Hey everyone and welcome.
In our guides, we often teach you a certain set of missions that are the way to win the
lane in different types of matchups.
What we want to draw attention to this time, is how to play dynamic and take shortcuts
to reach your overall objective faster, when your opponent is playing incorrectly.
This time around we'll be reviewing one of our Skill-Capped challengers, who has finished
top 50 multiple times, Ariana Lovato.
He'll be playing a smurf game in Diamond 3 where he's on control mage/assassin Zoe up
against Leblanc who's an assassin.
As always, even if you don't play these champs or even types of champions, it doesn't matter.
You're going to learn how to make better decisions based on your opponent's actions in this guide,
amongst the other small tips you can always expect from us.
Let's jump into analysis.
Zoe and Leblanc have similar range, but it's not cut and dry.
Zoe has higher E range when going through walls and range spell interactions with ult,
while Leblanc also has a dash to get closer for her spells.
But it about evens out in the general lane phase.
Damage, they're evenly matched.
Both are volatile mids who snowball easily off one combo.
For waveclear, Zoe has the advantage at all stages.
But Leblanc could fast clear with ulti if she chooses to past 6.
This lane is pretty even as to who should win it, Zoe's angle will be to directly pressure
Leblanc with shoving the wave and landing her skill shots.
Whereas Leblanc's best choice would be looking to try and delay Zoe's push outside of her
turret and setup ganks, as Leblanc's gank setups are insane.
The missions Ariana on the Zoe will follow this game are:
Push the wave Harass Leblanc when she goes to last hit
Don't get ganked
Jungle matchup for this one is Nocturne for Zoe and Taliyah for Leblanc.
Let's get into it.
Before the lane even starts, Leblanc actually scores first blood with a kill onto Zoe's
top laner.
Not ideal and Leblanc comes into this with an extra Doran's ring.
This won't change Ariana's missions on the Zoe, as he still needs to win the lane on
the lane dominant champ to carry his team.
What it does mean though, is that Leblanc has the edge in the 1v1 and definitely won't
need any ganks to win lane if she plays well enough.
Skipping forward to the start of lane phase, we can see that Zoe gets a few autos on the
wave before Leblanc arrives.
This is a nice start on mission 1.
When most players go into lane with the intent on pushing the wave though, they use their
first ability onto the wave as well and Zoe does not.
The reason for this is that mission 1 is currently in effect, the wave is pushing, by saving
her ability she can start on mission 2 right away.
Moments later, we can see mission 2 come into play.
By intelligently holding onto his Q and exploiting Leblanc's lateness to lane to work on mission
1 with autos, he has landed his first spell on the game onto Leblanc.
That was his main goal, but also hitting the wave at the same time is a nice bonus.
Though, this wasn't a harass on a last hit - but he fancied his chances at landing this
Q due Leblanc's exposed positioned in lane by the side of her minions.
Moving on, minimap awareness tells us the enemy not lane arrives late - meaning Taliyah
almost certainly started bot side.
This knowledge will help out with mission 3 later.
As these blue melees get low, we can see he misses a couple of them while auto'ing, when
he could've secured them with his ability.
Losing the CS isn't ideal, but he'd rather that than waste a spell to secure them.
He wants to gain momentum in this lane following mission 2.
A couple of seconds later, he does exactly that, once again hitting Leblanc with his
Q, this time as she goes for a last hit.
Nice work and he's gained a 20% health lead at this point, remember - Leblanc got the
first blood and has double doran's, but is falling behind.
Moving onto the next trade and we can see Ariana made a bit of a mistake here as both
champions are going for a last hit.
He moved a little too far forward and got caught by Leblanc's W.
A few things to note here are that with this W, the blue wave actually has the larger health
& minion count, so Zoe's no longer pushing for mission 1 for now.
Also, Ariana was still happy to take this trade, even though it wasn't ideal - because
he's already burnt through Leblanc's potion and they dealt around even damage to eachother.
Keep in mind, Zoe's playing corrupting potion, so this health will be easy to heal back up.
He looks for more harass and ends up pulling all the way back to secure his last hits and
think about how he wants to manage the wave.
If you were the Zoe here, what would your immediate objective be with how to manage
the wave?
Alright.
So most of you probably said push the wave, since we kind of baited you into that as this
is one of our missions and it's the gameplan for Zoe to win lane with that Ariana wants
to execute on.
However, the missions are the general strategy to winning the matchup and this Leblanc isn't
playing well enough for Ariana to respect how the matchup should be played out.
Because Leblanc is constantly pushing up for last hits and to trade, but is being outplayed,
Zoe doesn't need to push the wave to harass.
She can harass just fine with the wave being neutral, this suits her nicely as there's
little threat from gank for mission 3 as well.
So what we've just said have you immediately asking these two questions.
1) Why doesn't Zoe do this from the start?
She's getting her missions done, while staying safe from Leblanc's high threat ganks.
2) What can Leblanc even do?
First up, Zoe doesn't want to go into this matchup trying to freeze.
She wants to win lane and play aggressive.
The reason this is working without committing to the push is because Leblanc isn't trading
well and is doing a bad job with hiding behind her minions to block Q, which is what Zoe
and other champs who get their main ability blocked like to do - push so they can't block
with minions.
Because Leblanc isn't forcing Zoe to shove to tower to land easy harass, she can skip
this timely process, at least for the time being, and just go straight for harass.
