Mage Killer Crocodile: Renekton Top

8.5 Ranked blind pick renekton top vs heimer

The breakdown

Heimer goals - use turrets to shove in enemy and keep them low health; snowball lead off taking towers and denying opponent cs; look for stun combo's to maximize turret damage to opponent when he plays agro; snowball with jungler if possible whenever opponent pushes out or you push in and can 2v1 invade enemy jungle

Renekton goals - exploit limited mana pool of opponent and out-sustain them; play safe to avoid early game pressure of elise; survive lane and get as much farm as possible; only take trades/go agro when you have all abilities up - preferably with 50+ fury

Analysis Perhaps coincidence, perhaps cover. Elise feins invade bot - allowing heimer to sneak into blue brush unseen and steal our jg blue at lvl 1. This gives him huge lane power, xp advantage, and denies kha a buff he really needs early on. If I don't respond by pushing, when heimer comes top, the wave will be equal and I get shoved in, zoned, and heimer has lane tempo up until a jungle gank could kill him and put him behind/catch me up. Before seeing heimer, I assumed a red start for elise (mind games - faking bot invade, start top, possible lvl 2 gank). For this reason, I wanted to shove lane and get it bouncing lvl 1 to avoid early cheese by elise. Although I walked by blue, I was not in range to see it leashed.

Kha remains calm despite losing first blue. He sees low hp heimer instead, and comes top to reclaim his buff and grab an easy kill. Heimer wastes flash in a scenario he can't possibly escape from. He then burns tp and plays too agro - letting me chunk some of his hp off and waste some of his mana before basing. Because of wave positioning - and especially since it's heimer, i can walk back to lane and save tp. This let's take bad trades if I so choose, because I can chunk him low, get low myself, and tp back full hp to deny him cs. He makes a good guess that kha is in his jg and nearly grabs a kill. Again notice I play agro when i have fury and all sums available. Heimer is very low on mana, so I want to push and force him to stay. We are both level 5, so I am stalling for a potential flash ult kill under his tower. Elise comes, but it's not enough to kill me in a giant wave with my ult up.

Seeing elise and heimer had to base after their failed gank on me top, kha takes advantage and grabs an easy dragon. I then tp top to freeze wave on my half of lane and repeat the process of chunking heimer low and denying him cs. Meanwhile soraka and cait push what they think is an advantage too far; they don't respect their opponents' level lead and pay for it - giving away a double kill. Luckily, a map aware kha goes bot to punish the enemy duo.

Heimer, realizing he can't win 1v1, does a great job of getting me low and baiting me to overextend. But elise doesn't have the damage to kill me. This leaves a low hp elise and a free reset heimer for my jg to pick up. He could have just gone to gromp and farmed, but he's looking to maximize gains. Heimer tp's back top and he and elise chunk me low; however I stay to try to help kha when he pings he's coming back in. This nets us yet another kill. By taking advantage of the map rather than purely focusing on cs, kha has netted himself 3 easy kills set up by his laners.

I force my advantage - chunking heimer out and although we trade kills, he misses cs - allowing me to come out ahead. shortly later, the enemy support roams mid un-pinged. Kai'sa catches it though and avoids getting cc'd and potentially killed 2v1. This lets our team rotate and pick up kills instead... thanks to good rotations by my teammates.

Having had a rough start, akali decides to head top and 2v1 me. This is NOT a good idea for several reasons: I have ult, I'm ahead, she is behind, they have no vision of our top jg where a kha could be (and is) hiding. When you are behind in farm, kills, levels, and items; don't roam and force plays. Be smart, hold a tower, farm up safely and look to catch up. Unless the enemy does rotations, they can't easily tower-dive you early, so that's the best way to minimize their ability to take advantage of their lead. When they split up and overstep, you can look for picks to put you back in the game. Because they don't do this, their 2v1 backfires big time - putting them further behind. Also just horrible coincidence for heimer; placing that last tower let me double dash in and kill him. If he didn't place it, he probably walks back to his tier 2 and escapes.

Bot lane again oversteps - having no vision in the area and being behind 2v2, they should not be pressing up so far. Top, jg and mid are all winning; if you go even in lane by playing safe, playing smart... we win the game easy. No reason to keep forcing plays that aren't there and giving the enemy a way back into the game.

Taking advantage of the giant wave I pushed in top that heimer has to clear, i rotate mid to grab my team a tower AND be nearby for a potential fight at dragon pit. Until there's actual need to go to dragon, i keep pushing mid in - forcing the enemy to respond to multiple points of pressure. This nets us a tower mid and a fairly easy dragon. While I want to base here, kha had to spawn herald before it timed out, so I escort it in top to get something out of it. Again, he's there to exploit his toplaner's lead. Sure, he could ignore top since I can hold my own 1v2; however, this would deny him 3+ kills, 2 towers, and 3 assists. That's one thing that frustrates me some games... maximizing jg farm or ganking to (maybe) stabilize a losing lane can be nice... but what are you sacrificing to do so? Could you have gotten MORE for your team elsewhere and taken that advantage to the losing lane to make a bigger positive impact for it later? Often, the answer is yes; as you can see in this game.

