About a month ago, I posted a rant about 5v5. When I mentioned that I almost never bought boots, at least twopeople were surprised. One month later, those very posts inspired me to make this discussion. Without further ado, does anyone here not buy boots, and why do you build or not build boots?
My reasoning for not building boots
As I’ve stated in my rant, I don’t build boots because all of that extra mobility is useless in fights, as the mobility doesn’t make up for the extra damage you could do with an offensive item or the extra utility a utility item can give you. The only boots I even think about buying is War Treads, and even then, I only rarely buy them as either Phinn or Ardan, as they benefit the most from it, imo. I know that you could more easily run away from fights with boots, but if you do run away, at least one enemy will focus on you, especially if you’re low on health, and at that point, everyone on the enemy team within range will likely suddenly shift priorities from jerking off with your allies or whatever they’re fighting to deleting you from the game. What can aggravate this is if everyone on your team, including you, is fleeing, because no one is holding the enemy off and are too busy being mobile target practice for the enemy. You could say that building War Treads could help in this situation, but the three problems I have with that is that the extra mobility is useless if you or your allies get stunned or slowed, your allies could run out of War Tread’s range, and that running away will most often only prolong your immediate demise. As for Junglers or Laners, having extra damage will often be in your favor, as dealing higher damage will give you a much better chance of forcing the enemy to retreat, as you are able to delete them faster than they can to you. I also believe that the extra health provided by boots is meaningless.
tl;dr, I believe that being slightly faster doesn’t mean anything if the enemy can kill you faster than you can kill them.
Now i buy at least t2 boots in 5v5 as time is the biggest currency. That slight bit of speed can mean the world of difference. In example, say we have the enemy down to 1 or 2 people left and both sides have 1 armory destroyed it 1 or 2 people can take a vain easily, but if the enemy respawns while we are in the middle it becomes a bigger task
The issue with your reasoning is that you’re only focusing on the worth of boots in a teamfight. But really, you should consider how useful boots are outside of fights as well. With extra movement speed (which is greater outside of combat), you will be able to influence more areas of the map, pressure multiple objectives, assist teammates, steal camps and control resources, and dominate the pace and direction of the game. The goal of each match isn’t to get kills or win teamfights, it’s to take objectives to destroy the crystal. Winning fights is only a means to this end, but you can win without making any kills by split-pushing perfectly. If you don’t have boots, you will most likely be chasing the play, late to engagements, and unable to put pressure in the right areas of the map at the right time.
Boots aren’t about fights, they’re about map control, which equals objectives, which equals wins. But I don’t know, maybe your macro play is pro-tier and you can predict exactly where you’ll be needed all the time, and you’re never late to anything.
You can talk about both 5v5 and 3v3, as this is just a general discussion about the pros and cons of having boots.
I’m not pro-tier material, and your points are valid, but as a solo queue player, having influence over areas of map and pressuring objectives is hard to do when no one is either willing or able to support you, especially in 5v5, where objectives are extremely important, if not vital to success, yet people are more interested in spilling the blood of the enemy and are prone to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, and even though I admit to be more interested in teamfights than taking objectives, it doesn’t change the fact that when I do want to take and/or pressure objectives, especially Ghostwing and Blackclaw, people are rarely interested taking the initiative and they only really join in when the enemy is already attempting to take the one of the two dragons.
Having more speed means you get to objectives where you can make a difference faster (or at all as no boots you probably never get there in time). That’s very important. And even ignoring that in team fights you will still get more value from boots than other items. You can’t kite, you get kited, you can’t chase or escape which means you can not finish fights. You can not position correctly which would save you much more HP than 1 more defensive item or give you a good position to do more damage than 1 more offensive item.
I think boots are even more useful in solo queue than with a full party… with a less cohesive agenda, your teammates will be spread further apart, and if you want to help them, you’ll need some movement speed.
Don’t think of it as “why won’t my teammates help me take this objective?” think of it as “how can I help my teammates accomplish what they’re trying to do?” … as frustrating as that can be sometimes. If you want to Stick together! you’ll probably want some boots.
Actually split pushing works better in solq most people in soloq think only the fight in front of them you go off in another place weavining in and out of the lane while stealthing a scout cam in the furthest location if you die or need to be back in base you can teleport boot right there and if lategame you should have enough gold to sell buy another boot and rebuy to skip recharge
i love boots.
mobility is EXTREMELY useful be it in teamfights or out of combat, it gets you from point A to point B faster (important if you’re trying to end the game after a won teamfight!), makes it a bit easier to dodge and weave in and out of battle, and it gets you back to lane quicker.
i love playing gwen because she can push her lane, move to mid and help that, and, if you pushed far enough, go to top and even help that too, and still be able to go back to your lane before any trouble (woth travel boots ofc. god bless zoomy bunny)
phinn is an example of someone who should REALLY buy boots. if he gets separated from the rest of his team in a teamfight he has to waddle over slowly hoping that someone’s still alive to save.
i also really need boots against heroes with an escape tool! journey boots is amazing for those wild goose chases
war treads is the “i dont wanna build another defense item so i guess i’ll just put some fur on my outfit to protect myself more” option. do i need to be more tanky? i’ll get war treads. it also helps my team bc we all get to zoom together!
As others have already pointed out, boots are crucial outside of teamfights, if you wanna have any impact in the game, however I also wanted to oppose your main argument, which is you’re better of with a damage or utility item during teamfights. During teamfights, and especially in 5v5, positioning is key. You have to be trying to stay on the edge of the fights, taking as little damage as possible, while maximizing your own damage output (even as bruisers). No matter how much damage, life-steal or tankiness you have, it’s absolutely worthless against damage from 5 enemies, which can quite easily happen (if your opponents have any idea what they are doing) in cases when you are immobile - without boots and all your enemies are able to get in good positions much much faster than you.
It is also worth mentioning you’d never be able to pick up kills (except cases of heavy CC put on your enemies), since even if you were winning the fight, one tap is all it would take for your opponents to disengage, with you having no way to catch up.
I think you have yet to realize the power and importance of good positioning (In no way do i say you are bad, maybe you are simply just not consciously aware of the things you do well).
The the a c combo is a nice combo when dealing with a saw or skye.
@This_Aint_Sparta_2.0 i see you play mostly brawl modes that is more understandable not to buy boots now as they are all about kills. I don’t usually buy them in brawls too. In normal matches it is a must in order to even think about backdooring or stealing enemy jungle
oh, i usually use my ult as a “oh shit im gonna die” or “time to snipe someone” card and use A after the stun duration, then keep running at them with journey boots. journey boots best offense boots 10/10
i still buy halcyon chargers on wp kes tho
imo, split pushing doesn’t do jack if the enemy team decide to risk losing Ghostwing and focus on Blackclaw, and if I were to choose to split push, I’d focus on Blackclaw, as I see Ghostwing’s buff as nice, but unnecessary, while Blackclaw gives an immediate and urgent dilemma to the enemy.
To be honest, the only reason why I’m mostly talking about 5v5 is because it’s a prime example of mobility and tactical desicions. I don’t even think about playing it anymore unless I’m in a party, and since I’ve decided to avoid 5v5 like a plague, I feel that talking about tactics related to 5v5 is as meaningful as arguing about if Goku or Superman would win in a duel.
In 3v3 you can get away with no boots for some heroes: Gwen, Reza, Lance with SSw, Koshka. But 300 Gold is cheap for what T1 boots give you. I would think a better question would be, do you buy T2 boots before finishing the rest of your build?
