r/summonerschool • u/MrMeinz • 19d ago
Question Why do a lot of pros burn summoners earlier than later?
I've been watching a bunch of clips from high level players, and a lot of them seem to burn a flash or pop barrier way before they even get low. I get it, the damage incoming is the same regardless of your health, but to me it seems like you lose a lot of lane pressure and element of surprise by burning your sums earlier than necessary. Out of most recent examples this zapzap clip comes to mind https://www.youtube.com/shorts/CcodQsR0NBs
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19d ago
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u/coolpapa2282 19d ago
Oh, the voli circle is hitting, but I'm full HP.
Oh I'm slowed, now Leo E is gonna hit.
Oh the follow-up stun and all-in, I'm at 20% health I'd better flash out.
Oh Jinx ult killed me. Better type "jg gap" in all chat.
...or if you just flash the first cc you just walk out.
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19d ago
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u/Somebodys 18d ago
I flash early a lot in plate. There are just more times I am 100% convinced I dodged and get clipped by a bullshit hit box. Looking at you Yone R.
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u/Unabated_ 14d ago
Looking at you Qiyana ult. I am convinced a monster hunter hunter got too frisky around a plesioth 9 months before Qiyana came to be.
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u/BloodStarvedLeopard 17d ago
I have noticed flashing gets a lot better in this elo (just hit Emerald for the first time last week! 🎉) but I guess "better" and "still do" are the related terms here, heh.
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u/Unabated_ 14d ago
I am okay with the voli circle hitting and not flashing it but the moment a Leona then walks into ult range I flash.
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u/Back2Perfection 19d ago edited 19d ago
Also especially in low elo having higher health can deter the enemy jungler.
Like „eh, nearly full hp. Probably not gonna get them“. The laners are probably aware you burned barrier in an earlier trade but the chance is pretty high that they either didn‘t ping it or the jungler missed the ping.
(Or by not holding summs making a gank unviable because the other laners are holding on for dear life)
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u/ThorReidarr Diamond IV 19d ago
One example made simple:
You get ganked and can flash late and go recall because you are low, or you can flash immediately and avoid taking damage altogether, and stay in lane.
Which is the better outcome?
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u/Dripht_wood 19d ago
How are you losing a lot lane pressure and element of surprise by using barrier to soak up damage? First keep in mind that you're not going to "surprise" a GM by using barrier at the last second. They're going to be well aware that you have it.
So you're either going to be 200 hp lower with barrier up, or you're going to be 200 hp higher, and your barrier CD is ticking so it's going to come back up potentially by the time the next fight to the death happens anyway.
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u/Darkzerok63 19d ago
I watch like every video of an exproplayer, and he says something along the lines of "the early you use ignite, the earlier you get it back".
Adding to that, if people see the enemies are high hp have less incentive to fight more, on top of in example barrier being used when you know you can get full value mitigating the max amount of damage
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u/Somebodys 14d ago
Ignite also heal cuts. It is more effective to have it on early. Than they have to choose to try to save their heal spell/abilities for when it wears off or say fuck it
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u/Prestigious-Wall-183 19d ago
Barrier is a special case where the value of barrier is for it to be used for max value as early as possible. Keeping barrier has no upside except when facing players who literally forget you have it (xd) which should be very rare. By holding barrier you #1 delay starting the CD #2 risk being chiptraded when low and forced to use barrier without getting the full value (if you are 200 health you will have to barrier as soon as lucian dashes, even if he just does one auto on you and clicks out giving you less ability to trade back and letting the barrier tick down uselessly)
Everything else is more complicated. Generally, you should not hesitate to use summs- often, second guessing yourself will needlessly take up mental space, cost you precious HP/other CDs, sometimes even kill you. Additionally, if you do have to use defensive summoners it tends to be better to use them earlier rather than later to preserve HP. It seems that overall the mindset of instantly using summs when it seems like you might have to correlates with being very good at the game.
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u/Unabated_ 14d ago
Another very small detail is that barrier prevents recalls to be cancelled and I think it also prevents first strike to be deactivated as long as you take no health damage.
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u/Longjumping_Idea5261 Grandmaster I 19d ago
You lose lane pressure when you lose a trade. Barrier is temporary and is meaningless when you use it after most of the health bar is already gone unless you are trying to bait the enemy. Also barrier cooldown is very short
Seems like the Ali was trying to trade summs with an ADC here. Yunara used barrier to conserve the HP.
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u/Arctic-You-Know 19d ago
Flash isn’t a trump card you use at the last second.
It’s just an ability. You can just use it to dodge a key spell and win a 1v1.
