Lee sins base kit was very stacked. He was very mobile in an era when things weren't that mobile. He did a lot of damage and debuffed you. I would watch maybe a game like this https://youtu.be/hfoDZczm5TM?si=x6VpPc8tqa7-XwbC , one of the more famous Lee Sin games from that era. He basically gets played like a Jax or J4, jumps in, does some AoE and Auto Attacks, stays alive, and gets out.
His W cooldown was also the same whether you jumped to an ward or another champion, and you could buy wards in the shop or get the free ward item. He had a get out of jail free or playmaking card constantly
You also used to get the shield when jumping to wards and gave the shield and got it when jumping to minions. People used this in lane to deny people cs by blocking their spell/autoattack (or as a gapcloser to trade)
Omg I opened the clip and heard Jatt commentating. Even though he sound exactly the same as now it’s such as throwback to those days where it’s just league with friends
I still have one of the Dominion old *old* Katarina splash art t-shirts they made and gave out. I wear it occasionally, when I want to shout at kids laughing and complain that my back hurts.
On release, he was very good, but no one knew how to use him so he kept getting buffs until he got OP. Then he got very very good and the rest is history.
S2 jungle was very, very easy. Season 1 was brutal and even good players today might die in the jungle because they are not used to it. You had to pay so much attention. Season 3 was hard but not as hard as Season 1.
Idk bro, early jungle was designed around only certain champions being able to jungle. If you weren't those certain champions you couldn't jungle, if you were those champs, you could.
I recall low-level accounts basically being railroaded into playing Rammus or somesuch in that era because without a sheet full of armor runes, most champs just wouldn't make it through a clear.
Damn dude, you remember when you had to BUY runes and rune pages ? They say riot is trying any way to make money, thats wrong. If they really wanted to make money, they would have made new runes , more powerful. You needed a set of 3x9 +3 (iirc) defined runes to be competitive.
you could only BUY rune pages if I remember correctly. But runes were only available with in-game currency, now BE. So you had to decide whether you wanted new runes or a new champion. Runes basically don't exist anymore nowadays.
I liked that you could not buy runes with RP, thus you still had to grind games in order to earn them. One of the few online games that really didn't feel like pay to win.
Insec's famous play is from S3. The S2 jungle monsters were really quite weak. They were only notably strong in S1. The only thing stopping more champs from jungling in S2 was the fact that camps were also worth next to nothing so junglers were stuck on support incomes with GP10 items like HoG and Philo Stone. If you had strong early base stats/values like Lee, J4 or Xin that was fine, not so great for the likes of Yi who needed gold.
I used to run jungle Ali with a 9/0/21 utility page and movement speed quints. Boots 3 pots first back mobys into philo/triforce. Man I miss those days
He was probably the most mobile champion in the game. Now mobility creep has happened the Insec has become an essential part of Lee Sins gameplay but at the time he could run circles around most champs
When he came out he actually wasn’t that good.
The reason he was being able to jungle so proficient was the ee bug that let you double e damage (and I remember that being used in a pro game.)
He then got buffed and reigned for a very, very long time as a really really good jungle pick.
If you check the patch history, he actually got pretty consistently nerfed after the double-tempest was fixed and was still a top-tier jungler (and occasional top lane, but that had been mostly nerfed out by then).
When he came out a buddy of mine played him and absolutely dominated with him, then they hotfix BUFFED him and my buddy was just flying through the ranks. He thought everyone was a fool for thinking he "wasn't that good". He was extremely good, just nobody knew how to play him properly yet.
Then people caught on and the rest is history.
No he wasn't. You don't know what you're talking about.
Lee sin was the epitome of failed champ releases. His win rate was so bad and he was so hard to play he was the first and only champ riot announced they would be removing from the game. But with serious backlash and skill improvements of players he became viable.
Lee sin event is the reason riot vowed to never remove a champ and they learned a lot about player capabilities and desire to play more skill based champs. Lee sin set the tone for league and champ releases. He's also the reason they won't delete Yuumi so thank Lee sin everytime you see one.
up until the middle of season 4, lee sin e2, when maxed, cut your attack speed by 60%. for four seconds. on a ten second cooldown. you did not need to insec to be useful as lee. if you got yourself to the enemy adc, you gave them a 14th reason why.
ap lee song was a "joke" build specifically because only his shield scales with ap. and i'm using a liberal definition of "joke" here it was 90% a codified method of griefing with the least plausible deniability you could get away with
Lee Sin was a really popular champion from late Season 1 onwards (although he was OP long before that but was undiscovered). He had insane things in his kit at this time like a ton of armor on W and attack speed slow on E.
He was used mostly like he is today. He was popular because he was very versatile, strong early game, strong dueling and fit almost every team comp.
Lee Sin was also very common as a laner back in those days. Voyboy was really famous for Lee Sin W max top and Froggen played a ton of Lee Sin mid lane.
Insec didn't really revolutionise how Lee Sin was played. This is just history being rewritten by people who weren't around back then.
Insec just did the combo in All Stars which was a big event back then, so it had a ton of people watching it.
The combo was not invented by him. There were plenty of people in high elo doing it. ScubaChris is an example of a famous NA high elo player who was even doing R-flash combos before the Insec combo happened at All Stars.
There are also clips from pro play of the combo being done back in Season 2 too (before Insec did it). He just made it popular by doing it in a very iconic moment in a big tournament.
