Hey everyone!
When watching the best players in the world, it can be hard to see all of the small things
they do that seperate them from everyone else.
The mechanics are easy to notice, but as we all know, not everyone can be blessed with
those mechanics.
So today, were going to break down 2 of the many things Faker does that makes him so good,
that you can do as well.
You dont need any crazy mechanics for these tips and tricks, and the concepts will apply
to any champion.
So, lets get started.
The first thing that Faker does that you definetly dont do, is he always plays for the wave.
What I mean by that is, his first priority is wave control and CS.
This sounds like it should be a given, but nobody in low elo actually thinks about how
to control the wave in different scenarios, and its extremely important.
If you go to Fakers op.gg, he always has very high CS.
Good wavecontrol contributes to that massively.
But lets look at some gameplay to see a few examples of what im talking about.
Faker has been spamming Renekton, so lets look at 2 different Renekton games here, and
how he plays levels 1 to 3 differently as he has different plans for the matchup.
In this first one, hes playing Renekton vs Aatrox.
For the first wave, he hard shoves using Renektons strong level 1 push, and clears the entire
thing before the next wave gets here.
Lets quickly test your knowledge though.
Because he hard shoved the first wave, and it hits the tower as the next wave is arriving,
what will the wave do now?
So, because the next wave is going to stop and hit these blue minions on the tower for
a few seconds, the next waves wont meet in the middle, but instead, closer to aatrox
tower.
They will be even as well, so because of the even minion rule, it will slowpush to faker.
We will go over why this is improtant in a little bit.
But the other thing this enables him to do is, he can put a ward at the enemy raptors
to see where the enemy lillia started, and as he puts it down, he spots her.
The best time to drop wards is after shoving a wave, as you dont miss any CS, and the enemy
laner cant stop you.
Imagine if the wave is in the middle of the lane and Faker tries to put a ward at the
enemy raptors, it just wouldnt work.
Alright, so now the wave will slowly push abck to Faker, and he sees lillia trying to
gank mid, so he backs off a bit.
Lillia is going to go through mid, so now Faker is safe to walk up to the wave again.
Now lets stop here.
Do you see this one red minion Aatrox is standing near?
Faker knows aatrox is going to contest him for that, but he isnt just going to give it
up.
And the reason for that is, he has his abilities up, if his abilities were on cooldown he would
give it.
So he walks up to the CS as it gets low, dashes in with E to avoid Aatrox sweet spots, grabs
the CS and trades at the same time, then dashes out.
This is another example of how Faker plays for the wave.
He doesnt just randomly trade with aatrox.
He prioritizes the CS, then trades back when being contested in situations like these.
This makes it so hes more likely to have his abilities for these types of situations.
If hes using his abilities to trade constantly, he wouldnt have them and it could be much
more dangerous to grab CS.
Alright, as we move on, this is where the very smart wave control is going to come into
play.
Ifyou dont know, Renekton gets a lot of health if he uses Q with 50 fury and hits a lot of
minions or champions.
So by getting the wave to slowpush back to him, it lets him go for trades like these..
So he got a huge heal there, then disengaged entirely with E to avoid any return damage
from Aatrox.
So the wave is pushing to him and he has a huge health advantage, which puts aatrox in
a very tricky spot.
Does he recall with the wave pushing to Faker and lose a ton of CS?
This alone would lose him the lane and high elo players will do everything they can to
avoid that.
His other option is to really test his limits and try to get the wave crashed on Fakers
tower without dying.
So lets see what happens.
With the wave pushing to Faker, this means aatrox will get level 3 first, and when he
does he tries to go in and punish, but Faker knows and avoid it easily.
Faker hits level 3 immediately after, and here we can start talking about the next thing
Faker does that you dont do.
And its that he knows the little things add up.
So for this next trade, he walks up to aatrox, and he doesnt just use W, he makes sure to
auto first, then cancel the auto animation with renekton W, then autos again and cancels
that animation with renekton Q. Not only does this give him the most optimal
damage so hes not wasting any opportunities to get auto attacks in while using his combo,
but it put him at 50 fury for that Q, which gave him a big chunk of health from all the
minions around like we talked about.
