League of Legends Guide

How To Stop Throwing League Games

How often do you lose games you were winning? Here's a few simple ways to stop throwing your games.

Having a great early game can be an excellent way to boost your morale and provide you with the motivation to push your advantages to victory. Oftentimes, you may feel that someone on your team (or even yourself) gets too comfortable. Although we want to be comfortable, feeling too comfortable is what gives the snowball the little nudge it needs to start rolling. When you add in making mistakes, and a twist of chat usage to question your teammates, that snowball inevitably reaches the threshold where there is no coming back and you throw your lead, and more often than not, the game.

A simple way to envision this idea of mentality intrinsically being connected with the tempo of the game, is to consider a mid lane matchup where both players are 2/2/0 in score. You might say that it is evenly matched and both players should have a similar mindset towards the future of the game. But, consider this: One of the players started 2/0/0 and the other started 0/2/0. From there, the scores both ended up being 2/2/0. Who likely has a stronger mentality towards the rest of the game? Clearly the player that started 0/2/0 and came back to be 2/2/0. The other player had a massive advantage and has lost it. This guide will help you to not be that player.

The team with Tempo is the team with the better mental

Determine the Enemy's Only Hope

Depending on how much of a lead you have, it may be difficult to identify what the enemy has for a win condition. It is easiest to first establish if they have any late game hyper carries like Kayle, Kassadin, Vayne, etc. If they do, then that is a win condition to keep in mind. Otherwise, do they have a good split pushing champion? Do they have dragons giving them an opportunity to get soul? Answering these questions should be quite simple. The more difficult aspect is understanding how they will play to those win conditions. Obviously if there is a single champion (or even several) that are late game insurance policies, the enemy team will look to feed them as many resources as possible, but how will they try it? It's not as simple as giving them kills because, after all, they are losing, and if they take a fight, they will likely lose it.

Side lanes and wave management are the best way to get guaranteed income so expect the enemy team to let their hyper carries catch waves in the side lanes and farm jungle monsters. Use that knowledge to set up plays to deny them the opportunity to close the gold gap. Some ideas to use will be mentioned later, but for now, keep in mind that the first step to maintaining your advantages is to acknowledge the game is not over yet, and that there is a way for the enemy team to come back. So do your best to figure it out before they do and don't let them do it!

Let Your Carries be Carries

Determine What Your Best and Easiest Win Condition Is

While it is important to understand your enemy's win condition in order to prevent them from coming back, it's also important to understand yours so that you can close out the game. Fundamentally, the way you figure out the win condition is the same way you figure out the enemy's. Start with the easy questions: Do we have hyper carries? Do we have a player with a significant lead? Do we have dragons stacked for soul? Can we get baron? Once you find your win conditions, you will start to see the ways that you can convert your advantages towards those conditions. If we have a hyper carry, continue letting them get fed with kills and waves. If you have dragons stacked, maintain vision control around dragon and get wave priority to get soul. If you can get a pick on the enemy jungler, get baron. Or, if you have vision denial around baron, bait the enemies into a fight while you have the advantages. Always remember that you must play to your win conditions in order to win, if you think you won without playing to a win condition then you don't really understand what you did to win that game. There is always a win condition, no matter what side of the game you're on, it's your job to avoid the enemy's while striving to reach yours.

Dragon Soul Win Condition

Emphasize Vision Denial and Stick to Areas Where You Have Vision

As you may have guessed, vision is vital to the success of your game. The best way to create advantages is to use information that you gather from vision and using it to make better decisions. Additionally, by denying the enemy vision you make it more difficult for them to make good decisions. Always prioritize efficient vision and use the minimap! If you are desperate to set up a play, set up vision around the location and deny enemy vision. Vision is information, and information is power. The more vision you have the more power you have, so use it well!

Vision Setup and Denial Around Objectives

Stay Positive

I think it goes without saying, stay positive. In the majority of games where you start off with a lead and end up throwing, the first thing to fall is usually the team's mental. There is no reason to be toxic with your teammates and no reason to single people out. All it does is make you lose the game faster and keep you (and everyone involved) in a worse mindset for the next game. If you want the community to be less toxic, it starts with one game, and it starts with your game.

