Starting with Zaozi Ge, a dream lineup

Chapter 191 A Brand New Playing Style, Peak Olympia

Version 8.9 has begun to strengthen the voice of mid-lane mages, and with the addition of a series of AP items, utility heroes are gradually being pushed out of the mid-lane hero pool.

As for the mages who benefited the most, such as Syndra, Ekko, LeBlanc, Zoe and others have become top-tier AP damage dealers in this version.

Therefore, even professional players believe that the rise of mid laners is unstoppable.

While the mid laner is taking off, the bot lane ADC is naturally falling into a slump.

Vn, the Night Hunter.

Vayne has been in an awkward position in every version. Since she shone brightly at the World Championship in Season 3, her hero mechanics have not been significantly changed until Season 8.

Especially during the major nerfs to ADCs in Season 8, Vayne, who had never shown her full potential, was also severely weakened, with her base attack damage reduced by a full 5 points, and her crucial attack speed growth also suffering a major blow.

If it weren't for the subsequent endless nerfs, Vayne would have simply disappeared from everyone's sight during the S8 regular season.

However, this nerf had a far-reaching impact, so severe that Vayne was not even allowed to play a single game in the S8 World Championship.

With the rise of critical strike items, Vayne's item build has become increasingly awkward.

Gone is the days when, with a Ruined Sheepstick, beating up meat was as easy as beating up squishy skin.

Furthermore, with the gradual rework of talents and the rise of top lane warrior heroes, Vayne even dropped to the third lowest win rate among ADCs, ranking as a T5-tier hero.

Fortunately, with the boost from the championship skin, more and more people are using Vayne in the Chinese server, and casual players are developing all sorts of Vayne playstyles.

However, there is one way to play Vayne that no professional player dares to bring to competition even now.

Even many professional ADC players would scoff at it.

Stealing money Vn.

By taking advantage of the frequent acquisition of items in the early stages of stealing money, you can get through the weak early and mid-game. With the help of faster equipment, you can start to exert your strength in the mid-game and deal terrifying damage.

Players can configure professional players' talents with a single click of the mouse.

However, behind every set of talent runes and item builds lies the decision made by data analysts and professional players to maximize damage output.

A well-chosen talent and item build, combined with the skill of a professional player, can transform many heroes that are completely ignored in casual games into top-tier heroes in competitive matches, turning them from universally disliked trash heroes into highly sought-after characters.

The best examples are Trinity Lucian from Season 4, as well as Gangplank, Sett with Conqueror, and so on.

However, the biggest drawback of Vayne is that if she is targeted once or twice in the early game, she will be easily overtaken by the enemy team due to the lack of burst damage from her runes.

Li Luo's decision to pick Vayne this time wasn't just about testing his current Vayne skills; his strategy was very clear.

Towards development.

In terms of hero mechanics, both Kai'Sa and Vayne are relatively weak in the early game. In lane, they mainly rely on auto-attacks to trade damage and poke. As for getting a solo kill, it basically depends on the performance of the support and jungler.

In the mid-game, with the addition of certain equipment, both heroes will undergo a qualitative change.

However.
"Teleportation? Didn't you bring the unsealing manual? You brought the money-stealing technique?"

PDD and Wu Wukai both widened their eyes at the same time, and Changmao, after confirming several times, said in disbelief.

"In the last few seconds before entering the game, the puppy switched his Summoner Spell from Heal to Teleport, and gave the Gromp Heal?"

"this?"

PDD and Wu Wukai are not bot lane players. Although they are both regulars in mid-to-high elo, they were genuinely confused by this playstyle.

"It's not uncommon for ADCs to take Teleport, but that was before the Unsealed Spellbook was reworked and allowed unlimited Teleport swapping. Keep in mind that patch 8.9 completely reworked Unsealed Spellbook, and now, even in solo queue, you almost never see anyone using this rune on an ADC."

"To compensate for Vayne's early-game weakness with Kleptomancy? To use Teleport to replenish her health and items and achieve a suppressive effect? ​​But in a head-on fight, RNG's bot lane is completely missing Ignite! This kind of understanding is truly unprecedented."

Although Changmao spoke fluently, you could tell from the doubt and disbelief in his tone that this was the first time he had ever seen something like this.

As the main character of Vayne and the holder of the championship skin, anything Uzi can bring out definitely has its reasons.

The commentators who couldn't make it to the event didn't dare to say anything too outrageous in the live stream, for fear of being embarrassed by Uzi's unconventional gameplay.

