Have you ever been outplayed so hard that you could not grasp what happened? Well, you must’ve gone up against someone who has complete mastery of their Champion. Here are some advanced champion tricks you should know so you don’t look like a fool on the Rift
Have you ever been outplayed so hard that you could not grasp what happened? Well, you must’ve gone up against someone who has complete mastery of their Champion. Here are some advanced champion tricks you should know so you don’t look like a fool on the Rift.
Oftentimes, players refer to Riven as a Champion that is easy to play but hard to master. Playing Riven without using her animation cancel is almost like playing handicapped.
Starting off, Riven’s Q animation cancel is a signature skill a Riven main should learn. Her passive Runic Blade empowers her basic attacks after an ability, and it synergizes with her Broken Wings. Since Broken Wings has three consecutive casts, Runic Blade can also be triggered three times. To fully maximize this, after each cast of Broken Wings, a basic attack should be followed to achieve maximum damage.
Next, her default combo of Broken Wings → Basic Attack → Broken Wings → Basic Attack can be pretty slow. Nearly a decade ago, Albert “Boxbox” Zhang, a Challenger Riven main at the time, had discovered a way to perform the Broken Wings combo nearly 66% faster. This new combo allowed Riven, a bruiser, to almost become a burst Champion as she dealt so much damage in such a short amount of time. This combo involves the general Auto Attack animation cancel, where after any Auto Attack, a player can cancel the wind-down animation by clicking anywhere on the ground. The fast combo inputs look something like Broken Wings → Auto Attack → Click Ground → Broken Wings → Auto Attack → Click Ground, and so forth.
In this clip, Youtuber “downthecrop” compares the Fast Combo and the Normal Combo. The Fast Combo clocks in at about 2:15 seconds, while the Normal Combo clocks in at about 3 seconds. Although one second seems trivial, Riven is a combo-heavy champion, so fluidity is extremely important. Because she has animation cancels with her other abilities, this one-second difference is significant when her kit allows her to perform an action or ability at every second.
Aside from Riven’s signature Fast Combo, she has animation cancels all over her kit. It’s like solving a puzzle trying to find the cleanest and fastest animation cancels with her abilities. Hopping into the practice tool and spamming abilities together is the easiest way to find what works with what, so have fun experimenting with Riven!
Next, we will be on Caitlyn’s case. On the surface, Caitlyn doesn’t seem to be a flashy or complex Champion. However, many players do not realize the intricacies of Caitlyn’s combos and min-maxing potential with her traps.
Let’s start with Caitlyn’s most basic trick: the E → Q combo. This trick can be done by casting Caitlyn’s E and immediately following up with her Q in the middle of dashing back. This not only allows Caitlyn to push herself back into a better position, but Caitlyn’s Q will be cast from her position pre-E. If Caitlyn were to cast her E and Q separately, the wind-up animation would take much longer than if she cast them together. Additionally, hitting the initial E slows the enemies, making her Q much easier to land. The whole combo would look like E → Q → Headshot.
To go one step further with her basic E → Q, Caitlyn can add her traps within this combo. In the middle of her E animation, Caitlyn can place down her W during that time. This allows her to get two Headshots, one from her E, and one from her W. This combo almost ensures her trap will land as long as you hit the slow from the E. As the enemy is trapped, Caitlyn can then land a free Q. The whole combo looks like E → W → Headshot → Q → Headshot.
An important note is that Caitlyn’s Q deals the most damage to the first target hit and reduced damage to anything hit afterward. However, this doesn’t apply to Champions who are currently trapped. Adding Caitlyn’s trap to her combo ensures her targets will take the full damage, regardless if there are minions or other Champions in her path.
Here is an example of Caitlyn’s combo by player crazzyccat.
These combos allow Caitlyn to deal an insane amount of damage in a short amount of time. Many players don’t expect Caitlyn to have burst damage capabilities, so they will often time take duels without knowing they can be bursted in seconds. Paired with her insanely long auto attack range, she can kill enemies without entering their auto attack range, making her a hitwoman in the shadows.
Jarvan IV is one of those champions that hasn’t been picked very often since his release. Although he is the heir to the throne of Demacia and has the first-ever Victorious Skin, there isn’t much hype surrounding King Jarvan. This results from Jarvan’s abilities being easily countered with dashes or flashes. However, a select few players have found interest in this champion and found ways to maximize Jarvan’s damage, speed, and viability.
