In this article we'll tell you which lane you should gank to win more games in League of Legends. But first, let's quickly talk about what exactly ganking is.

Ganking is a term used for when an enemy from outside of your lane comes to attack you within your lane. This means if you’re in the Top lane in a 1v1 and the Jungler comes up, you’re getting Ganked. It’s a term that’s been used forever and it’s honestly a term that defines the Jungler play pattern since their role is all about ganking lanes.

But, what lane should you gank? Well, let’s discuss that from several perspectives!

Gank Evaluation as a Jungler

Since Junglers will be doing the majority of the ganks in League of Legends, let’s first slip on our Jungler shoes and discuss where one could find value.

Junglers come in all shapes and sizes with Assassins like Kha’zix and Rengar, to Bruisers like Rek’sai and Jarvan, to Supportive or Tanky picks like Ivern and Sejuani. Depending on your flavor of Jungler, you should evaluate where you gank path should be based on a few criteria.

We break it down like this:

• Which lane is my primary win condition?
  
• Which lane has the best setup to assist with ganks?
  
• Which lane needs priority for me to secure objectives?
  
• Which lane could use the assistance in a bad match-up?

Which of the bullets you answer first often comes down to what type of Jungler you’re playing.

For Assassins that provide little in the way of crowd-control and who really want to fetch an early lead into snowballing, you might be more inclined to gank your Maokai Top over your Ezreal-Yuumi Bot Lane since Maokai’s crowd-control is going to offer you more setup to get your gameplan rolling.

For a Champion like Jarvan who comes packaged with their own ganking tools, you might be more inclined to focus on Bot Lane where you recognize your Zeri-Yuumi combo as the clutch to win the game and since you can facilitate your own ganks it’ll be all on your timings.

If your matchup Mid is poor, and you want early priority over Rift and Scuttles, then a gank on Mid might be beneficial to you if you’re playing a Champion like Xin Zhao, Zac, or Sejuani that can come out early with a respectable gank threat to grant your laner some early priority in lane.

However this all shakes out for you, simply asking one of the above questions can really get you going in developing an early clear and gameplan for your given match.

Ganking From a Laner’s Perspective

Ganking as a Laner is often centered around something we call a ‘Timer’. Timers are when you have the ability to move from your lane to another without losing much or anything in the way of resources to your opponent that you’ve left alone. And Timers come off the back of a concept known as ‘Priority’ or ‘Push’.

If you have Prio/Push in a lane, then you have a Timer. Sometimes this Timer is big, allowing for you to move away from your lane and go as far as another lane to assist with a play or cover for a potential play your opponents might make. Sometimes the Timer is small, enabling you to slap down vision around your lane to offer information to yourself and your team.

What you do on your Timers depends on your wave-state more often than not though. Wave-states that take time for your opponents to clear, or ones that offer too much risk for them to move through, offer you a larger Timer to make a play from and it creates a trade-off scenario for your opponent. If you’ve built up a slow-push and it has crashed against your opponent’s tower, they have to make the choice of either responding to the wave or responding to your roam (if they can see it), and either situation gives you opportunity.

If they respond to your movement without checking the wave, then the wave gets free turret damage, and they lose out on the income it provides. If they check the wave without following your roam/gank, then you’re allowed to move unpressured and make plays with a numbers advantage. And this is just one of the many examples of Timers out there!

So, here are some situations where you can look to roam and gank as a laner!

• You’re coming back from a recall or respawn
  
• You’ve crashed a wave into the enemy turret
  
• You’ve detected an enemy you can easily kill alone, making any resource you lose worth it.
  
• When you’ve killed your enemy in lane.
  
• When you have your ultimate/an ally has an ultimate that is high impact. (Maokai Ult, Pantheon Ult, Twisted Fate Ult, etc.)

But What Lane is Really ‘Worth it’?

Well, it’s subjective ultimately, but right now the League of Legends Meta is defined by the shape of Dragon Control. Dragons have such a high impact over the outcome of a game that ganking either Mid Lane or Bot to maintain priority and the constant pressure to take them away from your opponent is absolutely huge.

That doesn’t make things easy though. Mid Lane is the shortest lane in the game, therefore it’s the hardest lane to gank. And with popular Champions like Akali, Zed, and Azir calling it home, it’s hard to lockdown opponents there, especially since your allies will also typically be playing Champions with higher mobility and less straight CC.

Bot Lane is a 2v2 lane, and while 3v2 is statistically better for you, there’s plenty of variance in communication and focus that can occur when you’re ganking a lane with multiple opponents. Additionally, Bot Lane typically hosts Champions that are great in the utility department with the likes of Enchanters and Wardens hanging out to protect their ADCs from any would-be one-shotters. But if you get your Bot Lane going, you’re likely looking at a better game state for yourself since you end up netting yourself control and DPS on Dragon, but you’ve also gotten 2 of your 5 members on your team ahead instead of just one with Mid or Top. Additionally, you’ve knocked down the enemy Bot too, putting two of their 5 behind the curve which can help you lay claim over areas that you may have neglected to develop your Bot Lane.

So, as a default, Bot Lane is probably the lane that’s most worthy of prioritizing if you can. But great Junglers are adaptive in their strategy and can make the most of whatever lane they think can benefit them and their team the best.

Closing Out

There you have it folks! Hope this discussion was fruitful and helpful for you! We’re closing in fast on the end of the first split of this ranked season, and if you’re anything like me, you’re pushing to reach your goals before the split closes out! Be sure to check out our plethora of resources like this one within the coming days to boost your game upwards and towards that last push of the season!