Hey everyone.
If you guys dont know, Dopa, a korean player and is considered the best Twisted Fate player
in the world.
Ive learned almost everything I know about TF by watching his replays and so has probably
every other great TF player in the pro scene, so I figured I would review one of his games
with you guys so you can understand his thought process as well.
In this game, he is playing TF vs Talon in challenger.
Talon is really strong in solo Q right now because of how easy it is for him to get mid
priority and then roam or kill the jungler.
Its super frusturating to play against and requires really good minion wave management
and map awareness.
So, lets jump into analysis.
TF is a medium range control mage vs talon who is a melee assassin.
Talon does way more damage with a full rotation of spells, and they have even waveclear, but
TF has the range advantage.
The gameplan for this matchup will be similar to the gameplan in our previous TF video where
I was going against Fizz, but a lot more advanced:
Mission 1: Match waveclear
Dopa cant really freeze vs talon since talon has so much waveclear to break it, so he needs
to be clearing just as fast as talon to make sure talon doesnt have mid priority.
Mission 2: Harass without giving wave control away
This is the difficult part of the matchup.
Dopa wants to harass talon as much as possible, because the lower health talon gets, the harder
it is for him to roam.
But its hard to harass without giving the wave control up.
Mission 3: Defend and setup ganks for jungler
In this game, dopas jungler is nidalee.
Nidalee is a great combo with TF because the gold card makes her spears really easy to
hit.
Also, nidalee is a jungler that loves to invade so he needs to protect nidalee from talon
roams.
Alright, so this gameplan is very different from our traditional ones because this is
a very high elo game and high elo TF vs talon matchup would be drastically different from
low elo.
But with that being said, all of these concepts still apply to your own games, this guide
is just a bit trickier to execute than the norm.
ALright, lets get into the gameplay.
As soon as the minions touch, the first thing dopa is doing is autoing minions, and throws
a red card at the back line.
This is because he is thinking a few steps of ahead of how this lane is going to play
out.
He knows talon is going to be using W on the wave and pushing it.
So hes getting the headstart on mission 1 by matching the waveclear before talon even
starts.
If talon doesnt W the wave and lets it push to him, then dopa just gets free harass on
him when he goes for CS and he gets mid priority, which is the opposite of what talon wants.
So in a high elo game dopa knows exactly what talons gameplan is.
Talon uses his first W, and look how much damage it did to the wave.
Now the wave is almost completely matched with eachother in terms of minion health.
Now that talon W is down, and the wave is even, dopa can start working on mission 2,
which is to harass.
So when talon walks up for CS, he instantly locks a gold card and pokes talon a bit.
This gold card was actually unlucky for him, he wanted a blue or red card since they do
more damage than gold, but he only has a short window to harass here because of the where
talon is in relation to the minions.
To clarify what that means, talon is going for a last hit here, if dopa picks a card
and waits to select a blue card, talon will retreat back into his own minions, so when
dopa walks up and throws it, talons ranged minions will aggro dopa and trade back damage.
But if he throws it here, the minions wont aggro and he gets free harass.
Talon throws his next W, which clears all but 1 of dopas minions, and as his last minion
falls, there is only 1 red minion left, which is exactly what he wanted from missions 1
and 2.
Instead of killing this last minion, he runs back into his wave and pulls the minion inbetween
these 2 pillars.
So when the waves meet again, look where it is.
Right in the perfect freeze spot that we have talked about in a lot of other videos.
If dopa left 1 minion up just to do this, hes even better than I thought.
It wouldnt surprise me at all as hes just insane, but its impossible to know.
Either way this is exactly where you want the lane in this kind of matchup.
TF cant be ganked, and talon is gankable.
He probably did it on purpose as hes said before in one of his videos "People think
they know wave control, but its a trade secret".
Dopa says even high elo players think they know wave control but he knows it the best.
So the waves are even again, and its back to mission 1.
He pulls a red card right away just like on the first wave, and is constantly auto attacking
the minions.
While this is happening he can see nidalee fighting the enemy jungler for scuttle crab.
So he wants to push this wave as fast as he can or talon will hit level 2 first and move
first, so he throws another red card at the backline.
Before moving on, lets talk about why this gameplan is working so well, and what could
be happening if he didnt play it this way.
So talon would push with his W, and if TF doesnt match the waveclear, talon would have
a kind of big wave on the second wave, hit level 2, then fully shove the wave making
a big wave on TF`s tower forcing him to stay in lane and kill the minions.
This gives talon a window to help his jungler fight for scuttle as this normally happens
after the second wave.
But because hes matching waveclear, he hit level 2 first.
Lets see what happens instead.
Talon hits level 2 and they both move down towards river.
Dopa is now working on mission 3, protecting his jungler.
Dopa isnt really moving to help kill taliyah, because he can see nidalee already winning
this fight.
He walks right infront of talon because hes just keeping talon away from his jungler.
Thats why he walks right infront of talon towards the river, and starts his pick a card.
