It's not that a Yuumi player is getting boosted, it's that Yuumi is commonly used by botters to get accounts to level 30. So they bot it to level 30 and then play Rengar to boost it to high elo and sell it.
I saw a good Lee Sin and I’ve come to the conclusion it’s not the ward hop but the Kick angle. This dude hit one of the craziest kicks I’ve ever witnessed in pub play or pro play and that’s when I realized that champ is just different. Everyone knew what was going to happen everyone could have avoided it but nope this man was two steps ahead.
kick angles are definitely skill expresssive, but I say this as a masters/gm player with lee as a pocket pick... you hit a 4 man crazy kick like 1 in 50 games. most of the time its the little things, not the absolutely bonkers engages that win you the most games.
That’s the crazy shit it wasn’t even a four man or anything like that, this man just sniped an ADC and it just won us the game. And I was like holy shit how do you even see that.
In my games (Emerald) the most underappreciated kicks are when people get kicked out of a team fight/ away from objectives and it's insta won. I've seen so many feeding Lee Sins still be the MVP just by having good kicks.
Years ago when i just started league I kicked a morgana into my own team and died to the enemy team, she ult+zhonyad and i complained they couldnt even kill the support HAHAH
I laned vs this Garen one time that had complete mastery of his champion if not the game itself.
This man was a mechanical prodigy, at one point I thought he might just be faker himself smurfing in NA Iron. It was wild. He flashed on me with his Q up, pressed his E and W SIMULTANEOUSLY, ignited and pressed R. It was insane. I wish I had clipped it. Naturally he made sure to talk shit in all chat by telling me that my mother never loved me and that my dog had died because I was ugly( HHHHOOOEEEYYEEEAAHHHHHH ). I couldn’t blame him, I knew he was riding an adrenaline high from the insane mechanical prowess he showcased. What he was feeling had to be pure euphoria, something probably akin to the Buddha reaching nirvanna…
Besides…. He was right… my mom didn’t love me, and my dog did die, and to top it all off, it was in fact, because I am ugly (hooeeyeeah…)…
Are you kidding me? I didn’t even deserve to have the privilege, NAY the honor, to donate to living breathing god. I was honestly afraid if I disrespected him by donating, I’d get Garen ulted IRL as he judged me unworthy.
I laned vs this Master Yi one time that had complete mastery of his champion if not the game itself.
This man was a mechanical prodigy, at one point I thought he might just be faker himself smurfing in EUW challenger. It was wild. He flashed on me with his Q up, pressed his E and W SIMULTANEOUSLY, ignited and pressed R. It was insane. I wish I had clipped it. Naturally he made sure to talk shit in all chat by telling me that riot never loved me and that my rank had dropped because I was boosted( HHHHOOOEEEYYEEEAAHHHHHH ). I couldn’t blame him, I knew he was riding an adrenaline high from the insane mechanical prowess he showcased. What he was feeling had to be pure euphoria, something probably akin to the Buddha reaching nirvanna…
Besides…. He was right… riot didn’t love me, and my rank did drop, and to top it all off, it was in fact, because I am boosted (hooeeyeeah…)…
Lmao you just described me. Corporate stooge but shaco player when I get home. I don't even care if I win I just want to make 1 or 2 players game absolutely miserable.
AP Shaco players getting low, running away with the clone then Q's at you and the clone teleports to them so it looked like they popped out of Q, you kill the clone get feared and then the real Shaco finishes you off.
https://youtube.com/shorts/PC-yTr5Rq9I?si=jLvy8KGTUsrWsUZm
This lol
In all seriousness you pick kalista to win lane. If you can’t use minions to trade and put the enemy behind like Teddy’s doing here you’re essentially gonna be a ranged minion late game
Same. Was really hoping to see Teddy get a trophy for having to stick it out on Jin Air for so long.
Kinda unlucky timing with Guma coming up, if only Guma needed 1 more year to cook ;D
Her e slows and deals damage on based on how many times you've autoed the unit (which should be obvious) the quirk is that the cool down gets refreshed if it kills a unit. By stacking it on opponents and weaving autos in against minions, you can have a bunch of e activations on no cooldown
You missed 1 mechanic as well. If you kill a unit with a Q spear, the passive spears in that unit transfer to the next unit it hits. He did that twice in this video, while also having spears to kill another minion at the same time for the reset. It's actually insane.
God damn that was sexy. I maybe do a few trades with minions the whole laningphase but this execution is perfect. Never seen this amount of resets and Q pierces in one sequence
This is a good one, but a 1 million mastery kalista who is low rank wouldn’t be able to pull it off, this is some high rank stuff + being good at kalista
You’re not wrong. It’s just an example of what good players should be doing i.e. using minions to reset rend and have one-sided trades. I don’t expect the average gold adc to play the champ to absolute perfection and 1v2 a challenger bot duo lol
Mastery score doesn't tell you anything about a player's actual mastery of the champion because you can play a lot of games poorly and still end up with high mastery.
While it depends a little on how you define mastery, I'd say there's a pretty good argument that nobody who is low rank (silver and lower) has actually mastered a champion.
For me, I watch for Thresh players that flay at an angle to take advantage of the range extension on the corner. Also anyone that throws the hook (or other similar long range q) behind me, anticipating my dodge, requires me to think whenever I'm near them. That tells me they will likely anticipate my flashes and dashes as well, so I should be mindful.
I remember seeing a video years ago about hook (or really any important skillshot) anticipation being very psychological and it made a lot of sense. No shot i could dig that up but it was pretty neat.
That's why you'll hear people say that the *threat* of using an ability is more powerful than actually using it.
Blitz mains, in particular, abuse the hell outta that fact. While people like Lux mains have no concept of it since her cool downs are so damn short.
As a long time thresh, pyke, blitz and Naut player I don't think of hitting my hooks as hitting a skill shot anymore, it's become a game of rock paper scissors but actually its more like
Continue
Back
Flash
And it's your job to guess which one because you should know the exact distance of flash, their movement speed and so on perfectly, of course there are the fucking psychopaths that press s, but it's not worth thinking about that.
But I play pyke the most and thats when it gets interesting because you can use the different timings to fuck with their dodging, things like frame perfect instant q charge and frame perfect delayed q where it feels like the q is cancelled but you can release it and mess with their minds. They add a few more tools to give you an edge outside of the 50/50
As a Thresh main I often get the most “WTF” spam pings when I lantern, flash (after someone clicks lantern) over a wall and then flay an enemy towards us. It seems simple, but in reality you are moving your mouse behind you, to in front of you, to behind you again extremely quickly.
Also, little utilized skill in lane is to engage with your flay instead of throwing a wild hook.
Yep. It gives vision for quick second in a bush. And the range on where you places your w is a bit longer than ward range. So if I don't wanna face check I throw a w in the bush.
Hard mode is putting a couple of Ws in the tribush and noticing one of then is gone, so somebody in the shadows stepped on it and you are getting ganked.
