Creating Pressure: A Breakdown of Team Dignitas' Global Ultimates and Splitpushing

A great start to the Summer Split from Team Dignitas! In the first 24 matches of the Summer Split, Shen was picked or banned in 22. Ashe was picked or banned in 14. Now, before you go off and pick Shen in solo queue to cash in that sweet elo, consider this: Team Dignitas has beaten the Shen pick with Ashe every time the match-up of globals has been picked. 

In this article, we're going to go over what makes Shen so powerful and how Team Dignitas uses his strengths. Then, we're going to take a look at what Ashe can do, and how Team Dignitas uses her abilities to keep the enemy team in check. Lastly, we'll take a look at how this all comes together to create a team strategy based on controlling both split pushing and team fighting. 

As you can probably imagine from the title of this article, Shen's strengths come primarily from splitpushing to create pressure. 

Constantly jamming sidelanes to push towers and open up the map creates a ton of map pressure and forces the enemy team to react and work together, a kind of mental pressure. Splitpushing abuses a lack of teamwork from the other team and can cause momentum for the enemy to stall out and creates chances for the enemy to trip up and make mistakes. 

Ideally, in splitpushing, the person that goes to shove waves can reliably duel anyone on the map or be able to escape multiple chasers. Your team is ready for you to rotate around the map and will be turtling on objectives, taking the chances you create to engage favorable teamfights or gobble up objectives that the enemy leaves behind.

So what makes Shen a fantastic splitpusher? For one, Shen is able to duel people quite effectively.

Shen's Twilight Assault means that even while building quite tanky, Shen is able to beat most other tanks in a straight up hitting contest with %HP damage output. His passive Ki Barrier means that building tanky grants even more bonuses, an effect that is triggered multiple times whenever he gets into combat. His Spirit's Refuge allows him to either get free damage off and turn a bad trade with the dodge area. It also buys him a valuable breathing space to reposition and ready another Twilight Assault. 

His Shadow Dash also provides amazing utility. It can be utilized as an escape to cross terrain or generally create distance, or as a gap close if the enemy decide that Shen is too powerful and decides to turn around. Mobility and taunt rolled into one skill.

Ssumday and Big force an enemy flash. 

But, let's get down to Shen's most powerful ability and the reason he is able to turn games around. His ultimate - Stand United.

This ability is fantastic. Upon activation, Shen provides a shield to any ally on the map, and after channeling 3 seconds, Shen blinks to the targeted ally. The cooldown on this spell is 180/150/120 seconds without cooldown reduction while Summoner Teleport is 300 seconds (200 cancelled). This gives Shen so much global presence. With Teleport and his ultimate both off cooldown, it can feel like Shen is literally everywhere on the map.

If light travels so fast, how come it's never caught a ninja?

Here's a great example of Shen's map pressure. Ssumday pushes the bottom lane as the team gets ready to do Baron. The enemy pings that Shen must be dealt with bot lane before they lose the turret. 

When the enemy is forced to back off and deal with the splitpush, Ssumday rejoins his team with ultimate and gets the Baron.

Let's take a look at the composition Team Dignitas utilized in Game 1 of Team Dignitas vs Team EnVyUs in Week 1 of the Summer Split.

It is quite apparent that this team is built to teamfight. While the small skirmishes involving two or three of these champions can be effective in picking off stragglers, they truly shine together when fighting large scale teamfights or contesting objectives as a team. This is a perfect composition for Shen. He can focus on pushing lanes, and Teleport in to engage or peel, creating a fantastic teamfight environment. 

Great teamfight engage from Ssumday on Shen

Now that we've taken a look at why Shen is so strong and how Team Dignitas uses him, let's take a look at Ashe.

Ashe is an immobile ADC and unlike Twitch, she can't flank with invisibility or decimate teamfights in the same fashion with piercing ultimate shots. However, her kit gives her a huge presence on the map and, you guessed it, creates a ton of objective pressure. 