Jarvan’s E ability places down a flag at a given location, and if he connects his Q ability with the flag, he can dash toward that given location and knock up enemies along his path. It is a seemingly powerful ability on paper, but it hardly ever lands if opponents anticipate it. Because he has to put down his flag to dash, enemies will already know, in advance, where Jarvan’s path and final location are. 90 Champions of the 140 have dashes in their kit, and mostly all Champions will have Flash as their summoner spell. This means Jarvan’s slow E → Q combo will miss more than half of the time.
To combat this, Jarvan can incorporate Flash into his combo to ensure his knock-up lands. Flash also allows Jarvan to perform his knock-up in any direction after the E → Q combo has been cast. Jarvan will need to Flash in the middle of the E → Q animation to perform this combo, but not too early where it cancels his knock-up. Ideally, casting Flash at the last second before his dash animation cancels will allow Jarvan to retain his knock-up wherever he ends up after Flashing. Because he will knock up Champions the instant he blinks, this will give enemies no time to react, and they will be caught off-guard because of the extended range of his E → Q combo with Flash.
Here is an example of Jarvan’s E → Q → Flash in action performed by Jarvan main Erick “KiNG Nidhogg” Yoo.
This tech makes Jarvan somewhat viable in the Jungle, as he has a reliable way to connect his knock-up when his Flash is up. Once enemies have blown their mobility to escape the E → Q combo, they will be rendered useless in Jarvan’s R.
There is no surprise that Yasuo made it onto this list. He is truly the definition of high-tech. With his low cooldowns and chainable abilities, his duel and solo carry potential is out of this world. However, Yasuo has some weaknesses, but there are ways to combat these.
Sometimes your Solo Queue teammates might build a knock-up-orientated team around your pick; sometimes, they won’t. Yasuo's R may be hard to pull off when there are no other sources of knock-ups on his team. With Yasuo’s tornado not being the most reliant source of knock-up, Yasuo can have difficulty dishing out his maximum damage. One way to increase the chance of landing Yasuo’s tornado is to buffer the animation with his Wind Wall. If Yasuo uses his Tornado immediately after casting his Wind Wall, the tornado will come out delayed. This can throw enemies off, as they see the animation for the Wind Wall come out, but do not realize a tornado is flying right toward them.
Secondly, Yasuo can chain his abilities E and Q together to strike in a circular area. Similar to Jarvan’s E → Q → Flash, Yasuo can do something similar. During Yasuo’s E → Q animation, if he Flashes to a given location before the circular strike finishes, his ability will cast at the post-Flash location. Not only will this sudden maneuver catch enemies off-guard, but it will also allow Yasuo to respond to dashes or Flashes the opponent performs.
One of Yasuo’s combos is named “Keyblade.” It involves Yasuo performing the E → 3rd Q → Flash. It’s important to note when Yasuo’s 3rd Q hits an opponent, his Q is immediately reset. During this short period when his opponents are knocked-up, there is a window in which Yasuo can perform another E → Q combo before using his R on the still knocked-up opponents.
The full combo looks something like E → 3rd Q → Flash → E → Q → R → Q
After this combo is done, Yasuo should have his 3rd Q ready to go once it’s off cooldown.
Here is a complete breakdown of the Keyblade combo by SwyfT:
We all know Diana can reset her E by applying Moonlight with her Q. But how many of you know her E can be used not twice in succession, but three times in succession? With the introduction of Diana’s rework in 2019, she can now dash thrice in succession.
Before we get into how to use her dash three times in a row, we must understand the basic concept of her Moonlight. All enemies hit by her Q will be marked with Moonlight. When Diana uses her E on an enemy marked with Moonlight, her E ability immediately gets reset once. However, for her E to get reset twice, she needs to apply Moonlight to more than one target at different times. Under normal circumstances, once her E hits one enemy with Moonlight, the Moonlight effect disappears on other enemies. Because her Q is a projectile that passes through all enemies in a crescent shape, some may have Moonlight applied before others. In this window where some enemies are applied with Moonlight before others, if Diana uses E on Moonlight-affected enemies before her Q is finished casting, the Moonlight effect will not disappear on enemies hit after the fact.
In this example, Diana is able to dash thrice because of the optimization with Moonlight:
As a Jungler, having that additional gap closer can be the key to securing a kill. Sometimes the position of enemies and enemy minions may not be ideal for this triple dash to work; however, in the correct circumstances, this triple dash will surely confuse your opponents.
Although these are just a few Champions and advanced tricks, you now know the skill cap of mechanics is limitless. So, why don’t you continue limit-testing on Summoner’s Rift? Maybe you’ll be the next to discover new tech on another Champion. Being able to perform these tricks or counter them is so rewarding, and I hope one day, you, too, will be able to feel that rush of excitement.
