There are many ways to lose a game and, consequently, many ways to win a game. Nonetheless, through thick and thin, economy is always the best way back to victory. If you manage your economy well, I guarantee you that more triumphs will come. After all, League of Legends includes many economical aspects. Mechanics and teamwork are critical but, at the base of it all, how a team will fare against their opponents in specific circumstances relies heavily on where it stands economically. How to push a gold advantage, how to play when you're at a gold deficit, it's all very important. More specifically, how the gold is allocated must also be treated with dilligence. Thus, this article will help you manage this essential resource.

Minions

Last hitting minions, commonly called "CSing", will obviously make you gain gold. If you want to have a gold advantage on your opponent, it starts with the laning phase. The concept of CSing better than the opposing laner does and will probably forever be an abstraction but there are various ways to find an opportunity to do so. If you accomplish favorable trades, you can eventually force a recall and push your minion wave crashing into the enemy turret. That will deny the possibility for your opponent to wrack up the rewards in addition depriving the experience that minions give. In terms of wave management, it isn't always necessary to shove the lane constantly with the intention of denying minions into the opposing turret. By communicating with your allied jungler, you can strictly hit the minions when they're about to die and never before that. That means that your opponent will most likely push his wave into your turret instead and, thus, he is vulnerable to a gank. That very gank could force a summoner spell, force a recall or even acquire your team a kill. A kill in lane has a very snowballing characteristic as they give the respective laner a kill or an assist but then, in most cases, it gets worse since he has the freedom to manage the minion wave as he pleases. The laner that's still alive could use the aforementioned tactic by shoving the lane into the enemy tower or he could alternatively freeze it (usually occurs in the side lanes).

In the same order of ideas of letting your opponent push, freezing the lane can bring about a gold advantage because in most cases it forces your enemy to venture dangerous territory. The important thing is to truly make it dangerous by exploiting a mistep if it occurs. However, it is important to note that freezing also has its drawbacks because it feeds the enemy team the information of your whereabouts. In response, your enemies can work around that. For example, you're freezing the bottom lane as an AD carry. The opposing team could initiate a dive on your top laner because they know you have absolutely no way to join and help. From that play, they get a kill and they probably take down the turret so be careful not to overstay your welcome.

In response to a foe's freeze, you can ask your jungler to come help unfreeze the lane or another moderate response would be to farm the jungle:

If a dive isn't in your cards like in the aforementioned example, backing away from an enemy freeze to farm a nearby jungle camp as displayed above is a decent source of income but just make sure that it isn't in your jungler's optimal path. You don't want the jungler to starve either, it's important to allocate the resources wisely.

In summary, denying and gaining gold through minions is very important. If we consider that a 1 CS is worth on average 20 gold, being 15 CS up on your opponent makes it 300 gold which is worth a kill.

In the example above, you see that the team with 13 kills managed to push their advantage effectively. On paper it's 3 kills ahead but in reality the gold advantage amounts to more than 6k. Indeed, that can be explained by being two towers up but, undoubtedly, it's also due to a significant CS discrepancy.

Kills

Probably the most straight forward approach on how to have more gold than your adversaries is to have more kills than them. However, more specifically, how do kills, and the assists that go along with them, get rewarded?

Bounty values

Getting a kill on someone with Gold Gained 1 kill 300 2 killstreak 350 3 killstreak (Killing Spree) 408 4 killstreak (Rampage) 475 5 killstreak (Unstoppable) 500 6 killstreak (Dominating) 500 7 killstreak (Godlike) 500 8 killstreak (Legendary) 500 9+ killstreak (Legendary) 500

First blood : 400 gold

Assists are worth half of the bounty value divided by the numbers of contributors. For example, shutting down an opponent that's Unstoppable aided by two allies will give these two allies 125 gold (250/2). However, similarly to killstreaks, assists can gain value too.

Assists value

Number of assists higher than kills Additional Gold 2 assists 30 3 assists 45 4+ assists (cap) 60

Hence, with all of that being said, it's paramount that the kills go to the right people. Three early kills to a Rek'Sai compared to three early kills to a LeBlanc makes a tremendous difference. The impact that they can both have on the game is very different and, quite frankly, LeBlanc will assuredly be more influential. In terms of ending killstreaks, if possible, a shutdown must be secured by one of your carries. More gold invested into your damage dealers will pay immediate dividends.

Turrets

The last gold income featured in this article will be the turrets. There are ways to manipulate the gold received from some of the turrets. If you manipulate it according to your strengths, those are the small details that can give you a discreet yet very effective advantage. Here's how it works:

Outer Turrets

- Global: 125 gold
- Close to tower: 150 gold split among the participating members

Inner Turrets

- Global: 150 gold
- Close to tower: 100 gold split among the participating members

Inhibitor Turrets

- Global: 175 gold
- Close to tower: 0 gold

Nexus Turrets

- Global: 50 gold
- Close to tower: 0 gold

As displayed above, inhibitor turrets and Nexus turrets distribute a flat gold amount, no hidden tricks to it. It's rather the gold from the outer and inner turrets that you can decide how to share the gold among your teammates. For example, you win a 3v3 fight in the bot lane which includes your jungler, your AD carry and your support against their own respective jungler, AD carry and support. Your team comes out of the fight unscathed, with all three of your aforementioned members alive. Thus, the bottom outer turret is there for the taking. Instead of sieging it with all three of these members, you could order the jungler and the support to recall preemptively and let the AD carry take all the gold for himself which would accumulate to 275 gold (125 + 150/1) since his power spikes are usually the most important as a main damage dealer. There are other factors to take into account also. Who got the kills in the fight I just mentioned? If the AD carry got all 3 kills and you have a damage dealer as your jungler (such as Lee Sin or Nidalee for example), it would be a fine decision to let him have the whole 275 gold also. Did your jungler have a hard time farming his camps due to the enemy jungler consistently counterjungling him? That would also be a good argument to give him the turret's full income in order to get him back in the game and stabilize his earnings.

There are scenarios in which giving the entirety of the turret's gold to one member isn't the most optimal decision. There are scenarios in which it's better to take down the turret as fast as possible such as recalling as fast as possible and reset to make your next move. If Dragon is available, you would want to take down the bottom outer turret as fast as possible to transition to Dragon as fast as you can also, taking two objectives in one fell swoop.

In terms of wave management, especially for the top lane, it's preferable to let the minions take down the turret for you. Often seen in the professional scene, professional teams let the minions crash into a turret that has low health to deny as much as possible this source of income. Eventually the turret gets taken down and, if executed properly, the minion wave should bounce towards you. From that point, you just freeze the minion wave on your end of the lane and force your opponent to lose precious time. The extra 150 gold for those close to the tower might go to waste if needed but freezing a minion wave in this manner is well worth it. 150 gold is approximately 8 minions. It won't take you much time to catch up on the lost gold plus you force your enemy into an unfavorable scenario.

In summary, destroying turrets is always good news for your team since it's such an important source of income. Don't forget that it also enables tremendous map control. Use those two aspects together. You've gained some precious gold thanks to the tower and the Rift opens up to your advantage. Take control of what opens up to you thanks to your gold advantage, hitting two birds with one stone.

Conclusion

In light of the foregoing statements, gold on Summoner's Rift is abundant but sharing it dilligently is what's important. Whether it's by the way of minions, kills, assists or turrets, focus on distributing the income based on your strengths and weaknesses. I hope that the knowledge provided by this article will help you gather more wins in your match history. For anything else about your favorite eSports, there's always more on www.team-dignitas.net!