Fast Push Strategy in LOL

The tower changes in 4.1 were meant to stop the 2v1 lanes, or at least strongly discourage them. However, the 2v1 is still prevalent in the current professional meta. Teams that love to push instaed of fight are running 2v1s but not intending to keep the top laner down but to force the opposing team into a game of chicken while both teams push towards the base extremely early in the game.

CLG vs Curse - Game 1











The jungle Gragas played by IWDominate turned out to be a problematic pick in this game. They played this game on patch 3.15, so it wasn't weird that Curse initiated the 2v1 to accelerate the game and go for a quick win because dealing with Doublelift on Vayne and Nien on Dr. Mundo in the late game would be a struggle. However, they couldn't account for Aphromoo stealing Dominate's blue buff on a very dependent jungle Gragas.

Curse probably should have abandoned the 2v1 when Dominate lost his buff but they didn't. Curse kept pushing the top lane but Nien did a good job of slowing them down which allowed the CLG bot lane to get the first tower. CLG pushed with impunity because Gragas couldn't spam barrels without the blue buff. CLG took down the two bottom turrets by the 6th minute and immediately took the first dragon of the game.



Aphro's level one blue buff steal that won the game


After the first dragon, Doublelift went down to the bottom lane to push it back towards Curse's base. The next turret target was in the top lane. Doublelift joined the team to pushed down that top lane turrret while Nien pressed the mid lane. The constant press on Curse enabled CLG to take the next dragon easily.



HotshotGG landing a spear on Cop, making it hard for Curse to defend


Doublelift splitpushed safely while the team continued to siege other lanes. This strategy was effective for a couple of reasons: Vayne isn't that great of siege champion because of her range and the rest of CLG could rotate quickly since all the outer turrets were down.

One does need to question the mental state of IWDominate after losing that early blue buff. He never recovered and got to the point of being a threat on the jungle Gragas. Also, while CLG attempted a two-man baron around the 22nd minute, Dominate jumped in without anybody on his team to back him up. He immediately died and gave CLG not only an incredibly late first blood but also the strength to win the game with the baron buff.

While CLG looked great in this game, I believe it was more of a factor of the game being 4v5 because Dominate was never able to catch up after being at such a big disadvantage early. Curse couldn't keep up with the rotations and played a very passive game, which allowed CLG to do whatever they wanted. We will see what happens when the team on the backfoot doesn't play passive in the next game.



MonteCristo's Rift Review talking about the CLG vs Curse game (Plus a great episode all around)


CLG vs Curse - Game 2




First, I want to talk about this team comp for Curse and the amount of great early game synergy it had.



You could tell from champion select that this team wanted to push early and often. The cleavers and bombs are the epitome of sieging in the current game. Another great thing about this comp is that Nunu is basically another laner with Jinx and Janna. Jinx is a fantastic late-game carry and the addition of Blood Boil and Eye Of The Storm makes her even stronger, even in the early game. Those two spells at level 4 are like giving her an extra 1600 gold, at max level it is 3300 gold which is basically an extra legendary item every 15 seconds. The added damage and attack speed allowed Jinx to push even quicker in the early game, and she is already known as one of the best early turret takers.

CLG's didn't have a comp ready to counter this lineup from Curse even though it was apparent that Curse wanted to push from early on in champion select with their first two picks being Ziggs and Mundo. Where the mid lane usually featured some sort of waveclear, CLG had Chauster on Yasuo with sub-optimal waveclear. The rest of CLG's team didn't pick up the waveclear slack either. It is an understatement to say that Curse had an advantage heading into the game.

Curse effectively pushed down towers but they weren't as quick as CLG was in the first game. Curse didn't put as much pressure on the map because no one was actively splitpushing like Doublelift did in the first game. Quas would go to other lanes but it was only to push the wave back, he wasn't demanding CLG to be present in the lane. Even if CLG did devote someone to dealing with Quas, he could have teleported to join the 5 man team putting CLG at an even bigger disadvantage.

The difficulty definitely increased when it came time for Curse to siege the base. However, they did have a good disengage lineup with Monsoon, Satchel Charge, Flame Chompers!, and Ice Blast. Curse knew that Link would attempt to engage with Dragon's Descent and Chauster would attempt to ride the coattails of the engage with Last Breath. Zekent had to use Monsoon with a splitsecond reaction time to knock back Link before he could get any form of displacement. If Link was successful it would allow Chauster to jump which would allow for a Wild Growth from Lulu and it could be the end of the fight before Curse knew it.

Zekent did a great job of protecting the team with Monsoon for a majority of the game. However, in the fight that swung the game, CLG surprised Curse with a flank from the side where Aphromoo and Link snuck through the jungle while Curse sieged. The only ward for Curse was close to the back of the team, not giving them enough time to react to the flank. In a fantastic, informative interview MonteCristo did with onGamers, he talked about teaching and discussing how warfare was done throughout history instead of focusing necessarily on League. I believe he is getting through to the team because Sun Tzu writes in The Art of War that if you encircle your enemy, you should leave a spot for retreat because they will attempt to take it; the idea being that you can kill the enemy while they attempt to retreat. CLG left a small lane open for Curse to retreat and Curse took it but the damage was done. The Dragon's Descent from Link landed enough to get Chauster into the fight with Last Breath and it was over from there as Curse got aced while trying to retreat.

Up to this point, Curse had a stranglehold on the game. Although CLG did save their top inhibitor with a nice teamfight but they by no means had control of the game. CLG proved that if you can get a smooth engage off against a comp like the one Curse ran, you can win the game because the comp couldn't fight straight up. However, it does take different movement and tactics to get that great engage and CLG showed quick thinking in the heat of the moment that turned the tide of the game and lead them to a win.

Banner of Command

CLG Aphromoo versus Coast
The fast push: CLG, Curse, and Banner of Command :: eSports Central by MOBAFire 6,915
GUIDES
In the current state of the game, supports have the gold to buy items that add much more damage or utility to the team instead of just buying a ton of wards. In the game against Team Coast in week 3, CLG's Aphromoo bought a Banner of Command to finish off the game. The item in this game was definitely a win-more item and not something that turned the game around. However, it does give us something to think about.

When he bought the item, he activated it in the base with a mid lane siege minion. Then the team moved to the top lane and started sieging the base with their newly acquired baron buff. While the team successfully sieged the top lane, the promoted minion smashed the mid lane and pushed Coast's inhibitor turret without any assistance from the members of CLG.

The current game is a lot about utilizing minion waves in a very push and pull type of manner. The Banner makes it difficult for the enemy team to push back against a powered up minion wave (+15% AD and AP for all nearby minions) and that isn't counting the promoted minion that is doing work on the other side of the map. While all this minion manipulation is great, the stats are also pretty awesome for a support like Annie because of the 80 AP and the 20% cooldown reduction; stats that she actively seeks.

Will we see more Banners in the professional scene? Possibly if the game continues to be so push oriented. Supports are still figuring out what items are most useful with all the extra gold they have and we could definitely see them prioritize the banner in the mid to late game.

Push strategies are fun if you enjoy map rotations and watching a game that feels a lot like chess. However, they are incredibly boring if you like to see a lot of blood. Hopefully this article gave you a little bit of respect for the fast push strategies as I believe we will continue to see more of them despite the tower changes in 4.1 and 4.2.

 

its the new thing here.

 

you will wake up with no allies. sleep tight