A very brief text guide to assist with advanced understanding on how feeding impacts games under varying circumstances. This guide uses 2 examples, but facilitates creative thinking for more scenarios.

Your votes are appreciated, and will help more to see this guide and hopefully learn something on their own that may have been missing from their approach to the game.

Ever play a Summoner's Rift match and wondered at a certain point how much of an impact a specific champion's death would have on the rest of the game?

This short guide is devised to help you along the lines of discerning just that.

So without further delay:

Parallel to feed is getting fed. We all hope to get good support players on our team, and we all hope that person knows what they are doing.

We know the role play: the carry depends on the support to help them score and the support depends on the carry to gain assists and win the lane. These 2 are lane mates, and their performance together depends on their synergy. Both roles must be aware of one another, their proximity to allied minions and the enemy champions/champion hazards in addition to allied and enemy reinforcements.

If you are bottom lane, do not make enemies with your lane mate. Gold is a resource you both need and acquire as you work together successfully. If a Taric summoner is hitting your minions, you must consider reasons why he might do so. Taric may be helping you last hit at a faster pace, showing his presence to the enemy lane mates, or reducing time remaining on his ability to heal.

A support champion may not be as quick as you would like to lay down their first ward. They could be making use of time necessary to clear a jungle buff camp or two, intending to make the most efficient use of wards they can.

A carry may forego last hitting in an auto-attack frenzy from time to time. The most logical reason for this would be to regenerate health at a faster pace using items like the Vampiric Scepter or multiple Doran's Blades.

Very little time is given for typing lengthy detailed explanations for a summoner's actions: time usually reserved for watching the map and focusing on the subtle changes that frequently occur.

It is always in your best interest to first try to understand things from your lane mate's perspective. The two of you are dependent on one another to win the lane, so keep your eyes peeled and your mouse clicking.

Early game is, without a doubt, one of the least favorable periods of a match in Summoner's Rift.

In the Ranked Scene, all summoners from Clay Tier to Challenger Tier experience the burden of pressure each and every game. Analyzing and cross referencing data collected from a crazy amount of games having given us the tips that we have today.

For starters: Harassing a teammate after a "mistake" is, quite contrary to popular belief, breaking the will, focus, and confidence of good players in the midst of a heated exchange of decisive impact making actions. They range anywhere from attacking creep to sacrificing their champion for the sake of an importance. Often times, a "mistake" is not as critical as it may appear to the rest of the team. It only becomes critical when no counter movement is made, resulting in perfect growth for the opposing team.

It is vital to understand that the many factors influentially involved in each phase of a game may force the summoner into awkward crossroads. There may very well be circumstances that arise in which there is a no-win outcome, where the only thing to do is cut losses and cut enemy growth asap.

No-win occurs when Team A threatens to capture a tower or valuable objective and Team B does not have the power available at that moment to cover all objectives under siege. A few of no-win circumstances where loss is inevitable:

Tower dives.

Disengaging.

Vision battles.

Dragon/Baron Nashor steal attempts.

Tower Marty.

Tower claims.

Bait and Ambush.

First Blood and the Battle for Survival.

It is extremely beneficial to the summoner when they recognize proper prioritizing and when it has been employed by either team. Such awareness of this information is breathtakingly overpowered, as it gives the enlightened summoner more options, more flexibility, and the ability to share these options and flexibility information with their team.

Ex. A top lane champion who finds repeated resistance deep within the push may start or join a skirmish mid lane, and quickly decide that the gathering allied minions in the bottom lane is a high priority target for someone on the opposing team. The top lane champion may decide to leave their post to push bottom lane if they feel the have a better drive behind their push, and are confident they can handle any resistance from another lane. He might communicate with his team via ping that he is interested in taking bottom lane on and signal another teammate to cover top lane.

It is a failure to recognize the board's flow and value placement as it changes -OR- when hinted to by another teammate. There could be a lot of resulting gold and goodies waiting for you where these queues try to steer your attention.

Let's say that in this particular setting, you have summoner Trundle Bot who feeds significantly over the course of a match on Summoner's Rift. His end game k/d/l is 3/9/n (for now, we'll eliminate assist streaks from the equation, given it is a variable of info not covered in this short guide.)

EX.1 NOTE: Trundle Bot begins his trolling spree of death right after he acquires a double kill for his first impact on the game. He then dies 3 times before acquiring another revenge kill in a gank, thereafter dying 3 more times before the game finally ends. For the purpose of this thought experiment, the amount of assists will be 2 for a total of 3 various champions involved with the demise of a troll over the course of the game of high-ganking glory!

