LOL: Can’t I play other games professionally?

Chapter 498 The Battle of the Tower: Success or Failure

Once both sides reach level six, a significant change will occur in the lane priority shift in the top lane: Gnar will start to dominate Ryze in the laning phase.

The multiple pressures that the Korean team hopes to exert may pose some threat to Ryze, but actually, the greater threat lies with the jungler Taliyah and even the mid laner Fiora.

Strong synergy and ganks are the real factors that can suppress the Korean team in the draft, because Gnar will be afraid of synergy and cooperation and will not dare to push the lane, which will naturally give the Korean team more initiative in the top lane.

However, this time, Score is confused again.

When Lin Ruo was taking the dragon earlier, Score was still wandering around the top lane. When Lin Ruo recalled to base and arrived in the top jungle, Score had just finished farming in the bottom jungle and returned home to upgrade his equipment.

Lin Ruo, who arrived first, helped his own top laner Gnar establish lane control, which naturally made him more effective in securing the Rift Herald.

Therefore, Lin Ruo should naturally open it first.

Taking advantage of lane control, and with Mouse's Gnar able to provide support first, they directly attacked the Rift Herald, and Tianye's Alistar arrived just in time to help.

With the natural laning advantage in the bottom lane, even if both supports are thinking of making a move, Alistar will definitely be the first support to arrive at the position.

Compared to the Korean team, perhaps the only way they have a solution is for their Fiora in the mid lane to have lane priority.

However, this aspect had already disappeared before the Rift Herald's Roar.

Because Tianye seized the advantage of arriving first, he helped the Irelia in the mid lane to push back the minion wave early. After getting a kill earlier, Xiaohu's pressure on Fiora was no longer so difficult.

Once the bullhead arrives, the troops stuck in the middle line can easily push back.

The Chinese team thus completed their preemptive assembly. At this point, the South Korean team, having lost their geographical advantage and vision control, would inevitably have to think twice before trying to catch a glimpse of the Rift Herald.

Especially take a close look at the opponent's lineup.

Cow-headed girl and pig-girl.

Who knows if they took the Rift Herald or theirs? This was obviously a huge test for the Korean team that entered the fray later. Support Corejj couldn't just recklessly dive in with his Gragas.

For the South Korean team, finding a suitable position to cut in or starting with poke seems to be a better approach.

The idea was good, but reality waits for no one. By the time the captain's barrage of bullets rained down, Lin Ruo had already firmly taken down the Rift Herald in the pit.

Only then did the South Korean team think of using the opponent's strength to press forward and try to attack from both above and below.

However, the Chinese team was not going to give them any leeway. Alistar used Flash and his combo to knock up the Gragas in front, and then used Sejuani's ultimate to lock down and control the enemy.

Corejj barely pressed any buttons before dying first on the river battlefield outside the dragon pit amidst a deluge of damage.

The barrels were still too brittle.

Considering the equipment CoreJJ bought makes him even squishier, this isn't a so-called "tanky" character, but rather a damage dealer to supplement the team's overall damage output.

With CD boots and a blue crystal, it's hard to tell who's more likely to die next to an AD carry. It's no wonder that a Gragas like that dies without any chance to fight back.

With fewer players before the game even started, the South Korean team dared not continue their pursuit and could only scatter like birds and beasts.

Although Sejuani and Alistar were out of ultimate abilities, the Chinese team's retreat was still too quick and easy, given their proximity to the side path.

Poke can't compare to the quick effect of entering a team fight; dealing damage and chipping away at the opponent's health in the back is pretty much all Score can do.

You want me to drive into the blue zone and block the road? Score thought about it and figured it was practically suicide.

All I can do is eat garlic.

Their next task is to deal with the Rift Herald's attack points. Logically, the most likely location for its release should be the mid lane, so Score, as the jungler, should naturally shift his focus to the mid lane.

The mid-lane tower is almost at full health, and the Rift Herald can't take it down by ramming it. What they need to do is prevent other players from coming in and attacking the tower besides the Rift Herald.

Allowing the Rift Herald to collide with the mid-lane is a sure success.

As a forward outpost for vision, everyone knows how important the mid tower is. Once it is lost, the impact on vision and the jungle environment will be extremely severe.

Without the help of turrets to clear minion waves, anyone can use the minion waves to create pressure during crucial jungle resource battles. So, regardless of anything else, the side without a turret will definitely suffer in terms of positioning during team fights.

