Hey guys!
RTO here, bringing you the 3rd video in the series 60 things that EVERY top laner should
know, to climb the ranked ladder!
This second video will cover 5 tips on the Laning Phase, and everything that follows
this topic.
Now is a perfect time to click that Like, Sub and bell notification button if you haven’t
already!
Number one!
Trading, and power spikes We’re finally in game, we have our runes,
items, match up covered, and we know our win condition!
It’s time we learn how to play the laning phase, the first thing that we need to know
is how to trade, and our power spikes.
Trading means when you trade attacks with your opponent, be it through auto attacks,
or abilities.
Generally, we want to hope for a positive trade - meaning you take less damage, and
use less cooldowns - such as flash - than your opponent.
There are multiple ways to achieve this, so let’s cover them!
Minion aggro - Everyone knows (or should know) that when you attack an enemy, their minion’s
aggro onto you, to help them fight.
During laning phase and initiating a trade, you generally want to make sure that you have
more minions behind you than the enemy does.
We can build up a wave to ensure this, remember we spoke about freezing?
Using freezing, we can build up a slow push and use the minions to our advantage to increase
the amount of damage the enemy takes.
Resources - Most champions in LoL have some kind of resource to use for their abilities,
whether it’s mana, fur, energy etc.
Keeping a good track on your own, and your enemies, resource bar (under the health bar!)
can give you a good indication of whether you’re going to come out on top of a trade.
For example; You’re playing Renekton, and the enemy is playing Akali.
She’s been using her Q to farm minions, while you’ve been stacking up your fury.
Now, there’s a point where she doesn’t have enough energy to cast her Q. You’re
at 50 fury - now is a good time to initiate a trade, as she cannot cast any abilities
until her energy has regenerated.
Get in, and get out quickly before she has that opportunity.
And that’s your positive trade!
Another thing to think about when trading is what sorts of mechanics are in your kit.
If you have health sustain as part of your kit and your opponent does not, then every
trade that you take will be a net positive.
Some great examples are Garen, Renekton and Dr. Mundo.
Each of these champs have an ability/ passive in their kit that allows them to heal up the
damage that they take.
They are able to trade more often their opponent.
Let’s go over power spikes Power Spikes is a certain time when we have
a significant spike in power - hence the name.
There are multiple ways a power spike comes, such as;
hitting a core level that enables you to complete a combo
finishing a certain item Item stacking power spike, such as hitting
that 10th stack on Dark Seal, or getting your momentum passive on deadman’s plate
Game phase power spikes, some champions hit a certain point when they have a massive power
spike at a point in the game - Jinx, for example, is a late game hyper carry, that excels with
items and levels.
If she has a mediocre early game, you can be sure she’ll still come back once the
game hits 25 - 30 minutes.
You can notice power spikes coming into advantage a lot by watching high elo gameplay, and especially
on bot lane if they have an aggressive pair - watch Thresh & Lucian hit level 2 before
their enemies, and they instantly go to engage because they have their level 2 abilities,
and stat advantage over their opponents.
Other examples are once Kassadin and Kayle receive their level 16s.
They will be able to take over games due to the massive increase in power at those levels.
Number two!
What is lane priority and how to use it Lane priority is when you have the upper hand
in a lane.
It’s being able to control the lane, pushing the minion wave into the opponent’s tower
without them being able to stop it - or if the enemy took bad trades with you, and their
health and resources are too low to be able to leave the safety of their tower.
What is taking advantage of lane priority?
For example, your jungler is top side and taking the scuttle crab, their jungler decides
to try and steal it, taking a fight.
You’re being pinged constantly - because you have lane priority, you can leave toplane
and run down to help your jungler, turning a 1v1 into a 2v1 and potentially securing
a kill, along with the scuttle.
The enemies top laner can’t come down and help, because they’re stuck under their
turret because if they leave, they will miss all the Experience from the minions crashing.
More champions available, means more power - and easily winnable fights, and this can
end up leading to a quick snowball, and a 15minute forfeit - if you’re lucky.
A way to help your jungler out in early levels is to tell him/ her whether or not you have
early game priority on your champion.
He shouldn’t be ganking or coming top lane until you are able to get some sort of priority
in the lane.
Number three!
Using Bushes Bushes are all around the map in League, and
they’re useful for many reasons, not only to you, but your enemy too - so be careful!
Let’s go over why they’re useful, how you can use them and what not to do.
Bushes, when entered, give you camouflage from the enemy team - meaning they cannot
see you, but you can still see them, and minions will not aggro on you while in the bush.
Do note that wards will light up a bush, so you can be seen!
It’s embarrassing when you’re sat in a bush, ready to make a sneak attack - and suddenly
you get 2v1’d because there was a ward and they knew you were there all along..
OOPS.
