LoL How To Play When Losing

LoL How To Play When Losing by Shiny

You died in lane; or maybe you’re just in a terrible matchup for your champion. How do you play and not feed horribly?! This short guide is looking at how to do the best you can during the laning phase of the game even if you are behind.

Gold. 2 minions = 1 health potion. 1 health potion is 150 health. That is huge. Often, whoever has a health potion advantage has a significant advantage in lane early on. More health potions means you can go in, lose a trade by a small amount, wait 15 seconds and be ahead. You need to be able to farm efficiently and miss as few minions as possible when you do have a good chance to farm.

Experience. Minions also have a very large experience radius. That is, when minions die you can get the experience from a very long way away. The stats, and skill point for a single level difference is huge. Even if you can’t farm you can very often try to get in exp range of minions and you should always try to stay as close as possible in experience as well.

Goal. If leaving your turret = you instantly dying to the enemy laner; just don’t do it. Wait for the minion wave to hit your tower and farm as best as you can but at least get the experience. If you’re losing, but you only go 0/1/0 and like 40 cs behind, that’s you doing about as well as possible from a losing matchup and you should be somewhat happy. The goal is to not go 0/7 and the enemy laner to be able to crush the rest of your team.

Winning. Even if you die early to your lane opponent; it doesn’t mean you can never win a fight vs them. Think about what needs to happen for you to be able to win a fight. Think about things such as spells they have on cooldown, their mana/energy being low, summoner spells being down, can you poke them?, do you have better sustain?, is there a huge minion wave helping you?, do they have a lot of unspent gold?. It’s possible to lose a fight 1v1, come back and immediately win a 1v1 fight if the right conditions are met. If you can’t come back by yourself then the rest of this guide should be more helpful.

Freezing. If the enemy laner is “freezing” the lane, attempting to never push the minion wave into your tower and not letting you get close enough to get the gold from any of the minions, don’t idly wait around. Go roam to a nearby lane for a gank if possible. You can try a risky invade into their jungle with your jungler (although this could go disastrously if your lane opponent follows you both) or simply farm your own jungle camps. If you’re top kill Wight + Wolves. Mid can kill Wraiths + Wolves. Bot can kill Double Golems. This means you’re not losing as much gold/experience even though your lane opponent is freezing. As well as that, if your jungler has less camps to kill they might be inclined to gank more often. Most importantly, if you leave your lane, never let a huge minion wave hit your tower while you are not there. That is the worst case scenario.

Junglers. If you are getting ganked repeatedly and losing because of that… Firstly, you should buy more wards. Play more passively if you don’t have a ward up or if you don’t have flash up. Secondly, accept that some games you lose your lane because of their jungler. **it happens. You can only hope your jungler has similar success in your other lanes for your team. If you’re so far behind that if you’re jungler tried to help you out then you’d both die – let your jungler know. Tell them to not come to your lane and help your other laners instead while you lose your lane gracefully.

Roaming. Bear in mind normal things when roaming. Which champions are good to gank, whose flashes are up, etc and try to keep good vision. If you’re behind and you’re ganking some lane, you don’t want there to be a countergank by their jungler. Knowing where they are helps massively. If your lane opponent is roaming or leaving to participate in teamfights, alert your team that they are going (keeping good vision is very important for this too). Tell them to back off and farm your ass off in your lane as much as possible. Take the few waves of minions that you are being allowed to get. You can also roam to follow the enemy laner instead but this is only a better option if the rest of your team is ahead. Remember, if you’re losing against your lane opponent, then you will probably lose a 5v5 if everyone else on the map is even [Exception – Your team has a much better teamfighting composition].

The Tower. If you’re so far behind that the enemy laner can kill you under the turret or can poke you down until this is possible… Call your jungler. It’s the worst scenario to be in because if you die under the tower as you will very often be denied a minion wave or 2 worth of exp and gold. The tower is your safe haven. If they try to dive you and your jungler is nearby it can result in a very easy kill for you or your jungler. If your tower dies… This is actually not that bad. It means any big minion waves are a little bit easier to catch, and it’s riskier for the enemy laner to push as far as your second turret without being ganked. If you get the chance while behind to kill the enemy laner’s turret (either they die somehow, or roamed to another part of the map or even based) you should take the opportunity to kill the tower as quickly as possible. Your team will appreciate the gold/exp and it stops the team having to kill that tower later in the game if you do get back into the game.

Remember, most champions can “do their job” as long as they have a certain amount of gold to get their “core items”, even if they are behind. If the game goes 50 minutes, you’ll probably hit max items and at that point them having more gold does not matter. Ignore anyone raging at you; concentrate on playing the game as best as you can. If your allies “give up” because you’re losing, that’s their fault and not yours. Just relax, try to be efficient with your time and try to get as much gold and exp while not dying and try to be as helpful to your team as possible from your weakened state. Almost every game, except at the highest tier of play, is winnable. How to play when behind as a team is a different topic I may go into one day… But it is very rare that a single bad lane will lose an entire match by itself… So there is 0 pressure!

Happy LoL-ing! ~ Shiny