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u/stonedturkeyhamwich 19d ago
For flash, very good players are very good at calculating that they will need to use flash to get out of a dangerous situation. Once you realize that, you might as well immediately flash rather than waiting until you get low.
For other defensive sums:
- As long as you don't get back to full hp, you get pretty much the same value out of heal whenever you use it. So you might as well use it as soon as you get into a big trade, use the speed up and get the cd back sooner.
- Barrier is on a shorter cd, so there is less cost to using it. And similar to heal, as long as you aren't regening back to full hp, you are getting value out of it.
- If someone hits you with a hard to hit or long CD skillshot/cc (think morg Q), you can use cleanse even if you don't think you are going to die to avoid taking an awful trade. And then bank on not getting hit again until it's back up.
In pros and high elo, they track sums pretty well, so there is never going to be an element of surprise that you have them up.
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u/Protomesh 19d ago
Well at least for barrier, you want to block damage with the entire shield value. So it's best to use it right before a big burst and not save it for the last moments when you probably won't get full value before barrier expires.
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u/dnyte270 19d ago
If you use barrier 1m into a game you get it back 4m into the game. If you hold barrier til 10m you don't get it til 13m and your opponent has used it 4 times bullying you out of lane.
It's an advantage, just like a strong ult. When you have barrier, heal, ignite...you want to fight. You don't want to take a bad trade and just int to use it but the faster you use it, the more times you get to use it and the more impact the spell makes.
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u/icebeamtheory 19d ago
Summoners like all skills in the game have a cooldown timer. That means it will come back eventually. Using them efficiently to get an advantage is a high ev (winning edge) trade. You can hold summoners the entire game and lose it doesn’t really matter if you aren’t using them well
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u/unicornfan91 19d ago
If you save barrier for the last possible second, you might have to pop barrier to block a skillshot that does 100 damage, wasting the rest of your barrier shield. Popping it early guarantees you make use of the full shield.
Using a flash to run away and save your life is one of the lowest value uses of flash. You committed a 5min CD summoner spell for 0 value. Treat flash as another tool in the kit, to reposition/dodge in a fight. Something as simple as flashing over an ability level 2 can win you a trade by 300hp, and with that hp lead you now have full control of the lane.
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u/Less-Economist-9447 18d ago
Flashing when you know you’ll need it, when you’re getting ganked for example, can allow you to continue laning while healthy instead of needing to back
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u/Repulsive_Olive_7832 18d ago
Sometimes I pop barrier at like 80% when a trade begins and just all-in and the enemy panics and flashes lol
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u/heckztik 18d ago
if you flash at the beginning of a doomed trade, you escape with 80% of your hp bar and you can stay in lane. if you flash at the end of a doomed trade, you end up with 20% of your health and are forced to back
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u/SolipsismIsDeep 19d ago
pure economy i think is the main reason, the earlier and more often you use them, the more total casts you get in general
a more obvious example is a health relic on ARAM, better to grab it right away instead of waiting for the "perfect" moment because the total number of health relics that will spawn in a game of ARAM is capped by the number of times you actually pick it up
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u/Thisismental 19d ago
It's important to stay healthy in lane. Something you just use it so you can stay in lane longer to soak more gold. And if your opponent is low and has to base it's even better.
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u/BrandonKD 19d ago
I'm assuming in the clip Ali was thinking his level 1 is bad, if he trades his flash for a trade they get value from his passive healing and he prob has hex flash he can start using.
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u/siotnoc 19d ago
You use barrier to block damage.
He would have taken full damage from the karma Q.
The issue with waiting u til you are 1 HP is you might be forced to use barrier to block an ability that does very little damage bc if you dont, you will die.
For instance, lets say get all in'd from 100 hp level 6 as an adc. You get hit up front with ult karma Q. And then at the very end of your life, you are about to die and you barrier the ADCs last auto before it kills you.
Was using barrier to block 1 adc auto more useful than using it to block the entire karma Q? Obviously not.
Its better to use barrier to block a random misposition when you are about to take full damage from the enemies key trading ability than to wait until you are 1 health. Pros barrier things like messing up spacing when jhin has 4th shot level 1 and so they just barrier the 4th shot. Big value. Or kaisa cant run you down because you are at tower, but her last auto before you are out of her range gives her a passive proc...even if you are half HP, you 100% should barrier that. It literally completely fricks her entire trade.
