Well, LCS kicked off with a bang for the LCS dudes with Digi on their chest (looking slick) as they took down a highly rated youth squad in the form of FlyQuest to open the LCS lock in with a win. The tale of the tape was Dardoch pressuring early for FakeGod to win lane hard and then transition set lead to the lower side of the map where Soligo popped off on Yone whilst the Dignitas bot lane cleaned up with Dardoch later on the get that clean W. But this isn’t a match review, no, this is a breakdown of some of the lessons you can take from this game and apply to your solo queue games to elevate your chances of gaining some easy LP in this just budding ranked season.

Exploiting Lane Priority as a Jungler

Now as I mentioned earlier Dardoch enabled FakeGod very well with his pathing but what I didn’t point out was what Dardoch then did while FakeGod was pushing FlyQuest’s top tier 1 turret. What Dardoch did was wait for the wave in the mid lane to bounce to a pushing state, then took FlyQuest’s red buff right in front of their jungle (he did this at the 7th minute). Sounds risky, right? Well, the truth of it was that whilst it was very aggro it wasn’t risky at all, with priority in both lanes on either side of the northern quadrant red buff Dardoch puts FlyQuest in the lose-lose situation of either give up the red-buff for free or contest it and then lose the fight to a number’s disparity. The lesson here is that using layers priority to contest enemy camps (provided you communicate that’s your objective [use those pings and chat]) is a tool that can set you up for easy victories and should be in your jungler arsenal.

Understanding How to Set Up a TP Play

I stick with the top side of the map for this point, but the location of the play is in bot here as FakeGod executed the art of setting and executing a Teleport to a fight with minimal loss play. This happened at around the 10-minute mark as with both junglers in bot a fight was definitely coming so FakeGod uses the lead he has to shove in the falls back to behind the mid-point of the lane before teleporting to fight that has just commenced in the bot lane, the fact he pushed in meant that the opposing top laner has to give up a lot of gold to match and the fact that he falls back to channel the TP makes it very hard to stop (so much so that when FlyQuest’s top laner attempted to cancel the TP he ended up wasting his Ornn Ultimate).

With the TP unanswered for some time Dig cleaned the fight. The lesson here is understanding that just blindly teleporting to fight isn’t enough but understanding when the fight is going to happen and setting up for it will give you maximum gain and getting maximum gain from your plays is going to net you more LP as you win more games.

Banning Out Your Biggest Counter

Now, this is the point that will seem like the most common sense to you but the thing about common sense is it's not its namesake and isn’t as common as you might think. Anyway, for this point credit must be given to the draft team for the LCS team as not only did they pick to set up a comfort pick in mid for Soligo with Yone, but their second phase bans took out the biggest punish in the form of Syndra leaving Soligo in a position to succeed as FlyQuest would take the next safe blind pick in Orianna which Soligo could play around much easier than the oppression of a Syndra. The point here is that before you go into ranked know your matchup and its meta so you can ban out the pick that will be most likely to make you lose that hard-earned LP (Leona mains banning my Morgana still makes me sad though).

Adapting Your Build to Your Income

For this final point, we look to the most veteran player in this game in Aphromoo. Now budgeting is a skill that is valuable in every stage of life (not just LoL) but it was showcased here. Now, normally Leona these days chooses the slightly more expensive mythic item in Sunfire Aegis (cost: 3200 gold), especially in the LPL which loves Leona. However, Aphromoo didn’t go with this item, why? Well, Aphro correctly identified that he was playing the lower econ side of the map and so went with the cheaper Locket of the Iron Solari (cost: 2500 gold). This is proved correct by the fact that Leona finished this game with just a GP5, T2 Boots, Locket, and a lonely Ruby Crystal (meaning Sunfire Aegis was unaffordable) meaning Aphro still has a mythic item at his disposal. The lesson here is to consider what you can afford when deciding what to build as ensuring you hit an item spike can be the difference between gaining and losing LP as you attempt to climb the ladder.

Conclusion

So, there we have it, 4 lessons you can take from Dignitas’s opening game of the 2021 season that can be used to help improve your gameplay. Now, they say learning is unlimited and that is true so I would recommend watching the VOD of the game or even better watch Dignitas’s future games live and support the black and yellow with your own energy and eager eye. With that, I leave you with the thoughts of GL, HF, and GG.