Teamfights, Power Plays, Map Awareness & Actively Losing by Getting Caught

After finishing a game just now, I am struck by a general ignorance, even among good players, of exactly how devastating getting caught out is.  Any player worth their ranking knows it is bad, and yet we still do it.  Here, I shall examine how it happens, why it happens, and why it completely ruins your game, then discuss how to reduce the chances of losing the game for your team.

Above all things, League of Legends is a team-based game.  Everyone has played with some over-hormoned tween who, after losing a team fight or some such, claims that they want to '1v1' you.  Pretty much every time, I laugh out loud.  Outside of a few champions--notably the Assassin class--few are balanced for one on one fights.  Moreover, the smallest game size playable outside of custom games is 3v3.  League is won and lost by teams of five or three champions synergizing well together.  In the case of Summoner's Rift, it takes five players to win the game.  If one of your players is AFK or disconnects or is so far behind that they are inconsequential, chances are good that you will lose.  Late in a game, a team that is 4v5 is going to get pushed and lose inhibitors or even the game.

When you get caught and get killed, you put your team down a player for no reason.  This can be getting caught while warding, being over pushed, roaming the enemy (or even your own!) jungle, or just being grossly out of position in your own lane.  Dying for no reason is considerably different than dying for a reason.  Trading champions is part of the game, and a support going down so that their ADC can kill the enemy ADC is, in fact, not losing out on the exchange but coming out ahead.  In chess, sacrificing pieces to force your opponent into a no-win situation is called a Combination, and this is quite literally the heart and soul of the game.  In League, whenever a champion goes down, you should be thinking to yourself 'why'.  Unless a good answer comes up, then the player probably got caught.

By and large, tight play in League of Legends boils down to winning strategic team fights: Baron, Dragon, Tower / Inhibitor pushes, all-mids.  In order to win a team fight, a side must concentrate their firepower into as small of a space as possible, both in terms of area on the map (ie the location of the fight) and specific targets (the ADC or AP mid first, for example) while trying to deny the enemy the ability to do the same.  This necessary concentration of firepower is why champions like Amumu and Malphite get banned every game; their ultimates make concentrating as a team go from an advantage to a fatal mistake.  

After the draft, there is no way to influence who will show up to a fight other than relying on your opponents to make mistakes.  If a champion is split pushing far away from an impending team fight, then congratulations, you just found yourself a 4v5.  The only way to actively produce these kinds of imbalances is to hunt down enemy champions that are isolated and kill them, producing a power play.

Probably the most important aspect of getting caught is map awareness.  This is a very general term that is bandied about without much meaning--bad players will constantly rag on others about their 'map awareness', when something else is equally to blame.  Map awareness is the ability to read into the situation, given data available, and make intelligent decisions.  This is much more than just looking at the minimap from time to time (which I highly suggest you do).  It is knowing the current state of the game, which lanes are pushed, which towers are down, what the matchups are in lanes and what that means for roaming, what the habits of the jungler have been, what locations are warded and which ones are not.  Looking at the minimap is just one source of information to base decisions on.

The longer the unseen, fog-of-war route to your location, the greater the possibility that an enemy champion is somewhere in the darkness, hunting you.  This means that top and bottom lanes, after their towers are down, can consider the jungle on their flank to be teeming with enemy champions at all times.  Whenever a champion is missing from the minimap, unless you have a reason to assume otherwise (you just saw them leave the other side of the map), believe that they are coming for you.  The direct counter for this is to ward. Derived from this example, one sees how incredibly important it is to ward your jungle after your tower has come down: you take away the advantage of being able to appear unnoticed.

The farther ahead a champion is, in CS, kills, lane position, or any combination of these, the more valuable they are as a target.  This increases your risk and exposure accordingly.  Your enemies will expend more time and effort (summoner skills, ultimates etc.) to secure your kill than you have to counter.  Doing well in your lane does not always mean that you are doing well overall (well, it often does, but that is another post), and it is incredibly easy to push too hard, too far, too fast, and expose yourself to massive risk.  In converse to the above example, pushing down the enemy tower can create the same dangerous jungle situation, but far worse as it is on the opponent's half of the map.

Later in the game, players will push farther and farther out--the towers are gone and the routes are longer by necessity--and a split push can be a winning strategy.  Split pushing is a way of breaking down the fundamental order of team fights.  A team that does not concentrate their firepower can achieve strategic advantages in the larger game, but does so at great risk.  When setting up a split push, if the enemy team reads the play soon enough, they can respond by going for the lone pusher and taking them out of the play, then move in for an advantaged team fight which they know to be in their favor.  When split pushing, try not to tip your hand until the enemy team has committed to their defense or to a team fight.

Players are often caught while warding, especially at magnetic, team-fight-centric locations like Dragon or Baron, and to a lesser extent the buffs.  Good players lead their movement towards the enemy jungle or baron by placing wards.  I can not emphasize this enough.  Good players begin warding before they approach an unwarded, dangerous location, and investigate bushes with wards from a distance.  They do not face check.  One of the constants about Baron, and to a lesser extent Dragon, is that they require a majority team presence, especially an ADC, and so approaching them means you are possibly approaching a concentration of the enemy team.  Finding this out too late will result in an unwarranted death, a power play for the enemy team, and probably a lost Baron buff or tower / inhibitor.

