Laning from Behind in League of Legends

5 Aug 20

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Laning from Behind in League of Legends

Manage the unfortunate inevitability of falling behind and catch up to your lane opponents with this guide.

It is important to apply your best techniques and plans to laning from minute one so that you can dominate your opponent and snowball the game from there. However, mistakes can happen. Whether it is because of your mistake or one of your allies, your opponent will get an early lead sometimes. It’s important to understand what you can do in situations where your opponent has built a lead in order to neutralize their lead to the best of your abilities. With a strong understanding and effective execution, you can find yourself climbing back into the game.

Magnitude and Style

First, you must understand the nature of the lead your opponent has. How much gold and experience differential did they get from their lead? What does their champion want to do with a lead early in the game? These questions will help you understand what exactly you need to concede and when you can look to punish your opponent if they overextend.

Leads can go anywhere from a farm lead created by forcing someone out of the lane to multiple kills acquired by roaming to other lanes when you cannot contest. The larger the lead the more you have to concede in order to deny your opponent the snowball. While with a minor farm lead you may only need to concede an extra couple of minions or a wave due to potential ultimate advantage. A lead of multiple kills will generally deny you much more pressure which will cause you to have to give up multiple waves and turret plates. If you can understand this and correctly ascertain what is too risky to fight for and what you can take then it allows you to stem the bleeding that comes from a lead. If you fight during the points where your opponent can leverage their lead then that lead will blow into a game win as long as they execute well.

To understand the magnitude of their lead you first need to see if they’ve spent their gold. If they haven’t spent their gold then their lead is mostly void. This is also true if they’ve spent their gold on an item that doesn’t necessarily raise their damage. Champions like Cassiopeia that would spend their early gold on Tear of the Goddess might not be able to snowball their lead hard off of gold spent alone. As for leads that will immediately kick into effect there is level lead to keep in mind. While a Tear of the Goddess might not massively spike Cassiopeia’s damage if she were to be level 6 while you’re level 5 as a result of her early lead then, she can still punish you for attempting to fight with her. However, this is obviously very different for a Talon that uses an early lead for a Serrated Dirk or even an early Umbral Glaive to be able to fully burst you.

This also plays into the style of the champion that you’re up against and how they want to leverage their lead into a massive advantage. To use earlier examples, you can look at two very different ends of the spectrum and playstyles of champions. Cassiopeia wants to create a lead that can allow her to run down her opponents if they overextend and generally just get to her power spikes in mid-game that allow her to become a scaling monster. Talon, on the other hand, is going to look to press you out of lane by killing you or chunking you and then roam around the map building as large of a lead in the early game as he can manage.

Conceding to Deny

The priority you should consider once you determine the extent of the situation is how you can deny your opponent’s snowball and lower their impact on the game.

You don’t want to give your opponents a single step forward past where they have already gotten. The goal of anyone trying to snowball a lead is to widen the gold and experience differential between them and their opponent. They will attempt to widen this gap based on the playstyle that their champion is able to best represent. However, regardless of playstyle, if they can get kills on you then they will be able to widen the gap extensively. You must learn what is acceptable to give up in order to deny them kills and snowballing their lead. The difficulty is to give up the right amount so that they can’t outright win the game. This is where you generally must also understand your team’s position and win condition within the game.

Pay attention to your opponent’s strengths and weaknesses. Once your opponent has hit a power spike then avoid confrontation until they leave themselves vulnerable with an exposed weakness. While your opponent has their cooldowns and resources you can’t fight for wave control, it will be the first thing that you have to concede. However, this will lead to map pressure being given to your opponents. In these times you will need to communicate with your team and rely on their ability to respect the map pressure. There will be moments that you can respond to your opponent’s pressure to recoup what you had to concede.

Your opponent may choose to not pressure the map and instead focus their efforts on dominating the lane. This will result in more of an individual ability to position correctly in the lane as opposed to the communication with the team. This will also allow you less ability to individually bounce waves but provide your team more freedom across the map.

In this situation, you will need to be able to dodge your opponent’s aggression. Allow waves to come into you and farm from the biggest distance you can manage. You can allow yourself to miss farm in order to avoid your opponent the ability to reach you. Your response time will then come once your opponent overextends as opposed to when your opponent is not present.

Punishing to Recover

If you know what the right amount to concede is then you can fight for what’s beyond that line in order to punish any overextension that your opponent makes in order to recover within the game. You must optimize what you are able to wean out of any moment of freedom you are given to recover within the game and have an impact. Your moments of freedom will come when your opponent is absent or vulnerable.

