LS aka Loves Soraka aka Loathes Shurelya's is a League of Legends content creator, streamer, and former head coach of Cloud9 who is known for identifying pro players' unnecessary control ward purchases and asinine mythic choices.
I think ls’ extensive knowledge in other games puts him a cut above the rest. I personally don’t know shit about StarCraft or a lot of the other games he plays, but I played melee competitively for a bit and I still follow the game. The amount of time that goes into figuring out what your “champion” can do in that game is endless and people are still figuring things out, and that game has progressed so far because of it. I think we all need to listen to LS a bit more. Even if you think he’s wrong, it’s this kind of thinking in games that progresses them. And if it’s not one lone man trying to carve a future for the game, we can eventually optimize the game to the point of melee. However, the fact that LS is even willing to try to optimize the game by himself is seriously inspiring. Sorry if this was a mess but good job LS. League needs you.
People only think about league as a mechanics game. But no, thats why starcraft knowledge is so importatn every game with economy, is an economy game. You need to actually think why are you buying a 75 gold pink ward.
@@bomnitoperro9422 economy is important, but there are other factors in league. we’ve seen teams win team fights with lower gold because of better draft, better vision, and better engages etc.
Really hope that people start listening, because this kind of concept is so obvious to anyone who comes from pretty much any game other than League. Thanks for this kind of analysis LS, it’s sorely needed.
It kind of sucks though, because to mechanically play at this high level, the only game theyre allowed to play IS league. If they played other competitive online games with less harsh learning curves they mightve learned general game theory and tactics, but what other such games have they played? Wow? No way
@fck peace Yeah in other side dota2 dont have tons of coaches but they sometimes make use of item to the max i watch OG run in 2019 if im not wrong, the heroes build something weird but worked very well. they clutch and win 1st prize 40mil or something dunno what happen with LoL, we have ton of coaches but sometime player build less effective item
Regarding the discussion about "space" in chess and its inherent lack of value, I'd argue another similar concept that fits in with the discussion is utility usage in CSGO. In 2015, on the map Mirage, there was a very powerful T-side execute on A site that involved throwing 5 smokes on the execute. 1 at top connector, 1 at jungle, 1 to cover under balcony, and two to cover the plant location. If you don't play CSGO, don't worry about the specific locations, just understand that they threw 5 smokes. Now, this was very powerful and considered unbeatable at the time, and every high tier team eventually developed their own variation along with the "standard" version. However, these days, this execute is basically never used at the professional level, and you'll only sometimes see it on amateur or PUG matches. Why is that the case? In CSGO, you have 5 players per team, and each person can only buy one smoke grenade. The only way you can throw more than one is if you pick them up off of dead bodies, but you can only hold one at a time, so this is usually never relevant. Smokes work to obscure vision, but this doesn't have any inherent value in and of itself, because 1. there has to be someone there to smoke off, and 2. that person needs to be utilizing that vision in the first place. If there is no one at the smoked off angle, or that person doesn't push and instead waits the smoke out, you essentially gained no value from said smoke. What eventually happened was the executes for A site changed over time to not use all 5 smokes and instead use 3 or 4, and instead more rely on first contact with your entry fragger and more coordinated flashes to clear angles. Using a flashbang instead of a smoke is a much more deliberate choice, because the effect is short lived yet much more powerful (fully blinding and deafening someone) and harder to counterplay. Additionally, you can hold two flashes per person, which makes using them less wasteful. In the earlier versions of the strat, smokes are easier to use and give the impression you have more control, but once they dissipate, the CTs can easily countersmoke you and retake the site with their unused utility. That is one small example of how players in another game refined their strategy with more deliberate and coordinated play.
love this kind of content man. the most valuable piece of information that i can collect from these and other analysis that you do, is that everything is attached to a REASON. When pro players, in their search of mastery over the diverse mechanics the game offers, start to automatize the process, they end up leaving reasoning behind. This leads to these absurd scenarios, where the automatization of "support role buys pinks. why? because vision. why vision? because support provide vision", ends up forgetting the reason of why do you need to see what's happening on the map in the first place, what are you going to do when you get the information you are looking for through vision. Same applies to baron dances and the need to throw a game just for one objective, herald and plates, prioritizing "broken combo's" like lucian nami regardless what the other team may draft, buying "op items" regardless of what the item does and if it is useful in the actual game (collector vs LDR, liandry vs luden's, etc.). Something is good, therefore you should always do it. and then what? nothing, because you don't even know the REASON why it is good in the first place. so obvious on theory, so missunderstood on practice.
I come from mtg and chess and it’s so interesting to see people react to what you say as it seems so intuitive based off the analytical discussions I’m used to hearing
@@phoenix_8901 Yes and no. While yes, League players are horrid at analysis, also analyzing past 20 games plus simple analysis of stats on the current champion a certain player is playing is definitely ''good enough'' for a quick glance of MENTAL states. So it's basically the biggest upside for shortest time span, while losing in precision, it's not suddenly irrelevant, just how a player listening to their favorite song in one draft because they lost their last game isn't irrelevant either, they're spending that time listening to music to improve their mental, while you could tell them they're wasting time because they aren't analyzing past 20 games of their 4 team mates they just got into lobby with.
Yeah I kinda gathered this concept when you first talked about overbuying control wards. By doing it too much you are giving your opponent a small advantage and all you are gaining is a possibility of gaining a space advantage. You have to buy control wards with the express intention on doing something with it that is worth the buy. Creating space without the ability to hold it directly leads to a slight disadvantage that when repeated can ad up. This is especially worse for a role that already is disadvantaged by low income. All that being said this is why I sub to both you and caedral. You focus on the advancement of what the best of the best can do and talk about alternatives to draft that I would love to see mastered on a team one day. Caedral on the other hand is much more player focused. You 2 provide a great balance in the understanding of the game at a pro level even though sometimes the views can contradict.
if you only have like 100 gold and slots it's probably worth buying a control ward as a support leaving base since the opurtunity cost is pretty low, you will almost certainly find a pretty decent place or time to use it in the next 10 minutes, worst case you sell it and lose 30 gold (or place it badly i guess)
@@bobdole6768 You need to understand the distinction between buying control wards and overbuying them. I constantly see this arguement of "if you have the gold you may aswell" but that isnt what the point is about. How many times have you placed a control ward badly such that you either need to place a new one or got no value out of it, its not about buying 1 control ward, its about buying 4 when you couldve been just as effective with just 1 over the same period.