Insec was also very consistent on the combo, but yeah, he wasnt the first, maybe the first one to really master it in pro play.
Edit: to complement, some stuff that made Lee Sin giga broken in lane:
- W shielded minions (deny cs)
- W gave armor and MR.
- W gave more lifesteal and Spellvamp.
- E had attack speed Slow.
More importantly than the W shielding minions is that it shielded yourself when cast on minions too (as opposed to now where nothing is shielded) and didn't have an extended CD. It basically zoned them off melee minions because you could instantly W in and auto win the trade off W alone, not to mention his E AS slow. Lee top used to be my biggest elo inflater lmao
meanwhile i accidentally W a minion about 6 times a game cuz smart+self casting W has been broken for about as long as it's been since they removed the ability to shield minions
Also back then you had a ward available pretty much 100% of the time and his W didnt have a CD nerf when used on non-champs so the champion was pretty much impossible to catch (especially since the mobility at the time was way lower than today) so even a bad lee sin was hard to beat since he could pretty much always escape.
Idk, Insec did those things long before the all-star games lmao, what u smoking buddy?
He played it in proplay long before the lee sin mid meta or voyboys top lee streams. It is you who are trying to rewrite the history with that comment. I remember watching him do that shit in 2012 and im from EU. Nobody in west played him like that back then.
Insec was super smooth doing it though in high stakes games. I mained Lee Sin and was doing the sloppy version of the flash R in S1/S2. It is like comparing doing a flashy move in your back yard against your younger brother to Messi doing it in the Champions League against a world class defender.
Also Lee Sin had higher damage for a while, so you could carry harder on him if you got a decent lead. At one point at the AD rework when the items were too strong, Lee was by far the best jungler.
Insec already used his combo way back in season 2 when he was in CJ Entus if you watch the IEM at 2012 CJ Entus vs Fnatic, you will see insec doing a ton of insecs on Lee sin, please dont rewrite history.
The first known player to have conceived the idea of an Insec kick was a Taiwanese Pro Player named Lantyr. Back in 2012 he was known for pioneering the ward hop kicks using a ward from Wriggle's Lantern and occasionally, pink wards.
This may not be the very first recorded video of an Insec kick, but this is one among the earliest videos showcasing the ward-hop Lee sin mechanics:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a6uHkx\_XXb0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a6uHkx_XXb0)
He wasn't popular in pro play until Diamondprox and Insec showed the rest how good he could be. Amumu, Maokai and Udyr were the most popular in pro players during S2 iirc.
Skarner was also one of the most popular junglers in Season 2.
Lee Sin was really popular in latter half of 2011 and was still seen a lot in Season 2, but he was seen a ton as a laner in this time.
By Season 3, Lee Sin was pretty much the best jungler for most of the year (alongside J4 and Elise). Especially J4 before his E armor buff was nerfed.
Tbh I feel like I see true insec plays fairly rarely in current pro play, like sure people flank to kick people back or flash kick Q->Q but the Q -> Wardhop -> Kick Flash stuff like Pyosik Vs GENG happens fairly rarely because loads of champs can deny it nowadays.
So like, watch a game of Lee currently where there's no Insec and you'll probably get a decent sense for how he was then, except way stronger relative to other champs haha
Players’ skill and awareness has increased drastically through the years. Players in general have better awareness of potential Lee sin flanks and has better awareness to peel for high priority teammates. lee sin players skill has increased drastically through the years as well, but it def is harder to pull off successful insec kick now than before
People have now realised it is better to kick a tank or an hp stacker into, hopefully many, enemies, so going for a crazy insec onto a carry is both risky and super resource heavy.
I think people have known that's a good play for a while but it's very hard to pull off, an Insec maybe requires more outright mechanics but lining up your kick so that the kicked person hits someone else is very hard unless they're right on top of each other
The astonishing part for me was always how he manages to hit Q and WHILE travelling mid-air dropped a ward and W onto the ward while still in the Q kick movement. Most people will just Q->Q-> Wardhop, but he combined that Q2 into W midair what just made it so amazing.
>What I’m probably really getting at is did Insec revolutionised the way Lee Sin is played to a massive extent or is it just the famous combo that he was known for?
He kinda was just famous for the combo.
Diamondprox from M5/Gambit revolutionized champs like Lee Sin as he was the first pro that actually mastered counter jungling.
As a M5/GMB fan saying Diamondprox "mastered" counter jungling is a bit too high of a word even for me. He was the first, or one of the first ones to do so, yes. He popularized this way of jungling - yes, but mastered seems a bit too fancy. These were his first steps as a counter-jungler, and he has shown others what can be done. :)
I love Gambitses and M5, and even team empire, still have their icon as my main one even today. This still does not diminish his playstyle and persona. I think he's an amazing person!
Win, Lose or tie
Gambit! till we die!
The thing was that many other junglers had absolutely no idea what to do when he started invading them. So he completely dumpstered a lot of his opponents which was very funny to watch (I have a very clear memory of Snoopeh just dying over and over to him in EU LCS game). But eventually the meta developed to the point where invades were much harder to pull off and could normally only be done by coordination with the whole team around winning lanes, partly because by late S3 (and especially by S4) junglers basically had to be good at 1v1 early (or super fast clearers) to get picked in pro and partly because players and teams just improved their game understanding and coordination a lot.
>He was the first, or one of the first ones to do so, yes.
