Recall is a spell that we learn about from when we start out playing League of Legends, and the concept is quite simple: you start a channel that lasts eight seconds, and after those eight seconds, you return to your team’s fountain where you can purchase items and restore your mana and health before going back to your lane/jungle. Despite its simplicity on its own, however, Recall is actually a very skillful ability that most people overlook when they think of how to get leads.

In this guide I will be examining a few different types of Recalls, and I’ll break down each category and go in-depth about how these usually happen and look at what you want to look to do after the Recall. These three types of Recalls include when you need to refresh your resources, you are Recalling for an item spike, and you are Recalling for tempo.

Recalling to Refresh Resources

This type of Recall is fairly straightforward in terms of when you take it, but it’s important to figure out how or why that happened, along with understanding fully what “resources” are. Health and mana are the most obvious choice of resources, but there are other factors too. Say, for example, you take a Doran’s Item and your opponent takes a Corrupting Potion. You will only have one to two potions available to you whereas your opponent has three, so it’s important to understand that you are inherently at a disadvantage in terms of sustain. With that said, it also can depend on the champion as well. If you are playing a champion like Lee Sin mid or top, it becomes less impactful despite you having less potions because Iron Will is fantastic at helping you sustain and keeping you in lane for longer. In melee assassin versus ranged matchups, health becomes your resource that you want to keep as high as possible until you have a kill opportunity, or else you won’t be able to take that opportunity because you’re within the enemy’s execute range.

These concepts are important to remember when thinking about if you need to Recall due to you being at a disadvantage in resources. Generally when you take these types of Recalls, you’ve either stacked a few waves and then crashed it into the enemy tower with your remaining resources which is a positive outcome and a good Recall timer, or something has gone wrong. Perhaps you took a bad trade or missed too many key skill shots; it’s important to understand that in a spot like that, you will need your jungler to come help you push out the lane so your waves aren’t stuck in a bad spot for several minutes. It does feel bad for your jungler unless they were already pathing to your lane to do so, however, it’s better to plug the hole temporarily rather than letting the whole ship sink.

As for what you want to do after this Recall, you want to make use of whatever item you have over your opponent to either freeze the wave as it’s coming back into you, or bully them out/try to force them to Recall due to their own resource disadvantage since you had the chance to Recall and they haven’t yet. This can be more difficult if they match your Recall or if they have Teleport, but it is still worth it to burn that summoner spell from them over a bad Recall, but make sure that you don’t burn all of your own resources to do so as it can end up with you being on the backfoot once more if you have no mana or are low HP and the enemy comes back fresh. Ultimately, you should view everything available to you as resources as well as what is available to the enemy for their resources. Your teammates are an extension of yourself and likewise you are an extension of your teammates, and if your team is the one who is ahead in resources, you are the team that is in control of the game. Good Recall timers not only make it easier for you to funnel resources into yourself such as gold or buffs, but it also enables your teammates to make bolder plays if they are aware of your lead and what it allows them to do.

Recalling for Item Spikes

This is another fairly self-explanatory Recall in terms of when you take it - you have an important item completed and simply need to get to the shop to have it in your inventory. However, this is the type of Recall I see get players messed up the most, especially when you factor in objective timers like Dragon and Baron, as they often don’t plan ahead of when they are going to time this Recall by knowing when their item spike is going to be completed, and letting their team know how much gold they have or what item they have waiting for them.

How can you combat this? There are a few ways, and the easiest is to understand how your team wants to contest objectives and the timings you need on that. For example, if the enemy team has a Fiddlesticks, who is a champion that wants you to face check into him, you generally want to be to the objective first and have your vision set up on spots where he can engage onto your team with Crowstorm to help reduce the impact he has on fights. If you’re playing AD Carry and Recalling thirty seconds before a dragon is spawning to complete an item spike in this scenario, your team will be forced into a really awkward position where they have to contest vision while being down a vital member of their team and may have to give over the dragon. This is why it’s important to plan ahead of time your item spikes and being able to mentally calculate the amount of gold you need to earn and if you will be able to do so well in advance of doing an objective, and communicating with your team so that they are able to make the decision to fight an objective or get it, and they can also help funnel gold into you if you are a key carry of your team or hitting an important power spike.

