Lately I've been losing a lot of games for the same reasons, including in cases where we were ahead. There’s a trend. It’s a bad one. And it’s one I suspect happens more often since the vision changes.
That is the lack of focusing on pushing.
Here are some situations that you might find frustrating:
- Your team doesn’t have consistent vision of an area, or any area, or much vision at all
- Your team doesn’t push
- Your team’s carry does poorly and/or gets blamed for everything
- Your team spends lots of time trying to get kills as the other team gets a larger and larger turret lead
- Any of these situations happen and despite winning a teamfight or two when you hadn’t won anyway, it is too late to defend because it’s too hard to push afterward, especially with late game builds meaning your team has only trinkets and the support’s Sightstone for vision
The reasons why this can happen I’m are something I’m not sure about. My theory is that with the larger jungle, poorer vision, and less punishing inhibitor deaths, there are many more longer games which leads to more people getting into “Robot Farm Mode” (RFM) where people aren’t playing League but a grindy MMO in the attempt to catch up in gold and levels. This leads to careless teamfights, poor defense, and, again poor pushing. I could be wrong on why it happens, but the why isn’t quite as important as the how to combat it.
1 Pick map champions, not just lane and teamfight champions.
2 Make sure your team has strong pushing and waveclear. Great teamfighting isn’t as important because it doesn’t always get there, and people are more likely to cover teamfighting than they are waveclearing/pushing.
3 Pick high sustain damage and/or high sustained cc.
Some mobility principles for Season 4:
- If you are a tank and you aren’t mobile, you are at the mercy of your teammates.
- If you are a tank and you are mobile, you can pretty much do you what you want.
- If you are a dps and you aren’t mobile, you are at the mercy of your tanks unless the other team has low-skilled or poorly fed or poorly mobile tanks, or, unlikely as it is, no tanks or assassins at all.
- If you are dps and you are mobile, you have to still be able to get away from tanks by yourself; it is only sometimes true that you can get yourself out of situations.
- If you are dps, your ability to waveclear is related to your ability to keep turrets up. This is more important than before because less vision means people are more likely to split push or barrel down the lane as a group. Poor clear also means being at the mercy of tanks to push. If you do have good waveclear, you are not at the mercy of tanks to defend, and you can split push if you don’t get caught.
With the vision changes has come extended games. With extended games comes a higher priority on taking and keeping turrets in the late game. Getting a big turret lead early is not as damning as it used to be in high-level play, but it is in solo queue, because of the way teams often cower in fear while they farm a jungle with increased camps, afraid to push or ward. Teams only come back this if some of the following conditions are met:
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They are not blaming each other or resenting each other
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They can win a team fight, despite their deficit in gold and/or map control and presence
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They can push and not also be split-pushed or backdoored to a loss
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They manage to maintain vision presence
To boot, this will usually have to happen repeated times.
Will you see comebacks? Sure. I have. I have had games where I would have sworn we have no chance and we consistently start winning fights and then pushing afterwards. But, this is the exception rather than the rule. You don’t want to get to this position. You are more likely to win when you push and defend well. Lanes matter less now; a lane that is won with a champion that is poor at pushing (LeBlanc, Ezreal) is not as a strong a win. A lane that is lost by a champion who is awesome right now (Ziggs, Sivir) is not as bad of a loss. Those champs can clear waves very easily. Ziggs is what Anivia used to be like. Anivia’s mana costs are insanely high and the chances to passive farm and stack her tear are the same. Ziggs, on the other hand, got buffed many times until his Bouncing Bomb offers better wave clear for less mana. Sivir, Jinx, and Lucian are all strong at killing turrets quickly and clearing the waves
There are champions with crappy or moderate wave clear that are doing well. Those are champions that are strong roamers or that can consistently kill and live, such as Warwick, Leona, Wukong, or Kassadin. In this instance, their ability to consistently take out targets gives their team the ability to push. They are also generally able to damage the turret well as long as they’re unmolested (i.e., WW gives the AS buff to teammates even if he can’t clear well, and Wukong doesn’t clear well without Hydra but does hit turrets hard with his Q).