I really wanna believe Phreak has good intentions but some of his remarks when it comes to LS really just feels like shit-stirring... And idk in this case, I think it's really hard to tell if its sarcastic or not.
I feel he's trying really hard to stay relevant or stand out it's really embarrassing sometimes and it's annoying when he does it as the game is happening and won't stop trying to claim he's right never moving on from the point.
I've heard Phreak talk over the years. He has a huge ego. He's not an intelligent mastermind doing this for the community. He just can't admit he's wrong.
Absolutely important point about vision in the video. The concept of vision is primitive in LoL and something far far more understood on a fundamental level. I could even argue Sun Tzu had a better understand of vision in League of Legends 2000 years ago xd
God damn this was good, so good att putting thought into words and really made it so easy to understand. Like sometimes I have thought on things that are very similiar to LS viewpoints but I can never verbalize all of it and he just does it perfectly!
Absolutely, and you don't have to agree with all of his takes, what LS brings to the table is a shift in perspective, using established concepts of game knowledge from multiple different backgrounds of games. The takes can absolutely be wrong, but the basis of how that conclusion was made tends to be quite thought out. He asks very relevant questions that aren't asked in the League scene, and the community truly needs a voice like that.
LS aka Loathe Seeing is a league analyst, former coach btw, who is known for wanting pro players to not buy control wards and keep the map as dark as his room
Heavily agree with LS's theory here. Personally though, would want to factor in player psychology into this discussion as well, particularly when talking about space / vision. For example from a chess perspective, I remember going up against an opponent I considered far more skillful than myself. Knowing that in a simplified game state, he would outplay me, I deliberately aimed for a cramped, 'messy' position which I knew would make my opponent uncomfortable, and increase the pressure on him. Realistically, I had no expectations placed on me, whereas my opponent did. In that game, I was lucky and he folded, making a couple of blunders that I was able to exploit and win the game. In no way was this tactic I used going to guarantee me the win though, however it gave me an 'edge' whereas instead of a 20% chance at winning, I might have raised my chances to 30% or 40%. You can extrapolate this within League and use this as part of talking points around draft/vision etc. I consider some of Huhi's ward placements largely indefensible and good examples of 'lazy' vision, but I do feel that the psychological / mental aspects of playing with / without vision do needs to be part of the conversation, albeit a difficult one since its largely intangible. I do like these sorts of videos though, as a chess/yugioh/card player its always struck me as unfortunate that league of legends hasn't yet embraced this way of viewing the game.
What you are talking about in regards to the chess example is exactly what LS is talking about in this video at 19 minutes. He has also mentioned this concept before when it comes to fighting games like Tekken. Rangchu won the World Tour with Kuma, one of the worst characters in the game because people were not familiar with it. So the opponent's S tier picks become A tier picks because they are uncomfortable vs Kuma, and Rangchu's B tier pick becomes an A tier pick because the opponent doesn't know how to counter his offense. This makes a massive difference in both his and his opponent's gameplay. I don't think however, that this concept applies very well at all to this control ward example. The "psychological" aspect you mention is so intangible that if we took a sample size of 1000+ games, I can't imagine the net benefit of the psychological aspect of vision ever overcoming the 500+ gold worth of stats that is wasted on vision every game. Let's say for the sake of hypothesising that this purely psychological benefit you receive from vision brings huhi's gameplay from a B to a B+ tier (already a very generous hypothesis) using that previous fighting game example. It actually does nothing to lower Vulcan's A tier gameplay, so it only affects one variable of the equation and very minimally. So I don't think this psychological boost you mention can really be used as a justification for overbuying wards
ls i feel your pain, experienced very similar issues in other communities and its always miserable to have a conversation when everyone is either acting in bad faith, or refuses to accept the thought process required to have an actual logical conversation. Have unironically heard arguments like "X didn't work before, so we won't try it again" and when confronted about why X doesn't work there's never any coherent answer. keep up the good fight if you can.
Nah man I played tekken once and the mishimas (hardest characters) are bad cause i dont know how to play the game Nah man I played Dota and Shadow Blade is the best item because it gives you invisibility (when you could literally buy another item that gives you SPELL IMMUNITY INSTEAD) because it worked againsts noobs Nah man melee in terrarria is the worst class cause you have no range (becomes the best lategame) Nah man Gwen is bad cause she had a 39% winrate on release (she eventually rose to be above 50% winrate while having an above average pickrate)
Love the in depth and nuanced discussion but it feels silly to have to justify that one mythic isn't always the best depending on the matchup, I build Moonstone more often but pick up Shurelya's if my team needs to haul ass to have a positive outcome, but if they can stick or disengage themselves just fine what's the point of MS instead of a healing steroid?
In addition, I don’t really recall LS mentioning that MS has depreciating value. League slows down the impact of MS the more you get at some point. And with Zeri/Trundle, you’re simply not getting much more movement speed. Not like moonstone needs any more justification to build here.
Lathyrus #1 bard world doesn’t buy pinks and I completely agree lol. Doesn’t accomplish anything in lane and lower elo it’s really pointless as you just put yourself behind for your team to not even use map
Loool LS: pros overbuy ward. You: that's why I never buy them huhuhu Denying vision and brush control accomplish nothing in lane (that's sarcasm) . You're a fucking joke if you think never buying ward is the solution.
For some reason i always how much knowledge ls has for league.. he can always have a valid point for everything he says. And the reasoning behind his points to bavk it up
Soraka has already the fastest and longest ms buff in the game with her passive especially in teamfights. Phreak is one of the dumbest personality in league so this is not a shocker.
BuT iTs GoOd ThOuGh?? Look Phreak does a lot of good in the scene (LS has said his patch rundowns are the best way to get a better understanding on how numbers changes affect the champions) but he has some real dumbass moments "He JuSt SeNsEs It"
“Phreak is one of the dumbest *personalities* in league” Don’t get too worked up. The whole point of shurelyas is a MS buff to more then just the champion it’s on, so why would Soraka having a solid MS buff in one direction have much to do with the utility of an item that boosts more people than just her?
@@vhufeosqap Exactly, statistically this is soraka's best mythic against Sivir, and Gangplank as well. LS's argument is only in principle, and lacks perspective.
