How a Fighting Game Pro Can Make You Better at LoL

A while back, The Penny Arcade Report posted an article titled “Why no one can stop Sun Woo Lee, the new king of Street Fighter.” Known as “Infiltration,” this South Korean has swept in and dominated the scene over the past nine or so months. There are many reasons for Infiltration’s success, but one big one is that “He studies his opponent’s playstyles to find their weaknesses. Whereas lots of players are figuring out how to beat a character, Infiltration is focused on how to beat the player and the character as a unit.”

You can probably figure out where I’m going with this. Though the ideas behind them do matter, “counters,” for most players, really don’t mean very much in LoL. A better way of saying this is that counters should not be what you focus on when you’re trying to improve at the game.

Especially in lower level play, players seldom fully utilize the strengths of their champions, turning most lanes into what amounts to a skill matchup. A perfect example of this is Caitlyn, who, according to many pros, should basically never lose her lane (at least pre-nerf from the most recent patch), something that obviously does not hold up in your regular, everyday solo queue game. This is large part of why the “only play one champion” method of raising your ELO works so well.

So how do you use an opponent’s playstyle against them? In my own, admittedly amateurish, play, I’ve found that the best way to gauge an opponent is to watch how they CS. Do they stay right up with the creep line, trying to harass you whenever they can? Or do they stay in the back, only cautiously coming up to grab the occasional CS? With this basic knowledge of your opponent’s mindset, you can apply your knowledge of your own champion’s kit to determine the best way to counter that playstyle. If they’re aggressive, poke them if possible and ask for ganks while just getting as much CS as you safely can. If you feel like you’re at least equal in dueling ability, engage and take advantage of them taking more creep damage than you. They’re defensive? Zone them from CS as much as possible and get harass in when you can. It is not always about what YOU know a champion can do, but what the person PLAYING them knows.

Like so many strategies, there is an element of risk here. When you see a player acting defensively even though they have an advantage and it’s a behavior that persists throughout the game, it is likely because that player doesn’t know they have an advantage or that they just always play defensively. If you went aggressive against a player aware of their advantage, they’d destroy you. But against someone who doesn’t? Who is just trying to sneak in what CS they can while staying away from you? You should be able to take advantage of that player, bullying them in lane.

          

Of course, it’s important to know every champion’s kit so that you can plan for all possibilities. Just know that what you see on a site like ChampionSelect is not written in stone. For example, Kassadin is rated as an overwhelming counter to Lux. A Lux who watches in lane, though, will quickly notice the early game advantage they have, especially with their strong poke when Kassadin has to play defensively for six levels. By taking advantage of this, a Lux player can deprive Kassadin of so much CS (while maybe even getting a kill or two in the process) that the advantage Kassadin would have had is essentially negated by Lux’s gold lead. Doing things like building defensively and putting extra points in your shield instead of going with your standard ability and item build can help put you on top.

At it’s core, LoL is a game about knowledge. A game like StarCraft 2, theoretically, has a much higher mechanical skill ceiling, but LoL is a game with over 100 champions, with more being added regularly. It’s about knowing every champion’s abilities and, once you get especially good, ranges, cooldowns, damage/ratios, etc. Instead of thinking about how one kit “counters” another, ask yourself how you can use your champions kit to its fullest extent. Know that you have sustained damage while your enemy has burst? Try to avoid that initial damage and force an extended trade . It’s all about what you know. Mechanics are important, but knowledge is just as important, if not more.

So go forward into your next ranked game with confidence. And when you’re playing, just ask yourself, “What would Infiltration do?”