G'day I'm UberGiantsBro and today I'm going to show you how to deal with ranked anxiety in League of Legends. I used to have ranked anxiety back in season 1 about when the season 1 rewards were announced because this made take ranked more seriously. Now this anxiety made me a toxic player, believe it or not.
I stopped enjoying playing the game because it just made me angry and I only started enjoying League again when I was able to deal with my anxiety through some advice my older brother gave me that I'll show you in this video. After that I'll tell you 3 of THE most important things you should always remember when approaching ranked games so keep watching.
Now before I fixed my anxiety there was a big hurdle that I had to overcome. I'm not a psychologist and I'm not going to explain to you how the brain works or anything like that but one of the things I had to realise was that it was okay for me to be angry. What wasn't okay was how I expressed it. The main challenge for me in dealing with my anxiety was not to stop myself getting angry but to focus more on other emotions, the ones that help me play better and let me improve.
So I would still get angry but instead of raging at others I would focus harder on my game, concentrate on what I could do better next time and use that anger as motivation to improve myself.
Now this small change in my mindset had a massive impact on how I played and thought about the game. I started enjoying the game more. And because I was enjoying the game more, I was more motivated to improve as a player and learn from my mistakes and I went from about 1600 elo (which was gold) in season 1 to around 2200 elo in season 2 on the NA server with 200 ping.
It was like the dam of improvement was unblocked and all the elo came rushing out. I'm not boasting about my elo but just giving you an example of how a small change in your mentality can make the biggest difference in your overall skill and improvement as a player.
So obviously not everyone will have the same anxiety or the same goal in League of Legends but if you're hitting a wall in your improvement, or you're "stuck in elo hell" or WHATEVER, it might be because you're focusing on the wrong thing. You could be getting bogged down in your anger like I was or you could frustrated at the afkers and this stops from you improving (because you're no longer concentrating on improving!), or you could be scared of even playing ranked because of the ragers you've heard about. These are just some examples of ranked anxiety you might be dealing with.
Whatever the cause for your ranked anxiety is, there's a couple things you should remember;
1. League of Legends is just a game.
As cliche as that sounds and as funny as those jokes like chicks dig elo are at the end of the day that's all League of Legends is. It's a game. And unless you're a professional at League of Legends or trying to get into the pro scene and you need the higher rank to get scouted or whatever then your ranking is only for you. If you have pressure or issues in real life that are giving you anxiety, please deal with them directly.
2. You have time to increase your rank.
Now unless you're racing for a higher tier to get an end of season reward or you're studying League of Legends and your homework is to get silver by next week, remember that you have TIME to increase your rank. In the overall context of you playing League of Legends, it doesn't really matter if you lost that long ranked game or even that placement series (FOR WHATEVER REASON), what does matter is that you LEARN from it so that you're more likely to win next time. Focus on one simple thing you can get better at and your rank will soon follow.
3. If you're *THAT* good, you will get to where you belong eventually.
Unfortunately this might make you realise that you're not as good as you believe you are. But that's okay, because like I said before, all it takes is a shift in mentality to focusing on your mistakes and improving instead of getting angry about afkers or how bad your team is. I once made a new account along with my brother who's also challenger. We leveled it up from scratch and only played with eachother for fun and jumped straight into ranked when we had the minimum characters. We got to challenger in X games, and people around us were amazed to see us rank up that fast. But the thing is, we weren't, we knew that it was only a matter of time like I said in point 2.
We had about 5 4v5's on the way up to challenger and we even won a couple of them, but we weren't angry at the others because we knew that in the context of things a loss here or there didn't really matter because we would get to challenger anyway. I mained Heimerdinger and he mained Warwick for the most part.
Now, continuing on from point 2 and 3 where I say it's only a matter of time, you might be saying "well it's going to take forever because I struggle to see my own mistakes and I don't have that much time in the first place". Great. That's why myself and my two brothers have put hours and hours into creating the most complete League of Legends guide out there so that you can save yourself time.
If you're gold and below and value your time and would like to speed up your improvement then check out Summoner School at thelolguide.com If you're above gold you can still learn from it but there are basic concepts covered in the guide which you might want to skip over.
That's all for this video on how to deal with Ranked anxiety in LoL, please thumb it up if you learned from it or enjoyed it and until next time all the best in solo queue.
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G'day, I'm UberGiantsBro and welcome to this concise Yasuo guide. In this video I'm going to teach you what you need to know to play Yasuo mid as well as how to counter Yasuo if you're versing one.
The first thing you need to know about Yasuo is that he's a high risk, high reward champion - he's easy to stuff up but he has a fairly high skill cap so he feels great when you outplay someone with an awesome combo.
So with the runes build and masteries, I don't want to talk about them too much because they're fairly self explanatory. Ofcourse you can try other stuff but this is what I've fuond to be the best settup. The reason for the 5% crit runes is that with this build it puts you at a neat 100% crit chance.
So with laning with Yasuo there's a few things you need to keep in mind.
Firstly with skills you'll want to start with Steel Tempest (his q) and max it always because it does the most damage. The only exception to this is starting with e against someone with skillshots like Syndra or Gragas so you can dodge their harass by dashing through minions.
Never stand still in lane, moving charges up your shield (passive) which is really what gets you through a tough harass lane. So make sure to time your trades for when your shield is up. The other reason you want to keep dashing in lane is because it increases the damage of your dash.