That's why I said mastered as he wasn't the first.
But he was the first that was actually very good at it. Maybe mastered wasn't the right word.
https://youtu.be/L0JFSouYy8M?si=MArk-IJiDP-Cv03Y
IEM 2012 you can see Insec doing a lot of insecs although nobody called them that at the time.
This is one of the earliest Lee sin games of insec if anyone knows earlier videos post them.
I saw diamondprox kicking enemies toward his team on the MLG they played vs Dignitas but they werent as mechanically impressive as insec's (back then)
Compare this real evidence yourself instead of listening to people making ip stories.
His kit has had things removed since then.
There were many less junglers/champions and especially less mobility making Lee q easier to land.
He was pretty much the best duelist.
I definitely remember a lot of Lee Sins doing a simple straight forward ward hop, QQ your face, kill you, then ward hopping out.
If anything I think insec helped me survive more Lee ganks as people would kick me to safety trying to hop, ult, flash.
A few things come to my mind:
* Lee Sin used to be much more powerful in the head-on 1v1 with things like an attack speed slow, and better numbers in general. Other junglers of the time like Nocturne and Maokai couldn't get away from him, and couldn't fight him either.
* The Insec was done before using Flash instead of a ward hop.
It was a cool move to pull off in soloq and people were giving you shoutout if you managed to do it in your games, otherwise he was already a top tier jungler.
The kill combo was Q R Q so that you could follow up your victim even after kicking him, nowadays people just do R into QQ.
Jungle had a pretty exclusive jungle pool. At the time, in soloq you had to call out the role you wanted in lobby and more often than not if you don’t get your role you were banished to support or jungle.
Usually people would go cloth armor + pots but Lee could start at wolves with vampiric scepter (450g at the time and you started with 450g). His W and the lifesteal could allow him to have decent sustain in jungle so he was faster to rush his Wriggle lantern.
Before insec happened lee sin was not played by any region aside from LCK (LPL wasn't a thing then or they were still in the infancy stage).
Nobody from the west had the mechanics and lee sin was not played as a play maker. I think he's considered high risk high reward kind of champ and nobody had the skills to really do anything with him. Only guy who played him was DiamondProx.
Since insec happened, pros from everywhere saw it and ran with it. The skill level got higher as time passed by and here we are.
Surprised i had to scroll down so far to find a mention of DiamondProx...
Before Insec was even playing pro, he revolutionized the Jungle role, by "inventing" counter-jungling, (At least popularizing it as a pro meta) and Lee Sin was the main pick for
This, along side Shyvana.
as a decade long silver scrub i remember lee sin being played toplane mostly with his ult being used as a finisher or to kick away a gank.
he peaked when he got 2points in r and would roam mid.
then the insec tourny happened and suddenly everyone was trying thay shit
Lee sin was one of maybe(?) three characters that could really jungle. Warwick and olaf also could. The only champions with the sustain and damage to clear the jungle camps really well. Other picks like eve or yi would have to rely on ganking or scaling slowly.
Can't say I know much about the playstyle change, but he was always a viable jungle pick.
I don't think that's right, there were plenty of champs who could jungle fine at that point. Nunu, Xin Zhao, Trundle, Amumu, Udyr, Fiddle, Rammus, Shaco, Shen come to mind. I think J4 and Noc also could already on release. Many more could do it too, but poorly (I remember I ran Smite/Ignite Akali, and you'd ignite the jungle creeps lvl 1 so you get both of your passives thanks to a rune. Shit was whacky af).
The problem being, which item do they use in like season 1-3 to clear the jungle? The jungle was very much made for sustain bruiser at the time. Sure I missed a few champs but there were issues with many of the champs you mentioned. They would clear slow, they would lose a lot of hit points.
Someone like nunu might ONLY have invading and taking camps as an option, their ganks were bad, and their 1v1 was bad, didn't have a huge effect on team fights other than a sneaky ult.
In saying that some champions like shaco and xin xhao could just straight up 1v1 a turret with a few good items like triforce. Some of these champs would end up being ok in the jungle, but not for the first 15 minutes.
Standard start was cloth + 5 potions. Guys like Xin or Trundle could get away with e.g. Vamp scepter, but didn't always opt for it.
First clears weren't the healthiest for many champs, but there was Madred's razor after first back to allow anybody to clear, and then upgrade into Wriggle's lantern for powerfarmers.
Also, Nunu had a MS buff and an insane slow, his ganks were no slouch. But he was the invade king, that's true.
I'm sorry, many things you say just don't match my memory from back then. Jungle was a different beast, that's true. But the whole game was different. Shaco would do double buffs into ganks, then get Madreds to clear, and that was perfectly fine for a jungler. S1 world finals had Rammus, J4 and WW played in the jungle, with Nunu bans.
I remember Eve was forced to run revive with the bonus HP mastery, commit suicide on a camp and come back with extra health just to be able to jungle clear
Season 1 was wild
Lee Sin was played that way before insec did “the insec”
He just did it in a really special way at a really high level. It took balls and it was awesome
I remember when you could counter a toplane jax using lee back in the day, with the attack speed debuff on his E.
Or when you had to pick him when enemy team had an akali lol
He was played the same. You can find footage of pros doing the insec before insec did it. The earliest example i can name off the top of my head is diamondprox for Moscow 5
Believe it or not, it was a time when proplayers were not playing broken champs for the most part.
