Hey everyone. Top lane can be really frustrating as there are so many counter picks up there
and it can feel like you just lose lane in champion select if you do get hard countered.
But, any match is winnable with strong fundamentals, so that's what we're going to show you today.
To do this, were going to break down a game from my smurf in plat where i'm playing Maokai
vs Illaoi.
I specifically chose maokai into illaoi because its maokai's most difficult matchup and players
tend to really struggle going against her in general.
Even if you don't play these two champions, the concepts you learn here will apply to
anyone.
Let's break down the match up.
Maokai is an AP tank vs Illaoi an AD juggernaut.
Maokai doesn't have many advantages in lane except he has a ton of guaranteed sustain,
where as illaoi only gets sustain when she lands her abilities.
Also, maokai's main trading tool, his Q, has a lower cooldown than Illaois main trading
ability, her E.
Illaoi outpushes Maokai, does more burst, and more sustained damage.
For these reasons this is obviously a very difficult match up.
My gameplan for this will be:
Mission 1: Push if possible
Even though Illaoi has more waveclear, if Illaoi doesn't focus on wave control, I can
get the push advantage.
Mission 2: Avoid Illaoi E
Illaoi E is her main trading tool, it gets blocked by minions so I need to make sure
to stand behind them to avoid it.
Mission 3: Don't die to ganks
Since i'm going to be pushing, I have to make sure to reset and ward at the right times
to keep myself safe.
Before we get into it, throughout the video try to look for the main reason why Illaoi
doesn't win this lane, as were going to go over it in the end and give her gameplan.
Alright, now let's get into the gameplay.
At the start of the lane, I'm constantly auto attacking minions to start mission 1, while
also making sure to keep my movement random and unpredictable since Im waiting for her
to use Q which is what most Illaoi players start with.
When she walks up to the minions, I hit her with Q, and she eventually uses W on me which
isn't what I expected.
But since she has no tentacles here to make use of her W, I can use this to my advantage.
First I walk up and use my grasp and passive auto on her when she walks up for a last hit.
This is just abusing my sustain advantage and the fact that she didnt have her W up.
Playing around cooldowns is a very basic fundamental to top lane.
After that I walk back into my wave to get this minion, so she jumps in with W again.
This is fine because like I said before, there are no tentacles here, and she's going to
take damage from my minion wave anyways.
I go back to auto attacking minions for mission 1, and when she walks up I use my Q to hit
all 3 minions and her to trade and push at the same time, then auto attack her to proc
grasp.
Illaoi made a big mistake here walking up to me with her W being down, again, playing
around cooldowns.
After I use my Q, notice I run back into my wave, knowing her W is going to come back
up now.
She jumps in again to use it, and I make a small mistake here.
When she used W, I should have buffered an auto attack on her to trade back, then used
the brush to cancel minion aggro.
I didn't expect her to be in range there but this is just another fundamental to top lane.
In these melee vs melee matchups you pretty much should always be trading back auto attacks
unless you're in there wave.
In this case, she's jumping into my wave so it's an even bigger reason to trade back.
I walk up and use Q on her again after that, to push and trade, and she trades back with
W, proccing her conq.
When going against any champion with conq, and youre not running it, this is when you
have to back off and let the stacks fall. When they have conqueror procced they do much
more damage and heal.
So I'm going to back away now to let conq fall off her.
Once it's off, I use Q on the minion wave to grab some CS and look for some poke but
it doesnt connect.
But i'm going back to auto attacking the wave to keep pushing for mission 1.
During this time, we both hit level 2.
Now I don't know which ability she’s going to grab at level 2, but I do have the push
advantage.
Most Illaois would grab Q right now but since she has 2 tentacles next to her, she could
get E instead.
To prepare for both look how i'm positioning around my minions.
I'm basically hugging them and am ready to use them as a shield to block her E for mission
2.
She does end up getting E and I dodge it running into my wave.
After I dodge it, I'm going to collect my last hits, then watch how I play. I'm going
to be pretty aggressive here because I know her main ability, her E, is down.
So I want to take that time to kill this tentacle and drop a ward for mission 3.
The enemy jungler is rengar, so I don't want to stand next to this brush blind where he
can jump on me.
Now as I go back to laning, Im back inside my minion wave for mission 2 to avoid Illaoi's
E, and continuing to push.
Somehow Illaoi's E connects with me here even though I'm completely covered by these 2 minions,
but it's ok in season 20 stuff like this won't happen.
Even though I get cursed and the tentacles are going to swing at me now. I have a level
lead here so the fundamentals of top lane still apply. I want to abuse my level lead
so I jump in with W and use Q, then walk back into my wave.
This is the really important part.
I used my abilities to use my level advantage, but once my abilities are down, I don't have
any damage left.
So by kiting into my wave like this, if Illaoi tries to fight me all my minions will hit
her.
She does walk into my wave so I hit her with an auto to trade back.
