On January 11 2015 12:32 Amui wrote: Problem with playing like a pussy(not only applicable to lux) against zed and fizz is
A. They get free farm and free 6. They're weakest 1-5, afterwards they're a kill threat to you and everybody else on your team. You completely cede map control around middle, and they get initiative on any roams because mid is going to constantly push and you can't fully clear the wave until they've cleared it. Especially with lux's range, you should be playing aggressively with autos, saving bind for counter aggression, at least early on.
B. Zed and Fizz both can dodge your skillshots. That wouldn't be so bad, except that you'll die before your next rotation of them comes up.
Let them farm. It doesn't matter, you're going to scale better than they will anyway. As long as they don't snowball they fall off like rocks.
It was a pretty long post, but see the part where I talk about laning patterns and when you'll want to use your Q. You never use your binding unless they use troll pole or Zed ult. You clear the waves with two Es. You throw your E out when they go to auto minions because if they're in melee range of the minions you'll have enough range to E without Zed being able to ult you and Fizz isn't able to slide onto you. So no, you're not particularly waiting for them to clear a wave and passively sitting on the side lines.
I also go over how you prevent roaming by warding the river and pinging when the enemy mid is mia. The whole guide is about preventing the snowball. See what happens at 20 minutes when the enemy Zed is 0/0/0 and you're both farmed up.
On January 11 2015 12:32 Amui wrote: Problem with playing like a pussy(not only applicable to lux) against zed and fizz is
A. They get free farm and free 6. They're weakest 1-5, afterwards they're a kill threat to you and everybody else on your team. You completely cede map control around middle, and they get initiative on any roams because mid is going to constantly push and you can't fully clear the wave until they've cleared it. Especially with lux's range, you should be playing aggressively with autos, saving bind for counter aggression, at least early on.
B. Zed and Fizz both can dodge your skillshots. That wouldn't be so bad, except that you'll die before your next rotation of them comes up.
Let them farm. It doesn't matter, you're going to scale better than they will anyway. As long as they don't snowball they fall off like rocks.
It was a pretty long post, but see the part where I talk about laning patterns and when you'll want to use your Q. You never use your binding unless they use troll pole or Zed ult. You clear the waves with two Es. You throw your E out when they go to auto minions because if they're in melee range of the minions you'll have enough range to E without Zed being able to ult you and Fizz isn't able to slide onto you. So no, you're not particularly waiting for them to clear a wave and passively sitting on the side lines.
I also go over how you prevent roaming by warding the river and pinging when the enemy mid is mia. The whole guide is about preventing the snowball. See what happens at 20 minutes when the enemy Zed is 0/0/0 and you're both farmed up.
I fail to see how Lux scales better than fizz, although Zed is debatable depending on teamcomp.
I've played enough Lux games to know that you're going to miss a lot of CS if you're trying to clear the wave with 2 E's against zed/fizz, and you're letting them farm(aka they are standing between you, and enemy minions).
To clear with only E's you have to wait until the minions line up, drop an E, and then wait 8 secs to drop another. If you can't walk up to auto, you'll probably miss at least a couple every wave, which adds up very, very quickly.
The way you would clear it if you could walk up is to Q the first two, drop E on all(wait a bit for the slow), and then auto/drop a second E just as the minions touch to clean up all the CS.
Presence in mid isn't just about warding. Zed/Fizz could be detected the whole time, but it still hamstrings your jungler when you can't help make plays.
I can see a handful of issues with this supposed Lux "counter" to Zed and Fizz:
1) if you go into mid lane with the intention of losing all map pressure, you're doing it wrong 2) if you play far back enough so that they can't touch you, you're going to miss CS; your CS difference is then made larger by the fact that you have to buy more wards than they do 3) it's soloQ and people rarely look at pings/minimap -- often the snowball is going to happen anyways 4) both Zed and Fizz are both much, much more mobile than you, so even if you see them going bot and try to follow chances are the only thing you're going to be able to get off is a long-range ulti, which 90% of the time isn't enough 5) if their jungler and support are competent, they'll clear your wards or kill you when you try to ward
Having played these matchups a LOT, especially last season, I'm also not convinced that a good Zed or Fizz won't murder you in the midgame, both in terms of 1v1 (after a certain point playing back often doesn't matter, especially against Fizz) and teamfights (it's easier for them to burst you or your ADC than it is for you to do the same to them).
Overall nothing of what you've described sounds to me like a "counter" and actually sounds like the same, roughly, of what you do when you get counterpicked by Zed or Fizz. It's an incredibly hard matchup for Lux, the only harder ones I can think of is maybe Talon or a really really good Xerath.
edit: to go along with Ketara's point below, I was Diamond V last season, then at the end of the season decayed down into high plat because I started only playing team builder/normals. I only had 20 games with Lux in ranked (iirc winning 15 of them), but I tend to focus on bot lane roles in ranked. I'd say I have at least over 100 games played with her last season.
