Hey guys.
When it comes to bot lane, support is the role that usually has way more impact than
ADC, at least during the early game.
We'll be covering some tips on how to dictate the pace of the lane, specifically for engage
supports in this video, since they need to get going early on.
Let's get into it.
We'll be reviewing a game of an engage champion vs a ranged support.
Therefore, your first mission will be to trade HP to look for opportunities to make a play.
All it takes is one good play to kill your opponents, whereas they need time to poke
you down.
You're going to likely need to tank damage from time to time to look for an opportunity
to set up a kill.
Mission 2 will be to use your flash aggressively, as soon as you can.
You want to be proactive against ranged supports.
You don't want to wait until after they've poked you down.
If you see an opportunity to flash in and land CC on either laner, if they're squishy,
they will very likely die, unless they flash.
And your final mission will be to avoid heading to bot lane immediately off of a recall.
This is a mistake we often see supports make.
Unless your ADC and/or tower are in immediate danger, you should be pathing towards mid
lane or the river to establish vision control or look for a play with your jungler or mid
laner.
Heading to bot lane immediately doesn't make good use of the pro activity your champion
can bring to a team.
Alright, enough with the missions let's get into it.
For this replay, we'll be reviewing a Thresh game from G2's Mikyx.
Immediately, we see Miky and Kaisa head into the enemy red buff to get a ward down.
This can be risky to do, especially if the enemy team comp were to be stacked in this
bush.
But the enemy team was composed of a lot of weak level 1 champions, so they took the risk
and it paid off to get vision.
They wait around for a bit to see if they can get a random pick, but just end up leaving.
Getting early vision down on the enemy's buff can provide a lot of crucial information.
For one, we now know that the enemy bot lane is leashing when we see them at the buff,
therefore Miky and Kaisa can establish early lane control.
Two, we'll be able to see the enemy jungler's path after the buff.
While we may not be able to see them clear their jungle the entire time, we can form
an idea of where they will be based on which way they pathed and play accordingly.
Once they get to lane, Miky immediately sets up in the bush.
This way when the enemy arrives in lane, they're forced to play very respectfully and it does
ultimately force Ezreal to miss a melee creep.
Also, thanks to the ward Miky placed earlier on, we do see Zac move from red buff to Krugs.
Miky and Kaisa can continue to play aggresive though, even knowing that Zac is bot side.
This is due to Thresh's flay being able to cancel Zac's jump, along with the fact that
Ezreal and Yuumi don't have great follow up at level 1.
Meaning that they're not in any real danger.
If they were against a more threatening gank combo, such as a Xin Zhao jungle with an Ashe
and Morgana bot lane though, they'd have to position much more carefully.
But they're not, so Miky's continued aggressively holding the bush, until Yuumi is forced to
waste a ward on it.
Miky then appropriately backs off, since he can now be auto'd and harassed for free.
Now that he's ceded control over that bush, Miky will play passively until level 2.
We did say that you should look to trade your hp to look for opportunities, but only if
those opportunities are worth it.
Thresh's level 1 isn't strong enough to justify tanking Ezreal and Yuumi Qs
Thanks to Miky's prior ward, we can also see Zac path from Krugs to his raptors.
This means that they can play aggressively for a long time, because Zac is likely pathing
to his top side jungle now.
Miky begins walking up prior to hitting level 2, but as his wave is dying.
Many players wait until they actually hit level 2 to begin moving forward, but you should
be looking to do it as minions are dying to try and surprise your opponent.
This is high challenger, so they don't fall for it.
Miky ends up tanking both their Qs unable to actually land his hook, but it's worth
it, as they retained lane control anyways.
After the enemy kills that melee creep, we can see that Thresh and Kaisa have retained
2 extra caster creeps from the previous wave.
This gives them a minion advantage, which means they have wave and lane control.
This is a really important concept as a melee champion.
Trading your health to look for a play is important, but sometimes doing so to acquire
lane control can be just as important.
If the enemy is hitting you while they run away, they're not hitting the wave, letting
your ADC build a minion advantage.
As a melee, you would rather be the one with minion advantage, since this naturally lets
you look for more opportunities.
If for example, the enemy had more minions, it would making walking into them harder,
and they'd have more minions to block Thresh's hook.
