It happens to everyone! Maybe the enemy Jungler decides that you aren’t allowed to play the game. Maybe the level one Tryndamere crit you three times in a row. Maybe you just get plain unlucky. Whatever the situation, there will be some games that you will have to play from behind. And there is an art to playing from behind because there is a right way and a wrong way to do it. I’ll walk you through a few steps that you can do to improve your win rate whenever you do happen to fall behind.

Technique 1: (If Applicable) Build Tank

This technique can’t be used by everyone but is especially important to keep in mind if you are a Top Laner or Jungler. A lot of the time, if one does end up falling behind, their solution will be to build damage and keep attempting to duel the enemy! Instead of building damage items and forcing fights that you will inevitably end up losing, slow the lane down and pick up some tank items. This makes it much harder for the enemy to kill you, which means they will not be able to snowball their lead as easily as they would if you continued to build damage and fight them.

Additionally, this will help you later game in team fights, where instead of getting focused down and destroyed because of your squishy build, you’ll be able to soak a lot of damage for your team and be useful even when behind. Again, this is not applicable to everyone, but on champs that can either go tank or damage such as Rek’Sai, Lee Sin, or even someone like Jax, this simple step can be the difference between a 2/0/0 score or a 9/0/5 score for the enemy!

Technique 2: Play the Split Push Game

Another technique that one can use is split pushing. Like the building tank technique, this strategy can’t and shouldn’t be used by everyone, but it can be very effective on the right champion. Sometimes, you fall behind, and you aren’t going to be able to team fight effectively. Instead of hopelessly engaging fights, you can choose to instead split push in hopes of drawing enough attention to pull them towards you, and maybe get a few towers in the process.

By playing this strategy, your goal will be to push either top or bottom lane as hard as possible and focus on hitting down the towers. Some champions such as Tryndamere or Master Yi are designed for this purpose, but you can pull it off on others as well if need be. By split pushing, you force enemies to respond to your pressure, which will hopefully allow your team to win a 4v4 or even 4v3 fight depending on how many people they send back to stop you. This strategy can not only net you an advantage by giving you an entire lane of minions to farm, but can also assist your team to comeback by applying pressure on the map and picking up tower gold!

Technique 3: Roam

This is a technique that can be utilized by basically every position in the game. Instead of staying in your lost lane, you can try and influence other lanes and tip them in your favor. This is quite easy to do as a support, as you can wait until your ADC has backed, and then take that time to roam mid and hopefully give your mid laner an advantage. It’s also easy to execute this strategy as a top laner because you can gank mid either while your opposite laner is holding the wave near their turret, or you can quickly gank middle and then Teleport back to top lane to make sure you don’t miss too many minions. Although not a guarantee success, usually leaving your lane to try and create a numbers advantage somewhere else on the map is better than staying in your lane and continue to get denied by your opposing laner.

Technique 4: Trading Objectives

If your team is behind, the last thing you are going to want to do is to engage a fight. What you want to do is avoid the enemy and try to do the opposite of what they are doing. If the enemy decides to five-man group mid, instead of hopelessly trying to defend the fragile tower, you can instead five-man group bottom or top lane and trade one tower for one tower. This strategy is a lot riskier because if they are stronger than you, they can continue to push and they will push faster than you usually if they are ahead.

This technique is quite situational and should be used when you can trade objectives, not get an objective but lose three! This technique can work very well if you have a team comp that can push towers effectively, like a Jax top and Jinx ADC. This technique can also work well if you have champions that are good at taking and securing neutral objectives, such as Kalista and Nunu.

Technique 5: Play to Win

The final technique I’ll explain is the concept of playing to win. Now, this might be obvious, but there is a technique to it. If you are behind and choose to give up a couple objectives, that is perfectly fine! However, you need to make a stand at some point, or else you are going to lose the game without a fight. Giving up the outer towers due to a deficit is fine, but giving up all of your inhibitors is usually not. This is where playing to win comes in. By simply giving up all of your objectives, and trying to just cling on to your Nexus, you are no longer playing to win, you are playing to not lose. While this strategy might prolong the game 10-15 minutes, it makes your possibility of winning disappear. Alternatively, if you choose to fight and defend your base, that is playing to win.

Although you might lose the fight, and then quickly lose the game after, there is a chance you win the fight that mounts the comeback. Knowing exactly when the moment to fight and make a move varies drastically game to game. You need to be able to realize when you are behind, and when to fight before it’s too late.

So don’t be scared to engage and start a fight, because to win the game you’re going to need to win some fights if you want to be victorious!

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