I literally learned this concept when I started learning and playing 2nd role support back in Season 5 after getting bullied by Jungle and Support duos in Solo Q in Season 4. I figured out on my fckin own that hey. Me placing wards that get cleared by the enemy jungler immdeiately equals bad ward. If I already know the jungler was there just spam ping back my dog adc. Since you know jungler tracking was already required skill back then as both high elo jungler and support if you didnt want to get curb stomped by Chinese Rengar 445 or Master Yi Taric elo boost boat OR Pro player and his boys Flex Quene gonna rail you and your pepega team. I really dont know how game knowledge and required skills back then disappeared. Even NA had these concepts especially when lane swaps were still a thing. Really ridiculous people dont wanna think even remotely critically about League except for the Koreans and Chinese Pros.
yeah but did LS consider that going fast = fun? didn't think so seriously tho shoutout to LS to bringing this style of thinking to the league community - even if people don't inherently agree with his takes the way he generalises league terms into more practical game-agnostic ideas is something that you don't really see and it's rlly cool imo
I mean I thinks similar thinking can be applied all over League of Legends. like League players in general have a very one tracked mind of "this is the way you play", there is a set of things you do and that's just what you do. Vision = good is an example of that, when in reality it's much more nuanced. Equally I've seen Virkayu pointing out that tower damage is actually one of the most important metrics in the game, as in reality the game is won by destroying the enemies nexus, not killing their players. Like how LS mentions that vision is only useful if you can actually gain information from it that allows you to make players, Virkayu points out that kills are only really useful if you can convert them into objectives. The gold is nice and all but half the time they gold you lost by not farming and instead fighting makes up most of the difference with the gold gained from the kill.
i can see the value of ms (skill shots from ahri, GP and maybe poppy ulti) has if u dont get hit by a GP barrel and charm from ahri not be hit by poppy ulti its going to be bigger then the healing for moon but i think the healing is just better has u can still side step all of them with only the first GP barrel can be made a hit (if they have fog and are there first and gets face checked) (at the start of the video i hated the speed but has i got longer into the video (about 12 min i started trying to think of ms with skill shots) i liked it but not more then healing but can see the speed argument has think if the team is used to this being the buy then maybe the speed is good just not better then healing)
The problem comes outside of league of legends. When you have experience with a vision/guessing system of any other game you can preetty much understand that vision is useless in league just because of micro-information that gets fed to you constantly. What do i mean. I play World of Tanks on a competitive lvl and i am very good at the game. That game is all about vision and exploiting it. You constantly see enemy tanks spotted for one second and the unspotted on the map just like league has on the corner. Basically vision is a guessing game, and a game of patterns. When you have such a high lvl game people take only certain paths and do certain things so it is not impossible to guess everything. Where a player is at any given moment with very little information because the likeliness of them doing something outside of the given paths is very very small. So how do you use active vision in league. Vision is usually put in situations of if`s and it only should be used on situations that will have a short active result. For example Warding Baron with a pink the moment it spaws and then holding another pink ward in your inv is useless because one of the 2 will go to waste nonetheless. If you ward baron so early you will need to use another pink at some point. And the pink at baron so early offers nothing. Basically what i am trying to say here is use active vision when it has the most high chance of giving you something back. For example warding chickens at the start of the game to see the jg path. Warding the bush next to dragon before the 1st dragon spaws and the 2 skudles die. That way you will absolutely get info back. And a last argument can be made that with so many recalls happening before important objectives you can just buy 1 pink that you need before that objective comes online.
Texas hold em poker is really only a strategic game because of the psychological part of it. Players get a lot of advantage by studying the other players and getting in their head. LS says he’s more interested in the Siver and Zeri aspect instead of the tactical vs berserker aspect but I feel like removing the personality aspect completely and looking instead at what is humanly possible could leave a gap where advantages could be attained. I’m gold in league though so idk im just good at Texas Holdem so maybe it’s not a perfect 1 to 1 match
I think the reason for looking at the Sivir/Zeri aspect over the individual players aspect is because it holds elements we can actually control and find consistency in, because the champions are only capable of so much, the decisions the players make usually pertain to the champion they are piloting and what is physically possible for the champion to achieve. Once that is fully established, then you can look at it from a psychology perspective, but in a game with as much readily available information as League, that very often doesn't come to light. Because we should know how champions interact, and we should be able to use vision (or lack thereof) to execute deductive reasoning in order to come to conclusions (which usually leave minimal options as to what can happen or where a certain champion can be.)
I think that pro players refuse to buy moonstone because its effects are less visable than shurelias, with which you get to push the go button and you see and feel the immediate effect, also your teammates most likely see it as more impactful.
But shurelyas is OP because LoL lategame is all about picks. You wait for one guy to int in enemy team and run at him. Lategame is literally only about that even for pros. Thats why shurelyas is great.
only reason to go shurely is if the adc is scripting since the movespeed imediatly translates into more autoattacks & easier dodging due to the fact that my adc is basically a robot playing pixel perfect
Control Wards are a conspiracy by Big Shopkeeper to deceive innocent champions into paying 75g for the exact same ability as Oracle Lens gives for free plus the ability support item also gives for free.
Is this information easy to comprehend I would say yes and no. Yes because the concepts and theories aren’t hard to understand but also, No because most peoples attention span was lost after the phreak tweet came up. Even though I think Phreak and LS would have better conversations over the game than a majority of people.
This would be a good produced video. Use analogies from chess or poker if you want to make the point, but be concise and it would be a point well worth making. Stream of consciousness during a livestream just muddles it since he hasn't really thought through how to convey a (what I consider) simple concept clearly.
'We are not robots, we are not machines' Imo there lies LS conundrum with the way some players/teams build items. In solo q I am often the one who buys 2 pinks and purposely delay my mythic, because my teammates either don't participate in vision game or only ward their own lanes ignoring soon spawning objectives. What I do is technically a mistake, but it alleviates the vision mistakes my team makes around objectives. It is a bad answer to a silly problem, but it is one for that given moment. Maybe, pro players see Shurelya in a similar way. They know their team should be able to position, play and react the way LS envisions them to, but because they FEEL better with the spur of movement speed Shurelya potentially gives them in one clutch moment, a team like 100Thieves is willing to abandon the, albeit superior, but less positional clutch, moonstone healing.
