In many games of League of Legends, there is a moment where you start to consider whether or not you can actually win. Sometimes this comes after the enemy winning a teamfight and securing an objective because of that, or sometimes it comes after an arduous lane where the enemy zoned you off the wave and left you in the absolute dust. In these situations, it can be easy to let your own biases convince you that your game has been rendered unwinnable, and incredibly tempting to just forfeit and move onto the next game. However, just because you see the game as an unwinnable mess does not mean that your team’s fate has entirely been decided. Unless your opponents are perfect players who never make any mistakes, you can often find ways to take small victories which will allow you to start your comeback and inevitably win the game. The goal of this guide is to help you recognize these opportunities even when you are getting walloped by the enemy team. In order to do this, let us go through a handful of things that you can look out for when you are behind that will allow you to get your foot in the door and begin staging a comeback.

You Can Still Win If: Even One of Your Teammates Is Ahead

When broken down to its most fundamental elements, League is a game about stats. Stats, in turn, come from your champion’s level and items. Levels and items then come from experience and gold, which you gain by slaying minions, monsters, and wards. All of this is to say that even if you’re not ahead of your lane opponent in your total number of minions slain, there is a chance that one of your teammates is ahead of their own opponent. In this situation, it is incredibly important for you and your teammates to play in a way which allows the one teammate who is ahead to flourish. If the person who is ahead is a bulkier tank, this often means following up upon their attempts to engage the enemy team and keeping them alive so that they can absorb damage from enemies. Alternatively, if your teammate primarily deals damage (either physical or magic), it is necessary that you keep them alive at all costs, as they are often the only way that you’ll be able to secure kills on enemies. Regardless of what champion your teammate is playing, if they have an advantage over the enemy team while you do not, your game can still be winnable if you play around this teammate and enable them in any way possible.

You Can Still Win If: You’re Behind on Kills but Keeping Up in ‘Creep Score’

It can very often seem like if you have been killed once or twice by an enemy player, then you are totally out of the game for the rest of the game. On one hand, this can potentially be the case, as being killed repeatedly can occasionally mean that the enemy is at a mechanical advantage over you. However, it is important to remember that there is more to winning a game of League of Legends than securing kills (especially isolated kills) on the enemy team. While killing champions is one way to get gold, it is inconsistent and truly only grants a burst of gold which decreases each time as the enemy falls even further behind. The most consistent way to gain gold in League is killing minions and boosting your ‘creep score’, as minions will always march down the lanes and every three-to-four waves of minions provides as much gold as a standard kill. Therefore, if you’re behind the enemy in terms of kills and assists but keeping up with them in number of minions slain, you’ll be consistently gaining gold at the same rate as them, ensuring that you’re keeping pace with them to the best of your ability. If you’re keeping up with the enemy team in this way, you can very often prevent the enemy from getting so far ahead of you that the game is unwinnable.

You Can Still Win If: You Lose Your Outermost Turret Early into the Game

At first glance, it might seem like a huge loss if the enemy destroys your tier 1 early into the game, especially if this occurs before tower plates fall. In the situation, the enemy gets a huge surge of gold due to both destroying the turret itself and breaking the tower plates that guard the outermost turrets in the early game. While many players would look at this situation and believe that the enemy will be too far ahead for you to fight (which is true in isolation), losing a tower does present new opportunities for your strategy. In particular, if the enemy wants to continue to push against you and attempt to destroy your next turret, they put themselves into a vulnerable position where your own team can cut them off and collapse on them, hopefully securing a kill. As a result of this, you will often be able to collect more waves of minions due to the fact that the enemy has to play more cautiously, thus being able to stop you from farming less often. If you do end up losing your outermost turret earlier than you would have liked to, keep this in mind so that you can start accumulating more gold and begin staging your comeback.

You Can Still Win If: The Enemy Team Slays an Epic Monster in the Early Game

When the enemy team slays an epic monster, it can often seem like a worst-case scenario. If this epic monster is a drake, the enemy team will gain a percentage-based increase to their stats, meaning that this buff only gets stronger as the game progresses. Alternatively, if the enemy team slays a Rift Herald, they will be able to destroy at least one of your turrets if they use it correctly. However, it is important to remember that the advantages they gain from these can often be overcome in other ways. For example, if they kill a drake in the early game, there’s a chance that the dragon soul will be of an element that the enemy team wants. This means that since the enemy team got an advantage early game, they are limiting their potential later. Typically, unless the epic monster being slain is the Elder Dragon or a very-late-game Baron Nashor, losing one epic monster does not mean that the game is entirely over. Instead, it just presents a new situation that your team has to play around, and a potential opportunity to secure future objectives. When you see the enemy secure an objective, try to keep this in mind and focus on what you can do rather than lamenting what you have lost.

