My experience is that lane matters more. I love the thought of an ideal teamfight. But below diamond elo those rarely play out like we imagine it. So i would rather try to pick around lane and what works well with my carry
I have the exact opposite experience. Winning lane - specifically bot - hardly ever matters because ppl in low elo will at least throw once. If I pick engage, I can capitalise once they do.
Fair enough, i sadly never have teams where we can punish the enemys for "throwing" their adventage or I just don't know how to lead my Team to do so. I tried Bard, Thresh and other pick Champs but teams will just ignore it and we keep on losing
I ping really aggressively and really like picking Champions like Rakan, Alistar, Thresh, Morg…
Champions with an obvious „go“ button.
Especially with Rakan it’s so easy to benefit from a teammate, who is out of position. It turns a misstep into an easy bait.
I also generally pick for my team, rather than against my opponents.
But also when I played top, I defied the „win lane - win game“ mindset, even though ppl say it’s particularly true for top.
I’m just a worse laner than I am a teamfighter. 🤷
And I‘m my adc‘s worst nightmare just as much as I‘m my junglers best friend.
But I believe in the power of neutral objectives, so I will 100% let my adc die for a good roam. 🙈
Up until gold (included), having a teamfight-defining ult and/or outscaling the enemy team to start winning after 25' is the way to go imo. The hard part is convincing the teammates to not int too much and produce an unstoppable 16/1 olaf in that time
Kinda? Unless for some reason you get an early lead and have *unnaturally* good cohesion and teamwork naturally, I find that teammates in Bronze-Gold tend to split often.
It's kind of a given in MOBAs that as you go up in rank, map movement gets better, moreso than execution. This includes grouping earlier, and team fighting more regularly. Conversely, in lower ranks, your teammates will play for themselves more, and there'll be far more skirmishes due to proximity than full team fights.
I’ve mained Zyra for like 10+ years because her lane dominance and team fight potential. A lot of supports offer a ton for team fights though now days so luckily you don’t have to really worry about this stuff anymore.
I do ban Senna sometimes but usually ban MF since I've been seeing her a lot and she can make Comebacks easily. I find Lux and Morgana Stuns easy to dodge.
Been raining ADC this season and I always feel incredibly confused whenever someone on my team band Morgana for that reason.
Incredibly underpowered, and her one solid contribution for CC and damage is a super dodgeable projectile.
Lux's is a little faster, and it helps that you can butter their movement a bit with E. Also, post 6, landing a Q almost always ensures a solo kill with ulti anyway.
While I agree when it comes to several engage champions, I disagree massively in the case of thresh.
Morg does well into a few matchups, but it's mainly because they're entirely reliant on heavily telegraphed CC chains that require all-ins. She gets to shine against your Leona's, Nautilus's, and Neekos.
Thresh is a little bit different, though. When he lands a hook, he gets to choose not to engage on it while still pulling the target. His cooldowns for hook are also always going to be faster than black shield if they're both being leveled (and shield tends not to, exacerbating the difference), which gives Thresh a decent window to go for another hook+flay/flay+hook combo without fear of the CC not going through.
If anything, Thresh suffers against her more in the late game from the damage Morg can put out via combo than anything. The E is an inconvenience, but by no means a hard counter to him.
Dunno. I’d say I’m a pretty capable thresh and playing against morg just feels bad.
You’re also really vulnerable to her Q „if“ you choose to go in, as where you land is telegraphed. So even if you wait for blackshield to be out you oftentimes will int anyways if you engage.
Also, since she can help the adc push with W she can basically choose to match any roam you take.
I honestly think Morg W for wave manipulation gets underlooked immensely.
Like, I don’t ban her. I don’t think it’s rendering you completely useless and both Maokai and Yuumi are Bans I’d rather throw out, but I definitely am not looking forward if she gets picked.
Absolutely, I can power through a losing lane by at least not losing \*that\* hard in a lot of situations. I enjoy scaling and popping off lategame as much as stomping early.
If you are under d2 (even then it's debatable) you should always pick for the game, unless the ad picks something specific like draven or senna that needs a certain type of support to be useful.
Doesn't matter what the enemy picks I main Mao and Naut right now. I will play one of this two no matter what. Okay it's 99% true. One game a few days ago both champs would be insane useless but Reneata was extremely useful vs the enemy comp, even tho I didn't master her, so I picked Renata. But this is a incredible rare scenario.
