Updated 8/23/2013

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The Twisted Treeline Metagame

The meta in Twisted Treeline is really flexible and situational. All of these team comps are viable at the Challenger level in TT, so whichever team comp you pick depends on what your team likes to do.You can:

• Duo lane top, solo bot lane
• Duo lane bot, solo top lane
• Two solo lanes and a jungler

Building team compositions

A lot of people have difficulty building team comps for this map. These are the characteristics that make champions strong on Twisted Treeline. Having most, if not all of these characteristics in your team, will definitely improve your team comp.

Wave Clearing: Pushing a lane is really important on 3v3 because it gives you control of the enemy jungle and altar. Basically you make your opponent choose between losing a huge wave of CS, or losing their altar and jungle camps which can result in the under-leveling their jungler (if they have one). Also, it can be used to shove your lane and gank the other lane.

High mobility: Moving around the map easily is really important because it allows you to gank other lanes, invade the enemy jungle and get back to lane quickly, and being able to engage in team fights before the enemy laner can arrive can swing a team fight.

AoE Skills: Since the map has a lot of fairly small areas, especially in the jungle, makes it really hard for the enemies to escape your AoE damage or CC. Also AoE skills can be used for both engaging and disengaging.

Strong early game: Having a strong early game can sometimes snowball you through the whole game. Once you are ahead and you have double altar control, it’s really hard for the enemy team to take back their altar since you have a team fight advantage (double altar bonuses) and if they try to fight, you just kill them, which reduces their chances of coming back late game since you will be farming both your jungle and theirs.

Ranged: Having 3 melees on your team can be really risky because you will have a hard time pushing towers. You could have both enemy inhibitors down but they can just turtle on their nexus tower and clear waves, that might result in them becoming stronger than you, especially if they have champions who scale well into the late game. I have seen many games where the losing team had three melees and they won early-mid game, but they simply could not finish the game.

Strong late game: At high ELO, players tend to make less mistakes and die less in general, which results in longer games and that’s when late game champions really shine.

Is it better to have a support or a jungler in my team ?

I think it really depends on your team play style and how experienced the player is on the jungler role or support role. If you know when and how to gank , how to read lanes, and when to invade, then it’s better to jungle. If you know how to pressure your lane, when to push, when to freeze. and when to invade enemy jungle then it’s better to support.

Should I always take smite when jungling ?

Yes, if a jungler has no smite, he can easily be invaded, and if you fall behind you will get under leveled since you will have a hard time clearing camps. If the enemy team is ahead, they will be camping your jungle and taking your camps.

How to jungle on Twisted Treeline:

Usually start on wraiths then wolves ( you will be level 2 then). Then gank or invade (It’s safer to invade when you have smite). You can also do wraith > wolves > golems then gank or invade jungle. If your solo laner takes wraith, just do golems > wolves.

What items should I start with?

Doran’s items: These are your best friends, they provide the best starting stats and give you early game boost.

Crystalline Flask: I love this item. It’s a very gold efficient item that pays itself after 5 charges and regenerates your health really quickly which can be useful in long team fights.

Spirit Stone: Safest starting item for junglers because it makes your clearing a lot faster which gives you more map pressure, since after you clear you are free to either gank or invade. Also if you fall behind due to failed ganks or doing a mistake early on, it still helps you farm up jungle camps and be useful.

Boots: A common mistake by a lot of people is buying boots first item. After the last nerf to boots, it’s not worth buying it as a starting item because it doesn’t benefit you much in lane and slows down your jungle clearing. Sometimes I run Movement Speed quintessences to be able to delay buying boots as much as I can.

GP5 Items: These items are not good on 3v3 because it just takes so much time to reach their cost efficiency and they don’t help your early game at all. If you wanted to build an item that builds from GP5 (Blackfire Torch, for example) always start with the non-GP5 parts.

Tear of the Goddess: Buying this as first item can be risky because it makes you squishy, which results in having a weaker early game, but if you can get away with it without dying early game, it can be rewarding later in the game when you finish it.

Ruby Crystal: I buy this on a few champs who don’t benefit much from doran’s items such as Kassadin in order to build it later into a Rod of Ages.

Special items in Twisted Treeline:

Blackfire Torch: This item is really strong with AP casters, especially the ones that have consistent damage or poke (Rumble, Nidalee, Zyra, etc,) as the percentage damage just shreds high HP targets.

Wooglet’s Witchcap: This item is a must on AP mages. It’s basically a Deathcap combined with a Zhonya’s Hourglass and only costs 3500.

Hextech Sweeper: This is a very cost efficient item for AP mages, as it gives you a lot of stats for a really cheap price ( 1900 gold).

Grez’s Spectral Lantern: This item can be good on junglers that auto attack and benefit from life steal a lot, but in most cases you would build the jungling items instead of this.

The Lightbringer: Really expensive for very poor stats, so it’s not really worth buying at all.

Overlord’s Bloodmail: It gives you a lot of HP, but when you hit late game, you can’t kill people in team fights very easily so you don’t benefit much from the passive. It’s also not cost efficient and there are much better options if you are looking for high HP items like Randuin’s Omen.

Sanguine Blade: On most champions, it’s not worth buying and it’s outclassed by Blade of the Ruined King. Since almost everyone builds HP mid-late game, Blade of the Ruined King will start doing more damage than this; also, the active for BOTRK is quite good for kiting melees.

Ichor of Illumination: A very cost efficient item (it costs only 500 gold) and it’s gold worth is 1000 at level 1 and 1760 gold at level 18.

Ichor of Rage: Also a very cost efficient item that costs only 500 gold. It’s gold worth is 1300 at level 1 and 2700 at level 18.

How to take and switch Vilemaw aggro

I found that a lot of 3v3 players don’t know about this and it’s really important, it  helps you take Vilemaw really early in the game and you take a lot less damage from it. With the right champions, you can take Vilemaw as early as it spawns ( at 10 mins) using this method.

Basically, what you have to do is stay as close as you can to Vilemaw on either the right or left side while your teammates stand on the opposite side so they don’t take any damage. Also, you can switch Vilemaw aggro by letting someone stand closer than you are on the other side while you take a few steps back from it.

Changelog

added “how to take and switch Vilemaw aggro” on 7/24/2013 

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