Having gotten top inhib tower and with me basing, kha should have backed off. He overstayed due to how fed he was and maybe due to pressure of seeing 2 opponents do the same to us bot. But akali had no chance to make it out alive and kill our bot inhib tower.

What are you doing twitch? Respect lack of vision. You just saw a fed enemy chase your support out of jg and you walk in there alone? That's basically asking to die. Then the rest of their team tries to make a play. Unfortunately i wasn't in range to save soraka, but we avenged her and came out ahead in the trade. Realizing due to respawn timers we can't kill mid inhib tower, we back off and take blue for cait. Do a little counter-jungling. Soraka gets caught, but I play the part of a good teammate and escort her to safety. Until our team overreaches and tries to 3v5. We still pull it off with some delayed help from kha, but it costs us 3 kills. Meanwhile a good objective conscious adc grabs a free dragon.

The stuff tilt is made of. Earlier, I tank inhib tower for kha - not even bothering to aa the tower just to intimidate my opponents. Now, a full hp akali decides to 1v1 me under her inhib tower mid. She's soooo close to killing me. But you are behind... far behind. Don't force a fight vs fed opponents unless you have a MAJOR advantage; just be happy you stopped me from getting mid tower and back off. Literally one aa from winning that fight - that's how you tilt an opponent. And it doesn't stop there. Elise can't even enter her own jungle without dying. Meanwhile, there's a giant minion wave top for us to farm. I could tp there after basing, but I try to be a nice guy. So I ask adc to soak it and save my tp for a team play.

Slice - flash - dice. Sure, I could have slice-dice-flash or flash-slice and maybe reached twitch, but doing the combo I did let me maximize distance in that scenario and maximize damage at the same time. I thought we were diving with the way my team was playing, but they couldn't follow me due to minion wave dying. Because we are so ahead though, I can survive until my team gets there - netting us more kills and a 2nd inhib tower. Notice how kha and I split up to jump on twitch? Doing this forces him to only target one of us... potentially saving kha's life and guaranteeing we get the kill with a max possibility of one death for it. I bait out heimer ult (stun ult) with my slice and cait decides to take him down. She overcommits, but realizing she's dead, gets a reply kill. I COULD overstay and try to kill a tower, but I'm not in the business of feeding free kills to my opponents.

I ward to see if they will rush baron and then look to back once my teammates are in position to stop any baron rush by our opponents. But overeager kha gets himself killed and raka dies trying to save him like the good support she is. Luckily, I hadn't based AND bot and mid were rotating over to baron rather than... farming jg camps or bot lane like I see all too often from people at this elo. This puts them in position to 3v5 contest baron with me. Normally I'd just say to push bot or mid instead, but due to our extreme lead and their low hp, we can contest. I position to zone the enemy carries off my bot and mid and then look to peel for them. This nets us an ace and stops the enemy doing baron. Kai'sa makes a risky but decent attempt to end the game off this; however, she goes agro too soon and I can't save her and set her up for more kills with my tp. This costs us 2 deaths, but it gets us both nexus towers, so it's not a bad trade. The key reason for that being the enemy can't 5 man baron and end the game off it. In situations like that, the risk kai'sa took would be too high to be worth it when much safer options existed.

I realize we could 5v5 force baron; however, we can also just walk top and force 2nd open inhib. I know they're all waiting in the brush for me, but they can't 1-shot me, so I go in. This gets all our opponents fairly low AND most importantly soaks all the burst and cc they have - leaving my carries free to destroy them with impunity without fear of being cc'd and blown up. The fight is a route in my teams favor and from there, we easily end the match.

It all starts with a few things: play to your win conditions, play safe - don't take needlessly risky plays, map awareness and effective ganks - not forced ones, playing to your winning lanes - not trying to prop up losing ones, and rotations.

These things shut down the enemy jungler. They gave top a meaningful lead rather than a tiny insignificant one. They got jungle fed enough to shut down the winning enemy bot lane. They got us objectives such as a several tower lead and every dragon. They turned around losing fights and skirmishes and let us avoid 50/50 fights or ones that gave our opponents a better chance at success (when we followed these things). Vision control let us spot enemies on the map, react to their rotations, out-fight, and out-flank them. These few simple things are the difference between a lost match or a close win and the utter destruction you see here.

So... the next time you are losing, play smart, play safe, and let your team catch you up WHEN THEY CAN. Don't force fights you can't win. The next time you have no vision of an objective or at all... use your free trinket ward and help your support or toplaner out. The next time someone makes one bad mistake, don't crucify them. If they keep making the same mistake, explain calmly to them how they might do something else instead and how that would be better. And help them... whenever reasonably possible. Don't make the selfish plays only thinking of YOU (like blowing tp to farm 20 minions that a teammate could easily get or farming raptors and then basing when your team is posturing for a fight at elder dragon). Give away objectives to your opponents when you can get better and/or more objectives in return - losing an outer tower to snag an inner tower or a baron is generally worth it. Giving away an outer and inner tower to soak 30 cs just because you are behind.... not so much.