In a game of League, there are more ways to win than to just completely dominate the opposing team in lanes. At the start of the game, the common initial win condition is to beat your lane opponent and snowball to win. But what if you find yourself losing laning phase and you cannot beat your opponent? The answer is simple. You have to shift your win condition from beating him to beating his team. Now that may sound like the same thing, but you always have to remember this one thing, “If you have four teammates to rely on, then he has four teammates to exploit.” There are ways to get a lead even when you lose your lane. I’m going to give you three simple methods to help you win your games. In short, these will be your win conditions.

Vision Control

First, we look at the jungle. While you may be susceptible to ganks if you move from the lane, you may also have an opportunity to take advantage of the enemy jungle. Placing vision in the jungle around one side of the map leads to more freedom for your team if you can spot the enemy jungler. While it may not seem like much, keeping constant tabs on the jungler renders his ganks useless if they know where he is. Perfect spots to ward are the choke points or most frequented routes used by junglers when coming to lanes. This gives you the chance to take advantage of his position and get some free kills when he wanders out into the open.

More specifically are wards that can show camps in the jungle. This allows you to keep track of the jungler for longer periods of time as he farms, essentially allowing your team to make decisions without fear of being ganked or countered in any sense. This can be done with two camps at once as you are able to show vision on both blue buff and Gromp.

However, this is only possible on top side whereas bottom side you can only show one camp. You still can reveal most of the second camp so even if the jungler was taking it, you would still see him regardless.

Objectives and Teamwork

Second, shift the balance in your favor by trying a different approach. Focus on objectives instead of constantly fighting trying to get back a lead. There is always a something to exploit from the enemy that you can do with your team. Some examples can be:

• Teleporting to teamfights or objectives, i.e. dragon or tower, when the enemy has no Teleport available.
  • If you did not take Teleport, instead roam more frequently to assist other lanes or the jungler when the opportunity arises.
• Teamfighting when the composition is largely in your favor such as AoE Ult combos.
• Securing scuttle crabs as frequently as you can, as they can assist your team in not only vision control but map movement as well.

Each of these points is considered macro-play where instead of individual wins, we try to take a large advantage for our teams. As much as we like to be the hero, a Summoner is only as good as the team he is with. The bonuses of dragon buffs, baron buff, or more freedom to roam is much better than having a bit of gold to yourself. Working towards objectives more than likely will be a better option in the long run in your games.

Building for the Team

Lastly, although not popular among many people, is building your champion to fit the team rather than yourself. There is no such thing as only one way to build a champion as each game is always different. For instance, if you are a tank in the top lane, you may be able to build for your team. There are items that allow for teamwork to excel such as Knight’s Vow, Zeke’s Convergence, Locket of the Iron Solari, Shurelya’s Reverie, and, in some cases, Redemption.

This also works for other items such as Twin Shadows, Rylai's Crystal Scepter, Frozen Heart, and Abyssal Mask. Each has the ability to negatively affect the enemy or slow them down, which could be highly synergetic with your teammates.

While it may not be optimal to build all of these, building one or two depending on your situation can dramatically affect your gameplay. Each item could complement a different teammate in a major way and help give a small push at any given point. This essentially makes you a secondary support of the team but with more freedom. Combine this with different champion’s kits and you could be the strongest pillar for your team.

Conclusion

Altogether, these small tips could change the outcome of your game regardless of how poorly you might have done in laning phase. The idea is to become more team-oriented instead of focusing on your own situation. This will eventually build into a larger sense of macro development for your future games. If you guys come up with any new ward spots, build theories, etc. make sure you let me know via twitter!

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