So Steel Tempest, Yasuo's q is either a little stab skill shot or if you use it while dashing it's a small spin attack. Every 3 casts you get a knockup on the q which turns the spin attack into a spin attack with a knockup and the stab into a whirlwhind, both of which you can use to set up your ult. It's good for farming and it's got a really low cooldown which is actually reduced by attack speed. It helps to charge your knockup before you engage, like in this example. I block Lee Sin's q with my wind wall and then dash away and charge my knockup which I use as a whirlwind to set up my ult and die as a hero samurai.
Alright so you can close a lot of space with Sweeping Blade his dash but if you're chasing it really helps if you have your 3rd q ready for the knockup. If you don't have 3 stacks of q ready like in this example you can easily charge it up by using q when you dash through a minion but it might slow down your chase.
Most of Yasuo's kill potential comes from his ult and you can activate the ult on your own by getting 3 stacks of q and then q'ing for a whirlwind like in this example or dashing and then q'ing for a guaranteed knockup like in this example. Make use of your windwall to block any retaliation damage but I didn't need to in this example cause TF's card was down.
One of the things I love most about Yasuo is that he's a great roamer. As soon as you hit 6 you should be looking to roam, preferably to a lane that can set your ult up. Yasuo combos really well with AOE knockups in team fights so that's another reason the Rock works great with him. Monkey and Cow are all great picks with Yasuo but outside of lane there's literally a tonne more champions that Yasuo's ult works with. Almost any displacement or knockup ability can activate it. Not sure how many of them are intentional but it even works with things like Vayne's condemn if you can react fast.
This was one of my first games with Yasuo and I didn't anticipate his ult to work with Lee Sin's ult and so I bungled it up really bad, but the next time he came back I'd learnt from my mistake which is the important thing and something I talk a lot about in my other videos.
Another cool thing you can do if you're running away is you can run next to a wall and then skirt around them and dash through them to get over the wall. You can do the same thing with jungle creeps if you stab them over the wall first so they agro on you and you get vision.
One of the main things you have to remember is that you can't dash to the same target within 10 seconds so be calculated in how you use it.
Alright how to counter Yasuo. A lot of Yasuo's matchups come down to skill and jungle pressure so there's not too many champions that counter him directly. It's impossible to go past Riven though because she can out-trade Yasuo with her shield if he ever gets too close and also she can match his mobility especially if there's not many creeps around. It's worth noting though that Riven's Wind Slash can be blocked by Yasuo's Wind Wall, pretty tough to do.
So instead of talking about matchups and counterpicks here's what you can do to counter Yasuo DESPITE what champion you have. Like all champions it helps to know what his cooldowns are like and his ability ranges and so it's a good idea to play him yourself a few times.
Firstly you need to be aware of what his knockup looks like, it makes a special sound effect and he has a glowing aura around him. This makes it easier to know when he's going to go in on you or you can be ready to dodge the tornado. Don't confuse the knockup aura with the shield animation.
You can dodge his q fairly easy by sidestepping tiny bits as it's so short and narrow. Be aware of all the things I told you about in this video like the bonus damage from consecutive dashes (especially early on) and also be aware that he can't dash to the same target for 10 seconds and be aware of his windwall and HIS KNOCKUP! Hue Hue Hue Hue
That's all for now, please follow me on Twitter @UberGiantsBro, like and subscribe and I'll catch you in my next video.
G'day, I'm UberGiantsBro and today I'm going to show you how to rotate lanes like SKTT1 the world champions. A big reason SKTT1 won the season 3 world championships is because of their near flawless rotations. You'll carry a lot more in solo queue when you understand how and when to rotate lanes.
Lane rotations can overwhelm you, but like most complex systems, when you break it down each individual part is simple. It doesn't take a diamond or challenger level player to understand rotations and it's something practical you can use in your solo queue and team games despite what league you're in. So let's get into it.
So what are lane rotations? A lane rotation is when you move from one lane to another to gank, cover, push or defend the lane. A rotation doesn't just mean you have to run straight there either, in some situations it might be better for you to base and then run to where you need to go. An example is if you do a lane swap for your fast push.
The core idea of lane rotations is that by doing those things and not wasting too much time running between lanes you maximise exp and gold distribution to your team. It's like in Football or Basketball how players spread out to cover more space for their passes, they aren't standing next to each other and they aren't chasing the same person. Remember in junior games how kids always clumped together chasing the ball carrier? In LoL terms if two people were chasing the same farm by moving to the same lane, that would likely be an inefficient rotation and a waste of time and pressure. Rotations are all about efficiency.
So now both teams just traded an early turret kill, but what we're more interested in here is what happens after. Now SKT the blue team swap their duo lane straight back to bot lane after the turret trade. They do this for two reasons; to continue to push down the outer turrets with Caitlyn (this is generally known as a fast push) but more importantly to have numbers near dragon. If the enemy rotates their ad and support to top at a bad time, you can often claim a free dragon.
Renekton rotates bottom to take the cs because Zyra doesn't need it and because his top wave is pushing in slowly. If your wave is pushing in towards you won't be losing much cs if you're not thereso you can usually take this chance to clear a jungle camp or put a ward up.
As you can see Renekton hardly lost any cs top.
Renekton backs and starts running up mid for dragon. Rumble realises his lane opponent has probably backed to go to drag so he rotates to dragon as well. As a rule of thumb, you want to follow your lane opponent.
SKT know TSM are doing their blue so they use this opportunity to push mid. Elise gets caught off guard with this rotation, she's farming wolves instead of defending mid. This a result of not keeping an eye on the mini-map to see where the enemy is putting pressure. See bot is safe because of the ward coverage and top is pushed out, so there's really only one logical place that they could pressure (mid).