Good players focus their team fights on strategic locations.  This validates the above example: good teams will gather up and then move as a unit into Baron.  Other strategic locations are towers and inhibitors.  All too many times, I see teams standing out ahead of their towers or inhibitors, somewhat out in a lane, gearing up for a team fight.  Only if you are ahead (and if you are ahead, why are you fighting at your own tower / inhibitor?) can you take such risks.  If the enemy team is going to push into your tower, defend at the tower.  Don't worry about a wave of creeps; the gold lost from not farming is nothing compared to the 300 gold bounty, plus the power-play that may lead to a lost tower, 750 gold to the enemy team, for a total of over a thousand gold lost.

Aggressiveness wins team fights, but it also loses them.  Aggressive players pressure their opponents and seize the initiative, forcing their enemies into bad situations or into making poor choices.  Bad players go too far, either in depth of the team fight or distance chased, and in effect put themselves in bad situations by making poor choices.  Both instances, a player isolates themselves and makes for easy prey.  Any time you are isolated and killed in this way, you are handing your opponents a power play and, if they are good, a strategic step of the game.  Being focused down in this way is 'getting caught' just like overpushing a lane is getting caught.  The margin of error can be very slim: an opponent can fall back into unwarded bushes, use the time to let their cooldowns reset, let you close the gap, then burst you down.  On a larger scale, every moment you spend chasing gives the enemy team that much more time to react to where you are on the map, and you will soon find yourself at a serious disadvantage.  ProtatoMonster's top 5 plays are usually replete with these kinds of moments.

So, in summary:

DO!

- ward the jungle once a tower goes down  

- split push only when the enemy team has committed  

- lead into Baron with wards

- check the minimap constantly

- know the matchups and lane phases

- fight at rather than near strategic objectives

- concentrate your firepower as a team by being near each other

DO NOT!

- isolate yourself by diving unsupported

- over chase

- face check dangerous locations

- defend towers outside of their firing radius

- buff steal when champions are missing / the jungle is unwarded

- farm instead of join team fights

Go out there and git some.

How Farming Loses Games

There are only a few objective, post-game metrics that provide data on how a game went.  The game summary screen can show you a plethora of data neatly displayed on little bar graphs, most of which tell you very little about the game.  Perhaps the most important metric after a game is Gold Earned.  Here, you see what team and which players managed to get ahead in the economy and in the team fights.

Rarely do you see a winning team out earned.

The major contribution to this, earned throughout the course of the game, is Creep Score.  CS is one of the few parts of the game that a player can improve on uncontested.  They can go to empty lanes, or an empty jungle, and farm.

Re-read those two sentences.

Empty lanes.  Empty jungle.  Uncontested.

Good teams make sure that there are no empty lanes, the jungle is cleared or crawling with champions on the hunt, and that the enemy team can not get any farm without putting themselves at risk.

Like most problems that come up in League, this one has a strategic expression and a tactical aspect.

Strategically, the impetus to farm is what splits teams up after winning a team fight and nullifies the most significant gain: consolidating a win with Dragon, Baron, Turrets or stealing buffs.  We have all seen it.  A team fight mid leaves two or three players alive and, rather than looking at the map and thinking aggressively, 'what can we take away from our enemies to pressure them', they choose the 'safe' bet and go farm.  These kinds of decisions directly lead to losses.

I played a Solo Queue game over the weekend and was matchmade with some real cowboys, total individualists.  We won several key team fights--somehow!--but never consolidated them.  The game went on for over 65:00 before we finally locked it up after the enemy team over pushed.  Multiple times earlier, starting at around 23:00, my team had easy shots at Dragon or a Tier 1 tower.  By 50:00, we were unable to take down top or bottom lane inhibitor turrets because Tier 1 towers were still standing.  Somehow, in 50:00 of gameplay, despite winning a team fight at baron, we neither got Baron nor took the top tower.  Same story with bottom lane.  Each and every time, champions ran off to whatever lane to farm so that they could complete their builds.  We almost lost, and more importantly, failed to win, a game over and over.

Tactically, the same passive desire to farm creates lane stasis.  If both parties are more concerned with farming than with killing their opponent or winning their lane--gaining freedom of movement to assist other lanes and help them win--then it is a race to see who decides to go on the offensive first.  Often, the jungler is the deciding factor.

As a case study, consider support champions like Leona and Blitzcrank.  Both have excellent initiations, strong CC, decent defenses, and high mobility.  Compared to Sona or Soraka, though, they have zero sustain, and offer their lane partner very little in the way of buffs or benefits.  The key to Leona and Blitzcrank is that they are able to assist their ADC in becoming aggressive to a point that the other lane can not deal with it and either falls back or gets killed.

But, and this is a huge but, this strategy relies on close timing and coordination between the Support and ADC.  As with any gambit, the risk is amplified by reward or defeat.  It takes only one failed initiation and death to make your lane start losing.  The risk is great.  Similarly, it takes one good initiation and kill to make your ADC start to snowball.