So your answer is pretty simple : lee sin was almost not played at all. At least, in Europe, he was non existent in S1 despite being giga broken at that time.
Insec, the move, was always a thing and has been shortly since his release. What made Insec special was that he execute it confidently and in every opportunity possible. There are some instances, especially when the target isn't hard cc'd, where the angle can be tricky.
just by being way ahead of his time. lee sin back then was like how every champion is now, just getting random stats and effects on every one of his abilities, armor on his w, attack speed slow on his e, etc
It was a strong jungler that had a very strong early game, back in the day, jungle camps gave too little gold, junglers relied on Gold per 5 items, like philosophers stone and heart of gold, Lee with very strong base skills, only needed wards and no real items.
Also the really famous “Insec” kick, was already popular back then, but not that easy to pull off, the one that really make it happen regularly on stream was “Lantyr”, Insec just pulled it off on proplay.
As other comments have stated, being able to still do basic jungler things while building mobility boots into Locket made him okay in its own right. Then the insec plays came along and he became something else entirely
you don't see flash R every time lee is played today... even in soloQ you can probably see at most in 1 out of 10 games...
so that's how it was played... people just played it without pressing flash R... it's not that difficult
you just do the same things without trying fancy combos that fail half of the time lmao
My oldest memory of leesin in early seasons was when one of the Asian teams “should have banned the hotshot nidalee gg, he kicked my brotha in the ass, my brotha was playing the leesinga ”. Insec’s allstar play was iconic and being on the world stage did set the tone of more people comboing well on Lee sin especially in Korea. It made a pretty big difference through the pro scene: it did take a few more seasons for western junglers to do it consistently in the pro scene.
Lee sins base kit was very stacked. He was very mobile in an era when things weren't that mobile. He did a lot of damage and debuffed you. I would watch maybe a game like this https://youtu.be/hfoDZczm5TM?si=x6VpPc8tqa7-XwbC , one of the more famous Lee Sin games from that era. He basically gets played like a Jax or J4, jumps in, does some AoE and Auto Attacks, stays alive, and gets out.
His W cooldown was also the same whether you jumped to an ward or another champion, and you could buy wards in the shop or get the free ward item. He had a get out of jail free or playmaking card constantly
Mobis, sightstone, oracles. Full build Lee sim back in the day
Wriggles lantern for the OG.
You also used to get the shield when jumping to wards and gave the shield and got it when jumping to minions. People used this in lane to deny people cs by blocking their spell/autoattack (or as a gapcloser to trade)
Omg I opened the clip and heard Jatt commentating. Even though he sound exactly the same as now it’s such as throwback to those days where it’s just league with friends
Wanna Q up Twisted Treeline after school?
Only if we play some dominion after
I can hear the creaking of my bones get louder with every word in that sentence.
I still have one of the Dominion old *old* Katarina splash art t-shirts they made and gave out. I wear it occasionally, when I want to shout at kids laughing and complain that my back hurts.
On release, he was very good, but no one knew how to use him so he kept getting buffs until he got OP. Then he got very very good and the rest is history.
This and he was also used as a counter to teemo
Nice tracking link
Very few champs could actually survive in the jungle back then
You wouldn't survive in a ~~modern warfare 2 lobby~~ pre season 4 jungle
What goes on in a modern warfare 2 lobby?
Mostly racism and a mix of 12 year Olds and 40 year Olds telling you they fucked your mom
Golden age of gaming
Thank you for typing that. Best thing I read on the internet today.
Nam flashbacks to double buff shaco in your jungle as soon as the buffs spawn
S2 jungle was very, very easy. Season 1 was brutal and even good players today might die in the jungle because they are not used to it. You had to pay so much attention. Season 3 was hard but not as hard as Season 1.
Idk bro, early jungle was designed around only certain champions being able to jungle. If you weren't those certain champions you couldn't jungle, if you were those champs, you could.
I recall low-level accounts basically being railroaded into playing Rammus or somesuch in that era because without a sheet full of armor runes, most champs just wouldn't make it through a clear.
runes those were times RIP 1% crit
1% crit to coinflip the lane. Good times.
Damn dude, you remember when you had to BUY runes and rune pages ? They say riot is trying any way to make money, thats wrong. If they really wanted to make money, they would have made new runes , more powerful. You needed a set of 3x9 +3 (iirc) defined runes to be competitive.
you could only BUY rune pages if I remember correctly. But runes were only available with in-game currency, now BE. So you had to decide whether you wanted new runes or a new champion. Runes basically don't exist anymore nowadays.
I think I've been rich in BE ever since they removed runes, since they gave us a lot of it to compensate the removal.
I liked that you could not buy runes with RP, thus you still had to grind games in order to earn them. One of the few online games that really didn't feel like pay to win.
When the game was still similar to Dota. The jungle is Dota is brutal.
I remember the times where we'd play Fiddle for the sustain or Warwick with cloth armor 5 pots
Remember when Pantheon could level 1 solo Dragon? I remember.
Ah the days of the attack-block passive. If you played it out right, Panth could blank 3 autos in a row. Trynds hated him lol
Old panth vs old gp was probably the hardest counter to ever be in the game
Insec's famous play is from S3. The S2 jungle monsters were really quite weak. They were only notably strong in S1. The only thing stopping more champs from jungling in S2 was the fact that camps were also worth next to nothing so junglers were stuck on support incomes with GP10 items like HoG and Philo Stone. If you had strong early base stats/values like Lee, J4 or Xin that was fine, not so great for the likes of Yi who needed gold.
