Underrated Plays: OG Z4pnu’s High Risk Playstyle
The triple-man knock up no one talks about
This article was written by Chise Alcantara.
Going in 3v1 as an assassin might be considered questionable to most people, but OBS Gaming’s Z4pnu showed all of us that with enough game knowledge and hero mastery, you can completely dominate your opponents.
Z4pnu gave fans quite a show in OBS Gaming’s first qualifiers against OBS Vanity with his flashy kills while playing Martis. Sure, everyone loves watching heroes going at it and epic fights do make for awesome highlight reels but what goes unnoticed are the little things that pro players do that get them these advantages to completely snowball the game.
A few minutes into a game, after a questionable tower dive and jungle invade by OBS Vanity, three members of the OV team were heading midlane in order to catch the minion wave crashing to the tower. Z4pnu then intercepted the three heroes and prevented them from reaching the minions while dealing a bit of damage to all of them.
We won’t take it against you if you don’t remember this moment because it quickly got overshadowed by Z4pnu’s triple kill moments later. But if we were to really look into it, we would see that these minor aggressive plays triggered a domino effect that eventually tip the entire game in favor of OBS Gaming.
The minor damage caused by Z4pnu forced the members of OBS Vanity to recall, leaving the the turtle unguarded and free for OBS Gaming to control heading into the fight. Because of the experience that was lost by all three members of OBS Vanity, they were at a disadvantage heading into the fight for the turtle because they were behind a level and a bit of gold. This why it was so easy for Z4pnu to clean up and score that triple kill.
What differentiates Z4pnu from your teammate who dives into the enemy team 1v5 and then blames everyone else for not following up is that Z4pnu knows he can make these solo plays and get away with it because he was actually in no danger when he harassed the enemy team. Z4pnu knew that he had enough time to knock the enemies up and use his three slashes to damage and re-position himself to safety.
He also took into consideration that his enemies were already at low health and mana. Prior to their failed engage at top, it was also apparent that they their skills were also on cooldown. Even though Z4pnu’s mechanics are pretty impressive, what clearly won that game was his dominating playstyle.
Being aggressive doesn’t mean being reckless. It may come as a shock for most people but assassins don’t have to always kill their target. If you can get in and out of a fray while dealing damage to your opponent, that’s great too because little advantages like those add up as seen in OBS Gaming versus OBS Vanity. An advantage could mean as little as making your opponent miss a few minions or even getting into your opponent’s’ heads and making them play more passively. These advantages are what lead to wins in high level play and the sooner you can adapt to this mentality, the sooner you’ll breeze through the ladder.
