Spring bloom

Preseason changes have been live now for a good bit of time and while champion updates are still flowing through, the map itself has started to settle in with the new living jungle changes. The changes come with a revamp of jungle camps and the experience distribution that I will not be touching on here in this article. Lolking’s Shakarez does a good job at underlining the overall changes.

My focus will be on the Scryer plant; a plant that seems to have gone under the radar as most drew interest over the explosive blast cone and the sustaining honey-fruit. Both of these plants can impact the game in a fairly noticeable way, be it escaping a charging udyr or keeping topped up after a heavy trade These traits are hard to ignore, and so naturally has overshadowed what I believe the be the most game changing plant moving into season 7.

What is Scryer

Scrying plant is a scouting tool that gives whichever team triggered the plant a 3300 range long field-of-view of any champions and wards in it’s path. The effects of the plant lasts for a whopping 12 seconds, keeping vision of minions, monsters and enemy wards for the full duration while losing vision of enemy champions after 3–4 seconds.

The warning stem spawns between 2–2:30 minutes into the game, and will spawn in both quadrants of the jungle in the section nearest to the sidelane. The plant will then fully bloom a minute after it’s warning and will stay on the rift till activated. Once activated the timer will reset as it’ll take 5–6.5 minutes for the next plant to come in bloom. The only limitation for it’s next respawn being that it can’t spawn in the same quadrant as the other existing scryer. So there should always be four existing or respawning scrying plant in play on the rift for both teams to contest.

What does it mean for competitive

On the road to the World Championships much after standard lanes were enforced, a team’s early game strength was largely dictated by how much priority a lane had over their opposition and how it pooled over to other matchups. A key example for this would be in Ashe & Karma. A combination of Karma’s inner-flame and Ashe’s Volley can assure a shove in most situations depending on matchup. A blue team Karma would then use the free time awarded by guiding the wave into the enemy tower to soft-scout the enemy blue buff so to catch information on the whereabouts of the enemy jungler. Which then brings side selection back under a scope and how it’ll impact strategy going into a game.

Side Selection and Strategy

First plant

The first plant will spawn in enemy blue buff entrance from 3:00–3:30. Scouting it’s exact timing will be necessary so it does not get denied, so level 1 soft invades for trinket placements to catch the warning stem’s 2:00 to 2:30 start will be required to reliably get control of scryer early. Like previously mentioned blue team should be able to utilize their duo lane in contesting the enemy 2nd quadrant’s plant. It’s a soft invade and if uncontested you’re given vision of blue and wolf camp without having to stick your head too deep into the woods. With this information you can get a clearer idea of where the enemy jungler is and what to expect. Best case scenario being that a support is able to stall blue’s take or wrestle for a steal w/ ally jungle attention. 12 seconds of additional vision of blue while it’s been dragged into the camp’s bush will cause some pain.

For red side, duo lane will not be in a similar position. They should be looking to deny scryer plants in their blue, or make use of it to clear river brush near bot lane or near mid since the range is vast enough to reach as far as bot lane tribush. The trade off is that top lane will have an advantage if they were to have early control. So if red team decides to prioritize top lane in pick/ban they can pool that advantage into top side scryer control mirrored to blue team’s control opposite of the map.

From that point forth

Every 5–6 minutes after the first scryer plant, mid control becomes necessary to branch out and continue early pressure. Sections nearest to mid will start to spawn these plants so any additional tracking and counter-jungling will start to work through mid. It’ll become imperative as the meta develops around these plants to keep mid shove, and so laners much like Kassadin, Vladamir and Katarina will find themselves on sidelanes, swapped with their duolane if matchups don’t go their way so that they can have a chance to contest for vision.

From this point sightstone and trinket wards will do it’s job in deep tracking and the focus will pivot towards utilizing plants to cleansweep river and jungle for further control and even to pluck potential flank wards when looking towards Dragon, Baron or simply setting up for siege on a side tower.

Once outer and inner turrets have cleared up, unless the teams have identified a clear siege composition the focus will center around baron and elder dragon as previously mentioned. The 12 seconds of clear sight will become a key point from this point forth as the team that has secured baron/elder vision will need to deny scryer behind behind the pit. There’s use in using that plant to further secure vision, but with finished upgraded red trinkets and control wards the value comes solely in denying it. If a defending team is able to use it to gain vision on the epic monster for the assured 12 seconds that can do a lot to stall out the objective as it’s continuously dealing damage, or perhaps open up an opportunity for a steal.

Currently the only competitive league’s on preseason patch are European National leagues that pool into EUCS Spring Qualifiers so there hasn’t been good examples of these plants being abused, and currently junglers are coming out having cleared well before the 3:30 minute mark so the early priorities still seem in question. With that being noted, I will be interested in the early statistics that come from a Scryer control rate and how often we see teams find success in prioritizing the plant early and late.