Improving Your League of Legends Map Impact
Sometimes when playing League of Legends, you might feel like you’re on an island all by yourself. All the action is happening in another part of the map or at worst – your teammates aren’t doing so hot. Perhaps you have the classic 0/7 Yasuo on your team, and you’re starting to lose hope.
Before things turn awry, let’s take a closer look at what you can do differently in order to improve your league of legends map impact regardless of the role you’re playing.
Be Careful With Lane Management
A frequent mistake that a lot of players make is the fact that they constantly push their minion waves. While that sometimes really is a good thing to do, it should never be done by default. By pushing the wave, you’re being forced to play near your opponent’s turret thus making yourself more vulnerable to jungler ganks.
When to push:
- Push the wave if you want to get to level two or six faster than your opponent in order to get the upper hand.
- Push the wave when you’re going back to base so that by the time you come back you don’t lose out on a lot of creeps and experience.
- Push the wave when your team is going for objectives so that your opponents have a harder time to respond.
- Push the wave when you’re trying to create global pressure on the map. Your opponents can’t respond to your Baron bait if they’re forced to defend their turrets or inhibitors.
That said you should never really push the wave if you want jungler assistance or if you’re playing defensively (perhaps waiting to reach an important item or level power spike). If you push the wave, your jungler doesn’t have an opportunity to gank easily.
Ask Your Jungler For Help
Don’t be afraid to call your jungler for help even if you’re going even in lane. Sometimes a single gank can be the deciding factor when it comes to winning or losing lane, and the benefits you get from a single kill could transfer over to other stages and elements of the game as well (a successful gank on bottom lane can easily transition over to a Drake or placing down deep vision in the enemy’s bottom side of the jungle).
While your jungler won’t always be able to help out if he does come by making sure to set everything up – check nearby bushes for enemy vision and control wards, don’t push your wave, and try to get shoved in a bit so that your enemy has a longer road to travel in order to escape.
Vision control
An integral part of the game and yet an element that is mostly ignored, especially in lower elos. To simplify things – by knowing where your opponents are you can better strategize when and where to rotate. With ample vision on the map, you can know whether or not it’s safe to go for Dragon or Baron.
By having control of the Summoner’s Rift, you can plan things out in advance, and by placing vision in the opposing jungle you can know where the enemy jungler is heading.
If you know you’re safe in the lane, then there’s nothing stopping you from pushing the wave, pressuring your opponent or going for a trade. Regardless of what decide to do, you’ll be safe.
Your support cannot place enough vision so make sure to help out regardless of the role you’re playing. Control wards can make the difference between dying from a gank or making a clean escape, and they cost just 75 gold (and last until they’re destroyed).
Realize That Your Jungler Cannot Be Everywhere At Once
No one likes losing – that’s a fact, and sometimes it’s frustrating to lose lane or get the short end of a match-up. If you can’t get jungle assistance make sure to play defensively and don’t go far from your turret. All you have to do is survive and wait for mid or late game when you’re going to start playing as a five-man unit.
Sometimes it’s best if your jungler focuses on a certain lane and that lane sometimes might not be your own. Obviously, it’s a lot more logical to gank for a hyper carry in the bottom lane rather than a tank in the top lane. Depending on the meta, a fed Vayne can solo carry later on so giving her all possible resources can pay off tenfold.
That said in a solo queue environment when you don’t really know who you’re playing with it’s best to go for champions that can thrive on their own (and at best have an escape mechanism as well).
Gank When Possible
Your jungler isn’t the only player that can gank. If you’re a toplaner and you’re destroying your opponent, then you’re pushing the wave almost by default. With nothing else to do why not stroll down to mid lane and at least burn the enemy midlaner’s flash? Or coordinate with your own jungler and invade the enemy’s red buff in order to set him back even further.
Obviously, this only works if you’re winning lane but most players even when ahead don’t try to impact other lanes which is a wasted opportunity.
Help out your jungler
Your jungler can’t do everything alone, so make sure to help him out when he’s in need. Is he pinging for Dragon? Try to follow, push out the lane and help out. Is he getting attacked in the river? Stop farming and go lend a hand.
A strong, fed jungler benefits everyone and depending on the champion and meta they can take over the game more often than not.
There’s More To A Game Than Just Laning
Players sometimes focus a bit too much on the laning phase. Is it important? Absolutely. After all, you get the majority of your resources and experience though laning, but it’s not the most important thing.
You should be playing for your win condition. Certain champions have pretty weak early games, but once they stack up a couple of items and reach a certain level threshold, they become incredibly strong.
You have to realize what is the best way to play your champion and what your win condition is. Laning is just the beginning, and if you fail to start a game the way you wanted to, it’s never the end of the world as you can always come back later on through stellar individual play or good teamwork.
Objectives Over Kills
Killing your opponent is a great thing, but kills aren’t the most important thing in the game. I really can’t count the number of games that I’ve lost over the last eight years because my team was focusing more on kills rather than objectives.
Obviously, killing the entire opposing team creates a big lead by default, but if you’re investing a lot of resources into just a kill or two while the rest of your enemies are taking down a couple of turrets or Baron, then it’s not worth it. Taking objectives down is far better in almost all stages of the game – turrets not only give a fair share of gold but by destroying enemy turrets you create global pressure. Taking Dragons down gives you multiple benefits especially if you manage to stack three or four.
Taking objectives down is also a team effort. If you’re an ADC and you already took down the bottom outer turret then rotate over to top or mid and do the same. You should always coordinate with your teammates and take as much gold as quickly as possible so that when the mid or late game comes, you have a lot more resources to fight with.
League of Legends is a team game. It doesn’t matter if you win your own lane if the rest of your team is getting destroyed so if you are ahead make sure to do everything in your power to help out the rest of the team and thus improve your chances of winning.
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