Bran's Newbie Adventures in ConquestLand - Episode OneZero

Been a while since my last post. Got lazy, partially...okay, mostly.

I'll quickly summarize everything up to before last night...varying degrees of success, mostly playing Khepri and Athena in the Support role, though I've had a couple of deviations:

• Freya ADC: went 2/2/2 in a 13 minute enemy surrender. Although GBow was already removed, still found myself, alongside Taco as Sobek, being pressured and pushed back under the tower by the enemy Ah Muzen Cab and Aphrodite. Interesting combo there, but they definitely had better early game presence. Thankfully, Zilby was destroying in the Solo lane, and his 6/1/1 score, alongside the teamwork of Prism ( Nemesis) and Ducks ( Nu Wa in her new volleyball outfit) destroyed the enemy team's hopes of a win.
  
  
• Bacchus Support: went 1/1/8 in a 22 minute enemy surrender. This was the 2nd time I played him in Conquest, and this time, I heeded the advice of a more conservative early game. Jaberg as Rama and I held our own in the Duo lane against Apollo and Ymir, while GGF ( Janus), Taco ( Osiris) and Ducks ( Arachne got the better (barely in some cases) of their counterparts. Solid game all-around.
  
  
• Guan Yu Support: went 3/1/6 in a 12 minute enemy surrender. This one only had Zilby ( Thor Jungle) and Ducks ( Freya ADC) with me, with 2 solo-queuers. I always feel like I should be so tanky with Guan Yu, and it almost got me demolished early. I had been concentrating on getting my stacks of Painless up on the minion wave for enhanced healing for Ducks and I, which left me exposed to the enemy Sobek and Skadi. I had to use my horsie ult to save myself, at least once or twice. I also absolutely stole kills...my total player damage was 1,861, while everyone else was around 5k or higher, lol. Oops. Thankfully, Ducks is a forgiving type of guy. So was our Anubis, who was great at rotating for ganks at opportune times. In any case, I'll be playing more of Guan in the future...he's fun.

And that brings us to last night. 2 games, 2 drastically different results.

Group Queue Game 1: Athena Support

This was an ugly one for me. 0/7/7. Ouch. I did Zilby, as Anhur, no favors whatsoever. Granted, he was horribly laggy in the early going (was jumping all over the place and missing basics on minions and enemies as a result), but I was apparently way too aggressive for the situation. Talked with the group after this one, and went over my simplistic thought process...for example, I'd see 3-4 enemies bunched up in a teamfight, and would taunt them all, recognizing only my ability to actually grab them all. That'd be great to sacrifice myself if the rest of my team was getting demolished and trying to escape, but that wasn't the case. Instead, it got me quickly destroyed, leaving the rest of my team without a tank and peel potential.

Taco did well as Erlang Shen, going 11/3/4, but overall, our team just got outmatched and pushed back, losing the Gold Fury multiple times. I expect a lot of this was my fault. I mean, how long can that damn Fafnir stay in his stupid dragon form anyway?!?

In the past month, I've really not done very well with Athena. I love her kit...the mobility, the slightly higher damage potential compared to Khepri, and her superior dash...but I just seem not to use it correctly. I feel really useless if we're being outpushed early. I need to get close to the wave to use her 3, but that exposes me to damage from the enemy. I use my dash too much to initiate, when I should be saving it as an escape...just things like that.

I'll go into the next game I choose her with this in mind, and try to adjust my playstyle to get better results, but I may have found another god that I prefer even more, and whose kit I'm vastly more experienced with...

Group Queue Game 2: Bacchus Support

Okay, this one was better all around. It started off pretty badly...Taco got out-dueled in a mirror match as Erlang Shen in Solo, creating a HUUUUGE level and damage disparity. He definitely wasn't happy with his early game, but he came back later, recovered from tilting, to help the team and make up for the early going.

I should also note...this was an extremely weird enemy team comp. 4 physical gods, with an unusual pair of Loki ADC and Fenrir Support.

Ducks ( Jing Wei) and I, as expected, were able to pressure the enemy Duo early, keeping their health low and the minions pushing the tower.

That enemy Erlang was the big reason it took us so long to win. Huge damage (over 50k), tanked over 100k (!?!?!)...geez. He kept us all pressured until we were able to catch up in build and level. If the enemy ADC was more standard, the outcome might have been different.

That said, even playing stupid sometimes, I went 8/6/24, with over 23k damage, getting roughly the same damage as Prism ( Bastet) and Taco. Definitely more comfortable with his kit, and I love the increased damage output. I probably should have gone more tanky though...I ended up getting Rod of Tahuti last just because I was having so much fun, to go with my Shoes of the Magi and Spear of the Magus.

A shout out to Zilby, who, as Ra, showed us his sniping ability, especially in the last 5 minutes, as he probably racked up 5-10 kills just in that time. Through the walls, whatever. I call wall-hack.