Alistar!

Holy crap! I just got my first win as Alistar! After countless games of getting completely owned by enemy Alistars, I decided to try him out a couple weeks ago... And I failed. Miserably. 0-5.

However, today I decided to get his Longhorn Alistar skin and give him another try. It went wayyy better than it previously had and I got my first win as him.

I realized that my problem had been that I had been building him for AP burst, but never building his damage spells - however that's not even a good idea. So I went Desolation Runes, Flat Armor Seals, some defense glyphs? and a Fortitude and 2 Swiftness Quints for my rune page; and then 1/8/21 on masteries (smite in offense cause I was jungling, strength of spirit in defense, and typical 21 Utility). Then on items I built Philosopher's Stone, Heart of Gold, and Merc's Treads initially with a bunch of wards, then built a Trinity Force. My original plan had been to just build the Sheen and then build armor and/or MR items and finish the TriForce later, but we were doing so well and I needed my ganks to be stronger than for my sustainability to last. By the time I finished my TriForce, the enemy team had surrendered.

I was able to gank early and often. My early ganks did not result in kills, but they did result in the enemy team recalling and giving up position in lane - which is all I really wanted.

I placed meaningful and impactful wards on both sides of the river that saved lives and resulted in at least one kill.

I maintained level with the bottom lane (of course mid and top, the solo lanes, outran me), and that was awesome.

Overall, I was very pleased with myself and my performance. I finally got the stupid purple cow to work for me!

Good Team Makeup does not equal Win

This is a cautionary tale.

Teamwork...

So I just lost my first real normal solo queue game with Gragas - and it wasn't pretty. It would seem that playing a champion with abilities that no one knows or understands is... dubious in solo queue. Now, to be fair, I have won several games in solo queue with Gragas up to this point, at times completely dominating lanes and laying on good damage.

The issue came with my team's complete lack of understanding of my ult. They seemed like the kind of people who were expecting a giant teamfight fustercluck with burst AoEs and tons of damage. So, when I would drop my barrel to blast the enemy team apart and to separate them into 5 small pieces which we, in theory, would then gang up on and burst down, my team instead scattered and each attacked a different person, some members even running away from our turrets and team to take on 2 enemies at once. So, my barrel had, in fact, the opposite result from what I had expected. By dropping my ult and intending to scatter the other team and make them easy to kill, my team instead scattered even more and became even easier kills.

I'm sure that they had just figured that they should keep attacking the person that they had been focusing, however, that person is now protected by their side and by the guy(s) with them. TURN AROUND. Focus them one at a time in easy-to-kill situations. You are not Rambo.

What also sucked was that their idea of a teamfight fustercluck with burst AoEs and tons of damage wasn't going to work because the enemy team had an Amumu. Guess what? If you all jump into a tiny little radius centered on Amumu, we're all going to die. They also didn't seem to realize that my ult leveled the playing field and reduced Amumu's effectiveness.

SERENITY NOW!