Leavers are rampant in ranked games. There is an option where the hero would be replaced by a bot in order to somehow help balance the teams. Of course, bots are easily telegraphed and their actions are severely limited. These are my observations regarding bots when you make them follow you:
- You’re the boss. They will follow you wherever you go. They will attack whoever or whatever you attack. If you initiate, they will follow up (which is even better than some players).
- If you die and they survive, they will go back to base. Even in the middle of a teamfight.
- If they’re on the base and you’re still dead, they will push a lane. They will immediately go back to you once you spawn though.
Whenever I get the option for the bot to follow me, I always let it follow. Chances are it would feed and just be abused by the opponents. Still, since it follows you around, if you play safely, it would play safely too. Actually, I’ve just won a game with a bot for a teammate.
This is a silver I game where I played WW jungle. I don’t have that much experience playing her but I just had a jungle Arthur game which I lost (yes, my jungle choices suck) terribly, so I tried her out. I’ve seen her being played lane with Leviathan so I just thought I’d just lane once my teammates start taking the jungle.
As far as I recall, the Jinnar left at level 3, while I’m at level 5. I made it follow me around while I’m clearing. I just made sure to respond to ganks since we’d have the numbers advantage anyway. We were still hardpressed as we have 2 marksmen that we need to protect. Luckily, they can teamfight at least decently even though they’re lacking in the macro department. Our Mina is pretty good too. I feel her engages made a lot of difference in teamfights. Our pet Jinnar follows up quite well. Once I go in, he’ll unleash all his skills until he’s taken down and through the chaos, our double marksmen were able to pick off our opponents. I just focused more on peeling for the marksmen instead of hunting opponents except for one fight that turned the game around. I’ve noticed that our lanes are pushing slowly while Mina was trying to split bot. I knew the opponents would respond so I quickly pinged for the brush near the enemy blue golem. Me and of course, Jinnar waited in the brush but the fucker didn’t step in the brush. Luckily, the enemy mistook it for him being out of position and tried to collapse on him. Both our marksmen were able to make it in time. Mina just had the waves crashing on the enemy tier 2 turret by then and is in position. As the enemies made their way to Jinnar, I immediately ulted and went in. I knew that if I had waited, Jinnar won’t be able to fire off his skills before dying. Luckily, Mina and the others are already in position to get to the fight and we won that teamfight.
The game described above was not the only bot experience that I had. I’ve also played with a marksman before. With marksmen bots, it is better to peel than to engage. They can actually kite and provide good damage output if given enough peel. I’ve even experienced a bot teammate getting a triple kill. It’s just crazy.
I’m just sharing this as I feel that not all games with leavers are lost causes. At the end of the day, the team with better teamwork will always win. As I’ve said before, observe, formulate, and adapt.
The Omniscientist 