Hey everyone. This week we're introducing something new that we haven't really tried
before. We asked Hector to go smurf like always, but this time we asked him to provide educational
commentary as he plays the game. We've uploaded his full commentary smurf games
exclusively to our website and will be continuing to upload a bunch of them on a weekly basis.
Hector's also promised not to leave his desk and respond to the questions you may have
on these commentary releases for the first 7 days upon their release, so be sure to check
us out after this video. So, why have we done this? Well, there's definitely
a difference between analysis made after the fact, and how someone *actually* thinks when
they're playing the game. Both types of analysis are useful, but it may surprise you just how
simple the decisions a Challenger player makes can be. We'll be asking a lot of questions
this time around, so see if you can think just like Hector does when he's smurfing.
Let's hop right into the start of this game. The match up Hector will be playing is Ashe
and Thresh vs a Lucian/Blitzcrank lane. As the lane begins, what do you think Hector's
game plan will be for this bot lane match up?
Let's see what he had to think this is uhh...obviously new content. I'll
outline exactly when I want you to cut my voice off, so there's no confusion. otherwise,
just mute my voice unless it's a blue node Okay, that's a very easy to follow game plan
based off simple logic. There isn't a whole lot of thought process behind this. Having
wave advantage lets your support land hooks Not only that, but even if your support misses
a hook here and there, your opponent will be unable to punish. They can't threaten skill
shots through the big wave you'll have to protect you, if you have the shove lead.
This same logic can be applied to any support match up where both champions have a skill
shot. If you deny the enemy support the chance of ever landing their skill shot, while at
the same time opening up your own support to do so, it's obviously a win win and the
lane will go much smoother. That's what happened this game. Hector and
his Thresh were able to consistently get good trades, until eventually they scored a solid,
if somewhat sloppy, double kill. Since there's no real game play theme to this
video, let's just skip ahead to a much later part of the game. Hector managed to snowball
pretty hard, so let's hear the logic behind his current actions.
"so we keep pushing here. we see 4 of them on the map "
Okay, once again that's sound, simple logic. Reacting to the enemy team's plays around
the map would be incorrect. He'd get there too late. It's much better to cross-map and
look for an advantage elsewhere. The real question for this section will be what Hector's
action will be after he takes this inhibitor tower. What do you think he'll do, and you'll
get bonus points if you tell us *why* he'll do it.
Alright, let's see what happens and what he thinks about it.
"this is a free inhibitor, now I will say I don't think taking this inhibitor is correct,
but I think my team's mental would go boom, if I didn't, because they don't understand
why this is potentially wrong" Okay, that's a bit weird. Making a call he
thinks is incorrect to spare his team from tilting. Let's break this down. First, let's
discuss why taking an inhibitor so early is usually not ideal.
The problem with taking very early inhibitors is that they're only useful, if you can make
use of the pressure generated from the super minions. With the inhibitor down, you'll always
have a man advantage for everything you attempt to do, since someone on the enemy team will
obviously be stuck clearing the super creep waves.
The problem is that having a man advantage this early into the game is not always that
useful. Trying to do Baron at 20 minutes, even with a 5v4 advantage is usually suicide.
And it's not like you can just randomly push or dive mid lane towers. Towers will still
be relatively powerful at that stage of the game, so it's difficult to get any meaningful
advantages by grouping near a tower. Especially, if the enemy team has reliable wave clear.
Therefore, if you take too early of an inhibitor, most of the time you're just funneling farm
into someone on the enemy team. This can be quite problematic when it's a hyper-scaling
champion, such as Jax for example. To illustrate just how bad it is to take early
inhibitors, let's take a look at an extreme example from recent competitive history. At
the 2019 MSI semi-finals, G2 *willingly* let their inhibitor die to minions against the
best team in League of Legends history. If professional players think other professional
players can't use the early inhibitor pressure, then you most definitely don't want to rely
on your random gold and platinum teammates to use the pressure efficiently.
Okay, so if it wasn't a good idea, then why'd he do it anyways?
Just as he said, he doesn't want to give his team any reason to tilt. If he'd left that
inhibitor alive, who knows what someone may have said or what it could lead to. Any time
you can afford to do something that boosts team morale, you may as well do it.
But only do so, if you're sure you can win anyways. Luckily for Hector, he's obviously
a smurf. He took that inhibitor because any advantage he gives the enemy team won't matter
in the long run. Alright, let's take a look at a couple of
examples from another game Hector played. In this game Hector has already accrued a
pretty large lead, so his team plays around him setting up a solid dive. At the end of
it, he places a pink ward in the lane bush and walks back to hit the tower with his team.
After a bit of pushing, we arrive at the point where he makes another interesting decision.
It's very clear that he has plenty of time to kill this tower and get first tower gold,
especially since we see no one coming any time soon thanks to that earlier pink.
Instead, he just backs off without taking the free 600 plus gold. Why do you think he
did this? There's 2 reasons this time, so think hard.
Let's listen to what he thought about it. "I think I lose a lot of tempo by doing that.....back
out on the map to prevent this dragon, right?" His foresight instantly pays off, as he's
here in time to cut off Lux's rotation to dragon securing a free kill, as well as ensuring
that his team gets the objective easily. Now of course this decision was based off
the fact that he didn't need the turret gold and the dragon was up. Let's imagine some
different scenarios. Imagine you're playing Lucian, and you need 600 gold to finish Blade
of the Ruined King. In that case, you *would* stay to finish the tower and just relay that
information to your team in hopes that they'll be patient.
Huge power spikes like that are too important, and securing the necessary gold before you
base would be the correct call. Now, let's imagine there wasn't a dragon up.
This means there's no rush to get back out on the map. You may as well take the free
600 or so gold This opens you up to potentially rotating top after recalling, since you don't
have to go back bottom anymore. Alright, let's take a look at another macro
decision Hector makes shortly after this dragon/tower situation.
"I would ideally like to go top lane......and I don't want to share farm"
Again, pretty simple right? This is something we're constantly bringing up about not going
to lanes that are already being farmed. With that line of thinking in mind, what do you
think is the most pressing issue on Hector's mind at the moment?
"I will just pressure mid and hope Ahri goes bottom. If Ahri comes mid, I will go bottom"
Okay. He's not even remotely thinking about the enemy team, but is instead focusing on
what his own teammates may do. ADC is a unique role in that way. After a
certain point, you and your support should be taking over mid, but people really love
to ARAM for some reason, which usually results in you sharing farm.
You need to be hyper aware of not only the enemy team's movements, but your own team's
as well. In case they come to group at a bad time, you should be looking for other sources
of farm you can rotate to, just in case. In this scenario, Lux had pushed in a wave bottom
that Ahri should ideally be catching, so she can pressure the side lane. But in low elo
that often times won't be the case. It'll be up to you to react to your own teammate's
bad macro, and rotate appropriately. Alright, that's going to be it for this guide.
We've uploaded the Kai'sa game for you to watch, if you want. Remember to leave absolutely
any feedback on that, and we'll see ya next week.