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Applying pressure bot lane and other questions

Aeron Em·11/25/2014, 5:16:57 PM·1 votes·2,385 views

Hey all, I’m a returning player not having played since Season 3 and recently getting back into ranked. I’m in Silver V ( was silver 3) and can play all lanes comfortably, but prefer ADC/support.

My question is about pressuring bot lane.

I was in a game last night as Jinx with a Janna support against Vayne/Thresh. In my head I figured this is not a good lane for me to fight, I know we can get away with poking but if I get out of position I’m most surely dead to this kill lane.

So I played it safe, poking when I can, hoping that my ranged support would provide most of the poke allowing me to cs. My Janna had other ideas apparently and after getting caught by a Thresh hook and getting annihilated (big surprise against a Vayne/Thresh) started to vent his frustrations at me for, and I quote “not having any presence in lane”.

After that he went on about how I rushed Shiv instead of BF/IE. My thought process here was that on my first back the other Vayne was 2-0 because of 2 deaths of my support and pushing to my tower and getting a lot of damage on it …. I figured I need the attack speed and move speed (bought boots and zeal for shiv) to keep the tower from being pushed to my tower and dodging those Thresh hooks. I never replied to Janna when she accused me but instead just muted after it started getting to the point she was all chatting how bad I was. Well it all eventually worked out in the end as we won, thanks to our top Swain becoming a monster and making their Katarina afk in frustration.

Here is the match history for those interested Ok – that was the long prelude. On to the questions

  1. I thought I was being adaptive to the situation by building Shiv first, rather than following the mould of BF into IE. Was I wrong or was this the right move?

  2. I feel like it’s also the supports job to punish the enemy support and ADC in lane. The enemy Thresh was really good at auto attacking me when I got too close and constantly throwing out hooks to zone us both. Should I have been more aggressive and risked dying to pressure them more or is it the supports responsibility to also exert presence in lane by poking and zoning?

I want to know if in the future I should play this lane more aggressive or if I did it the right way and should focus on csing and wait for support to zone or a gank from jungler to kill?

Thanks for reading this long post. I appreciate any answers you all have for me.

7 Comments

ValyrianBlade11/25/2014, 6:49:26 PM4 votes

Vayne is at her weakest pre 6, especially pre 3. So very early you should probably have played really aggressive, pushed them hard to turret and tried to establish some sort of lead in Lane before vayne got her trading potential (at 3) and her dueling potential (at 6).

As jinx, you have the aoe long range autos in your q, so you can do this really well. You also have a slow on zap and snare on chompers, both of which can really help you disengage after trades. Janna probably wanted you to throw stuff down to stop her getting blown up when she went in.

Basically, yes you should have been more aggressive early. You aren't really risking dying until you're poked down a lot, and you should be able to poke vayne down faster. You also had good disengage.

With respect to builds, you start AD almost always, exceptions being champs like vayne who have an on hit which scales better with attack speed (hence she'll often look for a BotRK). Since your starting Ad is so low, your damage increases by something like 60% when you get a BF sword, and is basically doubled from the AD on IE alone (then add crit chance and bonus crit damage). In contrast, 30% as only increases damage by 30%, even less since your skills scale with ad and not as. Same goes for crit chance. Once you build ad though, future ad is a smaller percent damage gain, which is why you build a modifier like shiv or pd second.

With respect to supports being responsible for poke/harass/presence - it depends on the lane but often both of you need to do it. You can harass while not missing cs, just harass between last hits. The general idea is that the adc pokes them down while the support tries to zone to protect the adc from harass when he goes for a last hit. The support sets up kills with their utility and the adc finishes them with damage. Of course, many supports don't zone/poke/land cc, just as many adcs don't poke/hit enough cs/go in when support lands cc. Janna probably didn't do her job too well, but you still need to harass and deny vayne as much as possible.

Hope this helps!

The Chin11/25/2014, 6:52:03 PM1 votes

You definitely should have played aggressively. Janna is the kind of champ that works best with an aggressive ADC, her strengths are in protecting you and providing great disengage, but she does pretty much nothing in lane when you play passively

Aer1123811/25/2014, 6:11:47 PM

you were behind on gold, why did you turn that avarice blade into a shiv? around 30mins you could've farmed up 600g-900g from the avarice and gained the gold you were behind on. IE is always a safer bet than a BF, BF provides no late game scale. csing is important, but you have to learn to balance it, last hitting is fine if you're getting ganked, but pushing to tower to pressure the enemy adc to farm under turret will be worth it.