You really need at least 20% CDR before you start doing the two E's to clear thing. If you do it before that the best you can hope for is 4 minions per wave, which is not enough.
Once you've got 20% CDR you should be able to get 5-6 with some practice. It depends on how the minions hit each other, and sometimes you get unlucky.
But like, Sonnington. I really appreciate having some fresh voices in the thread, that's pretty cool. But I'd like you to look at the people you're arguing with at this point.
Amui is diamond. Navi is a challenger mid main. I'm only plat, but I've also got a good 1000 or so ranked games on Lux in my career. You've got three accounts in mid to high gold, with less than 30 ranked Lux games. You're saying things like Lux scales into late game better than champions like Ziggs and Fizz, which is honestly just not correct.
You're not wrong that Lux is good against Assassins. But she's good because she beats them in lane, not because she scales better. Against Zed especially you can just walk up and kill him 1v1. Fizz is a lot harder, but pre 6 if Fizz jumps in on you and you play it right, you really should be expected to kill him too. Fizz just has a lot more room to outplay your snare than Zed does, because Zeds way to dodge your spells is also his engage tool, while Fizz can engage with Q and then dodge something after he's already on you.
I feel like I'm being mean saying this, but I do think you don't realize it and it's not clear at all from just peoples names on the subforum, so I am pointing it out.
On January 11 2015 12:32 Amui wrote: Problem with playing like a pussy(not only applicable to lux) against zed and fizz is
A. They get free farm and free 6. They're weakest 1-5, afterwards they're a kill threat to you and everybody else on your team. You completely cede map control around middle, and they get initiative on any roams because mid is going to constantly push and you can't fully clear the wave until they've cleared it. Especially with lux's range, you should be playing aggressively with autos, saving bind for counter aggression, at least early on.
B. Zed and Fizz both can dodge your skillshots. That wouldn't be so bad, except that you'll die before your next rotation of them comes up.
Let them farm. It doesn't matter, you're going to scale better than they will anyway. As long as they don't snowball they fall off like rocks.
It was a pretty long post, but see the part where I talk about laning patterns and when you'll want to use your Q. You never use your binding unless they use troll pole or Zed ult. You clear the waves with two Es. You throw your E out when they go to auto minions because if they're in melee range of the minions you'll have enough range to E without Zed being able to ult you and Fizz isn't able to slide onto you. So no, you're not particularly waiting for them to clear a wave and passively sitting on the side lines.
I also go over how you prevent roaming by warding the river and pinging when the enemy mid is mia. The whole guide is about preventing the snowball. See what happens at 20 minutes when the enemy Zed is 0/0/0 and you're both farmed up.
I fail to see how Lux scales better than fizz, although Zed is debatable depending on teamcomp.
I've played enough Lux games to know that you're going to miss a lot of CS if you're trying to clear the wave with 2 E's against zed/fizz, and you're letting them farm(aka they are standing between you, and enemy minions).
To clear with only E's you have to wait until the minions line up, drop an E, and then wait 8 secs to drop another. If you can't walk up to auto, you'll probably miss at least a couple every wave, which adds up very, very quickly.
The way you would clear it if you could walk up is to Q the first two, drop E on all(wait a bit for the slow), and then auto/drop a second E just as the minions touch to clean up all the CS.
Presence in mid isn't just about warding. Zed/Fizz could be detected the whole time, but it still hamstrings your jungler when you can't help make plays.
Mages, as a class, outscale assassins in usefulness mid-late game. AOE damage > single target damage especially in a team fight. Again, on top of that, the Lux shield is one of the best tools in the game for denying assassins kills.
Would you mind explaining how Zed doesn't fall off like a brick in the mid to late game? I don't think it's really a debatable topic.Through items he loses his ability to assassinate targets, An assassin who can't assassinate isn't very useful to me. Mid-late you typically see Zed split pushing so he can do something useful for the team.
As far as Fizz goes, like I said, if he doesn't snowball he has a difficult time farming mid-late game because he's melee and his only AOE ability is also his escape(outside of his ult). So if he doesn't snowball he's much less effective in a siege scenario and Lux is the goddess of sieges.
Can you explain how you're hamstringing your jungler? If your jungler's being invaded upon you still go to help him. You still show up to dragon fights. 2v2s and team fights are where Lux shines. Not only due to the shield mechanic, but because of her AOE damage and utility. You're a pussy to the extent that you're not taking a proactive role in bullying or trading with the enemy. Not insofar that you're afked at your tower crapping your pants praying to the only god you know that your jungler doesn't doesn't get 2v1ed. If the enemy makes a mistake, by all means, punish it in lane.
