Hey everyone and welcome. Today we'll be running you through a low elo review, this time from
Gold elo, where we'll take a look at some incredibly poor, yet common mistakes that
assassins make when mirrored against each other. Anyways, back to this guide where we're
going to be focusing on common mistakes that assassins make in mirrors and the replay we'll
be analyzing today will blow your mind at how many missed opportunities there are in
an explosive matchup, where both players simply do not have a gameplan. So this time around
we'll be taking a look at Ekko vs Katarina. What we're about to learn is essential for
any assassin to learn and EVEN if you don't play assassins, you'll learn some tips for
dealing with these champions in lane. So, let's get to matchup analysis. Ekko and Katarina
have about even range, with their range spells taken into account while being melee assassins.
Ekko has the waveclear advantage at all stages of the laneBoth champions deal around even
burst damage in short tradesWhile Katarina does more damage in extended, all-in trades
with her lower cool-downs. With this information in mind, Ekko will want to follow the following
missions between levels 1 and 3: Mission 1: Use his superior waveclear to secure the level
advantageMission 2: Play safe when Q is downMission 3: Trade with Katarina upon hitting his level
leadAs always, we'll break down why these are the key missions as we get into the gameplay,
let's jump right in! As the lane starts, Sneaky Pepper on the Kayn is starting raptors. He
actually asked this Ekko for a leash, but for future reference - Kayn is the only jungler
that can start raptors and it definitely isn't good to leash for them AND they don't need
the leash at all. By leashing, Ekko will have delayed his waveclear potential a ton and
if this was higher elo, the mid laner would inform their jungler that Kayn started raptors
due to Ekko's missing mana, which could easily lead to him being counter jungled. So Ekko
goes into lane without his Q, which means that for the moment, he doesn't have a waveclear
advantage for mission 1. However, Katarina is surrendering lane priority immediately
and does not contest Ekko's push. What Kat SHOULD be doing, is either contesting waveclear
as much as possible or at least looking for some harass. But, she's waiting for the wave
to come to her, gifting Ekko a start on mission 1, despite his Q currently being down. Moving
on as Ekko is correctly actively pushing the wave with auto attacks, we're about to see
him use his first Q in lane. While watching few seconds, try to think about what is wrong
with the Q he uses. So there's a couple of points to be made here. Firstly, this is an
auto pilot Q with seemingly no thought behind it. If his goal is to hard push the wave,
then he should've looked to hit the entire wave with the Q. And to that end, if he was
looking to secure his level lead for mission 1, then he wouldn't need to use the Q for
it, since Katarina is playing far back and not contesting the wave at all. Think about
it, securing a level lead is one thing - but to actually abuse your level lead is another.
You can get a tremendous amount of value from securing your level lead in assassin mirrors
- but only if you can act on it and trade when you level up. Therefore, you ideally
want to be just a minion or two ahead, so that the wave isn't fully pushed to their
tower, where would just farm safely until they equalize the level advantage. You want
the wave to be far enough from their tower to trade the moment you level up. This exact
same concept applies to all assassin mirrors, look to get the level lead but in a spot where
you can actually utilize it. So if this was Talon, he'd be holding his W. If it was Fizz,
he'd hold his E and so on, if they're ahead on experience with their opponent not contesting,
as is happening here for Ekko. Of course, some assassins have better waveclear than
others and if you're on the receiving end to being pushed, like Katarina, you can play
safe and thin the wave from distance. But there are ways to get the level advantage
with less waveclear in assassin mirrors, which we covered in this guide here, explaining
how to punish your opponent when their waveclear ability has been spent on the wave. So, with
Ekko's priority over the lane, he does not want to push with his Q and instead save it
for any potential trade, as he already secured lane priority, gifted to him by Katarina.
Anyway, let's speed it up as Ekko picks up last hits until the second wave has arrived.
At this point, the second wave is here. With the second wave, comes level 2. Think to yourself,
what minion on the second wave will allow Ekko to hit level 2? So, the first melee on
the second wave will level up Ekko. He also has around a 2 and a half minion advantage
with their collective health considered, and they'll clash in this spot here which is pretty
much perfect. It's far enough from Katarina's tower to look for a potential trade when he
levels up for mission 3. While Ekko is CS'ing, it's clear he isn't considering level 2, since
he's pretty relaxed about killing this melee minion. As he's about to kill it, Katarina
is making an insanely poor decision to go up and grab a last hit of her own, right in
Ekko's face as he's about to get a level lead. The melee dies, let's see what happens next.