I mean, can someone tell me how the fck Soraka procs Moonstone against this comp? Is LS delusional or is he blind and can't read the item? Shurelya is better on Soraka in this game for example. To be honest, anything is better than Moonstone here; Redemption, Staff of Flowing Water, Mikael's... Is he suggesting another mythic or is he suggesting something else before Shurelya? Because i don't get how is Moonstone better here? I'm genuinely curious, because i think there's no way to proc Moonstone consistently in this game.
But moonstone is the most op item in the whole game why does not one want to buy this item its so insane I have no idea why people don't get this and even if you are vs brust dmg shield support are still better with moonstone and there are just better than that shit item (OK venting over sorry)
The league community is honestly just so braindead. When you look at the innovation in a game like Dota, the willingness of teams to play crazy things or actually innovate. Then you compare it to league... Like teams arn't even willing to play AP carries bottom this season. It's so snooze.
He is wrong about Moonstone being "guaranteed HP" it takes 5 seconds to start being effective. I think Shurelya's was correct here because what is the worst thing that could happen to Soraka? Gets caught and dies quick. Soraka can win team fights for her team by healing up carries (she doesn't need moonstone to do this) but she can also win just by surviving an enemy dive while her team fucks up enemy carries. Shurelya's active + Raka Ult is so much guaranteed team fight presence even in the middle of an enemy dive. Moonstone is win more. If the fight goes 20 seconds Soraka wins anyways. If it goes 5 seconds Soraka now can contend with the sheer value of Lulu shield+polymorph+ult.
It it some immediate healing. The 20% bonus takes 5 seconds to stack but the passive on moonstone gives a flat heal that scales with level instead. I think its like 60 at early level. I agree that the shurelyas is more guaranteed value and can help survive dive so if huhi thinks he needs it to live and press R then sure.
I think the argument of "It's better because it's a crutch" is just a bad argument especially when you're talking about pro players rather than low elo players.
Yeap, Shurelya's is actually correct here, a lot of other pro players and analysts have already pointed out it's so easy to pick Soraka off and Moonstone is really just trolling when enemy team does have decent backline access. "Soraka can win team fights for her team by healing up carries (she doesn't need moonstone to do this)" Exactly. Rank 5 W Soraka is already a walking fountain that full heals her targets very easily. One thing that people don't think about how Shurelya contributes to Soraka's healing output is Q casts. Moonstone does very little for Soraka's personal survivability aside from max stack healing power buffing her personal Q regen and R healing, but it's so negligible and you will just die anyway. Shurelya on the other hand allows Soraka to position more aggressively for better Q, W and E casts across the board, which is more practical eHP than Moonstone.
im sorry for being dissapointed at you even though your double ganger was wayyyy taller than you... im sorry... i know its you... my little wubby dubby...
Well, I think it's easier to criticize when you're watching on a screen than actually playing as them in front of thousands of people. If you played pro, do you think you wouldn't be nervous? they're in game 5 i think the nerves are on edge
I completely disagree with his logic here. Movement Speed is by far and away the strongest stat in the game and he severely downplayed Phreak's point on this one.
It's like you missed the point of the movement speed. You use it to dodge skill shots or avoid damage, it's giving you effective HP. But you know what moonstone does? Give HP, and steroid your own abilities as Soraka. The movement speed of the Rogue comp is already naturally higher than the Fnatic comp, why do they need more?
"movement speed is by far and away the strongest stat in the game" x to doubt Attack Range most important league stat, but either way you're saying that some hypothetical value from the movement speed is more important than the guaranteed value from Moonstone healing. While it's possible for that argument to be correct, it would be an intensely difficult argument to make, and it's definitely a tradeoff that wasn't a good call in the game in question.
@@brucewayne1025 attack range is definitely more important of a stat but move speed can also translate to effective range. example when caits MS got buffed a long time ago in 10.15 and they had to nerf it back down in 10.17 because she was able to space better with her already long range. also thresh ms nerfs for getting into flay position etc. both have their value and can both be insanely strong in their own right
Haha speed up the Azir who isn't moving. The Zeri who has so much movement speed, Shurelyas becomes less efficient. Yeah Shurelyas is useful. Surely it is LMAO
LS aka Loves Soraka aka Loathes Shurelya's is a League of Legends content creator, streamer, and former head coach of Cloud9 who is known for identifying pro players' unnecessary control ward purchases and asinine mythic choices.
Lmao, made this vid that much better xD.
5Head
I think ls’ extensive knowledge in other games puts him a cut above the rest. I personally don’t know shit about StarCraft or a lot of the other games he plays, but I played melee competitively for a bit and I still follow the game. The amount of time that goes into figuring out what your “champion” can do in that game is endless and people are still figuring things out, and that game has progressed so far because of it. I think we all need to listen to LS a bit more. Even if you think he’s wrong, it’s this kind of thinking in games that progresses them. And if it’s not one lone man trying to carve a future for the game, we can eventually optimize the game to the point of melee. However, the fact that LS is even willing to try to optimize the game by himself is seriously inspiring. Sorry if this was a mess but good job LS. League needs you.
Melee is siiiiick
People only think about league as a mechanics game. But no, thats why starcraft knowledge is so importatn every game with economy, is an economy game. You need to actually think why are you buying a 75 gold pink ward.
@@bomnitoperro9422 economy is important, but there are other factors in league. we’ve seen teams win team fights with lower gold because of better draft, better vision, and better engages etc.
@@Chizypuff What's the full name of fhe game you are talking about?
@@Ar7Style87 super smash brothers melee
Every day I'm fascinated how ppl come up with tons of actual LS acronyms, really funny :D
Really hope that people start listening, because this kind of concept is so obvious to anyone who comes from pretty much any game other than League. Thanks for this kind of analysis LS, it’s sorely needed.
helps when he actually explains in depth rather than a sarcastic sentence
@@bobdole6768 he did and no one was listening, this is just a normal stream and chat interacted with him on the topic.
It kind of sucks though, because to mechanically play at this high level, the only game theyre allowed to play IS league. If they played other competitive online games with less harsh learning curves they mightve learned general game theory and tactics, but what other such games have they played? Wow? No way
@@deejaydee1578 so thats why Wunder was playing WoW last year, he was just playing for the long run
@fck peace Yeah in other side dota2 dont have tons of coaches but they sometimes make use of item to the max
i watch OG run in 2019 if im not wrong, the heroes build something weird but worked very well. they clutch and win 1st prize 40mil or something
dunno what happen with LoL, we have ton of coaches but sometime player build less effective item
Love these analogies to different fields. Naroditsky is great at expressing concepts in chess and it's great to hear how these apply to league.
