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How to Stall a Game

Meep Man··112 votes·12,390 views

Champions that can stall a game: Anivia Heimerdinger Illaoi Jayce Jinx Karthus KogMaw Lucian Malzahar Singed Sivir Teemo Tristana Varus Veigar Velkoz Viktor Xerath Ziggs Zilean Select other champions can stall, thse guys are just a "spotlight" group Items that can stall a game: item 3025 item 3285 item 3074 item 3060 item 3085 item 3087 item 3068 item 3748 item 3512 item 3124

Use these items and champions. All of these champions are very good at zoning and/or wave clear AND these items can all demolish minion waves very quickly. If your Top Lane can buy a item 3512 item 3068 item 3074 item 3748 or item 3025 , buy it. If your Jungle can buy ANY of these, buy it. If your Middle Lane can buy item 3285 item 3060 or item 3087 , buy it. If your ADC can buy item 3085 item 3124 or item 3087 , buy it. If your Support can buy item 3025 item 3285 item 3060 or item 3512 , buy it.

Not a lot of these items and especially champions are played right now, yet people are still complaining about short games. If you PLAY champions that cause long games, there will be long games. The main reasons a Singed can feed so much early and still win is because a.) he can farm easily b.) he can contribute to a team fight very easily and c.) HE CAN STALL VERY EASILY FOR HIS LATE GAME CARRIES! I'm very surprised no one has seen this by now, with the Marksman items being updated. A lot of Hyper Carry ADCs are not getting the light of day because no one is making the correct teams out of them. Something you should notice, as well, is that MAJORITY of these champions are not Supports. If you want a good late game carry, the entire team or a select few champions have to dedicate to it. The reason early game rush comps are so good right now is a.) most of those champions were played last season and b.) it is easier to use those champions without much thought on selecting them.

Placing a Zz'Rot Portal UNDER your own tower can SEVERELY stall a game out since it won't let the enemy minions reach your Tower and it makes it very hard for the enemy team to kill. This can KILL split pushers. Using Banner of Command to create a Super Minion to split push can force the enemy team to go wave clear a lane, making them down at least one member to go clear the wave. Getting ANY AoE item can make it very hard for enemy minions to approach a Tower, especially Stattik Shiv. In this current meta, where majority of teams rely on rushing the game to an end before it's too late, these stall items and champions can extremely hinder their process. A lot of people could say, "Those champions are weak right now." Well, a.) majority of them aren't played enough for anyone to say that and b.) most people don't play them right. People today naturally want to play aggressive, but what if you played very passively. Enemy gets farm, that's whatever. If they were an early game rush comp, they are likely going to get farm anyway. Now, however, they don't get kills because you play very passive. If you get Zz'Rot early, they autofarm for you, so the enemy doesn't benefit from pushing you to your Tower.

THIS IS HOW YOU STALL A GAME! Kills help. Towers help. It's the MINIONS, however, that are the big thing to kill. You kill minions, you stall the game. Another way is to damage an enemy a lot BEFORE a fight happens. Then they won't fight, thus either stalling the game or putting it in your favor to push. Late game carries farm by killing minions and STALLING the game, they get to late game, they carry. Boom. That's it. That is how to stall a game. You build these items and play these champions.

118 Comments

Meep Man12 votes

Im going to bump this once just so people see this that are paying attention. The game isn't changing, the meta is. Every single stalling champion isn't being played. A lot of the MAIN stalling items aren't getting bought. We need to bring them back if we want longer games.

jeremiahBIO2 votes

what do you think of Tristana? i really like playing her but like you said, early game comps are killing the hyper carries.

Meep Man4 votes

Tristana is... a strange one. She can stall, but can also make a game end VERY quickly. Basically, Tristana isn't helping or hurting game length. It's just either gonna be really short or really long when she is in a game usually. She's both? She can either be a Rush Comp Pusher or a Stall Comp Hyper Carry... kind of? She is weird when it comes to determining this. I'm not Tristana pro, but that's just from what I've seen from a friend of mine who plays her.

3ofGot40ve1 votes

Thoughts on udyr as a stall champ? He works with item 3025 item 3512 anditem 3060 and can split push without trouble. One of the best at pushing waves and proxy farming.

Meep Man1 votes

He's like Tristana. He can stall and rush. He is almost like an ABSOLUTE CONTROL champion. Its kind of what happens when any AA champion can stall because most of the time it also means they can push a tower quickly as well. He will work as a staller, but a staller build for him can also be an absolute tower rush build.