Therefore, the mid-lane tower is really important.

Lin Ruo, who controlled the Rift Herald, also knew this. In previous matches, he would usually place the Rift Herald in the mid lane as a matter of course.

But this time, Lin Ruo didn't want to let go.

The reason is very simple: the first tower in the middle has as much health as a brand new city wall.

Ten minutes passed, and Xiaohu hadn't made a single move, making it difficult to push down the middle lane.

With the Korean team also taking intensive precautions, Lin Ruo chose to go top lane without hesitation.

Placing the Rift Herald in the mid lane is fine, but sorry, this time he's going to place it in the top lane.

We won't go down the road.

Although Varus is the main damage dealer in the bottom lane, the enemy's health has already been reduced by more than half, so letting the bottom tower go is a bit of a waste considering the geographical location of the bottom lane.

UZI's Varus is currently in an advantageous position, but helping to take down the next tower prematurely is actually not conducive to the development of the situation later.

In Lin Ruo's view, Varus needs to develop well, but he definitely doesn't need to be liberated.

The position that truly needs to be liberated is always the top lane, without exception. The Chinese team needs Gnar to push down the top tower as soon as possible to free up the solo lane situation and create a lane-pushing advantage.

This is a necessary condition for Nal to use his solo play to promote the development of the situation in the mid-to-late stages of a stalemate, thereby generating restraint and benefits.

Moreover, for the Korean team, their early game focus has always been on the top lane, and Score's Taliyah's basic activities in the early game have always revolved around the top lane.

Ryze's development is what the Korean team values ​​most, so it's even more necessary to take advantage of this opportunity to suppress him.

Throughout the Rift Herald fight, with Mouse's Gnar enjoying some lane-pushing advantage, the top lane turret's health was also significantly whittled down.

Lin Ruo needs a suitable moment to release the Rift Herald, which depends on the location of the enemy jungler, Score's Taliyah.

When Score gets lost and appears in the lower jungle, even if it's an invasion, it's the best time to release the Rift Herald in the top lane.

However, if Score really wants to go to his bottom jungle, the only thing to do is to invade first.

Before the Rift Herald is released, Lin Ruo's task is to coordinate with Gnar, who is pushing the lane, to harass and invade the red buff in the jungle.

Once the red buff is taken, the score will naturally drop.

At this point, Score was clearly struggling to contain the momentum. The numerical advantage from the initial invasion posed a significant threat, and taking down the red buff would be a matter of moments. Fortunately, with Fiora's arrival, Score managed to fight back and secure the red buff.

However, there were no further penalties, so F6 naturally disappeared as well.

Forced to leave the jungle temporarily, Score was forced to leave the top lane, and the Rift Herald roared as it descended upon the top lane.

Gnar was left to pressure the Captain into taking down a tower alone, while Lin Ruo, controlling Sejuani, rushed back, upgraded her equipment, and headed straight for the bottom lane.

With the Rift Herald released in the upper lane, Score, who was still in the lower mid lane, naturally didn't think he could stop the first tower from falling.

Therefore, the best approach at this point would naturally be to call on Faker's Fiora and the other two players to gank the bottom lane, making up for the losses in the top lane through breakthroughs and trades.

In other matches, even if Lin Ruo gave up the Rift Herald and rushed back to base, he probably wouldn't be able to manage the first tower on the lane. His own duo should be watching from the second tower, seeing the enemy easily destroy the first tower.

Fortunately, it was just this game.

The opposing support is Gragas, who has the ability to tower dive but lacks the health to tank tower damage.

For a combination like Ezreal and Gragas, tower diving is obviously unrealistic. Even if Taliyah arrives in time to block their retreat, the Korean duo simply doesn't have the courage to initiate a team fight without considering anything else.

The injury is one aspect, and the lack of ability is another.

What's more, one of the targets that the Chinese team was being targeted by was a Minotaur.

The most likely scenario for a three-man bot lane duo with Alistar is that one of them will be knocked away, and the other two will be knocked up inside the turret.

This made the South Korean team hesitant to make any rash moves.

Conversely, if the attacking team trying to tower dive is the Chinese duo, then there's no need for such a drawn-out process.

If Taliyah blocks the road, Alistar can just drive in and ram it, and that's it.

But that's not the case.

The Korean team couldn't initiate team fights so decisively and could only wait for the most suitable opportunity. However, Sejuani arrived too quickly, resulting in a situation where they were counter-ganked.

