hard with W and it worked very well. Doran’s Shield gave me everything I needed to put the hurt on her, and she was already below 50% before the first creep wave died. Admittedly, I wasn’t last-hitting very well, but my harassment made her last-hitting much worse. At level 4 or 5 I managed to kill her under her tower and escape as Nasus came up to gank me. Once I got back into lane I resumed my aggressive play. Nasus came up to gank again and killed me under my tower, but I took him with me. By level 10, I was a fair bit ahead of Riven. The rest of my team was doing well and Morg in particular was great with a few kills, assists, and no deaths.
Mid game: We got ourselves up to a score of about 18-8 in the mid-game and Sona turned into a doom-and-gloomer saying how bad her team was even though she was warding everywhere. I’m sure that helped their morale! Graves and Maokai were getting caught quite a bit due to their lack of Flash/Ghost and the enemy team looked like they might catch up in score, but then we decided to start fighting more as a team. Our AoE proved to be too much for them in two team fights that we won easily and they surrendered at around 25 minutes.
Late game: There wasn’t one.
Post game summary: VICTORY! Sorry, I forgot to screenshot the scoreboard.
Lessons learned:
- Punish teh Riven early because once she get’s sustain, she’ll probably be fine
- Don’t ult her until you’ve secured a very close position, otherwise she’ll just stun and dash out
- I’m looking forward to energy regen runes because I found myself OOE at key moments in this match
Current record: 10-7
Game 16: Kennen vs. Veigar (mid)
Game date: February 3, 2012
Replay file: http://www.box.com/s/b10dy4x0kjmqpk75o6jj
My team: Kennen (mid), Poppy (top), Amumu (jungler), Orianna (bot), Caitlyn (bot)
Enemy team: Veigar (mid), Gangplank (top), Skarner (jungle), Soraka (bot), Sivir (bot)
I queued up with my buddy and his friends again after the last game hoping for another win. This match was a lot tougher!
Early game: My lane was actually much easier than last game because Veigar let me zone him hard. With no creeps in the way I simply Q + W harassed him during the entire laning phase. I got him once under his tower as soon as I hit level 6. When I came back, he was even more passive than before. Skarner came to gank me once but I easily avoided it. I killed him again and suddenly I was three levels higher than him. Unfortunately, Skarner had a much better early game than our Amumu, which put the enemy team up 4 or 5 kills by the ~20 minute mark.
Mid game: We grouped up for dragon and managed to split up the enemy team in the process. We caught Veigar coming down from mid for a quick kill and then jumped on Skarner, Soraka, and Sivir. With better reflexes I would have Flash + ulted for a very easy triple kill but instead I walked through GP’s ultimate. We still managed to ace them though, evening up the score. Poppy’s ult is awesome for initiating tower dives! The mid-game was very back-and forth, with each team picking up kills. I stupidly chased Soraka too close to their mid tower and got caught in a Skarner ultimate. I made another blunder by wasting my ult and Flash in an attempt to KS (ahem, kill secure) Skarner later on. Soraka deserves a lot of credit for keeping the mid game competitive as there were enemy wards everywhere and she also had an Oracles, clearing out all of our wards.
Late game: Poppy just got too strong for them by late game though and I’ll happily admit she carried us to victory! We were already up a few kills when we decided to go for Baron. Skarner face-checked it from the top lane and Poppy + Amumu chased him for a kill in the tribrush. The rest of the enemy was behind baron so I flashed over the wall and ulted, helping us catch Veigar and Soraka. Poppy peeled off and chased Sivir and Gangplank who thought their inner top tower would save them. Nope. We got the ace, pushed a couple inhibitors, and it was game over shortly afterward when we nearly aced them again.
Post-game scoreboard:
Lessons learned:
- Be much more mindful of positioning when Skarner’s ultimate is up
- Orianna as a support is pretty interesting and I love how her ult synergizes with my own
- Soraka with Oracles can be a huge pain in the ass… especially when she has three heals and a Locket!
- Veigar should be punished early to delay his insane late game