The most significant factor in the success of this strategy, after the landing of key skillshots on the part of Leona or Blitzcrank or Shen, is the ADC immediately engaging forcefully and effectively.  The fact that Corki, Ezreal and Graves all have ways to dash forward and exploit a strong initiation is just one of the many reasons why these three champions are preeminent competitive ADCs.

An ADC that is sitting deep in the pocket, staring at creep health bars, totally oblivious of a strong initiation or momentary advantage, is going to find their lane lost despite their 'best' efforts.  Similarly, an ADC that does not look up from those creep health bars and consider how to engage in effective harass is going to constantly wonder why their aggressive support hasn't gotten aggressive yet.

Put simply, the ADC sets the tempo by harassing.  If the ADC sets a lazy, passive, farm-centric tempo, they need to be paired with a support that is designed for that: Sona or Soraka.

Lane based initiations are extremely risky, and should be undertaken with great care and always on the point of advantage.  The key elements of this equation are:

• HP advantage from harass
• Enemy out of position
• Enemy momentary solo in lane
• Enemy lacking wards, letting you get into an extremely aggressive position
• Friendly jungler ready to assist
• Friendly champion position

The more of these factors you have, the better your chances of locking in a kill.  The next time you are Supporting or ADC, keep these factors in the front of your mind.  Name them.  Look for them.  Notice when they happen and why.  Find out what you can do to force them into being.

When you do this, you are seizing the initiative and forcing the other team to fight on your terms.  He who dictates the terms of an engagement and has the initiative is likely to win.

The Jungler is the Real MVP

Competitive games trend towards equilibrium.  Any competitor knows that success is generally found in the aftermath of daring, of risk, and is the reward for exposing yourself to defeat.  In League of Legends, highly competitive play often produces very evenly matched lanes.  Action typically comes in short, explosive bursts, where a champion takes advantage of a sudden opening.

Everyone knows this basic dynamic.  You 'play it safe' in your lane: focusing on farming first, then staying alive, with harassment at a distant third.  By trying to avoid making mistakes like being caught out of position, summoners are trying to eek along until an advantage presents itself.

The Jungler provides this advantage.  Junglers make lanes win.

Let me repeat that.  Junglers make lanes win.

As discussed earlier, a 'won' lane is a lane wherein champions are able to leave their lane and move about the map freely.  In the military, this idea is referred to as 'freedom of action', or the ability to actively make choices rather than re-act to what an opponent does.  Freedom of action is highly sought after in war, as it is the stuff of seizing and holding the initiative.

Hit 'em Early

A good jungler makes their presence known in a game as early as possible.  This is accomplished by:

• stealing a buff
• counter jungling creep camps
• level 2 red buff lane gank
• level 2 counter-jungle gank
• level 4 lane gank

Some champions, such as Lee Sin or Rengar, can accomplish very early, very effective ganks, often gaining first blood.  Other champions, such as Maokai, are usually better off waiting until level 4.  Regardless of the champion, there is a point at which that champion is capable of effectively entering a lane and possibly producing a kill.  A good jungler makes sure that the very moment their champion is capable of a gank, they get into a lane.

Hit 'em Often

A good jungler also never stops roaming the map to pressure the enemy team.  A jungler that is just moving from creep camp to creep camp on the friendly half of the map is failing as a jungler.  Everything that you do in a game should be for a reason.  Unless you are behind or there are no other, better opportunities, you should not be killing creep camps in your half of the jungle.

By 15:00 game time, no one hates a player more than their 0-0-1 Jungler--the guy that has done nothing of note except poke one champion.  Don't be that guy.  Always be on the hunt for kills and assists.

Choose Your Ground Wisely

Anyone that has played a jungler knows that ganking a pushed out lane is usually a waste of time.  Due to this simple fact, a good jungler must keep a weather eye out on the mini map, often clicking over to view a lane.  What phase is the lane in?  Will the creeps soon reset at the enemy tower?  Is the momentum swinging back towards a friendly tower?  What is the health of the friendly and enemy champions in the lane?  Without good situational and strategic awareness of the game, a bad jungler will miss out on many good ganking opportunities.

Go Where You are Most Needed

Similar to the above question of wisely choosing the time and place of your gank, a good jungler knows what lanes need help and which ones do not.  A good jungler considers what lane will win with the lowest amount of effort, and begins there.

This seems counter intuitive to a lot of players.  I think that many players consider the primary goal is to gank the hardest pressed lanes to relieve pressure.  This is indeed a task for a jungler, but it is a reactive one which cedes the initiative to the other team.  Trying to make a losing lane stop losing is not as effective as making another lane win.

The best candidates for early ganks to produce a winning lane are Solo Mid and Solo Top.  Both lanes benefit enormously from even just one or two kills, meaning that in just a couple of stops, you can turn an even match up into a total domination.  Having a Solo Top or Solo Mid get an early tower and start to wander the map, counter jungling and ganking other lanes is far more likely to produce a win than just trying to keep your 0-2 Solo Top in the game.

