LOL: I just turned 18, let me fight back and be reborn

Chapter 314 Eternal Child Tazan Meow! Formulaic Strategies and Breaking Expectations?
"We said at the beginning of the season that the styles of these two teams are somewhat like spear and shield," Ji said while analyzing the lineups on the commentary stage: "This can also be seen from the lineups of both sides in this game!"

"LNG is a team with a distinctive mid-to-late game style. They excel at stabilizing the lane during the laning phase, with their jungler Tazan focusing on map control and resource management to create space for their core players to farm. Once they have their items, they rely on their solid team composition to win team fights and secure victory!"

"V5's style is much simpler and more aggressive. They often find a breakthrough in the laning phase by relying on the laning phase of all three lanes and the mid and jungle's ability to seize opportunities. Then they use the Rift Herald to quickly take down towers and push forward. They then use their strong snowballing advantage to quickly widen the economic gap and directly kill the game!"

Wang Duoduo, standing next to him, nodded in agreement: "That's right, so the focus of this semi-final is very clear: it depends on whether V5 can gain enough advantages in the early stages!"

"If they can't build a big lead during the laning phase, once LNG drags the game into their preferred slow-paced macro game, they'll be able to easily win head-on thanks to their late-game carry potential!"

Clearly, everyone in the room knew what was going on.

The camera footage shows LNG's Tarzan constantly moving his mouth.

Neither side had a particularly strong lineup to rely on in the level 1 team fight. In fact, LNG, with Neeko, had the ability to keep enemies in place, so V5 players were very careful with their positioning.

Fortunately, both sides seemed to be just taking their usual positions.

Qiyana, who was positioned in the upper river bush, suddenly saw the enemy jungler Sejuani walking towards the middle river bush about a minute into the game, as if she wanted to create a "river bush vision" effect.

"Enemy jungler, attack!"

Before Ye Bo could speak, Xun, who hadn't suspected anything, had already seen the hero portraits on the minimap: "Then I'll start in a different half of the map."

"and many more."

Ye Bo looked at the bottom half of the dark mini-map and suddenly pressed TAB to access the scoreboard.

He then stated with certainty, "This was Neeko's act; the enemy jungler probably started in the bottom half of the map."

"Oh! Right, there's Neeko on the other side!"

Xun, who had just snapped out of her daze, immediately changed her position without suspicion, but was still a little curious: "How did you know it was Neeko? Her movements seemed pretty normal to me."

Ye Bo gave his teammates a brief explanation.

This is a small mechanic at the game level that allows you to "decipher Nico's imposter".

— Determine whether Neeko is currently in your field of vision by looking at the hero's portrait on the "scoreboard"!
As we all know, when viewing enemy heroes on the TAB scoreboard, if the enemy is not in your field of vision, their portrait will turn gray and have a question mark icon.

Neeko's transformation was flawless.

But in itself, it is still Nico!
So as long as you see that Neeko doesn't appear on the map, but her icon on the scoreboard is flashing.

Although it is still impossible to determine the opponent's exact location and transformation target, inferences and analyses can be made by observing the "abnormal things" exposed in the opponent's field of vision.

For example, a fruit suddenly appears in front of you, a true sight ward appears in your vision, or an enemy suddenly appears online.
This is a small detail that Ye Bo discovered unintentionally not long ago while researching the mechanics of another related hero.

Meanwhile, Tarzan, the mastermind behind the scheme, was unaware that his feint had been exposed.

His goal was actually very simple: to avoid being counter-jungled.

Speaking of which, Tarzan is actually a pretty versatile jungler. He can play a carry jungler or a utility champion to provide support. He can play an aggressive counter-jungling style or a more passive, map-controlling style.

But he has a very serious "problem" that he himself is unaware of.

Tarzan, who has consistently ranked first in the Korean server's ranked ladder for many years, still has his "ranked playstyle" deeply ingrained in him to this day.

I understand everything I understand.

In ranked matches, if you're playing jungle, you have to be "solo" to carry!

This "independence" doesn't refer to the kind of Graves player who only plays the game by taking money from their teammates: that's just dirty play.

"Unique" means that he will focus on his own perspective and must play the game according to his own ideas to ensure that the pace is in accordance with his expectations.

If you go astray and fall behind in your development and jungle clearing routes, you'll immediately lose your composure and have to blindly farm jungle camps to get back on track!
This kind of behavior has a general term: "Formula Playing Method".

