How do I recover from a lost bot lane? / Blitz problems :-/

Vanahae·Jun 4, 2015·2 votes·1,198 views

Please help! Does anyone have any tips or suggestions about what I should do as an ADC when bot lane is lost? Usually I am a competent player and I am able to freeze lane and not feed even when things go badly on bottom. However lately I have been playing against some incredibly strong Blitz players who have started snowballing their ADC and making my life miserable. So I have two questions.

Once lane is lost, and the enemy team has gotten to the point of diving me under the tower, what is my best course of action? I thought maybe I should let them take the first bot tower so I could still farm further back and leave them open to a gank. Or perhaps my support and I should roam to other lanes to try to feed them and make up for our loss? The problem in either scenario is a fed enemy bottom lane will end up roaming also. And, please only suggest things that I can improve on as ADC--saying I need jungle or support's help isn't useful because in solo queue you never know how helpful the rest of your team will be.
How do I not lose lane to blitz? --This is easy if I have the opportunity to counter him. I usually pick Sivir or Trist who can avoid his pulls and that works very well. But two games this week Blitz was the 10th pick so there was no chance to counter. I have read I should be baiting out his pulls but the problem is his hit box is so massive, Jinx will clearly be on the right of his fist but it will pull me anyway. Also I am not talking about bad blitzes here. These are smart, competent players who are flashing behind minions, or they will speed boost past my minions to grab me at the turret. For the two games I mentioned I had a Sona and a Lux support respectively. So with me playing Jinx neither of us had a good escape other than Flash, and when that was down Blitz was having the time of his life. I dont need tips to win this lane--I would be happy to just go even and/or not feed.

Any tips or advice are greatly appreciated. Thanks :)

12 Comments

RoaranorJun 4, 20153 votes

In regards to the first one, I recommend you pick up an early Avarice Blade and keep it. Don't immediately build it into shiv or yomuu's, hang on to it for as long as you can because your only real course of action is to farm your way back in. Are you giving up damage by doing this? Aside from lucky crits, yes you are. However, you've already been shut out of mid-game relevance it will help you catch up much faster in the long run. I've had games where I got shutdown hard, and was still a threat going into late game because I'd picked up 600-800+ gold from avarice blade before building it into shiv. After they take turret, yes they will roam. The ideal situation is one where you send your support mid to help defend while you hard push bot lane and maybe get their turret as well. If you can't get turret from the push, that's fine. At least you put some pressure on another lane since they'll have to send someone to stop you. If you see that they're suddenly missing from midlane, chances are someone is coming to deal with you in a not so nice way and you should immediately back off to safety. Now if you see that they're prepping for a full team fight mid-lane or elsewhere, go ahead and head that way. Sit in the back lines and do what you can with what you have. Hopefully you can pull a kill or assist from the fight to help boost your little gold hording spree.

The problem with having supports like Lux and Sona is that all it does is give Blitz another target (as opposed to Leona/Alistar/Thresh who can benefit and counterengage from getting pulled), but like you said, nothing you can do here. Do you practice stutterstepping? A quick definition is that you're constantly shifting directions randomly to make yourself a harder target to hit, as opposed to being stationary or running in a straight line. It's what helps you develop a juke factor and makes grabbing you infinitely harder. Also, you want to learn to read his pulls in combination with this. If Blitz is a good player, they'll land at least a couple of hooks, but this will help you mitigate the amount of hooks he lands. In terms of champion selection, you can pick up champs with immediate escapes that will help make dodging a lot easier than playing say Jinx (Vayne tumble, Lucian and Graves dash, Ezreal blink can actually negate a successfully connected hook if you time it right)

