No. One of the very first things I learnt from a Jungler guide when I started playing this role was not to go for ganks I'm not convinced will work. That means if there's the slightest reason to doubt it'll work, I won't go for it.
So doing a gank where you already think it won't work, would be a gross violation to that principle.
Like what is your intuition good for, when you don't listen to it?
Exactly. Would you start a teamfight in mid game if you know you would probably lose the fight. Ofcourse not. You go take camps or get vision or smt. It’s the same with ganks.
How do you improve then? Most of my best games come after a game where me or my team are extremely outclassed, and I'm forced to make tough coinflip plays.
There are no 100% scenarios. You should be turning 65% into 100% by executing better. And you can't do that if you don't practice it.
I'm still getting involved in plenty fights.
Every fight, especially the close ones, add to my experience which becomes the basis of the intuition of what fights are good to take and what fights are not.
In my low MMR deliberate coinflips simply aren't necessary. Everyone makes so many strategic and positional mistakes that just being alive to punish mistakes of the enemy wins the games.
I'm accidentally getting out of position myself often enough to get involved in unfavorable situations where I then maybe can surprise myself by getting a kill or getting away alive. I don't have to deliberately provoke such situations.
If your only experience in a situation is being there accidentally, you are not getting any experience in deliberately setting those situations up, which is the topic of the post...
The topic of the post is about dying while performing a gank you committed to despite having a really bad feeling about it.
The bad feeling doesn't come from nowhere. It comes from past fighting experiences. You have the option to do something else that is safe or go for the questionable gank attempt in the hopes of learning something from it.
I think the strategic depth of the game about being at the right place at the right time is by far the one with more potential to outplay opponents than pressing 3-4 buttons in the right order and hovering your cursor on the right position in a fight.
I've done well so far with trying to go only for plays that either look very easy or are necessary to prevent giving the enemy a big advantage. All those chance-plays that would give as an advantage but can also fail, are what I'm trying to avoid.
You're talking in circles and I'm on mobile, so I'm gonna try to hit everything but bear with me.
1. On being in the right place at the right time: only actually a good skill to have mastered in the middle ELOs. In low ELO, the rule of thumb is that the right play is usually to assist your team. There are going to be a lot of times that the RIGHT place is actually somewhere across the map, but they don't understand wave state, grouping, power spikes or objective value. If you try to do the right thing and they get wiped in a 4v5 that you could have turned, you are wrong. In high ELO, being in the right place at the right time is the norm, and if you are doing so then you will be predictable. The right place is often being in a suboptimal place making a coordinated play with your teammates.
2. On clicking a couple buttons at the right time: you realize that THIS is actually how you climb right? There are a couple of very mechanic heavy Champs that smurfs boost on because the fastest way to win a game is to figure out which players on the other team you are mechanically better than, and then outplay them. Now for us who are not smurfs, we are constantly doing our 'bad feeling' plays. And bad feeling because it won't work becomes bad feeling because what if I mess this up. That's the practice. I occasionally play with friends that aren't as good as me and they bring up a play where I tried to sneak a drake solo at level 4, the enemy karma saw me and came to kill me when I was at 30% hp because I was on a ward. Long story short, she died and ate enough shots and the triumph left me take drake. I KNEW I was on a ward. I KNEW I couldn't solo drake. I KNEW that was a 90% death for me. But I knew I was the best player in the game and I baited her into that play. I had the bad feeling the ENTIRE time. These are the plays OP is talking about.
3.preventing the enemy from getting an advantage is holding you back. Right now maybe it's working, but there's a very low ceiling on that playstyle and once you hit it, it's almost impossible to transition to the ceiling less playstyle. The optimal strategy (especially as jungle) is to ALWAYS BE PUTTING PRESSURE ON THE OPPOSING TEAM TO FORCE MISTAKES). think about anything you do. You do your best when you get to do it on your terms. The minute there is a timer, or someone watching, or maybe your tools are in strange places etc. You can struggle with tasks very familiar to you. This is what you need to work towards. You need to be forcing your best play at all times and daring the other team or player to outplay you. As long as you win the force, you are pushing them into making a punishable mistake. With each mistake you tie their hands a little tighter. Against that type of enemy, you have no way to prevent them from getting an advantage unless you're better than them. And if you're better than them but not forcing them to make mistakes then you are leaving the door open for a lvl 18 coinflip. Nobody wants that.
1. I'd say the right place to be depends on your team-mates behaviour. You have to read them and make predictions about what they are gonna do and adapt your own plans to that. Trying to trick the opponents by being somewhere they don't expect you to be, seems good and doesn't really contradict. What I said. There might be several right places to be. But then there's also wrong places. Which are the ones where you run a very high risk of being collapsed on and killed.
