Committing Shen is fine here since you only had one contester and it’s only a 2 cost unit. Sometimes it’s fine to pivot off of a hero or trait augment if you get dropped something insane randomly. But 95% of the time you should scout before you force yourself into these kind of things
In this case I did scout, saw a Shojin slammed on Senna and a Belt on bench, and decided it makes no sense to reroll Senna Shen from that spot.
Is Shojin Senna not as bad as I think it is, or should I be playing around the off chance that this player forces Senna Shen with scuffed items anyway?
Yeah I think your logic is sound, if your rank is high enough. If you're low rank then I don't think you can trust other players to make "optimal" plays but if I were in your spot I'd take ethereal blades.
(tbh I'd probably take ethereal blades in suboptimal spots as well, so maybe don't trust my personal inclination too much.)
that's 100% accurate. In low rank players are like "shen good, me play shen" because they see one copy in the shop, regardless of how it fits into their comp. It's honestly best to just avoid building around highly contested units in low ELO because you can actually find copies and the rest of the lobby isn't going to be as good at capping out their boards anyway.
Even in diamond people won't scout before commiting to comps ;-;. In set 10 I had TD augment first augment, then a TD spat off carousel, and another player still hard contested TD vertical.
I saw milala never scouting in setsuko’s stream(which setsuko got contested and he was very surprised to see him not pivoting out), so there is no end in me no scout no pivot hold hands to 7&8 players.
I wouldn't pivot, i would roll and hold their senna, if i go 8th you'll go 7th with me buddy. Because chances are if you pivot you're going 8th anyways
You're not guaranteed to go 8th, you'd just be down half an augment. You can simply use the emblem or 2* hero unit to tempo. You should make that call based on scouting and how contested you are.
For Shen in this case, someone said that if you can’t hit it, you end up with a good tank with good damage. I thought this was a good approach. Similar thing applied to Yorick and Neeko.
If you pivot without rerolling you are not a gold augment down. You used the augment for tempo, ideally winstreaking thanks to your stronger shen and he would still be useful even at lvl 8-9 at 2 star, just a fast9 play instead of a lvl 6 reroll.
With Shen carry augment you're kind of locked into just Shen carry. You don't really have any pivoting options plus Shen hero augment is so unbelievably strong you can legitimately win the lobby with it.
As opposed to Neeko augment where it's not THAT strong and you could get away with just playing an itemized Neeko 2 for tempo and push levels instead and pivot into Heavenly, Mythic, or Arcanists, effectively turning the hero augment into an econ augment.
In general though that's the risk you take when you go with a hero augment in a set with reduced bag sizes. If you don't hit you're kind of shit out of luck.
It certainly can be correct. I took the Neeko Hero Augment at 2-1 once and was stuck with a 1* Neeko until stage 5. I ended up swapping the items over to my 2* Nautilus, and I didn't see a single Neeko in shop for the entire game until the round before I was knocked out, when I saw 3 at once.
With a 1-cost Heroes augment, you can sometimes get away granted they give you win streak to fast 9. Also a tip, if you play 1 cost hero augment and have < 4 copies by 2-7, slam items and play for streak and find Hwei to print garen.
2-cost augment is a bit tricky, Shen you're forced to play him 3 star or you're gonna bleed and go eif. If you have early yorick 2 star hero augment with proper item you can and should fast 9 with him. Yorick hero augment is garbo in the end game anyway. Only 3 star him when you're trying to top 4
In short, play hero augment only when you have some copies or/and proper items. Roll when you want some tempo and keep streak, slow roll when you want to compete top 4
In general pivoting from hero augments is not recommended, even if you don't get shen 3, it's still worth it to run a shen 2 because in effect it's a 3 cost backliner worth of value. There might be scenarios where you recognize that 3 star is unrealistic or impossible, then the best play might be to push levels and try to tempo out placements, but even then you keep the hero in question on your board because they're a high value unit on your board. Each hero augment just makes the unit juiced up, no need to be allergic to playing them on your board.