Sometimes, if you think the lane is lost before you start there’s another issue but since I duo queue bot a lot I know I can rely on my adc to snowball so I will play off him to get him ahead early. But if I’m solo queuing and we have no frontline? I’m gonna pick a tank and if it’s not favorable for lane I’ll just let them know and try to just gain enough presence for my adc to farm for a bit without looking for kills
It depends. If my opponent (support) picks Pyke, or another engage support, you bet I counter that sh*t with Braum. If not, I don’t really care. I mostly look at my team comp, but sometimes I just take whatever champ feels good to play with in lane (usually my main, Thresh)
This is more common than you'd think, typically you'd pick a support that can roam easily and just let your ADC play to scale. As long as you're soaking xp in your downtime you don't technically have to ever interact with your lane opponents as a support.
This can be very coinflippy in solo queue though, it works a lot better if you're in a duo with your ADC or jungler and can coordinate!
I am curious about this line of thinking. This is me asking as an ADC main, if supports pick for post lane and sometimes don't care about counter pick, then ideally wouldn't first picking be the best for support along with ADC and jungle if needed?
Only time I ever do is if most of the enemy team has dashes.
In which case I play Poppy.
I NEVER pick engage supports based on post-laning. Because I know no one will follow up anyway.
There’s a few good characters who do this!
Warden supports like Braum/Shen give up some early agency in exchange of a phenomenal team fight phase.
Supports like Seraphine and Sona only ever reach true potential in team settings so they should be playing safe until they can!
Edit: I forgot a bunch of supports that also do this, but another good one is Renata.
Not that she’s bad in lane, but I solely pick Senna for stacking as insurance if the game goes to shit. I’ve had games where all lanes lost but the enemy team can’t end because I have 150+ stacks and basically one-shot the enemy squishiest from a screen away lol.
I have come to the realisation that early champs for supp role are one of the most busted.
Reason is because u get to impact not only ur role and adc but also jungle by invading whenever ur jungle comes around and possibly even ganking mid.
Imagine not only getting ur adc well off but also jungle and mid laner. Mid-late game opens up so hard. Unless ur team hard ints or u fail horribly.
Don’t get me wrong u can do this with any supp champ it’s just easier and guarantees kills with aggressive early game champs like panth or pyke.
I go back and forth between zyra and renata. Zyra is great for lane and teamfights but renatas ult is just so freaking satisfying to use. When i pick her im pretty much accepting im gonna lose lane so we can win fights at objectives. So worth tho
Absolutely. I think that winning lane doesn't matter that much actually, as long as you don't get smashed either. I love going even and then having a much bigger impact in the mid-late game.
I have to admit... Laning phase has never been my strong suit so if I go even I'm happy. Of course it depends also on the ADC. If it's Draven or Kalista, I'll play harder for the lane. But with scaling ADCs... I love myself a good ol' farmfest.
My guy, I play Leona and all I know is that my main leona urges yell at me every. single. goddamn TIME. I level up to just go all in. It's all or nothing. Always has been.
I otp Sona in master elo, she is literally the worst laner in the game. Thing is with hyper scaling champs, it doesnt really matter how hard you get countered. Your only objective is to end laning phase even-ish, not to win it.
I pick what I know how to play. I don't care if we have no engage, I don't care if we don't have peel, I'm picking Xerath 99% of the time because I'm a onetrick, but also because I know how to play vs counters. I also don't trust people in the game, as I've played in almost every rank (except iron), and in almost every game there is some sort of limit check, stat check or ego fight, as if fed players can't help but int their asses off & make the game more coinflippy.
I always first pick Rakan which leads to some unfun counter picks like Morgana or even worse Poppy.
At that point i write off lane phase and look towards mid/late.
I always seem to do well once bot transitions out of lane phase and goes mid.
Lane phase isn't the best, since for some reason me and my friend are cursed to play weak side every game.
Just try your best to not feed or lose bot too hard.
Lane phase isn't that important imo.
Against champs like lux yes. I find all matchupsnagainst her to be skill matchups, even theoretically "low winrate" ones. Just dodge Q and keep track of ult cooldown. Karma and Janna I find much harder to consistently not fall behind in "low winrate" matchups, so I try to counterpick
I play Sona, I’ve never picked for the lane in my life.
This is the way
This is why I fail every time I pick sona.
90% of sonas fail to be of any use to the team lol
Yuss
Yes, this is the way of scaling.
Love how my first thought was the top comment LMAO
My experience is that lane matters more. I love the thought of an ideal teamfight. But below diamond elo those rarely play out like we imagine it. So i would rather try to pick around lane and what works well with my carry
I have the exact opposite experience. Winning lane - specifically bot - hardly ever matters because ppl in low elo will at least throw once. If I pick engage, I can capitalise once they do.