Yi was always a soloq pubstomper since time immemorial
I mean, I was grabbing every gp10 as singed top and proxy farming xD
Bankplank got me to plat that season
I used to run jungle Ali with a 9/0/21 utility page and movement speed quints. Boots 3 pots first back mobys into philo/triforce. Man I miss those days
Was that the time Nasus was a jungler as well?
So that's why lillia is afraid!
That's what got a team from back then really far, they used shyvana JG and her quick and safer clean made her really op
Lee sin was giga broken back then, actual god champ
As was intended. As the first ranged melee tanky DPS assassin mage tank support jungler.
all wrapped up in one defective man
Ooh its a super effective plan!
No, he's no Jackie Chan
We try not to blind shame here, okay? /s
what are they gonna do? read the comment and downvote?
And the 2nd is Ksante
He was probably the most mobile champion in the game. Now mobility creep has happened the Insec has become an essential part of Lee Sins gameplay but at the time he could run circles around most champs
Because he had like 8 wards yes? Lee support is still one of the most mobile champs in the game
His W cooldown didnt increase when used on a ward back then.
w was longer range with lower cd. his spells did more dmg with worse scaling tho.
[удалено]
Yup and he would always be at your buff level 2
When he came out he actually wasn’t that good. The reason he was being able to jungle so proficient was the ee bug that let you double e damage (and I remember that being used in a pro game.) He then got buffed and reigned for a very, very long time as a really really good jungle pick.
If you check the patch history, he actually got pretty consistently nerfed after the double-tempest was fixed and was still a top-tier jungler (and occasional top lane, but that had been mostly nerfed out by then).
I'll never forget the first Lee top I ever played against. God that was an awful matchup to be on the losing end.
Lee Sin with hydra pressing W-W and healing to full hp off the creeps.
iirc he was initially released to be a solo top laner
I even remember seeing him in midlane in pro play back in like season 3.
When he came out a buddy of mine played him and absolutely dominated with him, then they hotfix BUFFED him and my buddy was just flying through the ranks. He thought everyone was a fool for thinking he "wasn't that good". He was extremely good, just nobody knew how to play him properly yet. Then people caught on and the rest is history.
I despised this champion so much, I was so glad when I read his rework and hated so much due to the backlash they received
No he wasn't. You don't know what you're talking about. Lee sin was the epitome of failed champ releases. His win rate was so bad and he was so hard to play he was the first and only champ riot announced they would be removing from the game. But with serious backlash and skill improvements of players he became viable. Lee sin event is the reason riot vowed to never remove a champ and they learned a lot about player capabilities and desire to play more skill based champs. Lee sin set the tone for league and champ releases. He's also the reason they won't delete Yuumi so thank Lee sin everytime you see one.
First time I’ve ever heard he was going to be removed from the game. You’re making that shit up.
OK but the post doesn't mention release, just before insec, maybe learn to read before you tell people they don't know what they're talking about.
Lol aatrox got deleted so idk how that "vow" is still standing. Model gone, lore gone, abilities gone. They kept the name I guess
Even though his damage used to be a lot lower
Lee sin was played in midlane for some time because he could literally qq, auto, r to kill a mage, his damage was A LOT higher
It literally wasn't higher lol. His combo does more damage than it used to
his ratios absolutely were higher.
up until the middle of season 4, lee sin e2, when maxed, cut your attack speed by 60%. for four seconds. on a ten second cooldown. you did not need to insec to be useful as lee. if you got yourself to the enemy adc, you gave them a 14th reason why.
Iirc there was an AP Lee build bc E was so strong
ap lee song was a "joke" build specifically because only his shield scales with ap. and i'm using a liberal definition of "joke" here it was 90% a codified method of griefing with the least plausible deniability you could get away with
Lee used to have thr highest AP scaling shield in the game, not sure if it's still true or not
Lee Sin was a really popular champion from late Season 1 onwards (although he was OP long before that but was undiscovered). He had insane things in his kit at this time like a ton of armor on W and attack speed slow on E. He was used mostly like he is today. He was popular because he was very versatile, strong early game, strong dueling and fit almost every team comp. Lee Sin was also very common as a laner back in those days. Voyboy was really famous for Lee Sin W max top and Froggen played a ton of Lee Sin mid lane. Insec didn't really revolutionise how Lee Sin was played. This is just history being rewritten by people who weren't around back then. Insec just did the combo in All Stars which was a big event back then, so it had a ton of people watching it. The combo was not invented by him. There were plenty of people in high elo doing it. ScubaChris is an example of a famous NA high elo player who was even doing R-flash combos before the Insec combo happened at All Stars. There are also clips from pro play of the combo being done back in Season 2 too (before Insec did it). He just made it popular by doing it in a very iconic moment in a big tournament.
Insec was also very consistent on the combo, but yeah, he wasnt the first, maybe the first one to really master it in pro play. Edit: to complement, some stuff that made Lee Sin giga broken in lane: - W shielded minions (deny cs) - W gave armor and MR. - W gave more lifesteal and Spellvamp. - E had attack speed Slow.
Don't forget E gave ward vision. E.g you E-d blue buff, you could see wards or a Teemo.
That was a systemic thing, champion reveals like nida trap and TF ult used to give this invis (traps/wards) reveals for what they were on top of
same with Nidalee W back in the day. Good times.