Conclusion

We've all played games where the jungler is playing PvE, doing nothing but farming creeps for the first 12:00 or 14:00.  Rarely do these games end with a win.  Next, we've seen games where the jungler fails to gank top or mid lanes.  Soon, the friendly ADC bottom will have no lane to farm in, since farming will overpush and leave them over extended.  All the while, the enemy mid that just got a few ganks is roaming around killing everything.  Again, a loss.

No where on the map is there more responsibility, a higher requirement of strategic planning and knowledge, or more precise timing so vital.

Next game that you jungle in, take a moment while loading in to consider the match ups solo mid and solo top.  Figure out who will combo well with your champion and make them snow-ball as early as possible.  Advise them to be aggressive and start ganking lanes or taking enemy jungle camps.  Do the same.

You may just win.

Tips for Teamwork & Success

All team games, from baseball to League, have a range of social intangibles that influence the game.  Some teams handle the pressure well, while others crack and fail.  The compulsive statistics culture of US pro sports shows this very easily: what teams score touchdowns in the Red Zone--the 20 yards before the goal line--shows that some teams get it done while others struggle.  Part of this has to do with their talent, and other parts have to do with how the players work as a team, their morale, their grit, and a bit of luck.

League of Legends is a child of the internet.  Do not expect to do well in League of Legends, or at least enjoy yourself, if you have thin skin.  This game swims in the same sea as 4chan, unending cat memes, crappy youtube dance videos, massive misogyny, anonymous heckling of all stripes.  The average League player can be expected to: rant, rave, be profane in the extreme, name-call, taunt, bate, and otherwise make fun of anything and everybody.  These are the teeming unwashed masses of internet, after all.  No Summoners Code is going to yoke these folks.

Likewise, for as many personalities (a generous term) as one finds playing League of Legends, one finds as many skill levels.  Some players have been in MOBA gaming since the likes of Defense of the Ancients, some at extremely high levels of play now or previously, others are just starting out.  While League offers a leveling system, but once a player reaches level 30, they are cast into the Elo pool, a totally fresh ranking system to sink or swim.  Player level has little do with skill, and Elo can indicate a player's skill, but neither of these measures manners.

Where the bad behavior crosses over into an area of strategic or tactical concern is when a player's conduct--in chat or in the game itself--negatively impacts the game at large.

For those players that infect chat with incessant invectives,  there is the Mute function.  Exercise this privilege liberally.

But when a player continues to make poor decisions--committing to badly balanced fights, often out of position; failing to participate in team fights; failing to itemize properly, etc.--a team can find itself playing a 'man down', functionally in a 4v5 state throughout the game.

JRizutko asked how to handle these seemingly intractable feeders.

Often, a problem with skill or ability is complemented with bad behavior in chat.  For these folks, you may just have to suffer, as we all suffer.

For those of you with a kind, indomitable heart, interested in helping your fellow Leaguer, I would suggest the following:

Lead by Example

This is the core leadership principle that every leader, from instructors at the War College, to team captains sports-wide, or those in the board room, agrees upon.  If you want people to behave a certain way, behave that way yourself.  If you want to do Dragon right now, ping and move in.  If you do not want to commit to a fight, use the fall back ping.  Be decisive.

Use Simple Commands

You would be surprised what people will do if you tell them to do it.  Avoid complex or abstract language or concepts like 'don't over extend'.  Try things like 'stay behind the river' or 'stay with me, I will help you farm', 'we are going to Baron in 2 minutes and we need you', or 'kill Ezreal first'.  Each of these is easy to understand and does not rely on the player instructed to know anything more than where the river or baron is, or to stay near a team mate.

Do Not Play the Blame Game

The moment a player blames someone else for a problem (rightfully or not!), everyone on the team will begin to blame each other for even the simplest things.  Once this begins, it is difficult to stop, short of totally stomping the enemy team.

Remain Polite

You are locked in a chat room with these people for upwards of 20:00.  If you foster an aggressive or condescending tone with players, you are contributing to the problem.  This kind of behavior is infectious, and can degrade the whole game.

Know How to Take a Joke

Laugh off 95% of what you are reading.  Most players are willing to consider even the most offensive of statements as a joke, so long as you do, too.  Some things cross the line: racism, rampant misogyny, etc.  If you can't laugh it off, Mute them.  But do try and loosen up a bit.  This is the internet, after all.

Use Lulls in the Game

Don't try and direct a team mate with a complex bit of advice while you are all struggling to keep up a good CS during the lane phase.  Similarly, if you are dead and the person you are addressing is alive and fighting, they won't read a thing you are typing. Address them when they are buying items or dead.

Know Your Audience

Not every player is ready to counter-jungle.  Not every player is ready to initiate on a given hero to draw out abilities and then switch to the actual target for a quick kill.  Some players have a full plate just trying to get a decent CS and not die a zillion times a game.  Pursuant to 'keeping it simple', try and recognize the inherent limitations in the player you are addressing.