@InfSunday 1. By giving up all pressure, you mean you won't match roams and facecheck brushes. Yes. If you mean you won't help your jungler, won't push the lane, or show up to dragon fights. No. 2. I've accounted for that. Again, being down 20-30cs at 20 minutes isn't so bad since you're going to outscale anyway. 3. I find if you spam ping the enemy mid laner is missing and then back ping the lane he's obviously going to roam to they listen almost 99% of the time. YMMV. 4. It takes about 15-20 seconds to walk from mid to bot/top lane. If they use their mobility spell on roaming it's not entirely efficient since their cd on living shadow and troll pole is fairly high early game. 5. What if your jungler and support are "competent"?
Zed can never kill you in a 1v1 due to hourglass. Fizz can't 100-0 you under tower, especially if you put points in shield second and take heal, barrier, or exhaust. If you have information on how Zed can reliably kill you after you buy hourglass or how Fizz can 100-0 you under tower. I'd be more than happy to hear it.
@Ketara That's great you guys are higher ranked! There's no doubt you have a lot more experience and knowledge about Lux than I do. It just doesn't help to argue that point. I'm more interested in hearing your rationale or examples on how or why something works rather than hear you're a higher rank. I'm just not seeing that. I've pretty much given up on getting your rationale of how Lux is strong early and falls off late besides hearing base stats and AP scaling. Hearing base stats and AP scaling is nice and all, but you won't address things like auto attack range or size of AOEs or ease of landing those abilities among other issues I've taken up.
In any event to placate the dick waving. My highest rank was gold 1 on NA and I entered plat promos a few times. At gold 1 you're within the top 10% of LoL players. I'd say that's not too shabby and our ranks by percentage of top players are similar.
I don't doubt you believe Lux is a lane bully that doesn't scale well into late game. I don't doubt your playstyle works for you. I also don't agree that it's optimal. I'm asking for more information on why you feel that way and I'm not getting much back. When you say things like, 'You walk up to Zed and kill him.' That gives me no useful information. What am I supposed to take away from that?
And BTW, I wrote a lengthy response to Navi, their post did not go ignored. I also want to actually illustrate my point about pushing the lane harder than Lux can to establish lane control. In the UoL vs C9 game, Hai pushes the lane into PowerofEvil constantly forcing the Lux to use her E to farm and counter push. It's definitely a viable strategy and it creates quite a bit of lane control. And it's definitely something people do, do.
I don't know why you're asking for rationale when you just plainly fucking ignore some of the most important things about why a champion is strong at certain points of the game (aka base stats and scaling)
look at it this way lategame if you land a Q on a target you use your full burst and any follow up from your team will ensure he will die and its probably a 5v4 teamfight which should be an easy win.
In lane phase you have no teammates to funnel them in to certain areas (e.g you can't run up to you and to the side of the lane if there's other skillshots, they have to always dodge backwards to the side) So you'll miss most of your skillshots and even if you hit them it will only do a relatively low amount of damage. Even if you do kill someone it will have a low impact on the game.
Meanwhile you're squishy and easy to gank and if you miss the skillshots you can get zoned. Lategame you can catch anyone and win a game with oneshotting.
On January 11 2015 12:32 Amui wrote: Problem with playing like a pussy(not only applicable to lux) against zed and fizz is
A. They get free farm and free 6. They're weakest 1-5, afterwards they're a kill threat to you and everybody else on your team. You completely cede map control around middle, and they get initiative on any roams because mid is going to constantly push and you can't fully clear the wave until they've cleared it. Especially with lux's range, you should be playing aggressively with autos, saving bind for counter aggression, at least early on.
B. Zed and Fizz both can dodge your skillshots. That wouldn't be so bad, except that you'll die before your next rotation of them comes up.
Let them farm. It doesn't matter, you're going to scale better than they will anyway. As long as they don't snowball they fall off like rocks.
It was a pretty long post, but see the part where I talk about laning patterns and when you'll want to use your Q. You never use your binding unless they use troll pole or Zed ult. You clear the waves with two Es. You throw your E out when they go to auto minions because if they're in melee range of the minions you'll have enough range to E without Zed being able to ult you and Fizz isn't able to slide onto you. So no, you're not particularly waiting for them to clear a wave and passively sitting on the side lines.
I also go over how you prevent roaming by warding the river and pinging when the enemy mid is mia. The whole guide is about preventing the snowball. See what happens at 20 minutes when the enemy Zed is 0/0/0 and you're both farmed up.
I fail to see how Lux scales better than fizz, although Zed is debatable depending on teamcomp.
I've played enough Lux games to know that you're going to miss a lot of CS if you're trying to clear the wave with 2 E's against zed/fizz, and you're letting them farm(aka they are standing between you, and enemy minions).
To clear with only E's you have to wait until the minions line up, drop an E, and then wait 8 secs to drop another. If you can't walk up to auto, you'll probably miss at least a couple every wave, which adds up very, very quickly.
