Post by Galaxy on Jun 29, 2015 11:46:06 GMT 1
Yesterday in a HL match I saw a complete misunderstanding of how we played when Vikings is in the comp, and also the conclusions attached when we lost. The comp was being blamed which is complete nonsense as I will explain.
I also realise now I assumed everyone understood the idea of having a vikings in the team but that isn't the case.
The main reason why you want Vikings is to get your ults (and other talents) before your opponent does.
So that you can easily win objectives and win the game.
If the level advantage doesn't happen IMO one of 3 things went wrong:
In my experience, the second option is by far the most occurring reason, when I queue for HL and I notice we are still equal level after 6-8 its always because of the "pops" I heared beforehand of to many deaths on our team. And often always the same reason, either people getting ganked to often during laning phase or people engaging team fights during objectives they can't handle. Less frequent reason but also saw happening several times is the enemy team pushing structures hard and no rotations happening to counter them.
Still despite that in most cases the game is won for the team with vikings, my win rate in HL is likely the highest because of the ease of play the level advantage gives towards the team.
So what I saw yesterday happening with our team I recognised very well.
Cursed Hollow
Situation: first tribute at 3m.
I remember I said "just play safe, don't engage, you are 4v5" but still habits ruled and we wiped. Now the blue team will get a level advantage during tribs (if enemy goes for trib), see the minimap below: Olaf is soaking top, Erik is travelling to soak bot and Baelog is almost ready to soak mid.
Now you can make 2 decisions as blue team that makes sense:
The first option is a very good idea since it forces the opponent to either lose xp or the objective, they have to "choose a loss", while the second option could maybe still be countered (by red team also leaving objective and depushing).
Instead you can already see purely from the positioning of blue team their idea is to capture tribute, which is completely wrong (also notice blue is 3v5), this is what happened as a consequence:
Stop right there.
This was no poking game, this was team fight engagement with 1 man less. You even see 1v3 continuing. The red team got 4 kills out of this. Blue team 1.
Think. Blue team is almost level 7 almost solely due to the soaking. What if no engage would have happened ? Red team would still be stuck mid level 5. And if they would have made the same mistake with second tribute the level advantage would have become more then 2 levels. In other words, red team plays bad strategically but are lucky to have blue team nullifying their own advantage.
I wanted to show this to make people think more on how they should play when Vikings is in their composition.
Because yesterday the blaming on "we simply don't have the right comp" is not true, having a level 10 vs level 6-7 would have been realistic against this team since they played wrong, we would have had very easy chances at winning objectives and team fights, instead level was about equal during the match and we never could get a real advantage and we lost.
I also realise now I assumed everyone understood the idea of having a vikings in the team but that isn't the case.
The main reason why you want Vikings is to get your ults (and other talents) before your opponent does.
So that you can easily win objectives and win the game.
If the level advantage doesn't happen IMO one of 3 things went wrong:
- Vikings is misplayed
- Your team is getting to many deaths and/or structure damage nullifying the xp adv
- The enemy counters Vikings very well (by harrassing them).
In my experience, the second option is by far the most occurring reason, when I queue for HL and I notice we are still equal level after 6-8 its always because of the "pops" I heared beforehand of to many deaths on our team. And often always the same reason, either people getting ganked to often during laning phase or people engaging team fights during objectives they can't handle. Less frequent reason but also saw happening several times is the enemy team pushing structures hard and no rotations happening to counter them.
Still despite that in most cases the game is won for the team with vikings, my win rate in HL is likely the highest because of the ease of play the level advantage gives towards the team.
So what I saw yesterday happening with our team I recognised very well.
Cursed Hollow
Situation: first tribute at 3m.
I remember I said "just play safe, don't engage, you are 4v5" but still habits ruled and we wiped. Now the blue team will get a level advantage during tribs (if enemy goes for trib), see the minimap below: Olaf is soaking top, Erik is travelling to soak bot and Baelog is almost ready to soak mid.
Now you can make 2 decisions as blue team that makes sense:
- You leave the vikings soaking and the rest of the team is going for tribute to poke-stall the enemy team
- You leave the vikings soaking and the rest of the team is pushing structure (prob furthest away from trib)
The first option is a very good idea since it forces the opponent to either lose xp or the objective, they have to "choose a loss", while the second option could maybe still be countered (by red team also leaving objective and depushing).
Instead you can already see purely from the positioning of blue team their idea is to capture tribute, which is completely wrong (also notice blue is 3v5), this is what happened as a consequence:
Stop right there.
This was no poking game, this was team fight engagement with 1 man less. You even see 1v3 continuing. The red team got 4 kills out of this. Blue team 1.
Think. Blue team is almost level 7 almost solely due to the soaking. What if no engage would have happened ? Red team would still be stuck mid level 5. And if they would have made the same mistake with second tribute the level advantage would have become more then 2 levels. In other words, red team plays bad strategically but are lucky to have blue team nullifying their own advantage.
I wanted to show this to make people think more on how they should play when Vikings is in their composition.
Because yesterday the blaming on "we simply don't have the right comp" is not true, having a level 10 vs level 6-7 would have been realistic against this team since they played wrong, we would have had very easy chances at winning objectives and team fights, instead level was about equal during the match and we never could get a real advantage and we lost.