An indepth analysis of a game that the outcome may seem apparently obvious
I have a great game here I think we should all take a look at.
Now I'm not witch hunting or blaming anyone here, no flame or anything. I am presenting this game to show that how some small factor that may have seen ok can cause a horrible turn around somewhere else.
Here it is. Try to avoid assumptions.
Now your first thought most likely is, "Wow, that Darius sure fed that game!" And the answer to that?
Well, yes. That Darius was me. I'm not ashamed of this. I fed like mad that game. However, you'll also notice despite this I still managed to stay in the game. I had comparable gold to the mage on the enemy team, and the lucians build allowed me to tank his damage for quite some time.
Now your second thought most likely is, "Wow, that Pantheon is super fed!" And the answer to that?
Well, yes! Pantheon was fed as hell, taking that gold mostly from me. It sucked! I was virtually helpless. As illustrated here:
Geez, thats a lot of kills top! The Darius got ganked early. His opponent was a Gragas top, so it usually doesn't play too much of a part. This is still a winnable lane! Playing Alpha against a Gragas leaves him nearly helpless. So playing back was out of the question, as holding back as a Darius is essentially forfeiting a lane.
Even if we subtract those 11 kills top, Pantheon still boasts a comparable KP of 13 along with his 300% lead.
Wow, their jungler looks like they did really good, hmm, I wonder how the other jungler did?
That's odd...
That CS lead is quite a large sum. You would think with pantheon spending so much time top lane, there would be a CS lead in the opposite direction, right?
Well, you'd be right, for the most part. Early on in the game our lee sin took his red buff, and it was about 1 kp vs 1 kp, except Pantheon was at 6 cs and Lee Sin was at about 21, He did really good at the start!
So what happened? 75 cs in a 32 minute game game equates to about 2.5 cs a minute, so he clearly wasn't farming.
So what did Lee Sin do about this?
Unfortunately, nothing.
The Lee Sin's only kills in laning phase were mid. In fact, he contributed to the problem top by dying four times there!
So with this lack of pressure, why was there such a CS loss?
Because He didn't clear. Most of the game there were 4+ Jungle camps up. And despite Pantheon clearly showing interest in hanging top, and being a strong solo jungler, we have no dragons.
This shows how important a jungler is in this game. The top lane massacre could have been tolerable had the other jungle acted appropriately. But instead, Lee Sin chose to do nothing most of the entire game.
Lee Sin had three options
A) Countergank and provide pressure
B) Farm camps and gain a CS lead, maybe take a dragon or two
C) Provide counter-pressure and force Pantheon to deviate attention to other parts of the map, lessening the burden on top lane.
But unfortunately, did none of those three things.
The jungler is super important. Without the jungler this is exactly the type of game you'll see. There is so much more to jungling than taking the buffs and ganking a lane level 3.
It's Pressure. You CAN gank a warded lane. Just being around when they are pushed to the tower can do a lot more than you think. It can give that person a sizeable farm chunk as well as save them a big chunk of health they would have spent vs poke trying to gain that farm, and all you had to do was show your face!
Normally gaining a farm lead would be a real option, but unfortunately most dominate jungler are very good at clearing and ganking at the same time. So if an enemy jungler is ganking a lot at most youll get is a 15-20 cs lead, which isn't really enough.
Normally this would have been solved by invading the enemy jungler to take their camps, but many things prevent that now.
A) Plants now give sustain, shortcuts, and vision to deny you that possibility
B) Camps do a huge amount of damage, so if you should be seen clearing those camps you will be at a severe hp disadvantage.
C) Vision is at an all time high from free wards and you'll be seen most of the time
So gaining a farm lead is simply not an option. As a jungler the best thing you can do is counterpressure. It doesn't even have to be that same lane.
I really hope this analysis showed how important the jungle role is, and when a game could be assumed to be lost by a lane, the absence of jungle pressure is the biggest cause of losses.