The way you would clear it if you could walk up is to Q the first two, drop E on all(wait a bit for the slow), and then auto/drop a second E just as the minions touch to clean up all the CS.
Presence in mid isn't just about warding. Zed/Fizz could be detected the whole time, but it still hamstrings your jungler when you can't help make plays.
Mages, as a class, outscale assassins in usefulness mid-late game. AOE damage > single target damage especially in a team fight. Again, on top of that, the Lux shield is one of the best tools in the game for denying assassins kills.
Would you mind explaining how Zed doesn't fall off like a brick in the mid to late game? I don't think it's really a debatable topic.Through items he loses his ability to assassinate targets, An assassin who can't assassinate isn't very useful to me. Mid-late you typically see Zed split pushing so he can do something useful for the team.
As far as Fizz goes, like I said, if he doesn't snowball he has a difficult time farming mid-late game because he's melee and his only AOE ability is also his escape(outside of his ult). So if he doesn't snowball he's much less effective in a siege scenario and Lux is the goddess of sieges.
Can you explain how you're hamstringing your jungler? If your jungler's being invaded upon you still go to help him. You still show up to dragon fights. 2v2s and team fights are where Lux shines. Not only due to the shield mechanic, but because of her AOE damage and utility. You're a pussy to the extent that you're not taking a proactive role in bullying or trading with the enemy. Not insofar that you're afked at your tower crapping your pants praying to the only god you know that your jungler doesn't doesn't get 2v1ed. If the enemy makes a mistake, by all means, punish it in lane.
@InfSunday 1. By giving up all pressure, you mean you won't match roams and facecheck brushes. Yes. If you mean you won't help your jungler, won't push the lane, or show up to dragon fights. No. 2. I've accounted for that. Again, being down 20-30cs at 20 minutes isn't so bad since you're going to outscale anyway. 3. I find if you spam ping the enemy mid laner is missing and then back ping the lane he's obviously going to roam to they listen almost 99% of the time. YMMV. 4. It takes about 15-20 seconds to walk from mid to bot/top lane. If they use their mobility spell on roaming it's not entirely efficient since their cd on living shadow and troll pole is fairly high early game. 5. What if your jungler and support are "competent"?
Zed can never kill you in a 1v1 due to hourglass. Fizz can't 100-0 you under tower, especially if you put points in shield second and take heal, barrier, or exhaust. If you have information on how Zed can reliably kill you after you buy hourglass or how Fizz can 100-0 you under tower. I'd be more than happy to hear it.
@Ketara That's great you guys are higher ranked! There's no doubt you have a lot more experience and knowledge about Lux than I do. It just doesn't help to argue that point. I'm more interested in hearing your rationale or examples on how or why something works rather than hear you're a higher rank. I'm just not seeing that. I've pretty much given up on getting your rationale of how Lux is strong early and falls off late besides hearing base stats and AP scaling. Hearing base stats and AP scaling is nice and all, but you won't address things like auto attack range or size of AOEs or ease of landing those abilities among other issues I've taken up.
In any event to placate the dick waving. My highest rank was gold 1 on NA and I entered plat promos a few times. At gold 1 you're within the top 10% of LoL players. I'd say that's not too shabby and our ranks by percentage of top players are similar.
I don't doubt you believe Lux is a lane bully that doesn't scale well into late game. I don't doubt your playstyle works for you. I also don't agree that it's optimal. I'm asking for more information on why you feel that way and I'm not getting much back. When you say things like, 'You walk up to Zed and kill him.' That gives me no useful information. What am I supposed to take away from that?
And BTW, I wrote a lengthy response to Navi, their post did not go ignored. I also want to actually illustrate my point about pushing the lane harder than Lux can to establish lane control. In the UoL vs C9 game, Hai pushes the lane into PowerofEvil constantly forcing the Lux to use her E to farm and counter push. It's definitely a viable strategy and it creates quite a bit of lane control. And it's definitely something people do, do.
Fizz one shots all casters, and kills the melee's with one auto if he doesn't outright kill them mid-lategame. Not sure how he can't farm. You're already giving him free farm, he can easily farm up a LB+DFG and oneshot everybody on your team. Sure he can't instaclear a wave like lux can, but give him 10 seconds and he'll clear a giant minion wave with ease.
You hamstring your jungler because the enemy team ALWAYS has initiative on roams/invades. If you roam, you die to their midlaner 1v1 without positioning advantage of turret. Even if you're just a screen away from a turret you're still dead.
Zed falls off somewhat once both carries can ignore his ult(hourglass/QSS). That's entering lategame territory. Fizz just straight up scales better than Lux. AoE damage is nice, but until somebodies HP hits zero, they can still contribute to a fight. And don't give me shit about cleaning up afterwards, because zed/fizz will do that many, many times better than a lux will.
