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    Welcome back, ye young squire! Anxious for knowledge and bad memes, I see! You’re in luck, because today we discuss Siege comps, which we’ll break down into Poke and Tower Pushing; two things that the LCS can’t do in or out of game ;D. So strap on your strap ons and let’s get to work, shall we!?
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Fuck That Thing ALLLLLLL The Way Over There
    Let’s start off with the style that LCS has struggled with the most; Poke comps. These teams are fairly straightforward in theory, but their execution can be incredibly difficult. Poke comps are designed to send massive amounts of damage from a distance; primarily when protecting or attempting to take a tower, since that is their major strength. The big thing you do not want to do as a Poke comp is teamfight, in the traditional sense at least. Instead, kiting backwards to allow more spell rotations and long range damage is how this comp can be used effectively against teams when fighting around Dragon or Baron. Let’s look at the composition NRG used in their game against Immortals in Week 2:
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NRG’s composition was the epitome of Poke comps; three massively long range champions, with an even distribution of damage, two with long range wave clear, two peel oriented tanks, and engage potential on every champion, once the enemy had taken enough damage. When these compositions are winning and sieging your towers, it’s almost impossible to stop them. Unfortunately, these comps become almost useless if they fall behind and have to battle with a Banner of Command and Baron empowered Siege Minion.
    The biggest weakness of Poke comps is vision control; if your team cannot establish and maintain vision around the upcoming fight, then you are susceptible to flanks and picks from compositions like the one Immortals drafted above. With this in mind, being able to rotate, secure vision, and take a turret, in one fell swoop, is probably your best bet and the optimal means of executing this composition. This can be done by prioritizing side lanes to reduce the avenues for flanks, whereas prioritizing mid lane makes you vulnerable to picks from virtually all sides. Let’s look at an example of how a Poke comp could be effectively utilized:
So your team just bought, grouped, and want to siege Red Side’s 2nd tier top turret. See how your team paths through the jungle, dropping wards and clearing vision, while on their way top? This prevents any sneak attacks from the opponent, while you attempt to chunk them out and take the turret. Even if they were to attempt a TP flank, you have adequate map awareness in this situation to kite backwards and prevent a favorable fight for the opponent; essentially ripping the door off, taking the hinges off, and putting them in the fuck boy’s hands. Because you smart. Very smart.
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I CAME IN LIKE A WREEEEECKING BAAALLLLLLLL
    Next, let’s look at Tower Shredding comps. These teams have one role and that’s it; destroying turrets as fast as possible. The core elements of this style are quick wave clear and as much safe tower damage as possible. Sure, this sounds a lot like poke comps or generally any composition, but there are particular ways to maximize this potential. Champions that benefit from items like Lich Bane and Trinity Force, have abilities that can be cast on turrets, or have some kind of attack speed buff are all examples of aspects that benefit this playstyle. Let’s use these elements to build a composition that is solely for pushing towers:
Gangplank’s barrels, Twisted Fate’s Q, and Tristana’s Explosive Charge are all safe forms of quick waveclear. Also, Gankplank’s empowered auto from Trinity Force, Twisted Fate’s added damage from Lich Bane and Pick A Card, Tristana’s Explosive Charge again, plus Nunu’s Blood Boil and Janna’s AD buff can shred through towers. On top of that, there is escape, CC, peel, ultimate combos, and pick potential within this team, which makes Tower Shred comps one of my favorites, especially in the current meta where turrets are so weak and provide an incredible amount of strength for your team.
    The downsides of this playstyle is hard to pinpoint, since it changes from team to team. You could build Tower Shred comps with the potential to do everything from have pick potential to being able to wombo combo the enemy team to death. Due to this amount of flexibility, knowing when and how your team can capitalize on its tower pushing strength is essential; understanding your composition is poor at 5v5 fights is absolutely necessary when trying to approach that team’s win conditions. Either way, just like with Poke comps, keeping adequate vision control around your objective is key to successfully pushing towers and maintaining your lead. If that doesn’t work, just get Baron or the new second stack Dragon buff on PBE that gives you additional damage to turrets; GGWPEZPZ.
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    Well, that was a lot shorter than expected (LOL EZ SEX JOKES LOL HIGH BROW COMEDY LOL). Sieging is fairly straightforward on paper, but learning proper positioning and execution for each composition is the difficult part, with vision control and map awareness being a close second. NOW GO FUCK ‘EM UP! CLIMB THAT DYNAMIC QUEUE LADDER! SIEGE ALL THE TOWERS! BUY A TRINITY FORCE! BUY YOUR WHOLE TEAM TRINITY FORCES! WIN WIN WIN NO MATTER WHAT! YOU DA BEST! MAJOR *KEY EMOJI* ALERT! DJ KHALED IS MY SPIRIT ANIMAL!
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