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Everybody wants to talk about strategy and skill expression in this game, but

TehNACHO··52 votes·16,863 views

NOBODY wants to talk about proper wave control and wave management.

It feels really jarring sometimes seeing the Boards praise to high heavens how this game used to be so much more strategic and how skill expression can help you dominate the game but nobody ever seems to talk about what exactly are the fundamental elements behind strategy and skill expression in this game. There's no discussion of objective priority in this game, given a list of Outer, Inner, Inhib Turrets, Dragon, and Baron, what order should you prioritize in what situations. There's no discussion of learning how to properly invest in laners and how not to feed as a laner who got the short end of the stick unless a Jungle player is complaining about it on the Boards. And, perhaps silliest of all, there's no discussion on wave management.

Do you want to know why the game feels so damn snowbally? Let me tell you why. Junglers can see you and your waves and 9 times out of 10 they see a juicy sitting duck of a target with no defense to help them. And, when you die even once in the game, you immediately reset the lane into a slow push against the enemy, making you an even easier target for a repeat gank and starving yourself of even more CS. Or, better yet, you saw this crazy clip of a Grandmaster Jax 1v1ing someone into the ground Level 1, so the moment you run into lane, you charge right into the enemy Top Laner and their full wave of minions, start striking away, and Question Mark Ping your Jungle why you lost that trade. And then, you try that again, but into 12 minions this time.

Strategy and skill expression in this game is only dead because players don't bother to learn strategies and skill expression. There's not even a hint of discussion about it online outside of specific Youtube Channels. I only picked Wave Management to rant about because it's such a stupid topic for people to consistently get wrong, yet despite that people consistently get wrong. And THEN the community wants to complain about snowballiness in this game and how the game is basically over at the 5 minute mark. Learn micro skills, turn them into strategies, get good at them and play them out over a multitude of games. Maybe you'll find something.

75 Comments

L Psy Kongroo11 votes

It's really simple actually. There's no discussion around it because hardly anyone actually knows how to properly do those things. Everyone talks about strategy and skill expression without knowing what those things actually mean. And since so few knowledgeable people even come to the boards, we never get real discussions.

LTK KoRo1 votes

because boards users think that strategy is clearing waves with anivia near inhib turrets, or doing malph+ori style combo and acting like it was a big outplay

WashyMoney2 votes

Boards has a tendency to be very low elo. You'll rarely see a plat player here, even though that's not even high elo.

Their rules protect and nurture low elo players, so you ocassionally see the Diamond visitors, and they eventually leave realizing that they can't get talk sense into these idiots without getting posts removed/banned. Whereas on some place like reddit, you'll even get pro players addressing the community - or people that consistently play in master+ SoloQ discussing things (also tons of Master+ people confirmed on SummonersSchool)

On top of that, they proudly claim to not watch/hate pro play.

Pretty much, boards is full of the least knowledgeable people about the game that's possible.

Tr4shB4NSYST3M9 votes

As a jg player this frustrates me to no end. I hate when a lane is spam pinging me for ganks but their lane is permapushed. As far as laning I used to be that guy who just cleared every wave as fast as possible, but after enough times doing that brought me jungle camps I started learning wave manipulation, learning to last hit minions at low hp letting enemy harass so wave pushes to me, when I started doing this I naturally started to notice trade timings, when I could go in and when it was a dumb idea. After a while doing this I noticed I was winning more lanes and going even in tough matchups more often b/c i knew when to deny my lane opponent by freezing or when to shove in so he misses a whole wave, and keeping the wave in a favorable position made it less likely the enemy jg could come smash my lane.

You are 100% spot on with this thread, far too many people especially on these boards tunnel vision on "outplay and skill expression" as being related to mechanics and fighting other champions, and they are forgetting that the MOBA genre was born from RealTimeStrategy games where unit manipulation was the primary form of skill expression.

That said In some of these peoples defense, some of the mechanics and champion kits riot has been releasing recently are very cancerous and have minimal mechanical counterplay (as well as options to "outplay the outplay"), i would call this "overloaded kit creep" and it is also certainly arguable the TTK for a lot of champs is way too fast which makes counterplay more challenging especially in a higher ping environment.