On January 12 2015 04:19 Slayer91 wrote: I don't know why you're asking for rationale when you just plainly fucking ignore some of the most important things about why a champion is strong at certain points of the game (aka base stats and scaling)
look at it this way lategame if you land a Q on a target you use your full burst and any follow up from your team will ensure he will die and its probably a 5v4 teamfight which should be an easy win.
In lane phase you have no teammates to funnel them in to certain areas (e.g you can't run up to you and to the side of the lane if there's other skillshots, they have to always dodge backwards to the side) So you'll miss most of your skillshots and even if you hit them it will only do a relatively low amount of damage. Even if you do kill someone it will have a low impact on the game.
Meanwhile you're squishy and easy to gank and if you miss the skillshots you can get zoned. Lategame you can catch anyone and win a game with oneshotting.
Are you confusing your posters? Ketara et al is arguing that Lux is strong in lane and weak late, whereas Sonnington is arguing the reverse. Your post seems to address both of them into one o.O
On January 12 2015 04:23 Amui wrote:
Zed falls off somewhat once both carries can ignore his ult(hourglass/QSS). That's entering lategame territory. Fizz just straight up scales better than Lux. AoE damage is nice, but until somebodies HP hits zero, they can still contribute to a fight. And don't give me shit about cleaning up afterwards, because zed/fizz will do that many, many times better than a lux will.
The AOE shield is really nice though, could save a lot of people's lives where they otherwise could've died, and that turns into "until somebodies HP hits zero, they can still contribute to a fight," except on your team.
On January 12 2015 04:19 Slayer91 wrote: I don't know why you're asking for rationale when you just plainly fucking ignore some of the most important things about why a champion is strong at certain points of the game (aka base stats and scaling)
look at it this way lategame if you land a Q on a target you use your full burst and any follow up from your team will ensure he will die and its probably a 5v4 teamfight which should be an easy win.
In lane phase you have no teammates to funnel them in to certain areas (e.g you can't run up to you and to the side of the lane if there's other skillshots, they have to always dodge backwards to the side) So you'll miss most of your skillshots and even if you hit them it will only do a relatively low amount of damage. Even if you do kill someone it will have a low impact on the game.
Meanwhile you're squishy and easy to gank and if you miss the skillshots you can get zoned. Lategame you can catch anyone and win a game with oneshotting.
Are you confusing your posters? Ketara et al is arguing that Lux is strong in lane and weak early, whereas Sonnington is arguing the reverse. Your post seems to address both of them into one o.O
Zed falls off somewhat once both carries can ignore his ult(hourglass/QSS). That's entering lategame territory. Fizz just straight up scales better than Lux. AoE damage is nice, but until somebodies HP hits zero, they can still contribute to a fight. And don't give me shit about cleaning up afterwards, because zed/fizz will do that many, many times better than a lux will.
The AOE shield is really nice though, could save a lot of people's lives where they otherwise could've died, and that turns into "until somebodies HP hits zero, they can still contribute to a fight," except on your team.
On January 12 2015 04:19 Slayer91 wrote: I don't know why you're asking for rationale when you just plainly fucking ignore some of the most important things about why a champion is strong at certain points of the game (aka base stats and scaling)
look at it this way lategame if you land a Q on a target you use your full burst and any follow up from your team will ensure he will die and its probably a 5v4 teamfight which should be an easy win.
In lane phase you have no teammates to funnel them in to certain areas (e.g you can't run up to you and to the side of the lane if there's other skillshots, they have to always dodge backwards to the side) So you'll miss most of your skillshots and even if you hit them it will only do a relatively low amount of damage. Even if you do kill someone it will have a low impact on the game.
Meanwhile you're squishy and easy to gank and if you miss the skillshots you can get zoned. Lategame you can catch anyone and win a game with oneshotting.
Are you confusing your posters? Ketara et al is arguing that Lux is strong in lane and weak early, whereas Sonnington is arguing the reverse. Your post seems to address both of them into one o.O
On January 12 2015 04:23 Amui wrote:
Zed falls off somewhat once both carries can ignore his ult(hourglass/QSS). That's entering lategame territory. Fizz just straight up scales better than Lux. AoE damage is nice, but until somebodies HP hits zero, they can still contribute to a fight. And don't give me shit about cleaning up afterwards, because zed/fizz will do that many, many times better than a lux will.
The AOE shield is really nice though, could save a lot of people's lives where they otherwise could've died, and that turns into "until somebodies HP hits zero, they can still contribute to a fight," except on your team.
Okay so, in general, this is how the Lux vs. Fizz and Lux vs. Zed matchups work.
In both cases, Lux is stronger pre 6, and should be bullying. You're ranged, their melee. You can auto them, they can't. You should be able to deny them farm, and if they do a stupid all in, you can get a kill.
