League of Legends: Twisted Treeline

For a variety of reasons which I may get into in a future post my team has started playing ranked games on the 3v3 map in League of Legends: Twisted Treeline. There are a number of key differences between this map and Summoner's Rift (the default one) and I wanted to muse a little about those differences and how they might impact champion selection strategy.

The first change is that the map is significantly smaller. I decided to test out exactly what the difference is by timing how long it took to walk in as straight a line as possible in each dimension on each map.

SR- 39 seconds horizontally, 39 seconds vertically, 62 seconds diagonally

TT - 36 seconds horizontally, 21 seconds vertically, 43 seconds diagonally

So the usable area of the map is a little smaller east to west and about half as big north to south. This means 'global' abilities which cover the entire map are less potent since they're cutting down less distance. Summoner teleport, Gangplank's ult, etc all feel less powerful. On the flip side abilities where large but not infinite distances matter should get better. Twisted Fate and Ziggs have ults with a huge range and they're probably always going to be able to connect with them on TT while they have to walk a bit to use them on SR.

The second change is the map is 3v3 instead of 5v5. This means massive area of effect abilities are devalued relative to single target abilities. Amumu's ult is awesome because it shuts off 5 people for 2 seconds each. If it can only hit 3 people it's still pretty good but not as fantastic. On the flip side single target heavy damage characters should be better.

Dedicated healers should be worse since you're giving up a larger percentage of your team's damage in order to get them. Self healing, on the other hand, gets better when the other team can do less damage to you. Someone like Dr Mundo could be unkillable with 2 or 3 people on him! In a 5v5 game he's not great because you get the whole team to focus him or no one hits him and his massive healing doesn't really help out. Warwick seemed somewhat similar though not nearly as extreme.

The third change is in the number of turrets on the map. In SR each team has 11 turrets across 3 lanes and typically they all have to get killed before you win the game. On TT each team has only 5 turrets in only 2 lanes. Again they'll all tend to get killed but it still means a lot less pushing to get a win. Winning a team fight generally nets you a turret kill and you only need half as many of those to win at TT than at SR! This means games should take less time to complete which means champions which start weak but build into a strong late game feel worse. If the game never reaches the same 'late game' then that champion will simply never be strong at all. By contrast champions which start off strong and then tail off seem a lot better on TT.

The fourth change is a substantial rework of the neutral monsters in the jungle. Perhaps the biggest change is the complete lack of a blue buff. SR has two blue buffs, one for each team, and teams will often choose their junglers and caster champions based on the existence of this buff. It gives a huge mana regeneration buff which is what allows some champions to function. I can't imagine Amumu killing at anything resembling a reasonable speed without access to blue buff, for example. Dragon and Baron got combined into a single monster that's between the two in difficulty, grants global xp, and gives a 1% damage per level buff globally. There's a single red buff monster that spawns incredibly close to the bottom lane making it a bit of a rsiky proposition to go for early. Beyond that there are 6 smaller camps which actually spawn randomly between two options. There are 3 tiers of camps and the highest one has two new short term buffs. One gives 30% movement speed and the other gives 20% attack speed and 10% cooldown reduction. Both are useful but not game changing like blue buff.

With all these changes should you even have a jungler in 3v3? It's a similar question in 5v5 where if one team has a jungler and the other doesn't then you get a big advantage in terms of available gold/experience for your team but have the disadvantage that one of your team has to fight 1 against 2. Being able to take and use the blue and red buffs in the standard game are so strong that the metagame has evolved to the point where every team has a jungler and you just have a second 1 against 1 lane. 3v3 so far has been different in that we have yet to play against a team with a jungler. There's no blue buff to control and the single red buff is right beside a lane so buff control isn't a reason to run a jungler in TT. On the other hand the experience and gold advantages still exist assuming you have someone capable of surviving 1 against 2. Even if you don't have someone jungling it still feels like having someone running smite helps a lot. I've only played a dozen games or so and already I've stolen both dragon and red buff from the other team with smite.

Lately we've been running a jungler and it feels like we're a little weaker in the early game (the 1v2 lane has to play really passively until they get pushed back to their turret) and often fall behind in player kills while staying ahead in creep kills. Then in the mid game we seem to surge forward and come back. I'm sure there's more going on than just having a jungler of course but it feels strong.

A fifth change between the maps is how mazey TT is. There are trees and cliffs all over the place making it take longer to move from one spot to another than it would seem. Unless you're playing a champion that can ignore walls in which case you have a ton more mobility than other champions. The first game I played on the map I was Tryndamere and his ability to spin through walls was huge. He's been banned in pretty much every game since but it still seemed like a really strong ability to have. Shen, Kassadin, Ziggs? Can they make it through the same walls I wonder? We played one game against a Fiddlesticks who was ulting over the walls from seemingly nowhere which seemed pretty good.


Last night we played 4 games with the team Ahri, Sion, Warwick and won them all. Ahri slots in as the high damage early on character and takes a 1v1 lane. She has a good CC ability in her charm and has an ult which allows escaping from 3 man ganks which seem particularly prevalent in TT. Sion goes 1v2 and tries to survive by farming at his turret with his shield. He also has a good CC ability with his stun. Warwick hangs out in the jungle giving the team the early experience advantage and seems well suited to the map in general. His attack speed buff makes for relatively quick turret destruction after a team fight victory or even if the other team is just out of position. His ult destroys a single target which is stronger in 3v3 than in 5v5. And he has a lot of self healing which also works well in a smaller format. I'm still building manamune (especially with no blue buff on the map) and it seems to be working out fine.

I am curious about building a full pushing team. Run someone like Heimerdinger and just keep the pressure on non-stop at a turret. You'd probably need someone with a taunt to protect him so maybe Shen who can also split-push and then ult in? He could also jungle maybe? And then round out the team with someone who does physical damage and can be a tanky pusher? Shyvanna maybe? Nocturne? Warwick even? Irelia? Tristana? Maybe skip the physical damage and just run Morgana in one lane and Heimerdinger in the other? You'd want wards to make sure you don't get ganked by 3 so maybe Teemo's mushrooms? (Or just actually shell out the bucks for wards...)

I'm really liking the map. The games are quicker and it's enough different from the standard game to be interesting while still having enough in common to have skill transferal.