L Psy Kongroo4 votes

{quoted}

As a jg player this frustrates me to no end. I hate when a lane is spam pinging me for ganks but their lane is permapushed. As far as laning I used to be that guy who just cleared every wave as fast as possible, but after enough times doing that brought me jungle camps I started learning wave manipulation, learning to last hit minions at low hp letting enemy harass so wave pushes to me, when I started doing this I naturally started to notice trade timings, when I could go in and when it was a dumb idea. After a while doing this I noticed I was winning more lanes and going even in tough matchups more often b/c i knew when to deny my lane opponent by freezing or when to shove in so he misses a whole wave, and keeping the wave in a favorable position made it less likely the enemy jg could come smash my lane.

You are 100% spot on with this thread, far too many people especially on these boards tunnel vision on "outplay and skill expression" as being related to mechanics and fighting other champions, and they are forgetting that the MOBA genre was born from RealTimeStrategy games where unit manipulation was the primary form of skill expression.

That said In some of these peoples defense, some of the mechanics and champion kits riot has been releasing recently are very cancerous and have minimal mechanical counterplay (as well as options to "outplay the outplay"), i would call this "overloaded kit creep" and it is also certainly arguable the TTK for a lot of champs is way too fast which makes counterplay more challenging especially in a higher ping environment.

I think you also (perhaps unintentionally) bring up another key issue in that, for many of us, these things were never really taught to us when we were just starting out. We had to learn by experience through trial and error over the course of hundreds or thousands of games that certain strategies were more effective than others.

Even if we had a friend introduce us to the game, unless that friend was already an expert at wave management, we weren't getting proper instruction. It's not like there's a rule book for League of Legends somewhere that discusses these concepts in detail. For most of us, "learning the game" basically meant "click mouse here, press buttons now, dead enemy, gg". Knowing how to cs, when to push and roam, how to freeze waves, or even WHY these things are important in the first place are concepts that are simply lost on people. You wouldn't believe how many diamond+ players I've met who still don't know basic stuff like how you need 4 enemy minions on your side of the lane to freeze a wave, or it takes ~30 seconds for a wave of minions to get to lane, or that even waves on one side of the lane push to the opposite side. Granted these mechanics aren't intuitive, but you'd think after years of playing the game, a person would catch on to these things.

We can even go deeper and surmise that people never learn these things because they simply don't want to. Strategy isn't fun or exciting; it's a slow, tedious, and methodical process that is perfected over many continuous repetitions and mental exercises. And since this is nothing more than a video game, people don't want to "waste time" on things that aren't fun. They just want to press buttons really fast, play the game without knowing the game, because to them it doesn't matter.

But you've also got people who want to improve and play better, reach higher ranks, and learn things that their peers don't know. These are the types that learn proper wave management, whereas the former type never does. It just so happens that the former type makes up a larger percentage of players. And due to the nature of the boards, you rarely get the later type posting about wave management and macro-level skills that often decide games more so than mechanical imbalances.

Tr4shB4NSYST3M3 votes

Very true man! I was an RTS player (as well as RPGs) before I started playing league so I took more naturally to some of the macro side of things, I took to split pushing/backdoor plays like a fish to water and even when I was terrible mechanically (not practiced on the champs i liked, didn't know a lot of matchups, fed a lot) I still won many games through split push and macro play.

But as time has gone on the RTS genre has mostly died out, and a lot of the younger players coming to league are much more familiar with Fighting games, ActionRPG games (diablo3), and first person shooters, which are more fast paced and focused almost exclusively on mechanics. So I guess looking at the big picture and the passage of time (and popularity of game genres) its not all that surprising that many league players view League in a primarily mechanical light.

Eonslegacy4 votes

Successful dives strip entire minion lines from people and cause massive snowballing. Dying while shoving strips far less xp and minion gold for the person that died than normal. Sometimes its best to shove, sometimes it isnt. The time when freezing is strongest, is when other laners are already ahead, and reducing the power of the enemy(opening them up for ganks) is better than getting a lead yourself(typically for tankier champs). The time when pushing is better is when you have a lead and wish to roam/use that lead. Sometimes it IS the junglers fault, sometimes it isnt.