Fizz can all in you at level 3, but if you're standing in minions, barrier/shield early to stop his missing HP % damage, and wait to Q him, you'll win the all in. He jumps onto you, you drop E under yourself, if he dodges it with pole you Q him inside your minions.
Zed can't do shit to you pre 6, if he goes in on you you just kill him, maybe you have to use Exhaust but it's fine. The problem with Zed is that you can't deny him farm as well because he will just back off and use shurikens to kill everything, but whatever.
Post 6, Fizz can kill you and you have to be kinda careful in lane, but you can outpush him, and in a teamfight you can do a pretty good job of protecting whoever he targets with shield and snare. If you're far enough ahead from bullying him early you can still win post 6, but if you're behind you might be forced into a passive farm playstyle.
Fizz's damage scales way WAY better than yours though, and he has multiple ways to outplay you and dodge your shit, so you always have to be careful with Fizz later in the game.
Zed is a lot easier. Every time he ults you, if you have either A - Zhonya, B - Exhaust, or C - Flash, he shouldn't be able to get a kill. Going Zhonyas first against Zed lets you bully him and win 1v1 pretty much the whole game long, excepting the window where he has ult and you don't have Zhonya finished yet. If he catches you without summoners during that time period it can be rough, but in general Lux just beats Zed. You'll deny him farm and he'll go off and split push and then you go teamfight with your team.
That's the way these two matchups work.
The basic point though is, you shouldn't go into these lanes assuming you're going to play passive, because you don't have to. If you play properly you can harass and bully these champions potentially the entire game long.
It's really not rocket science. In general, ranged champions are stronger than melee champions in lane at low levels.
I'm trying to read a bit more. So the argument is that you should give up pressure because of some arbitrary notion of scalings? That's pretty much a terrible way to look at the game. The whole reason early game champs are good is because you can snowball an advantage. If early game heroes were only good if the other laner fed you kills every game they wouldn't be so prominent in pro games.
If you're stronger than them in the lategame it doesn't mean you're going to win if you get to lategame. Chances of you getting crushed on other lanes is quite high if they have a roaming assassin, the best thing you can do is harass the shit out of them because they are melee and you are ranged and you can keep them low on farm for as long as possible. Once they can all in you, you can still prevent them from roaming by following them so they can't do anything too risky because you can countergank them if they try to tank some tower shots or something.
However it doesn't mean you should just try to fight them all the time, completely giving up pressure as a mid laner is pretty much the definition of losing the lane though, because its the lane that is most impacted by roaming.
Mages, as a class, outscale assassins in usefulness mid-late game. AOE damage > single target damage especially in a team fight. Again, on top of that, the Lux shield is one of the best tools in the game for denying assassins kills.
Would you mind explaining how Zed doesn't fall off like a brick in the mid to late game? I don't think it's really a debatable topic.Through items he loses his ability to assassinate targets, An assassin who can't assassinate isn't very useful to me. Mid-late you typically see Zed split pushing so he can do something useful for the team.
Zed can never kill you in a 1v1 due to hourglass. Fizz can't 100-0 you under tower, especially if you put points in shield second and take heal, barrier, or exhaust. If you have information on how Zed can reliably kill you after you buy hourglass or how Fizz can 100-0 you under tower. I'd be more than happy to hear it.
I feel like there's some pretty large logical disconnects going on here. Zed split pushes late because he can assassinate people 1v1 fairly easily even with items late game. If you hourglass as Lux against Zed in a 1v1 and you're not next to your team or a tower, he's just going to dodge your spells and then kill you anyways, whether it be through autos or skills. Also items work two ways- if its super late he probably has a hexdrinker/maw and maybe a banshees veil or GA, so even if you do hit your spells, he's not necessarily dead. Lux is almost never going to win a 1v1 where Zed actually manages to get on top of her. The idea that you hourglass and then are 100% a-okay is farcical.
Some of your other points are not particularly well thought out. The AOE vs single target point a bit ridiculous- even if it were true at face value, most assassins have AOE damage- Zed, Talon, Leblanc, Katarina, Kassadin, hell even Pantheon and Fizz have AOE abilities.
On January 12 2015 05:19 Ketara wrote: Okay so, in general, this is how the Lux vs. Fizz and Lux vs. Zed matchups work.
In both cases, Lux is stronger pre 6, and should be bullying. You're ranged, their melee. You can auto them, they can't. You should be able to deny them farm, and if they do a stupid all in, you can get a kill.
Fizz can all in you at level 3, but if you're standing in minions, barrier/shield early to stop his missing HP % damage, and wait to Q him, you'll win the all in. He jumps onto you, you drop E under yourself, if he dodges it with pole you Q him inside your minions.
Zed can't do shit to you pre 6, if he goes in on you you just kill him, maybe you have to use Exhaust but it's fine. The problem with Zed is that you can't deny him farm as well because he will just back off and use shurikens to kill everything, but whatever.