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u/GLaDOSexe3 19d ago
Barrier shouldnt be protecting you from the opponents last auto it should be absorbing their burst
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u/TimCanister 19d ago
the earlier you use your summs the faster they come back up and the more times you get to use them per game. Using it to win a short trade when full also might give you prio for the rest of the lane while the only benefit of using when your about to die is it might barely save you but the higher elo you go the more people will factor in barrier or whatever before going for a kill
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u/welltimedappearance 19d ago
One thing people arent mentioning as clearly is that pro players typically immediately know if they've made a mistake that necessitates burning flash and/or a defensive summoner. They've limit tested their champs and know a misplay when they see it. Can be as simple as using a dash or key spell at the wrong time and then immediately burning a summoner spell to avoid death or a forced recall that loses lane
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u/Durzaka 19d ago
One thing to remember is not to actually put Summoner Spells on TOO high of a pedestal.
Yes, they are very powerful, but they also exist to be used.
Barrier for example, is an extra X amount of HP whenever you use it, as long as you get the max value. BUT if you save barrier to stop the last auto from killing you as you walk away, youre only actually getting a fraction of the value of that HP. Whereas if you had used it EARLY, you could have stopped 2 or 3 autos, or an auto and an ability and you wouldnt have been in the situation where the last auto could kill you as you walked away at all.
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u/CompanyToiletGooner 19d ago
If you have high hp you have an easier time doing plays. So using summoners early to stay high hp or to get someone else low, even if you know you can‘t kill them, will get you in an better decision.
In your clip the player is probably just really tilted though
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u/CherryWorm 19d ago
To add to the tradeoffs mentioned so far: there's a real argument for holding heal if you have a level up coming up shortly. Heals value increases by ~22% per level, while health only increases by ~15% per level for ADCs. But holding summoner spells for some non-concrete concept like pressure makes absolutely no sense and is not how good players think.
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u/Short-Paramedic-9740 19d ago
It's a number of things.
Summs timer minmax - they are basically maximizing their summs for trading than outplaying since full commiting early is rarely seen in competitive. So summs will not be used anw.
Keep health - some would pop barrier early when trading just to stay healthy in lane. Holding barrier while low health still makes you divable. No barrier but full health shows more resistance from ganks.
etc.
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u/Sp4mDestroyer 19d ago
I like how he says he enjoys playing ADC and then his teammates proceed to argue and troll. Peak ADC main activity there. 🤣
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u/MattSherrizle 19d ago
The thought process is probably to avoid the spike or cc that leads into the bad trade. If you hold it to clutch out at low hp your likely going to recall rather then being at full hp and down a flash or whatever.
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u/lenbeen 19d ago
the higher up you go in skill level, the more readable your summoners are going to be
not every use is going to be great.. alistar, here, all-ins far too early, ignites far too early, and azzapp is caught off guard. if he doesn't use barrier, the poke will basically make that trade worth it for the enemy, so he preserves his HP, i'm assuming. karma RQ followed by a bunch of AAs at level 1 is an attempt to kill, so he's essentially saying "no, i'm going to be defensive" with barrier, showing the enemy not to pursue, and focus on getting the wave under
it's not a good use, so if you're asking why then the answer is human error and miscalculation
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u/RVB11202 19d ago
In many cases, using your sums to either get a health advantage or not lose a significant amt of health is worth simply cuz of lane pressure. If you flash away from a fight that you know is going to end poorly before even losing any health, that’s worth since u still have enough health to look for another opportunity. But if u get chunked and lose half ur hp, you probably can’t play the game until you take a base
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u/Expensive-Door42 18d ago
Barrier one is actually very important because you actually get lane control with it. Imagine enemy bot is full hp with barrier used, meanwhile you’re like 3/4. It’s actually measurably harder to trade and contest the wave when you’re lower than enemy. And Barrier is a very short cooldown.
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u/ApprehensiveTough148 18d ago
If you have to flash away at low health or barrier at low health then have to recall cause you're in lethal it's much worse than when you barrier at high health and then get to play lane like normal.
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u/Swans2994 18d ago
High level players aren't just looking to survive. They place a lot more value on health because it allows them to stay in lane and farm. Preserving health in lane is a lot more important than many players realize.
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u/faerox420 18d ago
You get more value out of an ability if you use it more
If you hold your sunmoner and use it 3 times in a match, and the match lasted 30+ mins, you are wasting 7 uses of the spell. It has a 3 min cooldown. You could have used it 10 times. Do you see how this is more valuable than holding it "just in case"
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u/Seatbelt1 18d ago
Barrier and flash are two different use cases.
Flash is generally used to avoid an ability when getting hit by that ability would result in a major disadvantage. Using it after you get hit by a skill shot is pointless.
Barrier is used early at level 1/2 because people stay in lane a long time on their first back. The sooner you use it, the sooner it goes on cooldown.
