The lane conundrum: to support or not to support

I’m curious to how you guys handle rampant lane abandonment. When I lane I usually go in with the mentality that I am responsible for protecting the turrets on my lane.

I’ve rotated out to try to cover an abandoned lane, in the past, but have lost my own turret in doing so. So now my rule of thumb is to prioritize my own turrets and rotate out only if I know they are 100% safe and quickly rotate back in to protect my turrets.

I generally think it is the roam and jungles responsibility to cover the slack on over attacked lanes and not the laners. If the enemy team overloads a lane than the other laners should simply push and take a 2 for 1 turret

How do you guys handle lane abandonment?

Rules of Thumb

  • “I need help” ping - jungle or roam should go help.
  • A constant need for help - laners should rotate to push, whenever possible and jungle should attempt ganks (not all have to be succcessful - even a few failed will make for a wary laner)
  • Death of your laner - anyone closest, if the danger is immediate (enemy is attacking turret)
  • Lane abandonment - it is now the job of the other laners or a flexible jungle to protect the abandoned lane
6 Likes

I look and see what is being pressured, and rotate around. Of course I’m mainly in my lane but if I see 3 enemies on a close lane(If I’m on a side lane, center lane. If center lane, either.) I’ll go help when not under pressure. I don’t move too far from my lane, and make sure to use the river when rotating back or to. It’s all about using pings and having smart people on your team.

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This about handling lane abandonment specifically, as a laner. Let’s say there are three people on the top lane, you’re playing mid, and the bot laner, for whatever, reason decides to go to the top lane too.

Do you stay in your lane and let the bot turret fall, or try to rotate to the bot lane to at least clear the wave, risking your own turret?

This was the actual scenerio that inspired the question. I rotated down to clear the wave. Then, the mid turret got taken, and my teammates either died, farmed the jungle, or stayed in the top lane.

During the next game a similar situation occurred, and I decided to just stick to the mid lane, in which all the bot lane turrets got taken but I managed to also solo all the mid lane turrets.

I’m generally the guy running around endgame clearing waves. I’m kinda sick of doing it, and feel like I’m enabling my shitty teammates, and just kind of only want to focus on my lane, but I also don’t want to throw away a half hour to lose.

3 Likes

Also, when I play jungle, I often end up laning. Should I just say “fuck it” and only support lane when the laner who chose the position plays it?

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Mid is closer to top. You should rotate to bottom to prevent(Or reduce) loss there. Someone on your team should rotate to mid. (Ping!) Otherwise you have bad teammates. Late game the laner for each of their respective lanes should still keep an eye on their lane, maybe go as a group to clear. That’s what I would do, any other ideas?

About the jungle thing, the jungle should be clearing the jungle, helping out in lane by a LOT of lane rotation and steal their gold toad. You should ping the laner to go back, or if they are busy helping another lane defend it as long as you have to.

I do ping. Sometimes people cover sometimes they don’t. The thing is that in soloq people are not dependable so I can’t rely on others to pick up my slack. It’s the same reasoning I won’t play captain, I’ll always go double jungle, because I can’t depend on soloq carries.

My mentally though is that I should worry about my turrets, and it’s the jungler and captains jobs to rotate. Quite frankly, in the early and mid game, I don’t ever see a need to have three people on a turret for any extended time, let alone four.

I sometimes get grouped with people that like to cluster, which I hate because I usually focus on objectives, and don’t get caught up in chasing kills, which a good amount of players do, at the expensive of objectives and leveling.

I’m not exactly sure what the best practice is in dealing with that, and I really hate enabling it by picking up the slack.

Jungler job is to gank. Getting a kill helps IMMENSELY… Mid lane should never fall. Have your best hero here.

I really hate junglers who just farm forever and never help. I always secure a kill within the 2 minute mark. And steal jungle away.

When I lane, I hold mid for as long as possible, if I make it to 5 minutes… I jungle shop. It’s the jungler job to relieve the laner, not the laner to request it. Jungler should have the most map awareness of all. Always check map constantly.

