Welcome back everyone.
In today's guide we're going to cover 3 very important concepts that Rekkles applies in
his games for more consistent results that you need to start applying immediately.
We could very easily say just get as good as Rekkles is at team fighting and you'll
be Challenger in no time, but that's definitely not what makes him so consistent.
It's always the little things that people tend to overlook, which makes him so dominating
both in professional play and in solo queue.
Let's get right into it with our first tip, but before introducing the concept, let's
first add a bit of context to his game.
Playing Tristana he has a pretty decent lead over the enemy Jhin.
It wasn't massive, but he did manage to get his Galeforce spike first, which allowed him
to easily score a solo kill while the supports were away.
Getting that kill helped him score the bot lane tower.
Then after taking that tower, with his lead, he moved towards mid where he scored a kill
on the enemy Yone.
Yone was the enemy mid this game, which leaves the tower basically undefended.
Rekkles proceeds to continue snowballing like crazy by taking yet another enemy structure.
Okay, now that we've got a fair bit of context to how the game is going, we're about to see
one of the things Rekkles does best in solo queue.
After clearing mid, he heads towards raptors.
Clearing the camp, he has a very good base timing lined up.
He has these items, with this much gold.
It's more than enough to buy Phantom Dancer and getting your 2 item spike as any ADC at
15 minutes is a dream scenario in most games.
But Rekkles has eyes for a play that could earn him an even bigger lead.
3 enemy players all converged into bot lane to kill Ahri.
What Rekkles is about to do is abuse a positional advantage over his opponents.
Something you want to constantly ask yourself is where your opponents want to go next in
solo queue.
Multiple people in one lane isn't very efficient.
It's very likely that some of the enemies in bot are going to rotate towards mid lane,
and this area is a perfect catching spot for a greedy rotation.
Another rotation the enemy team might do is head towards dragon.
They just got a pick, and even though they're behind, they may want to start the dragon
with a 5v4 advantage.
Well, in that case, the enemy players in bot would likely path this way, leaving Rekkles
and his Blitz to catch off the Elise rotating alone in either of these 2 ways.
Let's see what actually happens.
As we said, someone in bot was bound to come towards mid, giving Rekkles an easy pick off.
With a number's advantage they can now take the mid tower and things begin to very quickly
spiral out of control for the enemy team.
It would have been a very easy decision to make to immediately base after taking the
enemy raptors.
As we said, an early 2 item spike for any ADC is definitely something to play towards.
But Rekkles knows that as an ADC you've gotta put in a bit more effort to consistently carry
in solo queue.
Positional advantages are one of the best ways of scoring leads in a game.
You always want to be asking yourself these kinds of questions as you play.
One, "where does my opponent want to go next?"
In this case, there's a big mid wave, so obviously the enemy ADC would want to go that way.
Two, "am I strong enough to block their path to that area?"
If you've got an item lead, then that should be an easy answer.
and Three, "am I missing farm or risking something by committing time to blocking their path?"
For the sake of this example, let's say your raptor camp is up and you could take it.
You should always weigh what you're giving up, vs what you're trying to zone your opponents
from.
Denying this giant wave at their tower would be worth more than taking a single raptor
camp in this instance.
We'd love to keep going on about positional advantages, but let's move on to tip number
2 for now.
In this game we find Rekkles shoving in a final wave, prepping for a recall timing to
pick up some items.
As he does that, let's swap things over to the enemy ADC's point of view.
You see as Rekkles was setting up a recall, his jungler decided to throw the game over
a Gromp he had no right to steal.
Like we always say, your junglers throwing will never go away, even in Challenger elo.
This is a rather big problem, as Ezreal was already coming back to lane with a kill prior
to that.
With a 3 kill advantage, this lane is going to get rather tough for Rekkles when Ezreal
bases to buy items.
Disadvantages like these are inevitable in solo queue, but that doesn't mean you can't
find ways to try and even the odds as much as possible.
You should always be thinking about what you can do, based on the circumstances at hand.
For starters, the enemy Ezreal hasn't based yet, which means he's not nearly as strong
as a 3 kill Ezreal should be, since he hasn't bought any items.
Punishing someone who hasn't spent their gold yet should be an obvious move to try and gain
control back, and Rekkles does exactly that by harassing the Ezreal, while Bard isn't
in lane yet.
Of course this control won't last, as Ezreal has the wave advantage and once Bard comes
back, Rekkles is forced to play passively.
If you know that your opponent has a gold advantage over you and will become much stronger
once they base, then you need to counter that in some way by at the very least not giving
your opponent a clean recall.
Thus, we can see Rekkles make good use of Xayah's AoE to thin the wave as much as he
possibly can, before Ezreal can crash it into his tower.
The end result being 2 enemy minions remaining alive, outside of tower range, which is definitely
not a clean crash.
Now the tip is what to do with these minions.