Upon Trundle Bot's 1st Death, he awards 360 gold to the killer + half of that awarded to assists equally as equally as possible.

2nd Death: 300 G, 150 G/x

3rd Death: 275 G, 137.5 G/x *

Pause here. The asterisk is to draw attention and instill a notion of OMG REALLY? Trundle Bot bot has awarded 468 gold to assists across 3 different times with his FIRST 3 deaths. Imagine if they were the same killer/assists each time, as it would be in bottom lane!
Whoa.

Don't fear the reaper, man. Fear the camper!

4th Death: 300 G, 150 G/x (KILL RESET)

5th Death: 275 G, 137.5 G/x

...

...

9th Death: 112 G, 56 G/x 931 2,079

End Game, Trundle Bot fed a total of 2,079 G to his killers and 921 G to the assists, trolling up a grand total of 3000 gold and handing it to the other team.

ELEMENTS OF INFLUENCE: Trundle Bot foolishly overextended with low health, and his reluctance to Recall or med using pots cost him valuable growth time, and the wheel of retribution gave a burst of growth to the trio of punishers. His timing couldn't have been more perfect for the other team, dying at a crucial moment when the value of minion waves would increase while he is away. This further widens the gap of team capacity (represented by gold) as the trio gain increased growth immediately with bonus gold for his bounty while Trundle Bot is stuck dead with only level 2 grade farm. All would have been well if he didn't score another kill, resetting his bounty, giving another 458 gold in assists alone with his next three deaths.

The conclusion of this thought experiment ends with a stern warning to not die after getting kills in lane and mid game. It is when chunks of gold the likes that are awarded by Bounty Resets happen that make your carries, and break your carries. Just don't die!

In the first thought experiment, we witnessed Trundle Bot's rampant self-actualization scattered across the course of a game. Now lets examine the effects of a different perspective: The Other Team.

OoClutsFingersDlxoO is this experiment's FB victim (let's just say this summoner just got a little too greedy with his lane-mate in his eagerness to carry hard.) His score checked in at 9/5/n.

EXAMPLE NOTE: Just as within the last post, we'll use the magic number of 2 assists, simulating ganking conditions.

On OoClutsFingersDlxoO's first death, he awarded a bounty worth 400 G, 200 G/x

OoClutsFingersDlxoO is back in his resolve against the merciless Trundle Bot's wily ways. He scores 2 kills in a double kill of his own, and then succumbs to the tower defense strike from reinforcements about a minute after the start of the engagement (and-so-on and-so-forth)

2nd Death: 360 G, 180 G/x (KILL RESET)

He gains another kill after a few minutes of farming a Troll-Free lane, succumbing to another tower defense strike from reinforcements as well as a failed tower dive in another lane.

3rd Death: 300 G, 150 G/x (KILL RESET)

4th Death: 275 G, 137.5 G/x

OoClutsFingersDlxoO's final death of the match occurs after a stunning 5 point killing spree before being shut down.

5th Death: 500 G, 250 G/x (KILL RESET + KILLING SPREE END)

End Game, OoClutsFingersDlxoO has unwittingly anted up 1835 G to his killers and 918 to the assists for a grand total of 2,753 gold wind-falling into the pockets of the other team, increasing their overall capacity.

This part of this short guide is to help folks to understand the impact on value feeding has on a game's elements of influence. While it was a harsh blow to take, being Trundle Bot's FB, losing out on that valuable early creep score and experience gain, it did not immediately reward Trundle Bot, because that gold had not yet been converted into a form of power (stat increase). Trundle held on to that gold, and continued leveling up until he was killed.

Kill-by-kill comparison reveals that Trundle Bot had only gained a net 40 gold advantage in the first minutes when he foolishly stayed his lane too long. The gold acquired from minions would allow him to make use of his First Blood victory back at the shop, however, by the time Trundle Bot returned to his lane, he missed an interval of minion wave growth where the wave had increased in net value and experience points, thus quickly breaching what gap in power 40 G would have meant to him.



The conclusion of this thought experiment ends with a message of enlightenment.

It is simple, really. The more you kill, the stronger you become. The more you die after even one kill, the more you advocate your enemy's comeback!

As with the game of Chess, there are several forms of resources existing in a match on Summoner's Rift.

The three main forms are GOLD, TIME, and SPACE (a.k.a. positioning).

