Learn to play like the pros, from the pros

One of the best ways to learn anything is by analyzing people that are better than yourself. I have chosen to look at pro games and try to analyze them. So, without further ado, let’s learn from the pros!

Bans
One thing to look at to keep up with the meta is which champions gets banned in the game you are watching, assuming that you are watching a fairly new game. I will not talk much about bans because it is often only useful when you are playing on a higher level. A silver player will not be able to use Zed or LeBlanc to their fullest potential and if you are lucky, not banning them might be in your favour in case they are really bad with their champion and you great with yours.

Banning in the lower ranks should be more about what you think is hard to face. In this game, Lissandra, Rek’Sai, Irelia, Rengar, Syndra and Lee Sin were banned. In the lower leagues I have never seen Rengar and Lee Sin banned the last two patches. Are they banned because they are strong? Are the banned because their jungler is very good with Lee Sin? Did they just lose against a Lee Sin? There are many questions to pose before deciding what to ban. If you have no clue, follow the pros. Otherwise, ban what your team struggles with or that you see a lot of players winning with.

 

Picks
When it came to the picks this game there were many understandable picks. One team picked the very strong Jarvan and Janna. The other team picked some strong champions too: Gnar, Vi, Blitz and Kalista. I will tread carefully when speaking about champions too because the same goes here as it does with the bans; dependency upon ranking. Zed is being banned a lot but if your mechanics with him is very low you might not benefit at all by picking him. If you feel confident enough with any of the champions above however, they are all strong champions worth playing right now!

The reason for not picking god like champions on one of the teams was because they wanted to build around Yasuo who is not that strong anymore, in case you were wondering why they lacked many of the strong champions.

 

Invades
Something that has surprised me during season five is the lack of willingness to be aggressive very early on. Depending on your team, invades are not always the best option. No poke, stun or grab and you might not get anything out of it at all. However, with the recently added time to shop before entering the arena together with the early speed buff were things that I thought would spark many people’s interests for invading. Invading is not for everyone, I get that, but at least some poking around dragon or baron, yet I've seen very little of this.

However, one team invaded the other this game and it worked very well. For me, this was proof enough that invades at least can work.

They pushed up on the top lane side to the tribush on top lane where they found a Gnar that both spent his flash and died. They were happy about that and left whereas Gnar was pretty paranoid many minutes into the game.

What can you learn from this?

Face checking is dangerous. It’s as simple as that. Be careful.

If you feel confident enough/have communication with your teammates, try an invade now and then. With the speed buff you will have time to back and pick up an item before minions have spawned.

You get an early advantage that can mess with the enemies' minds and make them more defensive than they might actually need to be.

Jungle
The jungle has been covered all over the Internet… I don't know how many times. I just wanted to mention that if you still haven’t tried the new jungle there has been a ton of changes. Google jungle season 5 and you will receive a million articles on items, buffs and Smite. I suggest looking into the jungle a lot before trying it out this season or you will feel totally out of place.

Quick tips:
- Smite either the gromp, wolves or krugs before picking up blue or red buff respectively.
- Smite can have different buffs depending on what camp you smite. These buffs apply on champions too.
- Hunter’s machete is now upgradeable. Upgrade it almost as soon as you can.

Janna
Janna is one of the two really, really strong supports right now, the other one being Leona. However good she is right now I would still not recommend playing her if you are below Silver I or have not tried her before. Janna is a pretty tricky champion. She seems rather straight forward but you need to be able to use her skills very effectively in order to be of any use at all.

If you have played her before and are a bit higher in the ranks, with better game sense in general, I strongly suggest playing a lot of Janna and Leona as long as they are strong for!

 

Azir
Azir is another one of those champions that are tricky to play but once you get him down, he can be soooo annoying. His sand soldiers is a great tool to poke on the enemy team when you are in lane without losing any last hits, still denying and hurting the enemy champion and catching those far away last hits.

As you know, Azir met Orianna in this game. Her ball was kind of annoying to Azir too, with a similar mechanic, but it wasn’t nearly as annoying as Azir’s sand soldiers.

 

I hope you learned you something new from the pros. Until next time.