Let's start with the obvious: League is a 5v5 game. The laning phase divides teams into smaller matchups, but even then it's never truly 1v1 because of the presence of the jungler. Furthermore, the laners themselves are free to move across the map as they please, roaming to other lanes to contribute and help out their teammates.

With this in mind, it's important to know what to do when your lane opponent leaves lane and roams to another one. This dicussion is most relevant to the solo lanes (particularly mid), but it can be applied to the bottom lane when one or both members roam as well. TP'ing is essentially 'roaming', so these tips will still be applicable if you're reacting to your oponent's TP. (Proactive Teleport usage is a whole 'nother subject though)

When your opponent (or you, in fact) leave lane, you're giving up 2 important resources: gold and experience from minions. When your opponent undertakes a roam to another lane, he or she expects to recoup the lost gold or exp, usually by picking up kills. A laner who roams out of the lane is taking a risk, giving up guaranteed gold and XP in the hopes of obtaining greater rewards, as well as helping out his or her teammates.

There are two general ways you can react to a roam, and a number of situations that can arise depending on which option you choose. It's important to realize which of the situations you're likely to get into, so be sure to evaluate the circumstances within your particular game carefully.

Option 1: Stay in Your Lane

- Shove the wave, and put pressure on the tower

- Last hit normally (Hint: Not good!)

Option 2: Follow the Laner's Roam:

- Fight an even fight (3v3, 2v2, etc.)

- Attempt to clean up a fight that's already happened (your team has just barely lost, due to the numbers disadvantage)

- Follow the laner's roam, and get nothing out of it (Hint: Not good!)

Alright, so let's discuss these for a bit. (Technically, a third option is to roam to the ANOTHER lane, which can also be a good choice, though we won't go over this option in-depth.)

The most common response to seeing your lane opponent roam is to shove the wave and put pressure on the tower. The key here is how soon you recognize that your lane opponent has made the roam to bot or top (or even in the jungle). If you've quickly recognized that they're making the roam and can cut them off or follow them (and are reasonably capable of fighting the upcoming skirmish), you should definitely make an attempt to tail your lane opponent/support your team. However, it is often the case that you'll only recognize the roam after your opponent has already made significant progress moving across the map, or has already arrived at the lane they are ganking. In these situations, because you're far behind (distance-wise), it is often a smart play to shove the wave as hard as you can and deny XP and minion gold. Be careful and watch the map when you're hitting the tower, as the opposing team can sneak up on you if you stay too long.

Shoving the lane, THEN following the roam is also a good choice.

What you absolutely don't want to do is to simply last hit the wave normally, or 'freeze' it. You're essentially preserving as much gold and XP as possible for when your lane opponent returns! It's important to practice good map awareness to quickly realize that your opponent is out of lane, and that you need to push the wave hard.

You can also reactively follow your lane opponent on the roam to even the odds. As mentioned, if you are reasonably quick in picking up that your opponent is roaming, this is likely (but not always, as I'll discuss) the best option. There are a number of scenarios that can arise if you take this option. Fighting an even fight, a 3v3 or 2v2 (or perhaps the glorious laning phase 5v5), comes down to the champions involved and the usual considerations for skirmishes. Just be careful of your own positioning since you're arriving in the fight later, so that the other team doesn't simply turn on you because you're split from the rest of your team.

What's perhaps more interesting is when you arrive just a little bit later to the fight, and your lane opponent has already made an impact with his/her roam. Be careful here - depending on what champion you're playing, how healthy the enemy team is, and both your own and the enemy's positioning, the clean up could be easy or very difficult. You'll have to analyze if and how you'll be able to pick up kills.

To better illustrate the complexity of this decision, let's discuss the worst case scenarios. In the mid lane, your opponent has roamed bot to help pick up some kills. You roam down to bot as well, and find that the other team's ADC, support, and mid laner are all low and retreating. You try to chase, but end up picking up nothing - your lane opponent has lost very little by leaving mid (and gained much more by grabbing kills bot), while you've gained nothing and actually lost some resources by leaving mid for a while. Or even worse, in a parallel scenario, you try to clean up the 3 low health opponents bot, but they manage to CC you and you go down before you're able to accomplish anything!

Leblanc, with flexible mobility and burst, is a fantastic champion for clean-up.