So now aatrox is in a really tricky position here, as they are both low but renekton has
way faster burst than aatrox does, and the wave is psuhing to Faker.
He doesnt want to recall like we talked about before..so lets see what happens next.
Faker backs off while waiting for cooldowns, then as soon as his E is up, he dashes in,
uses Q to get a lot of fury, then uses that fury to empower W and finish off the aatrox.
So, because he set up the wave perfectly, he won multiple trades that he otherwise wouldnt
because of the big minion wave, then also put aatrox in a really tough spot because
of it.
Lets move on to the next game now, to see how things change a bit.
In this one hes also on renekton, but against Viktor.
Hes not going to hardpush the wave like he did vs Aatrox because he cant.
Viktor would punish him hard for that with his ranged advantage.
So instead, hes going to hide over this wall, to avoid any kind of damage from viktor while
the first few CS get low.
Viktor gets close though so he moves to the other side..
THen walks up and uses Q to grab the 2 CS, and autos the third.
Hes going to play safe for a bit while the next CS get low, then walk up and use Q once
again to grab them.
Then when the Q is back up, he goes into the big wave, and uses Q another time.
Now that he has 50 fury, and his E, he dashes
in, weaves in an auto between every ability like before, heals off the wave and viktor,
then dashes out.
But the beautiful part, and the thing that Im even learning and need to do in my own
games is..
In both of these games, the way he trades while going for CS, instead of just doing
one or the other, is amazing.
Its very very difficult in high elo to have good CS in lane if you are being contested
for every one of them.
I always wonder how these players have such high CS in hard matchups because how do they
not give up CS when they dont have cooldowns.
But its by playing like Faker does here, planning each trade around the last hits.
You can see in the last trade how he grabbed CS while doing it.. and hes going to do it
again multiple times here so lets keep watching.
He autos these next 2 CS as hes safe to with the wave he has..
Then grabs the cannon as well.. and now he has 50 fury, with all of his abilities.
This is what Im talking about.
Most players would go for a trade here, including myself.
he has the fury, he has a cannon wave, he would definetly win it..
But instead, he waits for this last hit, then waits for Viktor to walk up for this minion
and for these back 3 CS to get a little low..
NOW he can go in and use a full combo to trade, while collecting the CS at the same time.
Dont get me wrong, this is very hard to do because you have to know how much damage you
do, while knowing when its a good time to trade, while also thinking a few steps ahead,
but this is what seperates players like Faker from the others.
This kind of game knowledge and trading is crazy and takes a lot of practice.
But now that he doesnt have any abilities, he backs off playing a little safer, untill
he needs to walk up for a last hit again.
Then he drops a ward bot side before walking back into lane to grab last hits.
Notice when he goes to drop that ward, no CS were even close to low so he doesnt miss
anything.
Every minion counts especially in korean challenger.
Hes going to get this minion, and once again he has a window to trade here.
He has the fury, the cooldowns, and the wave advantage.
But he doesnt just jump in, or use his Q to grab these last 2 CS and crash the wave, which
also would have been fine.
Thats the main thing, its not that using Q to grab the last hits would be bad, but it
wouldnt be optimal.
Instead, hes going to use E through the CS to grab it, while also hitting level 4 for
2 points in his Q, then empower Q the viktor, getting a nice chunk of damage along with
a bunch of health.
Now you should know from the previous replay, what will the wave do now that he crashed
it?
5 second pause The wave is even and on Viktors side of the
lane, so because of the even minion rule, it will slowpush to faker.
And because of his optimal trades, Viktor is now in that awful spot that aatrox was
in earlier.
Faker is goign to go for one more trade here, which might have turned into a kill, but the
enemy Quinn is here to gank which makes Faker back off.
But the trade was good enough that Viktor doesnt feel safe enough to walk up anymore
and needs to recall, so Faker can win the lane just from that.
Alright guys, I learned a lot making this video so I would hope you guys learned and
enjoyed it as well.
But thats going to bring us to the end of
this one!
See you next time!