What happens during the mid game?
Riot·7/30/2014, 8:18:57 PM·0 votes·3,316 views
The laning phase is over. Teams have gotten to the point where they feel comfortable stopping their isolated farming and take the battle to the rest of the map. The mid game has begun.
Over the course of League of Legends matches, the midgame may be the most difficult to understand. To the untrained eye, teams often look like they’re wandering around with no clear objectives.
Trust us, they’re not. Most of the time, pro teams know exactly what they’re doing. Here’s some of the things they might be doing in the meantime.
League of Legends is a game of objectives. To win, teams must kill towers and kill the dragon and Baron Nashor, and do so more efficiently than their opponents. Sure, they could brute force things, but why do that if they can avoid the potential of losing the fight and, ultimately, the game?
At its basic level, a rotation is simply a team moving over to put pressure on a different objective. Pretty simple.
Done properly, though, it puts the opposing side between a rock and a hard place. Let’s say a team wants to kill Baron Nashor, but they can’t seem to shake their opponents. To deal with that, they’ll push one or more lanes up to the point where they’ll have to be dealt with, and then sprint to Baron. That way, they’ll have time to take it while their opponents deal with the shoved lanes. Easy money, man.
Typically, teams that focus on heavy rotations are those that prefer to avoid teamfights and use superior mobility and lane pushing power to quickly take whatever they want.
Executing proper rotations is one of the most difficult things to pull off in pro League.
If the full team rotations aren’t quite working out, there’s always rotations’ little brother, the split push.
If you see a lone member of a team racing their way towards a tower in one of the side lanes while the rest of their team is off doing something else, that’s a split pusher. They thrive on forcing teams to either deal with them, giving up defenses elsewhere, or simply letting them take whatever towers they want.
The split pushing role requires a very particular set of skills, primarily focused around survival. Either they’re amazing duelists, adept at taking on enemies one-on-one (think Kayle or Jax), or they’re really good at running the heck away, a la Tryndamere or Nidalee.
If done successfully, the split pusher will gain not only the chance to freely take objectives, but also all the farm that comes along with constantly shoving lanes. And because many split pushing champions tend to be strong in the late game, once they join back up with their squad, they’ll be absolute terrors.
Of course, teams could also just skip all the fancy maneuvers and beat the hell out of whoever waltzes into their line of sight.
Teams focused on winning the mid game through brute force will focus heavily on grabbing strong mid-game champions like Corki, Irelia, or solo lane Lulu. Ideally, they’ll survive the early game, wait for a few of them to grab an item or two, and go on the hunt.
Rather than trying to get the opposing force to split up their squad to deal with pressure from multiple fronts, they want everyone in the same place, ready to get blown up by their superior power. It’s a confident move, and one that could very well win the game in dramatic and decisive fashion, assuming the fights go well.
So there you have it, three of the major mid game strategies. Got anything else you like to see?
Next time: What is vision control?
Last time: What happens during laning phase?
Rotate away
League of Legends is a game of objectives. To win, teams must kill towers and kill the dragon and Baron Nashor, and do so more efficiently than their opponents. Sure, they could brute force things, but why do that if they can avoid the potential of losing the fight and, ultimately, the game?
At its basic level, a rotation is simply a team moving over to put pressure on a different objective. Pretty simple.
Done properly, though, it puts the opposing side between a rock and a hard place. Let’s say a team wants to kill Baron Nashor, but they can’t seem to shake their opponents. To deal with that, they’ll push one or more lanes up to the point where they’ll have to be dealt with, and then sprint to Baron. That way, they’ll have time to take it while their opponents deal with the shoved lanes. Easy money, man.
Typically, teams that focus on heavy rotations are those that prefer to avoid teamfights and use superior mobility and lane pushing power to quickly take whatever they want.
Executing proper rotations is one of the most difficult things to pull off in pro League.
Split ‘em up
If the full team rotations aren’t quite working out, there’s always rotations’ little brother, the split push.
If you see a lone member of a team racing their way towards a tower in one of the side lanes while the rest of their team is off doing something else, that’s a split pusher. They thrive on forcing teams to either deal with them, giving up defenses elsewhere, or simply letting them take whatever towers they want.
The split pushing role requires a very particular set of skills, primarily focused around survival. Either they’re amazing duelists, adept at taking on enemies one-on-one (think Kayle or Jax), or they’re really good at running the heck away, a la Tryndamere or Nidalee.
If done successfully, the split pusher will gain not only the chance to freely take objectives, but also all the farm that comes along with constantly shoving lanes. And because many split pushing champions tend to be strong in the late game, once they join back up with their squad, they’ll be absolute terrors.
Fight! Fight! Fight!
Of course, teams could also just skip all the fancy maneuvers and beat the hell out of whoever waltzes into their line of sight.
Teams focused on winning the mid game through brute force will focus heavily on grabbing strong mid-game champions like Corki, Irelia, or solo lane Lulu. Ideally, they’ll survive the early game, wait for a few of them to grab an item or two, and go on the hunt.
Rather than trying to get the opposing force to split up their squad to deal with pressure from multiple fronts, they want everyone in the same place, ready to get blown up by their superior power. It’s a confident move, and one that could very well win the game in dramatic and decisive fashion, assuming the fights go well.
So there you have it, three of the major mid game strategies. Got anything else you like to see?
Next time: What is vision control?
Last time: What happens during laning phase?