By following these basic guidelines, you can greatly improve your team cohesion.  It is vital to remember that if a player has been abused in chat and called a 'noob' and otherwise insulted or incited, they are far less likely to respond to commands or politeness.  All of these guidelines depend on keeping at least a neutral relationship with your team mates.

Troubleshooting

What do you do when a player just won't listen?  What if they persist in acting like a jerk or feeding or [insert bad behavior]?

Remember that Fields of Justice are not a classroom in the traditional sense (though we can and do 'school' people with regularity).  Mid game is not necessarily the time or place to lay into a player, pointing out flaws in their game.  Further, and pursuant to the guidelines above, being highly critical of a player often leads to arguments.

Be consistent.  By being consistently direct and polite with simple commands, you will increase the chances that someone will respond.

If you do want to explain a more difficult concept, remember to keep things simple and use non-aggressive language.  Do not make a player feel like they are the 'bad guy', just that they can improve their game.

Be an example.  Everything you put into the chat window, and everything you do in the game, is seen by your team.  If you get angry and rant, then AFK at the fountain for several minutes, you are telling everyone in the game that this game is going to be one of those nightmarish games we hope lasts only 20:00.

Prediction Skills for Becoming Dominant in Solo Lanes, Part II

In the first post on the subject of dominating solo mid, I examined one of the basic elements of prediction: anticipating the farming auto attacks of your lane opponent and using that moment to land skillshots or auto attacks.  Using this as a basis of understanding, I will continue the theme of dominating a solo lane, particularly mid, through prediction.

Have a Playbook

Every champion has several permutations of their abilities that produce a best-kill scenario.  Brand, for example, uses his E to ignite, a Q to stun and then drops his W onto the target for maximum damage.  To pull off this combination during the high stress of an incoming gank or in a one-on-one fight that will come down to 50 hitpoints or less takes a certain amount of rehearsal and planning.  Know your preferred combination and be planning to execute it as you move into attack.

Know the conditions most conducive to landing your abilities.  Many skillshots in League require a clear line of sight between caster and target.  Some do not.  Some champions auto attack range and casting range are the same, others are not.  For short casting range champions like Ryze or Annie, you will have to play up close to the creep wave to not scare off your opponent.

As when bidding for a contract, betting a hand of hold-em, or negotiating pay, the first person to show their colors is generally the loser.  If you can draw out your enemy's skillshots, escapes and crowd-control abilities (and dodging them) before beginning your own ability cycle, you will dominate your opponent.

Know Their Playbook

Just like you, your opponent's champion has a similar playbook for their abilities.  Morgana tries to hit you with her Q to lock you into her W so that the pool will tick for maximum damage.  A savvy Morgana player will drop her W as you commit onto her and then follow with her Q, letting Morgana's passive spell vamp sustain her through your incoming damage and making sure that you stay in the Tormented Soil for its full five second duration for maximum damage.  Her Q is a skillshot that requires a clear line of sight, binding the first target that it hits.  Knowing this, you can be sure that as you come forward into her pool or into a clearing, she will try to land a Q and W on you.  Dodge the Q so that you can stay out of the W.

While this seems like very obvious advice at first, there is quite a bit more going on here.  A constant in all strategy is to choose the time and place of your engagement while refusing your opponent that luxury.  If at all possible, do not fight your opponent when and where they want to.  Draw them into unfavorable ground (over-extended and/or around your creeps) and a time of your choosing (just as you reach level 6 and/or when your jungler is ready for a gank) while dictating the tempo of the fight (keeping to your plan while knowing and disrupting theirs).

Just as your abilities require specific conditons: range, clear line of sight, mana or health, etc., so do theirs.  Knowing what your opponent needs to pull off their combinations and disrupting or anticipating their choices can allow you to come out well ahead in an exchange.

An example:

Annie is facing off against Cassiopeia mid.  Annie is slightly ahead in hitpoints, having landed a few Q stuns followed up by a W.  On the next exchange, Cassiopeia anticipates Annie using her Molten Shield to produce a Pyromania stun.  Knowing that Annie is going to charge forward, Cassiopeia waits for Annie to begin to commit and drops her Miasma (W) down on Annie's path in, followed by a quick cast of Q.  Already, Annie is eating two DoTs to continue her combination.  Annie stuns and drops her W, dealing massive damage to Cassiopeia.  Not deterred, Cassiopeia continues her assault, tossing two casts of Twin Fang (E) onto Annie amidst auto attacks.  Annie falls back, having been massively out damaged.

By knowing the order of operations that her opponent was following, Cassiopeia was able to anticipate the exact location of her opponent and land a pair of skillshots to Annie's click-targetted Q and skillshot W.  Following this, Cassiopeia took advantage of her E's low cooldown against poisoned targets to continue to deal large damage to Annie.  It only takes a couple of exchanges like this to produce a kill.

Similarly, knowing the cooldowns on your opponent can allow you to get incredibly ahead.  Talon's cooldowns are particularly long, and once he has used his combination, he is extremely exposed to retaliation.  Karthus' Q is extremely dangerous if you try and face him away from creeps.  The list goes on and on.  Knowing what your opponent wants you to do and then doing something else can easily win an exchange.

