In the League Championship Series, it seems that once a team has cracked open the enemy base, the end of the game is in sight. If you happen to be a fan of the team playing from behind, the outlook often seems bleak. All you can do is pray for a baron throw or a bad team fight from the other team. Otherwise, it seems that the team who is ahead can simply coast to the finish on the backs of their beefy minions. Most pro teams make closing out a game look easy. Rooting for the underdog seems almost foolish as they are systematically suffocated from all sources of income besides the never ending waves of minions that are constantly pressuring their base.

In solo queue, at least to me, once my team has cracked open the enemy base, the game seems to devolve into a cacophony of pings and disagreements on where to go next, which lane to push, which objective to take, etc. This guide aims to teach you what you should do to close out a game efficiently. I will do my best to break this down into a few basic points that are important for closing out a game and go a little more in depth for those who want more specific instructions.

• Apply as much pressure as possible.
• Control the vision game.
• Only take favorable fights.
• Stick together.
• Watch the minimap, jungle timers, and respawn timers.

#1: Apply as much pressure as possible:

Taking an inhibitor is normally a turning point in the game. The first step to winning a game is cracking open an enemy's base and in this scenario, you've already succeeded in doing so. Now it's up to you to close out the game. The best way to do this is to apply as much pressure as possible to the enemy base, not allowing them to leave or establish vision control. The best way to do this is to keep all three waves pushing into their base as frequently as possible.

A good rule of thumb that I use for pushing minion waves is the four or more rule. If your minion wave has at least four more minions than the enemy minion wave, no matter where it is on the map , it will push until it reaches a tower or someone clears it. Setting up minion waves to push for you is the easiest way to apply pressure to your opponents and you can often make plays off of this pressure.

Other ways of applying pressure include controlling objectives and clearing the enemy jungle. As soon as you leave the enemy base after taking an inhibitor, move straight into the enemy jungle and clear ever camp you can while staying safe. As soon as your opponents have respawned or finish clearing your minion waves, they will look to establish vision in their own jungle and attempt to get buffs onto their carries. Finding an empty jungle is demoralizing. Starving them from jungle camp farm let's you keep your lead and applies further pressure to them and will make them more desperate to make plays. This desperation often leads to bad plays that you can capitalize on.

If you've done the above and all three of your waves are pushing, this will often open windows of opportunity for your team to take baron or dragon. While your opponents are preoccupied clearing minion waves, if you find an opportunity to take an objective uncontested, do it. When choosing between baron or towers, I often choose to avoid baron. That's not to say that baron buff isn't powerful. It is extremely powerful and can close out a game in minutes. But I also find it to be a throw-magnet, especially in lower elos, and so I often prioritize towers unless the enemy jungler is dead.

#2: Control the vision game.

I put this as my second point because I believe it is the most important to successfully closing out a game behind applying pressure. Controlling vision is crucial and leads to safe plays and easy fights. If you watch the pro's play, their vision control is insane. LCS teams with good vision control often have five pink wards placed on the map with another five in their inventory waiting to be placed. They also upgrade their trinkets as soon as possible and use them often.

To expect this in solo queue is unrealistic, but vision control is still extremely important. You should have a healthy mix of sweepers, yellow trinkets, and blue trinkets; sweepers to clear enemy vision from important areas, blue trinkets for long range warding, and yellow trinkets for larger ward coverage. If step #1 is being executed, the enemy should feel restricted to their own base. Leaving alone is scary, especially with the fog of war covering the majority of the map. But eventually, the call of buffs and jungle creeps will become too strong. The enemy jungler hasn't cashed in on his devourer stacks in a while and the gold is just begging to be harvested. The enemy mid-laner can get two full rotations of his spells in a teamfight if only he could get blue buff... If the enemy jungle is warded as it should be, you can move as five to mop up those greedy scrubs and pad your lead with even more gold. If you are able to choose who to pick off and important objectives are alive or will be soon, prioritize the enemy jungler if possible. This allows for free dragons or barons, barring a lucky steal from a well-timed ulti.