Trash junglers also dont understand wave management, they wont know when diving is the best option, or when counter ganks are gamechanging, just the same as someone 0/3 hard pushing doesn't understand self-control >.>

Not many, laners or jgs or supports, understand appropriate times to do wave-control based things.

With the importance of objectives and how junglers are actively punished for farming instead of ganking, its the jg that dictates when shoving/freezing is most viable and effective, but without 100% communication between jg and laners/supports, it has a massive risk of backfiring on laners. This is why most people this season have yet to adapt to wave-control.

Last season shoving was pretty much the only thing that mattered for mid laners, shove and skuttle fights, shove and skuttle fights. Coming from that season to this one has confused a LOT of players. _ When do you guys think shoving is best, freezing?, slow pushing? For me freezing is best when you want to strip someone of their potential power to scale and become a threat, something like tryndamere or nasus. It typically requires jungle pressure to accomplish. Slowpushing is when you want turret plates/turret dives/objectives and are coordinated with a jungler to force someone to back off of the turret/be stuck dealing with the wave and cant risk coming to rift/dragon to contest. Hard pushing is for roaming/helping the jungler in that 1v1 when they get invaded/prevent the invade.

Eonslegacy9 votes

Because of how important roaming is, freezing minion lines typically results in losing the game in most elos below diamond. Most people arent diamond therefore most people dont discuss this tactic. Ive once held a minion line (on fiora) from a sion for so long he had 8 cs and i had 90, and 2 kills on him. We lost that game. He simply used R bot lane got a double for his team, then my bot lane kept inting. Putting sion behind did nothing. Getting myself ahead did nothing. Teleporting bot lane and killing them, did nothing. This is why people typically dont worry with wave management(as in 80% of the playerbase) its just easier to hard push then roam/ward than it is to play super tactics and hope your team also plays well. Getting a massive lead is overall better than putting someone massively behind at least now it is. But yea, the 2, 3 and 4 minion rule for freezing and the appropriate time to freeze is rarely talked about now because it only rarely matters. Its deathball teamfight meta.

Ragnaveil2 votes

I kinda said the same thing, yet I got downvoted for it lol.

DeathBurst3 votes

The "kinda" is a kinda important difference, you know...

Ragnaveil8 votes

Kinda hard to really do "Wave Management" when its been not only neglected, but shoved to the side by Riot themselves. Minions past 15 instantly move faster, which hurts wave management.

TehNACHO27 votes

So wave management is too difficult and not worth it, and is this an excuse not to learn wave management at all?

And you missed the point of the thread. I picked Wave Management arbitrarily. Making excuses not to learn micro skills/macro strategies and then complaining about it is lame.

Ragnaveil5 votes

No, its just the importance of it has become very little. Try freezing against a Mage right now, cuz 9/10 they will insta unfreeze it.

TehNACHO32 votes

That's because you don't freeze lanes against a Mage. You either match it if you're a Mage, leading to Roaming Mid Lane strategies as both of you blow up each other's minions and have nothing to do otherwise, or you let the Mage push and rebound off the Turret if you can't match it because, well duh, you can't match it..

This is exactly why we need more discussion on Lane Management in this game and on these Boards.

Ahri Baka3 votes

{quoted}

So wave management is too difficult and not worth it, and is this an excuse not to learn wave management at all?

And you missed the point of the thread. I picked Wave Management arbitrarily. Making excuses not to learn micro skills/macro strategies and then complaining about it is lame.

I've been struggeling with wave mangement lately , can you give me a a good video that really helps? most of videos I saw are kinda not helpful

TehNACHO7 votes

The problem with most YouTube videos is that they react retroactively to what a (usually pro) player did in game. That said, I highly recommend skill-capped.

Wave Management is an enigma of many complicated and intertwined variables, so it's hard to get one message from one person to get the whole picture. It's almost like we as a community should discuss and debate this, perhaps on a common website we all visit.

(That last part wasn't aimed at you, just God the Boards as a whole irks me when it's being silly)

Ahri Baka2 votes

{quoted}

The problem with most YouTube videos is that they react retroactively to what a (usually pro) player did in game. That said, I highly recommend skill-capped.

Wave Management is an enigma of many complicated and intertwined variables, so it's hard to get one message from one person to get the whole picture. It's almost like we as a community should discuss and debate this, perhaps on a common website we all visit.

