While the old playstyles have become familiar and easy to counter, new and powerful styles are emerging every day in the Korean rank, making it difficult for opponents to respond. To avoid being caught off guard by these new playstyles, you should learn about them as soon as possible.
Here is a list of new playstyles in the Korean rank for patch 10.9:
Shen – Jungle
First, regarding the jungle role, initially Shen may struggle a bit due to his lack of fast jungle clearing skills. However, his abilities, including the passive Ki Shield and Spirit’s Refuge (W), will help Shen lose less health when farming jungle camps. Once he acquires the Bami’s Cinder, Shen will farm the jungle much faster.
When ganking, Shen is particularly strong with the combo Smite + Nimbus Cloak, allowing him to approach enemies at super speed and hold them down with Shadow Dash. In the current meta, Bloodthirster is making split-pushing champions more popular, and with Shen’s ultimate, Stand United, these split-pushers will feel like they have wings.
Additionally, with Spellbook and Flash combined with Nimbus Cloak, it becomes extremely terrifying, as opponents won’t know where Shen might appear from or what summoner spells he might use to attack them.
In team fights, Shen will primarily serve as a tank, so a team composition featuring Shen should ideally include at least one strong damage-dealing split-pusher to avoid late-game damage deficits.
Trundle – Jungle
Trundle in the jungle is no longer a stranger to the League of Legends community, but recently the Korean rank has seen a highly effective new playstyle that makes Trundle extremely sticky to his opponents.
This playstyle is fundamentally similar to the “speedy Xin Zhao” from the previous update but is much more effective. When jungling, Trundle will still farm as usual. However, when ganking, the playstyle’s speed advantage becomes clear thanks to the Sorcery rune tree’s Nimbus Cloak, Nimbus Cloak, Fleet Footwork, and Water Walking. Coupled with the slow from Chomp (Q) and Pillar of Ice (E) within the area of his Subjugate (W), Trundle becomes the “king of speed,” taking health or even securing kills during ganks.
In team fights, Trundle will continue to play the role of the “brute” charging in to set up Pillar of Ice to initiate fights, reducing the damage dealt by enemy carries and draining all tankiness from the opposing team’s tanks.
Twitch – AD Carry Bot Lane
As the meta for split-pushing solo laners returns, Twitch the assassin also makes a strong comeback in this update.
Like many other AD carries, Twitch can use Rain of Arrows combined with Ambush (Q) to gain a massive amount of attack speed. During the laning phase, Twitch can trade health early on if paired with a strong support champion like Thresh, Pyke, Leona, or Blitzcrank…
Once he has a few critical items, Twitch can begin his hunting spree with his support player. Once they encounter an enemy, it’s very hard for the prey to escape due to Twitch’s rapid attack speed, combined with the slow from Contaminate (W) and the long range of his ultimate, Rat-tat-tat!, making it difficult for the target to run out of Twitch’s damage range. Especially, this playstyle also helps take down enemies relying on Bloodthirster and high split-pushing without vision.