Hey everyone!
Were back with another Dopa breakdown.
Today we have some amazing gameplay as usual from the king of solo Q. Were going to show
you how Dopa smashes melee matchups in Korean Challenger, with one of the games going against
Faker.
After watching this, you should have 2 more strategies to add to your arsenal when playing
Ranged vs Melee.
So lets start with the first game where Dopa is playing Orianna vs Sylas.
At the start of the lane, notice Dopa isn't damaging anything.
He isn't autoing or using Q.
We can tell right away what kind of strategy hes going for.
This is a common strategy dopa likes to use vs champions with strong all-ins, like Irelia,
Yasuo, Sylas, or Fizz.
Instead of pushing.
He will try to let the wave push from level 1, and freeze from there.
This isn't as easy as it sounds most of the time, because it gives the enemy laner a minion
advantage, which also turns into a level advantage.
It can be hard to thin the wave perfectly so it freezes without running out of mana
or losing too many trades.
So, lets see how he does it.
As we get back into the gameplay, as the first 3 melee minions get low, Sylas uses E to grab
them, with Dopa using his Q to grab all 3, and hit Sylas.
A few things to note here.
First, Dopa made sure not to hit any back line minions.
And more importantly.
Watch his movement here.
He stood here, and knew Sylas would clear the wave and look to use E. So Dopa used Q
and immediately moved to the left, reading it perfectly.
After that, Dopa continues his gameplan, not auto attacking at all unless a minion is as
low as possible.
After killing these next 2 minions, they both hit level 2, and Sylas goes in to trade.
Since Dopa knows this is coming, he levels up his E to negate as much damage as possible,
then returns damage with auto attacks.
This was good for multiple reasons.
First, Sylas does a lot of aoe damage with his passive autos, which plays into dopas
gameplan, and Dopa can run him down with single target damage, which was his auto attacks.
He wins the trade extremely hard.
After that, Sylas uses his E backwards to dodge Dopas Q, then uses the second part of
his E to grab this last hit.
Right after grabbing it, Sylas uses W on Dopa.
Lets pause here.
If you were Dopa.
What would you do now?
You should be able to tell that Sylas is dead at this point.
He used his single target ability, his W, to trade with Dopa, and that should aggro
this entire cannon wave.
Dopa can then run him down with auto attacks.
So let's see what happens.
As expected, Dopa runs him down and forces Sylas to flash away.
This is one of the main benefits to a strategy like this.
If the wave is close to your tower, and the enemy messes up their trades, you can punish
really hard by running them down the lane.
Alright after he gets Sylas flash, he knows he's going to recall and TP back to lane,
so he starts pushing as fast as possible.
As he does it, look how he's positioned.
He's on the right side of the lane.
Why do you think that is?
The reason hes doing this is because his gragas is in the enemy bot jungle.
As a mid laner, you always want to be hugging the side your jungler is on incase you get
ganked, you can kite right to them.
We can see this perfectly here when Graves is here to gank Dopa after Sylas finishes
the TP.
But Dopa pops his phase rush and starts kiting to his jungler.
His top laner TPs in as well, which gets them to back off, but this is actually worse.
If they kept chasing, Sylas would be missing a huge wave on his tower, and Dopa would be
leading them right into his jungler where they would win the 2v2 really hard with Sylas
only level 2.
We don't know if the graves and sylas would have kept chasing, but it seemed like they
would.
Anyways, after lulu ruins the play, Dopa goes back to mid and crashes the wave.
After crashing it, what would you do next?
A lot of players would say to recall here, since he has enough gold for at least a dark
seal or dorans ring.
Its pretty common to recall at this point and its not necessarily wrong.
its just sub optimal.
This is because Dopa has TP up, and a good amount of health.
So he wants to use up his health and mana to get damage on the Sylas, without dying,
so then he can TP back in with full resources and gold spent.
So let's see what happens.
Dopa looks to harass Sylas as much as possible when hes going for last hits, making him use
a corrupting potion.
As hes doing that, his jungler, kindred, rotates to top side river, looking to get the second
scuttle crab.
She already got the one in bottom river.
You can tell its about to go down in the top river with the enemy top having full prio
and rotating down as well.
Now, Dopa is in a tricky spot.
He has to push this wave and get it under tower before rotating.
If he doesn't, it will freeze here and he will lose a lot of CS.
As Sylas moves over, Dopa stays focused on clearing the wave and crashes it, but his
gragas dies as soon as he does.
Dopa knows 2 things here.
First, Sylas wants to get back to this cannon wave on his tower as fast as possible, and
two, Dopa is about to recall and TP in.
So, he wants to get as much damage on the Sylas as possible as hes running to the wave.
Sylas knows he can't kill Dopa here so its not worth actually try to fight him.
Now hes going to quickly recall, buy items, and TP back to lane.
He tps right on the minions, and Sylas goes for a trade as soon as its done.
Dopa gladly takes this trade, as he knows Sylas has no flash or TP, and the wave is
pushing his way.
Now, to punish this, what does Dopa have to do.
Hint: it all comes down to the wave.
To punish this, Dopa needs to prevent the wave from crashing on his tower.
This will cause it to freeze.
If Dopa freezes, Sylas can't recall without losing multiple waves worth of experience
and gold, and if he tries to break the freeze, hes in danger of dying.
So, lets see what happens.
Dopa is going to start auto attacking the wave constantly until only 3 ranged minions
are left.
He needs to make sure the red wave has more minions, but has to trim it because if the
red wave stacks up too much, it will be too hard to freeze it.
AS the next waves arrive, now Dopa is going to keep thinning the wave but also look to
harass Sylas at the same time.
He knows Sylas really needs to recall as hes out of potions, but knows he needs to crash
the wave first.
