Hiho guys,

as most of you have seen, I play tons of shen, nidalee, tryndamere, jax, and sometimes nasus. All of these on toplane. Apart from nasus all of these provide a great deal of mobility/global pressure. All of them are great splitpushers with good escapability.
Splitpushing is the name of the game right now in many competitive matches .

Why do these champions splitpush well?

The answer to this is fairly simple: They have good mobility and good waveclear. Shen doesnt have great waveclear but his ult makes up for his slow splitpushing while nasus scales like crazy and takes turrets down in a heartbeat.

The next important thing is the ability to 1v1 alot of people. Most good splitpushers force your opponents to send more than one person because a single defender would easily get 1v1d.

Why is splitpushing so good?

Splitpushing is amazing in a coordinated team because it forces your opposing team to react to a horrible situation. Do they push 5v4 on your midlane, making for a really slow seige on turrets or do they send one to deal with the splitpush, making it easy for the splitpusher to 1v1 them or grp with the team and force an objective. If they send more than one to deal with the splitpusher, the team can easily take objectives 4v3 while your sidelane is still pushed.

Pushing provides pressure and pressure forces your opponents into a defensive position.

How do I create a splitpushing comp?

For one, you need your splitpusher. The champions I listed above are good examples but other often used are: Twisted Fate, Zed, Kha Zix, twitch …

As you can see they need to be mobile.

The rest of the team should be a 4manteam, meaning they have everything they need without the splitpusher. A very important part is waveclear and disengage. Cant have them getting engaged on while you are splitpushing They need some turret killing potential aswell and ideally some baronspeed (doesnt have to be extremely high but sufficient to take nash when they 3mangank the splitpusher bottom)

What i like to play with my team is a 4man pokingteam while i play nidalee/jayce/shen top or something with tp. the great thing about pokingteams is that they can actually outpressure opponents even when outnumbered if played carefully enough.

How to splitpush?

The splitpusher needs good ward coverage and his team needs to be in position to take an objective in case they gank him. Wards are important.

Early/midgame the splitpusher usually goes toplane to lure the opposing team away from dragon. Lategame he often goes botlane to do the same with baron. Always make sure they cant just take nash 5v4.

While splitpushing always make sure to be safe or at least have your team be able to take objectivesif they come with several people. All the splitpushers just wanna clear the waves asap and shove them to the turret.

I hope you enjoyed the post. If you have any questions, Tell me on www.facebook.com/strawhatbro

Please explore this site some more, check out my stream and give me feedback

Finally a new play by play by strawhatbro!

So yesterday I played some soloqueue on my way to high elo (first steppingstone 2k elo!) and got queued with trolls without anyone dodging. As the singedplayer I am, I decide to carry the game and MAKE DA PLAYZ.
Running up toplane I realize im up against a skarner and have to carry vs a champ that can kite the heck out of me. GL STRAWHATBRO. See how I try to make my team pay attention to the minimap and get in the fray to tank it out!

Thanks for watching; please subscribe and follow.

Blue team: Amumu: MAOLISK
Vladimir: Ayanotia
Skarner: Fishêr
Vayne: Bubnik2
Nunu: 5thDeathsquad

Purple team: Singed: strawhatbro
Lee Sin: Yumai
Sivir: Bubikopf
Heimerdinger: WebOne SkeudoN
Vladimir: zixouuBOT

Hiho
It has been a long time since my last post and i apologize for that . It’s been quite the busy time.

Why do professional teams push so aggressively nowerdays?

Basically, they play the game very straightforward and try to destroy turrets. That’s very obvious since thats the fastest way to end a game.

Apart from the global gold and the availability of inner turrets, there are other merits to pushing down turrets as early as possible:
The main one being mapcontrol. A dropped turret allows you to push your minionwave even further and thus increase your field of vision while decreasing your opponents’ vision. At the same time you take away a safetyzone from your opponent making for easy jungleinvades and ganks.

In the past people said that taking turrets to early (especially botlane) led to the opponent just freezing the lane -> freefarming and denying farm from your own team. This point is now moot because as soon as you push down one lane, you transition to another one and keep the pressure on the entire time resulting in a very aggressive playstyle forcing your opponent to react to every one of your moves and preventing them from starting any initiative and making it very difficult for them to freeze a lane and freefarm without losing objectives.