Notice how I don't go in and try to kill her even though she's so little hp.
You don't want to get baited into this when against champions with healing.
I have no abilities to actually finish her so if she uses W and one of the tentacles
hit me, it will heal her for 5% of her missing health. It's best to just play it patient
here.
So i'm going to go back into my minion wave and continue pushing, and this time her E
doesn't go through this wall of minions and protects me.
Now that her E is down, I can look to trade again. I try to hit her with Q but shes playing
pretty far back.
I'm not going to force a trade on her when she's that far back so I work on collecting
last hits.
She jumps on me instead with her W, which is very risky when her main ability is down.
Sadly I'm playing as if I have 500 ping and get hit by the tentacle and Q which gives
her some health and brings me low.
Right after that, her E comes back up, but because I walk behind my minions, she misses.
This is extremely important right now because if that E connected I would either die or
have to recall.
As soon as she misses, I walk up knowing she's going to jump in. With her E down and my level
lead, I can win this all-in.
I W in right away, and walk out of the tentacle damage from her W, then use an auto and Q
before flashing away from the two tentacles about to slam, getting the kill.
That was close because of the bad trade I took earlier, but the lane isn't over, she
still counters mein champion really hard.
Let's keep going.
I'm going to recall after this, and TP back to
lane.
I want to follow the same gameplan as before, so I use Q as soon as I get back to
lane on the wave. I know Illaoi is going to jump in with W since my Q is down, so I use
W as she does to cancel it. But since I have no minions in front of me, I walk into my
wave again, which makes me eat her Q. Eating her Q is much better than eating her
E as thats her main ability like we have talked about many times.
Also, this can apply to any champion in top.
Everyone has a main ability that you need to keep track of. The most obvious ones are
Jax E, Fiora W, Maokai W, or Kennen E. These abilities have longer cooldowns and
without them the champion can be Punished.
But after that I'm still playing in my wave, then go over to kill this tentacle.
I get hit by E here only because this is lower elo and Illaoi wasn't thinking how a high
elo illaoi would.
So what I was doing here was.. I was walking towards my minion wave to use it to block
for me. This would normally make her try to aim it right on the edge of my ranged minions,
but she just threw it at the tentacle not thinking about that.
This sounds like an excuse but ill be the first one to tell you when im trolling. In
lower elo its sometimes harder to hit or dodge skillshots just because it can be so random.
No Kapp.
But even though I got hit by the E. Since she only has 1 tentacle next to her and she
got hit by my sapling, I don't need to run away. She can't kill the spirit with only
1 tentacle, so I can just walk back into the wave while waiting for the spirit to die.
I don't want to fight her when the spirit is up, but by not running out of range I wont
get cursed.
As soon as the spirit is about to die as we can see from the timer below it, I jump in
to trade since her E is down and look at the difference in minion wave because I have been
working on mission 1.
I have 4 minions and 1 of them is a cannon, where she has just 1.
So if we fight here my wave will help me out a lot.
We trade and she gets very aggressive because her jungler is here as we can see from the
ward I placed.
In lower elo, I see way too often you guys letting the enemy team troll and get away
with it. You need to be able to spot these situations. This is one of them. Illaoi doesn't
have E, or any tentacles around, and has 30% health.
I'm at 70% with a level lead and minion wave behind me.
Rengar is only level 4 with 60%.
There is no way they have a chance at killing me here.
Because of this, I'm just going to bait this rengar in. Now, it doesn't mean I want to
run at the brush head first, I just want to walk into my minion wave and let them come
to me.
I focus on Illaoi first since she's really low, which makes her flash away. Notice I
dont flash for her after that though.
I'm still staying in my minion wave letting them fight for me, and defending myself.
Rengar actually did a lot of burst so I kite back a little more, and because all my abilities
are on cooldown now.
He keeps chasing as I kite back and trade auto attacks.
As soon as my Q and W come up I W on rengar to kill him, then Q the illaoi and punch her
to finish her as well.
This was actually closer than I thought it would be. Rengar just did a lot more damage
than expected.
Either way, you can see how by kiting and using my wave to defend me, I could 2v1 them
now putting me at 3-0 and closing the lane out.
Alright, before we wrap up the video. Remember we told you to keep in mind what you think
Illaoi did wrong in this matchup.
The main reason she lost was because she wasn't pushing the lane at all.
Remember she has the push advantage.
So her gameplan would look like this:
Mission 1: Push the wave
Mission 2: Look for E while Maokai farms under tower
Mission 3: Don't die to ganks
If she did this, I wouldn't be able to use my minion wave to block her E so many times,
and it would be a lot harder for me to farm or trade at all.
But since she just focused so hard on trading, I got wave control when I shouldnt have, which
won me the lane.
Alright guys, so as you can see, even the hardest matchups can be won with fundamental
game knowledge.
But thats going to be it for this one, we hope you enjoyed it and thanks for watching!