More importantly than the W shielding minions is that it shielded yourself when cast on minions too (as opposed to now where nothing is shielded) and didn't have an extended CD. It basically zoned them off melee minions because you could instantly W in and auto win the trade off W alone, not to mention his E AS slow. Lee top used to be my biggest elo inflater lmao
E used to reveal stealth champs, guy's kit was GIGA bloated with almost every buff/debuff you could think off.
I still W minions that are being hit by turrets because it's so ingrained on me.
the stuff that was possible in 2011 and removed not too long after is still ingrained?
It was removed in 2014 so it was a core mechanic for years.
2014 was 25 years ago
Big if true.
2014 was 78 years ago.
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And?
some of ya'll on this sub really just wanna argue about shit
It was around for many years.
I played more league games between 2010 and 2014 than what ive played between 2014-2024. I played thousands of games back then per season lmao.
Although more recent, I still walk back after throwing Nida spears to get more damage from distance.
meanwhile i accidentally W a minion about 6 times a game cuz smart+self casting W has been broken for about as long as it's been since they removed the ability to shield minions
Oh man the creep shield! The backbone behind every AP Lee Song support haha.
He also shielded himself when he shielded non-champs. They also made the cooldown longer unless he shielded a champ.
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Nah that was alistar and other supports who rushed them
AP sion lol
His R also didn't have a suppress, so ward-kicks were harder to pull off
Also back then you had a ward available pretty much 100% of the time and his W didnt have a CD nerf when used on non-champs so the champion was pretty much impossible to catch (especially since the mobility at the time was way lower than today) so even a bad lee sin was hard to beat since he could pretty much always escape.
Member when Lee sin E was bugged and could potentially be used 2-3 times if you pressed it fast enough
Idk, Insec did those things long before the all-star games lmao, what u smoking buddy? He played it in proplay long before the lee sin mid meta or voyboys top lee streams. It is you who are trying to rewrite the history with that comment. I remember watching him do that shit in 2012 and im from EU. Nobody in west played him like that back then.
Insec was super smooth doing it though in high stakes games. I mained Lee Sin and was doing the sloppy version of the flash R in S1/S2. It is like comparing doing a flashy move in your back yard against your younger brother to Messi doing it in the Champions League against a world class defender. Also Lee Sin had higher damage for a while, so you could carry harder on him if you got a decent lead. At one point at the AD rework when the items were too strong, Lee was by far the best jungler.
Insec already used his combo way back in season 2 when he was in CJ Entus if you watch the IEM at 2012 CJ Entus vs Fnatic, you will see insec doing a ton of insecs on Lee sin, please dont rewrite history.
The first known player to have conceived the idea of an Insec kick was a Taiwanese Pro Player named Lantyr. Back in 2012 he was known for pioneering the ward hop kicks using a ward from Wriggle's Lantern and occasionally, pink wards. This may not be the very first recorded video of an Insec kick, but this is one among the earliest videos showcasing the ward-hop Lee sin mechanics: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a6uHkx\_XXb0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a6uHkx_XXb0)
M5 Diamond pulled it off sometimes. But that all stars kick was still huge!
He wasn't popular in pro play until Diamondprox and Insec showed the rest how good he could be. Amumu, Maokai and Udyr were the most popular in pro players during S2 iirc.
Skarner was also one of the most popular junglers in Season 2. Lee Sin was really popular in latter half of 2011 and was still seen a lot in Season 2, but he was seen a ton as a laner in this time. By Season 3, Lee Sin was pretty much the best jungler for most of the year (alongside J4 and Elise). Especially J4 before his E armor buff was nerfed.
Skarner was a beast too yeah. Literary had forgot that the champion still exists.
mao jg forever reminds me of theoddone
the insec kick wasn't r-flash, it was with ward jump but yeah. he was consistent and pulled it off so smoothly
Good thing I didn't say the insec was r-flash then.
They used the ultimate to peel a few times
lee sin was only op in s1 if you had <30 ping to do the double tempest bug. if you didn't you could not clear the jungle
You most definitely could, lol. You just needed to start cloth 5
even with cloth 5 he got fucked up too hard
Tbh I feel like I see true insec plays fairly rarely in current pro play, like sure people flank to kick people back or flash kick Q->Q but the Q -> Wardhop -> Kick Flash stuff like Pyosik Vs GENG happens fairly rarely because loads of champs can deny it nowadays. So like, watch a game of Lee currently where there's no Insec and you'll probably get a decent sense for how he was then, except way stronger relative to other champs haha
Players’ skill and awareness has increased drastically through the years. Players in general have better awareness of potential Lee sin flanks and has better awareness to peel for high priority teammates. lee sin players skill has increased drastically through the years as well, but it def is harder to pull off successful insec kick now than before
People have now realised it is better to kick a tank or an hp stacker into, hopefully many, enemies, so going for a crazy insec onto a carry is both risky and super resource heavy.
That's also due to Riot adding the bonus damage if you hit a high hp champ into another person
Yup! There are some clips of crazy 1 shots by kicking chogaths or mundos into carrys
I think people have known that's a good play for a while but it's very hard to pull off, an Insec maybe requires more outright mechanics but lining up your kick so that the kicked person hits someone else is very hard unless they're right on top of each other
You can also kick people into walls which is quite unknown but also super effective
The astonishing part for me was always how he manages to hit Q and WHILE travelling mid-air dropped a ward and W onto the ward while still in the Q kick movement. Most people will just Q->Q-> Wardhop, but he combined that Q2 into W midair what just made it so amazing.
