First Pick Phase:
WBG: Rakan (first pick) + Xayah, Corki
V5: Ezreal + Leona (first two picks) + Azir
Second Ban Phase: Gnar, Trundle, Xin Zhao, Jarvan IV
With their fourth pick, V5 locked in Poppy.
Hong Mi naturally knew Sofm had assassin junglers in his champion pool, Talon among them. But he was in no hurry, because Poppy perfectly solved the enemy's engage problem. Rakan charging in alone would accomplish nothing.
WBG began to struggle. With Trundle already banned, they brought out a final Viego + Sion combination.
"Here it comes!"
The instant the enemy's final two picks were locked in, the V5 members felt reassured.
From a team fight perspective, the enemy composition was indeed solid. But there was something to understand about competitive games: a solid composition could only raise your floor for winning. If the composition itself did not suit the team's playstyle, though, it would instead lower the ceiling.
And V5 had secured their current favorite composition.
With the final pick, Jayce was locked in!
Jayce, Azir, Ezreal—three POKE damage dealers. This noble lineup would once again descend upon the LPL battlefield today.
And with that—
WBG: Top Sion, Jungle Viego, Mid Corki, Bot Xayah Rakan
V5: Top Jayce, Jungle Poppy, Mid Azir, Bot Ezreal + Leona
"This game, we'll aim to take them down in the mid game and end it quickly." After adjusting the draft, Hong Mi put away his notebook and seriously instructed his players.
"Especially you, Xiao Zhen. Their jungler will practically live top this game, and the support will roam too. So your responsibility remains the same as before: stay alive."
In a triple-POKE composition, any one gun falling silent would leave a gap in their mid-game damage. Karsa's radar could reliably protect two lanes, but it could not protect teammates in all three lanes at once.
Luo Zhen still had to pay the price for that.
"Got it, Coach. When it comes to playing scared, I'm a professional." Luo Zhen was not under much pressure. He smiled, since every AD player was familiar with Ezreal. Everyone was basically a One-trick Ace with him, right?
"Thanks for the effort."
Once all the instructions had been given, Hong Mi ruffled the players' hair before leaving the stage. "Remember, whenever you make a choice, think clearly about what you're fighting for this game!"
"For good soup!"
"For stronger erections!"
"For kidney supplements!"
"For the greater good!"
"Charge, brothers!"
The match began.
Right from the start, V5 gathered their top, mid, jungle, and support to invade the enemy Bottom Jungle and ward it. One ward went at F6. They feinted toward the Red Buff, but also placed another ward in the brush above the Dragon pit. Combined with the mid laner's river vision after level three, those two wards could basically lock down Sofm's early jungle route.
The reason for warding like that was simple: WBG's early Top Mid Jungle was too weak.
Corki could not outpush Azir early, and Sion could not beat a ranged opponent early. With both mid and top under pressure, Viego had no way to deal with Poppy. His only farming route was to start in the Upper Jungle and then clear downward toward bot.
But V5's bot lane was Ezreal + Leona. They were not afraid of your GANKs at all.
So from the very start of this game, Sofm was practically forced into a predictable jungle path.
The early laning was fairly simple. The Xayah Rakan duo had terrifying engage potential, but that was mainly after level 6. If Rakan casually went in with W before level 6, Leona could hit him with any crowd control and take more than half his health in moments.
Casual players always misunderstood Ezreal.
They thought he was just Scum, useless except for hiding behind minions and teammates to throw Qs.
But for top players, Ezreal was a rare early-game powerhouse among AD carries. With full passive stacks, Ezreal could even potentially fight two opponents by himself in bot lane.
He was like Nezha from One Hundred Thousand Bad Jokes.
Looking only at his head, you might think he was some easy-to-bully little girl. But if you actually dared to Auto Attack him, that muscle-bound Barbie would teach you what cruelty meant.
Chapter 22: From Childhood to Adulthood
There was not much to explain about playing Ezreal in bot lane.
As long as you played the AD position in League of Legends, every Player would eventually become an Ezreal addict. The only thing to watch out for was stacking your passive during the Laning Phase to maintain combat power. Once his attack speed came up, his AQA was indeed strong. But if minions clustered up and blocked your Q, while your Auto Attacks had not stacked enough attack speed, then he really was weak.