He knows with full health talon cant kill him.
As soon as talon uses his Q, he gold cards him and runs towards nidalee.
Nidalee finishes off taliyah, then runs towards dopa.
Dopa turns right away and since he started with boots, runs down talon and gold cards
him, giving nidalee an easy spear and an easy kill.
This is why league is such a crazy game, none of this could have happened if he didnt play
level 1 right, he wouldnt have the mid priority to zone talon away from nidalee.
Now he just pushes in the wave since talon is dead, and recalls.
This is super bad for talon, he loses a ton of minions here and experience.
Dopa comes back to lane, and tanks the minions so they dont hit the tower.
His wave catches up and look where the wave ends up settling.
Right in the sweet spot between the 2 pillars.
Like I said before though, its near impossible to actually freeze against talon, because
when the wave is big like this, you cant harass him off the wave without the wave owning you,
and he can clear your wave too easily.
So dopa is going to throw a red card and a Q here as he knows he cant really freeze,
he doesnt want to let this big wave crash on his tower where hes stuck CSing it.
Also, he throws the Q in a way that hits most of the minions and harasses talon at the same
time, so hes doing mission 1 and 2 at the same time, which is pretty efficient.
Talon is going to finish clearing the wave, and there are 4 ranged minions left, but look
at their HP.
1 tower shot will kill each one, so dopa walks up to make sure they dont hit the tower, and
quickly clears them.
The next wave meets, and hes just throws blue cards and last hitting, some of you might
be wondering why isnt he throwing red cards like before.
Well know thats hes level 4, he doesnt need to do a bunch of damage to the wave to prepare
for talon W, because his waveclear is good enough now to match it.
He could hard push the wave but his jungler is doing raptors, so it doesnt really do anything
for him.
If his jungler was invading right now, he would probably push.
His jungler finishes doing raptors, and is looking for a mid gank, you would think Dopa
would be playing aggro trying to look for a gold card.
But against a good player, they wont just let you walk up and gold card them, it would
be too obvious nidalee is here.
So he just throws a Q at the wave and is playing normally.
If he plays like this talon might overextend for a minion and he can catch him.
Sadly talon doesnt do that and nidalee walks out of the brush giving herself away.
Since talon knows nidalee is here, dopa just clears the wave, then moves out of vision
to get some wards down.
Notice, he wards bot side in pixel brush to make sure there is no way he can be surprised
by their jungler.
Also, nidalee is on his bot side, so he wants to be hugging here.
He cant hug this side of the lane without vision.
Now that he has proper vision, he can play a little more aggressive on the talon.
So when talon walks up to last hit under tower, he pokes him a bit.
The next wave comes, and the enemy jungler taliyah shows in top lane killing jayce, so
dopa knows hes safe to push this wave as fast as he wants.
Since hes level 5, hes going to be pushing as fast as he can to make sure he keeps lane
priority for when he hits level 6, or if he needs to roam.
The wave hits talons tower, and dopa is looking for more harass, hes playing cautiously, not
because hes afraid of ganks, but because talon can still easily chunk him really hard if
he doesnt respect it, so instead of getting in range of talons W and Q to throw this blue
card, he throws Q from a safe distance, then autos after talons W is down.
The next wave comes, and hes already starting to push, like I said, he wants full lane priority
vs talon to shut down talons snowballly roaming.
He uses Q, then a blue card.
He uses a blue card instead of red card here because this wave will give him level 6, and
TF ult costs 100 mana, which is a lot early game.
So he wants to make sure he has enough mana when hes doing clearing the wave to use his
ult if he needs to.
After another Q and blue card, the wave is pushed and he hits level 6.
Hes playing pretty far up here, getting tower damage while talon last hits.
But look how hes positioned in lane guys, hes hugging right side really hard, he knows
taliyah is top side as nidalee took her camps bot side, so he just plays towards his jungler
so he can kite if he needs to.
He also gets some good harass on talon bringing him to 50% health.
Since talon is in kill range of nidalee and TF now, nidalee pings shes on her way.
This is something Dopa is super good at, he sets up ganks perfectly for his jungler, which
is mission 3.
He waits for nidalee to get close enough to spear, then throws the card, giving them both
another really easy kill.
Making talon 0-3.
Its safe to say, this lane is over as talon is going to be 2 levels down now, making it
impossible for him to get mid priority over Dopa.
Lets do a quick recap of what happened.
First, dopa knew how talon was going to play the lane out and thinned out the wave before
talon started clearing the wave himself.
And because he matched the waveclear, he had free time to harass before the next wave came.
For the second wave he did the same thing and hit level 2 first, then zoned talon away
from his jungler so his jungler could solo kill taliyah.
Then they turned and got a free kill on talon.
When dopa gets back to lane, he uses his lead to continuously push talon into the tower,
while also staying safe to ganks by hugging the side closer to his jungler and to his
vision.
And after harassing talon to 50% health, nidalee drives by and lands an easy spear on a stunned
talon, killing him and closing the lane out.