LankPants1 votes

The problem with this theory is that the game did recently change significantly. With deathtimers getting longer stalling's now much harder and much riskier. If at any point the enemy team gets a significant pick they can pretty much destroy your base or take an easy Baron from it, both of these situations absolutely destroy stalling.

Meep Man2 votes

The game's death timers are lengthened because the gold income has also been increased, evening it out.

Also you miss the point. The entire point of stalling is two things:

  1. Avoid PvP conflict (avoid death timers)
  2. Kill minions (even out the gold and EXP gap)

Majority of people mix this up and believe that taking towers helps stalling, when, while it helps as I said, doesn't really give too much advantage to helping you stall since it comes with such risk.

Deus Imperator11 votes

1-Pick Singed

2-Survive Laning phase,Get Tanky And annoy the hell out of the enemy team,forcing them to send 2-3 to stop you,Run away with R when its too much

3-???

4-Win

TotalJerk3 votes

{quoted}

2-Survive Laning phase

You're Singed, so that's optional.

EvilRabbitt4 votes

It really is. You're job is to make sure I can split push 24/6. That /1 is my day off :P

kDrakari1 votes

I think you left out a few steps, let me try:

1-Pick Singed

2-Survive Laning phase,Get Tanky And annoy the hell out of the enemy team,forcing them to send 2-3 to stop you,Run away with R when its too much

3-?

4-???

5-?!?!?!?!?!?

6- ¯\(ツ)/¯

7-Win

Athenes Lulu5 votes

Too bad item 3512 is still disabled atm.

Though still good for future reference. [slayer-pantheon-thumbs]

ManiacalCoyote4 votes

Bump! I love late games. Nasus

LittleBlast5 votes

Lategame nasus sucks imho, midgame nasus is stronger.

Spoofghoul1 votes

well thats becasue nasus also needs a teamcomp around him.

You need hard engagers and someone else to dive their carries alongside you so they can also take some of the cc. A low maintenance adc would be ideal one who doesnt require god awfull amounts of peeling and protecting,

Champion Skin1 votes

Either that or Nasus is also good against juggernauts or other champions who have to dive into your team as then Nasus can just chill with his squishies waiting for the enemy to come to him (and using wither on the enemy ADC should they get in range or to peel)

Lady Hammerlock1 votes

[{quoted}](name=Champion Skin,realm=EUW,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=HXNHAajg,comment-id=0002000000000000,timestamp=2016-02-19T00:25:04.442+0000)

Either that or Nasus is also good against juggernauts or other champions who have to dive into your team as then Nasus can just chill with his squishies waiting for the enemy to come to him (and using wither on the enemy ADC should they get in range or to peel)

or watch riven suffer nasus is good at that..

BRBGTGBOWFLEX4 votes

No. Even if you had this, it wouldn't matter quite that much.

Weak towers and early access to damage via lowered cost of BF sword/NLR and amount of sheen champions are causing towers to fall too quickly. The ability to stall only matters if you can maintain control of your jg/lanes while doing it, however, the weak towers will let your T2 line fall too fast and once you get stuck in base, baron can be used to counter stalling tactics. Huge death timers will also exacerbate the problem.

Meep Man3 votes

The point of a stall tactic is so they cant damage your towers. Anivia, Singed, Ziggs, and a lot of stall champions can prevent that easily.

Ale non è male3 votes

Hey man, item 3060 doesn't help AT ALL for stalling games, though Basically:

  • if the enemy is taking down towers really fast your super minion will be eaten alive
  • if you put it in a side lane and the enemy minion wave is heavily pushing will be eaten alive
  • if you put it in a side lane where enemy wave is slowly pushing or is pretty much even your super minion will shove the minion lane wave back, but really slowly, so slowly that the enemy must really throw hugely their lead to give enough time to that push to have real effects on the game, which basically means that is not really relevant
  • if you put it in a side lane where your wave is yet pushing hard or you intend to use it to splitpush hard and it succeed to do so, it means that it is enemy fault that despite the lead is overlooking their sidelanes and the splitpushing you are doing and it is their fault if they can't catch you when overextended to kill you or use the 5vs4 advantage to punish your team for your absence

Basically, it is just an item that empower strategies that need the enemy to fail something or you to play anyway really good to stall out the game

item 3025 is even less useful in doing it so bcause it add abysmal damage to your clear and that field of slow literaly won't stop champions that are running over and over you if they have big lead or slow the minions down if you are counterpushing a sidelane

item 3068 really depends on your and enemy comp and what startegy you are employing to stall the game (attratc enemy attention on a side lane or potect successfuly your towers that are still up and outscale the enemy), and depending on those factors could be either positife or harmful for stalling your game

Meep Man2 votes

Ok, if you use it INCORRECTLY, then it is bad at stalling the game. Anything that pushes a lane, stalls the game. It's just these champions/items can do it well and from a safe distance or quick enough to where distance doesn't matter.