SKT hold the middle side of the map and they wait for Renekton to push mid up and then they all rotate mid for a free inner turret. They trade the dragon for an inner turret for dragon is worth. In dragon dances, the team towards the center of the map generally has the positional advantage because they can choose to either rotate mid or force the 5v5 dragon fight.
Caitlyn is running up mid to help seige but they recocgnise they won't be able to siege well against the wave clear of Gragas and Corki and there is a big wave pushing against them top so Cait goes to farm that instead of wasting time running up mid. Thinking ahead is integral to good lane rotations. This call may have been made by someone else on the team but it's important that every player has an understanding of this for themselves.
If you want more examples to help you understand rotations better then here's what to do. Next time you're watching the pros stream, focus 50% of your attention on to the mini-map and see how they and see if you can recognize why. Did they just push out their lane and are now moving to gank another lane? Are they rotating to clear a big wave that needs farming? Are they basing to move into a lane swap to help a fast push? When you get better at recognizing these things then watch a replay of a game from around your skill level (maybe one of your games) and notice the differences in rotations.
Are players slow to react to a big wave pushing in? Do they even react at all? Is there any organised pushing rotations? Do players 'step on each others toes' to cover lane farm?
This is a perfect example of better understanding why you're stuck in a low league despite thinking you're a 'god' at the game. There's a lot of skills like this that you actually have no idea how bad you are at them until you learn what they are and how to develop them all revealed in Summoner School.
That's all for this video on rotations. If you have any comments or questions about rotations make sure to post them below or direct them to my twitter @UberGiantsBro. If you liked the video please show your support with a thumbs up, and until next time all the best in solo queue.
G'day this is UberGiantsBro, and in this episode of How To Team Fight we're breaking down the big team fights from the Gambit Gaming vs Samsung Galaxy Ozone game in the group stage of the season 3 world championships. The main themes I'm focusing on this episode is target selection and positioning, two extremely important factors to team fighting and I'll be pulling on a core concept from Summoner School as well so keep an eye out for that. Btw we'll be going over this team fight slowly so don't worry, I just needed something to play in the background haha okay let's get into it.
So the two big main points for this team fight are this great initiation that we're about to see from Jarvan and Zyra as well as the Shen's position. So first for Shen, he's a pretty tanky bloke so he stays to finish off the tower but he holds on to his taunt. He doesn't burn it straight away! I see so many Shen's that just taunt straight at the carries and end up missing and being useless for the rest of the fight. Instead what Darrien does on Shen here is he holds on to his Taunt, effectively creating a zone which scares Vayne and Ryze.
So I'll just play it forward a bit more. As we see Ryze and Vayne are still focusing Shen while the rest of Ozone engage. Pausing it again, if you look at Shen's items you'll see he has a lot of auto attack blocking potential with Doran Shield, Ninja Tabi and most likely defense masteries too because he knows Vayne is going to be the main one focusing him in this team composition. This is great itemization from Shen. But doesn't Vayne deal a lot of true damage from Silver bolts and Bork? Sure, she does. But the problem is that Shen is not a priority target, especially since Shen doesn't deal much damage himself.
Just because you can kill a tank quickly, that doesn't mean you should focus the tank. But Vayne doesn't have many other options, since she is so short range and Ozone is all clumped up it would be dangerous for her to go near the group. Now is a great time to bring in the summary of the position and target model taken from Summoner School.
"A champion is in the best position and attacks the best target when he is unlikely to die and attacks the greatest damage dealer."
I think this is a great principal to follow for team fighting when you don't know who you should be focusing. In regards to our example here, Vayne is force to focus the Shen because he is the only target she can really get at safely. This also applies to Ryze, but because Ryze is a bit more tanky and the Sona Crescendo is down he could probably afford to move straight towards the main fight.
So as the fight plays on a bit more, all of Ozone's front line get destroyed by the high burst of Gambit and Vayne only picks up a kill on the Eve. The key factor in that fight was great zoning from a tanky Shen and Ryze not having his ultimate up for the engage - imagine if Ryze was in position to get his AOE off when Zyra and Jarvan engaged.
This team fight is a great fight because even though Ozone is behind, their carries are still able to exercise great target selection by focusing the greatest damage dealers while being unlikely to die most of the team fight. They're basically doing my job for me, I could just let you watch them in slow-mo haha.
But no, so as soon as Eve gets in range of Ryze, Ryze focuses her and then immediately backs off with his cd's. Let's take a look at where the main damage threats are because we'll be focusing on them mostly (KOG, EVE, RYZE, VAYNE). They are fairly spread out, but here's a general idea of where the focus should be for each carry - Ahri has most of her skills on CD so she isn't a big threat for now. Kog can focus Jarvan and Singed because the group focus brings them down very fast.
As it turns out, Vayne is able to chase Eve all the way down here because she knows Eve's ult is down. Playing slowly forward a bit more, Vanye immediately turns her attention to Kog after Eve instead of Sona because Sona is not a threat. It could be argued that Kog should've switched to Vayne earlier as soon as Vayne went after Eve but Singed was low already so they focused him as a team before turning on to Vayne.
A play worth mentioning here is that even though Ryze is focusing Shen, it effectively allowed Vayne to go ham. Again, notice the target selection where Vayne focuses the Ahri even though she is practically in the middle of four enemies. This is a big risk but a calculated risk, all a part of making good decisions on who you should be targeting. Team fighting dynamics can get very complicated like this so even though the position and target model is extremely useful, there is more to it which you can learn about in Summoner School. I'll try my best to explain them here for you in these videos.
