Hey everyone and welcome. In our guides, we often teach you a certain
set of missions that are the way to win the lane in different types of matchups. What we want to draw attention to this time,
is how to play dynamic and take shortcuts to reach your overall objective faster, when
your opponent is playing incorrectly. This time around we'll be reviewing one of
our Skill-Capped challengers, who has finished top 50 multiple times, Ariana Lovato. He'll be playing a smurf game in Diamond 3
where he's on control mage/assassin Zoe up against Leblanc who's an assassin. As always, even if you don't play these champs
or even types of champions, it doesn't matter. You're going to learn how to make better decisions
based on your opponent's actions in this guide, amongst the other small tips you can always
expect from us. Let's jump into analysis. Zoe and Leblanc have similar range, but it's
not cut and dry. Zoe has higher E range when going through
walls and range spell interactions with ult, while Leblanc also has a dash to get closer
for her spells. But it about evens out in the general lane
phase. Damage, they're evenly matched. Both are volatile mids who snowball easily
off one combo. For waveclear, Zoe has the advantage at all
stages. But Leblanc could fast clear with ulti if
she chooses to past 6. This lane is pretty even as to who should
win it, Zoe's angle will be to directly pressure Leblanc with shoving the wave and landing
her skill shots. Whereas Leblanc's best choice would be looking
to try and delay Zoe's push outside of her turret and setup ganks, as Leblanc's gank
setups are insane. The missions Ariana on the Zoe will follow
this game are: Push the wave
Harass Leblanc when she goes to last hit Don't get ganked Jungle matchup for this one is Nocturne for
Zoe and Taliyah for Leblanc. Let's get into it. Before the lane even starts, Leblanc actually
scores first blood with a kill onto Zoe's top laner. Not ideal and Leblanc comes into this with
an extra Doran's ring. This won't change Ariana's missions on the
Zoe, as he still needs to win the lane on the lane dominant champ to carry his team. What it does mean though, is that Leblanc
has the edge in the 1v1 and definitely won't need any ganks to win lane if she plays well
enough. Skipping forward to the start of lane phase,
we can see that Zoe gets a few autos on the wave before Leblanc arrives. This is a nice start on mission 1. When most players go into lane with the intent
on pushing the wave though, they use their first ability onto the wave as well and Zoe
does not. The reason for this is that mission 1 is currently
in effect, the wave is pushing, by saving her ability she can start on mission 2 right
away. Moments later, we can see mission 2 come into
play. By intelligently holding onto his Q and exploiting
Leblanc's lateness to lane to work on mission 1 with autos, he has landed his first spell
on the game onto Leblanc. That was his main goal, but also hitting the
wave at the same time is a nice bonus. Though, this wasn't a harass on a last hit
- but he fancied his chances at landing this Q due Leblanc's exposed positioned in lane
by the side of her minions. Moving on, minimap awareness tells us the
enemy not lane arrives late - meaning Taliyah almost certainly started bot side. This knowledge will help out with mission
3 later. As these blue melees get low, we can see he
misses a couple of them while auto'ing, when he could've secured them with his ability. Losing the CS isn't ideal, but he'd rather
that than waste a spell to secure them. He wants to gain momentum in this lane following
mission 2. A couple of seconds later, he does exactly
that, once again hitting Leblanc with his Q, this time as she goes for a last hit. Nice work and he's gained a 20% health lead
at this point, remember - Leblanc got the first blood and has double doran's, but is
falling behind. Moving onto the next trade and we can see
Ariana made a bit of a mistake here as both champions are going for a last hit. He moved a little too far forward and got
caught by Leblanc's W. A few things to note here are that with this
W, the blue wave actually has the larger health & minion count, so Zoe's no longer pushing
for mission 1 for now. Also, Ariana was still happy to take this
trade, even though it wasn't ideal - because he's already burnt through Leblanc's potion
and they dealt around even damage to eachother. Keep in mind, Zoe's playing corrupting potion,
so this health will be easy to heal back up. He looks for more harass and ends up pulling
all the way back to secure his last hits and think about how he wants to manage the wave. If you were the Zoe here, what would your
immediate objective be with how to manage the wave? Alright. So most of you probably said push the wave,
since we kind of baited you into that as this is one of our missions and it's the gameplan
for Zoe to win lane with that Ariana wants to execute on. However, the missions are the general strategy
to winning the matchup and this Leblanc isn't playing well enough for Ariana to respect
how the matchup should be played out. Because Leblanc is constantly pushing up for
last hits and to trade, but is being outplayed, Zoe doesn't need to push the wave to harass. She can harass just fine with the wave being
neutral, this suits her nicely as there's little threat from gank for mission 3 as well. So what we've just said have you immediately
asking these two questions. 1) Why doesn't Zoe do this from the start? She's getting her missions done, while staying
safe from Leblanc's high threat ganks. 2) What can Leblanc even do? First up, Zoe doesn't want to go into this
matchup trying to freeze. She wants to win lane and play aggressive. The reason this is working without committing
to the push is because Leblanc isn't trading well and is doing a bad job with hiding behind
her minions to block Q, which is what Zoe and other champs who get their main ability
blocked like to do - push so they can't block with minions. Because Leblanc isn't forcing Zoe to shove
to tower to land easy harass, she can skip this timely process, at least for the time