Tarzan didn't think he had any problems at the moment, since this kind of formula was usually broken when the opponent successfully "countered" his jungle.

If your jungler gets successfully countered, it's normal to lose momentum!

So if you look closely at LNG's lineup, you'll find that although they chose a late-game focused lineup, all three lanes actually have heroes who won't give up lane control for nothing, and can fully guarantee invasion of the jungle!

The lines of troops converge.

As LNG hoped, their basic laning phase on all three lanes was fine.

There's no reason why Gwen should be at a disadvantage against Ornn in the top lane, and there's no reason why Azir should be at a disadvantage against Qiyana in the mid lane.

Kai'Sa in the bot lane is no match for Varus in the laning phase.

But I have Nico!
In fact, what truly allowed Neeko support to take root and establish itself today is definitely not a minor trick like {transforming into a cannon minion to tank towers}.

Rather, it's their exceptional laning ability!

As a pseudo-hard support capable of initiating team fights, Neeko support's laning ability is stronger than most enchanter supports, and can even be said to completely outclass poke-type enchanter supports!
This might sound counterintuitive.

After all, in terms of skill range and damage output, champions like Lux, Sona, Seraphine, and Xerath are no weaker than him.

But Neeko's strength lies in her {survivability}!

Those poke supports are all heroes with near-zero survivability, which means they have to be extremely careful about their positioning when trading blows, especially against hard supports who can engage, they simply don't dare to move forward.

With the help of her W's invisibility and clones, Coneko can easily take advantage of most tank supports and recklessly harass them!
Survival space directly affects output efficiency.

There is one problem, however.

Neeko Support: It actually relies heavily on the individual player's skill!

This is a rare support hero that requires exceptional skill to play!

To put it simply, the support player who plays the hero needs to have the ability to play a carry role. The better their awareness of laning and positioning, the stronger the hero will be.

Otherwise, he'll just be a "tower-tanking tool" who has neither protective abilities nor a stable ability to initiate team fights.

After all, Neeko's skill set is entirely non-targeted, so it's entirely possible that she'll suffer the same "all four skills gone" problem as Xerath.

This is why V5 ​​dared to release LNG's Neeko.

Everyone knows that LNG's support player Hang's skills are definitely not that great, but he likes to do flashy things, which has led to many disastrous performances.

It is foreseeable that, at least for the LNG team, it is unrealistic for the bot lane to rely solely on Neeko to secure lane priority.

The initiative will most likely remain in V5's hands.

If it were a team with a skilled support player, even V5 wouldn't easily let them go.

"It seems that Sejuani's move to trick Neeko into revealing her intentions at the start of the game worked?"

"Xun originally intended to switch jungle camps to start, but after seeing Sejuani's movements, he opted to start with the blue buff, probably planning a mirror jungle start."

Junglers revealing themselves directly is actually a tactic of openly protecting their jungle.

The reason is very simple.

If your jungler doesn't show up, the enemy jungler won't know where you are → which means the enemy jungler's movements are also "unknown".

When "Sejuani" shows up in the upper half of the map and places wards, she can immediately dispel the opponent's idea of ​​invading the upper half of the map at level two. There are wards in the river bushes, so if the Prince wants to invade the jungle at level two, he can only use EQ to get out of the dragon pit.

If you don't have the skills, getting hit head-on is suicide; the risk and reward are completely disproportionate, and nobody would do that!
If we exclude the game between one half of the board, the prince's actions are actually quite predictable.

Alternatively, you could skip counter-jungling and start the game normally.

Alternatively, it could start in red and then turn around and hard-counter in the blue zone at level two.

The former is naturally what Tarzan most wants to see.

He was also on guard against the latter, so he specifically asked the bottom lane duo to help him take more blue buff, and even pulled the Gromp over before leaving, exchanging "more damage" for "faster jungle clearing".

As a player who also knows Prince, Tarzan knows that this hero's level 2 counter-jungling efficiency is not very high.

Especially when they take the red buff and invade the enemy jungle in the lower half of the map.

Since the prince cannot frequently dash over walls and use EQ to rush down from the dragon pit, the 12-second cooldown of his E skill will become a hard time limit for counter-jungling!
By the time the opponent arrives on foot after circling around, Sejuani will have already finished defeating the Swamp Frog.