Regarding the discussion about "space" in chess and its inherent lack of value, I'd argue another similar concept that fits in with the discussion is utility usage in CSGO.
In 2015, on the map Mirage, there was a very powerful T-side execute on A site that involved throwing 5 smokes on the execute. 1 at top connector, 1 at jungle, 1 to cover under balcony, and two to cover the plant location. If you don't play CSGO, don't worry about the specific locations, just understand that they threw 5 smokes.
Now, this was very powerful and considered unbeatable at the time, and every high tier team eventually developed their own variation along with the "standard" version. However, these days, this execute is basically never used at the professional level, and you'll only sometimes see it on amateur or PUG matches. Why is that the case?
In CSGO, you have 5 players per team, and each person can only buy one smoke grenade. The only way you can throw more than one is if you pick them up off of dead bodies, but you can only hold one at a time, so this is usually never relevant. Smokes work to obscure vision, but this doesn't have any inherent value in and of itself, because 1. there has to be someone there to smoke off, and 2. that person needs to be utilizing that vision in the first place. If there is no one at the smoked off angle, or that person doesn't push and instead waits the smoke out, you essentially gained no value from said smoke.
What eventually happened was the executes for A site changed over time to not use all 5 smokes and instead use 3 or 4, and instead more rely on first contact with your entry fragger and more coordinated flashes to clear angles. Using a flashbang instead of a smoke is a much more deliberate choice, because the effect is short lived yet much more powerful (fully blinding and deafening someone) and harder to counterplay. Additionally, you can hold two flashes per person, which makes using them less wasteful. In the earlier versions of the strat, smokes are easier to use and give the impression you have more control, but once they dissipate, the CTs can easily countersmoke you and retake the site with their unused utility.
That is one small example of how players in another game refined their strategy with more deliberate and coordinated play.
love this kind of content man. the most valuable piece of information that i can collect from these and other analysis that you do, is that everything is attached to a REASON. When pro players, in their search of mastery over the diverse mechanics the game offers, start to automatize the process, they end up leaving reasoning behind. This leads to these absurd scenarios, where the automatization of "support role buys pinks. why? because vision. why vision? because support provide vision", ends up forgetting the reason of why do you need to see what's happening on the map in the first place, what are you going to do when you get the information you are looking for through vision.
Same applies to baron dances and the need to throw a game just for one objective, herald and plates, prioritizing "broken combo's" like lucian nami regardless what the other team may draft, buying "op items" regardless of what the item does and if it is useful in the actual game (collector vs LDR, liandry vs luden's, etc.). Something is good, therefore you should always do it. and then what? nothing, because you don't even know the REASON why it is good in the first place. so obvious on theory, so missunderstood on practice.
I come from mtg and chess and it’s so interesting to see people react to what you say as it seems so intuitive based off the analytical discussions I’m used to hearing
You think League players are known for their analytical prowess?
@@Conantas the only thing league players can analyze is an opgg page. and they only look at the 20 most recent games. previous games are irrelevant.
@@phoenix_8901 Yes and no. While yes, League players are horrid at analysis, also analyzing past 20 games plus simple analysis of stats on the current champion a certain player is playing is definitely ''good enough'' for a quick glance of MENTAL states. So it's basically the biggest upside for shortest time span, while losing in precision, it's not suddenly irrelevant, just how a player listening to their favorite song in one draft because they lost their last game isn't irrelevant either, they're spending that time listening to music to improve their mental, while you could tell them they're wasting time because they aren't analyzing past 20 games of their 4 team mates they just got into lobby with.
Yeah I kinda gathered this concept when you first talked about overbuying control wards. By doing it too much you are giving your opponent a small advantage and all you are gaining is a possibility of gaining a space advantage. You have to buy control wards with the express intention on doing something with it that is worth the buy. Creating space without the ability to hold it directly leads to a slight disadvantage that when repeated can ad up. This is especially worse for a role that already is disadvantaged by low income.
All that being said this is why I sub to both you and caedral. You focus on the advancement of what the best of the best can do and talk about alternatives to draft that I would love to see mastered on a team one day. Caedral on the other hand is much more player focused. You 2 provide a great balance in the understanding of the game at a pro level even though sometimes the views can contradict.
if you only have like 100 gold and slots it's probably worth buying a control ward as a support leaving base since the opurtunity cost is pretty low, you will almost certainly find a pretty decent place or time to use it in the next 10 minutes, worst case you sell it and lose 30 gold (or place it badly i guess)
@@bobdole6768 You need to understand the distinction between buying control wards and overbuying them. I constantly see this arguement of "if you have the gold you may aswell" but that isnt what the point is about. How many times have you placed a control ward badly such that you either need to place a new one or got no value out of it, its not about buying 1 control ward, its about buying 4 when you couldve been just as effective with just 1 over the same period.
I really appreciate how he makes connections and breaks down issues into more solvable equations
1:40 LS is on another level with the perspectives
I really wanna believe Phreak has good intentions but some of his remarks when it comes to LS really just feels like shit-stirring... And idk in this case, I think it's really hard to tell if its sarcastic or not.
i think he does it cause its needed in the community - conflict, drama
tbf Phreaks whole personality is shit stirring, its not just towards LS
@@ocicjwnwldc haha making people argue to the point of fruitless depression entertaining
I feel he's trying really hard to stay relevant or stand out it's really embarrassing sometimes and it's annoying when he does it as the game is happening and won't stop trying to claim he's right never moving on from the point.
I've heard Phreak talk over the years. He has a huge ego. He's not an intelligent mastermind doing this for the community. He just can't admit he's wrong.
Absolutely important point about vision in the video. The concept of vision is primitive in LoL and something far far more understood on a fundamental level. I could even argue Sun Tzu had a better understand of vision in League of Legends 2000 years ago xd
God damn this was good, so good att putting thought into words and really made it so easy to understand. Like sometimes I have thought on things that are very similiar to LS viewpoints but I can never verbalize all of it and he just does it perfectly!
Phreak literally left his brain 2015 and it hasn't progressed since.