Her Ranger's Focus allows her to melt down objectives and her Volley allows her to control waves and also kite enemies around. It should also be noted that Ranger's Focus combined with Runaan's Hurricane and her passive allows her auto attacks to double as crowd control for multiple targets. Hawkshot provides global vision and can reveal objectives and traps set up by the enemy if shot across the whole map.

This is a very valuable source of vision and can help a ton when setting up fights and objectives. 

Spotted! Bait denied.

And then there's her global ultimate - Enchanted Crystal Arrow. This skill can be used to long range engage, disengage, or re-engage a fight on a dime. The cooldown is relatively low at 100/90/80 seconds, so it can be used frequently without worrying about downtime too much. 

LOD nails the enemy Varus with an Enchanted Crystal Arrow and immediately is rewarded with Mikael's Crucible and Redemption cooldowns from the enemy team.

Make sure you pull the trigger if you ever see an opening! Never hold the ultimate until you "need" it. Ashe is the one that makes things happen. Don't afraid to go for good engages and always look for the next opening. 

So close! Lee still had to blow his ultimate because he was zoned backwards.

Enchanted Crystal Arrow lands and the team makes a great pick.

Ashe's kit allows her to maneuver away from bad teamfights, and also help the team dominate engages that are favorable. 

LOD hits a nice arrow and the team moves in, but a follow-up Hawkshot spots more enemies than expected ready to back the Thresh up, so the team plays it safe and dodges a potentially bad fight. 

Stopping Shen

So now that we've looked at the two big champions at work here, let's see how exactly Team Dignitas responds to this Shen pick. As previously stated, Shen has two major factors that allow him to be an effective split push tank: dueling/escaping ability and global presence.

Ssumday on Fiora is able to beat Shen in lane. Fiora is an extremely reliable laner and can hold her own when fighting 1v1 or even 1v2. This makes it impossible for Shen to win by himself early on and draws a ton of pressure away from the botlane, where Ashe is starting to get stronger. 

With the help of Chaser, Ssumday secures a kill on Shen and is able to solidify a lead.

Shen tries to split push while the enemy team makes fights happen, but Fiora is always pushing a different area of the map and making sure the gold difference doesn't get too wide. 

During the early game, Team Dignitas plays safe, carefully trading cooldowns and making sure Shen's ultimate can't be saved for an optimal situation. The moment an engage is possible, LOD threatens with an Ashe arrow. 

The enemy gets caught by a nice Ashe ultimate and Shen is forced to burn his ultimate or else risk a needless kill. Thresh flashes after further chain crowd control and Team Dignitas is free to return and take the Dragon unhindered.

In the midgame, Fiora's power and items are now confidently ahead of Shen. If they fight, Shen is forced to his tower. Ssumday gets to push and grab jungle camps until the enemy rotates to help Shen, which leaves his team with an opening to push different objectives on the map.

 
The two split pushers meet in bot lane. Team Dignitas rotates to meet the rest of the enemy team and force another stalemate while Fiora is able to force Shen back.

Looking at that item difference, it is no wonder that Shen is unable to deal with Fiora. 

Then, when the carries are all properly built up, Fiora is able to split push and Ashe is able to force favorable teamfights/disengage bad ones. Shen is unable to push against the Fiora and his global presence is cancelled by Ashe's kiting and lower cooldown ultimate. 

 
The enemy sees Fiora threatening to take bottom lane, so they try for an engage. LOD's Ashe ultimate stops the momentum and allows Team Dignitas to reposition without casualties.

If Ssumday can draw this much pressure from the enemy team, there's no way to take advantage of Shen's presence or ultimate. Team Dignitas picks up two towers and Ssumday scrams before the enemy can collapse.

This game seemed to take quite a long time, but that's the strongest point about splitpushing. Usually, you can pick and choose your favorable fights. By limiting Shen's map pressure and then also locking down teamfights, it is impossible for the enemy to make use of Shen's dominating traits. 

Hopefully this helped you understand how and why champions with global abilities like Shen and Ashe are currently top priority picks in the competitive scene. Team Dignitas' style of dealing with these strategies while executing similar plans and controlling objectives are important concepts to understand.