A lot of knowing who to focus comes down to practice and evaluating yourself by watching recorded games of your team fights after you play. In game in an actual team fight you're repeatedly asking yourself, "is this guy a threat, is this guy a threat?" to determine where you should be positioned and who you should be focusing but a lot of what you learn about positioning and focus can be forgotten in the heat of the moment. If you remember one thing, try to remember the summary of the positioning and target model from Summoner School "A champion is in the best position and attacks the best target when he is unlikely to die and attacks the greatest damage dealer."
That's all for this Team Fight Analysis, I hope you learned something and if you did make sure to give it a thumbs up. I just wanted to give a quick shout out to my Twitter @UberGiantsBro which is a great way to get in touch with me or ask any questions you may have. Thanks for watching and have fun dunking noobs in solo queue.
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There are plenty of good Cheese tactics out there - sly tricks that catch people off guard or nab easy kills - that players like to use gain elo, but what are the best ones? Keep reading as I try to avoid making cheese related puns.... and as I give you my top 8 solo queue cheeses.
1. The 'Blue Buff Bum Rush'.
Commonly known in low elo as the 'we have Blitzcrank, let's invade' tactic, this cheese works surprisingly often in solo queue. Normally it depends on how fast your team gets out of the blocks to decide if you actually want to sprint to their blue or not. All you do is tell your team to buy fast in champion select ("Cause we're invading yo") and then make a beeline for their blue (if everyone bought fast). You can go through the mid lane but I would recommend crossing the river and getting your support to explorer ward that middle river bush on your way past (to make sure no sneaky hobbits spot you). Then run straight to the blue and ward it and back out if you don't catch anyone.
This strat could be dangerous, especially against an aware support but it more often than not does good than bad in solo queue. And hey if it back fires, have a quick laugh about it with your team and move on to the next cheese tactic.
2. The 'Level 2 All-In'.
Great for top, bot lane and those mids that are reliant on snowballing early (like Pantheon) this tactic requires you to push a tiny bit (not too much or the enemy may just back off completely) so that you can hit level 2 first and use your level, skill, health and damage advantage to 'all-in' your opponent(s). Red pots are a great start for this strat because of the extra AD and Health they give you depending on what champion you're playing. The key to executing this cheese comes with how you push the lane. You don't want to push too hard else they may just let you push all the way up to the tower and not lose anything because none of your creeps will have died yet. You want to push just fast enough so that you hit level 2 one or two creeps ahead of them but not so fast that you scare them off.
***BONUS CHEESE (Flat Out Early Pushing).
Most LoL players generally suck at last hitting under their tower (especially in lower elos) so one thing you can do to reduce how much cs (and therefor gold) they acquire is to push them under their tower hard early game. The reason early game (level 1-5) is the best time to do this is because players generally start getting more abilities or items that help them last hit under the tower easily after their first buy or simply when they level up. You want to start being careful around level 5 or 6 because that's when the enemy Jungler may be looking to gank you with his ultimate. In general, hard pushing someone against their turret allows you to harass them easier (because they have to be stationary at some point to get cs) or put damage onto the turret. ps. make sure you have wards for this or tell all your lanes to push aggressively (this may be hard to pull off as a team in solo queue).
3. The 'Recall Bait'.
This one is a bit tricky. There is also two different types of recall baits which I'll explain now. The first isn't as good but it can work sometimes. Simply recall to town in sight of your opponent to bait them in closer for a kill (preferably with your Jungler nearby, out of line of sight). It's similar to this classic 'fake dc' by Dyrus. The second one, well I think the best way to explain it is for you to watch this recall bait. Basically, you stand right near a bush but not in it as if you were supposed to go into the bush to recall and start your recall, but right before you recall, cancel it and run inside the bush. This can trick them into thinking you actually recalled when you recalled didn't, lulling them in to a false sense of security. Then you kill them.
4. The 'Red Buff To Red Buff' Invade.
This tactic requires two things, well three things actually;
An aggressive Jungler or someone who is strong at level 2 eg. Lee Sin, Nocturne, Shaco.
An enemy Jungler that usually starts blue or alternatively early vision to see if they are indeed starting blue.
Balls. Not even kidding. If you mess this up you may put yourself behind because of the fact you wasted so much time going to his buff instead of just taking your second buff with smite and snowball the game in the wrong way!
***An extra note about Shaco here. You can actually perform the same trick except at level 3. To do this you need to follow the double buff strat, explained by FoxDropLoL.
An aggressive summoner spell (exhaust or ignite) is also a possibility here, although it's not a necessity. Flash can help you escape if the mid lane happens to collapse on your position fast. What you do is you get a smiteless on your Red then run straight to their red (the sneaky bush way, not the wraith way). Here you make a decision. Either try to kill them while they are taking agro from red buff (because nearly all Junglers go straight from smiteless blue to red) or smite steal the red (very risky) to get the extra exp and then go on them. If you perform it correctly you can continue to put heavy pressure on the enemy Jungler, taking their wraiths and/or mini-golems.
You should have the advantage in any duel due to the fact that you have a red buff and a stronger level 2 (hopefully) while they just have a blue buff. The risk is, of course, that because you are in enemy territory the enemy mid laner is likely to get there before yours, not to mention they may have warded the entrance to their red. This may not matter though if you coordinate it with your team. Make sure you tell your team what your plan is and to either push aggressively early (so their lane enemy can't come to help or at least they lose more if they do) or ping like mad if a lane goes MIA.
5. The 'Proxy'.
Uhh. Just the word makes me cringe. How many crazy 'Chemical Men' have you seen farming behind turrets? If you've played against one before, you'll know how annoying it can be. If not, I'm sure you'll experience the joy of it one day. Yes, it can be a tad risky sometimes but on certain champions and against certain matchups (like Shen because of his low amount of dueling potential and wave clear) this can be a great tactic you can use to pressure the enemy team.
