Over the opening weeks of the split, we saw Dignitas take down some of North America's best, placing them near the top of the standings. With victories over teams such as Immortals, Golden Guardians, and Evil Geniuses, we saw the team secure wins playing a variety of styles and team comps. Let's review some of their games and see what decisions Dignitas made that could be replicated in your own ranked games.

1. Capitalizing Off Of Jungle Pressure

One pattern that kept repeating throughout Dignitas's first game of Week 2 against Immortals was that the whole team understood when and where they had map pressure, specifically on the bottom half of the map. Every time Immortals' bottom lane found themselves slightly out of position or trying to get back to lane, Joshua "Dardoch" Hartnett and Zaqueri "aphromoo" Black would make their lives much harder and make sure they miss out on experience and gold.

This can be seen as early as 8 minutes into the game, where after Destiny, Immortals' support player, gets killed in a 2v2 skirmish, Raes, their ADC, is forced all the way back to almost his inner turret, making him lose multiple full waves of experience and gold. The reason Dignitas was able to pressure him off was because they saw the enemy jungler top-side, so all Dardoch has to do is show himself in the bottom jungle and Raes has to back all the way out of vision. It was aphromoo who recognized when Raes stayed in lane too long, and managed to secure a kill over the wall using flash and Thresh lantern to pull Dardoch over with him.

See here how Raes is unable to walk all the way up to his turret in fear of a 3-person dive.

The reason Dardoch and Aphromoo were able to starve the enemy ADC from so many resources was because they understood that they had full control of the bottom side of the map. This type of situation happens a lot in regular ranked games, where the opposing ADC is bot without their summoner spells or their support, and they have to stay all the way out of vision in order to avoid a gank. Just the support and jungler is needed to roam into the enemy jungle, since there's no way the enemy team can bring more people to the fight then your team. While the ADC is bot lane by themselves farming and taking turret plates, the support is able to clear and put down vision while the jungler is able to take away jungle camps. Even if aphromoo ended up not finding a kill at the latter half of this play, Dignitas's bot lane would have been significantly ahead in all ways.

This type of play happens again around 22 minutes into the game, when Immortals extends too far into Bot lane to try and get a pick onto Aaron "FakeGod" Lee, but are met with a teleport from Max "Soligo" Soong and a flank from Dardoch. Just as the exchange turns sour for Immortals' and they try to back away, Dignitas's bot lane catches out the enemy ADC, giving them complete control over the map. Now that they have an overall numbers advantage, they chase the rest of the Immortals team away and prevent them from receiving any benefit from the fight, by taking their camps and zoning them away from even collecting the wave afterwards.

This game in particular highlights the importance of understanding jungle and map control, and how different plays can be made around the map depending on how much control you can have. If you're in a game and see an opportunity like the ones that happened in this game, feel free to try and tell your teammates to take jungle control if you know it's going to lead to a better game state for your team.

2. Understanding Champion Matchups

In their second game following their Immortals win, Dignitas took down Golden Guardians. One of the ways they took control over the game was having a better understanding of their matchups than their opponents. This can be seen in how they managed to get three dragons by 18 minutes, despite never gaining a gold lead higher than 3,000. Since they understood both their mid and bottom lane champion matchups, they knew that they could always shove both mid and bot at the same time to instantly create priority for the dragon. They understood their team comp could always outpush their opponents in lane, so Dardoch was able to always get control over the dragon pit before the enemy jungler.

Even if aphromoo and Soligo usually didn't even walk over to help out Dardoch take dragon, Dignitas understood that they would always be able to roam over to fight first if Golden Guardians decides to challenge the dragon.

Here, Dardoch is able to secure first dragon without GGS contesting, thanks to them having priority in both mid and bot at the same time.

This game is a great showing on how to fight for and secure objectives even when behind in lane. Aphromoo dies early on in lane yet by establishing pressure in both bot and mid, Dignitas always positioned themselves in the right place at the right time every time dragon was about to spawn. By being aware when you're able to apply pressure before objectives is super important in winning ranked games, so by doing some of the things that Dignitas did here you can up your chances in securing objectives. Before each game see who you're laning against and think about when you're going to be stronger than them and when you can shove the wave against them.

Aphromoo can be seen going in for an engage at level 1 even after getting chunked, since he knows he'll win the trade 9 times out of 10.

Another example of a Dignitas player using familiarity with a matchup in order to gain a small lead is when aphromoo goes in for a level one trade against the enemy Alistar as Thresh. Aphromoo knows that he can win any level one trade due to the Keystone Mastery matchup, since the enemy took Phase Rush and aphromoo took Aftershock. This is due to Alistar basically not being able to proc Phase Rush before level 2, and Aftershock provides Thresh with enough tankiness to win most level 1 fights. This is just one example of how being familiar with matchups is useful in regular games, as if you know that with your Keystone you're stronger than your opponent at certain levels, you know when to engage and when not to.

3. Have An Idea Of What You Want To Do Each Game

Oftentimes during solo queue games, it's easy to find yourself in the midgame unsure of what you're supposed to be doing to help the team. Something that helps this is while you're loading into the game, try and analyze the team comps and see how you can impact the game in the biggest way. While it's easier for LCS players to go into game with a more thought out game plan, it's possible to do it on a smaller scale even when just loading into the game. In Dignitas's victory against Evil Geniuses, even if it was a bit chaotic, the game was able to go the way of Dignitas heavily thanks to aphromoo and his performance on Tahm Kench.

Aphromoo went into the game with a specific idea in his head on how he wanted to play the game, which is evident through him taking Teleport as his second Summoner Spell. By examining the team comps, aphromoo recognizes that getting his Kayn jungle ahead of the enemy Lilia will be a huge factor in deciding the game, so he spends much of the game roaming the map and creating plays with Dardoch on Kayn. He also knows his ADC (Toàn "Neo" Trần) is playing as fasting Senna, which means that they can also leave bot lane for extended periods without worrying too much about the missed waves, as long as they're able to find plays elsewhere on the map. Paired with a mid lane Zoe, the entire team comp is based around finding picks across the entire map, and aphromoo is sure to use his teleport throughout the game to force plays and uneven fights.

Here's one of aphromoo's many W saves from this game, saving FakeGod from dying in a late game teamfight.

Aphromoo also understands his role in teamfights, which since he's a Tahm Kench with the Guardian Keystone, is to stick next to his carries and make sure they survive fights. Aphromoo does a great job with this, as he has several clutch W's in order to save his team mates from huge enemy cooldowns like Seraphine Ultimate. By having a clear goal before not only team fights but entire games is one of the reasons Aphromoo and Dignitas were able to clutch out this win.

Conclusion

There we are, just a few things that Dignitas did in their games that you should try adding to your own gameplay. To quickly recap:

• Be aware of when and where you have map pressure, and know how to capitalize off of that to secure a lead.
• Try and gain familiarity with champion matchups that you face often, so you know when you're stronger and when to fight.
  • Use this champion familiarity to know when you can pressure the lane in order to secure objectives.
• Go into games with a loose idea on how you want to play the game, and try to analyze the team comps to see how you can make the greatest impact.

And that's it! Hope this guide helped you understand how to approach your own games, good luck out there!