As for why you had to stack passive—
It was like asking whether you feared violence.
If you had no ability to resist, then of course you would fear any violence. But if you could fight back—say, eight-pack abs while you were a student and a law degree after graduation—then the people afraid of violence would change from you to everyone else.
It came down to one sentence: these days, if you tried reasoning with the enemy, they would play rough with you. But if you played hardball with them, they would immediately start reasoning with you. That was how you dealt with them!
Early on, Luo Zhen had 550 range against the enemy's 525. So during the first two levels, he immediately began pressuring them in bot lane.
He last hit while occasionally stacking his attack speed.
That prevented his side from rushing level two quickly, but once they reached level two, if Leona landed Zenith Blade, he could immediately E in and start dealing Face-to-Face damage. WBG also understood the enemy bot lane's strong timing. After successfully reaching level two first, they did not try anything fancy, simply maintaining a relatively safe Damage Position.
Seeing that, Luo Zhen immediately found things rather boring.
And not just him. The broadcast director also shifted the camera elsewhere because the enemy had no intention of fighting.
There was a good line in The King's Avatar: how many viewers could understand your high-end tactics? How many could grasp the technical depth of your intricate coordination? What players liked to watch was someone taking on three opponents in the arena, or turning the tide in a team battle.
As for those tiny thoughts and little Mind Games during the Laning Phase—
Really, unless someone was watching from first-person view to learn mechanics, hardly anyone paid attention.
With bot lane temporarily unable to fight, top naturally became the center of everyone's attention, because it was 369 against TheShy.
Sion versus Jayce meant trading HP for Lane Control early. Even if Jayce's base Attack Damage had been nerfed to 58, the rule of ranged versus melee had not changed. 369's goal this game was clear: pressure without thinking.
Karsa had already made it clear that he would camp top this game, and Rookie was also confident that he could roam faster than Angel. Back near his peak, Xiu Nan had once beaten 369 so badly that he shut himself away and went to see a doctor. Now, had the chance for revenge not arrived?
What was there to think about?
Just Fucking go for it!
Top applied pressure, mid applied pressure, and the jungler directly invaded to find Viego's location. WBG's early-game pressure naturally shifted to bot lane.
Judging by the compositions, the Offensive Pressure was on V5's side.
But based on the tempo of these first few minutes, if Huan Feng and ON wanted to help their teammates, there was only one way: create action in bot lane and force the enemy bot lane to call their jungler back to defend.
However, Huan Feng was having trouble making anything happen.
Xayah was an AD carry with strong self-protection. In the future, when Lethality Builds became popular, she might also become an AD carry with strong Laning Ability. But right now, in this version where traditional builds still dominated, expecting a pre-level-three Xayah to put immense pressure on Ezreal was impossible unless the enemy Ezreal had lost his mind.
Of course, there was another possibility: the person controlling Xayah could enter Burst State.
On the Pro Scene, there had been cases where professional players relied on individual skill to win lane despite a counter matchup. The most famous example was probably 957's Jarvan IV against Jax. Even today, it remained a classic Mind Games matchup packed with details.
Huan Feng had wanted to try that at first. In the second game, he had already entered Burst State once. Continuing that form and collapsing his opponent should not have been a problem.
But—
When the match reached game three, when the enemy picked Ezreal, he suddenly remembered an assessment of Luo Zhen from the internet.
His Non-directional Skill accuracy was absurdly high!
Yes.
Why had he suddenly remembered that?
Because he was now truly feeling it from the Laning Phase. In just a few short minutes, the enemy Ezreal had already forced out his potion using only Q skills and the occasional few Auto Attacks.
"Is this guy some FPS Game pro who switched careers?" Huan Feng could not help complaining.
Although he had Rakan as his support and could occasionally use Q on the enemy to heal him, repeatedly taking abilities like that was a massive blow to his confidence in his own movement.
"Is there a chance... that you're right?"
"???"
As a support, ON was a rookie, but his social circle was anything but small.
In fact, support was the most sociable role across all teams in the league. Whenever teams gathered together, the supports from every squad flitted among players like glamorous social butterflies, overflowing with testosterone.