The delicious cheesy benefits of proxying? The main benefit is that you force the enemy's attention upon yourself, relieving pressure elsewhere on the map. Unfortunately they did nerf this tactic a little bit a few patches ago with the changes to death streak gold and experience values. Now enemies get a little more reward for repeatedly killing you instead of the squat-all they got for killing a 0-6 -0 Tryndamere. It just means you have to be a bit more careful when proxying so that you don't get snowballed on rather than helping your team.
The other benefit of course is that you get to keep your lane opponent at their turret - especially useful against champs like Shen who have very slow pushing power (especially early on) or a teleport. If they teleport away to help their team, you'll be making sure to deny as many creeps (and therefor gold and exp) as possible as your creeps run straight to the enemy turret to die.
So when is the best time to proxy? As Singed, anytime is a good time to proxy. But more generally, you might be able to proxy if you get an advantage on your lane opponent through a couple early kills and/or they have a hard time pushing waves out like mentioned before. Here is an example of proxying with singed if you need to see an example.
Champs that you generally see proxying are those with quick wave clear or lots of sustain. Good examples are Tryndamere, Singed, Renekton, Zac or almost any other champ that gets ahead. Try it in a normal game before trying it in ranked! Oh and hey, it's even possible in other lanes! Check out the start of this funny video of Chauster and Doublelift doing a bit of proxying as they duo bot lane in Bronze.
6. The 'Support Carry'.
Supporting can be real boring sometimes for those of us that don't enjoy support that much. Why not try something different? People are so used to playing against the standard Flash/Exhaust/Ignite supports with support masteries and runes that any variant may catch someone off guard. Try running barrier or heal on your support and try running different runes rather than gp5 stuff. For example if you're playing Zyra you can either go full AP and surprise people with your burst or you can go full AD and abuse the enemy lane opponents early with your long auto attack. Or you can play AD Janna and auto their ADC twice with the shield on yourself. It hurts and can win you the lane early and give safe farm to your ADC for a few minutes.
Generally people run exhaust on support for a reason - it's great for later team fights when you have to exhaust someone diving your ADC. But if you can get away with it, a random (surprise) barrier might just be all you need to win a 2v2 duel. aAnd they always forget about it! Running hybrid pen marks on supports like Sona/Zyra/Lulu has been fairly common for a while due to the massive mixed harass they can put out but why not take it one step further?
I once ran AD runes, masteries and summoners as Blitzcrank while my duo partner started off as support Graves. This wasn't intentional (we forgot to trade haha) but it ended up working because I baited the enemy jungler into diving me at level 3 while I had barrier. They also all-in'd Graves at level 1-2 which allowed me to dps their ADC. Big mistake but next level stuff on my end ;-). Again, this might be worth trying in a normal game before you jump into a ranked with it. I do not advocate the useage of support mastery and runed Graves under any circumstances.
7. The 'Ward Bait'.
Ahh the old ward bait. Put a ward down where the enemy support sees it or is likely to see it (say, on top of a pink ward) but have allies nearby when they come to clear it - like a bug attracted to the light - so that you can zap them. This cheese works at all elos and never gets old. Be careful for counter ward baits - while very rare, smarter foes may read the situation and bring their own backup! Here is an example of a simple ward bait for you to watch.
8. The 'Garen'.
Possibly the oldest trick in the book. Stand in a bush and wait for an enemy to facecheck it. Simple yet effective, players have been using this strategy since before the ADC/Support bot lane meta became popular. Just check out Doublelift's famous facecheck (I'm sure we've all done this at some point haha). If you don't have to give a leash, there are two great places where this usually works.
For top lane, wait in the tri bush if you're on the blue side or if you're on purple side wait in that little brush near the river entrance to the lane. If the enemy is leashing blue they may run up through the river to save time. Perfect if you have a strong level 1 character so that you can chunk them right away.
For bot lane, either wait in the tri bush or in the enemies lane bush if you're on purple side or in the river entrance lane bush or the enemies lane bush if you're on blue side. Same again, wait for them to leash their buff and walk to lane and give them the old 'Garen treatment' (see picture below).
Where to wait if you have a better level 1.
Well, that's my list of the best solo queue cheese tactics, I hope you found it useful and that you can use them to grate your way to victory on Summoners Rift. If you have your own 'cheesy' tactics that you would like to tell me about, I would love to hear them! Tweet me @UberGiantsBro or comment on this post. Also check out Summoner School, the only complete League of Legends guide with everything you need to get better at LoL. Until next time, all the best in solo queue.
What's up Summoners! UberGiantsBro here and I'm proud to bring you the first episode of Learn to Team Fight with Summoner School. Today we'll be doing an analysis of the big teamfights in TSM vs Vulcun's game from day 1, week 7 of the NA LCS summer split and we're focusing mainly on decision making so I encourage you to put yourself in these players shoes and see what you would have done differently in each situation. Alright let's get into the first Team Fight!
Hey Summoners, I'm UberGiantsBro and today we're having a look at teamfighting dynamics and the risk-reward factors that come with decision making in teamfights. I've hardly seen this taught anywhere else so I'm excited to share it with you and if it goes well I'll look to do more teamfighting videos so I hope you learn something!
So what we're gonna do is we'll be break down some Pro level teamfights to see exactly why these players make these decisions so you can learn from them and improve. This episode we'll be using the TSM vs Vulcun game from week 7 in the NA LCS . One thing I highly recommend you do is putting yourself in these players positions and thinking what you might've done differently in each scenario, so you can be critical of yourself and learn more!