Post 6, Fizz can kill you and you have to be kinda careful in lane, but you can outpush him, and in a teamfight you can do a pretty good job of protecting whoever he targets with shield and snare. If you're far enough ahead from bullying him early you can still win post 6, but if you're behind you might be forced into a passive farm playstyle.
Fizz's damage scales way WAY better than yours though, and he has multiple ways to outplay you and dodge your shit, so you always have to be careful with Fizz later in the game.
Zed is a lot easier. Every time he ults you, if you have either A - Zhonya, B - Exhaust, or C - Flash, he shouldn't be able to get a kill. Going Zhonyas first against Zed lets you bully him and win 1v1 pretty much the whole game long, excepting the window where he has ult and you don't have Zhonya finished yet. If he catches you without summoners during that time period it can be rough, but in general Lux just beats Zed. You'll deny him farm and he'll go off and split push and then you go teamfight with your team.
That's the way these two matchups work.
The basic point though is, you shouldn't go into these lanes assuming you're going to play passive, because you don't have to. If you play properly you can harass and bully these champions potentially the entire game long.
It's really not rocket science. In general, ranged champions are stronger than melee champions in lane at low levels.
Hey that's a great post! Well put together. I can see your point now about taking hybrid runes if you're going to simply auto the enemy over and over again because they're melee. The laning methods you suggest are less proactive and more reactive which is something I totally agree with. Lux can punish mistakes really hard.
One thing that's worth noting are how Fizz players typically take flask and pots to start out with. So even if you're able to auto him without taking minion aggro, it's not a huge win. Also, because you're using your E as a counter engage for Fizz, you can't use it to farm or poke him without opening yourself up to opportunities to attack you.
Fizz also has the majority of the kill pressure in lane. While Lux has to land her binding Fizz just has to land his slow. Setting up a gank is far easier for Fizz than it is for Lux. Which is why I don't see much value in actively bullying the lane. Can you bully him around early game? Sure, but you'll be within his q range and the jungler is probably going to come around the back of you and kill you since you're an immobile mage who's walking around autoing the enemy. While conversely your jungler is likely thinking you're vs a Fizz with crazy mobility and a gank wouldn't be worth the effort.
About Zed, I pretty much totally agree with you. I've gotten first blood on cocky Zeds who've used their shadow to gap close into a minion wave and ate a light binding to the face. Although, that's a far cry away from walking up to him and killing him of course.
A few caveats are involved with Zed using his shadow. He can use it to push or get harass down through a minion wave which can be difficult to answer back to. Since he's an energy user he'll won't ever go OOM and doesn't need to back for mana. Generally, it's not that big of a deal though dodging shurikens isn't very hard. Also the same provisions involved with Fizz's kill potential with the jungler are involved with a Zed lane. Which again is why I don't suggest bullying the Zed. When you bully enemy champs around it usually sets yourself up for being ganked due to your lane positioning.
@zer0das Regarding the hourglass effect. It really depends on how the fight goes. It depends on how many procs of E he can hit you with, if the shurikens are hitting you or going through minions, when he decides to pop ghost blade, and how big your shield is. It's easier for Lux to land a full combo on a Zed when he ults, than it is for Zed to do the same to Lux. And of course, the hourglass is going to negate quite a bit of his damage either his upfront or just the ult proc. In either event you're not likely to die unless you're making some huge mistakes.
Lux's aoe is easy to hit, safe to launch, and is simply large in size. Vs the AOE of assassins almost always being much lower range, or requiring them to go melee which is super risky. I mean how do I take that seriously when you compare Lux's AOE to Fizz's AOE? It's like you're comparing apples to oranges.
It's not my argument, you're the one who said AOE wins games without qualifying it. And your response is my point- your comparison is inane.
I think you're nuts if you think landing a binding on a Zed who ults you is easy. He can just shadow out immediately unless you time it absolutely perfectly. Maybe in LAN that's doable, but to call it easy seems like an exaggeration to me, because I don't trust myself to land that at 70 ping at all. Also if you risk landing the binding, you probably just ate his entire combo.
Yeah AoE can be strong but it's not the reason zed and fizz run into problems, melee squishy champions are always going to run into issues when people start grouping because you can just cc and focus them immediately.
They get away with it in midgame when they have a large level advantage and the adc and support don't have a whole lot of damage, not to mention a full 5 man group is rarer.
Also from my experience Fizz stays strong throughout the game and zed only runs into issues because of QSS/zhonyas, their massive escape skills and huge burst lets them overcome most of their weaknesses and split is great for splitpushing too.
Lux can be pretty good against squishy teams lategame (or when enemy teams dont' have much damage and your shields make an impact) but she's not de-facto a strong champion at any point because she's skillshot reliant and I wouldn't prefer to have lux over fizz or zed if it meant sacrificing the early and midgame map pressure.