If you are mid and you can’t outroam, you have to push hard. You need to do one or the other. If you can’t do both, you are hosing your team.
Best,
Old Man Eyebrows
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Posted 1/12/2014 10:19:00 PMI hear you. Its really difficult to actually keep up on map objectives if your team doesn't have good pushing/counterpush abilities. Had a game end where my team was 35-25 up on kills, but we couldn't maintain pressure on all 3 lanes and baron due to inferior wave clear. Also winning fights 4-1, but the one is our ADC.
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Posted 1/12/2014 9:59:53 PMThose unbelievably annoying moments when you're sieging a tower and fiiinally, after getting a decent wave, your Marksman is suddenly more interested in diving to get a kill rather than destroying the tower first..
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Posted 1/12/2014 5:14:29 PMNEXUS SCHMEXUS!
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Posted 1/12/2014 12:43:27 PMThis is a quote from my friend.
"Ok guys, just remember we need to DESTROY THE ENEMY NEXUS (spam pings their nexus). That is all, thank you."
*I lose a match*
"Ok, just listen to me. This is gonna sound REALLY DIFFICULT, but I need you to focus. You also need to DEFEND YOUR OWN NEXUS. Got it? That is all, thank you."
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Posted 1/12/2014 11:37:26 AMReally good article.
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Posted 1/11/2014 5:32:49 PMLess vision?We now have trinkets and a pink that could last forever, it's imposible that there's less vision
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Posted 1/11/2014 7:13:16 PMYou can have all the trinkets in the world they only work if people use them. in ~80% of my games the only person warding is the support. I can't count high enough to enumerate the number of games where there are 0 wards on the map yet 4 people on my team have a yellow trinket. The vision changes potentially improve vision in high skill games and largely eliminate it in low skill games.
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Posted 1/11/2014 7:53:51 PMBefore when you had an advantage, you could spam ward the enemy jungle and have your support and jungle alternate buying oracles and have permanent vision control. Then you can push without having any fear of being caught out. Now you cant.
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Posted 1/11/2014 8:06:10 PMI miss having the map lit up like Christmas. Trinket mean stronger early game vision, but late game it's usually still the support everyone leans on (since they have spare slots) - but the support can't place enough anymore. They need to change the limit to be team-based, and have a team-based ward slot (perhaps make the trinket exempt from the limit, so that everyone can have one ward that's theirs).
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Posted 1/11/2014 9:02:53 PMThat's why I'd rather have ward slots instead of trinket crap.
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Posted 1/12/2014 9:45:17 AMThat way we return to S3: supports become ward dispensers and are responsible for all of the team vision.
I prefer the current system much more: if your team mates dont ward and complain about no wards you (the support) can just say: "I've already bought my sightstone and put down all my 5 wards. WHERE ARE YOURS?"
This is a nice difference between pros and ordinary gamers and yet another "skill" to be had in game. You dont ward? Well, then sorry but you deserve to die/be ganked/juked.
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Posted 1/13/2014 12:29:27 AMJust remember that the warding issues of season 3 went both ways, sure you got flamed as a support for "not warding" and by failing to be the perfect ward dispenser, but as a support you also had the capacity to entirely carry your team to victory with proper warding and team coordination. My favorite league games of all time have been all as a support in season three where being a "ward dispenser" allowed me to completely win games that my team had been losing incredibly hard.
When they changed the warding system not only did they remove the excuse of all vision being the job of the support, but they also removed the ability of a good support to carry their team through vision. And the sad thing is, supports still get flamed for not warding enough and in the proper places.
I don't know about you, but I found more satisfaction playing as a support in season three than I do now.
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Posted 1/13/2014 9:26:15 AMAnd i prefer now, that I can actually buy items, and carry my team to victory by helping in the teamfight, instead of "just" putting down wards in the right places and not failing at peeling for the adc.
Also, in S3, in higher levels of play the ability of a support to put down wards was directly tied to how he and his team were doing: you were winning? Then you have more money -> more wards -> more snowball potential
Also, i think it goes agaisnt the spirit of the game having the entire map revealed (even more if just one person does it). Why bother having FoW?