General Notes: -Once you bait out his hook, or you know that it's on cooldown, punish him for it. Getting him low enough through opportune moments will make it a lot harder for him to engage without dying quickly himself so he'll either recall or shift to a more passive playstyle. -Like every other all in melee support, he's weak against ranged harass since he can only retaliate through a single skill. Blitz especially since that skill can't go through minions (can you imagine omg we all cri) -Try not to panic when you see him engage on you. I know a Blitz overdriving through minions to get you is scary, but if you panic and run in a straight line instead of shifting left/right and prepping to juke, then you're already a free pull. I cannot emphasis enough how many times I've seen someone run in a straight line and expect to not get pulled, then go "omg blitz broken pls nerf his hook" At least make an effort to dodge. -His hook hitbox comes from his right hand if I'm not mistaken, which makes his hitbox biased towards that side. Keep this mind as juking to the opposite direction can sometimes give you an advantage (unless he's pulling at an angle in which shifting the other way might be better). -When you see him speed up, go ahead and drop chompers in his path as you retreat. It either stops his advance in its tracks and he has to hope to pull from where he is, or he has to detour around them giving you an extra distance lead. Maybe you can even turn around and retaliate if he's stuck inside the creep wave -If you can, find a friend or someone good with Blitz and get them to 1v1 you in a custom so you can practice dodging his hook.

VanahaeJun 4, 20151 votes

This was extremely helpful, thank you so much for taking the time to reply!!

RoaranorJun 4, 20151 votes

Oh, I forgot to mention. If you're unable to safely farm your lane, but still want a source of income early on, ask your jungler if it's okay for you to take krugs. Most will say yes as it's arguably the least vital buff they can retain from smiting (only really helps early clears).

Ih8ucuzurtoxicJun 4, 20152 votes

Work on skill shot dodging. Grabs like blitz's and thresh's can be VERY lethal. Avoiding them the whole game is almost essential. There's also the need for your laning partner to help you do this so that even if he does grab you there is amply ability to escape or trade.

Recovering though is different. As support it's tougher. You'll need to be VERY mobile and counterbuild to get help from your jg and mid until mid game where you can be more effective without the risk of getting all in'd.

As ADC in that situation your goal, as usual, is simply to out CS their adc and keep up in level. This can be done by telling your jungler that you need the jungle monsters to recover. Push your minion wave as far as it's safe to do so and then immediately jungle with your support so they can grab xp too or have them head mid to help out while you grab some bigger xp and maybe a red buff. Also, grouping a little early and pushing mid game sooner can aid in recovery as well as building differently.

When behind as an adc it's not a bad idea to grab a second dorans blade and a vampiric scepter to aid your sustain. Check out the trading stance guide too. As an ADC if you're in good position to get a poke and prevent an enemy cs, you're doing well. To counter blitz, ward the bushes and dodge by choosing a tangent that's not predictable.

The biggest way to counter blitz is to avoid his q. If you can juke him the whole game he's almost useless.

disregardableJun 4, 20152 votes

This. The best way to recover is farm bot as far up as it's safe, group with a teammate that's doing well, and take your jungler's creeps. In 10 minutes you'll be more than caught up. The question is whether or not your team can not feed until then.

VanahaeJun 4, 20151 votes

I really appreciate your advice. I agree I need to work on dodging his grabs, but it seems to be the most challenging thing I've encountered so far as ADC. I have no issue with Thresh at all, I can bait out his grab and sidestep easily. Blitz charges straight for my face and then I'm silenced, popped up, grabbed etc... Ugh... Still, this is my worst weakness and I am dedicated to trying to fix it.

Ih8ucuzurtoxicJun 4, 20151 votes

Another thing to do is to have your support counter him. When he rushes hard he's actually vulnerable, especially early on. Level 2 power spikes work well on him. If you can catch him close to your tower get your sup to slow or stun when he comes up or give you a boost and dps hard on him. This depends on who he's adcing with too. An exhaust on the adc from ur sup or a stun on the adc will stop their dmg and stop a large portion of what actually takes you down in a blitz grab.