This is the result of when you repeat a phrase "tons of damage"
@@Asp_2000 lmfao
That ward on dragon early from raka is an NA soloq special especially in Plat and below. We fear the mid roam or expect our team to be blind as fuck
Heimer jg can solo it on spawn
I don't always agree with all of LS takes but I completely agree pros over buy control wards
Ur probably silver
Absolutely, and you don't have to agree with all of his takes, what LS brings to the table is a shift in perspective, using established concepts of game knowledge from multiple different backgrounds of games. The takes can absolutely be wrong, but the basis of how that conclusion was made tends to be quite thought out. He asks very relevant questions that aren't asked in the League scene, and the community truly needs a voice like that.
when ls pulled up the naroditsky clip i thought i reached the end and autoplayed while alt tabbed
LS aka Loathe Seeing is a league analyst, former coach btw, who is known for wanting pro players to not buy control wards and keep the map as dark as his room
I wish I could talk to LS about this stuff on his stream id be so happy to legitimately go in depth with him to pick up as much as possible
Heavily agree with LS's theory here.
Personally though, would want to factor in player psychology into this discussion as well, particularly when talking about space / vision.
For example from a chess perspective, I remember going up against an opponent I considered far more skillful than myself. Knowing that in a simplified game state, he would outplay me, I deliberately aimed for a cramped, 'messy' position which I knew would make my opponent uncomfortable, and increase the pressure on him. Realistically, I had no expectations placed on me, whereas my opponent did. In that game, I was lucky and he folded, making a couple of blunders that I was able to exploit and win the game. In no way was this tactic I used going to guarantee me the win though, however it gave me an 'edge' whereas instead of a 20% chance at winning, I might have raised my chances to 30% or 40%.
You can extrapolate this within League and use this as part of talking points around draft/vision etc. I consider some of Huhi's ward placements largely indefensible and good examples of 'lazy' vision, but I do feel that the psychological / mental aspects of playing with / without vision do needs to be part of the conversation, albeit a difficult one since its largely intangible.
I do like these sorts of videos though, as a chess/yugioh/card player its always struck me as unfortunate that league of legends hasn't yet embraced this way of viewing the game.
did you get accused of cheating after that win too? 😁
What you are talking about in regards to the chess example is exactly what LS is talking about in this video at 19 minutes.
He has also mentioned this concept before when it comes to fighting games like Tekken. Rangchu won the World Tour with Kuma, one of the worst characters in the game because people were not familiar with it. So the opponent's S tier picks become A tier picks because they are uncomfortable vs Kuma, and Rangchu's B tier pick becomes an A tier pick because the opponent doesn't know how to counter his offense. This makes a massive difference in both his and his opponent's gameplay.
I don't think however, that this concept applies very well at all to this control ward example. The "psychological" aspect you mention is so intangible that if we took a sample size of 1000+ games, I can't imagine the net benefit of the psychological aspect of vision ever overcoming the 500+ gold worth of stats that is wasted on vision every game. Let's say for the sake of hypothesising that this purely psychological benefit you receive from vision brings huhi's gameplay from a B to a B+ tier (already a very generous hypothesis) using that previous fighting game example. It actually does nothing to lower Vulcan's A tier gameplay, so it only affects one variable of the equation and very minimally.
So I don't think this psychological boost you mention can really be used as a justification for overbuying wards
ls i feel your pain, experienced very similar issues in other communities and its always miserable to have a conversation when everyone is either acting in bad faith, or refuses to accept the thought process required to have an actual logical conversation. Have unironically heard arguments like "X didn't work before, so we won't try it again" and when confronted about why X doesn't work there's never any coherent answer. keep up the good fight if you can.
Nah man I played tekken once and the mishimas (hardest characters) are bad cause i dont know how to play the game
Nah man I played Dota and Shadow Blade is the best item because it gives you invisibility (when you could literally buy another item that gives you SPELL IMMUNITY INSTEAD) because it worked againsts noobs
Nah man melee in terrarria is the worst class cause you have no range (becomes the best lategame)
Nah man Gwen is bad cause she had a 39% winrate on release (she eventually rose to be above 50% winrate while having an above average pickrate)
@@goatnoodles9162 Melee in terraria at endgame becomes ranged though, not really a great example.
@@TheLordTyphoon yeah but it's bad ranged while ranged is actually good ranged
Love the in depth and nuanced discussion but it feels silly to have to justify that one mythic isn't always the best depending on the matchup, I build Moonstone more often but pick up Shurelya's if my team needs to haul ass to have a positive outcome, but if they can stick or disengage themselves just fine what's the point of MS instead of a healing steroid?
In addition, I don’t really recall LS mentioning that MS has depreciating value. League slows down the impact of MS the more you get at some point. And with Zeri/Trundle, you’re simply not getting much more movement speed. Not like moonstone needs any more justification to build here.
Lathyrus #1 bard world doesn’t buy pinks and I completely agree lol. Doesn’t accomplish anything in lane and lower elo it’s really pointless as you just put yourself behind for your team to not even use map
Loool LS: pros overbuy ward.
You: that's why I never buy them huhuhu
Denying vision and brush control accomplish nothing in lane (that's sarcasm) . You're a fucking joke if you think never buying ward is the solution.
Coming from C9 100T game and this aged like fine wine. Huhi never getting mythic.
For some reason i always how much knowledge ls has for league.. he can always have a valid point for everything he says. And the reasoning behind his points to bavk it up
Soraka has already the fastest and longest ms buff in the game with her passive especially in teamfights. Phreak is one of the dumbest personality in league so this is not a shocker.
BuT iTs GoOd ThOuGh??
Look Phreak does a lot of good in the scene (LS has said his patch rundowns are the best way to get a better understanding on how numbers changes affect the champions) but he has some real dumbass moments
"He JuSt SeNsEs It"
@@CaprielleHarmony He should just stick to what he does best. Idk at what point he started to have these weird cookie-cutter takes
“Phreak is one of the dumbest *personalities* in league”
Don’t get too worked up.
The whole point of shurelyas is a MS buff to more then just the champion it’s on, so why would Soraka having a solid MS buff in one direction have much to do with the utility of an item that boosts more people than just her?
@@vhufeosqap Exactly, statistically this is soraka's best mythic against Sivir, and Gangplank as well. LS's argument is only in principle, and lacks perspective.
@@bsp3971 youre the one talking about statistics
I literally learned this concept when I started learning and playing 2nd role support back in Season 5 after getting bullied by Jungle and Support duos in Solo Q in Season 4.
I figured out on my fckin own that hey. Me placing wards that get cleared by the enemy jungler immdeiately equals bad ward.
