In League of Legends, destroying an enemy inhibitor certainly has benefits. For five minutes, super minions instead of cannon minions will spawn in the destroyed inhibitor’s lane, buffing up the melee and caster minions around them as well. This causes a passive stream of pressure for the next eight minion waves that must be answered, lest they push into the base. As such, the opponent must make a choice: deal with the minions and sacrifice map presence or stay out on the map as the minions push into and threaten the base. This can undoubtedly be beneficial in many circumstances, whether your team is trying to pressure around a neutral objective or is simply trying to play around side lanes to force the defending team to split up. However, taking an inhibitor in the wrong conditions—that is to say, when your team cannot adequately capitalize upon the subsequent pressure—can result in the opponent receiving a welcome influx of gold and experience, putting your own team in unnecessary danger. Let’s take a look at why, in many cases, destroying the opponent’s inhibitor early (that is, before the twenty to twenty-five-minute mark, approximately) ironically inhibits your own team’s chances for victory.

Inability to Punish

Under normal circumstances, if you’re ahead of your lane opponent, then you can take actions to deny farm from them. Whether it’s pressuring them off of the wave through the threat of killing them or freezing the minion wave in an area you have control, you have ways to ensure that the discrepancy in gold between you keeps growing in your favor. However, when the inhibitor of a lane you wish to farm gets destroyed, doing this becomes significantly more difficult. Due to the immense strength of the super minions spawned by destroying an enemy inhibitor—along with the buff to the regular minions around them—the eight super minion waves of that lane will constantly and automatically push towards your opponents if uninterrupted. Their strength and longevity mean that you definitely can’t freeze the wave to your advantage and, as it pushes towards your opponents constantly, you will have to put yourself increasingly in harm’s way to pressure them off of the wave (if it’s even possible).

Because most players do not upgrade their boots early and support items have effectively timelocked upgrades, your mobility and available vision to protect yourself from being collapsed upon are much more limited in the early stages of the game. As such, unless you and/or your team is so far ahead as to avoid being killed or otherwise punished, you will have to allow the opposing team’s carries to clear the super minions safely. This will grant them valuable gold and experience on a player that they’d very much like to have it on, chipping away at your lead at an alarming rate. Unless you can sufficiently make up for these extra resources the enemy receives, the inhibitor won’t have been worth taking!

How to Capitalize on a Destroyed Inhibitor

In the best of cases, when played out properly, the extra pressure gained from destroying an inhibitor can be utilized in a few ways. Among these, the ideal scenario would be to steal jungle camps, take a tower or two, and slay Baron Nashor and/or a Dragon. Of course, if Baron or a Dragon Soul can be secured in this way, then that means your team will receive a bevy of resources—both in immediate gold and experience, and in towers taken via Baron buff or the continuous Dragon Soul effect, respectively. In either instance, the surrendered value of the enemies’ farmed super minions can pretty much be considered accounted for, as baron buff and dragon soul both can be utilized to break the game open in your team’s favor. If you can’t take either of these powerful neutral objectives, however, simply taking away some jungle camps for a few minutes and taking a tower and a non-soul dragon unfortunately just isn’t enough to match the gold and experience that the opponent will get by farming the super minions. Therefore, unless the pressure from taking the inhibitor specifically will allow your team to secure either the Baron or the Dragon Soul, more than two towers and a non-soul Dragon, or the ending of the game itself, it simply isn’t worth doing. Just remember that taking these objectives is harder the earlier in the game it is, so use caution when considering whether or not to destroy the inhibitor!

Which Inhibitor Matters

Moving on, which inhibitor you would be destroying matters. Being forced to clear super minions isn’t so bad when you do so from the mid lane, wherefrom rotating to events happening on the map is much easier. As such, destroying a side lane inhibitor is much better for utilizing the map pressure created to take objectives. Even then, if you are wishing to pressure either for Baron, Elder, or Dragon Soul, then destroying the inhibitor on the opposite side of the map is preferable, if possible—bot lane for taking Baron, top lane for taking a Dragon. As a side note, if you have the option to take two inhibitors at once (or one right after the other, at least), then doing so is almost always worth it. The pressure provided from two lanes of super minions can easily help you to either take down those big neutral objectives, or to pressure and destroy the third inhibitor, which is another separate win condition in itself. Just remember that if you’re confident your team can utilize the super minion pressure to secure one of these win conditions, then taking the inhibitor is absolutely worth it!

Things to Remember

Barring extraneous cases, there are generally a few rules you can remember to follow when deciding whether or not to take an opposing inhibitor. As explained above, taking early inhibitors (before the twenty to twenty-five minute mark, relatively) is generally a bad idea, due to the value they present to your opponents. By contrast, taking inhibitors later in the game—that is, more towards the thirty minute mark and beyond—is usually worth it, as your team will likely be strong enough to compensate for the value lost by utilizing the inherent map pressure provided to secure valuable objectives. If your team is so strong that you can pressure your opponents in this way even without taking the inhibitor, then destroying it shouldn’t be necessary.

In a high skill cap game like League of Legends, macro decision making can often be the difference between winning and losing a game. As one improves at the game and climbs up the ranks over time, they come to understand new strategies for playing the game optimally thanks to improved game knowledge. What once was considered an automatic decision becomes a complex point of consideration based heavily around the details of the specific game at hand. Taking the inhibitor is a perfect example; intuitively it seems like it’d be the right thing to do whenever possible, but in reality that’s not the case. It’s not ideal to take an inhibitor early on in many scenarios, but there are many factors that go into making that decision. Take these factors and reasonings into account when playing your games and decide for yourself when you think your team should take the inhibitor. The more you play, and the more you experiment in these different scenarios, the more often you’ll be able to make the right decision, improving your chances of closing out victories and climbing up those ranks.