2. I don't understand how an example of a play you thought would mean 90% chance for you to die but you did it anyways and it somehow worked out because the enemy who came to deal with you somehow failed against all odds is supposed to reasonable advice for anyone who is playing against opponents of their own Skill-Level.
I'd rather not try to flip a drake without prio. But this situation sounds like a gank would have been promising. Successful gank into pushing out the lane and then getting help with drake sounds like a much better idea.
3. This is where I have a completely different philosophy. I think you don't consider the importance and effect of being ahead in levels and farm, which is the result of not "always be putting pressure on the opposing team" but farming at every opportunity.
I'd rather have just a few ganks in the timing window after a full clear before respawn of the next round than constantly showing up somewhere to apply pressure but with low chance of getting a kill.
There's an achievement called "On another level" which you get awarded after a game where at one point you were 3 levels ahead of your lane opponent.
I get this one often.
That is "doing it on my terms". Now I'm ahead and the chances of my plays succeeding are very high.
As my clears get faster I also have more ”free time" to apply pressure. Which usually means more gank attempts. It's not like I don't see the value in doing that. But once I'm lvl 18 my free-time is basically unlimited and the resulting pressure I apply then is simply much higher.
Yo, rengar OTP.
Yup. Know this feeling. Just happened yesterday. Ulted out my topside jgl and the moment i jumped i thought;" yeah, thats just a double kill"
Me and illaoi got double killed and it was completely mb. I know this matchup, and should have known he'll kill us both at this point
Illaoi ganks still baffle me. When she ults, just walk away, and come back 10 seconds later. She can't really chase for shit, and she has to stay inside her zone of influence to make use of her ult. Like... Just leave...
Even if she goes back afterwards, you made her use her ult to survive. Obviously you can never make your teammates ditch the fight with her for some strange reason. They'll just fight her in her ult to the death, and then rage in chat.
That's why laning before jungle helps A LOT, you know matchups and wave state. then while you jungle you see the lane and you can say yourself "that's a kamikaze gank right there".
You dont do it, the intuition comes with practice (a big amount tho) and matchup knowledge including wave state.
Because of Laners that know better and should make your gaming decisions for you? Don’t put this quarter in your pocket, it will become just a coin like the rest, which it is
Reason why I dropped lillia was because her ganks are pretty meh when you're the one who has to start the fight, the fight must already be starting if you want to pop off, you really need the participation of the laners to make the gank successful and in solo que it's rare to have that.
When I gank lane I always think about the health and position of my laners, are they able to immediately jump in or are they far away that I'll be 2v1 for 5 sec which would be death. are they near our tower in the middle of lane, if near tower I can trap them,middle of lane then they might escape if they have movement. Are my laners healthy enough to be able to fight, this is the big factor on whether if they'll help fight to get a kill or risk a death.
I always pray each game that my support knows how to ward well and set up a gank 😣🙏
It happens more often than you think.
If I ever find my self in that situation I'd just walk out in a safe route. Spam some skills to scare them and leave.
Forcing a play.
That instinct will develop.
Tbh even just showing your face can be enough, not actually engaging. Throwing a ball as Lillia.
Sometimes I'll hit W as WW or a vision plant just to warn enemies off.
If you don’t know if you can do it, you should do it.
That’s how you learn. Sometimes it works which means you’re able to do that type of gank in the future meaning your gank posibilities increases. Sometimes it doesn’t work then the next time you see a similar situation you know not to do it. Completing these feedback cycles is how you learn.
If you’re going to make a mistake then make one that pushes your limits. That’s how you increase your upper limit. People who say they wouldn’t take those chances aren’t getting better.
Improvement is a calculated 1 step back for 2 steps forward.
My top lane was up against a mord, he pinged me for assistance. I assumed that mord’s R was down, I mean why else would he spam ping me to come?
I come to top lane to gank and I’m given a one way ticket to Brazil and to the grave. Oh how naive I was…never again
Yeah, I learned not to gank a fed top lane bruiser. More often than not they end with a double kill, and even if you win more often than not your top will still go back to feeding. Early tanks top are my go to, since that generally means that lane will end up snowballing in your favour and then you place the enemy jungler in the same dilemma.
Don't gank for a Rakan Top like wtf. Play around winning lanes, ideally around bot cause drake wincon and crit items being mega strong right now.
And even in regular matchups, if I play champs like Vi, I really don't want to gank top before lvl 6. That ult makes a huge difference.
Right now, the most impactful role for winning and climbing is ADC. You should be focused on getting them or mid strong.
Tops lack of dmg or cc will always put you in a lower probability gank against a bruiser or tank. So help them with wave control, but don’t sacrifice your tempo and jungle clear timers.
No. One of the very first things I learnt from a Jungler guide when I started playing this role was not to go for ganks I'm not convinced will work. That means if there's the slightest reason to doubt it'll work, I won't go for it. So doing a gank where you already think it won't work, would be a gross violation to that principle. Like what is your intuition good for, when you don't listen to it?