If I already know the jungler was there just spam ping back my dog adc.
Since you know jungler tracking was already required skill back then as both high elo jungler and support if you didnt want to get curb stomped by Chinese Rengar 445 or Master Yi Taric elo boost boat OR Pro player and his boys Flex Quene gonna rail you and your pepega team.
I really dont know how game knowledge and required skills back then disappeared.
Even NA had these concepts especially when lane swaps were still a thing. Really ridiculous people dont wanna think even remotely critically about League except for the Koreans and Chinese Pros.
And even they....
I really want this guy to talk fighting games.
lmao love seeing naro on here, dude’s such a well spoken guy.
yeah but did LS consider that going fast = fun? didn't think so
seriously tho shoutout to LS to bringing this style of thinking to the league community - even if people don't inherently agree with his takes the way he generalises league terms into more practical game-agnostic ideas is something that you don't really see and it's rlly cool imo
F for PainBringer
I mean I thinks similar thinking can be applied all over League of Legends. like League players in general have a very one tracked mind of "this is the way you play", there is a set of things you do and that's just what you do. Vision = good is an example of that, when in reality it's much more nuanced. Equally I've seen Virkayu pointing out that tower damage is actually one of the most important metrics in the game, as in reality the game is won by destroying the enemies nexus, not killing their players.
Like how LS mentions that vision is only useful if you can actually gain information from it that allows you to make players, Virkayu points out that kills are only really useful if you can convert them into objectives. The gold is nice and all but half the time they gold you lost by not farming and instead fighting makes up most of the difference with the gold gained from the kill.
i can see the value of ms (skill shots from ahri, GP and maybe poppy ulti) has if u dont get hit by a GP barrel and charm from ahri not be hit by poppy ulti its going to be bigger then the healing for moon
but i think the healing is just better has u can still side step all of them with only the first GP barrel can be made a hit (if they have fog and are there first and gets face checked)
(at the start of the video i hated the speed but has i got longer into the video (about 12 min i started trying to think of ms with skill shots) i liked it but not more then healing but can see the speed argument has think if the team is used to this being the buy then maybe the speed is good just not better then healing)
dude... steady heartbeat never fails... that shit makes you nervous... just watching it you know...
Why do they need shurelyas? Moonstone value is so high here
Ls watches danya, respect
Good video
LS doing more than 100T coaches for free
Ok so I ain't a proplayer or anything but I think that a champion who'se whole shtick is healing maybe would like the empowered healing mythic more
The problem comes outside of league of legends.
When you have experience with a vision/guessing system of any other game you can preetty much understand that vision is useless in league just because of micro-information that gets fed to you constantly.
What do i mean.
I play World of Tanks on a competitive lvl and i am very good at the game. That game is all about vision and exploiting it.
You constantly see enemy tanks spotted for one second and the unspotted on the map just like league has on the corner.
Basically vision is a guessing game, and a game of patterns. When you have such a high lvl game people take only certain paths and do certain things so it is not impossible to guess everything. Where a player is at any given moment with very little information because the likeliness of them doing something outside of the given paths is very very small.
So how do you use active vision in league.
Vision is usually put in situations of if`s and it only should be used on situations that will have a short active result.
For example Warding Baron with a pink the moment it spaws and then holding another pink ward in your inv is useless because one of the 2 will go to waste nonetheless.
If you ward baron so early you will need to use another pink at some point. And the pink at baron so early offers nothing.
Basically what i am trying to say here is use active vision when it has the most high chance of giving you something back.
For example warding chickens at the start of the game to see the jg path. Warding the bush next to dragon before the 1st dragon spaws and the 2 skudles die. That way you will absolutely get info back.
And a last argument can be made that with so many recalls happening before important objectives you can just buy 1 pink that you need before that objective comes online.
Texas hold em poker is really only a strategic game because of the psychological part of it. Players get a lot of advantage by studying the other players and getting in their head. LS says he’s more interested in the Siver and Zeri aspect instead of the tactical vs berserker aspect but I feel like removing the personality aspect completely and looking instead at what is humanly possible could leave a gap where advantages could be attained. I’m gold in league though so idk im just good at Texas Holdem so maybe it’s not a perfect 1 to 1 match
I think the reason for looking at the Sivir/Zeri aspect over the individual players aspect is because it holds elements we can actually control and find consistency in, because the champions are only capable of so much, the decisions the players make usually pertain to the champion they are piloting and what is physically possible for the champion to achieve.
Once that is fully established, then you can look at it from a psychology perspective, but in a game with as much readily available information as League, that very often doesn't come to light. Because we should know how champions interact, and we should be able to use vision (or lack thereof) to execute deductive reasoning in order to come to conclusions (which usually leave minimal options as to what can happen or where a certain champion can be.)
I love the knowledge you share, but unfortunately I'm already on the same page. Hope people that need to hear this are hearing it.
I really only buy shurelyahs if my team desperately needs to not get kited
@LS Great content idea 💡: have an argument with yourself representing both sides of the coin. Just flip the cámara 📸😂
I think that pro players refuse to buy moonstone because its effects are less visable than shurelias, with which you get to push the go button and you see and feel the immediate effect, also your teammates most likely see it as more impactful.
But shurelyas is OP because LoL lategame is all about picks. You wait for one guy to int in enemy team and run at him. Lategame is literally only about that even for pros. Thats why shurelyas is great.
But ... but my vision score
only reason to go shurely is if the adc is scripting since the movespeed imediatly translates into more autoattacks & easier dodging due to the fact that my adc is basically a robot playing pixel perfect
LS: I'm not going to reply
Also LS: Goes on rant about why Shurelya's isn't good there...
I love this guy XD
Phreak autopilot comment just to bait LS to get a reaction out of him. I'm glad LS didnt stoop down to his level of discussion phreak wanted him go
Control Wards are a conspiracy by Big Shopkeeper to deceive innocent champions into paying 75g for the exact same ability as Oracle Lens gives for free plus the ability support item also gives for free.
the reason huhi placed the ward at 7:00 is probably that lulu is about to destroy the pinkward he placed before i think
Soooooooo, basically Huhi sucks?
Why is he talking about casting R? Shrellia has nothing to do with R
Is this information easy to comprehend I would say yes and no. Yes because the concepts and theories aren’t hard to understand but also, No because most peoples attention span was lost after the phreak tweet came up. Even though I think Phreak and LS would have better conversations over the game than a majority of people.
