Translator: EndlessFantasy Translation Editor: EndlessFantasy Translation
The art of fog-of-war!
The two most important areas—anticipating the opponent’s reactions and response time as well as the amount of time the said opponent would take to recover from the shock!
After losing sight of the target, one would need to control his Champion to lock onto a new target via mouse-clicking. No matter what the attack speed of the Champion was, the player would still need to do that manual click before anything could happen.
Anticipating the amount of time of the opponent recovering from shock and starting to move his mouse, followed by quickly moving the Champion out of the opponent’s sight within that short window of time.
This would result in the art of fog-of-war!
Langjie quickly pursued the Vayne, heading toward the bushes, wanting to end Luocheng.
Indeed, pressing the A key could quickly lock-on the player’s target. Yet, pressing the A key at this time was not the right move, for this technique had a crucial and deadly weakness.
Wu Sen was good at what he did, and when Luocheng stepped into the bushes, Wu Sen quickly dropped a Ward near him. Thus, if Langjie were to use the A key to zip into the bushes, his attack would then surely land on the Ward!
Langjie was an LPL-ranked ADC—there was no way he would make such a mistake. His mouse was on stand-by all the time, preparing to attack Luocheng manually when the chance arose!
As he stepped into the bushes, suddenly, he heard a cry from Vayne!
Quickly Tumbling into sight, Vayne evaded Varus’s Arrow of Retribution and then stood at the edge of the bushes. Right after firing a bolt, she then hid quickly within those bushes.
Langjie had seen where Vayne was, and he quickly clicked his mouse to move forward and attack her.
Alas,just as he was about to strike, Vayne disappeared into thin air!
Target lost!
Varus thus had to keep on pursuing her into the bushes, however, as he entered the bushes, he saw Vayne, the Night Hunter, slowly walking past him!
After a short pause, Langjie quickly clicked on Luocheng’s Vayne but was foiled yet again as the Chronokeeper, Zilean, had flung a Time Warp at Vayne, enabling her to swiftly zip into another bush.
Langjie was quick in his reaction, but it wasn’t quick enough. Furious at what had just happened, Langjie hastily pursued his target. Seeing that his Chain of Corruption’s cooldown was over, he quickly pressed the E key and hurled a glob of black venom toward the bushes.
Chain of Corruption could deal area-damage, so in other words, it didn’t matter where exactly Vayne was hiding within the bushes, his attack would surely land on her!
However, as Langjie lifted his finger off the E key, he noticed that Vayne had quickly moved horizontally toward the creeps, evading his skill! Zilean’s Time Warp had raised Vayne’s movement speed earlier, enabling her to zip away from Varus’s Chain of Corruption easily.
“Bang!”
Another bolt was fired from Vayne’s crossbow, depleting more of Varus’s HP!
As Langjie paused momentarily due to the shock, a Time Bomb detonated above Varus’s head!
“Boom!”
Langjie’s last drop of HP was wiped clean as the Time Bomb exploded. In the end, he had not been able to slay Luocheng and his face turned grim immediately.
3 seconds! He hadn’t been able to land a single click on Vayne even in that 3-second time frame!
And the result? He was slain!
Losing his target and pursuing it only to have it zip out of sight again. What about throwing a calculated attack? Vayne was able to evade it with some strange movements, and when he was finally able to drop the kill-shot, the opponent’s support had thrown a fatal attack on him.
“You shouldn’t have pursued him.” Jupiter frowned.
Langjie looked at the mono-colored screen in front of him silently. His face looked so grim that one would have thought that he had just devoured countless stinking flies.
…
“Toying around with the fog-of-war! How incredible! One can only witness this brilliant technique in the LPL! Team Skycrown’s Vayne only had one drop of HP left and yet, she didn’t die. She completely toyed her opponent to death like a cat toying with a dying mouse!” Bao Jun excitedly exclaimed into his microphone.
To toy with the opponent using the fog-of-war took skill and also required perfect timing and believable fake-fleeing. You would need to flee toward just one direction, leaving a lot of openings for attacks. Yet, as soon as you entered the bush, you would need to stand completely still, waiting for your opponent to appear, and then, flee toward another direction. By doing this, one could perform this exciting fog-of-war play by zipping back-and-forth between the bushes!
However, there weren’t many people who could disappear into the bushes 4 times consecutively. Even Luocheng himself had only seen it happen once. which was when Xiao Bei had taken on Lin Siyong during that fight against the Fudan University team.
This time, the most that Luocheng could do was “disappear” 3 times. He was not as skillful as Xiao Bei was in mastering this technique, and if it weren’t for Wu Sen’s Time Bomb, he would have been slain earlier.
…
Two players were down in just minutes. The crowd was going wild!
The art of instant-kill, the art of fog-of-war! Just how many times could one witness these skills? And in the same match too!