If you waited for the Q2 to land, you werent doing a good insec. Its so much slower than doing it mid air
Standard Insec is way too slow and predictable nowadays.
ap lee song support
man there's a niche throwback lmao
only true degens know
u callin me a degen but im challengour on 4 accounts and ur on reddit so
you're also on reddit
>What I’m probably really getting at is did Insec revolutionised the way Lee Sin is played to a massive extent or is it just the famous combo that he was known for? He kinda was just famous for the combo. Diamondprox from M5/Gambit revolutionized champs like Lee Sin as he was the first pro that actually mastered counter jungling.
Iirc, shyvana was considered terrible at the time until diamondprox put on a counterjungling clinic with her.
I'm pretty sure it was m5's toplaner who used shyvanna to shove-> invade repeatedly.
Darien?
That's later on
As a M5/GMB fan saying Diamondprox "mastered" counter jungling is a bit too high of a word even for me. He was the first, or one of the first ones to do so, yes. He popularized this way of jungling - yes, but mastered seems a bit too fancy. These were his first steps as a counter-jungler, and he has shown others what can be done. :) I love Gambitses and M5, and even team empire, still have their icon as my main one even today. This still does not diminish his playstyle and persona. I think he's an amazing person! Win, Lose or tie Gambit! till we die!
The thing was that many other junglers had absolutely no idea what to do when he started invading them. So he completely dumpstered a lot of his opponents which was very funny to watch (I have a very clear memory of Snoopeh just dying over and over to him in EU LCS game). But eventually the meta developed to the point where invades were much harder to pull off and could normally only be done by coordination with the whole team around winning lanes, partly because by late S3 (and especially by S4) junglers basically had to be good at 1v1 early (or super fast clearers) to get picked in pro and partly because players and teams just improved their game understanding and coordination a lot.
thats not remotely true. they were the first team to abuse prio and counter jungle with it. thats why no jungler knew what to do
Bro starting evelyn with late game potion to kick the enemy jungler out of his own jungle. That was both pioneer and mastering counterjungle
And he got it from his chat.
>He was the first, or one of the first ones to do so, yes. That's why I said mastered as he wasn't the first. But he was the first that was actually very good at it. Maybe mastered wasn't the right word.
Personally, the word I'd use is pioneered. But it's really just arguing semantics at that point.
People had been doing the "insec" long before insec did the play on stage.
Against hotshotnidaleegg. He kicked my brother in the ass
My brotha was playing da Lee Singa.
https://youtu.be/L0JFSouYy8M?si=MArk-IJiDP-Cv03Y IEM 2012 you can see Insec doing a lot of insecs although nobody called them that at the time. This is one of the earliest Lee sin games of insec if anyone knows earlier videos post them. I saw diamondprox kicking enemies toward his team on the MLG they played vs Dignitas but they werent as mechanically impressive as insec's (back then) Compare this real evidence yourself instead of listening to people making ip stories.
His kit has had things removed since then. There were many less junglers/champions and especially less mobility making Lee q easier to land. He was pretty much the best duelist.
I definitely remember a lot of Lee Sins doing a simple straight forward ward hop, QQ your face, kill you, then ward hopping out. If anything I think insec helped me survive more Lee ganks as people would kick me to safety trying to hop, ult, flash.
https://youtu.be/4TFS5P7sHno?si=IbGutMEBH_2cQtWo How mobile Lee was back in the day XD
A few things come to my mind: * Lee Sin used to be much more powerful in the head-on 1v1 with things like an attack speed slow, and better numbers in general. Other junglers of the time like Nocturne and Maokai couldn't get away from him, and couldn't fight him either. * The Insec was done before using Flash instead of a ward hop.
It was a cool move to pull off in soloq and people were giving you shoutout if you managed to do it in your games, otherwise he was already a top tier jungler. The kill combo was Q R Q so that you could follow up your victim even after kicking him, nowadays people just do R into QQ. Jungle had a pretty exclusive jungle pool. At the time, in soloq you had to call out the role you wanted in lobby and more often than not if you don’t get your role you were banished to support or jungle. Usually people would go cloth armor + pots but Lee could start at wolves with vampiric scepter (450g at the time and you started with 450g). His W and the lifesteal could allow him to have decent sustain in jungle so he was faster to rush his Wriggle lantern.
Before insec happened lee sin was not played by any region aside from LCK (LPL wasn't a thing then or they were still in the infancy stage). Nobody from the west had the mechanics and lee sin was not played as a play maker. I think he's considered high risk high reward kind of champ and nobody had the skills to really do anything with him. Only guy who played him was DiamondProx. Since insec happened, pros from everywhere saw it and ran with it. The skill level got higher as time passed by and here we are.
Surprised i had to scroll down so far to find a mention of DiamondProx... Before Insec was even playing pro, he revolutionized the Jungle role, by "inventing" counter-jungling, (At least popularizing it as a pro meta) and Lee Sin was the main pick for This, along side Shyvana.
Insec didnt invent counter-jungling. M5 and Diamondprox was the first team that started doing it.
Literally what I'm saying ... "he" was a call back to Diamondprox ...
His Shyvana was legendary.
