Hey everyone, a lot of players struggle to understand when to push the lane or freeze
it.
When we talk about it, we try to avoid saying things like "Always push or always freeze
on these champions.." because in league there are always different ways to play the lane
out, we just give you general gameplans that you want in certain matchups.
To show you what im talking about, were going to take a look at a game from Ssumday, where
hes playing Irelia vs Viktor.
Were going to give the general gameplan, then look at what Ssumday did differently, and
why.
Lets get started.
Irelia is an AD bruiser vs Viktor, an AP control mage.
Irelia wins extended trades while Viktor wins poke and burst trades.
So, ssumdays gameplan will be the traditional melee vs ranged gameplan:
Mission 1: Let the wave Push Mission 2: Stay Healthy
Mission 3: Look for all-ins or extended Trades Viktors gameplan will be:
Mission 1: Slow Push the wave Mission 2: Poke and Harass when they go for
CS Mission 3: Avoid Extended Trades
Alright, lets breakdown the gameplay.
At the start of the lane, Viktor does a little wave management trick.
If you grab the wave before they meet and drag them to the side like this, the wave
will push to you.
So Viktor gets the wave pushing to his side, which means he's going to fail mission 1.
Ssumday is finishing leashing though and heads to lane.
He uses the brush for mission 2, while auto attacking to get some minions low and uses
his Q to start stacking his passive.
Now that these minions are all low, he uses his Q to grab them all which brings his passive
to 4 stacks, then goes all-in for mission 3 using Q for the last stack to proc his passive.
Since Viktor didn't push the wave early, and doesn't have a big wave stacking, he loses
this trade really hard.
So, lets really break this down so you guys can understand what just happened.
Viktor didn't push the wave early, meaning he wanted to freeze.
This isn't completely terrible, but he was playing so far up like he was pushing and
had a big wave behind him.
If he's going to let the wave push to him, he needs to respect that he's a ranged vs
melee champion who crushes him in all-ins, meaning he needs to stand around here.
This might have seemed Irelia specific, but with the way viktor was positioned, other
champions that have strong extended trades with a slow, stun, or gapcloser could have
done the same.
For example, if he was Jax or Darius, because Viktor is in the brush at this point, all
Ssumday would have had to do was cut him off and run diagonally at him like this.
On Irelia he has the gapcloser so it doesn't matter, but on Darius or Jax, Jax can stack
up his passive on the minions, then go in with his stun, and Darius can go in and catch
him with W, then run him down like this as well.
Anyways, the wave is pushing to Viktor, but Ssumday is level 2 with a health advantage,
and his jungler is on top side.
He starts pinging his jungler to head over for a dive, so his goal now is to crash the
wave on the tower.
So, he focuses on the minions while landing a stun on the viktor to pressure him away
from harassing, but the viktor disrespect ssumday again, so he stacks his passive and
goes in with a clean Q + Auto attack to chunk him a little more before sejuani gets here.
Before talking about the dive, let's talk about why what this viktor just did was so
bad.
It's easy to say well he didn't dodge the stun and let Irelia damage him.
But a concept here that is universal to any top matchup is that when the wave is pushing
to you like this, the most important thing to do is to stay healthy as the higher elo
you go, the higher the chance a jungler dives you.
This is really high elo so the odds are 99%
Anyways, Sejuani shows up, and it's an easy dive for them.
Something small here incase you are ever diving in your own game.
If you have a tanky jungler, or anyone that can drop turret aggro easily, like elise or
Yi, always let them damage the enemy top laner first so the turret focuses them.
They can tank way more hits than you and it's better if they die as your life is always
the most important.
After that kill, Ssumday wants to recall right away, as Viktor is going to TP back to lane
with full health.
Alright, if you were Ssumday here, would you TP back to Lane or save it?
Alright, so there actually is no right or wrong answer here, which is kind of the point
of this video, in most league scenarios there are multiple options.
He can teleport back to lane because his jungler is top side, meaning he can keep pressuring
the lane or set up another gank.
Or he can save the TP to have TP advantage.
So, SSumday decides to use his TP here.
But, we think this was a missed opportunity to get really far ahead.
His mid laner just got dove and died in mid, so a huge wave is crashing on mid tower.
If he uses his teleport there, he can collect the huge wave, then head top which will also
have a huge wave crashing.
Let us know what you think, was this a mistake or not?
Anyways, when he TPs back to lane, the wave is pushing to him, so he could set up a freeze
to look for an all-in when viktor gets too close, but since his jungler is there he gets
the wave pushing again.
His jungler recalls though, so he finishes pushing in the wave, making sure it crashes
on the tower.
This is very important as it prevent the enemy top laner from freezing, and giving you top
lane priority.
Whenever you are pushing waves and getting top lane priority, you want to go through
a checklist in your head like this:
1.
Can I dive the enemy top laner cleanly?
if not 2.
Are their any wards to clear or deep vision to get?
After that,
3.
Do I need to recall? if not...
4.
Look to Roam Mid
These are the main things you want to do with top lane priority as you don't want to just
stand around doing nothing while they Cs under tower.
So, since ssumday can't dive Viktor right now, he heads into river, clearing this control
ward, then heads towards mid after seeing rengar on this ward.
When he gets there, he cleans up an easily kill on Leblanc, then pushes in the next wave,
before heading to top lane again.
He has a big wave waiting for him when he gets there since he crashed the wave and got
it to bounce back, so he clears that and the next one to give him a clean recall and a
lot of gold to spend.
And since that was a cannon wave, it will set up a slow push back the other way.
When he gets back to lane, the wave is set up perfect for a freeze, and since his jungler
isn't around to dive he's going to actually hold it this time.
With how Fed he is right now, and the fact that he's level 6, Viktor knows he can't walk
up to last hit, so Ssumday freezes this wave for 2 and a half minutes, denying an insane
amount of CS from viktor as he only grabbed a few with his laser from far away,leaving
viktor with 53, to Ssumdays 88,.
Alright, at this point, Ssumday is way ahead of viktor and this lane is over so lets recap.
At the start of the lane, Viktor got the wave pushing to him with a small wave management
trick, but disrespected how strong melee champions are at level 1, so Ssumday stacked his passive
and went all-in, chunking him hard.
Ssumday called his jungler over to dive, so he focused on crashing the wave and chunked
viktor 1 more time before sejuani got there to make it a really free kill.
Then, he tped back to lane, shoved the wave in again to get him top lane priority, and
used it to clear top vision and roam mid to get another free kill.
After that, he went back to top lane and froze the wave for 2 and a half minutes, denying
viktor a ton of CS, leaving SSumday with 88 to viktors 53 putting him even further ahead
than he already was.
Alright, thats going to be it for this one, thanks for watching!