Use Chat Appropriately After Mistakes

Things to Keep in Mind

When you are in the lead there are a few things to keep in mind (aside from details mentioned above). First thing to keep in mind, as briefly mentioned, the side waves. All too often in solo queue the mid game develops into an ARAM and the side waves are completely neglected unless one of the teams has a split pusher. If not, usually the only action that the side lanes get is when a team's carry takes it upon themselves to venture off to get more gold without vision and without getting a teammate to assist them. When that happens, that is a prime opportunity to get your advantage. When you're in the lead and the tempo is in your hands, the enemy team gets desperate. At some point their win condition carry, or their only fed member will get so desperate to carry that they will rotate for a side wave, and that is your opportunity to shut down their carry from getting any income. Prepare side waves with slow pushes or freezes and set up vision and vision denial to lay in wait for their player to head in that direction. It's an easy play to make and rarely ever has any counter play as long as you know they don't have vision of you camping a bush or behind a wall.

Side Lane Priority to Get Early Control Over Objectives

Another prime opportunity to snowball your lead is by keeping track of buff timers and using that information to create plays. Often times, later into the game, the enemy bot laner will always try to get the red buff. Knowing the buff timer and using vision around the objective is a sure way to get a pick onto the bot laner AND take the buff. Often times the worst-case scenario is that the enemy jungler uses their smite to secure the buff when you're attempting to steal it. What do you do if they smite the buff? That's right, go straight to the dragon or the baron. You don't need to start the objective, but you bet the enemy team will be terrified because their jungler's smite is down and they will fall into the trap of face checking bushes and trying to stop you from taking the objective (another perfect opportunity for a trap, bait, etc.).

Setup Picks Around Smaller Objectives

Finally, the last thing to keep in mind, related to something previously mentioned, is to keep an eye out for what the enemy is doing to try and get back into the game. You might think this is the same as determining the enemy win condition but it's slightly different. One, what the enemy does, and what they are supposed to do, aren't always the same thing. If their win condition is through split pushing, but their split pushers are always grouped, welcome it with open arms and make them think they are doing the right thing. Essentially, if your team has the better 5v5 and the enemy has better split push, but the stay grouped in the mid lane, also stay grouped in the mid lane. This is the scenario where you are actually right to ignore the side lanes, because sending someone to catch waves will either leave you at a disadvantage in numbers mid, or will force their split pushers to match in the side lanes (exactly where you don't want them to be). It's small details like that example that will really make the difference in closing out games but are usually the most difficult to identify in the heat of the moment.

Overall Strategy to Close Out the Game

So now that you have the main concepts to maintain your lead and to stop throwing the game, how do you actually close out the game? Generally, the ending of games are pretty consistent. They end in teamfights. This can often be quite daunting because solo queue is very, very messy. It is never slow and methodical like you see in pro games and so you shouldn't expect your team to play like that. Solo queue, more often than not, usually is decided from a fight around baron, elder dragon, or an inhibitor.

What's important to know about two of these three locations, is that they are neutral and central on the map. That means that, generally (hopefully), the winning team has the advantage of setup in vision, vision denial, and positioning. This advantage is more than enough to take a teamfight even if your team doesn't have a better teamfighting composition (as long as you use it correctly). That's what this section is about.

There's three aspects to consider about a team that has a better team composition than yours. One: Do they have a hyper carry? If so, you want to use that vision and positioning advantage to get a pick on that carry, or at least position to have them zoned out of the fight. Two: Do they have easy engage (Malphite ult, Amumu ult, etc.)? If yes, you want to use your set up advantage to either bait out the engagement tools, or minimize their effectiveness with your positioning. Three: Do they have a "wombo-combo"? If they do, you must use your set up advantage to do any of the previous options, get a pick, find a way to zone out damage of the "wombo-combo" (Orianna ult, Miss Fortune ult, etc.), find a way to bait out one of the engagement tools, or at the very least, position in a way that minimizes the effectiveness of the "wombo-combo". Finding another advantage created from your set up will be enough to give you the edge in the fight considering you have the lead in items.

Position to Avoid "Wombo-Combo" when Teamfights are Unavoidable

Conclusion

There is a lot more to consider when you're in the lead that most people think. Which is probably why throws happen so often in the first place. It's easy to get complacent and comfortable, and sometimes that's all it takes to lose everything you've built for yourself. If I can leave you with one last note, remember that the team behind has nothing else to lose, and everything to gain, so all the pressure is on the team with the lead. So try your best to not get complacent and finish the game strong because the game isn't over until it's over.

Do your best and keep asking questions. Good luck, Summoners!

Related articles