Let's Teamfight! Instant Initiation

Initiation is a must on your team. However, just having that ability is not enough, as walking up to the enemy team will just show them you are about to initiate. There are indeed many different types of initiations, and how you use them may determine whether or not your team will succeed in teamfights.

 

The Flash Initiation

The flash initiation is probably one of the most common forms of instant initiation. When you flash and use a hard stunlock CC, it may catch your opponents off guard and put them on tilt during a teamfight. Furthermore, if you flash initiate, your team can burst down priority targets before they can react to the situation. The flash initiation works best if the two teams are skirmishing around eachother, as then both teams will be near eachother. This makes it so that you, or whoever is initiating, won't have to walk up, which could warn the enemy that the initiation will occur soon. Among my favorite flash initiations are Annie's ultimate, any flash hook and Sona's ultimate.

 

The Long Range Initiation

Many champions don't really have efficient flash initiations, but what takes its place is a long ranged initiation. The long range initiation can take two forms: the long ranged skillshots, and the dashing gap closer.

- Long Ranged Skillshots

These are skills like Ashe's ultimate, Nami's ultimate, Zyra entangle, and Sejuani's ultimate. The way you would want to use these is by instantly activating the skill with no hesitation. For example, both of the teams may be skirmishing, not really engaging. Instead of walking up to use the skill, you would want to try to use the skill in the middle of the teams hesitating, as it will suprise them, and therefore can help your team to pick someone off, and win a teamfight. In my opinion, this isn't as effective as say, a dash or flash initiation, as most of these skillshots are slow enough for the enemy team to dodge them. However, if pulled off successfully, you will be able to catch the enemy team off guard.

- The "Dash" Initiation

The dash initiation includes gap closers like Vi's dash to ultimate, Malphite's ultimate, Shyvana's ultimate, etc. Though there are indeed a ton of types of initiations in this category that aren't really "dashes," they still are champion movement gap closers. These are pretty much like the flash initiation, but they are more cost efficient, as you usually don't need to burn a flash. They bring the same suprise factor as the flash initiation, but are more expected due to the fact that most people know that the opposing team has that initiation champion.

 

These are just the basics of the start of teamfights, as messy beginnings to a teamfight can cause a team to lose a game. I hope these few tips will help you and your team in future games, and raise your elo!

Good luck everyone!

LYY