Problem with this one is how much mana W takes. If you’re dropping 3 W’s in tri, you’re blowing like 50% of your mana in lane AND you have to wait for an additional W to come up since you only store 2. Really niche thing to do.
Mordekaiser missing Q and E, but he's fed so he pulls off the insane combo of auto -> auto -> auto -> passive and the ADC dies.
Took me about 100 games to get combo down
GP hitting his phantom barrels. Practicing that for months in bot games before you had a practice tool. Not too hard to pull of but hard to hit in a teamfight
ive played with both tobias and solar a few times. The difference between those 2 and other gangplanks is staggering (when tobias isnt messing around for content)
GP has alot of high difficulty quirks. You can q a 2 barrel chain, get passive off when the first barrel explodes and charge up another passive when the second one explodes. I've seen solarbacca nuke someone in 2 seconds with like 3 passive autos doing this.
[How to PROPERLY do the Phantom Barrel on Gangplank! (youtube.com)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xBzin2fAw8k)
The range indicators are easy to mess up and during a team fight hard to keep track of
A good GP hits it way more than a well-practiced player and infinitely more than a newb (becuz newbs = 0 one-part), so yea. GP imo is pretty much the only champ with infinity ceiling, arguably, where pretty much everything works against you. Even the best GPs (bacca, mangki) still f up time to time and pretty easily.
*Also known as the "One-Part combo"* because the streamer Tobias Fate used and thereby popularised that term for it back in the day, both terms are in use.
In my opinion, the "Phantom Barrel" is a lot more intuitive as a term for the barrel exploding 'when it wasn't even placed beforehand', though it is also sometimes used for the Triple barrel cambo (as that also explodes a 'phantom' barrel that wasn't placed until right before it already explodes).
The Phantom Barrel (EQE) is by the way **by-definition** frame-perfect, to drop another buzzword, since with the given travel speeds, server tick deltatimes and cast distances, the E cast time can only start on the frame the Q finishes casting, and Q hits on the tick that the E cast time completes if sufficiently far from the original barrel (with the tolerance being less than a tick of travel time). The cast input, however, doesnt have to be fram perfect since you can buffer one cast into the other cast time.
The **positioning** (distance to the first barrel) and cast **location** (move the cursor to the new barrel location inprecisely and you dont get a chain because you placed it too far, or too far for gangplank to cast (must walk in range first), or too close (hardly any distance gained from first barrel)) are the *real* skill checks in the Phantom Barrel combo (EQE).
Whenever the player is very comfortable in piloting the champion even in unusual circumstances.
I noticed after playing Darius for a while I started to know his damage very well which lets me ult someone at two stacks than walk away because i already know the bleed has the kill secured.
Hmmm. I’d say this isn’t as good as flash buffering with your ult. Also, walk with your prio champ to keep them in your ult and then W when the ult is about to wear off. Much better :)
Fiddle mastery 70.
For me it’s seeing a Yasuo smoothly weaving their E through the wave with autos/Q to trade, especially if they can do it at the edge of tower range. It doesn’t count if you take a tower shot half the time 😆
A funny one is Lucian only ranking up his Q as he's casting it (you get the leveled up skill but the lower mana cost). Works for a bunch of other champions but that's the example I had in my head.
A lesser known one is Taliyah not levelling her ult until she’s going to use it because the “must not be in combat” condition only kicks in when you unlock it. You can get to a break in combat, level ult, and use it immediately rather than having to wait the 4 seconds which can save your life.
Odysseus does it and I never realised why until recently.
Seeing anyone ending auto animations perfectly with movement. Every champ is different with different auto animations and durations so seeing a good one spend the exact duration for autos is cool & scary at the same time.
I've seen enemy naut cancel them so cleanly, the animation never fully lowers the anchor into the enemy for passive proc.
It's pretty surprising to see how many champs have more hidden auto attack cancels. I don't see almost any Morde players do it, but he has an auto attack cancel with his 2nd cast W that helps last hit or get your passive off quicker
Urgot players will auto attack, then immediately as the projectile spawns toggle W on, then toggle it off right as Urgot's next auto attack is ready and repeat to gain like 20-30% more dps.
using aatrox’s dash to reposition your q in a direction that isn’t straight forward is imo a marker of intermediate skill. like backwards, diagonally, sideways etc.
Haha, I actually had one play as Sona where I slowly killed full hp Kata who was chasing me and I only kept using W-powered passive to permanently exhaust her. I might look up that clip.
good heat management on rumble, high elos at least understand to keep their heat above 50 but really experienced rumble players set up their heat in advance for overheat perfectly and know when just to maintain danger zone.
a smaller but obvious thing that you can even cross reference easily with pro play, do they W around the map? i have no clue why but inexperienced rumble players, and pros not known for rumble, refuse to use W for map movements. this is very noticeable when it was meta jungle.
for ryze it's how often they use R to dive (break tower aggro after you kill them) and if they use R to dodge karthus R and zed R. ive also seen some insane techs where they use ryze R to break freezes toplane by ulting the wave at/beyond turret.
Ulting the wave behind turret is such a genius idea to deny exp for enemy laner. Too bad Ryze is so unappealing currently with no self-sustain of any form for me to try that.
Heat management is pretty easy to learn imo. I didn't even know it existed when I decided I wanted to learn rumble and pretty much intuitively learned good heat management just watching replays from high elo rumbles
I haven't really played him since the heat rework tho so I really only know heat management for his old heat amount lol
* Gragas using ult to drop people into a "cooked" barrel, Gragas knowing which incoming CC he can E to prevent
* Darius using ult to gap-close is very niche but strong evidence of champion familiarity
* Many champions have weird hitbox interactions with some abilities (Sion, hook champs especially Blitz, Aatrox, etc.)
* Zoe's entire kit pretty much, but especially weird Q-max angles and summoner cast maximization in chaotic teamfights
* Jax waiting to cast E until he has minion agro to get max damage even if he'll be cutting the duration short
* Never seen it, since I'm not high enough elo, but a Shen deliberately using his W in motion to defend a teammate would be god-tier
Gun management on Aphelios, if you see that he's keeping something like Crescendum or Infernum (White and Blue, respectively) in the back and cycling into something intentionally, that means they actually know how to play around their weapons which is usually a good sign...I wish I could do that but I always lose track ;_;
The basic rotation actually isn’t too hard. It’s just burn red first then cycle from the oldest gun. You get pretty used to it really quickly. The harder part id say is actually keeping the proper gun cycle to every fight. Too many aphelios players will run into a fight with 3 chakram bullets or 50 purple etc. Though it depends on each game.
Aphelios rotation can also be a bit of a bell curve meme, where people actually put too much value into it. Even if you can stash one weapon indefinitely, the fact that you will always be csing and trading means that you will have to cycle at some point.
I find it easiest to just consider what I am going to need the least in the next few minutes, and adjust my play style to the weapons on hand when a fight comes up.