As for how bushes are useful, well, like I said above - you can make sneak attacks with
them!
Take a Darius level 1 for example - he has a level 1 powerspike, and can easily hide
in a bush in toplane, wait for the enemy to push in a little too hard, and boom, first
blood - all down to his bleed passive and heal.
Your team can take advantage of unwarded bushes, if you’re pushing in your lane, your jungler
can come in from behind your tower, and hide in the bush.
Let your lane opponent push back into you, and boom, first blood.
There’s also ways to bushes for outplays, there are 3 bushes topside, all with a little
gap between them.
You’re getting 2v1’d and your jungler is busy with the dragon on the opposite side
of the map.
Using the bushes, and a well timed Flash, you can confuse the opponents and escape with
your life, or maybe even two kills So, what do we not do?
FACE CHECK!!!
We don’t face check!
You’ve just spawned, level 1 and you’re 15s late from getting coffee.
Let’s run it down to the river, and hide in that little bush just under Baron pit - OOPS
YOU’RE DEAD there was a 5 man invade.
DON’T do it!
Use an oracle lens, a farsight ward, or literally anything that isn’t facechecking.
Another important thing about bushes are that you can lose minon aggro by walking into one.
As you know if you trade with an opponent, the minons will also start attacking you.
So if possible, do a short trade and go into a bush so that the minions lose aggro immediately.
They are also very useful tools in prepping waves which we will go over later in future
videos.
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Okay cool lets keep going.
Number Four!
Experience is king!
Most low elo (and even some higher elo!) players think that the be all and end all of laning
phase is to farm and get your CS score up.
And, while that is mostly true, sometimes it’s just not possible to.
Sometimes, your PC will have a fit and you’ll get to lane late.
Sometimes, you will get hard countered.
Sometimes, you will get camped constantly.
And sometimes your chapm just has extremely bad early game priority like Kayle and Nasus.
And what all of these things have in common is that we generally find ourselves not being
able to farm, because if we step forward - we are going to die.
We don’t want to do this!
You’re just feeding your enemy even more, and you’re going to be significantly behind.
What you need to do in these situations, is play safe - ignore the damn cannon!
Stay as near to your tower as you can, or hide in bushes and soak up that XP.
It hurts to watch the minions die while you have 150gold in your pocket, but it’s necessary.
You can always catch up - and even if you can’t, you can hope your team can carry
you while not being a liability!
If that Irelia - whose ahead on farm, whose jungler is camping her lane - gets more kills,
then it’s going to be unlikely that anyone in your team can stand toe to toe with her.
If she’s just getting minions, and no kills, you might be in luck she gets cocky and pushes
up too far - then, you can ask your jungler or mid for a gank, hopefully shut her down
a bit and give yourself some breathing room for collecting CS - you might even get a bounty
from the kill.
In the top right hand corner of your screen is a card that has a game where I absolutely
abuse a pantheon that gives up experience in the early game to help his jungler out.
He forgot that Experience is King and because of that one mistake, lost the game for his
team.
Number Five!
Abusing cooldowns To round out the laning phase tips, let’s
talk about abusing cooldowns.
What does it mean?
Abusing cooldowns means knowing when your opponent has used vital spells in their kit,
or combo, and they’re currently not available for X amount of time
Take Vladimir’s pool for example.
It gives him invulnerability and an escape tool - if your jungler has walked up for a
gank, and Vlad uses it to escape safely, you know it’s going to be on cooldown for a
period of time - it’s okay not to know the exact timings of every opponent at first,
but eventually it will benefit you extremely well to learn them.
When your opponents don’t have part of their kit, it means that you can abuse this advantage
in lane, either by winning trades or even securing a kill.
You have to be aware that this can happen to you as well, you don’t want to be playing
Kennen, use your only escape tool on the minion wave and OOPS you’re dead
Abusing cooldowns also relates to flash, ignite and other summoner spells.
If your jungler comes to gank and forces a flash out of the enemy Illaoi, she has no
escape tools then - you, and your jungler, both know that the next time she pushes forward,
she’s going to die to a gank.
Remember you can also keep an eye on other lanes cooldowns, if you want to roam after
pushing down the tier one - and keep in mind global cooldowns such as Karthus R, Ezreal
R, Soraka R and more.
You don’t want to be taking a bad trade, coming out with a sliver of health, to be
taken out by an Ezreal in botlane.
Thank you for taking your time to watch this video, and please please leave your feedback
and any tips I may have missed in the comments below!
The next video in the series will be covering jungler impact, how to understand jungle priority,
being camped and how to play with an ally jungler.
If it is already released, I have it listed here and if not I have another video here
that I have hand picked for you to watch until it comes out!
Make sure to be subscribed and have the notification bell clicked so you don’t miss the next
one!
Deuces boys!