The Laning Phase in League of Legends is the first thing that happens every game. It will happen every game and it is important to make the best of it and spend your time efficiently. That way, you can always have the best start to the game possible and go into mid/late game with a solid foundation.

CSing/Farming

This is your primary source of gold early on and will remain an extremely important factor even until the end of the game. "CS" stands for Creep Score. It is the number of minions/monsters you have managed to land the last hit on and earn gold for.

A good basis for comparing how well you are doing in lane is to compare your number to that of the enemy laner. If you are beating them in numbers, you have successfully gathered more resources than they have and will power up more quickly, leading to advantages both in the lane and into the rest of the game.

If you have last hit every minion to walk into your lane, you will break the 100 CS point at about 9:40. Next time you're in a game, look at your CS at 10 minutes. How close are you to the magic 100? That tells you just how much you have to improve. Be conscious of your farm numbers.

When you watch professional games or tune in to your favorite streamer, look at their CS numbers. Unless the game is wildly outside of normal conventions, it doesn't matter whether they are having a great game or a slightly bad one. Their CS numbers will remain fairly consistent.

Wave Control

Because CSing is so important, it is also very important to learn how to manipulate a minion wave. While the idea is simplistic, there are a few things that are essential to understand. At the start of the game, the minion waves will crash right in the middle of the lane.

Pushing is the act of damaging the minions in such a way that the equilibrium is broken and the minions move farther up along the lane, towards your opponent's tower. Because you are dealing more damage to enemy minions, you will be able to achieve many things by pushing.

• You will gain exp faster than your opponent because their minions are dying faster.
  • For important levels, like level 2 or level 6, many experienced players will push the lane and get the level quicker, allowing them to fight the enemy with an advantage.
• Your enemy must remain in lane longer.
  • This gives you breathing room to back and buy items or contest objectives on the map
• Your minions will now be attacking their turret
  • Their towers will fall quicker and you will be able to grab more gold
  • They must now time their attacks to match the tower, which does a significant amount of damage and result in a few missed cs

Freezing is the act of maintaining a minion equilibrium at a specific location. You allow your minions to die to an enemy push and then the next wave arrives. You will need to leave just enough enemy minions alive (usually 2 or 3) so that your wave is held up and stops to deal with them. The next enemy wave will add to the leftover minions and re-establish a minion stalemate, similar to how the minion waves crash at the middle of the lane in the beginning. This takes some practice, but is an extremely powerful tool.

If you are feeling pressure or wish not to overextend and get ganked, this is a great way to still farm while being very safe. The enemy will be afraid to fight you because you are so close to your turret, and you will not have to farm under the turret.

Lane Dynamics

Along with Wave Control, there are a few more things that are influential to the lane.

Pressure is what you feel when that enemy Blitzcrank weaves in and out of the bushes with his hook ready or when you feel like the Zed across from you hasn't missed a single shuriken and is going to hit level 6 soon. Although they haven't done anything yet, the threat is there and you must play around it or else suffer the consequences.

There are also external pressures like when the enemy Jungler has high mobility and your wards keep getting swept away. You have to play safe and be careful with your fights because you have no idea whether or not they have backup.

Trading is when the champions try to deal damage to each other. Of course, both players try to deal more damage in the exchange so it is a "trade." This is what happens between the minion farming. If you're not actively last-hitting a minion, you need to be ready to deal with your opponent.

A good example is usually found in the bottom lane because both of the carries and supports are actively looking for spots to throw an attack. If you are auto attacking a minion, you cannot fight back if the enemies throw their attacks at you. Your support must then be ready to dish out a counterattack and you must be ready to fight back if they continue shooting.

This must be balanced, because if all you do is shoot each other, no one is properly gathering the minion gold.

Skilled players that have a very good grasp of their champion's potentials and limits will usually win in these regards. They will be able to do the maximum damage with every trade and avoid fights they know they cannot win.

Positioning is also a key factor. If you can position yourself within a lane so that you take advantage of your strengths, whether they are range, mobility, etc., your opponent will be hard pressed to do anything to you.