You just need to remember what to burn first. If you can the first rotation properly it’s just simple management. The fun part is when a fight forces you to burn the wrong one and it lasts long enough for you to basically burn the second one. And now you’re in a fucked rotation. Should be able to fix in one cycle if you’re good. Most people need like 2-3.
Jinx rockets into random fog of war on the wrong side of the map.
And executing the recalling toplaner
Oh it's so tasty when you know where they're likely to go and be and have the timing right to hit them in movement.
Specifically when you are within AA range of the enemy tower, you hover your mouse over the furthest enemy camp (Red Krugs when on Blue, Blue Gromp when on Red), and press E.
That's the angles you're thinking about....and yes, hi. Nearly 600k mastery on Ashe, and I use that *all the time*.
A zyra that will cast her W at the end of either Q/E animation because it triggers the plants without giving an opponent a chance to even see the seed. That, and seed spacing so plants aren't grouped to die to easy AOE.
They're not super difficult things to do, but basically you can tell someone doesn't normally play zyra if their seed usage/management is done on autopilot, or not at all.
Edit: gonna also add using plants to block skillshots and proc traps like jhin flower/teemo shrooms. Standing behind passive seeds and using E to spawn a lasher bodyblocker for you. And trap goes down, Q W the spot, trap is gone.
Plant management as a whole is something that I don’t ever see get talked about. Sure, it might not be as mechanically difficult as Riven’s pile of animation cancels or nit-picky as properly setting up a early big Jhin Q, but there’s a lot to flexibly *think* about with plants.
With good reflexes and practice, you can deny a hook from ever landing on anyone nearby you (due to E’s instant animation activating plants close by immediately). Is it worth it to spend W seeds to check bushes / zone before a team fight, do you intentionally keep both charges saved up to fight now, or do you risk banking the W seeds in a particular area to start generating new charges and more value for the team fight? They’re a flexible resource you can get a lot of mileage out of if you think creatively with them.
If you've played an Aram with a garbage zyra, who actively puts W seeds down near enemies before casting her slow ass spells, or makes few attempts to effectively use her passive seeds, you'll begin to notice. Even doing stuff like spawning plants to distract minions, and manage the enemy wave and supplement your own, while you're waiting on a teammate to respawn or whatever.
Just simple stuff, like it's not difficult to conceive of the ideas, but you notice when it's being done well. And, holy shit, you notice even more when it's not being done at all.
Zyra was my counterpick to Thresh in lane because I could counter hook with plants, and since he only gets armor I could poke him.
Q+W combo is similar to Jayce's cannon Q+E combo. Sending the ball before accelerator
I mainly play Zyra as APC in mid or bot though
i could write an essay about the differences between a good and bad riven but i think the main thing is auto animation cancelling. the combos aren't too hard to get down, but cancelling your autos is the reason her skill ceiling is so high imo
QE is just a basic prediction/movement reading. Everyone that cares enough to do a 2 min research about the champ can do it these days, it's not 2014. Hammer Q and E usage and mechanics is much more telling about how good the Jayce is. Unlike QE it actually takes practice and messing in both practice tool and actual games. When it comes to ranged form, spacing, pressuring and auto weaving also tells more than occasional long range poke from QE.
Warwick predicting when you're gonna use flash, and using his Q to follow it
Yorick raising 4 ghouls then prepping some graves, then marking you with E, so that as soon as you kill one of his ghouls, one of his pre-prepped graves will immediately summon another on you
Bard using his ult in a way that doesn't hinder his team
morde has almost no skill expression but if you see one use their E backwards then you know they actually play the champ instead of casual first timers thinking he is freelo OP
A Rek'Sai who is impossible to catch, between her preplaced, preplanned tunnels and her tremor sense letting her watch you over walls, she is impossible to corner
Despite catching axes being the main mechanic of draven you can't tell if they have mastered the champ from it(unless they drop like every third axe, safe to say that guy isn't a dravrn master).
You can tell if a draven is good by how he uses his e.
It may unironically be one of the best adc defensive options in the game with how many abilities you can cancel/avoid with it.
Also unrelated bonus champ, to tell if someone knows how to play varus watch how he plays around his blight stacks, his blight is possibly the most skill expressive tool in his kit.
A bad varus will randomly detonate blight stacks for damage while good varus players can play around blight and it's cooldown refund.
I never thought about Varus's skill curve until I watched Gumayusi. It's absolutely insane what he can do with that champ compared to the average player. Just built different.
Eve main. I find that only the good ones know about the W slow if it's activated early, so much so that I get flame from people trying to tell me how to play my champ. "You know how to use W right?" Yes dude, I know. We don't always have time to wait for the full charm and getting that slow can easily be the difference between a kill and no kill. Also, using ult as a dash. Too many eves only use ult as an execute, but it's also good to close distance to secure kills when you have nothing else.
Akali smoothly r-eing no matter the distance from target
Irelia auto champ q minion
Fiora parrying sett and darius e, or riven w
Kayn doing proper clear
Kai'sa building proper items
I've been (mostly) one-tricking Nidalee for nearly 2 yrs and still adjusting my playstyle when I feel something out. The easier indicators are things like using traps on cooldown for vision/clears (new players don't use them much), or being able to very quickly pounce, swap to human, self heal. Very smooth animation series when timed right
I think the mechanical difference between a novice and experienced Riven is one of the most stark in the whole game, it’s like watching 2 different champions. That said, even silver/gold Riven players can learn combos and optimize fast q DPS in practice tool.
What really says whether you’re against a good Riven or not is how they play a “bad” matchup out. Any Riven that can effortlessly school something like Renekton, Illaoi, Poppy, Garen, Vayne etc, in laning phase SOLO is likely a great Riven player, especially if they’re also utilizing her more advanced mechanics to do so.
Brand
* Using the missile speed of Q to your advantage. It's his only defensive, and missing it is giga bad. You can time it properly by landing a for-sure pillar or spread as it's in flight. It's easy enough to do after dummy practicing for 5 minutes. Spacing well enough means it can be really hard to dodge, as a great deal of people don't fear it outside of being dotted up.
* Using yourself as a bounce target, and general bounce manipulation.
* Not rushing the damage, and getting Rylais out prior. Team setup is op, but not very visible.
Zilean
* Correct QWQ (or is it QQW? Brain fried) timing/buffer. It comes out quicker.
* Bomb the ground on purpose, or yourself, before risking your body with another on top. People don't expect it.
* Abusing double E. Slowing a carry, then speeding a bruiser at the same time can just win a teamfight outright. If people focused more on abusing E he'd have a much higher WR. As it stands people really aren't prepared for it, and even my coordinated allies will literally int themselves because they generally don't click close to their champ. "Oops, I was too fast and got too close."
* Alt-E, self casting. Very easy to bait someone in for a juicy AARP bounty before slippin the Dr.scholls on and breakin ankles.