Imagine if information like this was on the front page of the league client rather than making me watch some music video..
Hot Take, Should've built Imperial Mandate. :)
This would be a good produced video. Use analogies from chess or poker if you want to make the point, but be concise and it would be a point well worth making. Stream of consciousness during a livestream just muddles it since he hasn't really thought through how to convey a (what I consider) simple concept clearly.
I mean Huhi having S4 Mata's level of vision control if you all know what I mean
Agreege
phreak only cares about win rates and numbers without understanding the context lol so dont put too much attention on what he says
'We are not robots, we are not machines'
Imo there lies LS conundrum with the way some players/teams build items. In solo q I am often the one who buys 2 pinks and purposely delay my mythic, because my teammates either don't participate in vision game or only ward their own lanes ignoring soon spawning objectives.
What I do is technically a mistake, but it alleviates the vision mistakes my team makes around objectives. It is a bad answer to a silly problem, but it is one for that given moment.
Maybe, pro players see Shurelya in a similar way. They know their team should be able to position, play and react the way LS envisions them to, but because they FEEL better with the spur of movement speed Shurelya potentially gives them in one clutch moment, a team like 100Thieves is willing to abandon the, albeit superior, but less positional clutch, moonstone healing.
Ooooooh I really like your point. That's a strong analogy there
Always build Warmogs first on Soraka.
I mean, can someone tell me how the fck Soraka procs Moonstone against this comp? Is LS delusional or is he blind and can't read the item? Shurelya is better on Soraka in this game for example. To be honest, anything is better than Moonstone here; Redemption, Staff of Flowing Water, Mikael's...
Is he suggesting another mythic or is he suggesting something else before Shurelya? Because i don't get how is Moonstone better here? I'm genuinely curious, because i think there's no way to proc Moonstone consistently in this game.
But moonstone is the most op item in the whole game why does not one want to buy this item its so insane I have no idea why people don't get this and even if you are vs brust dmg shield support are still better with moonstone and there are just better than that shit item
(OK venting over sorry)
Gotta love seeing my sup go shurelya and then wonder why the fk we can’t win a single 2v2 or a team fight
Just take him back as coach, would make the game a lot more fun
its going back to the whole... why you bully me?
omg... some people cant even operate a day of not doing anything with certain parents... its crazy...
LS, you should watch some CBLOL.
Zzzzzzzzzz
Love the content!... But the Green/Orange/Red number on the left side is super distracting to me and I think it is not relevant for the viewer.
The league community is honestly just so braindead. When you look at the innovation in a game like Dota, the willingness of teams to play crazy things or actually innovate. Then you compare it to league... Like teams arn't even willing to play AP carries bottom this season. It's so snooze.
He is wrong about Moonstone being "guaranteed HP" it takes 5 seconds to start being effective.
I think Shurelya's was correct here because what is the worst thing that could happen to Soraka? Gets caught and dies quick. Soraka can win team fights for her team by healing up carries (she doesn't need moonstone to do this) but she can also win just by surviving an enemy dive while her team fucks up enemy carries. Shurelya's active + Raka Ult is so much guaranteed team fight presence even in the middle of an enemy dive.
Moonstone is win more. If the fight goes 20 seconds Soraka wins anyways. If it goes 5 seconds Soraka now can contend with the sheer value of Lulu shield+polymorph+ult.
It it some immediate healing. The 20% bonus takes 5 seconds to stack but the passive on moonstone gives a flat heal that scales with level instead. I think its like 60 at early level. I agree that the shurelyas is more guaranteed value and can help survive dive so if huhi thinks he needs it to live and press R then sure.
@@GamingGod2000 It's not scaling with levels, it's scaling with legendary items
Or you could also not waste 500 gold on control ward and buy a stopwatch or get the perfect timing rune and win the game
I think the argument of "It's better because it's a crutch" is just a bad argument especially when you're talking about pro players rather than low elo players.
Yeap, Shurelya's is actually correct here, a lot of other pro players and analysts have already pointed out it's so easy to pick Soraka off and Moonstone is really just trolling when enemy team does have decent backline access.
"Soraka can win team fights for her team by healing up carries (she doesn't need moonstone to do this)"
Exactly. Rank 5 W Soraka is already a walking fountain that full heals her targets very easily.
One thing that people don't think about how Shurelya contributes to Soraka's healing output is Q casts. Moonstone does very little for Soraka's personal survivability aside from max stack healing power buffing her personal Q regen and R healing, but it's so negligible and you will just die anyway. Shurelya on the other hand allows Soraka to position more aggressively for better Q, W and E casts across the board, which is more practical eHP than Moonstone.
you probably dont gas out like other people do...
im sorry for being dissapointed at you even though your double ganger was wayyyy taller than you... im sorry... i know its you... my little wubby dubby...
Well, I think it's easier to criticize when you're watching on a screen than actually playing as them in front of thousands of people. If you played pro, do you think you wouldn't be nervous? they're in game 5 i think the nerves are on edge
That would make sense, but happened the very next day on the C9 series...
I completely disagree with his logic here. Movement Speed is by far and away the strongest stat in the game and he severely downplayed Phreak's point on this one.
It's like you missed the point of the movement speed. You use it to dodge skill shots or avoid damage, it's giving you effective HP. But you know what moonstone does? Give HP, and steroid your own abilities as Soraka. The movement speed of the Rogue comp is already naturally higher than the Fnatic comp, why do they need more?
"movement speed is by far and away the strongest stat in the game" x to doubt
Attack Range most important league stat, but either way you're saying that some hypothetical value from the movement speed is more important than the guaranteed value from Moonstone healing. While it's possible for that argument to be correct, it would be an intensely difficult argument to make, and it's definitely a tradeoff that wasn't a good call in the game in question.
@@brucewayne1025 attack range is definitely more important of a stat but move speed can also translate to effective range. example when caits MS got buffed a long time ago in 10.15 and they had to nerf it back down in 10.17 because she was able to space better with her already long range. also thresh ms nerfs for getting into flay position etc. both have their value and can both be insanely strong in their own right
Haha speed up the Azir who isn't moving.
The Zeri who has so much movement speed, Shurelyas becomes less efficient.
Yeah Shurelyas is useful. Surely it is LMAO
@@renecardona4806 rogue? Fnatic?