Hey everyone. Top lane can be really frustrating
as there are so many counter picks up there and it can feel like you just lose lane in
champion select if you do get hard countered. But, any match is winnable with strong fundamentals,
so that's what we're going to show you today. To do this, were going to break down a game
from my smurf in plat where i'm playing Maokai vs Illaoi. I specifically chose maokai into illaoi because
its maokai's most difficult matchup and players tend to really struggle going against her
in general. Even if you don't play these two champions,
the concepts you learn here will apply to anyone. Let's break down the match up. Maokai is an AP tank vs Illaoi an AD juggernaut. Maokai doesn't have many advantages in lane
except he has a ton of guaranteed sustain, where as illaoi only gets sustain when she
lands her abilities. Also, maokai's main trading tool, his Q, has
a lower cooldown than Illaois main trading ability, her E. Illaoi outpushes Maokai, does more burst,
and more sustained damage. For these reasons this is obviously a very
difficult match up. My gameplan for this will be: Mission 1: Push if possible Even though Illaoi has more waveclear, if
Illaoi doesn't focus on wave control, I can get the push advantage. Mission 2: Avoid Illaoi E Illaoi E is her main trading tool, it gets
blocked by minions so I need to make sure to stand behind them to avoid it. Mission 3: Don't die to ganks Since i'm going to be pushing, I have to make
sure to reset and ward at the right times to keep myself safe. Before we get into it, throughout the video
try to look for the main reason why Illaoi doesn't win this lane, as were going to go
over it in the end and give her gameplan. Alright, now let's get into the gameplay. At the start of the lane, I'm constantly auto
attacking minions to start mission 1, while also making sure to keep my movement random
and unpredictable since Im waiting for her to use Q which is what most Illaoi players
start with. When she walks up to the minions, I hit her
with Q, and she eventually uses W on me which isn't what I expected. But since she has no tentacles here to make
use of her W, I can use this to my advantage. First I walk up and use my grasp and passive
auto on her when she walks up for a last hit. This is just abusing my sustain advantage
and the fact that she didnt have her W up. Playing around cooldowns is a very basic fundamental
to top lane. After that I walk back into my wave to get
this minion, so she jumps in with W again. This is fine because like I said before, there
are no tentacles here, and she's going to take damage from my minion wave anyways. I go back to auto attacking minions for mission
1, and when she walks up I use my Q to hit all 3 minions and her to trade and push at
the same time, then auto attack her to proc grasp. Illaoi made a big mistake here walking up
to me with her W being down, again, playing around cooldowns. After I use my Q, notice I run back into my
wave, knowing her W is going to come back up now. She jumps in again to use it, and I make a
small mistake here. When she used W, I should have buffered an
auto attack on her to trade back, then used the brush to cancel minion aggro. I didn't expect her to be in range there but
this is just another fundamental to top lane. In these melee vs melee matchups you pretty
much should always be trading back auto attacks unless you're in there wave. In this case, she's jumping into my wave so
it's an even bigger reason to trade back. I walk up and use Q on her again after that,
to push and trade, and she trades back with W, proccing her conq. When going against any champion with conq,
and youre not running it, this is when you have to back off and let the stacks fall.
When they have conqueror procced they do much more damage and heal. So I'm going to back away now to let conq
fall off her. Once it's off, I use Q on the minion wave
to grab some CS and look for some poke but it doesnt connect. But i'm going back to auto attacking the wave
to keep pushing for mission 1. During this time, we both hit level 2. Now I don't know which ability she’s going
to grab at level 2, but I do have the push advantage. Most Illaois would grab Q right now but since
she has 2 tentacles next to her, she could get E instead. To prepare for both look how i'm positioning
around my minions. I'm basically hugging them and am ready to
use them as a shield to block her E for mission 2. She does end up getting E and I dodge it running
into my wave. After I dodge it, I'm going to collect my
last hits, then watch how I play. I'm going to be pretty aggressive here because I know
her main ability, her E, is down. So I want to take that time to kill this tentacle
and drop a ward for mission 3. The enemy jungler is rengar, so I don't want
to stand next to this brush blind where he can jump on me. Now as I go back to laning, Im back inside
my minion wave for mission 2 to avoid Illaoi's E, and continuing to push. Somehow Illaoi's E connects with me here even
though I'm completely covered by these 2 minions, but it's ok in season 20 stuff like this won't
happen. Even though I get cursed and the tentacles
are going to swing at me now. I have a level lead here so the fundamentals of top lane
still apply. I want to abuse my level lead so I jump in with W and use Q, then walk back
into my wave. This is the really important part. I used my abilities to use my level advantage,
but once my abilities are down, I don't have any damage left. So by kiting into my wave like this, if Illaoi
tries to fight me all my minions will hit her. She does walk into my wave so I hit her with
an auto to trade back. Notice how I don't go in and try to kill her