You Can Still Win If: The Enemy Team Does Not Have Vision Control of the Entire Map

In League of Legends, vision is perhaps one of the most underestimated tools amongst non-professional players, and knowing how to work with and against it is crucial for winning some games. Assuming that you’re not playing against infallible enemies, they likely do not have perfect control over the map in terms of vision, and it is from this fact that you could potentially begin staging a comeback. As was said previously, the deeper enemies go into your side of the map, the more vulnerable they become to being collapsed upon if your team is able to sneak around them and pincer the enemy between themselves and your base. This is most easily achieved if the enemy is lacking on their vision control, and particularly if you are able to use sweepers and control wards to ensure that the enemy never gains complete vision of your side of the map. If you are able to do this, you will make it so that the enemy can never push up as aggressively as they might like to, curtailing their progress and slowing down the game so that you can regain control. Therefore, when the enemy is pushing towards you, do not just think about defending your base and its structures, but also consider the area around your base and how you could use it to overcome the odds.

You Can Still Win If: You Are Able to Obtain your Champion’s Key Items

As was already acknowledged, League of Legends is a game about stats and using your statistical advantage to overpower your enemy. Since this statistical advantage primarily comes from items, it might be hard to imagine that you could potentially eke out a victory when behind on items. However, it is important to recognize that not all champions are reliant on items to the same extent. Where some champions ‘come online’ with a handful of key items, others only need one or two to begin making pivotal plays around the map. Therefore, instead of strictly thinking in terms of whether or not you are equal to enemy champions in terms of how many items you have completed, consider whether or not you have the items that you need to be able to play your champion effectively. While having more items obviously puts the enemy team at an advantage, if you’re able to play your character functionally with only one or two items, you could potentially get an outplay and bring yourself back into the game. If you take a second to think about what you are capable of rather than fearing what the enemy can do, you might be able to secure a win from the jaws of defeat.

You Can Still Win If: Your Champion is Consistently Strong Without Much Gold

While some champions do have key items that they need to hit to be useful in-game, there are many champions in League of Legends who are relatively strong independently of whether or not they are at a gold advantage. In particular, while mages, slayers, and marksmen who need to deal a lot of damage to be a contributing member of their team cannot function effectively without copious amounts of gold, many tanks are able to get by with their base stats, innate defensiveness and healing from their abilities, and reliable crowd control. While these tanks obviously get stronger and more unkillable if they are in a position where they have plenty of gold to spend on items which provide them with health and resistances, they can often fulfil their role on the team by simply applying crowd control to enemies and defending frailer allies. With this in mind, when you’re playing a character who can succeed independently of gold, remember that you can concede advantages in the early game, making it seem like the enemy team is ahead when you have the game entirely under control. From this position, you can win from a state where you are behind in terms of gold and yet are still able to contribute to the game.

You Can Still Win If: Your Champion Scales Well into the Late-Game

Lastly, perhaps the most iconic situation wherein you can still win from behind is when you are playing a character who scales well if you can only stall out the game to the point where the enemy team having a gold advantage means very little because all players are nearing completed item builds. Traditionally, champions who scale effectively into the late-game are weak in the early-game, so it is normal (if not expected) that they fall behind their opponents in terms of items and gold only to catch up later and win the game. These champions are functionally time-bombs, winning games on their own once they are able to achieve this late-game state; the only problem is getting there in the first place. In order to get to that point in the game, it is important to keep in mind that victory is never out of reach when you pick a champion who scales into the late-game, as every minute that the enemy fails to end the game gets you closer to the point where you win the game automatically. With this patience, you will be able to come back from even the most impossible situations simply by having statistical superiority over the enemy team as you get into the endgame.

Concluding Thoughts

From what has been stated, it should be apparent that unless the enemy is knocking on your nexus, there are very few games that are entirely unwinnable. However, there are many games where victory seems so far away that forfeiting would be considerably easier. If there is one thing that you should keep in mind from this guide, it is to keep your cool, analyze the state of the game, and consider what your possible win conditions are. Whether you need to be patient and farm up or if you need to ambush greedy enemies who push without proper vision, knowing the right play to make when you’re on the cusp of defeat is the key to rising from the ashes so that you can make comebacks that other players wouldn’t even think are possible.