How To Use Objectives and Rotations To Grow A Lead
Ok, so this is a nice short video where you can see both micro (champ mechanics, etc.) and macro (rotations, objective pressure, etc.) come into play. This isn't high elo, but the use of map pressure to pull the enemy team to where YOU have an advantage or at least deny the enemy an advantage is better than many games at bronze-gold elo considering how close in power the two teams are. Your classic "who carries harder - mid+top or bot?" game. If this kind of macro can be done in low elo, you can do it too. So let's break some stuff down.
Laning phase - Cho didn't leash and enemy bot was late to lane. This means gragas started bot jungle - we know this even without warding. It takes players in this elo around 3 min mark to clear 3 camps and gank top +/- 15s. Earlier if they do double buff and lvl 2 gank, but then they are only level 2. Cho - should pretty much always start e. Starting q loses you massive pressure and depletes your mana faster while also denying you pushing power. Secondly - take grasp, dft, or even thunderlord's - not courage of the colossus. You only have 1 ability to proc it, it's easily missed, it has a long cd; it's not as good or reliable as any of the other 3 options.
As you can see - cho not doing this means I hit level 2 first, and chunk him to about half hp after he burns his potion and have a cs advantage despite missing 3 creeps to harass him more. 3:10 - enemy jungle has level 3 and ganks top. Cho's silence on me wasn't bad - it denies me instantly slicing and flashing away. Perhaps he planned to get pushed in to bait me into overextending - still, he lost way too much for this and could have done it without denying himself so much cs and without tanking so much free damage. 3:14 Cho gets a nice rupture in - denying my slice-n-dice. I was an idiot for not holding it until he'd used q. This mistake costs me flash at the least and COULD have gotten me killed if they both committed flash right after I flashed probably. If I don't flash gragas barrel, I die and don't get anything in return. But once I pull that off, I've got the fury to heal a ton off q and go back in. They fight one at a time - forcing cho to flash away and then gragas has to 1v1 me. He uses his cd's effectively, but it's not quite enough - 1 auto more and I would have died instead.
Here, cho should immediately tp top and deny me pushing the wave fully in. He can then set up a freeze. Also - get armor - not boots. I didn't need to tp at 4:40 ish to get back to lane; however I want to maximize use of my double buffs. For this, I tp to lane. But i can't just blindly engage and push onto cho or I'll force him under tower where I can't bully him - so I gotta wait for his minions to push out and deny him cs. Once I have a long lane - then I go agro. 5:30 ish - cho should be kiting to gragas. Even when cho dies - I'm pretty sure gragas could trade 1 for 1 with me there, so he should try to force me out of lane and set up freeze for cho. Instead he roams mid.
6:40ish - enemy mid, jg, and bot has based. Team could easily rush dragon. Especially since cho doesn't have tp. Instead they waste time setting up gank bot for about 10s and then decide to drag as the freshly shopped full hp enemy is heading back to their lanes. Still would have been ok except the drag is warded by the enemy team and I don't have tp either.
7:24 - I kill cho a 3rd time. Here I ult immediately after hitting w. I don't ult for the hp or the damage, but rather because it works like tiamat or ravenous hydra - breaking renekton out of his w so he can immediately use another ability. If I don't do this and cho is good - he can potentially use flash, q, and silence to escape or trade kills with me. Because enemy bot could get first brick tower gold, I dirty farm to try to beat them to it. Cho blows q AGAIN without using e first to ensure it lands. This removes any threat he has to me under his tower. I again set up a slow push to me - denying cho cs and forcing him to use mana; I have to wait on cd's before I can shove tower and finish it off or kill him. 10:10 - cho get's chunked, blows flash, and his tower WILL die on that push by me. If he doesn't have major backup coming, he NEEDS to leave before I reach tower. He stays, and he dies for it as well as me picking up first brick tower gold.
Gragas - rather than help a lost lane in cho - helps his winning bot lane in an attempt to beat me to first brick tower gold; they nearly succeed. If you've been watching the mini map at all - my jungler and mid have tried helping my bot lane. Normally helping a losing lane is bad; however, the lane is losing gracefully - not feeding - and so they have kept it basically neutral thanks to their counter-ganking of bot. This is good; doing that for a feeding lane is not good - too many low elo junglers and mids fall into that trap. Too many laners get upset they don't get help when they are that behind even though it's better for them if their team pulls pressure elsewhere by winning other lanes and pushing objectives on other parts of the map.
