I am starting a weekly blog for strategy, and likely many others. In this week's strategy discussion, I will be going over an easy trick that will help you and your team win skirmishes easier. There are often small things to be done that add up into larger advantage, and this is certainly one of those things. While calling an MIA might be important, I will now go into how to turn that around in your favor.

One common occurrence amongst the lower levels is people yelling at you to call an enemy Missing In Action (MIA or SS). This alerts your other lanes that someone might be coming at them from your lane, and they should probably look out for that. After you get over the learning curve of typing your MIA calls, you will get the players saying that they didn’t see it in chat, plus a few expletives. Learning from the previous faults, I commonly create a ping trail indicating that “hey, middle is coming to top right now” without saying words. This helps convey the message of an MIA without worrying about whether someone is reading the chat in the heat of things. If you’re reading this, chances are you’re aware you should call an MIA and/or ping. So how can you further this information?



I wouldn't have chose to recall there if I had seen an MIA.


Let us look beyond calling an MIA and get into examples on how to take an MIA and turn it into an advantage. The thing that differentiates a good player from a bad player is how they handle calling their MIAs. A good player will follow his MIAs, and by this I mean don’t simply call “top mia” and then continue farming. There are several ways to follow your MIA; they depend on your character, map and situational awareness.

Character awareness is the one that requires the least amount of explanation and skill. Knowing how your character reacts to the game is an experienced based skill. Can you impact a fight with your current skills, items and life right now? Does a character you know will be there completely shut you down (think stuns v. Katarina)? Most times you are able to help a fight, but knowing what you can do versus what the enemy can do is important. If your enemy is AP Sion and you see him missing after he buys mobility boots, follow him and scream at the top of your lungs.



Malzahar has 88 mana, not enough to cast any of his spells. When he goes MIA, he is no threat to another lane.


The next thing to look at when calling an MIA is knowing the situation. You know that when you get an AP carry low on mana or life, they’re going to push their wave and recall. So here an MIA is a precaution that they will recall, and then head to a different lane to gank. If you just killed your opponent, call an MIA after a few seconds if they don’t return to the lane. If you are playing very aggressively and have they are camping a tower, you might have to call MIAs more frequently because they will constantly be out of vision range.

Situational awareness is also knowing whether you will be getting baited or not. If you don’t know where their jungler is, don’t follow your laner into the brush immediately. A good player will go to gank top, but stop and wait in the bush if he sees his opponent coming. They can also fake going somewhere and be waiting in the bush with their jungler. Use your judgment of the situation and how fragile you are in order to determine if you should go after them.



Here Malzahar leaves the lane to possibly go top, however top laners are missing. This is clearly a bait to get me out into the lane so I can be killed. You should still ping an MIA trail, however be more careful of your own death than theirs.


The last and hardest skill is your map awareness. If you are seeing your laner go in a certain direction of the fog of war, estimate where they are going and why. This is very important in all lanes and is relatively easy to predict. If you are bottom lane and the support leaves towards mid, chances are they are warding dragon or securing dragon. This is because typically a support is too squishy to an AP carry mid and the AD carry is very vulnerable on the bottom alone. If you see both your bottom lane opponents going towards dragon, chances are they’re doing dragon! Call an MIA, ping dragon and bring your team to the objective. If your top laner moves up river, follow them upriver. Typically mobility by a top laner is to help a fight in mid or to counter jungle. Call your MIA at this point and head to your nearest buff or mid laner if buffs are down.


Saying Top MIA didn't save my life. Shen coming would have scored a double kill on his low life lane opponent, Xerath.


As a mid lane, an MIA and follow is most critical and the most rewarded. Not only do AP carries have the most burst damage available, they are typically the strongest when fed. If your opponent in mid lane leaves towards blue buff, ping the top laner and get the jungler to go. If they leave towards bottom lane, they are almost definitely ganking bottom since they don’t offer reliable damage to dragon. When you learn to follow your MIAs as a mid lane AP carry, you will find yourself getting fed or at least preventing death by your team and an increase in your winning percentage.


Next time you play, follow your MIAs. This changes your game from a passive “Why is my team feeding” stance to a much more active role. You are not required to farm your lane only, the more you help your team the higher your chances are of winning. Do not be the person farming your lane and complaining that your team is feeding. Find the action near you and make sure it goes your way.


Here's a handy-dandy flow chart!


Until next time…

GL HF,
Hahano