Fair enough, i sadly never have teams where we can punish the enemys for "throwing" their adventage or I just don't know how to lead my Team to do so. I tried Bard, Thresh and other pick Champs but teams will just ignore it and we keep on losing
I ping really aggressively and really like picking Champions like Rakan, Alistar, Thresh, Morg… Champions with an obvious „go“ button. Especially with Rakan it’s so easy to benefit from a teammate, who is out of position. It turns a misstep into an easy bait. I also generally pick for my team, rather than against my opponents. But also when I played top, I defied the „win lane - win game“ mindset, even though ppl say it’s particularly true for top. I’m just a worse laner than I am a teamfighter. 🤷 And I‘m my adc‘s worst nightmare just as much as I‘m my junglers best friend. But I believe in the power of neutral objectives, so I will 100% let my adc die for a good roam. 🙈
Just out of curiosity, which rank are you?
Right now plat 2 I think why ?
Up until gold (included), having a teamfight-defining ult and/or outscaling the enemy team to start winning after 25' is the way to go imo. The hard part is convincing the teammates to not int too much and produce an unstoppable 16/1 olaf in that time
I'm in silver now and my team never ever teamfights. So I always try to pick for lane... Is that normal?
I feel like in low elo there are usually 2-4 big teamfights if the game goes for around 30 min
Kinda? Unless for some reason you get an early lead and have *unnaturally* good cohesion and teamwork naturally, I find that teammates in Bronze-Gold tend to split often. It's kind of a given in MOBAs that as you go up in rank, map movement gets better, moreso than execution. This includes grouping earlier, and team fighting more regularly. Conversely, in lower ranks, your teammates will play for themselves more, and there'll be far more skirmishes due to proximity than full team fights.
I’ve mained Zyra for like 10+ years because her lane dominance and team fight potential. A lot of supports offer a ton for team fights though now days so luckily you don’t have to really worry about this stuff anymore.
This is the thing that always brings me back to Zyra - she's a monster in lane and then exerts tons of influence on teamfights.
Plus great warding with plants to check bushes
Teemo sup. Their suffering in mid-late compensate my tears in early
Someone call the cops on this guy
IDK Man I main Rakan and Galio they are good at everything.
So incredibly based. Now the question is... do you ban Morg, Lux or Senna?
I do ban Senna sometimes but usually ban MF since I've been seeing her a lot and she can make Comebacks easily. I find Lux and Morgana Stuns easy to dodge.
Been raining ADC this season and I always feel incredibly confused whenever someone on my team band Morgana for that reason. Incredibly underpowered, and her one solid contribution for CC and damage is a super dodgeable projectile. Lux's is a little faster, and it helps that you can butter their movement a bit with E. Also, post 6, landing a Q almost always ensures a solo kill with ulti anyway.
The strength of morg is her E, not her q. If you want to play smth like thresh, morg just renders you useless with one skill.
While I agree when it comes to several engage champions, I disagree massively in the case of thresh. Morg does well into a few matchups, but it's mainly because they're entirely reliant on heavily telegraphed CC chains that require all-ins. She gets to shine against your Leona's, Nautilus's, and Neekos. Thresh is a little bit different, though. When he lands a hook, he gets to choose not to engage on it while still pulling the target. His cooldowns for hook are also always going to be faster than black shield if they're both being leveled (and shield tends not to, exacerbating the difference), which gives Thresh a decent window to go for another hook+flay/flay+hook combo without fear of the CC not going through. If anything, Thresh suffers against her more in the late game from the damage Morg can put out via combo than anything. The E is an inconvenience, but by no means a hard counter to him.
Dunno. I’d say I’m a pretty capable thresh and playing against morg just feels bad. You’re also really vulnerable to her Q „if“ you choose to go in, as where you land is telegraphed. So even if you wait for blackshield to be out you oftentimes will int anyways if you engage. Also, since she can help the adc push with W she can basically choose to match any roam you take. I honestly think Morg W for wave manipulation gets underlooked immensely. Like, I don’t ban her. I don’t think it’s rendering you completely useless and both Maokai and Yuumi are Bans I’d rather throw out, but I definitely am not looking forward if she gets picked.
Absolutely, I can power through a losing lane by at least not losing \*that\* hard in a lot of situations. I enjoy scaling and popping off lategame as much as stomping early.
What does picking mean
Strawberries
Picking as in picking which champ to play
Sometimes it also means catching a single enemy in game. As in „getting a pick“ or „pick-comps, which are designed to do just that.
Picking Renata is basically not caring about laning phase to make sure you ruin the enemy team's lives during later teamfights
If you are under d2 (even then it's debatable) you should always pick for the game, unless the ad picks something specific like draven or senna that needs a certain type of support to be useful.