[teamfight at 37.08 mins].
TSM looks to engage here because they have super minions coming down the mid lane, Xpecial pop Shurelyas to try and force the engage - you only have split seconds to make these decisions - OddOne follows up with a Flash Cocoon to try and force the engage further and even though it only hits Nasus it gets the flash out of Ashe which gives TSM's dive comp an advantage.
So Regi is making a beeline for an Ashe with no escape while ManCloud on Ahri is sitting off on the wings because he wants to flank Twitch. As a small side flanking Twitch is a good idea because it makes it harder for him to AOE the teamfight. So right now Dyrus would be watching Regi for when he goes in. At this point Ashe should just distance herself from Zed as much as possible and wait for him to use some CDs before re-engaging. If you were Ashe, you'd want to be staring at Zed respecting his zone because he'd one shot you before you even auto attack.
So we go forward a bit more and notice that Bloodwater burns his hook on Elise and Regi goes ham.
So there's a couple things, Ashe burns her arrow instead of holding it til after Zed uses his CDS, Regi is going ham - he may have got a bit lucky dodging under the arrow like that - and importantly Thresh burns his deathsentence on Elise.
This play was actually pretty big so I'll explain why he did it. Bloodwater is in the mindset of 'engage, let's go counter engage' rather than thinking about the exact abilities he wants to save for peel. So if instead he chose to save it for when Zed jumps in just moments later, the small amount of lockdown on Zed may have allowed Vulcun to burst him rather than Zed bursting Ashe, and the teamfight might have been different. It might seem like nitpicking but this (very small) mis-step from Bloodwater leaves Ashe open for assassination. What is a Flay and The Box going to do against Zed? Not much.
What you can take out of BloodWater's mistake is that you should always be thinking about how you want to use each of your abilities in advance before you get into a teamfight.
Another thing to mention now is that Dyrus is ready, he would be watching Regi to time his ult for when he goes.
So as we play forward slowly a and Ashe gets popped despite the Thresh Flay, Ult and Exhaust and Zac's Let's Bouncedown being used on Zed.
The rest of the fight plays out a bit messily, OddOne bails like his ship is sinking but eventaully returns back to the fight to clean up.
So despite the Thresh Flay, Ult and Exhaust and Zac's Let's Bounce all being used on just Zed alone Ashe still gets popped because of the flash they managed to burn by forcing the engage with Shurelyas.
[teamfight at 40.17]
So the arrow comes in but instead of TSM backing off, they all move forward to cover Dyrus! [pause][arrows everywhere plz] So the reason why TSM did this instead of backing off like a lot of lower level players would do is to cover the guy who gets arrowed, this forces Vulcun to run past the other guys if they want to chain CC Rumble. Dyrus would be calm right now because he knows he is tanky and all he has to do is get his ult off. So Dyrus' mindset now is looking for a good opporunity to hit as many people as possible with the Rumble ult.
So as we play forward a bit Xmithie withers Zed and BloodWater deathsentences Zed. Xmithie wasted his wither on Zed because the attack and movement speed debuff doesn't really effect Zed here compared to say if he used it on Twitch instead. The reason he did that is because Zed is clearly still their #1 priority but again it's just thinking about how you want to use your abilities before you get into a teamfight. But hey, Bloodwater learnt from his mistake and saved his Death Sentence for Zed - good players learn from their mistakes!
So the biggest thing that happened here is that in the rush to burst Zed (spirit rush get it?), Ahri clumped on Ashe and Thresh. Whenever you're playing a carry position (and ESPECIALLY against AOE champs like Rumble) you always wanna try and stay split so it makes it harder for you to both get hit by AOE.
See that Rumble ult chunks the carries so hard. Here we have a 3 versus 4, a perfect example of a high risk, high reward situation where you have to make an instinctive decision. It's hard to make this sort of split second decision but the more you do it the more confident you will become in yourself and the better decisions you will be able to make. Elise and Thresh choose to go in.
So I'll just talk a bit more before recapping. These dynamic teamfight decisions are, I think, the most stressful but rewarding decisions in LoL - a game of decision making. You feel terrible when you make the wrong decision but you also feel great when you make the right one. Nobody makes perfect decisions all the time but the more you practice it and put yourself in that situation, the better you get at it. It's like most skills in LoL that you can learn about in Summoner School, but there are sometimes blocks in the way that stop you from learning and you don't even realise they're there. This is one of the things Summoner School can help you reconise, if you're interested in Summoner School check out the link in the description.
Well that's it for this first teamfighting dynamics episode, I hope you learned something and enjoyed it. And if you did and you wanna see more of these videos make sure to let me know with a like or comment and share it with a mate who might find it useful. Also you can follow me on Twitter @UberGiantsBro. Thanks for watching and all the best in solo queue!
The Dunning–Kruger effect is a cognitive bias in which unskilled individuals suffer from illusory superiority, mistakenly rating their ability much higher than average. This bias is attributed to a metacognitive inability of the unskilled to recognize their mistakes.
In laymans terms - you're bad at LoL but you think you're the best. I would estimate about 90% of LoL players suffer from the Dunning-Kruger effect. This is why I've (and I'm sure you have) had friends who refuse to play LoL simply because of the amount of 'big headedness' in the game.
If you're reading this, that's a good sign. Learn to accept that you're not the perfect League of Legends player. Even a lot of high level players are held back from improving because of the Dunning-Kruger effect.
