Failing ganks frequently? Here's 3 Tips.

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It’s in everyone’s best interest to establish their team by placing their best players in the core roles while the weaker players fill up the support roles. Players think the cores ‘carry’ their team while the supports run around the map performing ganks and provide vision with wards.



Let me convince you why it’s not so. In my humble opinion, supports impact the game as much as cores. Allow me to illustrate my point with a scenario I experienced not too long ago.



I was on Juggernaut with an Earth Spirit on my team. We dominated most teamfights as the Earth Spirit landed his spells perfectly on the high priority targets — silencing the enemy Void before he Chrono’d, stunning the enemy Tinker while using an urn charge on the enemy Earthshaker so he couldn’t blink.



I did what a core would do — Omnislashed the Earthshaker and right click-spam on the enemy Tinker.



Who won us the fight? I guess most players would say the Juggernaut — since I got a triple kill in that exact fight. But learn this — I wouldn’t be able to get any kills if it wasn’t for the perfect execution of the Earth Spirit player, and would’ve got chain stunned to oblivion instead.



From a core player’s standpoint, support players impact the game on a huge scale during the first 10 minutes of the game. The safe lane carry gets to farm while the enemy offlaner is zoned out if your support babysits well, and successfully pulling off 2 ganks at mid ensures a won lane.



Supporting is an art, but demolishing your enemies as a support is high art. In this blog, I’ll write on how to pull off successful ganks.

1. Looking at Spells

Determine whether your hero has lockdown/disabling spells and don’t neglect your target’s disable spells. Take note — if you’re skilled enough to disable your target opponent, then they’re capable to do the same as well. Therefore, have a mental note on whose disable spell has a shorter cast time, not to mention the reaction time of your opponent — if your opponent sees you coming beforehand, he’s likely to stun you and escape, leaving you with nothing for the past 2 minutes. Below is a gif that I’ve developed to show you an instant cast time vs a spell with a long cast time:


Click here for the gif

Notice that Earthshaker casted Fissure before Lion casted hex, however Lion landed his spell on Earthshaker due to the instant cast time. This changes a gank/counter-gank to your favour if your hero has an instant or shorter cast time.



Conversely, if your target opponent has no disables nor escape abilities, it’s likely that you will succeed your gank if you have a disable spell. However, if you happen to be a Dazzle or a Treant Protector (heroes with no disables early on), request assistance from other supports to gank a tanky enemy mid.



We’ve all been in that position where we wasted 2 minutes in ganking the enemy mid, allowing him/her to escape due to our hero not having disables. Thus, don’t forcefully gank an enemy if you’re more than 60% sure that your gank won’t be successful — you’ll be using 2 minutes to accomplish nothing.

2. Losing Gold while Last-hitting

Visualize yourself playing Pudge, strolling towards mid, carefully staying out of sight, only to miss a hook on a casually farming enemy Invoker. Your mid SF, already losing his lane, noticed you failed a gank, begins introducing you to all sorts of vulgarity in his mothertongue.


Click here for the gif



What if I told you that there’s a way to time your skill shots while predicting your target enemy’s movement, increasing your ganking chances drastically?

Be patient until your target enemy moves forward, and stops in his tracks for a last hit.



Click here for the gif



Once you’ve identified the attack range of your target enemy, land your spell on him/her by waiting for he/she to score a last hit. You’ll be amazed at how many ganks that turn out successful after you’ve mastered this trick, as it applies to most targeted spells such as meat hook, fissure, sacred arrow, chaos meteor, boulder smash etc.

3. The Master Bait in Ganks

Rather than try and run over an enemy core, pay attention to the minimap and ask yourself, “Where were the enemy supports last located?” and “How near is my target enemy to his tower?”



The nearer your target enemy is to his tower, the lower the success rate of your gank, not to mention any TP supports to countergank you. Once you’ve taken a moment to analyze the situation, you’ll get a rough idea on whether to proceed with the gank, or to stay patient until your target enemy slips out of position.



In a mid to high level game, there is a neat trick to buy some space for your cores to farm — fake a gank on one of the enemy cores to bait TP supports. Back off when you see enemy supports TP in, and no one dies. However, generating intel on the locations of the enemy supports provide a certain extent of space to your team’s cores, allowing them to farm for a brief moment.

Conclusion

-Supports are of the same importance as cores, executing their hero perfectly ensures a good teamfight in favor of your team, not to mention the early game impact and ward vision etc


-Having disables on your hero doesn’t mean you’ll succeed in a gank as the target enemy might have better disables (shorter cast time).


-Don’t forcefully gank an enemy core if you’re 60% sure that the gank won’t be successful, you’ll be accomplishing nothing for 2 minutes.


-If your hero has skillshots, identify the target enemy’s attack range. When the enemy moves forward for a last hit, you’ll know where you should land your spells.


-Analyze the situation and double check the location of enemy supports as they might be counterganking you from behind your target enemy.


-If your target enemy is close to his/her tower, the enemy supports might TP in and countergank you.


-In mid to high level games, buy space for your cores by initiating on one of the enemy cores, so that the enemy supports will TP in and your team gains intel of their locations


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