Also, if you just use Banner on a Cannon minion as it spawns in your base, that lane is going to get pushed unless an enemy player is already there, upon which I have no idea why you would use it there.

Ale non è male3 votes

[{quoted}](name=Inept Maverick,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=HXNHAajg,comment-id=00090000,timestamp=2016-02-18T20:41:13.608+0000)

Ok, if you use it INCORRECTLY, then it is bad at stalling the game. Anything that pushes a lane, stalls the game. It's just these champions/items can do it well and from a safe distance or quick enough to where distance doesn't matter.

This is not automatically true. If the push isn't singificant enough to distract people, if enemies can afford to send a champ to stop the push without loosen the pressure on your team, if the enemy has a fats pusher with hgih mobility that can repush the wave back after, for example, getting an objective and recalling back to base, if you do not have tools to do the splitpush safely, if your mates are dumb so that you got to stop to do what you are doing to help them or don't follow your instructions if you not have the tools and are forced to push slowly yourself, that push is not stalling the game, since it is not affecting enemy plans at all and they can keep snoballing the lead they yet have - and you could not even help your mates if you are doing some other duties like mentioned

Also, if you just use Banner on a Cannon minion as it spawns in your base, that lane is going to get pushed unless an enemy player is already there, upon which I have no idea why you would use it there.

Use a Banner on a Cannon minion near my inhib/nexus turrets in a lane where there isn't actually an enemy but there is a wave pushing/equal, the enemy finish a fight/objective and then turns on that lane before that empowered minion has built a strong enough wave that is pushing, there you go your minion. You have not stalled the game, not because Banner is overall useless, but because it has little impact alone. For example a ZZR Portal is far better when you are on the defensive if you want to slow down the enemy push to defend a turret

Meep Man1 votes

Of course, sometimes a stall will break and Banner might break easily at times, such as when the enemy is much ahead or such. Banner is good for stalling when the enemy isn't already exceptionally ahead since it can make them split up so you can even the odds a little easier. Stalling doesn't just have to mean the game as a whole. It could also mean stalling an enemy's arrival or such. While the game in general is most of the time the subject at hand, stalling doesn't ONLY mean lengthening the game. Banner of Command is an item that is either don'y buy or def buy.

Ale non è male1 votes

[{quoted}](name=Inept Maverick,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=HXNHAajg,comment-id=0009000000000000,timestamp=2016-02-18T21:54:29.680+0000)

Of course, sometimes a stall will break and Banner might break easily at times, such as when the enemy is much ahead or such. Banner is good for stalling when the enemy isn't already exceptionally ahead since it can make them split up so you can even the odds a little easier. Stalling doesn't just have to mean the game as a whole. It could also mean stalling an enemy's arrival or such. While the game in general is most of the time the subject at hand, stalling doesn't ONLY mean lengthening the game. Banner of Command is an item that is either don'y buy or def buy.

Banner empowered minion alone/with few sustain from the rest of the wave can't sustain a push big enough to delay an enemy lane enough, though, you still have to do a clearing work to have your wave in a position when your empowered super minion can actually survive

Stalling a game more often than not is not send someone splitpushing hoping that he doesn't get caught, is mostly the ability to hold on objectives long enough to allow your sidelane allies or minions to push/get objectives/win a fight next to your turret and be able to catch-up and outscale/play the enemy

What Banner can do, definitively, is making splitpushing faster, but that's not precisely stalling. It doesn't stop enemies from keeping getting advantages and taking objectives and turrets. If a faster splitpushing is the key factor that can lead you to stall game, because there is yet a big enough treat on your side that can achieve that, then Banner can become a factor, but it is still related to your enemies lack of ability to make good use of the advantages they get by some of you setting up the Banner push Something like Luden or Statik is better at stalling, since it basically allow you to clear enemy waves under your turret from pretty long range and force enemy team to wait other waves to join, which can allow some teammate to respawn and join you for the fight/some other mate to do something else on the map/allow a minion wae to push without being noticed because the enmy is tunnel visioned on your turret or force the enemies to commit to dive, which thing you can try to counter and trade evenly or getting the upper hand thanks to the turret help

Meep Man1 votes

Your comments are true. But Banner of Command minions can stall a lane in my own experience. All you have to do is slightly damage the enemy minion wave and then empower a minion. Its like how tanking and then killing a minion wave will then cause a lane to gradually become passively pushed. A Banner minion can passively cause a lane to be pushed and put in the advantage of your team's minions.

