Positioning is one of the fundamental skills that separate a good League of Legends Player from a great one. Learn how to analyze your positioning to maximize your impact on a game and minimize your deaths.
Where you are at any given moment can completely change a game of League of Legends. By learning to position yourself correctly on the map, you can maximize the value you provide to your team and minimize the risk of dying. This guide aims to explain all the key factors that you need to consider when positioning yourself in League of Legends.
The first thing to consider when looking at map positioning is value. Ask yourself what your current position allows you to do. This can be anything from getting farm or vision to taking objectives. Wherever you are on the map, it’s important that you’re providing value to your team. Many things that seem valuable at first glance may be hindering your team by sacrificing something of greater value. This is known as opportunity cost; the cost of forfeiting a better opportunity.
The value of an action can be expressed as the intrinsic value of that action (gold, objectives, XP, etc.) minus the opportunity cost. When considering the value of your position on the map, you want to maximize the potential to take valuable actions while limiting opportunity cost. This also applies to pathing. You need to weigh the value of getting somewhere quickly against the value of taking a longer path to get vision or collect a wave of minions. If your positioning doesn’t allow you to provide value to your team, you’re essentially dead weight.
Risk is another important factor to assess when considering your position. Unlike opportunity cost, where you fail to maximize value, risks can actively aid your enemy. The prime example of this would be dying. Not only are you leaving your team down a player, but you’re also giving the enemy team gold and experience. Similarly, your positioning could risk the enemy team taking your towers. Whatever the risk is, it’s important to properly assess it when considering your positioning.
For better or for worse, assessing risk isn’t as simple as assessing value. While you have control over the value you provide, you can’t control other players. Even small risks can be heavily punished by the enemy team. On the other hand, an incredibly risky position can be left unpunished. What you are assessing is not just the severity of the risk, but also the enemy team’s ability and willingness to punish you for taking it. You need to use your judgment to estimate the probability of getting punished for your positioning and weigh that against the potential value it provides. Countless factors such as which players are alive; where those players are; your ability to escape or fight; and even upcoming objectives should all be considered when assessing the risk of your position or pathing.
This leads to the topic of vision, one of the most important things you need to assess your positioning. As previously stated, there’s a lot of information to consider when assessing your positioning. Vision provides you with crucial information that you need to make an accurate assessment.
Conversely, a lack of vision limits the available information. Unless you can accurately track the enemy team, you have to account for any enemies with unknown positions. With proper vision, you can limit unknown variables and reduce the risk of dying. On top of this, vision gives you early warning against incoming enemies. This gives you time to escape and wastes the enemy team's time. All in all, vision gives you the option to position yourself in ways that would otherwise be too risky.
Neutral objectives are a core part of League of Legends so positioning with them in mind is vital. There are two ways to position around objectives. These are positioning near them and positioning away from them.
Positioning near objectives lets you move to take them as quickly as possible. Before an objective comes up there are a number of things that you can do to prepare. The first thing that you can do is get lane priority in the adjacent lanes. This involves pushing your minion wave as far forward as possible. This gives you vision of that lane through minions, denies that vision from the enemy team, and forces them to lose farm. The second thing you can do is set up vision. Both placing vision and denying enemy vision give your team an advantage when contesting the objective. Finally, you can pick off enemies before the teamfight, This gives your team a numbers advantage that can drastically change the outcome of the fight.
Positioning away from objectives has multiple uses. Objectives provide rare opportunities where you know enemies will be on a specific part of the map. By positioning away from the objective, you force the enemy to choose between contesting you and taking the objective. If your team plans to give up the objective, this can be a great way to gain value elsewhere. On the other hand, if your team plans to take the objective, you can force the enemies off of the objective. This is especially useful if you take teleport, as you teleport to the objective after drawing enemies away.
One other important thing to note is that you want to minimize risks in your positioning leading up to an objective. If both teams are aiming to take the objective, there will almost certainly be a team fight to contest it. Dying before the fight puts your team at a severe disadvantage that the enemy team is sure to capitalize on.
The final thing you need to consider when assessing your positioning is the game state. When your team is ahead you have far more options. Your ability to fight off or escape incoming enemies is largely dependent on game state. If you’re strong enough to survive three people collapsing on you, you can take a lot more risks. On the other hand, if you’d easily die to a single enemy, you need to position yourself more safely. The relative strength of the enemy team, yourself, and your team can completely alter your optimal positioning. Although analyzing the game state requires experience, it’s fairly easy to pick up.
To summarize, there are many factors you must take into account when positioning yourself in League of Legends. Finding the best place to be at any given time is no simple matter. You need to weigh what you stand to gain against the potential risks. I hope this guide has helped you to better understand positioning. Good luck on your climb.