The timings that are easiest to execute are when your opponent is absent. Whether it be when they roam or reset you will have a moment to control the wave and you need to use it to the best of your abilities so that you allow yourself economy and maybe even the chance to respond with a roam of your own to assist your team. Especially if you are also an early game proactive pick like Taliyah or Syndra then you will want to do quickly tend to the wave and leave the lane to affect the map at any opportunity available to you. You need to be able to account for your opponent’s position before you can safely tend to the wave and roam in this way though.

Although they are missing from vision, they may be lying in wait to punish you for your long-awaited roam. This should be done by using defensive vision or spotting them when they actually attempt to execute their roam or recall. If you plan to roam in response to theirs then keep in mind that they are stronger and thus you need to either roam to a place where you know they aren’t or roam as a way to create numbers advantage so that their advantage over you will not be enough to turn your roam into a successful fight for their team.

However, your opponent will spend more time making their presence known than being absent if they plan to snowball their lead. So you must understand how to punish them while they are still present and pressuring you. These require them to make themselves vulnerable and still refuse to concede space. This will happen in one of two ways. They will refuse to concede space with low resources or they will extend to a point that they are unable to retreat if they are attacked effectively. They also may refuse to reset and spend their gold allowing you to close the effective gold lead for certain situations even if they have to total gold lead.

There are three resources you should pay attention to in order to see if they are overextending. These are health, mana, and cooldowns. An Anivia might hold a level and gold lead over you, but without any mana, she is powerless to fight back with Glacial Storm (R) as you can begin to take control of the wave and punish the overstay. As for health, this will generally require you to land poke whenever available to you and steadily whittle them down without them being able to trade back. In order to land trades like this, you need to pay attention to the third resource mentioned, cooldowns. An Ahri with an early lead is scary but with her Spirit Rush (R) and Charm (E) on cooldown, she simply cannot use her kit to full effectiveness. This should allow you moments to begin to whittle at their health pool and try to fight back for the lead if they are refusing to concede space with these cooldowns down.

As for positional overextensions, these will generally require help from a teammate like a jungler, support, or any laner that can roam. You must stay healthy in order for a roam to be a possibility though even if they are overextended. It doesn’t matter much if your opponent is shoving waves aggressively under tower if you have no mana or health to fight with once your team is able to help. This is why you must concede the wave pressure and force them to try to dive you in order to get any effective trade at all. If your resources are high and they are still reaching for you then that is when you call for a teammate. If your resources are low then it is simply time for you to reset in order to deny your opponent any chance of a kill.

Finally, there are the times when they are simply not sustaining their lead. These times are the result of large amounts of gold in their pocket while you have spent yours. For example, let us say you recalled and bought an item and they responded by roaming and getting three kills. They obviously have secured a map lead for their team and a gold lead for themselves. However, if they haven’t spent the gold and simply come back to lane to meet you after your reset then you have the effective gold lead and must use the time that they are back in lane to punish them. If you can punish them and get a kill maybe they even have a shutdown that can account for a large part of their individual lead.

Tips & Tricks

While behind in lane you will have to give up control and look for your opportunities. In order to give up control while still getting resources as mentioned above, you will need to put in a few practices based on what situation you’re put in.

The absolute priority is to never let them catch you in a fair fight. In order to create these situations of unfairness, you want to always create a situation with numbers advantage or extra protection. Keep close to your towers while your opponent is pressuring you individually and if they bring reinforcements then fall even further back if you can’t get support from your team. If you can deny the opposing team a kill when their jungler comes to your lane then you are becoming a pressure sponge. While it may feel bad, you can fall back completely off of the lane and give up a wave or two in exchange for wasting their time.

If you can get reinforcements yourself, you still need to ensure that you create a situation that causes your reinforcements to create an advantageous fight for you. This means you want to create a situation where you have even resources if not advantageous if possible. If you’re expecting help from your jungler don’t allow yourself to take poke and poor trades that leave you within kill range during a potential gank. Although, there is more than just resources that you want to keep track of. It is important to ensure that when you get a gank that there is no counter gank possibility or your opponent can get a fair fight which is turned against you by their advantage.

Above all, take every farm that is available to you. Since you will be denied many due to the opponent’s lead you must ensure that when a minion is available to you that you are able to consistently secure it.

Good Luck in Solo Queue. If you ever fall behind, don’t sweat it and use this guide to help you back into the game.

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