Another note is that a Banner of Command minions count towards your CS, giving you gold for their kills. I can assume they also give you EXP for their minion kills, causing the minion EXP advantage to be either pt in your favor or more equally leveled.

Banner of Command may be a WEAK stalling item, but it can be used to help stall. It's not goint to do the job alone, but with a stalling champion or another stalling item, it can almost multiply the pressure/minion push your champ can cause. It adds on the "AND THIS" to everything you do. You clear a wave AND get an empowered minion. You defend a tower AND get an empowered minion. Banner is almost like a multiplyer to stall. 0 x 2 is 0. 2 x 2 is 4. Kind of what Banner does.

Ale non è male1 votes

[{quoted}](name=Inept Maverick,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=HXNHAajg,comment-id=000900000000000000000000,timestamp=2016-02-19T15:12:06.429+0000)

Your comments are true. But Banner of Command minions can stall a lane in my own experience.

Let's make things clear I do not disagree with what you say about the kind of positive impact Bannered minion can have upon stalling a game, that's not what the point of my initial post

The point is that I disagree with the premise of your thread In your thread you did a shortcut in your reasoning by endorsing the champs and items that can realize the strategies that you can put up to stall a game, but while I understand what you meant, that does not help to recognize what is stalling What Sunfire or Banner do is to empower some of the possible strategies you can use to actually stall a game, but no way you can say "pick Sunfire and you will be able to stall games" or "pick Anivia and you will be able to stall games"

Stall a game means basically that when you are behind you find ways to delay the game enough to allow you to catch-up or your comp to outscale the enemy.

I see why you those items are mentioned here, as they are splitpushing items and since splitpushing is a legit stalling tactc, but the stalling thing is the splitpushing strategy itself, not strictly the item - that surely can/will help you in doing that-. You can splitpush as much as you want, but if your team is getting rolled over and over while you are gone you are accomplishing nothing (and Sunfire for example could make you less ssafre when you are pushing neaar an enemy tower). Or, if you are splitpushing in a way the enemy can't really care about it, or can take objectives much faster than what you can threaten to do, or you can only take irrelevant objectives for them to trade, Banner minion will push the lane but it will be irrelevant as it will only represent free gold for an enemy that will clear the wave and then rejoin his mates after getting back subsequently to a dragon/baron/inhibito they have just taken

The only things that can you put as surefire stalling things are the champs and items that effectively can clean some minion or represent a disincentive to dive to force the enemy to wait a relevant amount for time before being able to get an obective for a tank mate to join them or the next big minion wave to come. This is net time you are earning to delay the game, and if you have then set a push this push will eventually force them to give up for the moment the objective or send a guy to deal with the push giving more chances to your team to fight or take other objectives to rebalance the situation

The definitions are off, and this cause to make suggestion that are not correct if not inserted in the proper context As an example, a Sivir can barely do any damage alone to prevent a group of people to take a turret. If those people have to dive, instead, she can really counter that and avoid enemies to take objectives. So, put her as a stalling champ in absolute is not correct, in some situations she can really help you to stall games, in other situations, regardless on how much advantage the enemy has, will not help much

Jasiwel3 votes

I don't think people realize how capable Anivia, Malzahar are in this meta. When played properly, they dominate every assassin and low-medium range mages, which means if they snowball they can be exceptionally difficult to confront.

When they aren't snowballed, they can either make waves vanish or force your team in a bad position. A decent Malzahar can also 1v1 most assassins as long as he isn't too far behind (fair well, Zed/Talon/Fizz) on top of wiping out turrets quicker due to voidlings. A decent Anivia owns team fights about as well as pre-nerf Viktor.

Loboros1 votes

Anivia is really good, but zed still counters pretty hard.

Meep Man2 votes

I find it the other way around due to her passive. Plus a good Anivia just casts Q once Zed reappears with his ultimate.

Quort1 votes

I've been taking Exhaust on Anivia. It makes it a really bad idea to try diving me. I also have a tendency to build an appreciable amount of defense (Rod of Ages/Seraph's Embrace, Liandry's Torment, Zhonya's Hourglass, Sorcerer's Shoes, Frozen Heart/Xeke's Herald, Athene's Unholy Grail/Morellonomicon[in case of Champions with powerful healing capabilities]) on Anivia. I focus on gradually weathering them down with Glacial Storm and providing peel and crowd control for other members of the team. Basically I turn into another Support! :3

Nyxceris1 votes

Xekes herald on anivia? Why tho?