10:50 - check enemy blue buff - if up, steal. Ward their jungle to spot top/mid rotations and ganks. Look for minion wave to dive low hp lux with our winning kat. Kat kills her before I get there though. So might as well push a wave - pull enemy pressure to mid. This allows kat to arrive mid basically as wave hits her tower - stopping her from missing any cs AND it might buy bot some time to free farm while their laners rotate mid to protect tower.
11:17 - gragas comes to stop me pushing mid tower. Alone, his only kill pressure is ulting me into their tower and then keeping me tanking tower as long as possible. Move to avoid this and look for anyone rotating - since only cho and grag are visible on map. 11:23 - I have xin backup. I incorrectly assume he and I can chain cc and blow up kalista - especially since grag basic abilities are on cd. Still, I bait out grag and soraka ults for my flash ult.
12:00 ish - enemy is pushed to our tower, they have a 4v4, and I am tp'ing by enemy red to flank their 4 man push mid. Our bot lane rotated over rather than selfishly stay bot to ff and probably cost us mid tower - just cuz you are behind bot doesn't mean you screw your teammates to get farm and try to catch up; make the good team play like my bot did. Great execution by my team - especially note some of those rakan knockups. 12:18 - cho should have long ago rotated mid. He's doing exactly what I preached my bot lane should not (and DID NOT) do; selfishly greeding for cs at cost of teamfights and objectives. Xin gets over-zealous and tower dives when we really didn't need to. We back him up though. I dash, stun the closest enemy, and then cut off their retreat path - ensuring my team will kill both enemies for trying to defend tower. Sure I could have finished off lux, but then kalista had a CHANCE to escape. Do the right thing for the team even if it means 2 assists instead of a kill.
12:50 - check enemy red buff, ward bot jungle, steal jungle camp and prepare to push bot tower - there's a large minion wave there for us. In retrospect, I should have just gone straight bot and we might have gotten tower. I was selfishly greedy after having missed a bunch of cs top in order to get us that mid tower and teamfight.
13:30 - enemy has rotated bot, we don't have the minion wave, and we can't tower dive bot anymore. My teammates correctly back off. Due to vision in tri brush, I can spot any rotations coming at me and can contest gragas for red buff. Not that I can steal it from him with his smite, but I can chunk him out for contesting it. This again distracts enemies from protecting bot tower. Because we can't dive bot tower, I suggest fighting at infernal drag. Takes team awhile to accept that, but it only makes sense - why fight by their tower where any engage by us get's negated by their cc and can't be pushed further because we'd be tanking tower? Force them to us where we don't have a disadvantage. Then, we have a wave building mid. Either they rotate to stop us pushing mid, or we trade towers - getting their TIER 2 MID for our TIER 1 BOT. A definite win for us. They rotate mid - but they split up - allowing us to engage on them and get advantageous fight.
15:09 - We've split their focus and used some of their basic cc abilities - absorbing them onto our tanky members and keeping our carries positioned safely and ready to follow up on our counter-engage. Because gragas used bodyslam, I'm free to ult, dash and stun kalista. Which can be followed up by kat and xin to nearly delete her and force her out of the fight. Xin meanwhile engages soraka - forcing her to focus on running away instead of healing enemies and silencing us. Gragas gets a beautiful ult - can't stress how perfectly timed it was - to deny xin and I deleting soraka and kalista. It also sets up lux combo somehow. Give that fat man a medal. Our team finally engages - having no real enemy cc or burst to worry about. Lead by rakan chain cc'ing clustered groups of enemies, we mop them up. 15:17 - Xin and I are low and cho is in our backline - he stands a chance of noming us for a kill, so we focus him down first while rakan gets a 3 man knockup. Since the enemy has no cc - say hello to a full duration fed kat ult. Kat continues in 1v4 to finish off adc and flashes out - keeping her nice and healthy to allow us to continue diving them if needed. Meanwhile, cho dies 1v4.
So you see how small advantages were exploited via rotations, good warding, pressuring the RIGHT objectives, and teamfighting at opportune moments. How engages were layered (like xin and I eating enemy cc to then counter-engage to THEN be followed up by rakan and our carries). Were we perfect? Not even close. Was the enemy all boosted? No way - gragas was definitely our equal as was their bot duo probably. We protected our losing members better and they played SMARTER - not constantly forcing 2v2's they lose - but playing around their team. So that the small deficit they had became a bait/engage tool for our ADVANTAGE rather than something that cost our team - like so many people in low elo. Anyways, hope you enjoyed getting some insight into the micro and macro play of this short game and that this gives you some new ideas for improving your gameplay. If so, you'll probably outrank me in no time - since I have no skill - only macro intelligence and playing easier champs.