In that case, it will be the prince who finds himself in a dilemma!
At the same time, Tarzan also thought about the possibility that having "Nico" in his family might attract the other party's attention.

But that's also part of the design—because even if the other party guesses that Sejuani might be Neeko, the inability to confirm it will only increase the "gambling cost" significantly, and if they guess wrong, they'll only hurt themselves!

Tarzan believes that if the opposing jungler were to actually consider the possibility that "that pig might be Neeko in disguise," then...

The only answer left is to honestly farm the jungle using the mirror image!
Tarzan already had his jungle strategy planned. With Ornn on the enemy top lane and Jarvan IV having difficulty ganking Gwen, it wasn't hard to deduce that the enemy jungler would likely not gank top early on.

But Piggy gained popularity through her collaboration with Gwen Stacy on "Pig Scissors".

The success rate of using variations to catch the beat is actually extremely high!

After Gwen's stats were significantly nerfed, she no longer has an advantage against Ornn in the early game, but she will definitely have a significant advantage once she levels up.

If Ornn gets crushed in the early game, he's basically in for a whole round of spinning top attacks from Gwen!
At the same time, the top laner can gain an advantage in the laning phase and also give LNG a crucial advantage in the fight for the Rift Herald!

As for the bottom lane, LNG chose Kai'Sa and Azir as their dual carries. There was no reason to contest the first dragon, and it was perfectly acceptable for them to be slightly pressured in the early game.

This layout strategy of Tarzan can be described as...

Even from God's perspective, it is clear and wise!

But, just as Pig Girl finished happily clearing the lower half of the map and leveling up to level three, she strode joyfully towards the upper half, and then, with her pig head shoving into her F6 camp...
The pig's head is in close contact with the air.

They crashed into nothing!
At that moment, Tarzan's mind seemed to short-circuit as if he had been electrocuted, and he stood there stunned for two seconds.

Looking at the grass in the river, the wards placed by the support had not detected any enemy activity until they disappeared at this moment.

The prince's figure has never appeared on the map for even a moment; he is still just a gray avatar with a level 1 question mark!

He continued walking towards the upper half of the bracket, still incredulous.

To my surprise, the red buff was also empty!

"Aishibashi!"

"How dare he?!"

Hearing Scout's familiar native language, I was about to switch screens to look.

But seeing Qiyana's forward stride, he immediately refocused.

Azir has a clear advantage over Qiyana in the first two levels, forcing Qiyana to use her Q skill to last-hit minions from a distance.

But things are different when you upgrade to level three.

The most important thing for Qiyana in lane is to be brave enough to trade blows—this champion has considerable burst damage, and as long as you can trade blows to a lower health level, it's easy to get a solo kill.

To many players unfamiliar with this champion, Qiyana seems to have no reason to get close to Azir.

But the reality is quite the opposite.

In fact, Qiyana's close-range abilities are among the best of all assassins!
What it relies on, besides the 250-yard W displacement distance, is the 650-yard E skill displacement distance.

There is also the element that is controlled: the Grass Element.

Each of the three elements has its own characteristics. Earth and Water elements both have the same "linear" projectile trajectory, while only Grass element has the largest AOE range with a "square" projectile trajectory, making it the best choice for long-range finishing off enemies and pushing lanes.

The most important aspect of the grass element is, of course, "invisibility," which can create a "hidden grass" with a length of about 700 yards along the trajectory of a projectile.

Therefore, the actual combat scenario is as follows.

Every time Qiyana seems to be using the grass element to finish off enemies—the opponent has no idea whether she is actually hiding in the bushes and sneaking in!
Even with the Tsar's long reach, it would be difficult for him to first distance himself from the grass elemental range and then create a full 900 yards of distance from Qiyana, otherwise he would be forced out of the experience zone!

Grass-elemental grass can last for 3 seconds.

It's highly unlikely that Tsar would simply ignore creeps for three seconds every time he sees the opponent use the Grass Elemental Q!
So as long as Qiyana is determined to get a blood exchange, she can get one.

Scout's approach was to retreat while attempting to use Sand Soldiers to "borrow troops and blindly poke" at Qiyana, who was hiding in the grass element.

If you can successfully poke and whittle down Qiyana's health a few times, she won't have the resources to charge in.

But Ye Bo's positioning was even more troublesome than he had imagined.

