What's going on everybody, welcome back to Know Your Enemy my name is TrendKill
Let's get it on
"Dramatic Woosh"
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.... EPIC Intro...
Bum Bum Bum ...
So if you haven't seen this series before this is not like most other guides. Most guides will
tell you how to play a god.
In Know Your Enemy we focus on the reverse and we focus on how to play
against a certain god. So in this episode we're going to be focusing on the assassin Loki
Now we're gonna learn a little bit about Loki's abilities
and some tips on how to play against a Loki should you find him on the enemy team
So without further ado let's go ahead and jump into the video we're gonna discuss
the Trickster God.
"Dramatic transition sign w/ Epic woosh sound"
First off let's take a look at Loki's graph, now you can see out of the six stats he
really only excelled in damage and mobility.
He's got damage that is off the charts and his mobility is almost maxed on this chart
but everything else kind of falls below average. He has next to no defense he
obviously has no healing abilities
his control, he really only gains from a slow and a stun on his ultimate
and his utilities really only gain from his vanish other than that he's the kind of
characters gonna sneak in
stab somebody in the back destroy them in less than a second or two
and then vanish an run out. The only thing you can really tell from this
graph is that defensively if he gets caught out or if he gets stun, or if he gets CC
chain in any form
he's probably going to die pretty quickly. So let's take a look at he's
abilitys and figure out why that is
Alright so first of lets take a look at his passive, called Behind You. This is a very
simple passive and it's very unique to Loki
in the fact that when he is behind the enemy he's attacking he does 20%
more damage with his basic attacks.
Now this could be a god or minion or a buff camp but if he's behind it
he will do 20% more damage. His first ability Vanish
this is what gives Loki his flavor Loki is basically
the definitive assassin he can Vanish from
a battle or Vanish while he's in the jungle to walk into the lane while invisible
to start a fight that way. Now as if invisibility was not enough while he's invisible
he moves 35% faster takes 25% less damage and
is immune to slows. On top of all that his first basic attack from stealth
or for two seconds after stealth adds a dot
to the enemy player that ticks four times over two seconds
So it doesn't just make Loki invisible it actually gives him a ton of utility in
that one ability.
Also you're probably gonna be surprised when you play against a Loki
as to how much damage that Vanish dot actually does
at max rank 90 damaged per tick plus 25% of your physical power which is
probably gonna be somewhere around
a 150 total damage per tick. You're talking about 600 plus premedigation damage
from an ability that already makes him invisible, immune to slows, faster
all the while he's taking less damage. Again this is the backbone of
Loki's kit his second ability Decoy is another very interesting ability and
it's also unique to Loki
in the fact that it spawns a decoy of himself with an aoe around
it and after three seconds that decoy explodes dealing damaged to
everything inside that radius.
Now the cool thing about this ability is that not only does it do damage in an area
it also taunts anything in that area to attack it
for that three seconds. So when Loki throws his decoy up into a wave of minions all of
those minions will not go down the lane they will attack that decoy
for that three seconds until it explodes and then they will go back to their
normal path.
This also works on jungle camps, it works on towers, and phoenix's
it work in a lot of different things in the game. Loki can use decoy in a lot
of different areas
in a lot of different scenarios. His third ability Aimed Strike, this is what
gives Loki his burst damage.
Essentially this is a steroid ability, he activates this and when he attacks with
his next basic attack
this ability than procs. Now there's a time limit on that if he doesn't attack
somebody in a five second time period the buff just goes away and you have to
reapply Aimed Strike to get that bonus.
Now in addition to that crazy burst it also slows the enemy for three seconds
by 25 percent
and his ultimate ability Assassinate, this is what gives Loki his little bit of control
and still adds further to his ability to burst damage somebody down quickly.
Essentially he's got a targeter about the size of Nemesis's ultimate targeter
except that Nemesis's ultimate can not miss
Loki's can, so you actually have to aim this one if you do happen to
aim this correctly Loki will teleport to a target, backstab them doing a ton of damage
and stunning them for one second. Now the benefit of having to aim this ability in
not being forced to target an enemy God
is the fact that you can use this as a blink as an escape
if you have to. So if you're low on life an running you can just aim this at the
ground to teleport away from somebody.