What if Teemo farms at a range and blinds the Nasus every time he comes in? What if the enemy ADC is constantly sitting at the maximum auto attack range and is never out of position to be engaged on? The opponent will be forced to play your game until they can come up with a plan to deal with you. If they make a wrong move, they will be punished.

How to Win Laning Phase

That being all said, how can we use all these things to win the laning phase? A combination of the above fundamentals will lead you to success.

Use Your Advantages

Let's say you have a range advantage over your opponent. Trading is going to go in your favor, since you can attack your enemy without them being able to retaliate and if they try to harass you while you farm, you can hit them before they leave your attack range.

Therefore, position yourself so that to if they even try to go for a minion, they must take multiple hits from you. If you gain an advantage from minion gold and manage to outpace them in items, start positioning even further ahead so that you can either straight out deny CS or bait them into a fight and win with your item advantage.

If you are afraid of a gank, freeze the lane like mentioned above and continue the range denial, now with more gold and a smoother entrance into the midgame.

Position yourself to your advantages. If you know that trading will lead to your loss, push as hard as you canto force the opponent to focus on last-hitting under the turret or freeze the wave so your opponent is reluctant to engage you.

Press Your Leads / Snowballing

If you gain a CS advantage or maybe grab a kill or two, use it to the best of your ability. If you are ahead and know it, make sure your opponent feels it too.

Many times, a single item lead will result in just that last few HP during trades, which leads to a bigger gap in power, which leads to an easier time. Make sure you position properly and respect your opponent's damage.

Overconfidence will lead to you giving the lead back to the opponent. Be watchful of outside influences, such as a midlane or a jungle gank. But don't be afraid to take battles you know you will win if your opponent has bad positioning or decides not to respect your lead.

Keep It Together

Sometimes, you'll be the one on the backfoot. Maybe an early jungle gank got them rolling or you played a fight wrong and lost some kills. Position well and try to freeze the lane in a good place for you to farm up and get enough gold to still compete. You can still deny them some farm this way and hold them in an good position until your jungler comes to help you.

If you need to deal with an annoying opponent, you can always ward up to make sure there is no other outside factor, and then play safe and wait for your opponent to slip up. Maybe you'll just be flat out better at farming and don't even need to do anything to make up for the gold deficit.

If you opponent freezes the lane to stop you from coming close, there are a few ways to break the freeze.

• Harass the opponent as they focus on maintaining minion equilibrium. They will eventually be forced to back up, and then you can flush the wave into the turret and bring it back to the center.
• Bounce the wave with superior waveclear. Basically, the same concept as above but you make use of your character's skill kit if you have it.
• Call your jungler over to hopefully get some kills and even the gold back up. Having and extra person also means you now have a chance to push the wave to the tower.
• Back and return to lane. This needs some explaining.
  • If you back, you will have refreshed your health/mana and come back with more powerful items. You will be able to fight for control of the lane now.
  • You know they won't be pushing if they freeze, so your tower is still safe.
  • If they DO push when you back, you now have a reset lane when you arrive back. With some luck, you might catch the end of the push and be able to start your own freeze.

On the same vein as the idea above, you could just leave the lane and help your jungler with an objective or bother another lane. You are still making an impact on the game with pressure. Just be sure to return and CS after you are done. Being out of the lane means no one from your team is collecting the farm/exp in that lane and you are actually sapping it away from your team if you remain in another lane.

Or Just Don't Deal

Many times, if you have better waveclear, you can simply just push the lane out, get all the last - hits, and leave your opponent to their own devices. Sure, this also means they get some uncontested farm, but you aren't dying to them and making them stronger. Plus, you gurantee you get all the resources from the lane and can hope to help you team later in the game.

It is worth noting that this is an extreme option, as you are essentially giving your opponent lane control. But if the scary Fiora has 5 kills on you and can blast you, even under the turret, maybe it's best that you don't continue giving her more kills.

Conclusion

Laning is extremely important because you'll have to do it every game. You'll get better at it and it will lead into solid midgame objective control and lategame teamfights. Understand what to do and when is the biggest thing, which comes with practice.

This guide went over the basics of laning and focused on a few things you can do to make your laning phase go smoother.

Good luck out there on Summoner's Rift!

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