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Great post and something I’ve found annoying in game (scrubs giving up in a lane because they’re being outplayed).

Personal opinion is that it’s the responsibility of the laner to manage there own lane. If they want to help split push the need to ensure they’ve pushed their lane wave to ensure you don’t get counter pushed, its your responsibility to ensure you don’t lose turrets, that’s your priority IMO. It’s also your responsibility to split push when you feel it’s appropriate (this is an art I’ve yet to master).

As mid laner I feel it’s key to ensure that this lane doesn’t fall, if someone abandons bottom or top lane I’ll think long and hard before I rotate down to cover it.

I also feel your pain re wave clears, late game bad players simply forget to ensure they’re lanes pushed. I’ll always do my best to ensure my lane is pushed into the enemy territory. No point taking a dragon if your losing turrets to minions (this can be so frustrating). I quite like the slow push approach where you take out the enemy captain minion before rotating to join a team fight, it enable your us to slowly get the uppper hand without a need to spend time clearing entire waves.

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Your sentiments mirror my own.

However, late game I’m usually porting back to base to clear waves from other lanes. It’s something that I want to stop doing, because quite frankly it enables bad play, and because I focus on my lane and on high CS I usually have the highest CS and am more equipped to team fight. Nevertheless, like you said, that’s all worthless if the minions are taking turrets, which I’m that should never happen.

1 Like

I really like this topic :-). When I play center lane I do prioritize my lane, but if another lane is being pushed by 3 or 4 people I will either go help and have another person cover or stay in my lane and guard the other lane if any of the other team split pushes.

I have a hard time making the decision sometimes, because lots of people are horrible at laning. They don’t know how to freeze or farm under turret, over extend like crazy, and try to dive under the enemy turret, when it is clear that opponent is the mechanically superior player.

Prioritize your own lane first, especially if you are mid. If no one is pressuring your lane then you should definitely rotate to abandoned lanes or lanes where teammates are having problems. I don’t think it’s right to say that junglers and roams should only be rotating.

Mostly I prefer roam (though I’ve been laning more now) and, while I can’t say this will work for every roamer, please green ping if you see a lane has been abandoned or you need help. A problem I have as a roamer is that people don’t ping when they need help then the turret goes down :frowning: while I do my best with map awareness sometimes I get distracted by other things…

I find that just taking full responsibility for my lane works best for me. Just keep it simple:

  • No side lane rotations.
  • Only farm the jungle on the way back to the turret.
  • Don’t over extend the turret.
  • Hit the shop when your jungler / roam rotates to lane.
  • Don’t worry about the other lanes.

Last game I just ignored everything else and focused on my lane. I was 1v2 most of the against an over aggressive Rona and Skarf on the mid lane, which was fine with me because I’m confident with my laning ability. I just focused on CS and not dying and was able to get kills and out farm them because they were so focused on killing me that they wrecklessly dove all game, which resulted in me getting ten kills in the first 10 minutes.

With minimal help, I managed to push the mid lane all the way back to the crystal, before the black wing capture.

I saw opportunities to rotate to assist the sidelines, both to capture and defend, but decided to just focus on my lane and position, and let everyone else focus on theirs.

What I realized is that there isn’t really time to rotate to other lanes. Minion waves build too fast and someone needs to be there to kill them, despite that scaled fast and was completely dominate on my lane. So I really just focused on wave clear and farming out the enemy jungle, when moving back to the protection of my turret, instead of rotating to the side lanes. I did make attempts to take the deep turrets when my cool downs were up, though, which was successful in the end.

Given are junglers for this particular game rotated well to help pick up the slack on the side lanes.

However, yeah, I going to just focus on my lane and not stress out about if other people are playing their position or not.

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At some point, you just need a coordinated party. People only farming & not protecting their lane properly is a thing. People simply being outplayed in their lane is a thing. Prioritize yours and help if you can but smart enemies will usually rotate out to yours once they see you’ve left. It’s hard to deal with but the best solution is better teamates.

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