even though she's so little hp. You don't want to get baited into this when
against champions with healing. I have no abilities to actually finish her
so if she uses W and one of the tentacles hit me, it will heal her for 5% of her missing
health. It's best to just play it patient here. So i'm going to go back into my minion wave
and continue pushing, and this time her E doesn't go through this wall of minions and
protects me. Now that her E is down, I can look to trade
again. I try to hit her with Q but shes playing pretty far back. I'm not going to force a trade on her when
she's that far back so I work on collecting last hits. She jumps on me instead with her W, which
is very risky when her main ability is down. Sadly I'm playing as if I have 500 ping and
get hit by the tentacle and Q which gives her some health and brings me low. Right after that, her E comes back up, but
because I walk behind my minions, she misses. This is extremely important right now because
if that E connected I would either die or have to recall. As soon as she misses, I walk up knowing she's
going to jump in. With her E down and my level lead, I can win this all-in. I W in right away, and walk out of the tentacle
damage from her W, then use an auto and Q before flashing away from the two tentacles
about to slam, getting the kill. That was close because of the bad trade I
took earlier, but the lane isn't over, she still counters mein champion really hard. Let's keep going. I'm going to recall after this, and TP back
to lane. I want to follow the same gameplan as
before, so I use Q as soon as I get back to lane on the wave. I know Illaoi is going to
jump in with W since my Q is down, so I use W as she does to cancel it. But since I have
no minions in front of me, I walk into my wave again, which makes me eat her Q.
Eating her Q is much better than eating her E as thats her main ability like we have
talked about many times. Also, this can apply to any champion in top. Everyone has a main ability that you need
to keep track of. The most obvious ones are Jax E, Fiora W, Maokai W, or Kennen E.
These abilities have longer cooldowns and without them the champion can be
Punished. But after that I'm still playing in my wave,
then go over to kill this tentacle. I get hit by E here only because this is lower
elo and Illaoi wasn't thinking how a high elo illaoi would. So what I was doing here was.. I was walking
towards my minion wave to use it to block for me. This would normally make her try to
aim it right on the edge of my ranged minions, but she just threw it at the tentacle not
thinking about that. This sounds like an excuse but ill be the
first one to tell you when im trolling. In lower elo its sometimes harder to hit or dodge
skillshots just because it can be so random. No Kapp. But even though I got hit by the E. Since
she only has 1 tentacle next to her and she got hit by my sapling, I don't need to run
away. She can't kill the spirit with only 1 tentacle, so I can just walk back into the
wave while waiting for the spirit to die. I don't want to fight her when the spirit
is up, but by not running out of range I wont get cursed. As soon as the spirit is about to die as we
can see from the timer below it, I jump in to trade since her E is down and look at the
difference in minion wave because I have been working on mission 1. I have 4 minions and 1 of them is a cannon,
where she has just 1. So if we fight here my wave will help me out
a lot. We trade and she gets very aggressive because
her jungler is here as we can see from the ward I placed. In lower elo, I see way too often you guys
letting the enemy team troll and get away with it. You need to be able to spot these
situations. This is one of them. Illaoi doesn't have E, or any tentacles around, and has 30%
health. I'm at 70% with a level lead and minion wave
behind me. Rengar is only level 4 with 60%. There is no way they have a chance at killing
me here. Because of this, I'm just going to bait this
rengar in. Now, it doesn't mean I want to run at the brush head first, I just want to
walk into my minion wave and let them come to me. I focus on Illaoi first since she's really
low, which makes her flash away. Notice I dont flash for her after that though. I'm still staying in my minion wave letting
them fight for me, and defending myself. Rengar actually did a lot of burst so I kite
back a little more, and because all my abilities are on cooldown now. He keeps chasing as I kite back and trade
auto attacks. As soon as my Q and W come up I W on rengar
to kill him, then Q the illaoi and punch her to finish her as well. This was actually closer than I thought it
would be. Rengar just did a lot more damage than expected. Either way, you can see how by kiting and
using my wave to defend me, I could 2v1 them now putting me at 3-0 and closing the lane
out. Alright, before we wrap up the video. Remember
we told you to keep in mind what you think Illaoi did wrong in this matchup. The main reason she lost was because she wasn't
pushing the lane at all. Remember she has the push advantage. So her gameplan would look like this: Mission 1: Push the wave Mission 2: Look for E while Maokai farms under
tower Mission 3: Don't die to ganks If she did this, I wouldn't be able to use
my minion wave to block her E so many times, and it would be a lot harder for me to farm
or trade at all. But since she just focused so hard on trading,
I got wave control when I shouldnt have, which won me the lane. Alright guys, so as you can see, even the
hardest matchups can be won with fundamental game knowledge. But thats going to be it for this one, we
hope you enjoyed it and thanks for watching!
