Poke to win
Article talks about a very important aspect of the league of legends play, POKING. Some people tend to underestimate the power of POKING, some people poke until they lose the lane. Always remember that poke comes with a price, it can be your mana or minion kills. Let us talk about this under several topics
Why I should poke
- If you poke, enough you win the fight even before it starts
- Low health opponent will be more careful and you will be in lesser risk
- More careful opponent tend to miss minion kills and your faming will be made easy
Risks of poking
- You drain your mana if you are using your abilities to poke
- You might lose health if opponent successfully counter you (this is possible when you lacking one of following auto-attack range, ability range, ability to disengage)
- You might miss minion kills while you try to poke
What champions should I choose (Qualities of good poking champion)
- Do not need lot of mana or other resource (health, energy) to spam abilities
- Good auto-attack range (Caitlyn, Kog’Maw)
- Good ability range (Ashe, Caitlyn, Nidalee)
- Good ability to disengage (Ezreal, Lux)
How to poke
You have to remember several things in poking.
- First, if you are a ranged champion and you are up against a melee champion normal level of poking is not enough, you have to damage him as much as possible. Once he gets to you, he will burst high damage that you do not have a chance.
- Make sure you ward, some people let you poke to be bait. You have to keep eye on their jungler.
- If you cannot force a kill or early revive, there is no point in poking.
- Make sure you trade more damage in every engage. If you cannot do this, do not try it repeatedly.
How to counter poke
Sometimes it is easy to counter poke than poke
- Pick a support with a heal (poking will not have any value after that, e.g. Soraka, Tariq)
- Pick several health pots (Crystalline Flask will be a good choice)
- If you can hold till your normal revive point, you are doing well
- Be the bait; ask help from jungler to get the kill
- Try to dodge abilities and get items that will help in dodging (e.g. Banshee’s Veil)
Conclusion
No matter what you do always remember the final goal (it is to kill the nexus, not players). You need to build yourself to archive that goal and you need gold for it. We do all things (kills, minion kills, dragon, and baron) to get more gold for the team than opponent team. If our actions do not result in more gold most of the time, it is useless.