Getting camped is an almost totally unavoidable experience. Any person playing a laning role has seen it: the enemy jungler sitting in the bush, waiting to jump them for the third time in 5 minutes. While some may view this as a foolproof way to keep the biggest threats out of the game, it’s a lot riskier than you might expect.
It seems like a near universal experience in League of Legends: one team’s jungler has set up their tent and decided to live for the sake of feeding one of their laners. For the laner having to constantly 1v2, it can feel like the game is lost. Without help from their Jungler, how can a player expect to impact the game later when they’re forced to fight two people for the entire laning phase? Even before the game hits 15 minutes, it can feel lost… but something many players fail to realize is how damaging that camping can be for the rest of the team.
Camping is when a team’s Jungler repeatedly visits (“ganks”) a lane in an attempt to choke out their opponent’s access to resources. Stopping by bot lane once when there are a couple of easy kills is not camping, but repeating that trip botside multiple times after to secure or build the lead would be. The same goes for a Jungler that constantly paths topside and takes every opportunity to try and 2v1 the opposing top laner. A Jungler (or even any roaming laner) spending a large amount of time in a lane is what most people think of when they say they’re being camped.
League is a game that prioritizes overall game knowledge and intuition over execution, generally. Many of the top players do have great mechanics, but one player’s mechanics alone cannot win a team game. It takes map awareness, knowledge on game states, and collaboration with your allies to win consistently. Unless your mechanics are god-tier, relying more on the intel gathered by yourself and your allies and knowing what that little bit of extra vision can tell you will be what wins you most games.
Letting your (or your team’s) plans become predictable is a one-way ticket to harder teamfights. If you’re Jungling, ganking bot every time before heading off to fight the Dragon can let your enemies know who they should bring if they plan on contesting the next time it spawns. Every time they’d see a gank botside near Drake, they might start sending their mid laner to make it a 4v3 at best. If your ADC and Support fail to rotate, you will be caught out in a 3v1 or possibly even a 4v1.
If your team’s Jungler instead decides to camp topside, the enemy Jungler will see them and know that they can go for anything botside for free. That means your team will lose priority (and possibly any chance to check the enemy’s approach) on Dragons and probably also end up losing to the opposing Jungler pathing bot.
A Jungler camping bot in favor of sharing their time across the map will lose out on helping their top lane, which is one of the most volatile roles. People might call it an island, but that doesn’t mean that giving over free kills can lead to a devastating split push topside. Giving gold over to the enemy toplaner and anyone who assisted is bad enough, but effectively losing the ability to roam freely and pressure topside can cripple your team’s gameplan.
In some cases, some level of camping can be helpful, but it should not be your team’s win condition. If the enemy team’s toplaner is someone that relies heavily on scaling to win games (like Kayle), depriving them of their much-needed experience and gold from minion waves can help you control the gamestate. The longer the enemy team needs for their hypercarries to scale, the better it is for your team, especially if you do not have infinite or heavily-scaling (Veigar, Nasus, Vayne, Senna, Kayle, Sion, etc.) to keep you going in the late game.
When the opportunity presents itself to slow down these characters from getting to their endgame plans, it allows comps that are more early-mid game focused to break through enemy defenses before the big threats come online. Suffocating a scaling champion out of their “sit back and farm” plan can secure a safer late game for your team. Knowing when it’s safe to do that, though, is important. If a Jungler’s patterns become too predictable, the enemy will have a good opportunity to secure every objective without contest. It’s all a matter of balance.
There are a near-endless number of variables that go into determining when or if ganking is a good idea. Some thoughts that go through your head might include things like this: Is your team at a general advantage, where you can afford to potentially be in a 3v2 if the enemy mid laner joins? Do you have a significant lead in objectives? Is the enemy Jungler dead or spotted on the opposite side of the map? How’s their K/D looking? It might seem like a lot, but ultimately all of these things (and more) can factor into the outcome of a gank. Learning to gauge the risk/reward ratio of any gank is important. Keeping map awareness and general pattern recognition as the game progresses at the forefront of your thinking can help you immensely.
