Tom's Notes: Mechanical Teamplay
WTF I THOUGH MECHANICS WERE ABOUT INDIVIDUAL EXECUTION WHAT COULD POSSIBLY BE "MECHANICAL" ABOUT PLAYING AS A TEAM? OH, YOU WANT US TO BE ROBOTS? I BET YOU WANT US TO BE ROBOTS DON'T YOU? WELL FUCK YOU AND YOUR SYSTEM, I WILL RAGE AGAINST THE MACHINE.
The idea of mechanical play is a lot simpler than it sounds (also a lot less poetic and pop-culture-pun-filled). It is communicating and moving in a coordinated manner that allows a team to take or threaten to take objectives. This definition is extremely broad, and I would group different aspects of mechanical team play into three categories: observation, preparation and action.
This is the easy one. Sometimes two eyes are better than one, and observing exemplifies this concept. If you see something significant that impacts your ability or the team's ability to take an objective, you should call it immediately.
Things that people should tell everyone on the team:
A ward has been placed* (where and when)
The enemy is missing* (where is he going, what should be done)
A buff has been taken (timer and who got it)
A major cooldown has been blown* (summoner or ultimate)
An enemy is out of position (where is he and how do we counter)
A tower is threatened (which tower, is it savable)
Observations with * are particularly important during the early game where allies are constantly interacting with enemies on an individual level (laning) and knowing this information could tip the scale (likelihood of a successful gank, whether or not Kyle feeds jungle udyr).
While map awareness is an important individual skill (that I believe EVERYONE SHOULD GET GOOD AT IF THEY WANT TO IMPROVE), we must realize that league of legends, like most real time strategy games (no it isn'-yes it is. It is very much a strategy game at its core), is a game of limited information. Nobody can see everything, especially when there are other important things to focus on (you know, the enemy in your lane?). Every little bit of information you can contribute will increase the team's chances of victory. I do have to say that supports and junglers have a greater responsibility to take notes of these things during the laning phase, but that does not mean that the solos or the marksman is free from such responsibilities (pls tell me where wards are before I gank PLEASE).
Before we move on to our next point, a few important numbers to remember:
Explorer wards are 1 minute (you can click on a ward before it goes into stealth to check if it's an explorer)
Sight wards(green) and vision wards (pink) last 3 minutes.
Ghost wards last 3 minutes, but will disappear if enemy wards
Blue and red buff take 5 minutes to respawn. Note that the young lizards must be cleared for the timer to reset. You can use this to estimate the timer if an enemy takes their blue buff from out of vision (minus travel time of 5-10 seconds, +5 minutes from current time).
Dragon spawns at 2:30 and takes 6 minutes to respawn upon death. You may estimate dragon timer using a similar method to the red and blue buff timer if dragon is taken from out of vision (but it should be fairly obvious, at least force them to kill a ward first).
Baron spawns at 15:00 and takes 7 minutes to respawn upon death. You may estimate the baron timer using a similar method to the red and blue buff timer if baron is taken from out of vision (IT SHOULD BE PAINFULLY OBVIOUS WHEN THE ENEMY TEAM IS DOING BARON).
Flash+ cooldown is 300 seconds base, 285 seconds with the summoner's insight mastery, 270 seconds with 3 points in the mastermind mastery, 255 seconds with both. At most, flash can have a 188 second cooldown (those two+distortion boots). This means that you have AT LEAST 3 MINUTES to make a play on a man that drops his flash.
Like flash, teleport+ has a cooldown of 300 seconds. With the mastermind mastery, teleport's cooldown becomes 270 seconds. With distortion boots and the mastery, teleport's cooldown becomes 203 seconds. If teleport is canceled, the cooldown is 180 seconds. When an enemy casts teleport, there is a 4 second window to cancel his teleport (3.5 if he takes summoner's insight). This means that THE THREAT OF TELEPORT IS GONE FOR AT LEAST 3 MINUTES after it has been casted (canceled or otherwise).
Ghost+ has a cooldown of 210 seconds. Nobody cares about this spell, but if you take all the masteries+distortion boots you hit 142 seconds. This means you have at least 2 minutes to make a play on a guy who takes ghost.