Gold represents team capacity, or potentiality. The more gold a team has, the more potential they are able to actualize and make use of. A team with a modest amount of unspent gold is a team that is failing to actualize their potential, which can easily lead to a gap in team capacity should the other team suspect this is the case. Carries such as Sivir, or high sustaining champions such as Tryndamere are able to stay out in the field for extended periods of time adding to their personal potential, yet run the risk of being engaged by those with more personal capacity that has been actualized.

"Your gold is useless to you if you are dead, just give it to me." - Sivir

However, gold is not the most important resource for your team...

Time is a factor of resource that is used in nearly every faucet of a match. Minions spawn roughly 30 seconds apart, and deliver gold in neat single-file packages to the other end of the map. Death timers will span longer than 30 seconds at some point in the game meaning that one who dies frequently early game is missing out on valuable growth (due to having to spend time traveling back to the lane). Some summoners always carry Teleport with them so that they may quickly return to the lane after basing or after death with the sole purpose of continuing growth in the early game, and snagging high priority objectives in the mid-to-late game.

Making good use of time is one way to both increase your team/personal capacity and deny your opposition team/personal capacity actualization. Lengthening the amount of time it takes for your opposition to gain gold lengthens the amount of time they must allow passage in order to actualize their potential in their desired way. It really throws a wrench in their clockwork to deny them time and gold for extended periods.

(Denying your enemy ADC during the entire lane-phase effectively renders them useless during the mid-game phase, as they will need to spend more time catching up to the pace of the game with a lower potential. In turn, this creates opportunities for continued growth for your team if you're all able to coordinate strikes against that enemy ADC.)

"Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like banana." - Zilean

Last up, there is space or positioning. To be frank, positioning is all about controlling space, and this is all a product of Gold and Time interacting with one another. Controlling the space of your enemy's side of the field in the early game is a great way to gain more time and space. Your position may zone the enemy summoner out of position, further disrupting their ability to acquire gold and experience. An early zoned champion is more susceptible to feeding or other methods of growth-halting (such as being forced to Recall).

In the late game, using the minion waves to your advantage in terms of acquiring space in all 3 lanes buys your team time to acquire camps, objectives, enemy jungle camps, and better vision of the map.

IMPORTANT NOTICE TO ALL SUMMONERS:

Around the time of late-game, minion values become so incredibly high that a single wave may be worth more than the bounty of some champions. Many are lead to believe that this game is about farming to win, or killing to win. Such is not the case, as these beliefs ignore the factor of time as a resource. Remember that scanning the minimap constantly will allow a summoner to spot openings for siege strikes and free objectives.

Gold is a by product that accumulates naturally. Objectives that respawn are of high priority because of their effects and rewards. The highest priority are the objectives that do not respawn, the highest of all being the Nexus, NOT GOLD.

(The 300 valued minion wave approaching your tower, is it worth more than the Nexus which is defenseless due to 3 defenders being down? Is any amount of gold really that valuable when the Nexus blows up?)

"We shall see, summoner!" - Mordekaiser

Drawing Conclusions applicable to maintaining a solid unbreakable meta during a single match depends highly on your team and the level of teamwork present.

In both thought experiments in this short guide, we saw the effects of champion deaths to a varying degree of circumstance between just 2 summoners in opposition to one another.

In case you missed it, the total in gold bounties awarded to each team between the 2 are as follows.

Trundle Bot's Team-Income: 2753 gold.

OoClutsFingersDlxoO Team: 3010 gold.

Go ahead. Do a double-take at the whopping 257 gold (team capacity) difference the 2's team traded based on just their gameplay alone, which is a rather small amount when viewed from the broad 25 minute long perspective.

Though Trundle Bot valiantly trolled his lane 9 times, because of the nature in which he acquired his deaths, he only shelled out hundreds of gold less than his rival, and could have given away more if he were to have made more impact like OoClutsFingersDlxoO did.

The key idea to focus and ponder here (the true message of this short guide) is the timing. So the question is presented:

"If my champion is going to die AT ALL... when is the best time to do it?"

League of Legends is a game of large battlefields and varying rosters per game. This means that, as a single summoner, you have the potential to experience an infinite variety of game flows.

Knowing when to die and when to live on to secure objectives, when to sacrifice and when to obtain, when it is appropriate to die and when it is better to live...

...This is what separates the participants from the Challengers.

GL HF.

See you on the Fields of Justice.