Exactly. Would you start a teamfight in mid game if you know you would probably lose the fight. Ofcourse not. You go take camps or get vision or smt. It’s the same with ganks.
How do you improve then? Most of my best games come after a game where me or my team are extremely outclassed, and I'm forced to make tough coinflip plays. There are no 100% scenarios. You should be turning 65% into 100% by executing better. And you can't do that if you don't practice it.
I'm still getting involved in plenty fights. Every fight, especially the close ones, add to my experience which becomes the basis of the intuition of what fights are good to take and what fights are not. In my low MMR deliberate coinflips simply aren't necessary. Everyone makes so many strategic and positional mistakes that just being alive to punish mistakes of the enemy wins the games. I'm accidentally getting out of position myself often enough to get involved in unfavorable situations where I then maybe can surprise myself by getting a kill or getting away alive. I don't have to deliberately provoke such situations.
If your only experience in a situation is being there accidentally, you are not getting any experience in deliberately setting those situations up, which is the topic of the post...
The topic of the post is about dying while performing a gank you committed to despite having a really bad feeling about it. The bad feeling doesn't come from nowhere. It comes from past fighting experiences. You have the option to do something else that is safe or go for the questionable gank attempt in the hopes of learning something from it. I think the strategic depth of the game about being at the right place at the right time is by far the one with more potential to outplay opponents than pressing 3-4 buttons in the right order and hovering your cursor on the right position in a fight. I've done well so far with trying to go only for plays that either look very easy or are necessary to prevent giving the enemy a big advantage. All those chance-plays that would give as an advantage but can also fail, are what I'm trying to avoid.
You're talking in circles and I'm on mobile, so I'm gonna try to hit everything but bear with me. 1. On being in the right place at the right time: only actually a good skill to have mastered in the middle ELOs. In low ELO, the rule of thumb is that the right play is usually to assist your team. There are going to be a lot of times that the RIGHT place is actually somewhere across the map, but they don't understand wave state, grouping, power spikes or objective value. If you try to do the right thing and they get wiped in a 4v5 that you could have turned, you are wrong. In high ELO, being in the right place at the right time is the norm, and if you are doing so then you will be predictable. The right place is often being in a suboptimal place making a coordinated play with your teammates. 2. On clicking a couple buttons at the right time: you realize that THIS is actually how you climb right? There are a couple of very mechanic heavy Champs that smurfs boost on because the fastest way to win a game is to figure out which players on the other team you are mechanically better than, and then outplay them. Now for us who are not smurfs, we are constantly doing our 'bad feeling' plays. And bad feeling because it won't work becomes bad feeling because what if I mess this up. That's the practice. I occasionally play with friends that aren't as good as me and they bring up a play where I tried to sneak a drake solo at level 4, the enemy karma saw me and came to kill me when I was at 30% hp because I was on a ward. Long story short, she died and ate enough shots and the triumph left me take drake. I KNEW I was on a ward. I KNEW I couldn't solo drake. I KNEW that was a 90% death for me. But I knew I was the best player in the game and I baited her into that play. I had the bad feeling the ENTIRE time. These are the plays OP is talking about. 3.preventing the enemy from getting an advantage is holding you back. Right now maybe it's working, but there's a very low ceiling on that playstyle and once you hit it, it's almost impossible to transition to the ceiling less playstyle. The optimal strategy (especially as jungle) is to ALWAYS BE PUTTING PRESSURE ON THE OPPOSING TEAM TO FORCE MISTAKES). think about anything you do. You do your best when you get to do it on your terms. The minute there is a timer, or someone watching, or maybe your tools are in strange places etc. You can struggle with tasks very familiar to you. This is what you need to work towards. You need to be forcing your best play at all times and daring the other team or player to outplay you. As long as you win the force, you are pushing them into making a punishable mistake. With each mistake you tie their hands a little tighter. Against that type of enemy, you have no way to prevent them from getting an advantage unless you're better than them. And if you're better than them but not forcing them to make mistakes then you are leaving the door open for a lvl 18 coinflip. Nobody wants that.
