The Difference Between Kinda Carrying and Carrying

Hello there summoners! Today's post is about the difference between "carrying" and "CARRYING"!

Q: So what's the difference?
A: One form of "carrying" is having really nice scores with high kills, low deaths, and high assists. The other form is actually leading your team to VICTORY

Viktory?

But first, an introduction to why I made this guide:

Click to enlarge

The game above is a game I played on my 1500 smurf earlier today as Maokai.

As you can see, I did fairly well, going 10-5-15 and leading my team in gold despite everyone else on the team going even or negative.

Did I carry? Not really. Did I KS? Also a negative. So what went wrong?

1. Sending Gold/Buffs to the Right People:
During the game, bot lane lost their tower and Sivir started farming our jungle camps. But as a jungler with instant clears, I obviously reign king over the domain!

Actually, If your lanes are falling behind, you should probably let them have a camp or two instead of taking full control over the jungle. But unfortunately, your farm won't be as high.

Blue Buff/Red Buff: Mao's quite good with either one early game, and they both led to very successful ganks, teamfights, and objectives. But honestly, maybe Galio could have farmed a little better with blue buff, snowballed a little harder and allowed us to be victorious.

2. Targetting in Teamfights:
Did I KS? No. But obviously, I went after easier targets along with the rest of my team, aka the squishies. However, doing this every fight eventually led to our Sivir dying early in teamfights. Did she have bad positioning? Yes! Could I have saved her anyway? Probably.

Why is this important? Despite the fact that I dealt more damage than her early-mid game, an AD carry's scaling late game is naturally the best as your team's main glass cannon. As a result, keeping her alive for kills and assists naturally snowballs better into late game.

3. Optimizing Gold Use:
Now for the big one!

If you check out the screenshot above, I chose to go AP maokai, a very fun build, but doesn't scale very well considering his main damage skills, Q and E only have a 40% AP ratio. In comparison, Gragas' barrel has a 90% AP ratio and is easier to land than Mao's Sapling. Deathcap was a massive waste of gold.

You'll also notice that I didn't build any armor at all, since I planned on targeting and instantly killing Vayne first every battle anyway. Except this one time Vayne managed to survive my initial burst...and then proceed to destroy my team. Once again, bad idea.

I also had a "full build" at the time, which meant I couldn't be bothered to buy any wards. Never expect your team to buy wards, not even the support. As the only person on the team who could afford to buy anything, I probably should have bought the ward and oracle. Not like that deathcap was very helpful to begin with.

An Oracle and wards are probably the most game-changing items in a poke fight at baron. It allows you the ability to engage when and where you want, and also lets you know if you're in danger of getting engaged on. A single Oracle and a 5 pack of wards is infinitely valuable in this situation. 775 gold to make or break a game, less than the cost of a Void Stone...I mean Cloak of Agility.

4. Being a Leader:
You've probably heard this one countless times before. However, being a leader really is the way to win a game, as long as you're smarter than the other team...which of course you always are right? If you have time to tell someone how dumb they are, you have just as much time to tell them what to do differently.

In this game I went full troll mode, but as you can see, there are better alternatives if I was actually trying to win:

Goal: Sivir, you retard why the hell are you always the first one dead?
Alternate Method: Jax and Sejuani, protect Sivir, Galio and I will engage.

Sure, it's a little pushover-y, goodie two-shoes, and vomit inducing to some degree as my lower elo friends would agree, but that's what the internet's all about right? Being fake so people like you :(

5. Conclusions:
1. You have limited gold to use. Use it wisely.
2. You will be playing at least 20 minutes with the 4 idiots on your team. Treat them kindly.
3. Since you're reading this guide, clearly you're smarter than everyone else. Nobody cares if you're smarter unless you use your intelligence wisely.
4. Oracles and wards win games. Use them, and don't lose them for dumb reasons.

Or maybe I'm just a bad champion :( Oh sure. Blame the tree. I'll just leaf.