(That last part wasn't aimed at you, just God the Boards as a whole irks me when it's being silly)

Never mind the boards , it's very common , it's a place 95% for circle jerking and 5% for good content , as for the wave management then what am I supposed to do ?:(

TehNACHO6 votes

Sorry for slow reply, am busy.

First thing is identifying how much waveclear you and your opponent have. Generally speaking, if you have more waveclear than the opponent, you have control of the lane and you decide the pace of the lane. If you match the opponent, you either want to mirror them and freeze the lane in a neutral position, or try to get the push lead before them and develop a slow push from the neutral position. If you know you have less waveclear than the opponent, you want to let the opponent out push you on purpose, farm under tower, and hope your kit is capable of taking advantage of the following slow push.

The goal of champions with greater waveclear is ultimately to freeze the wave on their side of the lane. Since they have more waveclear than the opponent, freezing the lane is both incredibly safe from ganks and incredibly easy to farm because, as mentioned, the player in question has more waveclear than the opponent. This means it's harder for the opponent to break the freeze with their weaker waveclear. This usually means, as great waveclear often comes with good range and vice versa, free poke and trade opportunities as you're safe and near tower while your opponent needs to stretch really far out if they want to farm. If you're starting from a neutral position, the pattern is poke on wave one, shove on wave two, and try to have the lane bounce back on your side by wave three. Freeze as long as you can/want after that. If you're a good roamer, the window between wave 2 and 3, or sometimes even wave 3 itself is a fantastic window for shoving in and ruining another lane's day. Ideally you time this on the cannon wave for wave 3.

Aaaand that's as much as I can do right now. I or somebody else could come in and tell you what to do if you have matching waveclear with the opponent, or if you have less waveclear than the opponent. Just a disclaimer, levels 1-4 are of course their entirely own discussion on wave management, and the theme of having losing waveclear is 'you better have something you're good at other than laning or you're boned'. I promise to come back later when I'm free but until then, I hope someone else can pick up the discussion from here.

EDIT: For those who have seen this, I have written a part 2 and 3 for even matchups and losing matchups as separate posts. Just scroll down.

owo plz gently4 votes

It depends on your match ups, since i see Ahri on your name im gonna use it as an example.

Ahri vs Zed

In this match-up, Ahri wants to gain lane priority and create an HP advantage to prevent Zed from killing her or roaming. Ahris needs to harass Zed pre 3, because at 3 Zeds WEQ combo will deal way more damage then Ahris EWQ plus Ahri needs to hit her E which Zed can easily avoid by standing behind minions.

Ahri always wants to slow push the wave on these first 3 levels, this will ensure she gets lane priority and Zed will always have less minions, making Ahris E easier to hit. Ahri should auto attack and occasionally Q Zed when he goes for CS, that will make Zeds minions attack Ahri, automatically slow pushing the wave. Make sure you always have 2/2.5 minions more than Zed. By this point Ahri should have an HP advantage over Zed.

At level 3 Zeds combo is way stronger than Ahris, BUT the HP and minion advantage will make it hard for Zed to commit to a fight. At this point you should crash your wave into Zeds tower before the next wave arrives in order to reset the lane. This will force Zed to use his W to wave clear. (Why? If the Zed does not clear the wave fast Ahri can harass him under turret AND since our wave is in his side of the map, the next 2 waves will slow push towards Ahri since Zeds waves will arrive first, giving her a change to freeze them forcing a low HP Zed to stand on Ahris side of the map in order to farm risking himself to a gank.)

The next waves will be in the middle of the lane(if you did everything right). This will put Zed in a very bad situation, he is low HP, has no W(used to clear the wave that Ahri crashed) and if he recalls Ahri can push the wave fast enough making him lose XP or Ahri can leave the wave as is and roam/help jungler and if he doesn't recall he is risking himself to getting ganked/dived by Ahri and her jungler.

Checking Skill-Cappeds youtube videos on wave management will help you a ton.

TehNACHO3 votes

Okay I'm back, Part 2.