Quort2 votes

It's got AP, Armor, CD-R, and mana and works well in conjunction with any ADC that are jungling or playing in top lane. It's definitely not something I purchase all the time though. :)

KilljoyX3 votes

I can't buy ZZ rot. It's broken, no literally its broken right now. They turned it off.

Meep Man1 votes

Yeah, its unfortunate since its one of the best items for stalling.

SeargentAnus1 votes

It feels great to stop a super minion wave with the item 3512

Unlimilore2 votes

BEST WAY TO STALL A GAME:

If you are losing severly you always have a bargaining chip. I forget if eq has made it to live yet, since I play mainly pbe but 3/5 times this method works.

Threaten the enemy team with a surrender. Tell them your team is going to surrender @ 20 if they don't eq. If they refuse to eq just constantly reinforce the fact that they will have a shorter game which provides less enjoyment since they wont have a long good game that they won. If they do eq, you just got your team a massive chance at winning, if not securing the win for your team, you have just added an easy close 20 minutes to that game where you were losing severely.

Bruh, EQ works so well that's its almost too good.

LittleBlast8 votes

EQ? Whats that

BladeSteel19 votes

its on the pbe. they put it on to allow for more testing for bugs. it equalizes the gold and towers for teams so if blue is ahead by 5000 gold and 4 towers, if blue team votes for eq, it gives red team 5000 gold and destroys 4 of blue's towers (basically) it doesnt exist on normal games. it just lets games go longer for testing.

dangopee18 votes

LOL why would this guy ever think this is eventually coming to live?

The Lexer16 votes

Obviously, everything on PBE will become live, even the 1IP price for every skin in the game kappa

trash sion2 votes

What's and EQ?

ModAcademy Kayn2 votes

Sion with a Titanic Hydra makes for great wave clearing with a Q-Auto. He also makes a great splitpusher who, if ahead, can make multiple people come have to kill him, and even then, he can ult away 9 times out of 10, and the tenth is a misclick.

Tis a nice day1 votes

Would prefer a sunfire or cinderhulk for waveclear but yeah, sion splitpush is hard to catch without coordination.

For Carthage2 votes

The only downside is that those are all generally offensive items that minimize the ability to survive dives. What little ones are bulky items offer no offensive capabilities, and so are only really useful on tanks. However, the meta is bruiser favored - going for just bulk items doesn't do much when a Yi is barreling down on you packing both damage and bulk simultaneously.

So that leaves us with Sunfire Cape, Iceborn Gauntlet, and Titanic Hydra. Now against a competent team, Titanic and Sunfire won't stall out a game more because they're both only usable in melee range, and so if you're under siege, those two items put you right in range for a beating. Trying to clear waves like that won't work well at all.

Ultimately, you're left with Iceborn, which actually perfectly explains how Ezreal is popular right now with it - obnoxious amounts of poke, kiting, clearing, and just about everything else under the hood while sacrificing some amount of immediate damage. Currently, he's the only champ that really makes full use of this item without sacrificing too much to use it, or without being melee and putting himself in danger.

kaltenashes2 votes

had a game where my team jungler was jax and enemy jungler was xin, early on xin got feed, my team decided to avoid almost every single fight (sometimes we picked overextended players with my FQC), defend turrets, not push lane too far... and we did, we didnt die that much and we stalled the game long enough for jax to carry our happy asses to victory

xin also started to play without thinking, he'd Engage in a 3v1 fight and die then blame his teammates for no follow-up

glad we didnt surrender that game

Meep Man2 votes

The ultimate counter to stalling a game is the Surrender Vote.

Most frequent cause of lost stalls.

Bodkins Odds2 votes

I feel like Tristana should be in the spotlight group, if only because of her E passive.

agbudar1 votes

yknow what you did?

make me cook up a ad malzahar zzrot banner of command build. now im gonna spend at least 10 games ruining everyone's lives on my taem by feeding horribly

thank you very much

sincerely my inner troll

agbudar2 votes

tankmo....

item 3512 item 3026 item 3060 item 3025 item 3009 item 3056

something like this surprisingly tanky kind hard to catch can kite well and has max cdr for lots of shrooms.

Samflash31 votes

Why ohmwrecker? And iceborn?

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