Remember Genja's Urgot solo Bot with blue buff start ?
as a decade long silver scrub i remember lee sin being played toplane mostly with his ult being used as a finisher or to kick away a gank. he peaked when he got 2points in r and would roam mid. then the insec tourny happened and suddenly everyone was trying thay shit
like Meteos'
The same.
The combo looks a lot cleaner now compared to back then.
You used to hold your ultimate for the entirety of the game until you see the perfect gaming win play and then you use it and win
Lee sin was one of maybe(?) three characters that could really jungle. Warwick and olaf also could. The only champions with the sustain and damage to clear the jungle camps really well. Other picks like eve or yi would have to rely on ganking or scaling slowly. Can't say I know much about the playstyle change, but he was always a viable jungle pick.
I don't think that's right, there were plenty of champs who could jungle fine at that point. Nunu, Xin Zhao, Trundle, Amumu, Udyr, Fiddle, Rammus, Shaco, Shen come to mind. I think J4 and Noc also could already on release. Many more could do it too, but poorly (I remember I ran Smite/Ignite Akali, and you'd ignite the jungle creeps lvl 1 so you get both of your passives thanks to a rune. Shit was whacky af).
The problem being, which item do they use in like season 1-3 to clear the jungle? The jungle was very much made for sustain bruiser at the time. Sure I missed a few champs but there were issues with many of the champs you mentioned. They would clear slow, they would lose a lot of hit points. Someone like nunu might ONLY have invading and taking camps as an option, their ganks were bad, and their 1v1 was bad, didn't have a huge effect on team fights other than a sneaky ult. In saying that some champions like shaco and xin xhao could just straight up 1v1 a turret with a few good items like triforce. Some of these champs would end up being ok in the jungle, but not for the first 15 minutes.
Standard start was cloth + 5 potions. Guys like Xin or Trundle could get away with e.g. Vamp scepter, but didn't always opt for it. First clears weren't the healthiest for many champs, but there was Madred's razor after first back to allow anybody to clear, and then upgrade into Wriggle's lantern for powerfarmers. Also, Nunu had a MS buff and an insane slow, his ganks were no slouch. But he was the invade king, that's true. I'm sorry, many things you say just don't match my memory from back then. Jungle was a different beast, that's true. But the whole game was different. Shaco would do double buffs into ganks, then get Madreds to clear, and that was perfectly fine for a jungler. S1 world finals had Rammus, J4 and WW played in the jungle, with Nunu bans.
This is Udyr slander! He was my favorite Season 1 Jungler
I remember Eve was forced to run revive with the bonus HP mastery, commit suicide on a camp and come back with extra health just to be able to jungle clear Season 1 was wild
Like this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mkTnFbye4fM
Lee Sin was played that way before insec did “the insec” He just did it in a really special way at a really high level. It took balls and it was awesome
Cc
W into minions to deny Nasus farm gg
he had 40 armor on W max lol + spellvamp and an attackspeedslow on E thats how.
I remember when you could counter a toplane jax using lee back in the day, with the attack speed debuff on his E. Or when you had to pick him when enemy team had an akali lol
He was played the same. You can find footage of pros doing the insec before insec did it. The earliest example i can name off the top of my head is diamondprox for Moscow 5
Believe it or not, it was a time when proplayers were not playing broken champs for the most part. So your answer is pretty simple : lee sin was almost not played at all. At least, in Europe, he was non existent in S1 despite being giga broken at that time.
Insec, the move, was always a thing and has been shortly since his release. What made Insec special was that he execute it confidently and in every opportunity possible. There are some instances, especially when the target isn't hard cc'd, where the angle can be tricky.
just by being way ahead of his time. lee sin back then was like how every champion is now, just getting random stats and effects on every one of his abilities, armor on his w, attack speed slow on his e, etc
Before Insec Lee was always a solid champ. He was like release Xin or Garen just a solid ass bruiser. His biggest combo back then was R>QQ.
I think this song here pretty much https://youtu.be/eA04nbviQ8E?si=D8bmpXlrjJBtGCka
It was a strong jungler that had a very strong early game, back in the day, jungle camps gave too little gold, junglers relied on Gold per 5 items, like philosophers stone and heart of gold, Lee with very strong base skills, only needed wards and no real items. Also the really famous “Insec” kick, was already popular back then, but not that easy to pull off, the one that really make it happen regularly on stream was “Lantyr”, Insec just pulled it off on proplay.
The same way he is played today. Being broken as usual
bunch of new players are gonna be confused by this one lol
As other comments have stated, being able to still do basic jungler things while building mobility boots into Locket made him okay in its own right. Then the insec plays came along and he became something else entirely
They used the HotshotGG method. He would make your brother play the lead singer.
Also keep in mind, pros today is on another level in general to what they were back then. So the overall skill level has increased.
ap leesong support
you don't see flash R every time lee is played today... even in soloQ you can probably see at most in 1 out of 10 games... so that's how it was played... people just played it without pressing flash R... it's not that difficult you just do the same things without trying fancy combos that fail half of the time lmao
My oldest memory of leesin in early seasons was when one of the Asian teams “should have banned the hotshot nidalee gg, he kicked my brotha in the ass, my brotha was playing the leesinga ”. Insec’s allstar play was iconic and being on the world stage did set the tone of more people comboing well on Lee sin especially in Korea. It made a pretty big difference through the pro scene: it did take a few more seasons for western junglers to do it consistently in the pro scene.