Initially, when they learned that the game was going to be a siege, Score's strategy was to pressure the Chinese team's bot lane duo to retreat, thereby exchanging towers to minimize their losses.

However, he saw halfway there that Varus and Alistar had no intention of retreating at all. He had calculated that the red team's tower diving ability was weak, so there was no need for them to retreat blindly.

At this point, Score already felt that the next tower would be difficult to break.

However, the arrow was already on the string and had to be released.

When the road was finally blocked, and with the top tower already fallen and Fiora on her way, the Korean team decided to give it one last try.

If they can get past Varus and take down the next tower, then they won't lose anything at all.

However, if things go wrong, it could result in a huge loss.

From Wang Duoduo's perspective in the commentary booth, Lin Ruo, who was heading to the bottom lane, had returned to the fountain and reached the vicinity of the high ground tower. If the Korean team didn't act soon, they would likely have little chance.

Here he had to admit that Lin Ruo's judgment was too accurate.

Most junglers release Rift Herald in the top lane with the intention of getting a share of the spoils, or to help their top laner push further.

At this point, the bottom lane duo in most situations were already hanging near the second tower.

This is a forced exchange.

But the Chinese team adhered to the principle of "I want it all" this time. We want the top tower, we want the bottom tower, and our duo team needs to farm minions and gain experience, so we can't retreat even a little bit.

Therefore, the South Korean team was forced to cross the border.

With the minion wave pushing into the tower and suffering significant losses, CoreJJ finally made up his mind and launched an offensive. Taliyah also appeared in the back to poke and harass the tower. The Korean team initiated the team fight with Gragas.

Corejj isn't tanky at all and definitely won't withstand many tower hits, but thankfully he has the Stopwatch talent, which automatically generates and uses it after a certain amount of time at the start of the game.
This gave him room to maneuver.

The fact that Alistar didn't have Flash because of the previous team fight in the river is undoubtedly good news, but Corejj is definitely not going to initiate on Alistar first.

His only target was Varus under the turret.

First, he searched for the angle and space for E-flash. After finding that there was no such space, Corejj manipulated the barrel and threw it out in an instant. The barrel exploded into pieces with a loud bang.

This could be either a way to forcefully inflict damage, or it could be a way to use the chaos to find a better space to strike.

This "space" undoubtedly refers to completely blasting Varus, who is located in the back, against the wall, and incidentally blasting away Alistar in the middle to create an opportunity for E-Flash.

However, his initial move was too aggressive, and it was clear that Tianye Niu Tou had also figured out his intentions.

Therefore, the moment the exploding barrel was thrown, the Minotaur's Savage Charge also charged out without any reason. Tianye had to ensure that the barrel would not have room to charge after using its ultimate, otherwise Varus's chances of survival would be extremely slim.

So when the exploding barrel falls, the barrel is also knocked aside, and at this point, the second control needs to be done by Taliyah outside the tower behind.

As UZI Varus activated his healing ability, he twisted the position of the exploding barrel, causing the expected impact point to deviate significantly.

Originally, it was supposed to be blasted into the wall, but because it turned around and moved backward, it was moved a distance away from the tower at an angle.

The area outside this tower is directly behind it, at the edge of the defensive tower's interior.

Score, who was about to enter the tower, ran right into Varus and didn't know whether it was good news or bad news.

He knew Varus's idea was to create a one-on-one situation, rather than being attacked by him, Taliyah, and then by Ezreal who came in from under the tower.

At least he landed outside the rear tower, and Aiming, who was entering the tower in front, was someone EZ couldn't attack immediately.

Of course, this excludes using your E skill to close the distance.

However, it will ultimately have some impact on damage output; Ezreal's inclusion likely means he'll become a new target for tanking towers.
Because the barrels behind won't hold out for long, after being entangled by the Minotaur, the first thing to do under normal circumstances is to quickly pull away to avoid being knocked back and then stumbling and being killed by the turret in three hits.

If you insist on following the enemy into the fray, then it's no longer possible to make a decisive E-flash entry. Instead, you must flash behind the tower and then use your E skill to move out of the tower.

With so many pauses in the maneuver, it would be very difficult for UZI, with his extremely fast reaction speed, to accurately control Varus outside the turret's edge.

Corejj knows this better than anyone else.

He could only hope that Score could control the people first.

(End of this chapter)