As we can see, pushing down turrets has many advantages and the disadvantages can be overcome by just piling up pressure.

This metagame leads to very dynamic laneswaps and jungle appearances (2v1lanes top with lvl2-dives as often seen in competitive play).

The aggressive team always tries to outnumber the defending team in a lane they plan to push down and ward the area to cut off the reinforcements whenever possible. This leaves improtant objectives like dragon, nashor, buffs to be taken with ease.

Thanks for reading, dont forget to subscribe and follow us on facebook/twitch

Hey guys, finally another commentary by strawhatbro. The exams are over and I decided to upload a commentary on my newest kassadin game.

If you have any suggestions for commentaries, articles, music playlists etc, tell me on http://board.strawhatbro.net, on the twitch chat or on sam@strawhatbro.net (thats my email addy)

This game I decided to pick Kassadin into Orianna and bought mejais. Most of the game we are trailing in gold and have to try hard to keep the game even. The “stalemate” is broken by epic moves from several players. Stealing dragon and tourning a lost situation into a huge win was one turningpoint, but we kept falling behind. The real krisis was the baron attemp by blue team where we got the better of it.

All in all a very close game that took a change for the better

Champions played:
Blue Team: Orianna, Singed, Warwick, Nidalee, Vayne
Red Team:Shaco, Graves, Olaf, Lulu, Kassadin

I hope you enjoy this video.
Greez, sam aka strawhatbro

Update: The deal isn’t up anymore
Hey there! Long time no post, sorry for that. . .
BUT today I have a Amazon Germany deal for you!

During the Gamescom, which started today and last till 2012-08-19  Amazon offers daily new game releases for 10€ less.
The price gets reducted on checkout of your order.

Today they offer Halo4 (Xbox 360) and Disney Micky Epic 2 for almost every platform.

Halo 4 seems fun to me:

no spoiler trailer

spoiler trailer

For more information about Halo 4 -> 4Players.de Halo4

Halo 4 on Amazon

The Disnay game does not seem so nice to me But anyways. . .

Amazon Gamescom promotion overview

We will keep you updated on Facebook, follow up now strawhatbro on Facebook

Pushing:

Pushing is one of the basic concepts of lanecontrol.

What do you accomplish by pushing your lane to the turret?

When the lane is at turret, your opponent will have to focus on lasthitting, so you can harass him while he cant return any damage without losing cs.

Having the creeps pushed to the turret at the same time means your opponent will most likely miss more cs or have to use his mana to get those precious lasthits giving you an easier time harassing and zoning him.

Pushing is a very good tool to get ahead in a lane where you would usually lose straightup exchanges or u want to prevent your opponent from roaming (e.g. against Kass, Leblanc… anything that needs to roam/farms horribly under turret)

The Risks of Pushing:

If you have the lane pushed and it doesnt reset soon enaugh (i.e. the turret taking to long to clear the wave) your opponent will have an easy time freezing the lane and zoning you in return if his jungler comes to help at some point.

Before pushing you must be aware of the opposing jungler’s location to be sure he cannot simply come and pick up a free kill! I’ve said it before: WARD YOUR LANE EARLY AND KEEP IT WARDED!!! You cannot stress enaugh how important mapvision is to give you an advantage/prevent you from losing the advantage in lane.

If you can’t pick up a ward, ask your jungler, support/ad to pick one up; but in almost every scenario you will be able to pick up a few wards for yourself.

Harassing:

What is it?

Simply put: harassing is damaging/poking your opponent without fully commiting to killing him.

When you should try to harass:

• Whenever you can get free damage onto your opponent without being out of position or spending your rest of mana making you gankable (cannot use your defensive/escape mechanisms as well) without taking damage in return. This is mostly the case if your opponent is going for a lasthit on your minions or when you simply outrange him or his spells are on cooldown.
• I will repeat this, because this is the easiest and at the same time the safest way to harass: wait untill your opponent is going for a lasthit and autoattack him (if it’s safe aka he cant kill you/outtrade you if he wants the lasthit) and/or (ideally both) get a free spell or two on him! This is a very easy way to harass, because your opponent will have to stop swaying around while his animation for the lasthit is going -> he cant aa back/dodge.
• If you can simply outtrade your opponent because your skills/autohits outdamage what your opponent has got without overextending/depleting your manapool.
• Anytime your opponent is oom (out of mana) and relies on his skills for major dmgoutput you can freely aa harass + shoot your skills at him without having to be too afraid of ganks
• When you have a bigger creepwave and your opponent will draw creepaggro if he tries to trade. CREEPS DEAL HUGE DAMAGE EARLYGAME. Never forget that!