Using autos on the wave and spells on the champion.
And to answer the 2nd question: Leblanc needs to be trading back more actively and using
minions to block more effectively.
We'll highlight one example of this in just a moment.
So we see Ariana continue the trend of saving his spells for trading and he actively autos
the wave to thin it - because while he's not focused on pushing, he doesn't want this wave
to get out of control.
And right here, is how Leblanc can do better and is why Ariana doesn't have to push to
harass right now on the Zoe.
Leblanc is positioned to the side of her casters to score this last hit, allowing Zoe to execute
on mission 2 once again.
If she was behind these casters, it'd be much easier to dodge or block.
Also, Leblanc doesn't shoot for one of our recent active missions: trading when ability
is down.
Yes she tanks this damage, but doesn't retaliate while Zoe's Q is down, just continues to CS,
giving Ariana a much easier time.
Okay, speeding it up while Zoe continues to auto the wave, throwing in one q to just thin
it out and keep it under control.
The main thing on Ariana's mind at this point is to get level 3 fast on this third wave,
to really turn up the tempo once skilling up his E.
Nocturne arrives and Leblanc just uses her W, so they go in but this is why Nocturne
doesn't really gank pre-6, he floats away across the lane but what this did achieve
was the the opportunity to zone Leblanc away from this cannon minion.
Unfortunately Ariana misses the cannon as well, but crucially he did zone Leblanc away
from even getting experience from it, so another win for him.
We see him pull right back now to start working on the wave.
Leblanc's playing defensive and he wants to start pushing now to get to work on his original
missions.
Actively auto'ing and using a couple of Q's on the wave, it's not yet enough to reverse
the push, but the waves are closer to neutral as a result.
Now we're seeing Ariana take a trade that is usually a pretty bad idea on most champions,
as his Q is currently down and he's walking into minions.
But, if you're Zoe with a barrier picked up, ignite ready and another spell available on
the ground next to you, you can just go for this as we see he does here.
The important thing to think about here regardless of what champion you play, is how these moves
change the minion wave.
Because he's aggros the blue minions, they're attacking Zoe, while the red minions are hitting
the blue wave.
This turns the tides and gets Zoe's wave pushing, which is ideal as he looks to get aggressive
and start acting on mission 1.
Alright, we've learnt a lot about minion wave control and dynamic missions so far, let's
speed it up while they pick up their last hits.
Zoe has the level lead at the moment thanks to the cannon exp denial from earlier.
She's also gotten rid of Leblanc's potions, with 2 charges of corrupting left for herself.
A second later, we see Ariana ward the brush and will now play to the side of his ward
to evade being ganked too easily.
Leblanc also uses her W onto the wave in this moment
This is Leblanc's trigger to go for a new mission, having played so well previously:
Go for an all-in.
While Leblanc's main damage and only mobility is down, Ariana grabs a couple of last hits,
then looks to move in.
What he was going for here was a very aggressive trade, where he can either send Leblanc home
to recall or even land a kill.
The point is, with Leblanc's main ability down, there's nothing to worry about in the
1v1.
Though, with no eyes on Taliyah, there is a possibility of the jungler helping out.
But being 3-0 down as a team, Ariana needs to make plays and carry with this lane dominant
champion.
Anyway, Zoe drops the redemption and moves in.
Misses bubble, but here's something that you all want to pay attention to.
Notice how Zoe uses corrupting as he goes for the all in?
Why do you think that is?
Alright, bonus points to those who got this.
When you have corrupting potion active, it means your autos will also apply a burn effect
to the target, burning over-time, lasting for 3 seconds.
So, when Leblanc's passive procs, the Leblanc who has the visible corrupting potion burn
on them, is the real Leblanc.
This also works on Shaco clone.
Then, as we see, the real Leblanc is clearly the one closest to Zoe and he can keep going
without delay.
We also see Taliyah coming up here for the counter, let's see what happens.
Alright, so this was some nice play from Ariana, a little late on the flash as the ignite would've
finished Leblanc, but got the job done regardless.
You may be asking yourself that this was a risky play that only just paid off, as he
went all-in without vision on the jungler.
This was certainly a risk, but Ariana felt pressured because his team was losing and
knew he'd win the 1v1.
He also played to the side of his ward and suspected Taliyah to be top side.
He wouldn't have went for this if he thought Taliyah was bot side and Leblanc had her spells
up, sometimes you just have to go to it and make plays, even if they're not guaranteed
to score results.
Looking at our original missions, it's safe to say this lane didn't go as planned.
But what we can say is that the way Ariana dynamically played around Leblanc's positioning
and mistakes, accelerated his gameplan to scoring a kill by 4 minutes, vs a double doran's
first blood Leblanc, boosting his chances of carrying the losing team.
Let's get you today's takeaways.
Ariana started the game looking to push the wave to tower for free harass and last hit
punishment.
But Leblanc's aggressive positioning and poor trade execution, allowed him to land his Q's
even with the minions available to protect Leblanc.
This allowed Ariana to constantly hit the champion and not the wave, accelerating his
aggression.
To the point that when he was online with level 3, he really pushed the tempo and chipped
away at Leblanc's potions, scoring a successful all-in at level 4.
Alright, that's it for this one.
Thanks for watching and we'll catch you next time.