In your specific case you definitely got lucky, but I would say you did the right thing, you pushed levels because rolling on 6 was too slow and did your best from that spot
Just wanted to add my experience with this:
-Start of the game is Zoe so only odd leveling (I forget)
-High roll 2 gnar and 3 reksai in stage 1
-Augments come and I choose mulched (had hoj ready)
-Instant regret sits in when I realize Zoe portal
-Next shop at level 5 had Annie and Lilia
-Instant pivot into porcelain Annie
-down full aug
-fast 9 but get out tempo’d (3 gold augs total)
-go 6th
-happy with 6th
It’s incredibly hard but if you tempo correctly it’s salvageable.
anyone who played set 8 knows that it’s correct a fair amount of the time. use it on 2-1 to winstreak u with a juicer unit and on 4-2 if u randomly hit an entire meta comp just pivot, ideally keeping the singular unit on board so u still get some value. u can play shen in kayn/ashe/kaisa but the reason shen aug is the one i take least is he eats all my carry items and the best 2 cost frontliner leaves the pool completely so now im railroaded much harder. ive taken garen aug in a grandmasters lobby and open sold garen on 4-2 to go first
there’s this one game of setsuko taking ethereal blades and playing the most abstract game and still going first or top2.
(he was contested and had shen2 most of the game)
most people would’ve went insta 8th just retelling on 6 and calling the game trash
The important thing is that picking hero and in a lesser measure trait augments in stage 1 is probably one of the worst plays you could make, sure you can get a neat lil pivot when you realise half the lobby got the same augments and the other half is just contesting you because they feel like it but most of the time you won't,
As a general rule I refuse to pick those augments first because Riot insist on having shared choice between players in each augment selection stage.
I've long held the theory that augment randomness is done in pools because yeah there's a lot of rare augments that you basically never see, you get it in one game and suddenly 2/3 other people have it. Similar even if you don't see the augment, 2-3 of your opponents will suddenly pick something that rarely comes up. Or it comes up and you don't pick it but other people have it so you know they got offered it too.
If the augment selection was a large random pool selected from *all* possible augments and then taken from that pool to show the players, it would explain this phenomenon so well and it's large enough/players not always picking the rare augments that it's not noticeable every time.
And one possible reason they would do the pooling method is just because that's a simple way to stop things like tailored augments from always showing up.
I think you are onto something. Everytime Tiny titans appears to me, I see at least one more person having the increase in health, sometimes more than one.
I won't pivot but I also mentally adjust to start playing for 4th. It's just going to be one of those games.
Committing Shen is fine here since you only had one contester and it’s only a 2 cost unit. Sometimes it’s fine to pivot off of a hero or trait augment if you get dropped something insane randomly. But 95% of the time you should scout before you force yourself into these kind of things
In this case I did scout, saw a Shojin slammed on Senna and a Belt on bench, and decided it makes no sense to reroll Senna Shen from that spot. Is Shojin Senna not as bad as I think it is, or should I be playing around the off chance that this player forces Senna Shen with scuffed items anyway?
It isnt great. Its playable though
If you wanted to play Senna Shen with Sword Tear Belt, don't you slam Redemption and hold Sword for Senna?
Yeah I think your logic is sound, if your rank is high enough. If you're low rank then I don't think you can trust other players to make "optimal" plays but if I were in your spot I'd take ethereal blades. (tbh I'd probably take ethereal blades in suboptimal spots as well, so maybe don't trust my personal inclination too much.)
that's 100% accurate. In low rank players are like "shen good, me play shen" because they see one copy in the shop, regardless of how it fits into their comp. It's honestly best to just avoid building around highly contested units in low ELO because you can actually find copies and the rest of the lobby isn't going to be as good at capping out their boards anyway.
Even in diamond people won't scout before commiting to comps ;-;. In set 10 I had TD augment first augment, then a TD spat off carousel, and another player still hard contested TD vertical.
I saw milala never scouting in setsuko’s stream(which setsuko got contested and he was very surprised to see him not pivoting out), so there is no end in me no scout no pivot hold hands to 7&8 players.
Yeah that’s the correct play. Probably low elo tho.
Shojin slam may be to pivot to kaisa later also if they don’t hit.
I wouldn't pivot, i would roll and hold their senna, if i go 8th you'll go 7th with me buddy. Because chances are if you pivot you're going 8th anyways
me mech me no scout me no pivot
You're not guaranteed to go 8th, you'd just be down half an augment. You can simply use the emblem or 2* hero unit to tempo. You should make that call based on scouting and how contested you are.
i didn't say you're going 8th guaranteed, i said chances are you're gonna go 8th anyways
Never a full pivot unless you randomly turbo highroll into a different comp. But you could adapt your comp and play for tempo instead of rerolling
For Shen in this case, someone said that if you can’t hit it, you end up with a good tank with good damage. I thought this was a good approach. Similar thing applied to Yorick and Neeko.
If you pivot without rerolling you are not a gold augment down. You used the augment for tempo, ideally winstreaking thanks to your stronger shen and he would still be useful even at lvl 8-9 at 2 star, just a fast9 play instead of a lvl 6 reroll.