“After the First Blood and assist-kill from his Support, Vayne can surely bag herself a Berserker Greaves now. After the cooldown of her Ultimate skill and Blade of the Ruined King is over, she can then head out and resume her killing spree!” Bao Jun keenly deduced.
Sure enough, the spectators could see as the camera focused on Vayne recalling back to her base to purchase equipments.
After that short moment of her killing-spree, Vaybe had grown a lot and earned herself quite a bit of dough in her purse. Perhaps she could buy herself a Zeal or something…
“Hmm? Vayne’s bought… Wow, what on earth is the Fighting Hawk thinking!” Bao Jun sounded surprised.
In the LPL, every player would carefully calculate their moves, and yet sometimes, some players would gamble like the devil. However, unless the player could acquire some specific champions, doing this was equivalent to committing suicide in the match.
Bao Jun was a high-ranking player himself and he had also been commentating in countless tournaments and leagues. He had seen Kassadin, Katarina, and Lux, turning the tables by using a Mejai’s.
However, this was also due to Mejai’s being suitable for these Champions.
Fighting Hawk on the other hand was an ADC, so why the heck had he bought a Sword of the Occult!?
Sword of the Occult!
Thousands of spectators and hundreds of thousands of live-stream viewers could see very clearly that Luocheng had bought himself a Sword of the Occult!
Not many would dare to purchase this equipment when they were competing in a ranking match, and of course, this applied to this nation-wide league!
No one had ever acquired a Sword of the Occult in the LPL ever!
Just one Blade of the Ruined King and a Sword of the Occult! Nothing else!
No one could believe their eyes and they looked at Vayne carrying these two items with her.
He had managed to slay two opponents in the first 10 minutes of the match, a match of a professional league. Why the hell would he get a Sword of the Occult!
LPL matches were known to be intense—sometimes, a match could go on for over 20 minutes and still the total kill counts on either team would be locked at below 10.
How could a Sword of the Occult help in a match like this!?
Spending over 1000 gold to buy a weapon that would only add a mere 10 damage was almost equal to forfeiting the advantages that he had acquired from slaying the two opponents earlier!
He would need to continue slaying enemies to compensate for this loss, and if he were to be slain once, all this gold would then be wasted. Wasted! There was no room for error in the LPL.
This dude had to be nuts!
…
“Sword of the Occult. Sword of the Occult! Just who does he think I am!” Langjie from Team Sky was pissed.
All the gold that he had gotten from slaying him had been used for a Sword of the Occult? So, this Fighting Hawk thought that he was an easy kill!?
What a joke! This was the LPL, the highest level of E-sport within the nation. Equipping himself with this pathetic weapon was equivalent to a death wish.
Langjie was furious indeed.
Just who did this Fighting Hawk think he was.
This was LOL, not DOTA.
So, he thought that he was unbeatable, huh!?
…
Luocheng’s Vayne had been able to acquire a major advantage after buying the Blade of the Ruined King. Now, after getting her hands on a Sword of the Occult, this Vayne had totally shrouded herself in vapours of killing intent!
Why? She had totally forfeited creep scoring, going straight for the Champions!
Whenever she saw Varus and Fiddlesticks, she would rush at them without hesitation. With the innately higher movement speed and Zilean’s Time Warp, Vayne was indeed able to zip around as much as she wanted!
“Reckless! How reckless! Rushing at his opponent like this, Fiddlesticks could easily cast his Terror and then use his Ultimate Skill… Vayne could be annihilated in an instant!” Bao Jun shouted into his mic.
Vayne, as though she had lost her mind, rushed straight at the enemies when all their skills were not in cooldown.
As expected, Fiddlesticks cast Terror on her while Varus launched his Ultimate Skill. Vayne dropped dead almost instantly as her HP was quickly drained to zero, But as her corpse was kneeling in place, life started brimming in her again!
Chronoshift!
Wu Sen had been able to cast his Ultimate Skill at Luocheng when the latter had rushed toward his enemies. In a matter of seconds, Vayne was now alive and kicking again!
“Bang!”
The sounds of Vayne’s crossbow stretching out echoed in the Summoner’s Rift!
Tumble!
As soon as Vayne had risen from the dead, she quickly Tumbled away and hid herself in stealth mode. When she reappeared again, a bolt darted out like a strike of lightning and hit Varus, sending him flying backward, pinning him to the wall nearby!
Langjie had already been very mindful of where he stood, and yet, Luocheng was able to pin him like this.
It couldn’t be helped though. Vayne had been recently resurrected, thus, they would need to standby near her corpse or else she would flee away. But he hadn’t expected Vayne to Tumble away and Condemn his Varus like that!
…
700 HP after resurrection.
With this much HP left and all her skills exhausted, Vayne was basically just a long-ranged creep to Fiddlesticks.
