Farewell, laneswaps, we barely knew ye — the Echo Fox-NRG game 1 case study

Compositions and power spikes.

This is perhaps the most straight-forward element, and probably the most important. Even the most casual of fans and players at this point understand the concept of a power-spike in the abstract: you get certain items or components, you’re stronger at the moment you get that item (certainly absolutely, usually relatively), and if you’re going to put together a team, it makes sense to have a plan of action based around those spikes.

Laneswaps are important not only because they can modify certain spikes (the maxim of “you don’t want a Trinity Force user in a laneswap” is flawed but has truth to it), but because those spikes are nothing if you don’t have a map situation to abuse it.

While certain 2v2 combinations for top/jungle and ADC/support can change the tempo, in high-level play, given a standard lane setup, the first tower will fall somewhere between 15 and 20 minutes — at which point, all bets are off regarding the maintenance of ‘laning phase’, because that’s when teams can start sending people anywhere on the map without planned, ingrained, automatic counterplay on the side of their opponents.

If we want to boil it down to the most reductionist terms, we can understand standard lanes as advantaging a ‘2-item’ comp (i.e. when the three champions getting lane farm should be at their second full item), while a full laneswap would help a ‘1-item’ comp, and a half-swap would be somewhere in the middle. Those aren’t completely accurate labels for a number of reasons (including, among other things, the cost of that one item, and the existence of stacking items and of Cull), but they’re a good place to start.

In this game: advantage NRG, overwhelmingly. For Echo Fox, Malzahar requires Morello’s to get through lane, and Rylai’s to actually be effective. Gangplank needs his Trinity Force, which is one of the aforementioned costly items. On NRG’s side, Jhin is a true one-item champion, Gnar perhaps even less than that; even Ziggs, who has a reputation as a scaling champion (albeit in the defensive sense), can go active at Morello‘s’ and/or level 6.

Junglers, open map, closed map.

It’s been a long time since junglers who were either completely reliant on ganking or completely reliant on a lack of invade pressure have been considered viable in pro play, or even at any decent level of competitive play. Most pro picks necessarily fall into the realm of being able to do a little of everything in the early and mid game in that regard.

Yet, clearly, there are champions that not only have special ability in the areas of ganks or invades, but are picked at least in part because of such. It does Rek’Sai no harm that he’s able to provide the threat or reality of a level 3 gank, even if it doesn’t happen every game. There is still variance in abilities — and the different in gank pressure and in being able to farm and fight in an ‘open map’ scenario matters a lot.

In this game: advantage NRG, overwhelmingly. Even if the part of Nidalee’s kit that made her so destructive to the competitive meta (her fast early clear) hadn’t been nerfed on 6.15, there’s a good chance that she would’ve fallen down the boards in terms of priority in a post laneswap world anyway. Junglers have been able to find ways to make the most of her in closed maps too, but open-map Nidalee was an absolute terror — her fast clear and her ability to fight 1v1 meant that with the threat of any sort of collapse removed, and a reduced ability for the enemy jungler to execute one-sided ganks on lanes, she was practically unstoppable. Particularly against a Rek’Sai, there’s almost no excuse for not swapping with a Nidalee.

The terrain dynamics of laning.

While a laneswap situation will involve a lot of rotating — a lot of running away, to put it uncharitably — there’s eventually going to come a point where things settle and you’re laning 1v1 and sometimes 2v2 in the side lanes, even if often by correspondence. This is particularly true in half-swap situations, since the way you force a half-swap is to bring duo to face duo in the lane you’re expecting them to push in.

A full swap creates long lanes for both participants; a half swap creates a long lane and a short lane. That can bring an advantage to one side or the other. If you’ve ever played top lane in solo queue, and gotten behind against something like an Ekko, a Fizz, a Gnar, and so on, you probably have an idea of where this is going — the ability to chase down and solo-kill an opponent is the extreme example here, but the potential questions and answers proposed by an early long-lane matter, certainly for the 1v1 and likely for the 2v2 too.

In this game: advantage NRG. This is a narrower advantage than the previous two points, but it’s there. Gangplank’s single CC cleanse means that while he has the advantage in general vs a Gnar, he’s the party at greater risk in the long lane; Jhin-Karma into Lucian-Trundle is less clear-cut, but Karma is a fairly good answer into Trundle and Rek’Sai’s particular forms of CC, and one would probably expect the NRG side to be pushed in more often (to their benefit) anyway due to Lucian’s farming style. Again, this isn’t as clear a win as before — but on balance, it’s probably still a win.

The mid tower and the mid laner.

I initially wasn’t going to put this in a separate section, because I tend to think of it more as a product of the earlier points (particularly point 2), but it’s worth mentioning on its own. A laneswap, and an open map, necessarily directs teams towards mid earlier both in terms of focus and in terms of resources.

While most pro-viable mid picks are set up to deal with that pressure on the traditional timetable, a lot have some degree of trouble between roughly levels 6 and 13 as they ramp up statistically and move onto maxing out their second ability. A lot of champions can be out-zoned, or dove, fairly easily as a result of pressure mid before they’re ready.

In this game: even, slight advantage Echo Fox. This is the one area where Echo Fox win out from a laneswap, but it’s slight. Malzahar is one of those champions who is fairly reliant on two maxed abilities for effective defensive waveclear, but the same is true of Ziggs. Pre-6.15 Malzahar does at least have the advantage of his passive, although it should be said that against any sustained siege NRG should be able to ‘pop’ it relatively easily. In any case, he’s slightly safer than Ziggs.