So the advantage of freezing the lane is that it makes you really safe and makes it easy for you to farm, poke, and trade. On the other hand, it's often more difficult for the opponent to do all of the above unless they have specific tools around a frozen lane. The only way you can sustain this however is if you have a waveclear advantage over the opponent; if the opponent has just as much waveclear as you, and your wave is much smaller than the opponent's by definition of a frozen wave, they'll eventually just outshove you. That or you burn out all of your mana trying to maintain the freeze but the point is, freezing isn't a viable goal in an even matchup. There are some champion specific maneuvers you may want to learn, but as this is far more specific and I can cover this topic in greater detail later, I will save that discussion for when you have less waveclear than your opponent. So, from a general waveclear perspective, what is the goal to win the waveclear game?

In a word, Efficiency. Between two relatively equal waveclear champions, the one blowing their abilities on stupid crap instead of maintaining control of the lane or getting easy poke in is going to lose. Every time you throw an Ahri Q, you want it to hit as many minions as you can per Q, perhaps while hitting the enemy champion at the same time. Because it doesn't cost any mana, it's also important to be auto attacking minions when you can, and only use your W and E if you have a clean shot on the enemy Mage, to minimize stupid and inefficient mana consumption. If both players play hypothetically perfectly, the wave will be perfectly frozen in the middle, and for a very long time since both players are practicing perfect mana consumption, won by the person who can get in those trades off of pure mechanical skill.

That hypothetical is not realistic however. Be it player priorities (poke vs wave), small differences in waveclear capabilities between the champions (maybe one runs out of mana one spellcast before the other), or even random minion aggro, one lane will inevitably start pushing. What makes even matchups so fun and dynamic is that even as both players are playing as efficient as possible, the wave is going to naturally start swinging back and forth, opening different opportunities to both players. As the wave is pushing towards you, could continue the efficiency game of maximizing each individual spellcast, or you can go full minimalist mode and let the wave push in, doing the bare minimum to catch every CS you can without overextending yourself. Eventually the wave will crash under tower, in an even matchup you can usually farm rather safely under tower, and a slow push will form. Now that the wave is pushing towards your opponent, your minions are going to make waveclearing the enemy minions so much easier, so while you can focus on efficiency like before, you can spend more time maximizing poke and trade opportunities instead of just strictly waveclear. Eventually the wave will grow so big that it must crash under the enemy's tower, and it might be difficult for you to get any poke on them, so you can now back off and roam the map, controlling the River and Pits, warding bushes and the Jungle, or snowballing your side lanes.

To summarize, even matchups are all about efficiency, and flowing with the waves to maximize opportunities to save mana/health, maximize poke, or get opportunities to roam.

TehNACHO3 votes

And now for Part 3. What to do when you lose the waveclear game.

In short, when you lose the waveclear game, stop playing the waveclear game. What I mean is that you don't have control of the lane; from a neutral position the opponent will have greater control than you, they have an easier time shoving in, and they have an easier time freezing if the lane pushes into them. The game now is to identify what strong points you have other than waveclear and try to capitalize on them all while minimizing Mana usage and Health Loss.

This is the point I was dancing around in Part 2. Sometimes, you play Fizz, and you're laning against an Ahri. There's no point in trying to Troll Pole your way to waveclear because all it's going to do is make you vulnerable to Ahri's abilities. So, why not just forget about it? Make the game entirely about staying on the side of your minions so Ahri has to actively choose whether to hit you or clear the waves. Dodge all her attempts to hit you and burn her mana down. Be gracious for every CS under tower and pray Ahri isn't that good at freezing waves. Finally, once you hit Lv6, or if Ahri burns her charm in a stupid attempt to catch you, all in her from 100 to 0.

Do you want to know what makes champions lane counters in this game? Sometimes it's specific champion interactions, Ziggs v Yasuo sucks dick. Sometimes it's power spikes, people underestimating Akali's insane Lv1 potential. But do you really want to know how to damn a champion and make the lane unplayable? Freeze the lane against a champion who has less waveclear than you and has no other tools to play the lane. This is why Garen v Darius is an impossible matchup, Garen literally can't approach a frozen lane without eating an axe or getting run down by Darius. This is why Assassins are able to survive or even thrive in Mid Lane, not all of them are designed for waveclear but almost all of them are good at killing Mages. I really hope I can say this aloud without being made fun of or called a hypocrite but in some matchups the best wave control strategy is to just throw it out the window.

