General DiscussionHow to best play offlane LC?

With the 4 heroes disabling you problem

LC is quite underrated in teamfighys with her ability to run down supports and spam heal and purge. In those cases where its hard to win duel off just duel a target about to die and get the bonus damage. You’re not really an initiator like mag or enigma, you’re more like an ursa who kill you quick with their kit then clean up after.

Also aghs is pretty nasty after blink, blademail deso. It makes you pretty much a tank because you can jump in, duel a target and wait out any saves in most cases because of the duration increase and immunity from the outside. I waited out cold embrace and killed him after all while my team jumped in because I caught their tinker and he couldn’t spam anymore. It’s all decision making and mindset, if you can’t initiate you don’t have to.

Go bkb or aghs if you are getting disabled too much, build force staff or halberd (which is a better choice) to break Linken

what

you pick lc into teams where there are already enough disables (which is the normally expected role of the offlaner) and against melee carries/weak safelanes

the point of this hero is to snowball

in games where you're playing from behind or its evenly match, your job is to pickoff and make fights 4v5 quickly, if you're getting aimed by 4 heroes when you duel, you're playing wrong

the timing for jumping in is situational and you honestly have to see in case-by-case basis but a player like you that likes to think and comment a lot on his own plays should more or less understand whether or not you did a good jump.

^ I 2nd or 3rd picked LC after seeing the Jugg/AM pick. You know in SEA or in most regions, you have to pick your core early or else you're not going to get it.

I had problems jumping in when enemy was sieging high ground. As you mentioned, I can't initiate into multiple disables. At times I found good jumping situations w/c were during teamfight chaos. But that doesn't happen instantly and sometimes you already lose tower or rax before that happens.

Do I really just wait for proper timing before entering such teamfights? Meaning, I shouldn't be the initiator? But the team was relying on me to open fights.

Theorycrafting, maybe blink in and just right click BKB someone, at best put him in half health, retreat then let my teammates follow it up? Then re-enter the fight w/ Duel.. something along these lines..

i mean i dont think people snatch offlane often? anyway

if enemy is sieging your high ground somehow your entire team is helpless then i don't think thats really a matter of you not being able to do anything but rather the game is already lost at the point

unless you're doing well (decent duel dmg gained) and have a bkb, lc doesn't really do well in 5v5 standoffs where both teams are ready for som1 jumping in

i think the issue is it seems you often aren't strong enough by the time late game rolls around and it feels like you can't do anything. that's not really an issue of not knowing what to do late game already then but rather your early/mid game you're doing something wrong because you're not getting enough duel damage

^yes that's a good analysis. it's definitely something about the early to mid game that's wrong. if you can do well in lane and then not snowball, you're definitely doing something that's too passive. you have to remember all LC can basically do is rightclick damage and lockdown 1 hero. a lot of heroes can do more than that, so your impact has to come from outside of what you can do in plain 5 v 5 fights. it's the entire early to mid game (how much pressure do you apply on the map, slow their farm, force them to be scared, get pickoffs when they are careless). in late game, how many times do you buff your teammates to save them? etc.

so you must must must find a ton of pickoffs in early to mid game and really constrict the map. in 5 v 5 situations that you're describing, it sounds like you're a;lready losing honestly. id suggest split pushing to try and split em up, and if you have enough dmg, just smash towers.

^ yep. I also thought about that.

I have to review the game and check if there were various opportunities for me to snowball and get DPS.

I usually focus on being in the enemy's safe lane or farming our jungle. This is to apply constant pressure on enemy carry.

But if enemy carry has been baby sitted well enough and has map awareness to dodge my Duels then I guess me pressuring lane and not getting kills is not good enough.

Meaning, its not w/ farm, xp and items where success is measured when playing LC, but rather on how much dps i already have?

@Jacked yeah I do a lot of buffs when teammates get stunned, slowed or even need a little HP regen but as you and another poster pointed out - being able to farm, get levels and get items is not good enough for being LC. It should be the constant threat during early and mid game to get me more DPS.

ive played as jugg against offlane LC and usually i'll end up losing the lane because supports are such cucks in this bracket. it's frustrating being on the backfoot because of an offlane LC. but then if LC does not capitalize on this and get damage, she'll lose. because you have your whole mid game farming something shitty like blink and blademail while the safelane is freefarming and recovering and outfarming you. meaning you HAVE To snowball. thats kinda how the hero is built. meaning you have to really win the offlane. if the enemy carry is still babysitted well enough, it means you didnt win the lane. it means you are the one spending most of the time on the backfoot which is a definite loss.

a lot of successful LCs that have played against me have probably cucked me many times with shadowblade in the jungle. my map awareness sucks, but shadowblade is a really good item. yes you need to get shit ton of kills and make the carries scared and farm less. if you are just passively farming the lane you probably lost. i dont even think LCs should ever farm the lane.

theres 2 parts of lc behavior

pickoff and teamfight

in teamfight ur goals are to target 1 key enemy with duel. hes either going to be isolated or not, and ur teams either gonna be there or not

u need to judge whether you need to kill or just disable him, whether you can do that, if u will live or not, and if you need to live. whether key teammates (oracle omni sd od naga) are nearby is obviously key, but you should be targeting those heroes

pick is as simple as it gets, sneak up on hero with dewards or smoke or sb + blink and murder him with blademail duel. if you see a perseverance or UO begin building halberd immediately

remember in teamfight usually counter init is better than init unless you have magic immunity. you can do a lot to disrupt the enemy initiation instead of just blinking into a pointless death to ursa or whatever when ur team doesnt IMMEDIATELY react

ur goals to get ahead, because if u have duel damage u can just buy aghs or bkb + mobility and ur impossible to punish in fights. if ur behind u gotta focus on ur ability to disable key players like omni am storm or qop types, u can still have huge contribution while poor

legion is my offlane pick when :
- i get to pick 4th or 5th
- i can build up communication with my team while drafting
- the enemy safelane is not capable of dealing with a legion
- my team decides to run 2-1-2 for some reason

if you face strong lanes where you cant threat the carry anyway go pick sth else. underlord/shaker/clock are my prefered options in that scenario, as legion you will end up jungling and not doing what an offlaner should do early/midgame

https://www.dotabuff.com/players/319549325/matches?hero=legion-commander

watch some replays if you want to
my playstyle works up to mid 4k, above that i usually get punished or ppl just pick strong trilanes

when i am vs lineups where i know they are gonna interrupt my duels ill go tanky and build bkb pretty early. dont go for pickoffs. force rotations and fights, dont use duel as initiation. sneak in a duel when a support tries to get out of the fight. in case you get to a point where you can solokill any of their cores buy aghs and do it over and over again. bkb tp after the aghs duel. they will throw their bkb piercing stuns during duel and not leave any to interrupt the tp.
legion does, unlike most meta offlaners, scale with high networth. in games where my lane goes better than my carry's lane ill take over his position.

you should ask your teammates to draft one bursty support and 1-2 strong teamfight heroes. a good support combo with a legion can take over a game during the first 5min, forcing 3+ heroes to camp your lane

The best way to play LC
Step 1:Buy LC arcana
Step 2 : Last pick LC everygame
Step 3: Go LC jungle abd build midas
Step 4: Wait for the loss
Thats it. Ez -25

I can't win for crap on this hero but part of me wishes LCs would just skill their Q.

people who dont skill q need to be gassed

also i wish this hero would get buffed because shes insanely fun

doesnt need a buff imo, shes just hard to balance in general and a very niche pick
Q got slightly nerfed 7.06 and is still insane