As if anticipating his thoughts, they walked out in a winding S-shape, concealed by the grass element.
Although the sand soldiers surrounded by enemy minions can use the surrounding enemy minions to perform "omnidirectional thrusts," theoretically, Qiyana can thrust at any angle no matter how she moves.

But Scout's Azir couldn't see the invisible Qiyana.

Both sides can only rely on strategy and "luck".

"After Tazan cleared the Krugs, he still headed to the top lane, but it was obvious that his move was completely anticipated by Flandre, so it was a wasted trip!"

I remember feeling a little sorry for Sejuani after her failed attempt: "He seemed unwilling to give up, he circled around and tried to catch her again, but Flandre didn't give him a chance!"

Wang Duoduo frowned and commented, "Actually, I feel there were some problems with how this was handled?"

"First of all, although the prince made a very unexpected quick start with the three wolves and then boldly detoured to the red buff area at level two to invade the enemy jungle, he still wasted a lot of travel time."

"When Sejuani arrived, the prince had just finished taking down the red buff, and the two of them barely brushed past each other!"

"Tarzan shouldn't have thought of this."

Even GuGu, who has only a basic understanding of the game, said, "I feel that Sejuani's correct choice should be to go to the opposing team's red buff area immediately. After all, Jarvan IV is in poor condition and has used up two Smite spells. He should be able to make up for his losses in the bottom half of the map!"

"Besides, the prince's position in the upper half of the map is obvious. He shouldn't have continued to go to the top lane as originally planned. Now he doesn't even have a chance to invade the blue buff area!"

[According to Ning Wang, Tazan is acting up again this time; he gets itchy all over as long as the planned attacks aren't executed!]

[Is Ning the jungler from that team, the second-to-last IG remnants who formed the pseudo-god team UP? That's pretty authoritative~]

[Seriously, the Sneaker King only won three teams in the Summer Split, but he really crushed Tazan! He really knows his stuff!]

[Tazan is going to screw over my junior again!! Forever! Chick! Ta! Zan! Meow!]

[The enemy gets all the jungle loot, meow, but Tazan will pick up the trash and eat it all, meow, it's delicious~]

Sejuani spent a lot of time pulling back and forth in the top lane, but Ornn, who just stood behind the minion wave and didn't even care about experience, was completely wasting her time.

When he finally gave up and went to check the other party's blue zone, he found that the prince had also cleared his own blue zone!
At that moment, Tazan felt his mind was completely blank.
This is also V5's true analysis of the player Tazan.

After watching the replays of the games LNG lost, they discovered that the opponent didn't actually lose their composure when "counter-jungled"—in fact, they would lose their composure whenever their expectations and plans were disrupted!

Just like this wave.

Tazan failed to make the correct decision, even though it was obvious to the commentators.

Successfully executing a "one-sided counter-jungling" strategy is indeed not easy; it requires a high level of team composition and hero selection, and most level 1 strategies can only be used once.

But if all you want is to "break expectations"—that's easy, isn't it?

This is arguably what V5's mid and jungle players excel at!
Fortunately, this time...

Just then, someone in the middle lane casually gave instructions.

"Come and catch Bo Zhong, this guy is a show-off."

Without a second thought, the dazed Tazan rode over on his boar, but he did remember to warn, "The prince might be squatting here too."

Scout remained silent after listening.

Clearly, he hadn't given up the idea.

"Sejuani still isn't planning to recall; she seems to want to continue to mid lane. Is the pressure in mid lane really that high?!"

When everyone switched their focus to the mid lane, they discovered that both teams' mid laners were already down to around half health.

Qiyana didn't gain any blood.

However, it is clear that in this mid-lane matchup, exchanging blows to each other until they are around half health would pose a much greater threat to Azir!

After all, the Tsar certainly doesn't have much killing ability before level six.

Qiyana is a different story.

Scout called the jungler over because he felt he was in some danger, but he didn't want to give up lane control or be the first to recall, so he had to sacrifice the jungler's rhythm to help him alleviate the situation.

Although it's unlikely you can kill them with all your skills, as long as you can trade skills or deal some damage, it's enough for the mid laner to progress to the comfortable phase later on.

"Should I just cast the spells for you?" Tazan, who had taken his position, clearly knew what the other was thinking.

“Okay,” Scout said, still trying to appear calm.

"As long as he doesn't use Flash, I can easily dominate the lane, and it'll be easy to gank him when he reaches level six!"

(End of this chapter)