In fact, Vayne doesn't benefit from Heal, and can even equip any Summoner Spell such as Shield, Evolve, and Ghost.

What is the purpose of bringing healing spells to the lower flank?
The bot lane ecosystem has changed a lot over the years.

The skill sets for the bot lane in the early years were much better than they are now. They included Ignite, Shield, Promotion, Exhaust, Teleport, Ghost, Insight, Heal, and some even had Battle Fury or Rebirth.

Back then, apart from Flash being a standard skill, other skills seemed to appear in the bottom lane, unlike now, where it's just two or three skills that keep changing.

Later, many skills were gradually removed, and the bottom lane meta slowly changed to Heal, Shield, Ghost, Exhaust, and Ignite.

Later on, why did everyone bring healing items? Initially, healing was a group heal that included minions. In a later version, it was changed to the healing that we are familiar with now, healing the hero with the lowest health or the mouse cursor, speed boost, and removing grievous wounds effects.

This change directly led to a large number of double heals in the bot lane. Later, the cooldown of healing was reduced and a debuff to healing spell was added, which made double heals less common.

ADCs with Teleport is something from a very, very long time ago. The reason it's hard to carry now is because they die too easily.

The instant health regeneration from the healing spell is useful against some burst damage, and the two-second speed boost allows the ADC to position themselves better, which is why ADCs rarely choose shields to counter high burst damage.

Moreover, the healing in a duo allows both people to recover health faster together, which is very beneficial.

To improve the margin for error in laning and team fights, to have room for maneuver when encountering ganks, and to have a better position to deal damage in team fights.

However, this is somewhat inconsistent with Vn's positioning.

In fact, in the eyes of high-level professional players, although they don't say it, they all know very well that Vayne is a pure split-push hero.

However, after the S8 season, very few professional top and mid laners who could play Vayne well dared to pick her for solo lane.

Even though TheShy picked Lucian and Kalista, he didn't dare pick Vayne.

Throughout S8, only a handful of players, such as Caps, picked Vayne to counter Galio in the mid lane for specific reasons.

Sending Vayne to team fights is like sending a sprinter with a broken bone to compete in a 100-meter dash if the player isn't fully skilled.

The best proof is that in solo queue ranked games during Season 9 and Season 10, Vayne's pick rate as a top laner was far higher than her pick rate as an ADC.

Since this game is going to be played with this kind of solo pressure strategy, Li Luo simply didn't bring it, and even let Xiao Dongbei in the top lane bring Ignite to make up for the lack of solo kill ability in lane.

The opposing team's Kai'Sa and Braum have very weak early-game pressure, so taking Heal isn't very effective for him; he might only suffer a slight disadvantage in lane duels. However, this slight disadvantage can be easily compensated for by the health potions he can steal through Kleptomancy.

In contrast, FNC's bot lane still uses the standard Heal and Ignite combo, while the top laner Cho'Gath has Teleport, and Malzahar also has Teleport.

Both sides are laning normally.

Li Luo chose Doran's Shield as his starting item for better survivability.

In the early game, Vayne with Kleptomancy is completely defenseless.

Even in skill point allocation, one must abandon the high damage of maxing W and instead choose the more flexible and versatile Q skill as the primary skill.

Doran's Shield's stats perfectly complement the lane sustain and gold-stealing ability, making it effective against any champion, especially ADCs like Kai'Sa who rely on their Q skill for poke damage.

As soon as they met, Li Luo, controlling Vayne, mindlessly used his Q to engage. The two ADCs exchanged a friendly click, then immediately parted ways to farm minions.

Since Kai'Sa uses her basic attack followed by her ultimate (A) and her ultimate (Q), she gained a slight advantage in the first exchange of blows.

However, after the money pouch that appeared on Vayne was marked by the support Hylissang, Rekkles' expression turned ugly.

Hylissang may not be good at much else, but he's got a knack for messing with his teammates' mentality.

In the match between S9fnc and FPX, his Alistar was renowned both domestically and internationally. He made a series of impressive plays, but his score was 0-5.

If you steal a money bag, the safest approach is to sell it to a shop for 65 coins. Opening the money bag will reward you with 40-110 gold coins.

After thinking it over, Li Luo resolutely decided to make a strong start.

With a hiss, the sound of gold coins arriving in the account accompanied by a "100" icon appearing above Vn's body, and the audience in front of the screen cheered.

After having his money stolen once, Rekkles, controlling Kai'Sa, lost all interest in fighting Vayne.

Unfortunately, Vayne's attack range is 550 yards, while Kai'Sa's is 25 yards less, at only 525.

