Sejuani has always been known as a jungler in League of Legends. With a kit dealing percent health damage to monsters with decent tankiness and crowd control, she makes a perfect case for sitting in the jungle, farming up, and roaming the map to help laners out.
Her synergy with melee champions can make her one of the strongest duo-laners in the game in the right hands, however. She had all the crowd control and tankiness to play like an engage support, but lacked the meta to thrive down in bot lane.
That meta has finally come. Sejuani support was dusted off in the LCK today by Damwon Gaming as they stormed over Sandbox. The top of the table clash saw the two rookie teams duke it out, with Damwon needing some innovative strategies to outwit their opponents.
Cho “BeryL” Geon-hee took the Freljordian princess down bot alongside Sin “Nuclear” Jeong-hyeon’s Yasuo. Yasuo has seen some play down bot lane over the last 12 months, although he has slowly been phased out as marksmans have been buffed. With Sejuani though, Yasuo becomes a lane monster, with a perfect partner to help him lock down targets and nuke them with ease.
Against Sandbox’s safe lane of Ezreal and Yuumi, Nuclear and BeryL looked for every window to punish them. They caught out Cho “Joker” Jae-eup’s Yuumi out at level three, with Sejuani landing first blood. Damwon’s bot lane then snowballed the game out of control, and once Nuclear picked up a double kill 10 minutes into the game, the Yasuo was well and truly online.
It wasn’t just the innovative bot lane that gave Damwon the tools to succeed. Lee Sin in the jungle gave Yasuo a knockback in the late game to use his Last Breath on.
Camille and LeBlanc in the solo lanes opened up a 1-3-1 lane assignment, forcing Sandbox into the choice of taking bad fights in the mid lane to try and get back in the game, or turtling in base and losing all their map control.
Sandbox often took bad fights, and Damwon punished them for it around objectives. As they ran into the base with a 16,000 gold lead at 25 minutes, Sandbox fell on their sword as Damwon took the game one victory.
This game was the perfect example of how Sejuani support works, and why it works.
Sejuani’s E, Permafrost, stacks when nearby melee allies lands auto attacks on an enemy. Yasuo can dash on top of the enemy, auto them a few times, and Sejuani can get the stun off. Sejuani’s Q, Arctic Assault, also knocks up enemies it hits, meaning Yasuo can engage off the back of it using Lash Breath.
Sejuani herself has a passive defensive steroid, which can help her take extended skirmishes in the early game. While a poke lane like Ezreal-Yuumi might be able to nullify its effects, Sejuani can abuse their short range and long cooldowns in the early game to get a lead.
Sejuani scales well with a lot of support items too. Because she primarily scales off health, getting an early Knight’s Vow, Eye of the Remnants, or Redemption is really strong. Zeke’s Convergence gives her more slows to use in fights, allowing her to lock down more targets. Her inert tankiness, and her ability to scale well with popular support items, means that Sejuani can be a viable pick down bot.
The one thing a Sejuani lane relies on is a melee carry, however. Champions like Yasuo or Renekton in bot lane have good synergy with Sejuani, but she struggles when laning with ranged champions. This is because it becomes a lot harder to stack her Frost, thereby making it harder to lock down enemies.
While the pick is a bit out there, Sejuani support has its merits. Given her strength in the current meta, as well as Yasuo’s, expect to see the unlikely duo demolishing down bot over the next few weeks.