And during a casual conversation, he had actually heard that the enemy AD had undergone Specialized Training for his Non-directional Skills.
He just had no idea what that training involved.
Well, because Luo Zhen would not tell anyone.
He had indeed been an FPS Game fanatic even before transmigrating. There was no need to mention the major FPS Games—he had played all the ones worth playing. But beyond those, he had played many FPS Games from childhood to adulthood, such as Dig Dug and Mirror2.
Yes, from childhood to adulthood in every sense of the phrase. That was why his aim was now so impossibly steady.
Only after spotting the enemy jungler in the Bottom Jungle through vision did Luo Zhen reluctantly give up the pressure and start backing away.
But... even that was enough.
"Alright, go roam. I'm recalling."
The next wave arriving had a Cannon Minion. Whether it was for preventing a Push Lane or for absorbing turret damage when the enemy pushed in, it would reduce a lot of unnecessary experience loss when he recalled and returned to lane. So he might as well recall.
With Ezreal, no matter what, once you had enough gold, you needed to buy Sheen first.
Same rule as always: if you had enough gold for Sheen early on, blindly buy Sheen. Only if you could not afford Sheen should you consider other items, because the damage difference was truly enormous.
And while he recalled and came back out, there was already enough time for his support to go make something happen.
People talked about supports walking their ADs like dogs.
But when an AD occasionally let the support go roam, it also felt like raising a support was like raising a traveling frog.
The instant his support left for mid lane, an incredibly familiar sensation descended upon Luo Zhen's body once more, making him involuntarily sink into it.
{It's here, this feeling.}
{A realm countless Predecessors had discussed in private.}
{When the support abandoned the AD and the AD was left alone in bot lane, forced to face the threat of two enemies by himself, a top AD would automatically trigger the body's memories, entering a special state where anti-GANK ability was maxed out.}
[Its name was—Orphan Realm!]
Chapter 23: Who Exactly Collapsed?
As an AD, besides calculating the threat posed by lane opponents, he also had to calculate the threat from the enemy jungler.
The enemy knew about this recall. Their jungler had gone top, V5's support had gone mid, the enemy jungler had invaded V5's Bottom Jungle, the enemy support had disappeared from lane, and only the enemy AD remained in bot lane, slowly pushing the wave.
That left two possibilities.
One was that Rakan had also gone mid to support, preventing his own Earthbound Spirit mid laner from getting taken out by V5's jungle and support in a pincer attack from above and below.
The other possibility was that they had come for him.
As everyone knew, most of V5's attention was currently on top lane. If WBG could neither win a 3v3 nor outpush them, they had to find another point of breakthrough. Elemental Dragon was too slow, and the bot-lane turret-taking tempo was not good enough. So did they have another way to force the enemy jungler back to defend?
Yes. Collapse your bot lane.
The moment Luo Zhen left base again, he noticed something off through the Minimap. Normally, upon seeing him missing, the enemy bot lane should Fast Push and recall, or simply leave the wave alone and recall together. But slowly pushing like this was definitely saying something.
"I think they might want to ambush me on my way back to bot." Sensing that something was wrong, he took a few steps back, bought a Control Ward at the fountain, and only then left base again.
Viego + Rakan could theoretically force out at least his Summoner Skill and E. Once all his abilities had been forced out and he was already near his own bot turret, the enemy AD could push the wave into turret range and make a three-man dive on him. At that point, he would probably be dead.
"Do you need me to come back and defend?"
PPGOD had already gone far toward top lane. He had also sensed that the enemy had discovered his roam, so he stopped pretending and simply ran top at full speed.
Diving an Old Driver in a 2v1 was difficult, but in a 3v1? Wasn't that a free kill?
"No need. It's only a feeling, but I have a way to get experience. Don't worry about me."
Since his goal this game was not to die, he naturally could not gamble on any risky move.
In that case, he would go around.
He entered the jungle and took the long route. After realizing bot lane might be dangerous, Luo Zhen directly controlled Ezreal through his own jungle toward the river, then hugged the wall as he headed downward from the river.
This time, he planned to circle directly behind the enemy minion wave and return to his turret.
Before you continue