Twisted Treeline has always been void of love from Riot since I've been playing with all patches being for the balance state of Summoner's Rift with Riot avoiding Treeline like a plague. However it was with this, the April fools announcement for 'League of Legends 3D' where Riot ignored one of the maps entirely in favour of Dominion and Rift. Despite Dominion seemingly being about as popular as Treeline it is riot's more favoured map for some reason and naturally Rift gets the most attention due to it being the most played.
However in my opinion Treeline is the most fun map, I'm sure many would disagree, the action is more fast paced than Rift but keeps the same basic structure, the matches are shorter so you can get easily one and a half to two matches in the time it would take you to play one Rift game. However some people claim it is hideously unbalanced with some champions who are only average on Rift being powerhouses on Treeline. Examples of some of the more powerful champions include Jax, Dr. Mundo and Yorick.
Strong champions on Treeline seem to be relatively tanky, have a good early game, maneuverability, good CC or strong abilities to 1v1. A couple of the above features on a champion tend to make them perform well on Treeline though as I said in my earlier article about the meta it is still more player skill that matters than champion selection. Though a small meta-game of two people bot lane with a solo lane top has developed and I can't say that I like it (even though more often than not I conform to it) the benefits of running a dedicated jungler with all the Treeline buffs (more on jungling below) to leave two solo lanes to get all the experience and gold. Even if you don't run a dedicated jungler it makes more sense to run two laners in top as their are more buffs in top jungle than two bot.
Speaking of the Jungle and buffs on Treeline there are more than on Rift and I will briefly run through each one:
Grez the Lizard Lord- Your standard redbuff (slow and dot) giver except actually named as opposed to Rift's Lizard Elder Grez is also slightly tougher and hits harder.
Rabid Wolf- Grants a buff that gives both attack speed and cooldown reduction however this buff lasts only one minute so you need to be careful when you pick it up not to waste it
Ghast- A slightly bigger wraith that gives a large movespeed increase (30%) like Rabid Wolf's buff this only lasts one minute so you've got to make good use of it.
Ebonmaw the Terror of Zaun- This is Treeline's equivelant of Baron, though significantly easier to take, Ebonmaw grants a large amount of global gold and a strong buff that increases all damage delt by a percentage equal to your character level.
All these buffs are very useful and it is customary if not running a jungler to have your top laner take either ghast or wolf, along with some of the smaller camps frequently whilst laning. If you are running a jungler top lane is very easy to gank anyone with a gapcloser that goes through walls can immidiately jump into the lane from almost anywhere a long the lane whilst the entrances to the lane from the jungle are all close to the turrets resulting in a hard to escape gank if caught in the middle of the lane. Taking smite to secure and steal big buffs like Ebonmaw gives the jungler another use except strong ganks and more experience, even if not running a jungler then I would still recommend trying to fit smite on one of your team members just to ensure you get those buffs. A problem with jungling on Treeline is that any blue dependant jungler will not be able to clear very quickly and it is quite a lot harder than Rift's jungle since the change making small camps give health back was not applied to Treeline (suprise suprise). However if you lane until you have a razor or wriggles your jungle clears should be fast and easy. I will be experimenting with a variety of different dedicated junglers on Treeline in the near future and hopefully documenting which ones performed well.
People tend to think Flash essential on Treeline due to all the walls that can get in the way and it helps gank, escape ganks, and chase. On the champions without built in maneuverability it pretty much is essential. Speaking of Ranked Treeline a 'meta' (using the phrase loosely at best) seems to consist of grab a variety of tanky champions or champions deemed 'OP' at Treeline send two bot, one top, ward occasionally and hope for the best. Though I'll admit my steps into ranked Treeline this season has been few and fairly poor with about an even w/l ratio last season we saw almost the same but luckily it can be countered with well chosen picks and bans (not going into detail due to my last article on the meta) and once again there is no need to conform to the metagame and play how everyone else does. Once my ranked team was quite easily beaten by a team running a dedicated jungler and a ranged AD carry, something that did not in any way conform to the metagame of Treeline and remember that due to the lack of Treeline players compared to Rift lots of options haven't been fully explored so many strong strategies may await for your team to uncover.
Well I think that's everything I wanted to say about Twisted Treeline, now back to Rift stuff...
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