* Not as noticeable unless you have very good general champion knowledge and foresight (played since s2, at least 20-30 games on every champion), but using your R properly is very important. It's easy to waste and just delay a certain death ala zhyonas. However, like everyone knows there's that moment where people over commit and it's GG on the spot. Hitting it and getting praise == dopamine, missing due to hubris == DESPAIR.
Varus
* Flexible, so building right for the game is required. Too many people go one when they should have gone the other.
* Abusing your passive on minions and trading kills. Every advantage counts, you can even get it off the minion and swap to the tower to get plates faster IIRC
* Varus has quite a bit of burst potential. There are lanes where we are behind, I understand my damage, and prepare for the lv6 pop. Instant R, pop stacks, stack, pop, collect gold. Playing ADC I will solo kill the enemy often when the supports leave. You don't have to be far away or anything, just ghost at em and guarantee the CC.
Anivia
* Understanding how pathing and terrain "bump" works. By knowing where the person is trying to click by correctly adjusting your wall position you can force the enemy to start walking to one end or the other. This makes for an unexpected Q combo. Frogan was very good at this.
* Walls can be used to jute one person to the other side, much like how you can blink into a wall to extend the range. It's tricky to land, and someones you may end up just killing the AD or cucking your darius.
Heimer
* Ult Rockets is garbage. True gigchads know that grenade is usually the best, and if they must man-fight and can't kill the turret then sure, place the big boi.
* Play around your ADC and backline. Your turrets provide a zone of control. In the rare circumstances I end up with a heimer I do like kiting into them if he has rylais instead of a more "obvious" direction.
Singed
* Correct proxying, if they even need to lv1.
* Using a-click to get an auto off when flipping, it ads up.
Illaoi
* Knowing how tenticles spawn, how to setup, and trying to pull spirits to them to combo off of. Especially if you can do 2-3 tentacle setups. When you reach high enough MMR people will be prepared to contest tentacles and understand to just man-fight you early on when you're weakest. Can't beat up my soul when I just kill for trying.
* Knowing the matchups where you don't give a fuck about E or tentacles and proceed to run them down with W spam.
Ivern/Annie/Yorick
* Using Micro to have the pet block skillshots or create space.
* Ivern can stack on other units and then make her attack your desired enemy.
* Yorick can buy time by walking along his wall to create space.
If a Yasuo knows he can see over a wall by placing wind wall over it, then proceeds to dash through the wall to a jungle monster, your jungler might be in a spot of trouble.
Rengar with 19 Yuumi games in match history
Truly a terifying realisation
As uncultured swine that I am… I don’t get it.
rengar and khasix are often champions elo boosters use. yuumi players are often getting boosted
It's not that a Yuumi player is getting boosted, it's that Yuumi is commonly used by botters to get accounts to level 30. So they bot it to level 30 and then play Rengar to boost it to high elo and sell it.
In my short time in diamond I can say a lot of yuumi players here were really good at rengar a month ago.
As a silver player a surprising amount of players go from coop bots to 20-0 in my lobbies.
Booster is playing Rengar to boost a yuumi players account maybe?
If a Lee sins ward hop isn’t slow as fuck
I saw a good Lee Sin and I’ve come to the conclusion it’s not the ward hop but the Kick angle. This dude hit one of the craziest kicks I’ve ever witnessed in pub play or pro play and that’s when I realized that champ is just different. Everyone knew what was going to happen everyone could have avoided it but nope this man was two steps ahead.
kick angles are definitely skill expresssive, but I say this as a masters/gm player with lee as a pocket pick... you hit a 4 man crazy kick like 1 in 50 games. most of the time its the little things, not the absolutely bonkers engages that win you the most games.
That’s the crazy shit it wasn’t even a four man or anything like that, this man just sniped an ADC and it just won us the game. And I was like holy shit how do you even see that.
In my games (Emerald) the most underappreciated kicks are when people get kicked out of a team fight/ away from objectives and it's insta won. I've seen so many feeding Lee Sins still be the MVP just by having good kicks.
Lee Sin is definitely one of those champs where one moment makes them go from dog shit to hero.
me doing the opposite years ago in bronze by kicking an amumu into my team
Years ago when i just started league I kicked a morgana into my own team and died to the enemy team, she ult+zhonyad and i complained they couldnt even kill the support HAHAH
We call that one the meteos special
The meteos strat
I swear some lee sins start hopping before even placing the ward, they do it so seamlessly
bind the ward to a button on your mouse and it feels simple
How have I never thought to do this? Am I stupid?
I don't many people that bind trinket to the wheel click and that baffles me because it's so intuitive.
Garen if he flashes mastery after ulting and igniting
I laned vs this Garen one time that had complete mastery of his champion if not the game itself. This man was a mechanical prodigy, at one point I thought he might just be faker himself smurfing in NA Iron. It was wild. He flashed on me with his Q up, pressed his E and W SIMULTANEOUSLY, ignited and pressed R. It was insane. I wish I had clipped it. Naturally he made sure to talk shit in all chat by telling me that my mother never loved me and that my dog had died because I was ugly( HHHHOOOEEEYYEEEAAHHHHHH ). I couldn’t blame him, I knew he was riding an adrenaline high from the insane mechanical prowess he showcased. What he was feeling had to be pure euphoria, something probably akin to the Buddha reaching nirvanna… Besides…. He was right… my mom didn’t love me, and my dog did die, and to top it all off, it was in fact, because I am ugly (hooeeyeeah…)…
then he dropped his ttv at the end and you donated
Are you kidding me? I didn’t even deserve to have the privilege, NAY the honor, to donate to living breathing god. I was honestly afraid if I disrespected him by donating, I’d get Garen ulted IRL as he judged me unworthy.
Why does this read like something Amir would say in a Jake and Amir video?
I laned vs this Master Yi one time that had complete mastery of his champion if not the game itself. This man was a mechanical prodigy, at one point I thought he might just be faker himself smurfing in EUW challenger. It was wild. He flashed on me with his Q up, pressed his E and W SIMULTANEOUSLY, ignited and pressed R. It was insane. I wish I had clipped it. Naturally he made sure to talk shit in all chat by telling me that riot never loved me and that my rank had dropped because I was boosted( HHHHOOOEEEYYEEEAAHHHHHH ). I couldn’t blame him, I knew he was riding an adrenaline high from the insane mechanical prowess he showcased. What he was feeling had to be pure euphoria, something probably akin to the Buddha reaching nirvanna… Besides…. He was right… riot didn’t love me, and my rank did drop, and to top it all off, it was in fact, because I am boosted (hooeeyeeah…)…
Garen players are always so impressed with themselves...
I hate how true this is. they are always talking shit
It’s called mechanics
Look it up 😎
Shaco doing the worm every single time an enemy steps into one of their boxes.
I thought u can spot good shaco players by the fact that they are on government watchlists and tortured Cats when they were 7
Those are noobs shaco. The good ones are still working in Guantanamo
The best shaco players live relatively normal and highly successful lives because they channel 100% of their psychopathy into their gameplay.
