Pressure is the influence of something to make someone else do something they might not want to do. Most players get this mixed up with aggression which in and of itself is only one kind of pressure. Players believe that pressure is only achieved by the player always doing something. This is partly true because opponents might be more tempted to do something as a response to the player. However, a player can also do nothing which will also cause a response, forcing a different form of pressure.

Pressure can be categorized as aggressive pressure, defensive pressure, and intimidation pressure depending on the player’s action or lack thereof.

The most common type of pressure is by way of aggression. By doing something aggressive towards an opponent such as approaching or attacking the enemy player, the enemy player will usually respond with a defensive type of play such as retreating. Another style of this kind of aggressive pressure is to bait. When you, the player, are in a disadvantageous position against the opponent, you are able to go somewhat aggressive to make the opponent use an aggressive option like move closer.

The status of your health, mana, and summoner spells will elicit different responses from your opponents. Here is an example of aggressive pressure. Imagine that the enemy is lower health than you and every time you approach them, they back off so that you can't kill them. You can then aggressively pressure the opponent to back up towards the jungle when the jungler is ganking by simply moving towards the opponent or throwing out an attack to cause a similar response. In the below image, Malzahar backs off because he doesn’t have his passive and is scared of Galio engaging. By Galio simply walking towards Malzahar, it already has put him in a panicking state. This causes him to move closer to Twitch which results in Malzahar's death.

When baiting, imagine that the enemy will always approach you when you attempt to do something such as to farm minions or ward. What you are able to do is to approach slightly to get the opponent to respond in kind. This is an aggressive type of pressure because it makes the enemy laner make a more aggressive and greedy play, such as taking minions when they are too far away and trying to fight with no vision in the jungle. This will let the jungler have ample time and room to come behind the opponent and kill them when ganking. In the image below, Karthus is pressured by Singed, who moves into the minion wave near some low health minions. This baits Karthus into CSing and poking Singed.

Even though Karthus should know this isn’t safe, both the minions and Singed stay close enough to Karthus to entice him to stay for longer for Twitch to gank. Even though Karthus gets to level 2 first, it kills him in the end and he loses his lead. By doing this simple bait by being more aggressive even though your resources are low and letting your opponent start fighting first, you let the Jungler gank and clean up the kill as shown.

The next kind of pressure is what I call defensive pressure. Defensive pressure is the use of holding out abilities or skills to make the opponent act differently in the game. Depending on what kind of resources you have over your opponent (such as health pots in laning phase, certain types of keystones, key abilities being up, and summoner spells you have up), they may act as protection against the opponent even though you have not used them.

What is scary about defensive pressure, is the potential for something to happen. People get scared by what they don’t know, such as their immediate surroundings, so they play more defensively because of the potential for a death. By strictly using your resources defensively, this will cause your opponent to also use their resources defensively, leading to a stalemate until someone decides to use aggressive pressure to threaten the defensive pressure.

An example of a character who uses defensive pressure a lot in his gameplay is Vladimir. Once Vladimir has his passive ability, Crimson Rush, from his Transfusion ability, no one wants to fight him because he has the potential to deal a lot of damage. Regardless of the HP players have, people will play more cautiously or defensively because of the potential damage that may be inflicted to them. In the images below, Vladimir is able to use his defensive pressure to step up and make room for himself to CS against Darius who would want to fight Vladimir any time other than when he has Crimson Rush up. Once Crimson Rush is gone, Darius again approaches because the potential damage that Vladimir had is now gone.

The final kind of pressure is intimidation pressure. This kind of pressure is special in that you don’t necessarily need to do anything to cause it. The jungler is a prime example of intimidation pressure because even though opponents may be low on resources such as Flashes, Heals, and escape abilities, the jungler always has a presence in every lane because no one knows where they are, preventing you from killing your weakened opponent. The fear of not knowing something is the biggest kind of pressure in a game of League of Legends and it is present throughout the map. This fear is further expressed when an enemy laner is missing.

When an enemy laner is missing, other champions play more cautious because the worst case scenario always is them dying to the jungler, the laner who they are playing against, and/or the enemy laner who is missing. In all the previous images, the intimidation pressure is always there because they don’t want to die to the jungle Twitch. Once the opponent forgets about the jungler or other laners, that is when they are most vulnerable to ganks. In the below image, the wards, Scuttle Crab passive, and Honeyfruit act as information of where the enemy jungler isn't. Their presence (or lack thereof) gives information to the laners, and in this scenario it's the bottom lane even though this information is used throughout the whole map. Once people have knowledge about their immediate area through these vision tools, it is then normal for people to then exhert more pressure onto their opponents.

In conclusion, to win games of League of Legends is to exert more pressure onto the enemy. Players are able to do this by mixing up what kinds of pressure they exert such as holding out on abilities, approaching and using moves, and denying vision and information to keep the fear of not knowing where players are prevalent in every lane. I hope this guide has helped you and be sure to have fun in the Summoner's Rift.

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