This puts a lot of pressure on the Sylas here and forces him to make a risky call.
Sylas tries to use his entire kit on the wave except W to clear it, and use the minions
to defend him.
But, Dopa planned ahead and thinned the wave so much, there isn't enough minions to defend
the Sylas, and he realizes hes dead.
An absolute masterclass in wave management from Dopa here.
He froze from the start which gave him multiple good trades, and hard punished Sylas at level
2 to get his flash.
Then he used up the rest of his potions and mana to harass sylas as much as he could before
Tping back tolane, while getting the wave to push back to him.
Dopa knew Sylas didn't have any potions, and forced Sylas to either have to recall and
lose multiple waves to the freeze, or try to clear it and survive.
Sylas tried to clear it but paid with his life.
Alright, now lets move on to the next game where Dopa is up against Faker.
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Anyways, in this one, Dopa is on orianna again, vs Faker on Akali.
At the start of the lane, look how different this is from the previous game.
Dopa uses Q hitting all 6 minions, and is constantly auto attacking.
We know Dopa is definitely not looking for a level 1 or 2 freeze here.
Why would he do this vs Akali and not sylas?
Well think about this.
How does Akali really trade with Ori before level 3?
Akali has to play really safe in these levels as she doesnt have a gap closer that is too
reliable.
Dopa knows this, and wants to abuse her early game as much as possible.
So, after Dopa gets a big push advantage and minions start to get low on the first wave,
Faker walks up to use Q and grab a last hit.
Dopa makes sure to hit him with his Q at the same time.
Pretty much every Cs faker goes for Dopa will pressure him for it.
Dopa finishes clearing the wave and crashes it on the tower, and can look to harass Faker
for every last hit now.
He hits him with multiple Qs and auto attacks, getting a decent chunk of health.
Also, as he was doing that, we could see the enemy Graves move from top side to bot side.
Now watch what Dopa does.
This is why I love his gameplay.
He runs into bot river, acting like hes going to drop ward, but does not drop it.
Then, look at the minimap pings.
Faker pinging dopa dropping a ward in river.
Now Graves thinks bottom river is warded which could affect his decision making and pathing.
Especially when this is a kayn vs Graves matchup.
If graves invades kayn, kayn doesn't have many ways of winning that 1v1.
Anyways when Dopa gets back into lane, its back to the same thing as before.
Harassing Akali when she goes for last hits.
He wants to get as much health off her as possible before she hits level 3, when she
can actually start trading reliably.
If we pause here.
Which way is this wave pushing?
Blue has 6 minions, red has 5.
Since the red wave has a cannon, its going to push towards Dopa.
This is a very very rare wave control tactic that Dopa used.
He hard pushed the first wave, which then bounced and pushed towards him.
I can normally tell why Dopa does what he does, but this time Im stumped.
Let us know what you think in the comments.
But, with the wave pushing back towards him, hes going to want to harass Akali, and look
to do the same thing that he did to the sylas.
Get her low enough that he can freeze and force her to take a bad reset.
Its an Akali with Doran's sheild, Fleet, and second wind though, so its hard for the harass
to stick.
Dopa looks to get extra aggressive here, but Graves shows up to gank from bot side.
And its funny, look what time he ganked from.
Dopa went to put that ward down at 2 minutes.
The wards last 90 seconds at this point in the game, and graves his ganking as the fake
ward would have disappeared.
Coincidence?
But either way, Dopa gets a big chunk on Akali and then kites towards his jungler away from
the graves.
They arnt dumb enough to keep chasing, and focus on the wave instead, as Akali needs
help pushing it so she can recall.
But, Dopa grabs the wave and doesnt let it crash, re-freezing it, and putting Faker in
a bad spot again.
He knows if they try to fight him, he can just kite to kayn.
Faker cancels his recall and comes back into lane, looking to break the freeze.
He uses his entire kit on the wave, and since Dopa is out of mana, hes forced to let him
break it and recall.
Now Dopa has to clear the next wave as fast as possible so he can get a reset of his own.
This is where Dopa stands out from the rest of the pack though.
he doesn't need to tp back to lane since Akali wouldn't be able to clear the wave before
he got back, but, he tps back anyways.
Why do you think he does this?
He does it to get back to the same game plan as before.
If he doesn't TP in, Akali can clear the waves and look to roam before he gets back, or she
will just hit level 6 first and Dopa cant do anything.
Instead, he Tps back in, and can start harassing just like before, and freeze again.
lets see what happens.
As expected, Dopa is playing very aggressive, trying to poke as much as possible.
Hes up in Fakers face, and chunks her to half health.
They both hit level 6 now where Akali really gets her kill pressure.
Dopa isn't scared though and is still playing very aggressive.
He just stands in her shroud.
He isn't worried about akalis broken level 6 at all.
As soon as she reappears, he goes all-in running her down.
She tries to run into her top jungle, but then thinks she can turn and win the 1v1 and
ults onto Dopa.
Dopa makes a genius play, and holds his Q and ult for this exact moment.
Its very hard to hit Akali with ori R, but after she uses her first R, she has to wait
1 second before using the second part.
Dopa knows this and takes advantage of this 1 second window.
Then, Akali uses her second ult through Dopa, with Kayn waiting on the other side.
Thats why Dopa was kiting this way.
Faker tries to flash away,but Kayn runs her down and kills her.
So, another masterclass in wave management and TP usage from Dopa.
Even Faker couldn't deal with it.
Alright guys, so as you can see.
Dopa is the king of wave management.
Everytime we break down his gameplay, there is always more to learn.
Applying it to your own games will be very tricky and will take practice.
But even if you can't, its still great to see how the game is played by the best players
in the world.
But, thats going to bring us to the end of this video.
We hope you enjoyed it, and thanks for watching!