Clash 2020 — everything we know so far
Clash emulates professional matches, which puts you in a high-stress competitive environment. As a result, you may throw some words you don’t really mean and lose a friend or two along with the match. Here’s how to manage everyone’s expectations and enjoy Clash no matter the result.
Shotcalling
You may not need a designated shot caller, but the team should elect the leader. He or she will be the one to either give a call or make the team commit to a call from one of the other players. This is crucial: you are less likely to succeed against another premade team if you’re committed to different goals.
Ideally, you would have your highest-ranked player as the leader. Unless they are a rare case of mechanical god with a peanut brain, this will be the most knowledgeable player as well. If there’s no big Elo discrepancy on your team, consider putting your trust into Support or Jungle. These players have more time to roam around and/or think about all lanes and the game state.
Naturally, personality traits are important as well. If your leader of choice doesn’t sound entirely confident in their calls, people will instinctively be more likely to dismiss the call and look for alternatives. The rest of the team may get used to this and learn to stay conscientious within a few matches, but initial games won’t be as smooth.
Draft and Scouting
As the Clash pick & ban stage is designed after what you see in esports, it’s important to come up at least with a small playbook. Put down all must-bans in the current meta as well as several preferred champions for each player. You’ll need that for cross-reference during the drafts.
Currently, your Clash team captain gets to do all the bans while each player picks separately. You don’t really have to change the team captain if your in-game leader will be a different person. After all, you made a document with bans and preferred picks for everyone to access.
As the scouting stage lasts for 10 minutes, you have plenty of time to look up enemy players on a stats website. To avoid disagreements and prepare the best, I recommend that each player makes a separate document and puts down the bans against each opponent. Later on, you may assess their priority based on which players appear stronger and what roles/champions are more dominant in this meta.
Alternatively, use our desktop assistant Nemo for all your Clash needs and avoid loading up that slow browser
Lastly, don’t stick to the playbook blindly and always adjust. Recognize what enemy picks covered which role to avoid unnecessary bans, look out for counter picks and avoid falling into them. Quick thinking here can win you a game or at least give a solid win condition that cannot be immediately denied.
Clash Gameplay
Based on the win condition that you bargained away with enemies in the draft, pick a course of action and stick to it. Don’t force early fights with a protect the ADC composition, don’t stall when your Draven has a lead, etc. Remember to deny epic monsters even if that’s not essential at this stage: you want to halt enemy growth just as much as you want to farm up yourselves.
After a poor team fight, avoid overanalyzing what went wrong too much. Blaming someone specifically is a no-no as well. Your takeaways should be aimed at what’s next for you map-wise as well as in the next fight. If your teammate is going off the rails, try to placate that and move on. There’s time for in-depth analysis and quarrels later.
Most importantly, stick to positive reinforcement and avoid negative remarks. Praise the team when they perform better than expected or just well, and avoid scrutinizing poor plays. Badmouthed teammates won’t magically become better. After all, you knew what you signed up for when you decided to play with this combo.
Clash Teammates
Even though Clash is made for complete teams, you may find it enjoyable with random teammates as well. Here are a few resources to find people in case you’re a solo player or lack a person or two.
- The official League of Legends forum has a dedicated Clash section. Please, follow the board’s etiquette and state your rank(s)
- Our Discord server always has a few poor souls looking for last-minute mates
- Reddit /r/leagueoflegends has a sticky thread before Clash weekends
Other than that, don’t be shy and approach the people you like in SoloQ! Chances are, they are still available or may fit you into their team. Playing with random people is better in a way: you don’t have to worry about staying friends and can actually make some new!
As it is, you still have time to form a team committed to Clash. The mode is set to come back in 2020 without a set date.
5 comments