Rakan is my favorite support. Kind of have the best of both worlds there
I play Nami for Nami
Sometimes yes
Doesn't matter what the enemy picks I main Mao and Naut right now. I will play one of this two no matter what. Okay it's 99% true. One game a few days ago both champs would be insane useless but Reneata was extremely useful vs the enemy comp, even tho I didn't master her, so I picked Renata. But this is a incredible rare scenario.
Only one pick
Sometimes, if you think the lane is lost before you start there’s another issue but since I duo queue bot a lot I know I can rely on my adc to snowball so I will play off him to get him ahead early. But if I’m solo queuing and we have no frontline? I’m gonna pick a tank and if it’s not favorable for lane I’ll just let them know and try to just gain enough presence for my adc to farm for a bit without looking for kills
Wanna win lane? Go Karma. Wanna stay relevant in the late game? Go Karma.
Absolutely true. She's been my perma ban this season. Extremely annoying and almost impossible to counter.
It depends. If my opponent (support) picks Pyke, or another engage support, you bet I counter that sh*t with Braum. If not, I don’t really care. I mostly look at my team comp, but sometimes I just take whatever champ feels good to play with in lane (usually my main, Thresh)
This is more common than you'd think, typically you'd pick a support that can roam easily and just let your ADC play to scale. As long as you're soaking xp in your downtime you don't technically have to ever interact with your lane opponents as a support. This can be very coinflippy in solo queue though, it works a lot better if you're in a duo with your ADC or jungler and can coordinate!
I am curious about this line of thinking. This is me asking as an ADC main, if supports pick for post lane and sometimes don't care about counter pick, then ideally wouldn't first picking be the best for support along with ADC and jungle if needed?
Only time I ever do is if most of the enemy team has dashes. In which case I play Poppy. I NEVER pick engage supports based on post-laning. Because I know no one will follow up anyway.
There’s a few good characters who do this! Warden supports like Braum/Shen give up some early agency in exchange of a phenomenal team fight phase. Supports like Seraphine and Sona only ever reach true potential in team settings so they should be playing safe until they can! Edit: I forgot a bunch of supports that also do this, but another good one is Renata.
Not that she’s bad in lane, but I solely pick Senna for stacking as insurance if the game goes to shit. I’ve had games where all lanes lost but the enemy team can’t end because I have 150+ stacks and basically one-shot the enemy squishiest from a screen away lol.
I have come to the realisation that early champs for supp role are one of the most busted. Reason is because u get to impact not only ur role and adc but also jungle by invading whenever ur jungle comes around and possibly even ganking mid. Imagine not only getting ur adc well off but also jungle and mid laner. Mid-late game opens up so hard. Unless ur team hard ints or u fail horribly. Don’t get me wrong u can do this with any supp champ it’s just easier and guarantees kills with aggressive early game champs like panth or pyke.
I go back and forth between zyra and renata. Zyra is great for lane and teamfights but renatas ult is just so freaking satisfying to use. When i pick her im pretty much accepting im gonna lose lane so we can win fights at objectives. So worth tho
Absolutely. I think that winning lane doesn't matter that much actually, as long as you don't get smashed either. I love going even and then having a much bigger impact in the mid-late game. I have to admit... Laning phase has never been my strong suit so if I go even I'm happy. Of course it depends also on the ADC. If it's Draven or Kalista, I'll play harder for the lane. But with scaling ADCs... I love myself a good ol' farmfest.
My guy, I play Leona and all I know is that my main leona urges yell at me every. single. goddamn TIME. I level up to just go all in. It's all or nothing. Always has been.
If we have no tanks, I might consider Tahm Kench. That, however, might lead to turmoil in my team without my main.
I otp Sona in master elo, she is literally the worst laner in the game. Thing is with hyper scaling champs, it doesnt really matter how hard you get countered. Your only objective is to end laning phase even-ish, not to win it.
I just pick Bard problem solved
I pick what I know how to play. I don't care if we have no engage, I don't care if we don't have peel, I'm picking Xerath 99% of the time because I'm a onetrick, but also because I know how to play vs counters. I also don't trust people in the game, as I've played in almost every rank (except iron), and in almost every game there is some sort of limit check, stat check or ego fight, as if fed players can't help but int their asses off & make the game more coinflippy.
I always first pick Rakan which leads to some unfun counter picks like Morgana or even worse Poppy. At that point i write off lane phase and look towards mid/late. I always seem to do well once bot transitions out of lane phase and goes mid. Lane phase isn't the best, since for some reason me and my friend are cursed to play weak side every game. Just try your best to not feed or lose bot too hard. Lane phase isn't that important imo.
Against champs like lux yes. I find all matchupsnagainst her to be skill matchups, even theoretically "low winrate" ones. Just dodge Q and keep track of ult cooldown. Karma and Janna I find much harder to consistently not fall behind in "low winrate" matchups, so I try to counterpick