To put it shortly, people looking to gank should consider a few key questions:
1. Can my (laner you want to gank) 1v1 them?
If your laner is able to 1v1, you might have more productive routes to take! Consider looking at objectives spawning soon, or seeing if there are other lanes that need help.
2. Will this player kill us easily?
If the enemy laner can easily kill both you and your ally, taking a coinflip of a gank is usually a bigger risk than it is worth unless it is communicated ahead of time via pings or text chat.
3. Can we live through a 2v2?
If your opposing Jungler or mid laner decided to roam and countergank, would you be handing over a double kill without much chance of survival?
4. Do they know where I’m at?
If the enemy knows you’ll be ganking, expect some interference. Consider sweeping/clearing vision and coming back around after a camp or two if possible.
If multiple of these questions raise large concerns for you, consider looking elsewhere on the map or exercising caution and communication with your team before running to their lane for a gank. Occasionally there will be lanes that are so far gone that you need to spend your resources nurturing what can grow and letting that lane, and that’s OK! Being able to evaluate what can be saved and what you need to put off is a skill learned through time and experience.
While it might seem ideal or even necessary to keep your ganks perfectly even between all lanes, that is usually not quite the right answer either. You need to be able to look at the game from a number of angles, like: team comp, and game state. These are not the definitive factors that determine wins and losses. Nothing in this game is truly guaranteed aside from there being a winning and losing team at the end of the day. These guidelines function more as a way to make sure you can make the most educated guesses possible.
Team Comp
Team composition, usually called “team comp” or “comp” by most players, can allow you to gauge team builds and their threat level. For example, some Junglers are inherently gank-reliant to function. These are usually going to be tanks or Junglers with lots of crowd control to lock down enemies. Assassins or damage-heavy Junglers tend to want to farm and gain levels and gold before ganking. This can help you predict enemy gameplans!
Team composition, usually called “team comp” or “comp” by most players, can allow you to gauge team builds and their threat level. For example, some Junglers are inherently gank-reliant to function. These are usually going to be tanks or Junglers with lots of crowd control to lock down enemies. Assassins or damage-heavy Junglers tend to want to farm and gain levels and gold before ganking. This can help you predict enemy gameplans!
Team comp extends far beyond the Jungle itself, though. If the enemy is a team full of early-game assassins, your Jungler will need to be aware that every lane will be much more volatile. Being prepared, regardless of your role, to follow up on your Jungler’s approach will be important. If both teams are full of scalers, it’ll be important to know that any lanes with scaling champion vs. scaling champion matchups will both want to be sitting back rather than pushing up aggressively. In such games, ganks may be hard to come by and focusing on objective priority may be the right move.
Game state revolves around where your team is at compared to the enemy team. Knowing what point of the game you’re in, as well as where the enemy players are at is important to making sure you can evaluate risk properly. Ganking your ally to take down the enemy Kayle isn’t a bad idea, but doing so if she has a significant gold and/or level lead on you and your ally could be sending you to a faster loss than just letting lane play out. A double kill given to an early or mid game scaler can feel like a death sentence, but it’s not.
What can run away with the game is a tilted laner who gives up. Avoiding these scenarios where someone “feeds” (even if unintentional) the enemy or is “stealing” experience by wandering into a lane for too long will help you a lot. Regardless of your role, it is generally impossible to keep your allies’ mental in check, but being aware of why people find repeat ganking (for or against them) can be tilting can help you avoid some of it.
Ganking/roaming is one of the most valuable tools in any laner’s arsenal when it comes to fighting for the upper hand in laning phase. Abusing that, through camping, is a double-edged sword. Especially when teams don’t know how to deal with camping, it can be pretty overwhelming. Through learning its weaknesses and ways to address it, you can help your team climb out of even the ugliest early games. This knowledge won’t be implemented as soon as you boot up for your next game, but with time, it will start to come naturally. Happy learning!
