Hey everyone and welcome to today's Jungle daily where we'll be attempting to challenge
some of the ideas you have about how and where to gank.
To do this, we'll be examining a game from our Challenger consultant, Firefly, where
his top and bottom lanes lose very hard.
And, to instantly spoil the question I just posed--Firefly is going to decide to focus
on his only good lane--mid.
There are a couple of reasons for this, but the one I want to focus on today is this:
the way pressure correlates with gankability.
Alright, let's now hop into the game.
And, right away we're going to see NA, no, the world's best player, Imaqtpie being killed
for the first time ever in his legendary career.
This is going to make top lane difficult, and Firefly can know right away that ganking
this lane could be challenging.
After the rough start, Rek'Sai has to improvise a jungle route going Red, Raptors, then scuttle
because he's low and without smite.
He considers a gank bottom, but he's still level two, so heads back to his jungle to
farm some more, having regen'd off of scuttle and gotten his smite back up.
Wave is pushing in and Viktor has controlAnd here's where we'll see him beginning to implement
his plan for the game--avoid his losing lanes and focus mid.
At this point, just 3 minutes into the game, his top laner has died twice, and his bot
lane has died once.
So, he heads mid where he sees Xin.
Let's see what happens.
Great.
So, Xin, despite his two other winning lanes tried to gank mid, and, remember what we talked
about earlier?
So not only is this an example of good play from Rek'Sai to play to his winning lane,
but it's also a clear example of a mistake from Xin.
Making an aggressive play around your only losing lane, is a sure way to let the enemy
team back into the game when you don't need to...you have two winning lanes!
So, Rek'Sai now has a clear path in this game--pound middle, get Viktor ahead, then let that advantage
spread to his other lanes.
And if we jump ahead about 2 minutes, we can see Firefly preparing for another gank mid
after some farming and a trip to base.
Now, right away we're going to see him make a good decision--to steal wolves.
Seeing Xin bottom, he knows that there's no risk here, but he's also stalling--waiting
for this wave to crash into the tower for a dive.
Now, right after the good decision to take wolves, he's going to make a mistake, and,
Firefly agreed that this was a mistake--he heads to Gromp.
This is greedy.
It's greedy, because he wants to time his gank with the wave being
at tower.
So, as we can see, it takes Firefly too long to do Gromp, even using smite to rush it down,
and, by the same he reaches mid, the entire wave has been killed.
Now, he still goes for the gank because it's a flashless Xerath, but, as we can see, Viktor
gets hit by E, which the minions would have blocked, getting him low on HP and allowing
Xin to come in for the clean up.
At the end of the day, it's still a 2 for 1 in the red team's favor, but had he gone
earlier instead of doing Gromp, they would have easily killed Xerath cleanly, and Xerath
would have missed even more minions.
Now, two minutes later we see Firefly once again in an aggressive position around his
winning mid lane, and, we're going to see him move into position to gank while also
dropping a ward to make sure Xin isn't there waitingAnd, let's quickly watch what happens
here as another great example of Firefly continuing to punish mid, before we jump back and examine
a couple of micro plays that happen here.
Awesome.
Another easy kill mid, but let's examine some things more closely: first, look at where
Firefly directs his tunnel--behind Xerath.
This is a great general Rek'Sai tip that will allow you to knock up your opponent even when
they flash to the other side of you, like Xerath does in this clip.
The second micro interaction I want to examine for this gank is the exact moment Firefly
decides to tunnel in.
Let's watch that again.
What do you think he was waiting for that made him go in when he did?
If you caught onto the fact that he was waiting for Xerath to charge up his Q, awesome job,
because you're absolutely right.
This is a great tip for ganking Xerath, because two extremely helpful things often happen
while Xerath charges Q: First, he moves forward, which we can clearly see here.
Look where Xerath is when he starts charging, and look where he is when he releases it.
And the second thing that will often happen when a Xerath uses Q, is that his camera will
move in front of him, giving him less visibility if ganked from behindHere's a quick custom
example I made of this.
Notice how, to get full vision of the Q skill shot indicator, the camera moves up in front
of Xerath.
This makes it very possible that he would see Rek'Sai coming a moment later.
Awesome.
So, at this point Rek'Sai has been 3 great, successful proactive plays around mid.
He has drawn the enemy Jungler to the lane with his pressure, helping out his other lanes
BY ignoring them.
There are some situations in which you can't play this way, but as a general rule this
is a great plan of attack for when you have two losing lanes.