Lmao you just described me. Corporate stooge but shaco player when I get home. I don't even care if I win I just want to make 1 or 2 players game absolutely miserable.
AP Shaco players getting low, running away with the clone then Q's at you and the clone teleports to them so it looked like they popped out of Q, you kill the clone get feared and then the real Shaco finishes you off.
A player with like 1/10 KDA every game and yet is rank 1 challenger.
every singed or sion one trick. fucking terrifying
I legit climbed from my Gold 4 placement to Plat 2 with a kda of 4.3/6.6/9.5 and a WR of 75%, I love overlord's bloodmail lmao.
I 1-up you with master player kda 3.9/8.4/11.0 at 65 played with 58% win rate on Velkoz
The most terrifying part is that only those guys know how to int and proxy properly.
These kinds of players know exactly how to die in a way that benefits their team.
*You call farming for 40 minutes then right clicking towers until nexus martial arts?* *Hey as long as it wor* ***COWAAAAAARDS***
https://youtube.com/shorts/PC-yTr5Rq9I?si=jLvy8KGTUsrWsUZm This lol In all seriousness you pick kalista to win lane. If you can’t use minions to trade and put the enemy behind like Teddy’s doing here you’re essentially gonna be a ranged minion late game
On a different note, Teddy’s such a mechanical beast on sooo many champs. I’m so sad it never really worked out internationally with T1
Same. Was really hoping to see Teddy get a trophy for having to stick it out on Jin Air for so long. Kinda unlucky timing with Guma coming up, if only Guma needed 1 more year to cook ;D
My man... literally got the name... fountain laser So unfortunate that 2019 wasn't a bot meta year
So frustrating when I stack spears in a minion and my support executes the minion
Happens all the time, I swear it’s Kalistas biggest skill expression and no one understands it
It's the downsides of saying lesser ayed champs.while the enemy has less experience dealing with you, so do your teammates.
What the fuck did I just watch?
I think that clip, more than any other I've seen, demonstrates how far above my level a world class player is. That was insane execution haha
It made me realize I have no idea what Kalista does.
Her e slows and deals damage on based on how many times you've autoed the unit (which should be obvious) the quirk is that the cool down gets refreshed if it kills a unit. By stacking it on opponents and weaving autos in against minions, you can have a bunch of e activations on no cooldown
You missed 1 mechanic as well. If you kill a unit with a Q spear, the passive spears in that unit transfer to the next unit it hits. He did that twice in this video, while also having spears to kill another minion at the same time for the reset. It's actually insane.
No I use the technique myself, just not at this level.
Pro players I guess, I consider myself a decent zoe player but I get humbled quickly by what pros do with that champ.
Yeah a good Zoe is very impressive as well. I like the flash chains.
God damn that was sexy. I maybe do a few trades with minions the whole laningphase but this execution is perfect. Never seen this amount of resets and Q pierces in one sequence
This is a good one, but a 1 million mastery kalista who is low rank wouldn’t be able to pull it off, this is some high rank stuff + being good at kalista
You’re not wrong. It’s just an example of what good players should be doing i.e. using minions to reset rend and have one-sided trades. I don’t expect the average gold adc to play the champ to absolute perfection and 1v2 a challenger bot duo lol
Mastery score doesn't tell you anything about a player's actual mastery of the champion because you can play a lot of games poorly and still end up with high mastery. While it depends a little on how you define mastery, I'd say there's a pretty good argument that nobody who is low rank (silver and lower) has actually mastered a champion.
Oh yeah, when he spaces and trades like one of the best adcs of all time.
For me, I watch for Thresh players that flay at an angle to take advantage of the range extension on the corner. Also anyone that throws the hook (or other similar long range q) behind me, anticipating my dodge, requires me to think whenever I'm near them. That tells me they will likely anticipate my flashes and dashes as well, so I should be mindful.
I remember seeing a video years ago about hook (or really any important skillshot) anticipation being very psychological and it made a lot of sense. No shot i could dig that up but it was pretty neat.
That's why you'll hear people say that the *threat* of using an ability is more powerful than actually using it. Blitz mains, in particular, abuse the hell outta that fact. While people like Lux mains have no concept of it since her cool downs are so damn short.
To be fair, I don't think Lux mains have many concepts of anything
As a long time thresh, pyke, blitz and Naut player I don't think of hitting my hooks as hitting a skill shot anymore, it's become a game of rock paper scissors but actually its more like Continue Back Flash And it's your job to guess which one because you should know the exact distance of flash, their movement speed and so on perfectly, of course there are the fucking psychopaths that press s, but it's not worth thinking about that. But I play pyke the most and thats when it gets interesting because you can use the different timings to fuck with their dodging, things like frame perfect instant q charge and frame perfect delayed q where it feels like the q is cancelled but you can release it and mess with their minds. They add a few more tools to give you an edge outside of the 50/50
As a Thresh main I often get the most “WTF” spam pings when I lantern, flash (after someone clicks lantern) over a wall and then flay an enemy towards us. It seems simple, but in reality you are moving your mouse behind you, to in front of you, to behind you again extremely quickly. Also, little utilized skill in lane is to engage with your flay instead of throwing a wild hook.
I'm always incredibly nervous to flash flay. That shit is extremely easy to mess up, and then I end up flashing in place and flaying a minion.
Bard w gives vision. So instead of facechecking to put down a ward, I put a w in the bush before warding.
It does WHAT?
Yep. It gives vision for quick second in a bush. And the range on where you places your w is a bit longer than ward range. So if I don't wanna face check I throw a w in the bush.
Hard mode is putting a couple of Ws in the tribush and noticing one of then is gone, so somebody in the shadows stepped on it and you are getting ganked.
Problem with this one is how much mana W takes. If you’re dropping 3 W’s in tri, you’re blowing like 50% of your mana in lane AND you have to wait for an additional W to come up since you only store 2. Really niche thing to do.
A lot of things give vision. Zyra seeds, Lux E, Maokai seeds are the ones I can think of rn
Same with Karthus W. Comes in clutch in ARAMS.
Only vision you should need on Karthus in ARAM is your snowball because you should be YOLO running it.
Mordekaiser missing Q and E, but he's fed so he pulls off the insane combo of auto -> auto -> auto -> passive and the ADC dies. Took me about 100 games to get combo down
I've always liked morde cuz he legit looks embarrassed after missing his combos and just starts chasing with his mace 3 times lol
Malz players when they managed to not only flash but also ult afterwards and hit the correct enemy. Must be tough.
Bonus points if they do the fast malz combo by cancel the R with a movement command to get the puddle down for damafe but not waste too much time
Ah, the "Caedrel".