I believe it was Riot Kobe who said this (not 100% certain), but facing 3 low health champions is like facing 1 full health champion with 12 abilities - it can be tricky. There are a number of variables that can affect the success of your counter roam; if you're playing a champion who can quickly pick up kills on low health enemies safely (LeBlanc, Xerath, Kassadin, etc.) then you can take more risks and go for the clean-up. Additionally, let's say your team has certain champions that have a good degree of survivability, and can scrap and fight for a rather extended duration of time (e.g., Soraka, Alistar, etc.) or you evaluate that a gank attempt is going to last for a long time, you can still make the counter-roam, even if you're a bit late. These sorts of extended fights happen quite often in solo-queue (overextensions, over-chasing, etc.), so even if you're a bit late you can still have an impact in the fight - always be watching what's going on around the map, and be thinking about how you can best respond.

Again, the most important considerations as to whether you should follow an opposing laner's roam is how fast you realize that they're going for a roam. A corollary to this is your own (and your team's) ward placement, to be able to quickly spot if they're moving out of lane. This simplifies your decision, as you can either set up to gank your lane opponent en route/set up a turnaround, or simply allow the roam to happen, telling your teammates in the lane of interest to play passive for a bit, while you shove the wave and pressure your tower. Your lane opponent loses gold and XP for free! If you have some time to spare (i.e., your team knows about the enemy roam and is playing safe), you can shove the wave to tower and then counter-roam; look to gain these sorts of small advantages when you can. But most of the time, you'll probably just want to run to support your team as fast as possible.

TF's roams happen so quickly that you won't always have time to follow. Push your lane hard if you feel you're too far away.

In essence, if you see an opposing roam in time, there are two calls: one is to follow your opposing laner. One important advantage this creates is that THEY do not know that YOU are roaming as well, while YOUR team has knowledge of the roam. In this situation, you're the unexpected element and that element of surprise can be extremely effective in turning a skirmish. You can communicate with your team to bait an engage and you can turn the fight around. The other option (with less risk, but less reward) is to tell your team to play passive/play back while you get free tower pressure. Whichever option is both up to you and determined by the situation, but keep in mind that you are NOT obligated to follow every roam! You may actually accomplish more by staying in lane!

Finally, one thing to keep in mind is that your opponents may sometimes be deceptive and fake a roam, or recall. They'll step out of lane for a bit - or retreat very far back under tower - and give the appearance of having left lane. Normally, when you find your opponent has left lane you want to push the wave to tower so that they lose CS; however, this plays right into your opponent's hands (e.g., a Nasus faking a back so that you push, and he can farm the wave under tower). The best counterplay to this strategy is to ward the exits to a lane (to detect a roam), and to quickly move forward and check under turret if you suspect they may be trying to fool you into pushing.

Summary and Key Points

The most important concept you should get out of this article is that it's not always the right move to follow your lane opponent's roam (even though sometimes your team may grumble at you for not doing so). If your lane opponent gets a well-executed roam down into the bot lane (without your team noticing him) and picks up a kill, that's ok. You're not going to be able to react quickly every time, and even when you CAN react quickly, due to other variables (opposing power spikes, lack of mana or low on health), it still might be too risky to commit to a roam and skirmish. In these situations, shoving the wave and applying tower pressure is a good choice. The worst case scenario is to give up your own CS, XP, and lane pressure for no gain by roaming down too late to make an impact.

Part of the skill in making proper decisions is avoiding suboptimal ones. In your future games, be very wary of freezing the wave when the other laner is roaming, as well as attempting to counter-roam and getting boxed in by the enemy team. I've done both of these several times, so let me tell you from experience it doesn't feel great! Warding also helps your team spot enemy roams a ton, drop wards often. As a general rule, if can see your lane opponent making a move early, or if the situation looks like you'll be able to make a solid contribution even if you arrive late (deciding if you can comes with experience), definitely counter-roam. Otherwise, applying tower pressure is almost always a solid choice.

That's all for today, I hope you enjoyed the article. If you'd like to discuss anything League, have comments/feedback on this article, or just want to say hi, feel free to tweet me @k0nduit (with a zero instead of an 'o') and I'll get back to you.

Until next time.

konduit