Now why would I want to use a 90 second cool down to teleport
away that sounds like that would be a poor use of my ability
however almost always Lokis gonna have a minimum of 25% cooldown reduction
if not max cooldown reduction
which is gonna put this on a 54 second cooldown so
if it's going to save your life it's really not that much of a disadvantage
to use it as an escape
and that's going to do it for a brief rundown of Lokis abilities let's go ahead move
into the mechanic section were we're gonna learn some tips on how to play against a Loki
"Dramatic Woosh"
Alright so as far as Loki's mechanics are concerned Loki is one of those gods
that can be either really terrible or really good depending on the
skill of the player that's playing him. Now what I mean by that is to play Loki
properly you have to know what order to use his abilities in
based on the situation that you're in you have to know when
you can go in, when you can't, you have to know about your
positioning, there's a lot of things to know about playing Loki that
a good player just understands an a novice player may not have grasped yet
So depending on the player that's playing Loki your gonna see one game were
Loki seems to be a terrible god and you're gonna see another game were Loki
seems to be op and I just don't want to ever play in a game
with Loki again. So with all that being said let's go over some
basic tips that are gonna tell you a little bit about
how Loki's going to use his ability so first off let's talk about Vanish.
Now there's no right or wrong way to go invisible again its
about when you use it, so again it's going to be up to the player
playing Loki however there are important things to know about Vanish like
how to counter it. Three ways to counter and on-demand
invisibility, first off is crowd control. Crowd control is the
bane of Loki's existent there are several forms a crowd control that will
pull Loki out of his stealth
the main three being stuns, silences, and mesmerized.
Imagine you are Ymir an a Loki is right in front of you and you see
Loki go invisible
the first thing I would do is use my Frost Breath to try to freeze him in
that large cone in front of me.
If I were to successfully freeze him he is incapable of going invisible for
another nine seconds minimum.
If you happen to catch him while his ultimate is also on cooldown
Loki is a very squishy god and becomes very easy to take care off
another thing that makes Loki very easy to track while he's in stealth are dots
there are many damage over time abilities in the game and while damage
over time does not pull Loki
out of stealth you will still see the damage ticking over his head as he is
running away
So while it's not a foolproof plan to follow him it does help give you a general idea
which direction he's heading
and the 3rd thing on that list that will help reveal Loki when he's
are your towers and phoenix's
if Loki is invisible and walks into your tower or your phoenix
the phoenix and the tower see him making him show up as like a purple silhouette.
Now I'm not saying you're safe under your tower or under your phoenix from a Loki who
can burst you down and teleport out
but I am saying that Loki is not just gonna stealth through a tower unscathed
you at least know where he's going. Now since we're talking about Loki going
through towers in Phoenix's let's go ahead and move on to a second ability
Decoy. Now Decoy is Loki's wave clear ability we've already kinda talked about that
however Decoy can also be used in several other
applications one of which being throwing Decoy in the tower
to have the tower attack the Decoy so that Loki can walk through unscathed
this is a very interesting tactic to 1 escape but to 2
1 escape but to 2 also be able to push through the back line and come up behind somebody.
be able to push through the back line and come up behind somebody.
Now its not likely you're ever
gonna need to gank somebody from behind their tower
but unlike most other gods with
Loki there's at least a safe alternative to do that
Now lets talk about a small simple general tip for people using Decoy when
your playing Loki, not playing against him
this is a tip for those people who are watching this guide to learn how to play Loki
So when you're trying to clear a wave with Lokis Decoy make sure you place the aoe
of the Decoy on the archers. If not they will stop in their tracks
outside of that aoe
range to shoot at the Decoy. I see a lot of new Loki players
making this mistake. If you
simple move your Decoy back just a little bit so the archers are covered
by the aoe
the melee minion instead of stopping outside an shooting it
they can't because they have swords they have to run back
into the aoe so make sure that the aoe of the Decoy covers the archers
and that's how you get the most efficient damaged out of your decoy. Now as
an addition to that tip make sure that you are utilizing the Decoys taunt
to attack the enemies
in the back while they're busy attacking your decoy you should be busy
taking advantage of the extra damage from your passive.
