Trying to learn and practice the finer points of wave manipulation in top lane. I've got general ideas of how to manipulate it, but that changes a bit with a melee. Interestingly enough, I learned quite a bit about wave control thanks to donger. With him, you often intentionally try to get creep aggro by attacking the enemy champ. This pulls the wave towards you and into turrets and when properly managed, means you can safely hold the wave wherever you want.
With top lane as a melee, I'm finding that a bit more tricky and I'm not quite as sure when I should be trading. I'm paying a lot more attention to the wave and how much damage I'll take if I attack the enemy and also factor that into my trades if I have a creep adv and the enemy attacks me.
A bunch of this is pretty basic stuff that I just don't know how do to properly.
Along those lines, I learned how to do irelia's super gap closer combo (which is likely just common sense to more experienced folks). What you do is use your ult to damage the ranged creeps behind the wave. Using that and with proper timing, you increase your effective range to somewhat crazy levels (but requiring more precision than a yasuo dash as if you don't execute a creep when you dash, your q goes on CD). Had no idea about that tool in irelia's kit until I watched a coaching video and that was brought up by the coach.
Also, omg please make the rageblades stop. Once game last night was a master yi and a udyr both with rageblade (udyr went phoneix with rb and it was trash, yi it was more serviceable, but silly); however, we ended up letting those 2 shites just afk splitpush and I could only pick up one as irelia. rage build is useful enough for split pushing, but sub par on those champs. Currently, I'm liking rageblade on Xin, Ire, jax fairly exclusively.
Awful kayles are abounding running rage build in lane as well. Had one of those last night that manage to get picked twice, which started late game team fights and fail to ult. FOTM is fine, but god... people with no skill with a champ just having a go, not even getting the ult mechanic or how games function... bleh.
Had some fun playing irelia and learning more matchups. I might stick w/ her a bit. I feel like there's a pretty good amount of depth with her and a bunch to learn.