One of the key details when laning against Kai'Sa is to avoid standing outside the minion wave and engaging her directly, otherwise Kai'Sa's Q skill will hit the hero like a cruise missile.

The second detail is to remember Kai'Sa's Q skill cooldown.

Kai'Sa's Q skill has an 8-second cooldown at level 1, while Vayne's Q skill has a 4-second cooldown at level 1. In other words, the time it takes for Kai'Sa to Q Vayne once is enough for Vayne to Q Kai'Sa twice.

The level 2 Q Kai'Sa has a 7.5, while Vayne has a 3.5.

The terrifying power of a level 5.5 hero proficiency level was immediately apparent.

Although Li Luo didn't pay close attention to the timing, he had a vague feeling that, based on the cooldown of his Q skill, it was as if he could see the cooldown as he was playing Kai'Sa.

Taking advantage of Vayne's strengths, he repeatedly used the opening window of Rekkles' Q skill to poke and harass, resulting in a near draw between the two.

Kai'Sa's health didn't seem to drop much, and she was still pushing Vayne's lane, but this was just a matter of dominating the map.

In reality, once Hylissang's Braum pushed the lane, he became completely useless. He couldn't hold onto anyone, and he couldn't gank with the jungler. He could only play around with Xiaoming on the sidelines.

Tahm Kench uses Q on Braum, Braum uses Q on Tahm Kench, how harmonious!

"Ou Cheng is very detail-oriented."

Li Luo was also taken aback when he faced off against Ou Cheng for the first time.

Although as a spectator I thought Rekkles was terrible and even inferior to top domestic ADCs, this match made Li Luo realize the difference in style between European and American ADCs and LPL and LCK ADCs.

In the previous life, FNC in S8 reached the semifinals of this season, but unfortunately lost to IG and won the runner-up.

Many people blamed Rekkles in the bot lane.

The criticism is that Rekkles, a veteran ADC, actually went toe-to-toe with the rising star Jacklove, without showing any dominance.

Even a marketing account's rhetoric has led casual players to believe that Rekkles is a complete noob ADC, not worth paying attention to, and his skill level is only average.

However, in reality, Rekkles' skill reached another peak in his professional career during the S8 period.

The S8 World Championship patch significantly weakened the "voice" of bot lane ADCs.

Even on the nights after each training match, during the post-match review, Li Luo was considering whether to switch to the top lane position for the World Championship.

With his current understanding of the game, if he went to play top lane in S8, as long as the team bans a few strong fighters, he could still put up a good fight.

But after much deliberation, Li Luo ultimately gave up on the idea.

The current teammates are not weak. Even if Xiao Dongbei and Letme are not world-class top laners, Xiangguo and Xiaotian's strength can completely eliminate the disadvantage of the two against the world's top laners.

Top-tier top laners are extremely rare in the LPL.

Even in Season 10, apart from the Korean import TheShy, no top laner has ever achieved TheShy's dominance in Season 8.

TheShy was very strong in the S8 World Championship and S9, and was at his peak.

Although TheShy unexpectedly outmaneuvered Fiora with Lucian in the Spring Finals, he had not yet reached his full potential at that time.

The fact that Rekkles was able to lead his team single-handedly in S10 and hold his own against G2, who had Ap and Caps, fully demonstrates his strength.

FNC isn't stupid; who would spend a lot of money every year to keep a mediocre AD carry in their team, occupying the most important ADC position?

Unfortunately, no one expected that Fnatic in S9 would enter a period of confusion due to poor team coordination and the departure of key players, and their performance could only be described as mediocre.

Professional players' peak years are too short; they should cherish every moment.

Baolan, the champion support player of S8, was universally criticized in S9 and was nicknamed "Princess Blue" by various haters.

Ning, the FMVP jungler of S8, was the subject of a "Ning speedrun" in S10. Even Ambition mocked Ning on Twitter, asking if he was asleep. A bunch of Chinese players followed suit, mocking how bad their team's first FMVP was.

As a veteran of several seasons, Xiye joined LGD in S10. After defeating IG to secure a spot in the World Championship, he was criticized by viewers in the live chat for not being qualified and being told to go home.

The increasingly deteriorating viewing environment has caused too many talented players to fall into their mediocre phase, and there are too few players like Baolan Xiye who have persevered and returned to success.

Li Luo was thrilled to be able to compete against Ou Cai at his peak, and before he knew it, his performance was getting better and better.

Meanwhile, Rekkles, who was completely outmatched by Uzi's full strength, was in a terrible predicament.

(End of this chapter)