Playing reactively

ELO Boost Series:Playing reactively

Playing reactively. You’ve probably heard some pro players say this many times, but what does it really mean?

Playing reactively means you base your play off of how your opponent plays. Your play should not be stagnant from game to game, but rather different based on what your opponent does.

Examples:

Toplane: if your lane opponent goes back/mid/dragon, you can either follow them or shove your lane to their turret and pressure it.

Midlane: if your opponent roams, you can either push to their turret or follow them. Generally, if your lane opponent is roaming, then you’re probably getting outpushed to your turret and thus losing map pressure.

Botlane: I’ll quote Doublelift on this one:

“You guys have really weak fundamentals. It’s actually the exact opposite, Kog beats Corki in lane and throughout the game (obviously depending on the support too). You go in for a CS and you eat an auto + Phos. If you do it again, you lose the lane. That’s not worth 2 CS

Your response to me going so aggressive on you should never be to lasthit, that’s how you lose lane. If I move forward I’ll eventually have to move back. When I pull back, Kog presses W and starts hitting me. Because he’s got so much higher range, I have to actually move back just to trade with you, which puts me already 1 auto behind the trade. You can get a free auto or read the situation and see if you can win an all-in. Every time I try to push, I’m attacking a creep. You can be attacking me every single time I attack a creep because my auto is essentially on CD.

Basically, if the enemy goes for a CS and you’re going for a CS, then fuck your shitty 20 gold lasthit, you can play Corki or Graves and get an auto + Q for 200 damage. The next time they go in for a CS, you can get another auto + Q for 200 damage. What happens after a certain number of times is the opposing AD can no longer CS. So you invest a loss of a few CS early to completely zone and beat your opponent later in the lane.

This is super basic, but what happens when your opponent also knows not to go for a CS if they can be chunked, or even to hit you with an auto + Q when you’re the one CSing? The lane gets more tricky, you have to play off of what you predict the enemy AD will do based on how they reacted to your aggression earlier.”

Jungle: Based on the enemy jungler’s position, you can countergank, steal buffs, or gank another lane and push.