Maintain Map Awareness

Be predictive about the enemy team's position and choices to come and gank you.  Solo lanes are intense struggles and can easily create tunnel vision, especially as you feel you are drawing near to a kill.  Try to take a moment in a lull of action to glance at the minimap.

Losing clarity on where you are in your lane and the relative game time or events surrounding the present moment of your engagement can easily lead you into traps.  Remembering a lesson on How to Receive a Good Jungle Gank, you may be over-chasing an opponent who is trying to draw deep into the lane, sure of a kill, but actually into the clutches of their jungler.  

Similarly, anyone who goes missing in bottom or top lanes, especially if you are ahead and pushed out, may be coming to gank you.  If you are behind, these missing players maybe headed to an early Dragon or counter-jungling your blue or red buff.

If you get ahead early and want to play forward in your lane, buy some wards to keep your river and/or river bushes clear.  Mid lane is very small compared to other lanes, and an escape is close at hand so long as you have some warning.  Keep an eye on where the enemy jungler has been ganking and how he exits the lane following a gank.  He may be coming for you.

Know When You are Ahead

Advantages come hard and fast in the mid lane.  Missing just a couple of skill shots or running too low on mana to land a combination can quickly find you dead or having to head back to base.  Similarly, getting ahead of your opponent pays huge dividends.

The current meta game in the mid lane favors Boots and three Potions of Healing.  There is a reason for this: sustain.  These potions allow you to come back after an exchange and be ahead of your opponent.  Most kills in the early mid game occur when:

1) Their opponent is out of potions and falls behind in health.

2) A jungler comes in for a successful gank.

3) Their opponent has blown their Flash early and is now playing forward in the lane.

4) One player reaches level six ahead of their enemy.

If you can force your opponent to go back to heal before they reach level six, you can nurse a massive advantage.  Reaching level six first is a dominant moment because you suddenly have a 4th ability to deal damage with, one more than your opponent, and often that ability is extremely powerful (Graggas, Annie, Cassiopeia).  Combine this 4th ability with Ignite (a pseudo 5th source of damage), and you can 40% ahead of your opponent in damage.  That is a massive advantage.  Press it.

Any combination of the above circumstances can create a huge advantage.  If you find yourself in that moment, take a breath, think through a plan and then execute it.  Chances are good, so long as you land your skillshots, you will get a kill.

Prediction Skills for Becoming Dominant in Solo Lanes, Part I

Solo lanes being intense tests of skill is an emergent theme in these articles.  There are few tests of champion knowledge, micro management skills, timing and prediction--the core and essential skills of MOBA gameplay--that so directly show a champion's limitations or a player's abilities.  One of the defining characteristics of a dominant solo mid player is the combination of their incredibly precise knowledge of champion abilities and their capacity to be predictive based on that knowledge.

Solo mid is won in a series of often short and generally brutal exchanges.  Champions jockey for position, farm for gold and experience, and generally try and create an advantage by landing more abilities and skillshots than their opponent until they have a significant health advantage to press.  This should explain why Flash and Ignite are the most common solo mid Summoner Spells.  The former allows for a champion to extract themselves from a bad situation: an exchange that went terribly or an incoming jungler.  The latter is True Damage, a kind of extra champion ability with a long cooldown that can turn the tide.  Both revolve around gaining and exploiting an advantage earned by winning exchanges.

Let's look at the first half of the equation: champion abilities.  Nowhere else in the game is it as important to know the limitations of an opponent than in the mid lane.  Everything from their native defenses, to their passive ability, to the exact damages on their QWE and R, to the range of their auto attacks or the range of their QWE&R to the scaling ratios associated with them.  Every bit of knowledge here is helpful, and one of the reasons that I strongly advocate for playing every champion to a minimum ability, to where you 'get it' and are able to reliably win lanes with them.  Not every piece of minutia is going to make or break your game, but they can give you a serious advantage.

Every hero has a maximum auto attack range, and range bands for their QWE & R abilites be they on-click targeted or skillshots.  These ranges establish a Zone of Control--their area of influence (read: damage)--in a lane.  This video by Shurelia is an in depth study of zone control, and gives a working knowledge of the subject.  These zones are highly important because they establish the creeps which may be farmed uncontested and those which may cost health to get their gold.  These zones can establish areas in the lane which are dangerous to enter, possibly pushing a champion out of experience range.

During heads-up solo mid laning phase, both players are trying to farm as much as possible and maybe get a kill.  When farming, their zones can sometimes overlap.  This is where prediction skills come into play.  Every creep kill that puts a champion in their opponent's zone is an opportunity to damage them.  When a champion comes forward in the lane to farm a back row ranged creep, you have the opportunity to forgo farming that last-hit that is coming up and instead spending that auto attack or two on the enemy, perhaps dropping an ability on them, too.

Watch your own creeps' health and note those creeps that are getting close to auto attack last hit.  These are the creeps that your enemy is going to move towards.  From their present location and the location of the creep, you should be able to figure out where they are going to be.  Make sure a skillshot is waiting.

