Views: 2739 How to position when behind/against powerplay
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Yo. Didn't intend to write this publicly but I figured I might as well. Strategy blog about positioning when your team is behind or against a powerplay such as elder dragon or baron. Harder to apply in soloQ but pings exist and these mistakes happen more commonly in soloQ but also awfully often in premade flex games.
This mostly applies when your team has no control over the map anymore. The enemy team has the initiative to make something happen. Often means being thousands of gold behind in the game, enemy team having early-mid game comp against late game team or enemy team having baron or elder dragon powerplay.
Using images might be easier to understand the situation so in this case for example, baron is down and almost every lane has lost first turrets.
Baron plays are so efficient in soloQ for example because people don't understand what they are supposed to do or rather, many will try to do something which leads to problems. Everyone (hopefully) knows the general idea which is to defend but other than that, very little thinking goes into thinking how to survive a baron play or how to get back up from a disadvantageous position.
Very big margin of objectives are taken after someone gets caught or doesn't position properly. These are the players that are trying to do something. Very commonly someone sees a minion wave in some lane or a jungle camp being up and decides it'd be good idea to go clear that camp, go ward or farm a minion wave. This leads to that someone risking getting caught and dying which is often the case. Now the enemy team has a man advantage and is more likely to get something big out of their push.
I'll link a riftkit with circles meaning that is the safe zone where you want to be and fight. Let's look at top and mid first because they are in the same situation.
Those are the safe zones. There is no initiative or objective to be outside of those circles. Your team is behind, your team's objective is to farm it out and not get caught. The enemy team is stronger and wants to shove waves and go for towers. The pressure is on them to do stuff. Generally speaking the team which makes less mistakes wins the game in soloQ so you want to do very little when behind. You do nothing but farm and play it out until the enemy team makes a mistake.
The reason the circle is so small around the towers is that minion waves will come to the turret. Especially if you are against baron or elder, the enemy team is guaranteed to want to shove the waves so there is absolutely no reason to go and risk dying farming a wave outside of turret range when you can be sure that the minions will come to you.
You want to fight within the tower range because it's like your 6th team member. Like said before, there is no reason to go out of your way to farm waves out of turret range and get team fight forced on you without the turret being there.
Let's put up few examples or often bad positioning and when you can or canno't position like this. I will use the blue markers to indicate positioning.
This is but a portion of the possible ways you can get caught. If you don't have 100% knowledge of the enemy team's position, you can't afford to be in the open like that. There is a big distance between the safety circle and the blue markers I put down. Sometimes players position even worse than the blue markers I put down, like someone could be farming deeper in the jungle or contesting an useless objective like dragon (useless compared to the overall goal to win the game, losing ocean or cloud dragon won't cost you the game). Same goes for warding the jungle or around mid lane. Why would you place wards to blue or red brushes if you know the enemy team will come face to face against tower?
You can farm minion waves deeper in the lane or clear jungle camps once you have 100% knowledge of enemy team's position so you can't get caught or surprised. If there is no vision, no need to risk the entire game because you couldn't wait for minion waves to come to you.
Let's finally have a look at bot lane where the second tower is still up but it could be any of the three lanes to have the second tower up.
I spoke about turret range being the safety spot but I also said going outside of base leaves you open to many gank opportunities. Both cases are true but if you are behind a lot or the enemy team has a powerplay like baron or elder dragon, the cost of 1 turret won't lose you the game but dying while defending the turret can cost you the game. If the whole team is not on the same page to defend the tower or you are so far behind that the enemy team will just dive your ***es, you abandon that turret. You abandon it and try to farm while waiting for enemy team to make a mistake.
If you can hold your ground with the second tier tower, no reason to give it up for free though but if there is doubt, it's safer to let the tower fall and defend inhibitor turret because it's harder to dive.
Don't think I have anything to add but I will if I forgot something. Tell me if I missed something or there's something wrong and I'll correct if it's necessary.
tl;dr Don't leave base when behind, farm and wait for enemy team to screw things up.
This mostly applies when your team has no control over the map anymore. The enemy team has the initiative to make something happen. Often means being thousands of gold behind in the game, enemy team having early-mid game comp against late game team or enemy team having baron or elder dragon powerplay.
Using images might be easier to understand the situation so in this case for example, baron is down and almost every lane has lost first turrets.
Baron plays are so efficient in soloQ for example because people don't understand what they are supposed to do or rather, many will try to do something which leads to problems. Everyone (hopefully) knows the general idea which is to defend but other than that, very little thinking goes into thinking how to survive a baron play or how to get back up from a disadvantageous position.
Very big margin of objectives are taken after someone gets caught or doesn't position properly. These are the players that are trying to do something. Very commonly someone sees a minion wave in some lane or a jungle camp being up and decides it'd be good idea to go clear that camp, go ward or farm a minion wave. This leads to that someone risking getting caught and dying which is often the case. Now the enemy team has a man advantage and is more likely to get something big out of their push.
I'll link a riftkit with circles meaning that is the safe zone where you want to be and fight. Let's look at top and mid first because they are in the same situation.
Those are the safe zones. There is no initiative or objective to be outside of those circles. Your team is behind, your team's objective is to farm it out and not get caught. The enemy team is stronger and wants to shove waves and go for towers. The pressure is on them to do stuff. Generally speaking the team which makes less mistakes wins the game in soloQ so you want to do very little when behind. You do nothing but farm and play it out until the enemy team makes a mistake.
The reason the circle is so small around the towers is that minion waves will come to the turret. Especially if you are against baron or elder, the enemy team is guaranteed to want to shove the waves so there is absolutely no reason to go and risk dying farming a wave outside of turret range when you can be sure that the minions will come to you.
You want to fight within the tower range because it's like your 6th team member. Like said before, there is no reason to go out of your way to farm waves out of turret range and get team fight forced on you without the turret being there.
Let's put up few examples or often bad positioning and when you can or canno't position like this. I will use the blue markers to indicate positioning.
This is but a portion of the possible ways you can get caught. If you don't have 100% knowledge of the enemy team's position, you can't afford to be in the open like that. There is a big distance between the safety circle and the blue markers I put down. Sometimes players position even worse than the blue markers I put down, like someone could be farming deeper in the jungle or contesting an useless objective like dragon (useless compared to the overall goal to win the game, losing ocean or cloud dragon won't cost you the game). Same goes for warding the jungle or around mid lane. Why would you place wards to blue or red brushes if you know the enemy team will come face to face against tower?
You can farm minion waves deeper in the lane or clear jungle camps once you have 100% knowledge of enemy team's position so you can't get caught or surprised. If there is no vision, no need to risk the entire game because you couldn't wait for minion waves to come to you.
Let's finally have a look at bot lane where the second tower is still up but it could be any of the three lanes to have the second tower up.
I spoke about turret range being the safety spot but I also said going outside of base leaves you open to many gank opportunities. Both cases are true but if you are behind a lot or the enemy team has a powerplay like baron or elder dragon, the cost of 1 turret won't lose you the game but dying while defending the turret can cost you the game. If the whole team is not on the same page to defend the tower or you are so far behind that the enemy team will just dive your ***es, you abandon that turret. You abandon it and try to farm while waiting for enemy team to make a mistake.
If you can hold your ground with the second tier tower, no reason to give it up for free though but if there is doubt, it's safer to let the tower fall and defend inhibitor turret because it's harder to dive.
Don't think I have anything to add but I will if I forgot something. Tell me if I missed something or there's something wrong and I'll correct if it's necessary.
tl;dr Don't leave base when behind, farm and wait for enemy team to screw things up.
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