Engage supports need to all in, so having to fight your opponent, while you're at a
minion disadvantage, can be very detrimental to your success.
Back to the lane Thresh once again walks up to them, tanking a Yuumi Q, and forcing Ezreal
to Q to last hit.
Then Miky's hook pressures them far enough back that it forces Ezreal to miss another
melee creep.
Now we can see another advantage of having minion wave control.
Usually, wasting your hook or a highly threatening ability like Leona E, Blitzcrank Q, or Gragas
E, it allows the enemy to walk past the defense of their minions and poke you out.
But, having traded his hp for wave control, despite Miky missing his hook, they have such
a big wave advantage that Ezreal and Yuumi can't pressure, so Miky can just chill until
his hook is off cooldown.
Despite knowing that this bush is warded, Miky walks up baiting them to try and poke
him, letting him look for a well placed hook which heavily chunks the Ezreal and forces
him to use a potion.
Now that his hook is down, Miky walks away, perhaps pretending that he's roaming, but
the second his hook is back up he immediately flashes in and reads the Ezreal's E for an
easy kill.
Remember, you want to use your flash proactively in lane, just like he did here.
And it's typically going to be easier to pull off.
Miky was against an Ezreal Yuumi lane where his only option is going on Ezreal, who has
a built in blink.
If you're against a less safe lane like Jinx Nami, when you flash on either of them, they
have to flash or they die.
And even if they flash, they could still potentially die.
This is the heart of why you want to flash proactively as an engage support.
It's a 50/50 whether they die or not, but there's usually no risk to you, so it's always
beneficial to try and do so.
With Sejuani coming to help, they end up diving the defenseless Yuumi, since she has no one
she can tag onto.
Afterwards, they do make the mistake of tunneling really hard on the Ezreal dive, but end up
taking too much damage because their minions weren't at tower yet.
Because of that, Sejuani has to die when they re-try the dive, but that's very worth to
put Ezreal even further behind.
Then Kaisa and Thresh recall together, and Miky picks up mobility boots.
As an engage support, you're almost always going to want to buy mobis first.
The ability to move around the map and make picks will result in more gold generation
than the slight increase in gold you'd get by buying the upgraded version of your support
item.
Now, as we said you don't want to walk back to lane with your ADC immediately.
Typically, you want to look for a potential play in mid lane or river with your jungler,
while your ADC is slowly walking back to lane.
But in this case, Kaisa opted to teleport very far up in the lane, and she has no flash.
So Miky just gets minor vision control with the sight plant, and goes to back up his ADC.
As we talked about, the enemy is now the ones with the slow push, making it very difficult
for Miky to walk towards them and look for a play.
So he mind games them instead.
Since he has mobility boots, he walks towards the river.
This forces them to spam ping their teammates back in mid lane, as the threat of him showing
up is really high.
Once the enemy team backs off due to the threat of his roam, he can double back bottom really
fast with his mobis.
And because he has a flank, he can bypass the minion rule we've discussed, and set up
a great chunk onto Ezreal.
If you find yourself in a situation like this, do like Miky does and help your ADC push,
so that you can dive the low hp ADC.
They can see Zac mid, so this dive is for sure a 2v2, which prompts Miky to look for
the killer hook, which sets up the kill.
Don't be a KDA player when playing an engage support.
You should be trading your life for high value targets like this, if you see the opportunity.
Once Miky respawns, Kaisa is in the process of basing.
This gives him an absurd amount of time to go and do something on the map, so he immediately
paths towards mid.
His pit stop mid, forces Sylas to use his ultimate onto Ahri and use it as an escape
tool, just by being there.
That's definitely frustrating for Sylas.
Then, becauase Kaisa's recall took a long time, he can hang around mid and even loop
around for another attempt to kill Sylas.
Unfortunately, they both miss their skillshot on an otherwise free kill, but at least mid
lane is won for now, so his Ahri can maybe return the favor by roaming bot later on.
After making sure Ahri can push safely, Thresh returns to his Kaisa, and we can probably
pause here.
At this point, he's gotten Kaisa so far ahead, that they can kind of do whatever they want,
and there's no real point discussing that.
By trading his health effectively, and proactively using his flash, Miky set up a series of events
that easily let him and Kaisa demolish this bot lane.
Good luck engaging in your games, and thanks for watching.