When to use flash?

DarkHeadgear·Aug 5, 2016·1 votes·1,570 views

When do you use ? It sounds like an obvious question, though. When you want to, right? To secure a kill, to escape a gank, to go over a wall... No, going over a wall doesn't seem like a good idea just for speeding up travel, that much is obvious due to how useful it is and the long cooldown of it. When I watch challenger gameplay they seem to very raely use it to secure a kill. I use flash to secure kills often and so do most people around my high bronze elo, but is this a bad way to use it? Should you only be using flash to avoid deaths rather than secure kills? All thoughts appreciated. Thanks!

5 Comments

Chamuel85Aug 5, 20161 votes

I would say 70/30. 70% to escape and 30% to secure kills.

I use it to escape more because it's usually better to deny them 300g by not letting them kill you than to add 300g to your pocket on top of other advantages that you can gain from them being down a flash. (Likely they flashed cuz of low HP, and are backing so you have run of th eminions and can shove your minions into tower to deny and have it reset)

PheonixwishAug 5, 20161 votes

Using it to escape is usually the best, at least early game. Junglers will often gank lanes that don't have flash up, and using it to secure a kill puts you more at risk.

Late game, when death timers are high, flashing is more feasible, simply to pick off enemies.

DeathBurstAug 5, 20161 votes

It's a very complex question, but I'll try to summarize and give general principles.

If you use your Flash (for whatever reason), it means you won't have Flash available in the next 5 minutes. Obvious, right? So, the question you have to ask yourself before using Flash is: "Will I need Flash in the next 5 minutes for something more important than what I want to do right now?" You can't be sure, of course, but you have to guess.

As an ADC in late game, for instance, using Flash to chase that isolated player means you probably won't have it back for the next team fight in 2 or 3 minutes. If their team jumps on you and insta-kill you at the beginning of the fight, your team will probably lose the fight horribly, and this is obviously much more important than getting one kill.

Another opposite example: you're Renekton Top lane, it's 5 minutes into the game. Should you Flash to get First Blood? Well, probably. Getting First Blood means you'll be able to have an item advantage and dominate your lane, so you won't need your Flash defensively against your laner. You will need to be careful about the enemy Jungler, since you won't have Flash to escape ganks, but with the kill gold, you can buy a pink ward and put it in the river. So yes, using Flash is probably a good idea.

(As a side note, if you're interested in Economics, that's called an opportunity cost, you can read a bit more about it on Wikipedia or something like that.)

MasterAKAug 5, 20161 votes

When climbing through bronze on my main account, I noticed once you get to the higher tiers of bronze a lot of people use flash to secure kills and even to try and KS (WHY?? that always triggered me).

There isn't really a moment where you can just say "oh if the jungler is within 500 units of you and your health is under 30% and they have more than 10% mana you flash away" it's all a judgement call. Generally if it's still in laning phase, it's better to try and hold on to your flash so you can have it in case you need to escape from a gank or anything else that could put you behind going into mid and late game.

NahuiAug 5, 20161 votes

There's no time to use flash. No correct time anyways.

You need to decide that whatever you use it for is worth a 300 second CD. Escape death (Avoid 300-450g to enemy team), get a kill (300-450g for your team), dodge a death sentence, body block, steal objective, etc. It's whatever you value. There's no correct way to use it. It's simply used as a tool to slightly reposition yourself to accomplish a task when your skills cannot.

And pros rarely flash for a kill because pros know CDs. They know if their opponent has their flash, and pro reflexes are fast as they are watching for flashes so chances are, if someone flashes for a kill, the enemy will flash away and trading flash for flash is not seen as favorable. Flashing at lucian as viktor to kill him but having him flash away is not worth because lucian is mobile and viktor is not so that flash has higher value for vik than lucian who has a dash. Alternatively, a kassadin flashing at a Viktor and burning his flash is more valuable because kassadin doesn't need flash due to natural mobility while Viktor does.