Verxint2 votes

That difference between high and low play also makes wave management hard to teach. It's one thing when you and your opponent are both playing for wave management. It's quite different if you are and your opponent isn't; a lot of the decisions are different if you know your opponent will act a certain way

GigglesO4 votes

{quoted}

So wave management is too difficult and not worth it, and is this an excuse not to learn wave management at all?

And you missed the point of the thread. I picked Wave Management arbitrarily. Making excuses not to learn micro skills/macro strategies and then complaining about it is lame.

Wave management used to matter more when champions couldn’t just nuke waves after level 3... now damage is so high it’s best to nuke the wave and then afk under tower...

TehNACHO5 votes

Or.

And hear me out here.

Use that opportunity to go out and roam, win neutral objective control for your Jungler, snowball your side lanes, and win the game because you're not lazy and hiding under tower when you have nothing to do.

GigglesO3 votes

{quoted}

Or.

And hear me out here.

Use that opportunity to go out and roam, win neutral objective control for your Jungler, snowball your side lanes, and win the game because you're not lazy and hiding under tower when you have nothing to do.

Lol roam in 2k19 where if you get seen first you die?

No thanks.

TehNACHO3 votes

Maybe, just maybe, the whole point of roaming and establishing vision is so that you can see the enemy first so you can kill them.

GigglesO5 votes

{quoted}

Maybe, just maybe, the whole point of roaming and establishing vision is so that you can see the enemy first so you can kill them.

Which would be great if you already had enough vision to not get instantly clapped the second you walk out of the middle of your lane/vision

Shiroyashayami3 votes

But that guy actually has a point. Wave management is fucked since riot made the minions move faster after 15 min mark. The game is getting sped up for no reason.

TehNACHO1 votes

That's still 15 whole minutes of personal laning phase management. Not even in slower metas do laning phases last that long. I mean look, fuck the Jungler for a moment. Fuck the rest of your team for 15 minutes. This is a completely personal skill that directly affects your personal performance that isn't bogged down by excuses of mechanics like minions speeding up. This is no excuse for people on the Boards to ignore this skill and complain about how personal skill doesn't matter about this game.

Shiroyashayami1 votes

I agree that its worth learning and before 15 min mark i usually do good. I am only mad at how everything is fucked after 15 min mark. Those minions are entering godspeed and inting way faster. And its all because RIot wants matches to end faster, so minions must push towers down. I disagree with a premise that games should end faster and even if riot is right, then they could achieve it in many other ways.

TehNACHO1 votes

Somebody else mentioned it in the post above in regards to laning but if you're really good at mid to late game freezing, you can completely cut off minions and thus gold supply to your enemies for minutes at a time.

I can concede that faster minions could be an inelegant solution to that problem, but we needed a solution to that problem unless we want crazy stall tactics like those in the past.

Shiroyashayami1 votes

but there are ways to break the freeze like shoving the wave under the tower so it bounces back or asking your jungler for help so w/e

actually i think doing it solo is better

also you can just kill your enemy xd

TehNACHO1 votes

Ahh now I addressed this on my three huge posts in reply to Ahri Baka.

That's only really an option if you match or beat enemy wave clear already, and asking coordination out of your Jungler in solo q? Furthermore some matchups just don't have clean answers to a frozen wave; see Garen v Darius.

Also our conversation is flopping around a lot; we were talking about mid to late game no? We just ended up back in the early game with your post now.

Shiroyashayami1 votes

Sorry. Yeah. According to mid - late game i didn't really see poeple doing freezing.

TehNACHO1 votes

Yeah it's a real problem, and a problem I'm willing not to get mad at the Boards for. LS has pointed out even Pro Players suffer with that particular skill.

preternatural7 votes

I tried doing this but I got down voted so I'm jaded now.

Abibyama II6 votes

Because to them, none of that shit matters because "damage lol"

La Belle Sauvage5 votes

I wish I could upvote this more than once! Excellent point.

Jennifer4205 votes

all i wanna know is how to not get cockblocked by my own minions.

Saezio5 votes

Wave management isn't macro though really. It's not strategy, it's tactics.

