Obtaining leads gives you the tools you need to win games. However, it can also bring about complacency that causes players to lose focus and throw games away. This guide will help you to translate leads and advantages into wins in League of Legends.
Perhaps you have experienced this before, you and your team come out of the laning phase with a gold advantage, and maybe even a couple of Dragons to go along with it. Then either one big team fight or a couple of skirmishes go wrong, and suddenly your team is on the back foot. Eventually, everyone starts panicking and a few more bad decisions cause the defeat screen to beam in your face.
The goal of this guide will be to help you to avoid throwing advantages and games away, and to transition your leads into wins more often.
Sometimes players get confused when they die after getting early kills or huge farm leads on their lane opponents. One simple reason this might happen is because they did not recall to spend their gold. If you score an early lead on your opponents, although you may have more gold than they do, it does not matter unless you spend it. Even though your opponent died, they were able to buy items and come back to lane stronger than they were before. On the other hand, not recalling and spending your gold just means that you stay in lane without replenishing your resources, like health and mana. It also means that you did not get any stronger because you were not able to purchase any new items.
While it is good to be on the map making proactive plays and getting leads for your team, the lead does not really come into effect until you spend the gold that was gained from those plays. This is especially important if a skirmish or team fight breaks out at an objective such as Baron or Dragon. The last thing you want to happen is for your lead to be meaningless in team fights because you forgot to recall; nobody likes to lose an objective and team fight knowing that they were sitting on a full item’s worth of gold.
When playing as a role that can roam and influence other lanes such as support, jungle or mid; focusing on one side of the map or a specific lane is usually better than trying to impact every lane. Once you have influenced a lane and gotten your teammate ahead, you almost always want to continue roaming to that same lane. This is because you have already successfully impacted that lane before, which probably means both you and your teammate have already secured a lead. This makes any further ganks more likely to succeed due to the item and experience advantage that both of you have gained. Chances are, the opponent in that lane likely has no summoner spells due to previous ganks, which further increase the chances of another successful gank. It will also make vision control of that side of the map much easier due to the amount of pressure that is produced by that lane.
Having one teammate extremely far ahead of their lane opponent can be better than everyone being slightly ahead. If everyone on your team is just slightly ahead of the enemy, that one extra Long Sword or Ruby Crystal might not make a big difference when a team fight breaks out. However, if one person on the team is an entire item ahead of their lane opponent, it can feel as if your team has an extra player due to the massive advantage they have. It also means that the respective enemy laner is extremely weak and may not be able to contribute much to team fights, which gives your team a bigger advantage.
Vision and map control is one of the most important things in League of Legends. Vision helps you to spot out enemy players on the map, which not only prevents you from dying to ganks, but it also helps you and your team to set up picks on unsuspecting enemies.
When you have a lead in your lane, you will usually have more freedom to do what you want because of how strong you are at the moment. You can take the opportunity to drop deep wards down in the enemy jungle to allow you and your team to have more vision and information on the enemy team. This will also allow you to push lanes and pressure the map safely, because you will be able to spot any enemy players rotating far in advance before they reach you. This will not only benefit you, but it will also benefit your entire team. For example, if you are pushing top lane and you see several opponents rotating towards you through the jungle, you can just back off safely. Meanwhile, your team can use this information to make a play on the bottom side of the map with the knowledge that they will have a numbers advantage. This also works both ways, setting up deep vision for one of your teammates while they split push will also give the same benefit. This allows you and your team to extend leads safely and avoid giving opponents a way back into the game.
While it is important to place down vision for your team, it is also equally important that you clear the enemy’s vision. Players tend to play more reserved and passive when they do not have vision, which means that they are less likely to be looking for proactive plays around the map. If your team has taken down two or more outer turrets, you have the ability to essentially zone your opponents out of their own jungle. Taking down their outer turret and clearing their vision in the jungle forces them to either sit back and farm behind their inner turret, or to go into the fog of war and risk dying while farming jungle camps and regaining vision. This also means that your team will have easy access to any important objectives such as Dragon or Baron. If the enemy team were to contest, they will be forced to go in blind, which gives your team the option to fake an objective and wait in a bush for any rotating opponents.
After gaining leads, some players tend to take their foot off the pedal and go on autopilot. This is an extremely destructive habit that gives your opponents time to breathe and allows them to come back into the game. It does not matter if you have a small lead or a big lead, you should always be looking to be proactive and make plays around the map. Having an advantage can be a double-edged sword sometimes; on one hand, having a lead and being stronger than your opponent is always a good feeling, but on the other hand, it can also cause players to have a lack of urgency and a loss of focus.
If having a lead means you have a higher chance of winning, then extending that lead must mean that your chances of winning becomes even higher. Sometimes your opponents are just playing champions that are weak in the early game, which means that your team will naturally be ahead early on. If you do not continue to push the issue and extend your lead in such cases, your opponents will end up getting stronger and stronger as the game progresses on further; eventually, they will outscale your team and most likely gain the lead and momentum. Staying proactive by constantly looking for ways to increase your advantage will reduce the enemy team’s chances of coming back. As gold leads start getting higher and higher, some players may feel frustrated or pressured to make game-changing plays. You can use this to your advantage and wait for mistakes or overcommitments to happen. Extending leads may cause opponents to make a bad play in a desperate attempt to come back into the game, which gives your team an opportunity to pull even further ahead.
Players may sometimes get too focused on trying to get big leads by scoring kills or taking objectives, but this can quickly backfire and cause more harm than good. Learning to accept and be happy with small wins will not only help you to win more games, but it can also help to make games feel less stressful. For example, if you trade with your lane opponent and come out with a health advantage, you do not have to always look to finish them off. Forcing plays can cause you to overcommit and lose focus due to tunnel vision. Instead, you can use your health advantage to extend your lead slowly by simply zoning your opponent off the wave, forcing them to lose gold and maybe even some experience. If you try to force a solo kill after a good trade, you might end up taking too much damage from minions due to overextending. This could not only cause you to lose your health advantage, but it can also cause you to die if there are too many minions. Tunnel vision from getting too excited and zoning in on your opponent can also cause you to lose focus on your surroundings, which leaves you extremely prone to ganks.
Going for small wins can also help to make games feel less stressful by taking the focus away from trying to make huge game-changing plays. Team fights put a lot of pressure on players and can be extremely stressful, especially when an important objective such as Dragon or Baron is at stake. Small wins such as winning trades and gaining minor resource advantages have much less at stake and are easier to obtain, but they add up over the course of a game and can be just as important as winning a team fight or getting a major objective. Huge team fights also have many factors that are out of your control, such as your team’s positioning or their ability usage. Going for favourable trades and manipulating minion waves are smaller and less chaotic plays that are much more controlled.
To conclude, gaining a lead, whether small or large, does not mean that the game is over. Advantages are much easier to lose than they are to gain, and massive gold leads can be easily lost in one bad team fight. This is why it is important to always stay focused and look for ways to extend your lead. After all, the game is not won until the enemy Nexus explodes.
I hope this guide has been helpful, and remember, do not get too comfortable with your lead!