If you find he's going past your creeps, you might even want to (if you're able to) to push through your creeps push at their adc forcing him to pull you in a direction you WANT to go and pushing his adc away from where you'll be grabbed to but again your sup is really the factor here. If you have a stun it helps a lot, a silence does too and with really push happy blitzes start poking the second you see him. He can't grab you right away and if you land 3-4 hits before he grabs you he'll be in a really bad spot cause he'll take minion dmg after that and your sups dmg too. Also, if he's pushing right to your face, run in circles around him while poking. This means he'll either miss or spend a lot of extra time extended. Using your heal and potions at the right time can be devasting as well in this regard. All in all it's a very annoying match to have a blitz to deal with but shutting him down is usually a win.

If he's truly push happy and you can't outlast it tell your jungler to gank often. This works great with junglers like lee sin and sejuani and rengar who will punish him for over extending as a trollcrank by using a lot of slow, big dmg and knock backs to keep him from retreating. Getting a kill early on him this way can force him to be defensive or at least wary of pushing toward your tower where you can still cs but be generally safe.

As an adc, try pushing for the level 2 power spike and then only last hitting so he's constantly needing to push into a bad position himself if he's trying to grab you. This makes for easy jungle ganks. Items that can help you through this would be getting boot upgrades early since the extra mobility will lead to more dodges as well as having your sup grab a shield or mobility item. Certain champions help as well. Sivir/Morgana's shield stops him and it's even worth starting these e's to prevent early grabs. Tristana isn't bad either because of her mobility, jumping when he q's is almost always a miss. Kalista is also tough as nails to hit with all her jumping around.

Since you mentioned Jinx, poke out with your w and e so he can't actually reach you. This works well if he's forced to push past your minion wave. He'll eat a slow then ur e and you can get in some hard pokes before even worrying if he'll get around the minions enough to q.

The real trick for a very good blitz though is going to be very good teamwork between you and your sup and making certain you land the skillshots before he can.

FieBall25Jun 4, 20151 votes

ban blitz. tis simple as that

VanahaeJun 4, 20151 votes

Wish they would increase the bans to 1 per player on each team for Ranked :-/

CrunchyfiedJun 4, 20151 votes

There is really nothing you can do that will put you back in the game immediately. If you are getting dove under tower, you have to let them take the tower or else you will continue feeding but also know that once they take bot tower, they will roam mid and put a lot of pressure and possibly take mid tower also. So either you stay bot and freeze/farm or you go mid also and defend. Either choice has its own consequences. Point is that you can't come back from a lost bot lane, you're basically useless unless you get a double or triple kill due to enemy mistakes. Just farm and hope your late game comes in at the right moment and participate in teamfights to try and get a few kills. As for going against a blitz, you have to just dodge his hooks. That's all there is to it. Also helps to have a Leona, Thresh, Alistar as support versus a blitz.

annador3Jun 4, 20151 votes

I havent seen this mentioned yet for the Blitz problem, but if you are still struggling with the hooks as it gets closer to late game, you can always pick up a Banshee's Veil. It can at least negate one of Blitz's hooks. Gives extra health, a fair amount of magic resist, and health regen, so I at least dont consider it bad on adc's as a defensive item. Granted, I'm unranked, so take this with a grain of salt, I suppose. The passive is the huge reason to get it, though. It blocks one ability from an enemy champion, ie, the blitz hook, and refreshes after you have not taken damage from a champion for 40 seconds.

Ih8ucuzurtoxicJun 4, 20151 votes

{quoted}

I havent seen this mentioned yet for the Blitz problem, but if you are still struggling with the hooks as it gets closer to late game, you can always pick up a Banshee's Veil. It can at least negate one of Blitz's hooks. Gives extra health, a fair amount of magic resist, and health regen, so I at least dont consider it bad on adc's as a defensive item. Granted, I'm unranked, so take this with a grain of salt, I suppose. The passive is the huge reason to get it, though. It blocks one ability from an enemy champion, ie, the blitz hook, and refreshes after you have not taken damage from a champion for 40 seconds.

Not so bad for late game actually. Early on you want boots quick cause the extra mobility will help you dodge. There's a couple other movement items that can help and champion abilities like I mentioned will help as well. Morgana's shield can be life saving.