On November 19 2013 19:29 Arisen wrote:Playing a bit on my new account that got palced into S1 after promos. Some observations that I think can help some people.
1) I think A good strategy in these levels is to ban champs people like to play but are usually HORRIBLE at. Examples include:
Lee Sin: Everyone sees bengi or some other korean jungler go on a tear with lee and make these really nice looking ganks happen. In games I've been observing, either players don't have the mechanics or (more likely) the game knowledge to make good ganks happen with lee. They waste a lot of time trying to gank unsuccessfully, have a bad score and then build glass cannon. I think if people played champs like shyvana or amumu who can just farm and be really useful with their ult and some tanky items later they would do much better in lower elos.
Kassadin: People love to Firstpick kassadin in solo q at this level as I'm observing. They don't even have to get countered, usually they just die a lot because they take a bunch of free poke in lane; decision making with their ult usually isn't great either. There are times when one will do really well and carry though, so I wouldnt want one on either team!
Zed: The amount of ults i've seen on Full HP bruisers in teamfights astounds me/
(most importantly) VAYNE: I make it a rule to always ban/ask for ban for vayne now.Bot lanes die a lot in low levels anyway because they misplay the trades, and it's too easy for your vayne to get the short end of the stick, or theirs to get a few kills and your game to become a whole lot harder. Combined with the inability to close out games vayne lategame becomes so hard to deal with and is a terror in this elo. You might get some free wins because your vayne got fed, but the times where the enemy vayne gets fed will make you want to rip your eyes out. Much easier to deal with almost any other ADC who gets fed lategame, vayne is just to slippery.
2) Almost no one trades back. If you're in this elo, make sure you don't take damage for free unless you can at all help it! A good example is Renekton versus Darius. Darius does really well versus renekton if he can land his Q's. So as renekton, you really want to bait out some Q's, then close in and trade with him. Now, if you eat a Q by mistake, I see a lot of people who will just turn and run. They take the full Q, and bleed damage and did nothing in return. Now there's a health discrepancy and he's slowly going to build on it if you eat more Q's.
What you should do, on the other hand, is immediately use your combo on him after he lands his Q and accept that you lost that trade. Maybe you took some damage, but you gave it back too (just not as efficiently). Now, his health lead is still there, but is much smaller than it was in the scenario where you run.
Alternatively the auto trades that happen a lot top lane don't really happen in the game's I've played so far. I just auto people and they don't throw one back and I slowly build a health lead and go all in. A trick you can try if you're laning melee vs melee and are having trouble here is to stand on the low health minion you know he's going to want to last hit in a moment. When he goes up to last hit you have a chance of him hitting you and gaining minion aggro. Trade him an auto and maybe an ability depending on who you are back. Works very well in my experience.
Note: I'm not advocating you going HAM and dying for free because you took some free poke; be smart about it, but in general in early laning, if he throws an auto on you you need to reciprocate unless you know why you're not.
3) Don't wait till you're almost dead to drink your health pots! I see this all the time. People start dorans pot or something, and I will whittle them down. When I check their HP to see if I can go all in with ignite I see that they are almost in the range where I can instagib them and they still haven't chugged their HP pot. Try not to clip the pot where you are drinking it too early and will take extra healing if you can help it, but if you wait that long to drink your pots, I'm going to keep bullying you and probably all in you.
4) Gap close after their escape! This is a general statement obviously, as there are situations where you want to use your gap close first (ex. I double dash W someone as renekton), but I see all kinds of people get away from stuff they shouldn't here. If you have a gap closer and the other guy has to escape, wait till he uses his to use yours if at all possible.
The classic example is lee sin. You've Q'd an enemy, and they're low, but not low enough to get instagibbed by your second Q. Wait to see if they use flash before you gap close, otherwise they can just flash after your second q and get away. Another good example is jax. So many people Q>E me as renekton when they could have walked up to me and started the E. I'm just going to stun and dash away from you, and you wasted mana on nothing. On the other hand If you save your Q untill after I use my E to run, you can then Q onto me and get the guaranteed stun off.
5) If you're ganking and you dont HAVE to open with a skill shot, don't.
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/2bufIh6.jpg)
This goes back to lee sin again. A lot of lee players will run up, throw thier Q out immediately, miss and then the guy will get away. On the other hand, if you approach the enemy like on my wonderfully drawn diagram, then use your slow (EE), then start chasing him, it's a million times easier to land a Q to finish it up because the range is shorter, and you dont have to deal with creeps blocking. I've seen a lot of bad ganks on this account, and that is probably one of the biggest reasons I see ganks fail (the other being ganking when you are too weak and can be dueled 2v1)
Ok, this is getting long, so I'll cut it out here. Hope some people in lower leagues saw this and benefit from it in some way, these are all mistakes I've made (and still make from time to time) too, and I just had to learn from making the same mistake a bunch till I figured it out because a lot of people higher up would consider them common knowledge and don't explain it a lot. Gl.
As a PS, I've seen the jungle olaf's in Korea, and I tried it and I don't think the new olaf is a drag to play, I remember the old olaf being much more fun to play, but maybe I just don't have enough experience with it yet.
EPT