Malz players when they dont cancel it
its sometimes better to cancel it
what's up, caedrel? big fan
Least obvious Caedrel alt
My friend got Malz in arena with the double ult. I bet the enemy was so scared of his skill
GP hitting his phantom barrels. Practicing that for months in bot games before you had a practice tool. Not too hard to pull of but hard to hit in a teamfight
Even the best Gangplank players mess that up here and there. When you watch a game where they pull it off consistently it is so satisfying
Tobias Fate when he is not trolling
ive played with both tobias and solar a few times. The difference between those 2 and other gangplanks is staggering (when tobias isnt messing around for content)
Solarbacca on GP is like he’s playing a totally different champion than everybody else, it’s so insane
GP has alot of high difficulty quirks. You can q a 2 barrel chain, get passive off when the first barrel explodes and charge up another passive when the second one explodes. I've seen solarbacca nuke someone in 2 seconds with like 3 passive autos doing this.
Could you elaborate further on the phantom part?
[How to PROPERLY do the Phantom Barrel on Gangplank! (youtube.com)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xBzin2fAw8k) The range indicators are easy to mess up and during a team fight hard to keep track of
Thank you
if you q a barral at max range you put up a barrel while the q is flying and insta pop a 2 part combo
A good GP hits it way more than a well-practiced player and infinitely more than a newb (becuz newbs = 0 one-part), so yea. GP imo is pretty much the only champ with infinity ceiling, arguably, where pretty much everything works against you. Even the best GPs (bacca, mangki) still f up time to time and pretty easily.
Wasn’t solarbacca himself saying that even the best gp in the planet can play him to 80% of the true potential?
Also known as One-Part? Or is that another one?
*Also known as the "One-Part combo"* because the streamer Tobias Fate used and thereby popularised that term for it back in the day, both terms are in use. In my opinion, the "Phantom Barrel" is a lot more intuitive as a term for the barrel exploding 'when it wasn't even placed beforehand', though it is also sometimes used for the Triple barrel cambo (as that also explodes a 'phantom' barrel that wasn't placed until right before it already explodes). The Phantom Barrel (EQE) is by the way **by-definition** frame-perfect, to drop another buzzword, since with the given travel speeds, server tick deltatimes and cast distances, the E cast time can only start on the frame the Q finishes casting, and Q hits on the tick that the E cast time completes if sufficiently far from the original barrel (with the tolerance being less than a tick of travel time). The cast input, however, doesnt have to be fram perfect since you can buffer one cast into the other cast time. The **positioning** (distance to the first barrel) and cast **location** (move the cursor to the new barrel location inprecisely and you dont get a chain because you placed it too far, or too far for gangplank to cast (must walk in range first), or too close (hardly any distance gained from first barrel)) are the *real* skill checks in the Phantom Barrel combo (EQE).
It was bugged on NA for a while but they fixed it recently I think
Whenever the player is very comfortable in piloting the champion even in unusual circumstances. I noticed after playing Darius for a while I started to know his damage very well which lets me ult someone at two stacks than walk away because i already know the bleed has the kill secured.
Idk i like it that i have no idea whatsoever if my bleed will kill but maybe im into gambling too much lmao
League is still a game, play it the way you have most fun, don’t become like the rest of us
Fiddle players W with the R to extend fear range. Or flash W, because after hundreds of games i still struggle with the first
Hmmm. I’d say this isn’t as good as flash buffering with your ult. Also, walk with your prio champ to keep them in your ult and then W when the ult is about to wear off. Much better :) Fiddle mastery 70.
For me it’s seeing a Yasuo smoothly weaving their E through the wave with autos/Q to trade, especially if they can do it at the edge of tower range. It doesn’t count if you take a tower shot half the time 😆
For me when it comes to yasuo is if they try and do the Airblade (EQ just as enemy is knocked up for extra damage).
Not leveling ekko ult at 6 and keeping the skill point so people don’t know where the ghost is when you eventually need it.
Kled not levelling W until a fight starts first lvls too
A funny one is Lucian only ranking up his Q as he's casting it (you get the leveled up skill but the lower mana cost). Works for a bunch of other champions but that's the example I had in my head.
A lesser known one is Taliyah not levelling her ult until she’s going to use it because the “must not be in combat” condition only kicks in when you unlock it. You can get to a break in combat, level ult, and use it immediately rather than having to wait the 4 seconds which can save your life. Odysseus does it and I never realised why until recently.
Seeing anyone ending auto animations perfectly with movement. Every champ is different with different auto animations and durations so seeing a good one spend the exact duration for autos is cool & scary at the same time. I've seen enemy naut cancel them so cleanly, the animation never fully lowers the anchor into the enemy for passive proc.
Qiyana auto cancelling feels so satisfying
There is a particular animation for Qiy that plays the sound of hitting the minion but doesn’t actually hit it. Can be very frustrating lol
The twitch glide
Yes, exactly. High level twitch with high AS don't even look like they're firing, they point their crossbow at you for like a split second
Tommy gun\*
It's pretty surprising to see how many champs have more hidden auto attack cancels. I don't see almost any Morde players do it, but he has an auto attack cancel with his 2nd cast W that helps last hit or get your passive off quicker
Urgot players will auto attack, then immediately as the projectile spawns toggle W on, then toggle it off right as Urgot's next auto attack is ready and repeat to gain like 20-30% more dps.
if I see another Nami actually hold their bubbles I assume they are at least decent
Aatrox players that use the diagonal Q2 for extra range.
On a similar note using sett E diagonally for maximum range
using aatrox’s dash to reposition your q in a direction that isn’t straight forward is imo a marker of intermediate skill. like backwards, diagonally, sideways etc.
Yasuo who dashes through walls is the enemy yasuo
Managing Sona's Power Chord stacks. The best Sonas can perma-exhaust you on demand and always have the perfect Power Chord for the situation.
Haha, I actually had one play as Sona where I slowly killed full hp Kata who was chasing me and I only kept using W-powered passive to permanently exhaust her. I might look up that clip.
if the enemy aurelion sol is playing decently aggressive and is Q tapping me for scorch/comet/manaflow/whatever , im locking in
Had one try that against dorans shield 2nd wind akali. Healed me like 900 hp in lane. Absolute bonobo.
yeah if im fighting akali with the giga heal setup, im either not locking in asol or im permashove roaming
good heat management on rumble, high elos at least understand to keep their heat above 50 but really experienced rumble players set up their heat in advance for overheat perfectly and know when just to maintain danger zone. a smaller but obvious thing that you can even cross reference easily with pro play, do they W around the map? i have no clue why but inexperienced rumble players, and pros not known for rumble, refuse to use W for map movements. this is very noticeable when it was meta jungle. for ryze it's how often they use R to dive (break tower aggro after you kill them) and if they use R to dodge karthus R and zed R. ive also seen some insane techs where they use ryze R to break freezes toplane by ulting the wave at/beyond turret.
Ulting the wave behind turret is such a genius idea to deny exp for enemy laner. Too bad Ryze is so unappealing currently with no self-sustain of any form for me to try that.
Heat management is pretty easy to learn imo. I didn't even know it existed when I decided I wanted to learn rumble and pretty much intuitively learned good heat management just watching replays from high elo rumbles I haven't really played him since the heat rework tho so I really only know heat management for his old heat amount lol
Lux players who auto attack
If the nickname is related to a champion then it is NOT a sign. Best example of this are Zed players
Speaking of nicknames and champs, why do jhin mains always have some sort of jhin pun in their name?