On January 13 2015 00:33 Slayer91 wrote: Yeah AoE can be strong but it's not the reason zed and fizz run into problems, melee squishy champions are always going to run into issues when people start grouping because you can just cc and focus them immediately.
They get away with it in midgame when they have a large level advantage and the adc and support don't have a whole lot of damage, not to mention a full 5 man group is rarer.
Also from my experience Fizz stays strong throughout the game and zed only runs into issues because of QSS/zhonyas, their massive escape skills and huge burst lets them overcome most of their weaknesses and split is great for splitpushing too.
Lux can be pretty good against squishy teams lategame (or when enemy teams dont' have much damage and your shields make an impact) but she's not de-facto a strong champion at any point because she's skillshot reliant and I wouldn't prefer to have lux over fizz or zed if it meant sacrificing the early and midgame map pressure.
Yeah that's a valid point about their team fighting.
I think Lux is pretty strong during the mid game though. I consider the mid game to be the the point when laning phase ends and teams start to group and take objectives. Once she gets one item she's pretty beastly.
That's quite fluid though, it all depends on things like waveclear, how well people can escape ganks etc.
Laning phase can last a really long time if they've got people who you can't easily gank or their mid can easily waveclear. Sometimes grouping happens but in a sort of skirmishy way where people come to 4 man dive or something and big fights break out.
What you want as lux is just the ARAM situation of fights in your jungle where you can hit skillshots, maybe a overbold towerdive where you can snipe someone with lazer.
What I'm saying is that if you don't make an attempt to shut down a mid player who wants to roam, and you stay in lane and let him roam, it creates exactly the sort of game you don't want, because you can easily be caught if you yourself roam around and your team can't group if they are being ganked or pushed to their towers constantly.
On January 13 2015 08:38 Slayer91 wrote: That's quite fluid though, it all depends on things like waveclear, how well people can escape ganks etc.
Laning phase can last a really long time if they've got people who you can't easily gank or their mid can easily waveclear. Sometimes grouping happens but in a sort of skirmishy way where people come to 4 man dive or something and big fights break out.
What you want as lux is just the ARAM situation of fights in your jungle where you can hit skillshots, maybe a overbold towerdive where you can snipe someone with lazer.
What I'm saying is that if you don't make an attempt to shut down a mid player who wants to roam, and you stay in lane and let him roam, it creates exactly the sort of game you don't want, because you can easily be caught if you yourself roam around and your team can't group if they are being ganked or pushed to their towers constantly.
Yeah, mid game can happen at different points. Sometimes it's 10 minutes, sometimes it's 20 minutes. Generally it happens when a bot lane takes a tower and goes mid.
That's interesting. I guess with that sort of shutdown mindset it would make sense people hate playing against Fizz and Zed. With that outlook, that puts -you- on the timer to shut down the enemy before they roam. Which might put pressure on you to make risky plays that probably won't pan out well. I can see how that would obviously work, but I don't agree that's the only way. Good map awareness and communication is just as effective a counter to roaming as shutting down the enemy laner.
On January 13 2015 08:38 Slayer91 wrote: That's quite fluid though, it all depends on things like waveclear, how well people can escape ganks etc.
Laning phase can last a really long time if they've got people who you can't easily gank or their mid can easily waveclear. Sometimes grouping happens but in a sort of skirmishy way where people come to 4 man dive or something and big fights break out.
What you want as lux is just the ARAM situation of fights in your jungle where you can hit skillshots, maybe a overbold towerdive where you can snipe someone with lazer.
What I'm saying is that if you don't make an attempt to shut down a mid player who wants to roam, and you stay in lane and let him roam, it creates exactly the sort of game you don't want, because you can easily be caught if you yourself roam around and your team can't group if they are being ganked or pushed to their towers constantly.
Yeah, mid game can happen at different points. Sometimes it's 10 minutes, sometimes it's 20 minutes. Generally it happens when a bot lane takes a tower and goes mid.
That's interesting. I guess with that sort of shutdown mindset it would make sense people hate playing against Fizz and Zed. With that outlook, that puts -you- on the timer to shut down the enemy before they roam. Which might put pressure on you to make risky plays that probably won't pan out well. I can see how that would obviously work, but I don't agree that's the only way. Good map awareness and communication is just as effective a counter to roaming as shutting down the enemy laner.
It isn't. It doesn't matter if you ward, because if the enemy jungler+mid walks into your jungle to contest something, at the end of the day you're not making the play, they are. Map awareness and communication doesn't make up for the fact that while your jungle entrances may be warded, everything within is not, and neither you, nor your jungler can go facechecking bushes without risking a death against zed/fizz. Sure you can slowly scout everything with E, or ward your own jungle, but now you've completely given up map control and just trying to stop the snowball.