What do you think Rekkles will do to try and come back in the lane?
3 sec pause Some of you may be thinking of a freeze, but
that's actually not a very good response to the current game state.
Rekkles can force a freeze by walking forward dragging these 2 minions along with him.
By joining them up with the incoming red wave, he can definitely still force a freeze.
A freeze is generally one of the best ideas to punish your opponents poor recall timings,
but when your opponent is really far ahead in terms of gold, it can easily backfire.
Ezreal with his 3 kills would come back to lane with a massive item advantage.
Once he's back, he can crash the freeze, and then just perma shove Rekkles into his tower.
With his item and range advantage, the lane could very easily turn into a living nightmare.
Rekkles knows this and wants to give himself the highest possibility to try and come back
in the game.
He left these 2 minions alive, so that he can begin building a massive slow push.
This is a very good tactic when you want to build the biggest wave you can.
You leave 2 to 3 enemy minions alive from the prior wave and allow your wave to crash
into them here.
Then, you just slow push and last hit as late as you can.
The goal of this slow push is to guarantee a base timing, once he has enough gold for
an item.
If he had enough gold here, he would have instantly crashed this wave into the enemy
tower to get a base off.
But he didn't have enough gold yet, so he continues slow pushing the wave.
Thankfully both junglers are bottom so their presence is countered by one another, and
Rekkles is able to continue pushing with his wave.
Regardless of how behind he is, slow pushing during the early game is almost always a surefire
way of securing a crash, even at a big gold disadvantage.
By planning ahead, he secured a recall timing during his own item spike to try and even
out the odds.
Once he bases, he picks up a pickaxe and runs back to bot.
When he gets back in lane, the enemy Bard immediately engages onto him.
Rekkles is able to easily outplay the 2v2 and come out on top.
Now don't get us wrong.
Rekkles isn't good enough to mind control the enemy Ezreal to E into a Xayah and Rakan.
What he did do is fully utilize the power of a slow push to help him even out the item
disparity that all those kills gave Ezreal.
When he got back to lane, their power levels were fairly similar, and all he had to do
was wait for the Ezreal to make a mistake.
And as we've seen, that will happen regardless of what elo you're playing at.
Our final tip is for an all too common mistake we see from a ton of ADC players.
Very often we see ADCs waste so much time hitting enemy towers without gaining much
in return.
Like we say, consistency is the trademark of a great ADC player and there's a very important
tip that Rekkles follows when it comes to hitting towers.
He almost never hits a tower, unless he's guaranteed to take it in its entirety.
The problem with hitting towers after turret plates have fallen is that they don't really
give you anything, unless you completely destroy it.
Wasting time hitting a tower not only wastes your time for no gain, but also leaves you
a bit vulnerable, since you're having to overextend into enemy territory to hit in the first place.
Let's take a look at some examples to show you what kind of guidelines Rekkles follows
before hitting a tower.
Here we see him farming mid, while his team is getting into a skirmish in bot.
Before rotating, he clears the wave and then heads on over to help finish off Rell with
his Yone.
As he goes back mid, remember that we saw Ryze, Hecarim, Jhin and Rell die.
Jayce is also top lane, which means no one is going to be close enough to defend this
tower.
That's about as perfect as it gets to knowing when you can finish off an enemy tower.
Let's compare that to a different situation moments later.
As he rotates top lane to assist the Gragas killing Jayce, Hecarim runs past to try and
get there first.
He fails, but the Hecarim does manage to escape to safety afterwards.
In this case, after clearing the wave, Rekkles immediately bases and doesn't even consider
hitting the top tower, which is a play we'd see from a lot of ADCs playing on auto-pilot.
It's easy to think that you have a huge number's advantage up here, your team just won a fight,
and there's not many people around.
Pushing seems like second nature in this situation.
But consider the differences this time around from the previous example.
One, Jhin is pushing waves in mid freely, which is a lot of farm being missed the longer
Rekkles stays here.
Two, there's also a ton of jungle camps available.
Its likely Gragas won't take them all, so Rekkles getting to mid to have better access
to those is important to accelerate his farm.
And three, we saw Hecarim get away with quite a bit of health left, and should still be
in the area.
The wave here is very frail and Hecarim could very quickly kill it with his AoE.
It's incredibly unlikely Rekkles does even half the turret's health, so it's completely
pointless to stay here.
It may not seem like a big deal, but this is a major reason why some low elo ADCs sometimes
struggle with their farm.
Too much time wasted hitting towers they won't take is time not spent farming to become a
powerful ADC.
Rekkles definitely knows better, which is yet another reason why he's almost always
popping off in his games.
Alright guys, that's going to wrap up this guide.
Remember that it's never about fancy team fighting to becoming a great ADC player.
It's about the minor details that help you get farm leads, and punish enemy macro mistakes
that's always more important.
Thanks for watching and see ya next time.