Once in a while, you get one of those heavy games. Everyone on your team is feeding, nobody knows what the heck they're doing, and you strongly suspect that one of them might be a blind chimpanzee. There are only two ways to conclude this game: Roll over on your back and admit defeat; or put the team on your back and wrench that victory from the jaws of defeat with your bare hands. But how do you go about doing it? Check out the top 10 ways below:
Introduction
Once in a while, you get one of those heavy games. Everyone on your team is feeding, nobody knows what the heck they're doing, and you strongly suspect that one of them might be a blind chimpanzee.
There are only two ways to conclude this game:
- Roll over on your back and admit defeat; or
- Put the team on your back and wrench that victory from the jaws of defeat with your bare hands.
1. Dump on your lane. Hard.
This might seem intuitive, but the old adage "win lane, win game" holds true for the majority of the time. Games where you win your lane, you naturally create a strong advantage for your team.
Even if your teammates all lose their lanes slightly, if you absolutely crush your lane and end up going 1v2, 1v3, 1v4, or even 1v5 and still coming out on top, then losing the game is very, very difficult.
2. Split-push like crazy
Similar to #1, if you create advantageous situations for your teammates to fight in by drawing two or more people to a specific lane, you're naturally allowing your team to get back into the game. Further, by practicing good movement from lane to lane, you can create openings where by winning one teamfight, you can take out two lanes rather than one.
Meanwhile, if you simply become an unstoppable force (see: fed Tryndamere), you may end up killing enemy champions one by one while taking turret after turret.
3. Take down towers
Taking down multiple towers have a dual benefit. First and foremost is the massive amount of global gold that it provides your teammates. Even if your teammates have fallen behind in farm, by taking down several towers in succession, you've allowed them to close the gold gap.
Secondly, taking down turrets forces the enemy team to either spend more gold on warding, or simply lose control of a side of the map. This slowly creates more and more openings where your team can hide and wait for an advantageous fight to break out.
4. Pacify your teammates
When Riot's tooltip comes up saying that teammates that verbally abuse their own tend to lose more games, it's true. Meanwhile, teammates that stop their teammates from verbally abusing their own win more games. Use the following tactics to win more games:
- If your teammate is depressed about your chances of winning, always say that your late game is better.
- If your teammate is bullying another teammate, change the subject.
- If your teammate is bullying you, ignore him.
5. Control the map
As mentioned in #3, controlling the map opens up your team to many more advantage points to invade their jungle, gain extra farm, and move around the map without the enemy team responding in a timely manner.
Sweepers and pink wards are your main tools to do so, although you should try not to spam too many green wards. If you find yourself needing to place excessive amounts of green wards down, it may be best to upgrade your yellow trinket instead of getting a sweeper.
6. Buy valuable items
If your team is getting crushed by some specific champions on the enemy team and your build can fit it, then two of the most valuable items in the game are Aegis of the Legion and Frozen Heart.
These two defensive items are barely noticeable to your team and will likely go without praise, but they are by far, the two highest impact defensive items you can possibly buy. The amount of damage reduction that Aegis can provide vs even a single AP champion with AOE damage is absurd.
7. Call out timers
There is nothing that screams "tryhard" than calling out timers. While buff timers and objective times have largely been integrated directly into the game, calling out things like dragon timers when your team doesn't have vision of the pit and/or summoner spell timers inspires confidence in your team.
It says to your teammates, "there's else someone on our team that might not be a chimpanzee, this is good news" (no offense to chimpanzees of course).
8. Last hit objectives
Never ever rely on your jungler to smite anything.
There's nothing more obnoxious than a fed Leblanc complaining about a jungler missing smite on Baron. If you're a burst damage champion, or even just someone like Graves with some burst damage attached, save some of your burst for last hitting objectives.
More times than not, the person who steals an objective isn't even the enemy jungler. If you have any sort of burst, use it to ensure that the objective is secured.
Never rely on your jungler to smite anything.
9. Keep lanes pushed
Waves operate on a very simple rule. The wave with more minions will likely outpush the wave with less minions (not including any strange pathing by ranged minions).
This means that most of the time, it's easy to tell when a small wave will eventually grow into a big wave. Late game, you don't need to push all your lanes all the way to turret, simply making sure that the lane is going towards the enemy lane is enough.
By pushing lanes late game, you're able to possibly draw enemies out of teamfights to clear waves, and to also potentially pick up two lanes worth of objectives if you win a teamfight.
Early game, keeping lanes pushed invites jungle pressure, alleviating it from your other lanes and also forces the enemy laners to try harder to CS.
10. Backdoor
Finally, the famous backdoor. If your team is absolutely getting slaughtered, there's no way for you to win a teamfight, and there are no objectives left, then this is the last resort.
Pop your Highlander. Take out the enemy nexus. Laugh at your 2-70 victory over the enemy team. Winning never tasted so sweet.