Now we talk about his third ability Aim Strike there's not a lot tips that can be used its just a
steroid it doesn't do anything special other than
add a bunch of damage to his next basic attack an slow that target by 25%
So again this is one of those abilities that the player playing Loki needs to know
when to use that ability however I can give you one neat little tip
remember you have a time limit on your Aim Strike a five seconds to hit with
the next basic attack to deal that damaged, the buff of
Aim Strike only last for five seconds. Well guess what the
cooldown of Aim Strike at max rank is eight seconds but with max cooldown reduction that
reduces that to about five seconds so the duration on the buff is five seconds
and the cool down of the ability is
five seconds meaning that if you know you're going to attack somebody
you can cast your Aim Strike about four seconds before you need the actual damage
hit somebody with a burst from Aim Strike and then 1 second later
you can Aim Strike again in the same attack. So with proper planning
two Aim Strikes can be used in succession to deal massive burst damage in a very
very short amount of time. So with all that being said let's talk about Assassinate cause
this add only even more burst to Lokis Aim Strikes
If somebody is trying to burst you down and has the wherewithal to use their Aim Strikes properly
their Assessinate when it needs to be used and can add dot damage from Vanish
that player can hit you with 1250 ability damage plus
four hundred and twenty percent of their total physical power
Now just like in the other videos that is all before damage mitigation however
that is an insane amount of damage to have to mitigate. So how do you stop all of
that incoming damage how do you stop Loki from bursting you
from a hundred percent health down to dead in less than two seconds
Well the obvious answer is some form of the Aegis Amulet however if
he chooses to open the fight with Assassinate that one second may be
enough to actually kill you.
So you can hope that you can kind of pre-planned your Aegis and kinda guess
when he's gonna Assassinate you however that's not a reliable way to
avoid that damage.
The only real way to avoid
Loki being able to burst you down like that is to have some sort of cleanse
and then use your Aegis, so you could do something like Magis Blessing that gives you that innate
CC immunity once every 45 seconds or you can use something like
Purification Beads to cleanse it and then pop your Aegis really quickly
but the question is are those items going to fit into your build
Odds are you can find room for Magis Blessing
and/or Purification Beads to build against somebody who can kill you
so quickly and last but not least let's talk about some general tips on Loki
I know this video has gone on a little longer than most my other videos however
I wanted to make sure we touched on
everything that Loki brings to the table. First off Loki has a very low
team fight presence meaning that all of his abilities
are single target abilities he has no a aoe abilities other than his Decoy
and his Decoy is not reliable team fight damage
so if you see Loki in a teamfight he's not looking to fight with the team
he's looking for the straggler in the back line of the enemy teams so he can take them out
without anybody else noticing. Another down fall of Loki is that all of his
abilities have very distinct sounds
so much so that I hearLoki's sounds
in games when there's no Loki in the game just because I'm paranoid
of that sounded anything sounds similar too Loki sound, "Im like Ohh
where he at , is he stealth heard Aim Strike you know it's just one of those things
that after you've played with enough Lokis in your game
even if you have a Loki on your own team you get a little scared by that noise
Now the benefit of that to you is that likely you're going to hear Loki
coming at some point in some way
This gives you a little more time to prepare for that insane
burst thats getting ready to hit you. So if your used to playing with your game sound low
or your used to listening to music while you play, if
you're playing against a Loki that is not recommended because you have no idea
he's getting ready to stab you in the back
and last but not least let's talk about Lokis ability to split push.
Now when I talk about split pushing I'm not sure if we cover that this series yet before
however split pushing is the idea that if there's a big team fight going on
that one person can slip away into an empty lane
just to push down a couple towers. That is it absolutely viable strategy
especially with somebody
like Loki who has a very low team fight presents
if I can't be completely helpful in that team fights say everybody's a little bit tanky
or I'm a little bit behind it's better for me to be
in another lane in an empty lane pushing down objectives
This gives our whole team gold and if I split pushed far enough
I laid down to Phoenix to start spawning fire minions in that lane
now the reason Loki is so good at this is because he's got a ton of
mobility and he's got a lot of misdirection its easy for him to escape
harm's way.
This is similar to Apollo who can just use his ultimate and fly out
Loki can just use his invisibility and then Assassinate out if he has to
Odds are if he's got max cool down he's going to be able to Vanish
every 9 seconds making it very hard for you to be able to chase him back through the jungle
for him to get back to safety now his ability to split push it even further
amplified here to get something like
Teleport to Wards he can sneak up toss a ward down
go back to base buy Teleport to Wards or upgraded if he already has it or whatever
and teleport to that ward to be right back where he was
and then he's still got all that safety to get back out if he has to
so even if Loki is way behind his ability to split push can completely
manipulate an entire game
in his team's favor. So anyways guys that's going to do it for the video hopefully you've
learn a little bit about Loki hopefully you know how to play against
him now
and hopefully you enjoyed yourself enough to come back and check us out
next week
we're gonna be talking about Odin
The All Father
"Dramatic Woosh"