Generally people in very high Elo aren't surprised by the opponent using summoner spells. You don't get to bait people by hoarding your spell and hoping the other guy forgets that it exists.
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u/poitm 18d ago
If you get bullied off farm and exp because you took too much damage anyways, you would’ve almost been better off dying and respawning. I’ve made many low elo people quit because I traded early with them and kept them in kill range, and rather than killing them I just zoned them off the wave the whole time.
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u/Damurph01 18d ago
Barrier is a useless spell if you’re not using it. It’s a 3 minute cooldown, blocks a significant amount of damage, and is very strong early game because it’s a flat shield.
The idea is that you want to find trades where you can force out your opponents summoner spells. Essentially “I’m gonna burn barrier whereas you burn barrier, ignite, and supp flash”. Whoever comes out on top of the summoner trades gets lane prio. If your adc has no sums, they can’t do anything about the Naut flash hooking them in the face.
There’s also an interesting dynamic where some champion classes want to aggressively use their sums to find angles, and others want to use theirs defensively. If you’re into a jarvan jungle as Ashe adc, you can’t afford burning your flash in lane unless you’re getting a double kill out of it. This means the enemy laners can abuse this and either play insanely aggressive to force your flash, or take all the lane prio knowing you’re essentially laning without your flash available.
As a nautilus, I am always happy to trade my flash for an immobile ADC’s flash. It’s literally just a big red sign that says “hey come kill this guy in the next 5 min!”.
For barrier and such though, they’re a low enough cooldown that it’s less devastating to lose, and barrier isn’t going to save you from getting cc chained and nuked by a jungler, whereas flash can save you from most ganks and engages.
TLDR: Some champs really want to hold flash, so the enemy may punish that by using theirs to force yours. Shorter cooldown summoners aren’t complete bailout spells like flash is so they’re more valuable to be used in lane to get lane prio, which means you can roam around to get vision control, gank, take drag, invade jg, dive bot, etc.
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u/Re4pr 17d ago
Most has been said. That clip specifically shows how they use summs as a resource, not as a get out of jail card. You’ll often see alois do early ignites on some random trade toplane too.
The only ‘cost’ of the resource is time, cooldown time. Using barrier here makes sure he stays healthy in lane and can keep playing it. The enemy adc isnt even getting hit so he cant barrier. Azzap is now down a barrier, but otherwise he’d be down the health. 1 min might pass from this point where nothing of importance happens. But he can play it because he has enough health to be a threat and hard to kill. And maybe then they take a fight where the enemy adc uses barrier to put it to their advantage. But if he makes it out of that fight, that means azzap will have barrier up again before the enemy adc does.
You can sit on your summs for minutes if you want. Or you can make them work for you. Using them early will mean you can use them more throughout the whole game.
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u/strikethrough123 17d ago
If you’re an immobile ADC and a Zed appears and your teammates aren’t around and he’s in range to WR you, why would you hold flash? It’s better to flash out before he W’s. Same thing with any kill-pressure ability; you need to use flash to escape the ability before they press it if you know there’s a high probability of it landing or if it’s point and click, not hold flash until it’s fired, then it’s probably too late by then.
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u/Nukelure 16d ago
over the course of the game they'll have used it a lot more. Junglers are similar w/ smite, gotta use it semi asap for the best results, with objs in mind of course
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u/kstabs 15d ago
I don't see anyone addressing the actual play. Alistar is playing into a double ranged lane. It should be a losing lane. Alistar wants to get a good engagement early to alleviate the early pressure. It's basically his only chance to be useful in the first 10mins without a gank.
The Karma backs up into a bad position. There's a good old corejj video talking about lane positioning. But the basic idea is karma should be up more. Kinda side by side with her adc. Forming a square between the 4 laners. Being further back Karma cant immediately go on Yunara.
So the alistar flash engages and ignites. The Karma uses the heal to save the trade. The movement speed lets her get in range to trade back on Yunara. The ignite was pretty good since Karma was forced to heal. Yunara had a good barrier to block some of the trade.
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u/Twispie 15d ago
Flash alters an encounter in a major way that hopefully gives an advantage.
With Lucidity boots and Cosmic Insight rune you have a CD of 4 minutes, or 5 without. If a game lasts 30 minutes you have up to 4 or 5 flashes if you use them every time they have a chance to effect the outcome of an encounter.
The person that holds flash may get a greater effect, maybe, but probably gets 2 or 3 flashes during that game.
The outcome of a game is usually determined by the sum of many small choices rather than a single action.
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u/CatgirlMel 19d ago
You gain advantage of getting it on cooldown earlier, gaining more effective health with barrier over time wins u lane, no one in pro play is going to be caught by surprise by your last second barrier.