But to each his own, if you prefer the old way, then by all means, do so. But this is how the game got changed, and me (and many other supports) prefer it this way.
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Posted 1/12/2014 7:35:28 AMwell before it was at everz moment around 6 wards form the support
now its 3 wards from the support and 4 wards that are up 1/3 of the time (not factoring in the permanent pink the support bought)
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Posted 1/11/2014 1:59:52 PMVery nice read and sums up pretty much 90% of the games I've had until I got Gold. One thing though, I hope you meant "you can't do either" instead of "both" at the end. I mean having the best of both worlds kind of means there's no stopping you in midlane, doesn't it? Of course there are exceptions, like Morgana(speaking of which, I think she might actually have a spot midlane this season), but mostly people either roam very well(Kass) or shove lane instantly(Orianna). Kass's push is there, but it's fairly slow if his opponent doesn't cast anything, while Ori's roam is alright, but isn't godlike since she has no mobility without sacrificing CC and damage, not to mention ally buffs.
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Posted 1/11/2014 1:22:00 PMI hate to bring it up again but it seems that Hurricane is a good item to get in this upcoming season's meta: it can directly boost an ADC's waveclear. Figure, if the enemy ADC has sivir or someone who can push, it'll allow you to compete in the push race. If they don't and you get it, you have an advantage in the push race.
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Posted 1/11/2014 1:41:04 PMI tought of the same thing but for a different reason: in a meta with more tanks and less jumpy assasins, hurricane just brings a lot to a teamfight. I tried this out on a very late game item on cait and my always did damage on their leona/renekton/Mundo comp made didn't allow them a lot of tankswapping since the side effect brought them low enough to think 2ce about diving so hard It must be said i had a good thresh that game and it was the first time I actually had the feeling it brought me something another item cound't have had and I have been experimenting with it quite a few times.
Hurricane isn't all that slot inefficient if you have 1) the range to use it 2) a composition in both your own teams that allows you to always have at least 1 and preferably 2 other targets in addition to your main and 3) some kind of an on-hit effect to maximise it's goldvalue. But even if you can, It's gold efficientcy is still horrible tough, a lot of as (the stat most carries already have build in somewhere), without any crit ad or pen makes poor itemisation and an awfull build path for an item that already is very situational.
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Posted 1/11/2014 3:42:10 PMGood points.
There's one more thing I just thought of: Mindset.
Even if it isn't the best weapon around (there are good arguments to that), if getting it puts you in the mindset of pushing and defending pushes, if it helps your team clear waves faster, then it is good to get. It's a reminder for you and your team to push or stop pushing. It'll be good not because of it boosting your own stats (though it does make farming quick and easy) but because it could push you and your team into doing things that promote winning.
Ideally you probably don't want your ADC putting an item into waveclear, you want that elsewhere on your team. But in the real world, it might be a thing to do when your first option fell through. So instead of writing the item off, it could possibly be thought of as a fall back item that you might need to get.
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Posted 1/11/2014 7:55:00 PMShiv helps with pushing and it doesn't gimp your damage.
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Posted 1/12/2014 1:35:24 AMI don't like shiv overall. The damage passive isn't that great, and frankly if I want stats I'd prefer PD or TF, depending on whom I am playing and what I need. If I want pushing I'd take Hurricane. To me shiv seems neither here nor there: it's a gimped PD for stats, doesn't have TF's versatility or speed, and a gimped Hurricane for pushing.
If you are trying to min/max then shiv is probably the worst choice. If you are trying to be average in everything... TF is better overall.
Objectively speaking... shiv only has win rate on par with hurricane and a 2-3 percent lower win rate than PD and TF. It also gets picked a ton more often than hurricane so it has a lower ceiling for unknown potential. Basically shiv is a noob trap that hurts you compared to the other zeal items.
IMO Hurricane doesn't gimp your damage either, but you have to understand how it does damage and apply it. You can still apply crits on your primary target. Your extra damage is also not random like it is with Shiv. It scales up according to the situation and punishes the other team for bad positioning with every AA. It allows harass while you are farming or farming while you harass. Because the passive is always working, you can plan around it better.