I would suggest looking up the cooldowns of REAL ultimates (ignore transforms, ammo-gated spells, mana-gated low cooldown spells) and "combat" summoner spells (ignite, barrier,heal,cleanse). For all intents and purposes, if these spells are down, you can probably expect them to be down for at least 1 minute, but no guarantees beyond 100 seconds (rune and mastery setups are not always predictable).
+Displacement summoner spells are a real threat to both you and your team and are probably the most underrated abilities to the uneducated masses of league players. An enemy's flash is one less guy escaping with 10 hp, one less initiator diving your squishies, one less baron steal after the blood, sweat and tears it took to break down that monstrosity. Ghost and teleport are slightly less threatening that flash (jumping walls op), but can be equally or even more potent in most situations.
PS. You can take your own cooldowns as well if you feel that it is necessary (mostly summoner spells, everyone knows when your ultimate is up :3).
This is a throwback to our discussion of objectives and how to take objectives. Using the information you learn from "observing" the enemy as well as your own cooldowns and positioning, you may be able to lightly snowball this knowledge into a tangible advantage. In the early-mid game where time is of the essence, simply communicating 30 seconds beforehand that you are going to gank a lane will give the laner an appropriate amount of time to evaluate the enemy's positioning, ward positions and lane state in order to make appropriate movements to optimize the gank (kill slightly more minions while allowing the lane to push up, standing further forward to appear vulnerable,etc.). While this is commonly used to set up kills, preparation is very important when coordinating tower pushes and dragons (a fight with 5 level 2 ultimates is very different from a fight with 2 level 2 ultimates). We have been practicing this the most, using a solid framework to band-aid our communication issues, so I will not go too deeply into this (see coordinated buff steals).
Very simple in theory. Very difficult in practice. Often this job lies on one person, but so long as everyone is on the same page, anyone can do it. Mechanically, action is essentially calling what objective to take, what battles to initiate and what threats to focus. In the heat of the moment, everyone has a different view of the game state. Consider this scenario:
At the 30 minute mark, game is 15-20, your team has taken the past 4 dragons, but your entire outer turret layer is gone. A lucky pick by your team forces the enemy support and jungler to base, nearly dead. You have just taken the enemy's outer middle turret, your first of the game but barely have any minions to siege the inner for another 30 seconds. The dragon is currently down, your top inner turret is at half health and is under threat from a large minion wave, and the bottom lane is pushing slightly in your favor on the enemy's full hp outer turret. Baron is warded and ripe for the taking, but you know there might be an enemy ward around there somewhere so they might know if you attempt it. For all intents and purposes, your team is both equal power and equal skill with your enemy. After you take the turret, do you:
Go bottom and take the easy outer turret. With the minion wave you could easily crash down and get the easy 750 global gold to pad the mid outer turret money. You do not know if the enemy jungle is warded and they may quickly threaten a counter baron or counter turret afterwards.
Continue to press middle lane and attempt to take an inner turret. This would give you the most map control, but with the enemy jungle and support returning soon, you may face strong opposition.
Take baron. This risky baron will give you the power spike you need to gain the upper hand and push for the victory. You can take it fairly fast and with the enemy jungler in base, there is little chance of a smite steal. Unfortunately their solos and marksman are all near full health/mana and can definitely put up a fight with the additional damage from baron.
Send a couple people top to save the turret while the rest of the team clears wolves/wraiths and goes quickly to buy. This is the safest of the four options. It guarantees that the enemy won't get more global gold from killing your top tower (so you come out marginally ahead) and allows you to power up for the next objective. Unfortunately this will allow the enemy team to regroup as 5 again and resume the game normally.
How often do you get scenario 5? "One ally goes top lane to try to save the turret. He does not have enough damage to kill all the minions and save the turret but gets some farm. One ally goes bottom and gets the tower down to half health before the minions expire. The remaining three attempt to take mid and die in the 5v3 that follows". I can tell you that this scenario must be treated on a deeper case by case basis. I can also tell you that in every single game, there is a single optimal answer, but several "correct" alternative answers. The most important thing I can tell you is that the call you make must be executed as a team. That is the essence of decisive action.