This is the first part of my guide about Denying in lane

Zoning:

What is Zoning?

Zoning is what players call the process of pressuring (threatening to damage/kill) somebody enaugh to make him back away from an area. In this instance I will treat zoning as zoning somebody out of the area where he can get cs (lasthits) or even experience.

You can zone your opponent if:

• the lane is frozen (explained on my post on lanecontrol) close to your turret:
  This is ideal, because now you aren’t exposed to ganks and can mindgame your opponent(s) into thinking your               jungler might be close (especially if they have no wards!).
• you have immediate killing potential on them (e.g. if you bullied them to a point where they are low enaugh for you to chase them down or burst them down) check out my post on laning for a general idea of how to get there.
  DONT GREED FOR THE KILL IF YOU DONT KNOW WHERE ALL THE OPPONENTS ARE/THERE IS THE CHANCE OF YOU GETTING BAITED!
  Dont make the mistake of going for a kill when you can’t and tossing away the advantage that is your opponent having to go back to base
• your jungler is close/the fear of a gank is instilled. As long as your opponents are afraid of a gank, you are likely to outtrade them (once again, be aware of the opposing jungler!)
• you can outharass your opponent without being exposed to ganks (mostly when the lane is frozen)

Zoning is strongly related to harassing in lane (explained in a later post) but i feel harassing and zoning deserve to be examined seperately. Especially because there are matchups where you can zone your opponent without previously harassing.

Many people asked me the question : “Which items do I start with?”

On pretty much any role(exept support, thats a littlebit different) you can start boots+ pots without any regrets. I don’t even recall the last time I’ve seen a midlane starting with anything else.

Starting boots + pots has two major advantages: Mobility and sustain!
The reason to start boots + pots mainly manifests in the disadvantages you have if you don’t.

What happens if you skip the mobility?

If you don’t start boots, a good jungler on the opposing team will see that and gank the heck out of you!

Without boots you cant escape ganks where both opposing players have a mobilityadvantage or you have to chose a more defensive playstyle resulting in a laning disadvantage. If your lane gets frozen you will miss several cs if you want to stay in lane.

What happens if you have more/less pots than your opponent?

Having extra healthpotions is a great advantage giving you the ability to outtrade your opponent. If you are up on healthpots, try to trade harass evenly untill your opponent runs out of pots, sending him home earlier resulting in you having the opportunity to push the lane and lose less creeps.

If you are behind on potions you will have to avoid any kind of harass because they will get the better of you in the long run.

When it might be worth to not start boots!

You might decide to not start boots if you are up against a lane you cannot handle without a different option. To make starting e.g. clotharmor a good idea you better have a champion elusive enaugh to escape from ganks (good example being me picking up vladimir with cloth+5 vs pantheon).

You can even start dorans on some champions (allthough nobody does that anymore because the lack of mobility just hurts you to much in higherlvl play).

Conclusion

Boots +3-4 potions give you the perfect mix of mobility and sustain for most matchups. This setup will suit you well in almost any game.

So i spectated dejavue227 (watch him crush in a mobafire inhouse match) in a ~2k elo game.
His team fell behind early and was able to turn around the game because they had a “protect the kogmaw” comp (check out my post on Kog’Maw) which was able to just crush in teamfights as soon as kog got his phantomdancer!

Blue team: Zilean, Graves, Nocturne, Soraka, Lee Sin
xCyn, Pharenx, 4K nucklehead, y0ur n1ghtmare, EbosherObebosher
Purple Team: Janna, Kog’Maw, Nautilus, Kennen, Nunu
TehBreaker, 4nD I Cas, dejavue227, Sogo, Hayanh