being, and just go straight for harass. Using autos on the wave and spells on the
champion. And to answer the 2nd question: Leblanc needs
to be trading back more actively and using minions to block more effectively. We'll highlight one example of this in just
a moment. So we see Ariana continue the trend of saving
his spells for trading and he actively autos the wave to thin it - because while he's not
focused on pushing, he doesn't want this wave to get out of control. And right here, is how Leblanc can do better
and is why Ariana doesn't have to push to harass right now on the Zoe. Leblanc is positioned to the side of her casters
to score this last hit, allowing Zoe to execute on mission 2 once again. If she was behind these casters, it'd be much
easier to dodge or block. Also, Leblanc doesn't shoot for one of our
recent active missions: trading when ability is down. Yes she tanks this damage, but doesn't retaliate
while Zoe's Q is down, just continues to CS, giving Ariana a much easier time. Okay, speeding it up while Zoe continues to
auto the wave, throwing in one q to just thin it out and keep it under control. The main thing on Ariana's mind at this point
is to get level 3 fast on this third wave, to really turn up the tempo once skilling
up his E. Nocturne arrives and Leblanc just uses her
W, so they go in but this is why Nocturne doesn't really gank pre-6, he floats away
across the lane but what this did achieve was the the opportunity to zone Leblanc away
from this cannon minion. Unfortunately Ariana misses the cannon as
well, but crucially he did zone Leblanc away from even getting experience from it, so another
win for him. We see him pull right back now to start working
on the wave. Leblanc's playing defensive and he wants to
start pushing now to get to work on his original missions. Actively auto'ing and using a couple of Q's
on the wave, it's not yet enough to reverse the push, but the waves are closer to neutral
as a result. Now we're seeing Ariana take a trade that
is usually a pretty bad idea on most champions, as his Q is currently down and he's walking
into minions. But, if you're Zoe with a barrier picked up,
ignite ready and another spell available on the ground next to you, you can just go for
this as we see he does here. The important thing to think about here regardless
of what champion you play, is how these moves change the minion wave. Because he's aggros the blue minions, they're
attacking Zoe, while the red minions are hitting the blue wave. This turns the tides and gets Zoe's wave pushing,
which is ideal as he looks to get aggressive and start acting on mission 1. Alright, we've learnt a lot about minion wave
control and dynamic missions so far, let's speed it up while they pick up their last
hits. Zoe has the level lead at the moment thanks
to the cannon exp denial from earlier. She's also gotten rid of Leblanc's potions,
with 2 charges of corrupting left for herself. A second later, we see Ariana ward the brush
and will now play to the side of his ward to evade being ganked too easily. Leblanc also uses her W onto the wave in this
moment This is Leblanc's trigger to go for a new
mission, having played so well previously: Go for an all-in. While Leblanc's main damage and only mobility
is down, Ariana grabs a couple of last hits, then looks to move in. What he was going for here was a very aggressive
trade, where he can either send Leblanc home to recall or even land a kill. The point is, with Leblanc's main ability
down, there's nothing to worry about in the 1v1. Though, with no eyes on Taliyah, there is
a possibility of the jungler helping out. But being 3-0 down as a team, Ariana needs
to make plays and carry with this lane dominant champion. Anyway, Zoe drops the redemption and moves
in. Misses bubble, but here's something that you
all want to pay attention to. Notice how Zoe uses corrupting as he goes
for the all in? Why do you think that is? Alright, bonus points to those who got this. When you have corrupting potion active, it
means your autos will also apply a burn effect to the target, burning over-time, lasting
for 3 seconds. So, when Leblanc's passive procs, the Leblanc
who has the visible corrupting potion burn on them, is the real Leblanc. This also works on Shaco clone. Then, as we see, the real Leblanc is clearly
the one closest to Zoe and he can keep going without delay. We also see Taliyah coming up here for the
counter, let's see what happens. Alright, so this was some nice play from Ariana,
a little late on the flash as the ignite would've finished Leblanc, but got the job done regardless. You may be asking yourself that this was a
risky play that only just paid off, as he went all-in without vision on the jungler. This was certainly a risk, but Ariana felt
pressured because his team was losing and knew he'd win the 1v1. He also played to the side of his ward and
suspected Taliyah to be top side. He wouldn't have went for this if he thought
Taliyah was bot side and Leblanc had her spells up, sometimes you just have to go to it and
make plays, even if they're not guaranteed to score results. Looking at our original missions, it's safe
to say this lane didn't go as planned. But what we can say is that the way Ariana
dynamically played around Leblanc's positioning and mistakes, accelerated his gameplan to
scoring a kill by 4 minutes, vs a double doran's first blood Leblanc, boosting his chances
of carrying the losing team. Let's get you today's takeaways. Ariana started the game looking to push the
wave to tower for free harass and last hit punishment. But Leblanc's aggressive positioning and poor
trade execution, allowed him to land his Q's even with the minions available to protect
Leblanc. This allowed Ariana to constantly hit the
champion and not the wave, accelerating his aggression. To the point that when he was online with
level 3, he really pushed the tempo and chipped away at Leblanc's potions, scoring a successful
all-in at level 4. Alright, that's it for this one. Thanks for watching and we'll catch you next
time.