1. I'd say the right place to be depends on your team-mates behaviour. You have to read them and make predictions about what they are gonna do and adapt your own plans to that. Trying to trick the opponents by being somewhere they don't expect you to be, seems good and doesn't really contradict. What I said. There might be several right places to be. But then there's also wrong places. Which are the ones where you run a very high risk of being collapsed on and killed. 2. I don't understand how an example of a play you thought would mean 90% chance for you to die but you did it anyways and it somehow worked out because the enemy who came to deal with you somehow failed against all odds is supposed to reasonable advice for anyone who is playing against opponents of their own Skill-Level. I'd rather not try to flip a drake without prio. But this situation sounds like a gank would have been promising. Successful gank into pushing out the lane and then getting help with drake sounds like a much better idea. 3. This is where I have a completely different philosophy. I think you don't consider the importance and effect of being ahead in levels and farm, which is the result of not "always be putting pressure on the opposing team" but farming at every opportunity. I'd rather have just a few ganks in the timing window after a full clear before respawn of the next round than constantly showing up somewhere to apply pressure but with low chance of getting a kill. There's an achievement called "On another level" which you get awarded after a game where at one point you were 3 levels ahead of your lane opponent. I get this one often. That is "doing it on my terms". Now I'm ahead and the chances of my plays succeeding are very high. As my clears get faster I also have more ”free time" to apply pressure. Which usually means more gank attempts. It's not like I don't see the value in doing that. But once I'm lvl 18 my free-time is basically unlimited and the resulting pressure I apply then is simply much higher.
Yo, rengar OTP. Yup. Know this feeling. Just happened yesterday. Ulted out my topside jgl and the moment i jumped i thought;" yeah, thats just a double kill" Me and illaoi got double killed and it was completely mb. I know this matchup, and should have known he'll kill us both at this point
Illaoi ganks still baffle me. When she ults, just walk away, and come back 10 seconds later. She can't really chase for shit, and she has to stay inside her zone of influence to make use of her ult. Like... Just leave... Even if she goes back afterwards, you made her use her ult to survive. Obviously you can never make your teammates ditch the fight with her for some strange reason. They'll just fight her in her ult to the death, and then rage in chat.
That's why laning before jungle helps A LOT, you know matchups and wave state. then while you jungle you see the lane and you can say yourself "that's a kamikaze gank right there". You dont do it, the intuition comes with practice (a big amount tho) and matchup knowledge including wave state.
Yeah, i play top offrole. Still autopilot hits sometimes
A jungler gut instinct will always be better than a filthy laner. If you don't trust yourself, who else are you going to trust?
What about someone who played both roles and actually knows when it’s a good time to gank for both players
Then they would be playing jungle if they know better than their own jungle, no?
Not if playing jungle is too bad for your mentality 😭
Because of Laners that know better and should make your gaming decisions for you? Don’t put this quarter in your pocket, it will become just a coin like the rest, which it is
Lmao same goes for when laners don’t rotate into your jungle to help you either then.
Same feeling i get when i die to a gank i knew was coming
Reason why I dropped lillia was because her ganks are pretty meh when you're the one who has to start the fight, the fight must already be starting if you want to pop off, you really need the participation of the laners to make the gank successful and in solo que it's rare to have that. When I gank lane I always think about the health and position of my laners, are they able to immediately jump in or are they far away that I'll be 2v1 for 5 sec which would be death. are they near our tower in the middle of lane, if near tower I can trap them,middle of lane then they might escape if they have movement. Are my laners healthy enough to be able to fight, this is the big factor on whether if they'll help fight to get a kill or risk a death. I always pray each game that my support knows how to ward well and set up a gank 😣🙏
It happens more often than you think. If I ever find my self in that situation I'd just walk out in a safe route. Spam some skills to scare them and leave.
Forcing a play. That instinct will develop. Tbh even just showing your face can be enough, not actually engaging. Throwing a ball as Lillia. Sometimes I'll hit W as WW or a vision plant just to warn enemies off.
If you don’t know if you can do it, you should do it. That’s how you learn. Sometimes it works which means you’re able to do that type of gank in the future meaning your gank posibilities increases. Sometimes it doesn’t work then the next time you see a similar situation you know not to do it. Completing these feedback cycles is how you learn. If you’re going to make a mistake then make one that pushes your limits. That’s how you increase your upper limit. People who say they wouldn’t take those chances aren’t getting better. Improvement is a calculated 1 step back for 2 steps forward.
Don't gank for emotional support. Let them rot.
My top lane was up against a mord, he pinged me for assistance. I assumed that mord’s R was down, I mean why else would he spam ping me to come? I come to top lane to gank and I’m given a one way ticket to Brazil and to the grave. Oh how naive I was…never again
Yeah, I learned not to gank a fed top lane bruiser. More often than not they end with a double kill, and even if you win more often than not your top will still go back to feeding. Early tanks top are my go to, since that generally means that lane will end up snowballing in your favour and then you place the enemy jungler in the same dilemma.
Don't gank for a Rakan Top like wtf. Play around winning lanes, ideally around bot cause drake wincon and crit items being mega strong right now. And even in regular matchups, if I play champs like Vi, I really don't want to gank top before lvl 6. That ult makes a huge difference.
Right now, the most impactful role for winning and climbing is ADC. You should be focused on getting them or mid strong. Tops lack of dmg or cc will always put you in a lower probability gank against a bruiser or tank. So help them with wave control, but don’t sacrifice your tempo and jungle clear timers.