Yeahhhh, so, that was incredibly poor play from both sides where Ekko missed a giant
opportunity, that Katarina served up to him, as if she was begging to lose the lane right
there. If this was one of our smurf videos, you'd see Katarina at 50% health right now
thinking, wow this looks way too easy. Well, that's because high level players will capitalize
on level leads and poor positioning like Ekko should here, making things look super one
sided. Playing it back, Katarina should be standing far away waiting for level 2 in this
position and Ekko should've been looking for a huge trade with his level lead. As Ekko
hit two, he should complete mission 3 if he'd e-q'd the kat and procced his passive, this
would've chunked katarina's health by around 50% or even more. The reason why you want
to look for level lead trades in particular on assassins is that your burst damage at
low levels is super high, especially vs other squishy assassins. It's a very bursty and
snowbally lane and getting levels 2, 3 and 6 first and capitalizing on these spikes can
snowball you out of control, as you'll get a new ability at those levels each time. Anyway,
with this giant opportunity missed, Ekko continues to push the wave, which under the circumstance
is the correct move, so that wave three bounces back towards him and he could look for another
trade opportunity with a level 3 advantage. Alright, playing it back, we can see another
giant opportunity missed by Ekko, who could've absolutely destroyed this Katarina here with
better decision making. Katarina goes for a Q E trade onto the Ekko, but look at this
giant wave Ekko had to work with. It's not uncommon for players from bronze to platinum
to go in and trade with big waves like this - which can gift you massive leads if you
use it, as we saw Mcbaze do in his most recent smurf video vs Leblanc. Ekko was looking to
trade back, but it seems his lack of matchup knowledge gets the better of him and he uses
his E before Katarina hops out, so he can't follow her. Think about it, where does Katarina
have to run to? Ekko could've just ran her down with Q and autos, with this huge minion
wave, until she hops away, then he could've chased her with E and destroyed her. But instead,
Ekko, uses E before Katarina uses hers and she hops away relatively unscathed. An awful
play from the Kat, that went unpunished. So you may be thinking now that this is getting
matchup specific. But what this moment really came down to was Ekko not understanding exactly
how Katarina works. Katarina used her Q dagger, which landed behind Ekko, which Katarina hopped
to with E, which significantly reduces her E cool-down, which means she'll have E back
real soon to hop away with. If you don't completely understand how champions work, especially
mobile dash champs like Kat and Irelia, it's worth giving them a go in practice tool to
learn their mechanics, so there's no surprises in ranked. Anyway, Ekko has now missed two
opportunities to crush this lane and things are starting to look bad for him. At this
point he's strafing around in lane, not really doing anything while he should be warding
top side. It's pretty unfortunate for him to be in this position, since Katarina actually
has a soft freeze on him now in this area here, so the wave is in a really awkward spot
for him to push up and deal with it. This is a result of Ekko not shoving the wave all
the way to the tower on wave 2, for a clean bounce, which we often teach for level 3.
But the way it happened was that weird trade Katarina went for, happened to hold the wave
which caused it to get to tower late. You can call it bad luck but Katarina should be
far too low health to even contest the wave now, had Ekko played correctly. Anyway, Ekko
should just wait for this wave to come back towards him and hit his level 3 from it. You
may be thinking he should push up and shove this third wave all the way as well, but it'd
be risky to do because of possible jungle threat from Udyr. Ontop of that he doesn't
have any real lead on Katarina, so she could chunk him when he uses Q on the wave if she's
smart. Moving on, we see Ekko let the wave come towards him, which is fine. But he pushes
up to CS this melee minion here, which he could actually get with an auto attack since
Katarina isn't contesting. However, Ekko makes an awful uncalculated decision to actually
use Q to get just this one melee minion. He should be holding his Q for trading and letting
this wave push towards him, because he's actually behind on minion damage now. The tower has
helped Katarina kill the melees, which is a pace Ekko can't match. The third melee on
the third wave gets 3 and as we can see, Katarina only has 1 blue melee to secure, while Ekko
has two near full hp ones alongside the one he's going for now. Katarina hits level 3
first and Ekko's Q is down, so he should be very far away from this Kat here. But it doesn't
seem like Ekko is paying attention to exp or levels and is auto pilot going to get this
third melee of his own. Let's see what happens. So, that was pretty sad, but finally a great
example of how much you can gain from abusing a level lead in assassin mirrors - just unfortunate
that Ekko was on the wrong side of this one. Throwing it back, we'll briefly break down
what happened here besides Ekko being too close to Kat when she had a level lead. This
is comically similar to Ekko's level 2 lead, except Ekko did absolutely nothing with it
and just walked away. So as Katarina E's onto Ekko, she uses a W which throws her dagger
in the air and will activate aoe damage when it lands. So Ekko should've E'd away here
instead of tank the W damage. Picking up a dagger also reduces the cool-down of her E,
which just happened by picking up her W dagger. So she then Q's Ekko, E's on her Q dagger,
then goes for a final E onto Ekko after the flash. Had Ekko avoided the W damage and traded
back, he could've counter pressured and didn't have to die here. But this was the least of
his laning worries. If there's one thing to take away from this video, it's that level
leads are the easiest and probably most impactful way of winning assassin mirrors. Next time
you're in a mirror go ahead and try this. Try to have the wave in a good spot and hit
level 2 first on the 1st melee on 2nd wave and 3rd melee on the third wave. With the
leads you should gain from executing this call to action, you should be able to carry
your exp lead all the way to level 6 and use the same concept then as well. Let's get you
today's takeaways. Ekko came into lane with his Q down as he'd wasted it on a leash. But
it didn't really matter, since Katarina default forfeited lane priority, so he gets the push
lead. This allowed Ekko to hit level 2 first, with the wave in a perfect spot and Katarina
going for a last hit she had no business going for, a level behind. Ekko however, did absolutely
nothing with this and missed a key opportunity. Ekko was given another chance when Katarina
took this potentially awful trade. But since Ekko wasted his dash, he couldn't do much
with this and by chance it also messed up the wave as the third one came in. By level
3, Katarina was the one with the waveclear lead and hit 3 first. Ekko was in range with
his Q down and died immediately to Kat's level 3 advantage, which showed Ekko what he should've
done at level 2. Alright so that's it for this low elo guide, we listened to your feedback
on our low Orianna guide and delivered your calls for a lower elo review than platinum.
So, what did you think? Let us know in the comments below! We'll mix in some more high
elo stuff next time and your feedback has helped us a ton so far. Thanks for watching
and we'll see you next time!