When taking dragon or baron, ward the paths the enemy will take to get to it. Contesting an objective like baron is the one way a losing team can turn a game around, but with proper vision control, this should never be an issue. Position someone with hard CC near the back of the pit to or on the other side of the wall to zone away the enemy jungler. This should never be your own jungler. He should always be in the pit to smite secure the buff. Even if the person zoning goes down, if they are able to buy you enough time to take the baron buff, it should be well worth it for you.

You can find dozens of guides on where to ward.

#3: Only take favorable fights.

This problem plagues lower elos constantly. Everyone is always looking for the next fight and will chase for kills at all costs when sometimes all you need to do is let the minions do the work for you. You've already done the hardest part. You're already winning and are most likely ahead in gold. Now all you need to do is sit back, let your minions do work, and wait for your opponents to make a mistake. Half of succeeding with this step has to do with proper warding as explained in step #2. With proper ward coverage, it should be easy for you to decide when to fight and when not to fight. When you have the vision, you get to choose when and where to engage.

The other half has to do with proper rotations and using your minion waves to your advantage. You should always push the wave that is farthest away from the destroyed inhibitor. When the mid lane inhibitor is destroyed, you can opt to have your top laner or someone with teleport split push one lane while the four of you push the other, but you should only do this if teleport is off of cooldown. Another rule of thumb for the mid lane inhibitor is to pressure the baron lane if baron is up or pressure the dragon lane is dragon is up. You also have the option of setting up a super wave to push in one lane while you shove the other. Setting up a super wave involves following the four or more rule and then destroying the enemy casters minions of the next wave. The melee minions will take longer to kill allowing several minion waves to stack up at once. This can also be done with the item Banner of Command.

This wave is actually three combined waves of caster minions.

Regardless of the lane, your opponents will be forced to group under the tower of the lane you are pushing. At this point all you need to do is wait. Land poke, clear the enemy minion wave, and do not die. Eventually, your super minion wave will begin to push in to the enemy base and they will be forced to send someone with waveclear to force the wave back. This is your window to close in on the tower. Put as much damage onto the tower as possible while still staying safe and back away once the minion wave is gone. Repeat. The super minions practically do the work for you in this situation. The worst possible thing to do is to engage your opponents under tower and risk a throw when all you need to do is have patience and let your pressure cause the enemy to crack.

#4: Stick together.

You're ahead and the base is cracked open. All you need to do now is not throw. The easiest way to ensure this is to stick together as five. You want to take dragon? Take it as five. You want to take baron? Take it as five. Your mid laner wants the enemy blue buff? Take it as five. This way, no one can get picked off without retaliation and no one starts raging in chat at the noob who got picked off while trying to take jungle farm. And if you happen to run into your opponents in the jungle, you're already grouped as five and can decimate them. Bonus points if you've worked in step #2 and saw the whole thing coming.

#5: Watch the minimap, jungle timers and respawn timers.

This step is the culmination of the four steps before it. If all four of the above are true, all you need to do now is rotate to the appropriate lanes and watch your minimap for opportunities to catch people out, rotate to objectives, and close out the game like the pros. This step may seem obvious, but it is very easy to tunnel on what is in front of you and ignore your minimap and timers. Pay attention to the map. Ping out enemies and objectives your team may not have noticed. It is also very important at this point in the game to watch the enemy jungler's positioning. If you see him in the bot lane clearing waves and baron is alive, it's often not a bad idea to rotate to it. With the jungler out of the picture, a smite steal is no longer possible. Pressing "o" in game pulls up the scoreboard with jungle timers on the top for dragon, baron, and your main buffs. These are important objectives and if you know they are coming and your enemy is contained in their base, you have free reign to set up vision and prepare for them before the objective spawns.

Icons mean the camp is active. Timers count down until spawn.

Conclusion:

Work on these five steps and you'll learn to close out games like the pro's. That's all for me today, ladies and gents. If you want more content like this, check back here soon for more great content from Team Dignitas. If you enjoyed this 'How It Works' article, check out the first article in the series on support Trundle, here.

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