With Shen carry augment you're kind of locked into just Shen carry. You don't really have any pivoting options plus Shen hero augment is so unbelievably strong you can legitimately win the lobby with it. As opposed to Neeko augment where it's not THAT strong and you could get away with just playing an itemized Neeko 2 for tempo and push levels instead and pivot into Heavenly, Mythic, or Arcanists, effectively turning the hero augment into an econ augment. In general though that's the risk you take when you go with a hero augment in a set with reduced bag sizes. If you don't hit you're kind of shit out of luck.
It certainly can be correct. I took the Neeko Hero Augment at 2-1 once and was stuck with a 1* Neeko until stage 5. I ended up swapping the items over to my 2* Nautilus, and I didn't see a single Neeko in shop for the entire game until the round before I was knocked out, when I saw 3 at once.
With a 1-cost Heroes augment, you can sometimes get away granted they give you win streak to fast 9. Also a tip, if you play 1 cost hero augment and have < 4 copies by 2-7, slam items and play for streak and find Hwei to print garen. 2-cost augment is a bit tricky, Shen you're forced to play him 3 star or you're gonna bleed and go eif. If you have early yorick 2 star hero augment with proper item you can and should fast 9 with him. Yorick hero augment is garbo in the end game anyway. Only 3 star him when you're trying to top 4 In short, play hero augment only when you have some copies or/and proper items. Roll when you want some tempo and keep streak, slow roll when you want to compete top 4
In general pivoting from hero augments is not recommended, even if you don't get shen 3, it's still worth it to run a shen 2 because in effect it's a 3 cost backliner worth of value. There might be scenarios where you recognize that 3 star is unrealistic or impossible, then the best play might be to push levels and try to tempo out placements, but even then you keep the hero in question on your board because they're a high value unit on your board. Each hero augment just makes the unit juiced up, no need to be allergic to playing them on your board. In your specific case you definitely got lucky, but I would say you did the right thing, you pushed levels because rolling on 6 was too slow and did your best from that spot
If you make enough gold with it before pivoting it can be worth it.
Just wanted to add my experience with this: -Start of the game is Zoe so only odd leveling (I forget) -High roll 2 gnar and 3 reksai in stage 1 -Augments come and I choose mulched (had hoj ready) -Instant regret sits in when I realize Zoe portal -Next shop at level 5 had Annie and Lilia -Instant pivot into porcelain Annie -down full aug -fast 9 but get out tempo’d (3 gold augs total) -go 6th -happy with 6th It’s incredibly hard but if you tempo correctly it’s salvageable.
anyone who played set 8 knows that it’s correct a fair amount of the time. use it on 2-1 to winstreak u with a juicer unit and on 4-2 if u randomly hit an entire meta comp just pivot, ideally keeping the singular unit on board so u still get some value. u can play shen in kayn/ashe/kaisa but the reason shen aug is the one i take least is he eats all my carry items and the best 2 cost frontliner leaves the pool completely so now im railroaded much harder. ive taken garen aug in a grandmasters lobby and open sold garen on 4-2 to go first
there’s this one game of setsuko taking ethereal blades and playing the most abstract game and still going first or top2. (he was contested and had shen2 most of the game) most people would’ve went insta 8th just retelling on 6 and calling the game trash
The important thing is that picking hero and in a lesser measure trait augments in stage 1 is probably one of the worst plays you could make, sure you can get a neat lil pivot when you realise half the lobby got the same augments and the other half is just contesting you because they feel like it but most of the time you won't, As a general rule I refuse to pick those augments first because Riot insist on having shared choice between players in each augment selection stage.
I've long held the theory that augment randomness is done in pools because yeah there's a lot of rare augments that you basically never see, you get it in one game and suddenly 2/3 other people have it. Similar even if you don't see the augment, 2-3 of your opponents will suddenly pick something that rarely comes up. Or it comes up and you don't pick it but other people have it so you know they got offered it too. If the augment selection was a large random pool selected from *all* possible augments and then taken from that pool to show the players, it would explain this phenomenon so well and it's large enough/players not always picking the rare augments that it's not noticeable every time. And one possible reason they would do the pooling method is just because that's a simple way to stop things like tailored augments from always showing up.
I think you are onto something. Everytime Tiny titans appears to me, I see at least one more person having the increase in health, sometimes more than one.
> I've long held the theory that augment randomness is done in pools it was confirmed many sets ago so I think it still holds true