An example:

Talon is mid against Ahri.  Talon's bread and butter plan is to harass with his W to start, then blink to the enemy AP champion, silencing them with the E and dropping a Q on them while auto attacking for big damage.  Ahri, knowing the modus operandi for Talon, waits for him to come forward to farm any creep and drops a maximum range Q on him, getting both phases of damage every time.  Usually, this is followed up by an auto attack.  Talon is soon at two-thirds or half health and has to rethink his plans to EWQ Ahri.  Further, he is frustrated and finding it very hard to farm.  Ahri is well on her way to dominating her lane.

If a player realizes that farming creeps will place them in a situation where they have to repeatedly pay significant amounts of health to earn gold from distant creeps, they may back way off in the lane.  Alternately, they may press the issue and try to push you out of the lane.  Regardless, you are going to learn crucial information about both the player and the way they intend to use their champion.

From the moment you get into lane, you should be trying to understand your enemy's plans.  The strategy outlined above--turning farming into damage to observe your opponent's reaction--can be one of your first sounding methods to learn about your enemy.  There are hundreds of thousands of League players, and each person plays differently.  Champions will form their play to a point, but it is the player that you are going to need to defeat.

In strategy, the advantages goes to the attack.  This does not mean that you must always be diving at your opponent to be successful (but this can, in fact, work), but rather that you must always be applying pressure of a kind to your enemy.  When you move in on an opponent and begin to deal damage to them, you are forcing them to do something.  Not all champions are equal, and rune pages just make things that much more complicated.  A full page of flat +AP runes can make Graggas your living nightmare mid if you are unprepared.  So, again, champion knowledge goes a long, long way for determining the limits of what you can get away with.  But, you have to always be trying to get away with something, trying to pressure your opponent and force them into bad situations.

Most champions have an optimal range, a preferred order of operations, a combination of abilities used in a specific order, which produce the greatest effect.  For some champions, such as Brand, this order is easily disrupted by dodging skill shots.  Others, like Kassadin, have a very simple and difficult to counter strategy because his main harass is a click-targeted silence.  By finding this order and disrupting it, you will create massive advantages for yourself.

How To Receive a Good Jungle Gank

I am a firm believer every player needs to play every role (solo mid, solo top, jungle, support & carry) to a minimum competence.  Just as playing a champion gives you insight into how to beat that champion in a later match up, playing each role informs your involvement with the greater game.  Jungling is a unique role in the meta-game, one which demands mastery of map awareness, encyclopedic knowledge of champion abilities, strong prediction skills, cracker jack timing, and sometimes some serious brass.

Especially in Solo / Duo queue, the two positions where a player is best situated to influence the whole game (i.e. WIN) is in the solo-mid lane and as the Jungler.  All other positions are far more dependent on the actions of others than of one's own abilities.  The Jungler's unique ability to create a temporary advantage in any lane, at any time, makes them an X factor able to set the tempo of a game.  The difference between winning and losing Solo Top is how effective the Jungler's ganks are.  Sometimes, the difference between winning and losing a game starts with the Jungler.

Many players, especially those who do not care to jungle, presume that the task is an easy one.  Move from camp to camp clearing the creeps, ganking occasionally.  As watching high-ranked or Pro games will show, things are a wee bit more complex than this.

Successful Jungle ganks depend on a wide range of criteria, some vital and others simply helpful.  Here are some of the big hitters.

Lane Push Phase:  The position of the creep wave in the lane.

Lanes in League of Legends sea-saw back and forth with the ebb and flow of the fight.  Each side builds up an advantage of creeps--usually ranged creeps centered around the catapult--that crashes into the enemy tower, gets killed and then is pushed back by a similar wave to their own tower.

• Ganks are most successful when the enemy creep wave is pushed to the base of your tower.
• Conversely, ganks are least successful when your creeps are pushed to the base of the enemy tower.
• In the early game (~8:00 or less), creeps can cause massive damage in an extended lane fight.

Allied Position:  Where your team mates are in the lane.

When a Jungler commits to a gank on a lane, there are only a few precious seconds to capitalize on their sudden appearance before the enemy champion falls back to safety.  If you are spending those seconds closing the gap with the intended gank victim, not dealing any damage, unable to use slows or stuns, you can bet that the gank will be a failure.

• Be as close as safely possible at the start of a gank.
• Aggressively advancing on an opponent too early can tip your hand, causing them to fall back.
• Opponents that are ahead can often be easily baited into engaging on you and chasing you back towards your tower.  Exploit this.

Enemy Position:  Where the enemy champion(s) is(are) in the lane.

Certain champions (Zilean, Caitlyn, Tristana) have very long engagement ranges and are able to sit far back in a lane and still farm effectively.  Other champions (any melee, for example) do not have such a luxury and must play up near the creep wave to farm.  A champion that favors the bushes in top or bottom lane has that much more time to react to an incoming Jungler.  Further, they can possibly break Line of Sight (LoS), thereby nullifying the ability of friendly champions to target them.  Knowing where an enemy champion is in the lane and how to move them around can make the difference between an easy kill and a failed gank.