2. You don't mesh with your team.
You might not think meshing with your team is important, but the fact of the matter is that you need your team to be fighting to win the game, not fighting each other. Sun Tzu in his book The Art of War said,
A united nation is strong, a divided nation is weak. A united army is strong, a divided army is weak.
One of the ways you can mesh with your team is by establishing some quick rapport. This generally takes less than 20 seconds to do and can set you up for an enjoyable ranked game.
Some of the ways you can establish quick rapport include talking about recent LoL changes, joke about someone's user name (laugh with them), complementing someone on a champion pick and so on.
By the way, what you just read was an excerpt from Summoner School. This is what really sets Summoner School apart from anything else I've ever seen about LoL and what gets me so excited to be a part of it. It teaches you more than just mechanics, it teaches you life skills and how to interact with people in League of Legends so that you can win more ranked games and have fun doing it.
3. You're not a flexible player.
Think about this for a sec, what sort of teammate would you rather get queued up with? Someone who must have a specific role and is threatening to feed if they don't or someone who is willing to compromise and work with the team. Despite common 'Silver League theory', League of Legends is a team game. It takes teamwork to win.
Don't expect your team to be flexy for you, be the flexible person and work with your team.
Learn to play more than 1 role. You don't have to play all roles and you can still have your 'preferred' role. Just have a couple roles that you are comfortable with and you'll have a much better time in Yolo Queue.
4. You don't ward enough.
If you're stuck in silver league, chances are you don't ward enough. There's really not a lot to it - wards are your best friend in LoL. Buy more of them. If you're jungling, you could even consder buying a sightstone to help your team out.
5. You don't understand how to push your advantage.
League of Legends is snowbally game. However, since the season 3 changes to the way killing spree and experience bonuses work from killing a champion, there is now more of an opportunity to come back in any game of LoL than there ever used to be. This is even truer in the lower leagues where players have a habit of throwing their advantages away.
If you understand how to push the advantages that you gain and not throw them away 'willy nilly' like most Silver players do, you can drive home any game that you get ahead in and punish your opponents for making silly mistakes.
This is something that a lot of top level players do WAY better than the average low ranked player, they push their advantages. A massive part of this is knowing when to take your advantage and group to end the laning phase and when to stay split.
Unfortunately I don't have enough time to cover that whole topic right here, if you'd like to find out more hints and tips to help you raise your league right now, check out Summoner School at thelolguide.com.
So that's all for 'Why You're Stuck In Silver League'. I'm UberGiantsBro, you can follow me on Twitter @UberGiantsBro. Have a great day!
While I've gotten used to 200 ping as an Australian LoL player, there are definitely things you can't do as EFFECTIVELY with 200 ping. For example I find it tough to react to a Morgana bind in time, I have to predict and anticipate it's direction rather than react to it to dodge it.
So UberBro, how can that possibly be a good thing?
Let me explain. When you take something away from someone, it's safe to say that they've lost that thing and that they're now at a disadvantage, right? But what happens sometimes is that disadvantage may allow the person to focus on another skill, and as a result that skill is now stronger and better than it was before.
I want to use an analogy here. You may know a person or have at least heard about people who for whatever reason become blind, and after a while their hearing becomes that much more effective because that's what they have to RELY on all the time. It's a similar thing.
So for me, while it's obviously not that severe, it's still the same concept! In terms of League of Legends, I've become less reliant on my reactions (due to my ping) and more reliant on other skills such as prediction and reading players. I'll use one of my favourite champions to illustrate this - Lux.
In lane I've learned to watch a players movement pattern more closely and use that to predict where he'll be or when he'll go aggressive so I can more easily take advantage of his position with an e auto harass combo, rather than simply reacting to when he moves forward for aggression.
If you are reacting to that aggression rather than anticipating it, you're generally going to lose. Is this something I would have learned without 200 ping? Possibly. But I have no doubt that that skill is stronger for me than it would have been simply because I've had to rely on it so much.
I've always been jealous of players with like 30 ping, but then I remember that I may not have developed or even learned some of these other skills without my ping, so in essence that's how 200 ping made me a better player and I think that's pretty cool.
So do you have a weakness in your game or something that could be labeled as a disadvantage to you? Here's what you do.
Step 1.
Identify one weak point in your game. Pause for a moment and make a note... Please don't say your disadvantage is having bad teammates! Don't ever use that as an excuse if you want to improve yourself.
Step 2.
Once you've identified something, take note of how it effects your game play in normal circumstances. Maybe you have poor map awareness and this makes you an easy target for jungle ganks.
Step 3.
Admit it and work on improving. Whatever it is, being aware of it (and being able to ADMIT it) is the first major hurdle. Realise that you are not the perfect League of Legends player. For a complete and step by step guide on how to rise through the leagues right now, check out summoner school now. I helped create summoner school and being in the top fraction in the world - literally the top 0.01% in the world, being in Diamond 1 - I know what I'm talking about.
Well I hope you've learned something here, I can appreciate that everyone will have a different point in their game that they'd consider a weakness. It's cool to have a weak point, you just have to acknowledge it and work on it. Until next time! Follow me on twitter @UberGiantsBro.
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What is up, I am UbergiantsBro and today we're discussing how to handle 'Trolls' in League of Legends. We'll be discussing what a Troll is, then why Trolls troll - focusing on intentions, and finally some techniques that will help you handle Trolls better.
A Troll is a nasty label so always be careful how you use it and give people the benefit of the doubt when you can. Remember that you are playing with real people, not robots. With that warning heeded, let's proceed.
What is a Troll?