It is also important to simply let your teammates know your important spikes and when you are strong on your next Recall. Not everyone will know your spikes on your champion in your game, especially if it is a less popular champion that you might one trick, so it is up to you and you alone to let them know that it is important for you to get your Recall off to buy an important item because even if it drags out the game for a few extra minutes, it guarantees your chances of victory rather than simply you taking a chance on a fight that might not be as favorable. Of course, it won’t always work out that way, and if that happens, be sure to adapt to whatever it is your teammates are doing so that even if the circumstances are less favorable, you have a better chance of winning together as a team rather than divide and fall apart.

Recalling for Tempo

This is usually done after you take baron as a team and want to shop for elixirs or simply to reset your positioning on the map and start figuring out what you want to vie for next on the map. This is also a Recall that supports will do during the laning phase in order to assist certain plays on the map that they would have downtime during otherwise. A common timing for this type of Recall is when the first Rift Herald is about to spawn at the eight minute mark, supports will oftentimes roam up to the Rift Herald in order to help their team by setting up vision and potentially committing to a fight if their team is contested. When doing this as a support however, be sure to not leave your AD Carry alone for too long, as you can potentially harm them in the long term if you spend too much time after a tempo Recall dancing around a Rift Herald and not making a trade for the loss of pressure on the bottom side of the map.

It’s also good to know when you need to take these tempo Recalls versus immediately pressuring after objectives such as Baron. It may not always be the best idea to immediately Recall as there might be another important objective on the map that you could take such as a tower or enemy jungle camps, or you may have to contest something like a soul point Dragon or Elder Dragon. Be sure that you aren’t delaying your resets for too long as sometimes what can happen is the rest of your team will Recall but you may stay because you want to try to get an item spike before a siege happens, but if you are Recalling by the time your team is on the map and starting to push lanes, you are wasting a significant amount of your timer with the Baron buff and also making it harder for your team to do something because now they have to wait for you to get back onto the map after a reset. You need to make sure that you’re walking this balancing act properly where you are hitting your item breakpoints and you are aware of what you need to get in order to get those breakpoints like mentioned in the Recalling for item spikes, but when you’re looking for Recalls, you also need to walk the other side of this balance where your teammates are on their breakpoints before you and they have chances to get something done. You may be playing a carry in your game, but it’s important to recognize when you are the carry of your team and when someone else is the carry, and how you can best enable that person with your Recalls (or lack thereof).

It’s also worth noting that this can apply to your lane as well when you’re doing something such as matching the enemy’s Recall. A good example of this is you might get a good trade and freeze the wave and force your opponent to take a bad Recall, which calls back to that idea of Recalling due to resource mismanagement. However a way to avert being potentially down in resources despite having control of the lane is to match the enemy’s Recall with your own and return to the lane at the same time as them while keeping the wave in the same spot. This is a bit of a difficult concept to pull off as you need to know how to freeze a wave and keep it frozen while you’re Recalled, but a really easy rule of thumb is to have around four caster minions alive and position the waves where they can’t easily run under tower and break the freeze. If you’re able to do this successfully however and keep the wave thinned enough to where you can fight, you’ll oftentimes provide your jungler or other teammates with gank opportunities that are easy to pull off since you have everything at your disposal to help kill your laner.

Conclusion

In all, these are just a few different types of Recalls one can take and is generally a good baseline for a player to have. Be sure that whatever it is you do, whether it’s Recalling due to a lack of resources, Recalling for an item spike, or Recalling to have tempo with your team, that you have intent with your Recalls and you are immediately thinking about what you want to do as soon as you start channeling and what the next play is. Being just that one step ahead of your opponent and planning your plays in advance can be key in leading your teammates to victory, and as always it’s important to look back onto your gameplay and figure out why you were taking a certain Recall and what your thought process behind it was, as well as the factors that led to you taking that Recall and figure out if they were good or bad and how to replicate those circumstances if they were good or avoid them if they were bad.

As always, best of luck on the Rift, and stay safe out there!