• Zoning an enemy champion towards the bushes can lead them to advance to the end of the bushes, pushing them very far forward in the lane.
• Per above, baiting an enemy champion can change their position in lane significantly.

Cooldowns:  What abilities are on cooldown, and what abilities are available.

When a Jungler appears from the river, the first reaction of most players is to fall back.  Champions will use any and all escapes available to them.  Corki will use Valkyrie, Caitlyn will use her Net Shot, Taric will stun, Nunu will use Snowball.  Summoners that have reserved their Flash or Ghost will pop those abilities to reach safety.  Especially in mid lane, where the distances are very short, it is imperative to force the enemy champion to use as many of their cooldowns--crowd control or otherwise--before the gank even occurs.  If your mid can force an early Flash from their opponent, that can be the nail in their coffin.

• Draw out as many crowd control abilities from the enemy that you can before your jungler commits.
• Utilize your escapes early if you believe that the enemy will chase, pushing them out of position.
• Save your escapes, even if it looks bleak, so that you can use them to pursue once the Jungler commits.
• Report on the use of Summoner Spells like Flash, Ghost or Cleanse.

Wards / Map Awareness:  Where, when, & how the jungler and other champions show up on the mini-map.

Competitive games are won and lost by map awareness and map control.  Wards are everywhere in these games, and a significant portion of the meta-game centers around the placement and destruction of wards.  A ward placed in the lane-side of the river can give advanced warning of an incoming Jungler, making their intended gank totally inert.  Further, the direction of a champion's movement away from creeps can be a strong indicator as to their intended destination.  For example, watching a Jungler who has just ganked mid depart towards the top river, but favoring their opponent's side of the map indicates that they may be counter jungling.

• Study your opponent's inventory, noting any wards you see.
• Report all ward placements to your Jungler that they may make informed decisions on where and when to strike.

Champion Health:  How damaged are you and your allies?  How damaged is your opponent.

Junglers expend a lot of time (and thereby experience and gold un-earned) coming to your lane, waiting around in bushes and otherwise setting up a gank.  Trying to burn down a full health, tanky champion, especially if they have defensive items, is less than optimal.  Conversely, being unable to support an incoming Jungler because you lack the durability to survive a fight makes the whole endeavor a risky waste.

• Maintain constant harass on your lane opponent.  Make them pay for their CS with hitpoints.
• Try to win as many trades as possible to establish an HP advantage.
• Use your low health as bait to draw an enemy deeper into your lane, but save your Flash or escape to make sure you don't die.
• Recommit to a fight if the enemy champions use all of their cooldowns and are running, even if low health.

Putting it All Together

Ganks are explosive and sudden--the best ones are, at least--and involve a number of variables.  To maximize your success, minimize the number of variables.  This means maintaining decent harass on the enemy champions, managing your lane's pushing phase, keeping abreast of the wards in your lane, and committing intelligently to a gank once it begins.

An example:

Game time is 6:00.  Blue Team's Ahri is facing off against Purple Team's Ezreal mid and both champions are at half health.  Lane phase is neutral and slightly favoring Ezreal (his creeps are being pushed back to his tower).  Blue's Jungler, Xin Zhao, is waiting in the bushes to gank.

This is a dangerous situation, as Ezreal can easily out DPS Ahri in an short-term fight, especially if Ahri misses with her skillshots.  Further, Ezreal can use Arcane Shift and a Flash to quickly exit the lane.

A)  Ahri moves forward and tosses out her Orb of Deception (Q), landing the skillshot.  Ezreal counters with a couple of auto attacks and an Essence Flux (W).  Xin Zhao enters the lane, and Ezreal immediately uses Arcane Shift (E) to dodge clear, but still slowed, uses his Flash to move to safetey.  GANK FAIL.

B)  Ahri moves clear of creeps towards the side of the river that Xin Zhao is waiting on.  She fires a Q and Ezreal moves clear of his creeps to counter with his own Q.  Ahri eats it, is losing the exchange and begins to fall back.  Ezreal Arcane Shifts in (E) and uses his W and Ignite.  Xin Zhao enters with his E as Ahri lands her E, taunting Ezreal.  By the time Ezreal regains control of his hero, he is likely dead.

In A, Blue Team played it safe, and there was no kill in the lane.  Ezreal may have even gotten ahead in health during the exchange, and Xin Zhao departs the lane empty handed.

B, on the other hand, is a totally different story.  Ahri uses her Lane Position to draw Ezreal closer to Xin Zhao.  Further, she draws out his blink and puts all of his abilities on cooldown.  Xin Zhao is able to enter the fight with Audacious Charge, his E that is a leap-to-target and slow.  Ahri saves her E, and because of their position clear of creeps, can easily land it.  This buys Xin Zhao time to get the third hit on Three Talon Strike, knocking Ezreal up.  Even if Ezreal flashes, he is probably eating an Ignite and may get caught by another Ahri Q.  Things are looking pretty bleak.

The first example is a passive player, someone unfamiliar with what it takes to get a good, easy kill mid.

In the second, she shows good map awareness and influences both her own and her opponent's lane position, she draws out abilities and cooldowns, and recommits to a fight at low health for a clean kill.