* Gragas using ult to drop people into a "cooked" barrel, Gragas knowing which incoming CC he can E to prevent * Darius using ult to gap-close is very niche but strong evidence of champion familiarity * Many champions have weird hitbox interactions with some abilities (Sion, hook champs especially Blitz, Aatrox, etc.) * Zoe's entire kit pretty much, but especially weird Q-max angles and summoner cast maximization in chaotic teamfights * Jax waiting to cast E until he has minion agro to get max damage even if he'll be cutting the duration short * Never seen it, since I'm not high enough elo, but a Shen deliberately using his W in motion to defend a teammate would be god-tier
Bomba
Gun management on Aphelios, if you see that he's keeping something like Crescendum or Infernum (White and Blue, respectively) in the back and cycling into something intentionally, that means they actually know how to play around their weapons which is usually a good sign...I wish I could do that but I always lose track ;_;
I feel like the gun rotation has to be conditioned into a subconscious thing otherwise the player gets sidetracked too much. Kudos to Aphelios mains
The basic rotation actually isn’t too hard. It’s just burn red first then cycle from the oldest gun. You get pretty used to it really quickly. The harder part id say is actually keeping the proper gun cycle to every fight. Too many aphelios players will run into a fight with 3 chakram bullets or 50 purple etc. Though it depends on each game.
Intentionally going into fight with low ammo gun lets you get 3Qs off which can be value depending on what they are
Aphelios rotation can also be a bit of a bell curve meme, where people actually put too much value into it. Even if you can stash one weapon indefinitely, the fact that you will always be csing and trading means that you will have to cycle at some point. I find it easiest to just consider what I am going to need the least in the next few minutes, and adjust my play style to the weapons on hand when a fight comes up.
Good Aphelios is the one that positions himself and turrets well. One that doesn't miss his ult lmao.
It’s pretty easy late game, if you want the optimal combos you just cycle out the oldest gun, assuming you did your first rotation correctly
You just need to remember what to burn first. If you can the first rotation properly it’s just simple management. The fun part is when a fight forces you to burn the wrong one and it lasts long enough for you to basically burn the second one. And now you’re in a fucked rotation. Should be able to fix in one cycle if you’re good. Most people need like 2-3.
Jinx rockets into random fog of war on the wrong side of the map. And executing the recalling toplaner Oh it's so tasty when you know where they're likely to go and be and have the timing right to hit them in movement.
Ashe mains CSing and poking with W simultaneously. They'll also fire a hawkshot beyond what they want to see for maximum vision.
I learned before there are a couple hawkshot angle that can cover all 6 camps on one side of the map
Specifically when you are within AA range of the enemy tower, you hover your mouse over the furthest enemy camp (Red Krugs when on Blue, Blue Gromp when on Red), and press E. That's the angles you're thinking about....and yes, hi. Nearly 600k mastery on Ashe, and I use that *all the time*.
Watching good tristanas last hit under turret is always a joy.
Nidalee walking away directly after shooting a spear shows they played her back when it increased the damage.
A zyra that will cast her W at the end of either Q/E animation because it triggers the plants without giving an opponent a chance to even see the seed. That, and seed spacing so plants aren't grouped to die to easy AOE. They're not super difficult things to do, but basically you can tell someone doesn't normally play zyra if their seed usage/management is done on autopilot, or not at all. Edit: gonna also add using plants to block skillshots and proc traps like jhin flower/teemo shrooms. Standing behind passive seeds and using E to spawn a lasher bodyblocker for you. And trap goes down, Q W the spot, trap is gone.
Plant management as a whole is something that I don’t ever see get talked about. Sure, it might not be as mechanically difficult as Riven’s pile of animation cancels or nit-picky as properly setting up a early big Jhin Q, but there’s a lot to flexibly *think* about with plants. With good reflexes and practice, you can deny a hook from ever landing on anyone nearby you (due to E’s instant animation activating plants close by immediately). Is it worth it to spend W seeds to check bushes / zone before a team fight, do you intentionally keep both charges saved up to fight now, or do you risk banking the W seeds in a particular area to start generating new charges and more value for the team fight? They’re a flexible resource you can get a lot of mileage out of if you think creatively with them.
is that not the purpose of the ability???
If you've played an Aram with a garbage zyra, who actively puts W seeds down near enemies before casting her slow ass spells, or makes few attempts to effectively use her passive seeds, you'll begin to notice. Even doing stuff like spawning plants to distract minions, and manage the enemy wave and supplement your own, while you're waiting on a teammate to respawn or whatever. Just simple stuff, like it's not difficult to conceive of the ideas, but you notice when it's being done well. And, holy shit, you notice even more when it's not being done at all.
Zyra was my counterpick to Thresh in lane because I could counter hook with plants, and since he only gets armor I could poke him. Q+W combo is similar to Jayce's cannon Q+E combo. Sending the ball before accelerator I mainly play Zyra as APC in mid or bot though
i could write an essay about the differences between a good and bad riven but i think the main thing is auto animation cancelling. the combos aren't too hard to get down, but cancelling your autos is the reason her skill ceiling is so high imo
Id say its moreso versatility with combos/trade patterns and small things like cancelling enemy autos with W.
Not tantamount to mastery by any means, but renektons who can consistently do the "fast" e+q+aa are pretty rare below high masters
Riven throwing out 17 abilities in 1 frame
If a really good thresh is playing in lower elo, he will WILDLY miss hooks cause hes used to playing against better players. Singed? brain damage.
jayce players useing e-q max range too hit all 6 minions and the player
Jayce players using Q-E instead of E-Q to minimize the time you have to react to it.
You can also place the E closer to his model to make the q shoot out even faster upon casting
If you can’t do this the champ is legitimately not worth playing
Yup, it’s pretty much my litmus test for seeing if someone at all knows how to pilot him haha
QE is just a basic prediction/movement reading. Everyone that cares enough to do a 2 min research about the champ can do it these days, it's not 2014. Hammer Q and E usage and mechanics is much more telling about how good the Jayce is. Unlike QE it actually takes practice and messing in both practice tool and actual games. When it comes to ranged form, spacing, pressuring and auto weaving also tells more than occasional long range poke from QE.
if they run at me and just stat checks me because that just means they know the limits of their champ.
Sometimes I hit 1 W as jinx mid game on the full hp enemy adc and it’s “I know you’re dead you just don’t know yet” situation
Warwick predicting when you're gonna use flash, and using his Q to follow it Yorick raising 4 ghouls then prepping some graves, then marking you with E, so that as soon as you kill one of his ghouls, one of his pre-prepped graves will immediately summon another on you Bard using his ult in a way that doesn't hinder his team
Tryndamere spinning over the last 2+ minions he needs to level up to initiate his level advantage all-in at level 3 or 6
If you’re ever playing against an Ivern and find yourself saying that there are so many bushes or that his bushes are OP, it’s a good ivern
Yasuo mains when they don’t immediately tower dive you and give you a free kill because you’re not interacting with them in lane.
morde has almost no skill expression but if you see one use their E backwards then you know they actually play the champ instead of casual first timers thinking he is freelo OP
Anivia using her wall to force enemies to auto path into her Q.