Riot has systematically destroyed strategies that did not abide to the strict meta(1 top 1 mid 1 jg 1adc 1 support)

Some quick examples just from the last 2 years, Funnel, 0 CS Frostmancy, Double MAge/Bruiser bot lanes.

Even in professional play, comebacks are super rare these days. Stalling has also been rendered useless AF. You can't stall games PERIOD. It doesn't matter who you are or what you do. Towers are so useless you can't stall a game after as early as 20 mins I would say

TehNACHO2 votes

It's a form of skill expression, and disclaimer, I chose it arbitrarily to rant about. Sorry if it seems to stand out against the title of the post.

In Riot's defense, the 4-1-0 and 3-1-1 metas from S3 and 4 were stupid, ADCs moving bot and the support role existing is a natural evolution, having a Jungler makes all sorts of sense in terms of maximizing resources on the map, and roaming Support is still a play style that exists in coordinated play. Unless we all suddenly miss the base race meta, there are times when Riot's enforced changes are justified. Do they have blunders, sure, and I'm pretty sure the Double Mage/Bruiser revert was because of pro players complaining first and foremost, but at the end of the day there needs to be some order to the game and for the most part it works.

Oh but yeah the stalling things hurts a lot. It's like Riot has some hardcore PTSD from when Ziggs Xerath Karthus were all meta at the same time.

Saezio2 votes

I wouldn't mind if they let people explore those options and their counters for 3-4 months and then decide if it should be kept or nerfed. But they were all gutted within a couple patches. What is that? They made a fucking " iS It mETa?" video, how hypocritical is that?

How exactly was split pushing stupid? But making people have to 5v5 in EVERY GAME is not stupid?

kittylover1114 votes

The entire strategy and skill expression is literally just pick a highly mobile assassin or adc and run roughshod on the enemy team.

Kai Guy3 votes

Its shocking how many folks refuse to Body block a Wave, or how some folks that do wont move to reduce the damage. You can keep it near but out of tower range.

If your a support player you should be willing to trade health for gold, give your ADC a good opportunity to cs. If they are returning to lane and a pushed wave is gonna splatter on your tower, you can stall the wave. Easy if there is no pressure, harder if you have to deal with enemy champions.

Blue side is best cuz you can drag them up into jungle a bit

Eonslegacy2 votes

Body blocking and assisting in last hits under tower is the core fundamental of the bestest supports. To few people do this, and focus entirely on killing the enemies its kinda sad.

L Psy Kongroo2 votes

{quoted}

Body blocking and assisting in last hits under tower is the core fundamental of the bestest supports. To few people do this, and focus entirely on killing the enemies its kinda sad.

To be fair, assisting in last hits only matters if your ADC also knows what they're doing. Too many times I've tried to set up minions for my ADC under tower and they ruin it by attacking the minion anyway. It works a lot better if you're duo and/or on comms since you can tell your ADC precisely which minions you're going to hit and when.

Eonslegacy2 votes

True lol, jinx will still be in rocket form under tower.

Hazardus ducees2 votes

Dude, I've managed to learn how to apply extremely good micro and macro plays, but if you're not a specific champion that is designed to carry and your team sticks with the raw end of the stick at all times then odds are- you're going to have a sensible enemy team that focuses and picks on you all the time.

Morbys2 votes

No amount of wave management/control is going to help you win against how broken this game is atm. Too much dmg

The JigSAW2 votes

Excellent post and discussion below with the Ahri/Zed match about how to manipulate waves and the like. Glad someone else has as much appreciation for strategy and skill over random numbers and cheese.

The only issue is when you have an idiot jungler (sorry, I'm redundant) come into your lane and steal cs, scare off the laner, and then get the enemy jungler over in a repeating process so you can't farm or get a kill. Also, the leashing! As a top laner I can never get to my lane because I'm either leashing blue or red, and when I show up in lane my opponent is level 2 and I missed the first wave, but they didn't. So the second I go to farm in comes the Iron Invader trying to gank and usually ends up putting me further behind. Frustrating honestly, but perhaps if Riot did some type of compensation for leashing (XP and a little gold?) it'd balance out better for those of us who can't farm until 2 minutes in because of an idiot in the bush.

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