So firstly, what is a troll? A troll is someone who deliberately ruins the game for other players. The key word here? deliberately. Many people make the mistake of failing to recognise a players intentions.
Believe it or not, the majority of players in solo queue mean well.... Sure, your teammate may do a dumbass facecheck going to your blue buff at level 1, but his intention was to protect your team's blue. That is not trolling.
The same is to be said when a jungler comes to gank your lane but messes up and the opponent gets away. Your jungler isn't trolling, otherwise why would he gank your lane in the first place? He clearly has good intentions but he messed up. Who cares? Everybody messes up at some point.
Four Paws does a good job in describing this in his video Gain Elo through your Mindset when he discusses intentions versus actuality.
Why do Trolls Troll?
So a troll is someone who does these things DELIBERATELY. We've all played with them before. But why do they troll? What drives them? It all comes down to this; attention. Trolls troll because their trolling rewards them with a cheap troll laugh at others expense.
People have their own reasons for needing attention and recognising this fact can actually change your mindset from being angry with them to being sympathetic towards them. Trolls troll because they are missing out on something in real life so they come to League of Legends for attention.
I am not going to go into the psychological aspect of why trolls are the way they are too much - if that interests you and you want to read more there is a great article on the summoner school website that goes into that. You can check it out by clicking here.
How to Handle Trolls
So we know that trolls crave attention. Without attention trolls would have no audience and they would then have no cheap laugh. But how do you handle trolls? One of the best things you can do is to ignore them and to not let them effect you. Do not get angry at them. Don't rage, threaten or whine at them either. Doing any of these things only feeds their cause.
Instead of getting angry, try this technique taken directly out of summoner school the next time you are faced with a troll; Say something like, "I'll send you roses to your door with a love note if you get exhaust over revive" or "Please, if you get exhaust over revive I'll order a hot chick dressed up as Nidalee to come visit you."
Unfortunately some trolls are beyond help and all you can do is put them on ignore and try to carry them as best you can. Remember to report them after the game with details of what they did so that the tribunal can handle them.
You can't expect to change trolls, what you can do though is change how their trolling effects you. Concentrate on that and you will find handling trolls easier.
The Maths is On Your Side
"But I always get the trolls on my team, always! What do I do??"
Well let's do a bit of maths, because everyone loves maths, right? There are 10 players in any given league of legends game.
Let's say 1 in every 10 players is a troll who intentionally feeds once he gets in game. For the sake of this example that means that there is exactly 1 troll in every game. So the chance of getting the troll on your team is 50% because each player has a 10% chance of being the troll yeah? But you are not the troll...
And because you are not the troll each player's chance of being the troll has gone up to 11.1'(recurring)% (excluding you), so your team now has a 44.4% chance of having the troll while the other team now has 55.6% chance of having the troll. It might not seem like much of a change, but mathematically over a period of 100 games, that means you could expect to have 11 less trolls than normal. The maths is on your side....
That's all I have to say about how to handle trolls for now, for more useful info check out the ultimate League of Legends guide that will help raise your league and maybe, just maybe, you might even start to enjoy ranked games!
I hope you learned something and that the techniques I've showed you here help you to handle trolls better. For League of Legends related tidbits you can follow me on twitter @UberGiantsBro. Have a great day!
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G'day it's UberGiantsBro here, and today we're going to be talking about 'When to Push in League of Legends'.
Firstly, what is pushing?
Pushing is shoving the creep wave to the enemy tower by killing creeps as fast as possible. The general rule for pushing is that you want to push as soon as you kill your lane opponent.
The reason for this is that you want your opponent to miss as much gold (and exp.) as possible while at the same time allowing you to farm that extra wave of creeps so that you can go back to base ASAP. However this is not ALWAYS the best idea as will be discussed soon.
The inverse of Pushing is Freezing (or holding) the lane. Freezing is holding the creep wave by only last hitting minions and/or trimming the wave so that it stays where you want it to. It is a characteristic of a good player to know when to push and when to hold a lane.
There are some key questions that we need to ask ourselves here that will help us understand and decide WHEN to push:
Is it safe to push?
Use common sense here. If people are MIA and you are on low health after a kill, you should probably not stay to push. However if you see that the mid and jungler has 4 man ganked bot, you are safe to finish pushing the lane to secure your advantage.
What is my pushing potential?
Recognize the difference between playing a fast pusher like Morde compared to a notoriously slow pusher like early game Ryze.
Is there more gold to be had elsewhere?
Whether it be roaming to another lane, helping with dragon, potentially stealing an enemy buff or simply farming a wraith camp, there is usually an opportunity to claim more gold elsewhere on the map. Be careful you are not putting your teammate behind.
Do I need to base?
If you are sitting on a large amount of gold it is often smart to push your lane and base (provided it is safe of course). Most good laners will recognize this so be sure to recall in a safe position and call your jungler to farm-farm the wave.
Map Awareness is another subject on its own but it is important to mention that sometimes it can actually be SAFER to push if your champion is a good pusher or relies on lifesteal or spellvamp to sustain.
A good example here is a Cait and Nunu bot lane. This lane is generally very powerful in solo queue because they can push fast which keeps their opponents at their tower. This makes it harder for them to counter harass and the pressure or lack of bot lane coordination may cause opponents to miss CS under their tower.
That's it for when to push, for League of Legends tidbits you can follow me on twitter @UberGiantsBro.
End your solo queue solo queue frustrations now with the most detailed League of Legends guide called Summoner School. I help develop Summoner School. Inside it you discover all the skills, strategies, and tips you need to carry yourself out of elo hell then maybe even become a diamond player like I did. Check out the ultimate League of Legends guide now.