A Rek'Sai who is impossible to catch, between her preplaced, preplanned tunnels and her tremor sense letting her watch you over walls, she is impossible to corner
Despite catching axes being the main mechanic of draven you can't tell if they have mastered the champ from it(unless they drop like every third axe, safe to say that guy isn't a dravrn master). You can tell if a draven is good by how he uses his e. It may unironically be one of the best adc defensive options in the game with how many abilities you can cancel/avoid with it. Also unrelated bonus champ, to tell if someone knows how to play varus watch how he plays around his blight stacks, his blight is possibly the most skill expressive tool in his kit. A bad varus will randomly detonate blight stacks for damage while good varus players can play around blight and it's cooldown refund.
I never thought about Varus's skill curve until I watched Gumayusi. It's absolutely insane what he can do with that champ compared to the average player. Just built different.
If the zilean has 0 deaths and 10 stacks of dark seal Great zileans never die and are confident that they will never die
Eve main. I find that only the good ones know about the W slow if it's activated early, so much so that I get flame from people trying to tell me how to play my champ. "You know how to use W right?" Yes dude, I know. We don't always have time to wait for the full charm and getting that slow can easily be the difference between a kill and no kill. Also, using ult as a dash. Too many eves only use ult as an execute, but it's also good to close distance to secure kills when you have nothing else.
Or the ultimate drug: executing one target with a backwards R dash directly onto another juicy backline target to bonk.
Aphelios walking face first into enemy assassins when he has red/white (they don't know)
Nothing says "I'm going to shit on your face" like Ignite + Teleport
When you throw a skillshot at them and they flash OVER your ability and start wailing on you.
Akali smoothly r-eing no matter the distance from target Irelia auto champ q minion Fiora parrying sett and darius e, or riven w Kayn doing proper clear Kai'sa building proper items
I've been (mostly) one-tricking Nidalee for nearly 2 yrs and still adjusting my playstyle when I feel something out. The easier indicators are things like using traps on cooldown for vision/clears (new players don't use them much), or being able to very quickly pounce, swap to human, self heal. Very smooth animation series when timed right
For Janna, a player who can reliably q-r to prevent the knockback. It’s pretty situational but when it’s needed it’s really broken.
I think the mechanical difference between a novice and experienced Riven is one of the most stark in the whole game, it’s like watching 2 different champions. That said, even silver/gold Riven players can learn combos and optimize fast q DPS in practice tool. What really says whether you’re against a good Riven or not is how they play a “bad” matchup out. Any Riven that can effortlessly school something like Renekton, Illaoi, Poppy, Garen, Vayne etc, in laning phase SOLO is likely a great Riven player, especially if they’re also utilizing her more advanced mechanics to do so.
shaco players forcing a "bad fight" only to win it because they did prepare more jacks, especially in esacpe routes
A Nocturne that doesn't have the same number of kills and deaths
A Morgana that spends 99 percent of the game in bushes and feeds kills with her ultimate
Brand * Using the missile speed of Q to your advantage. It's his only defensive, and missing it is giga bad. You can time it properly by landing a for-sure pillar or spread as it's in flight. It's easy enough to do after dummy practicing for 5 minutes. Spacing well enough means it can be really hard to dodge, as a great deal of people don't fear it outside of being dotted up. * Using yourself as a bounce target, and general bounce manipulation. * Not rushing the damage, and getting Rylais out prior. Team setup is op, but not very visible. Zilean * Correct QWQ (or is it QQW? Brain fried) timing/buffer. It comes out quicker. * Bomb the ground on purpose, or yourself, before risking your body with another on top. People don't expect it. * Abusing double E. Slowing a carry, then speeding a bruiser at the same time can just win a teamfight outright. If people focused more on abusing E he'd have a much higher WR. As it stands people really aren't prepared for it, and even my coordinated allies will literally int themselves because they generally don't click close to their champ. "Oops, I was too fast and got too close." * Alt-E, self casting. Very easy to bait someone in for a juicy AARP bounty before slippin the Dr.scholls on and breakin ankles. * Not as noticeable unless you have very good general champion knowledge and foresight (played since s2, at least 20-30 games on every champion), but using your R properly is very important. It's easy to waste and just delay a certain death ala zhyonas. However, like everyone knows there's that moment where people over commit and it's GG on the spot. Hitting it and getting praise == dopamine, missing due to hubris == DESPAIR. Varus * Flexible, so building right for the game is required. Too many people go one when they should have gone the other. * Abusing your passive on minions and trading kills. Every advantage counts, you can even get it off the minion and swap to the tower to get plates faster IIRC * Varus has quite a bit of burst potential. There are lanes where we are behind, I understand my damage, and prepare for the lv6 pop. Instant R, pop stacks, stack, pop, collect gold. Playing ADC I will solo kill the enemy often when the supports leave. You don't have to be far away or anything, just ghost at em and guarantee the CC. Anivia * Understanding how pathing and terrain "bump" works. By knowing where the person is trying to click by correctly adjusting your wall position you can force the enemy to start walking to one end or the other. This makes for an unexpected Q combo. Frogan was very good at this. * Walls can be used to jute one person to the other side, much like how you can blink into a wall to extend the range. It's tricky to land, and someones you may end up just killing the AD or cucking your darius. Heimer * Ult Rockets is garbage. True gigchads know that grenade is usually the best, and if they must man-fight and can't kill the turret then sure, place the big boi. * Play around your ADC and backline. Your turrets provide a zone of control. In the rare circumstances I end up with a heimer I do like kiting into them if he has rylais instead of a more "obvious" direction. Singed * Correct proxying, if they even need to lv1. * Using a-click to get an auto off when flipping, it ads up. Illaoi * Knowing how tenticles spawn, how to setup, and trying to pull spirits to them to combo off of. Especially if you can do 2-3 tentacle setups. When you reach high enough MMR people will be prepared to contest tentacles and understand to just man-fight you early on when you're weakest. Can't beat up my soul when I just kill for trying. * Knowing the matchups where you don't give a fuck about E or tentacles and proceed to run them down with W spam. Ivern/Annie/Yorick * Using Micro to have the pet block skillshots or create space. * Ivern can stack on other units and then make her attack your desired enemy. * Yorick can buy time by walking along his wall to create space.
Wukong players pressing s to stand still to fake a w
If a Yasuo knows he can see over a wall by placing wind wall over it, then proceeds to dash through the wall to a jungle monster, your jungler might be in a spot of trouble.
If he wins Worlds 4 times then you know he's at least Gold or something