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I don’t know what to do in this situation. Any Gold+ out there have advice?

I Support Solar·8/3/2018, 2:00:19 PM·1 votes·892 views

Hypothetical: You are midlaner. You know that their jungler is the kind that can solo dragons really early (like lvls 3/4ish). At one point, you strongly suspect that their jungler might do dragon (it is an Infernal, and they haven’t showed in any lanes by mid-xp lvl 4). It isn’t warded, though, so you don’t know this. You decide to go ward it just in case. You place your ward, and it is X-ed out, because the enemy has a control ward on dragon already. In fact, their jungler is already soloing dragon! Fortunately, you manage to kill him. However, you are very low health at the end of the fight, and the dragon is still attacking you. You flash over the jungle wall (you wouldn’t have made it trying to run all the way out of the pit, and you were closest to the wall because that’s where their jungler was positioned when you started attacking them). After a couple of seconds of their mid chasing you, you get away and recall in a bush. Their botlane clears your ward that you placed on dragon before (their team still has a control ward on dragon).

So, the situation is this:

-You just recalled to fountain, but you don’t have any yellow wards left on your trinket.

-You know they have a control ward on the Infernal Dragon, and their jungler rezzed by now and could be running to try to kill it again even right now.

-Your bot lane either can’t or won’t ward dragon and clear the control ward. They are not doing well in lane, and may have used their own wards on their bot bushes to try to stop Blitzcrank from grabbing them. Or, they just don’t feel safe going up river, maybe? For whatever reason, they can’t help.

-Your own jungler just died trying to gank top.

. . .

I don’t know what to do here. What do I do?

A) Buy a control ward (I’m out of yellow), run all the way back down to dragon, and clear the control ward/ward the dragon myself. I know this one seems like common sense, but if I do this, I feel like their midlaner will just free-farm even more and gain lvls on me. It also doesn’t seem safe because the control ward is actually a little inside the dragon pit, so I would be trapped in there if some of them managed to block the exit before I was done killing the control ward.

B) Concede the dragon to the other team. I just go mid and try to keep up in farm and levels with my midlane opponent. If their jungler wants to Dragon again, they can at any time.

C) “This is a dumb, low ELO situation, and you shouldn’t have done half the things you did to get here.” (That’s fine. But, please explain what I should have done instead.)

D) Other (Please explain.)

2 Comments

SuperLuigiLXIV8/3/2018, 2:27:08 PM2 votes

I would say you want to concede. It hurts to give up a fire drake to a team that's already snowballing, but unless you have Smite yourself, you don't have a realistic chance of contesting it so early (I'm assuming you're not Nunu) and you're either going to get pincered between the jungler and the midlane who you say is farming in mid, or you'll get pincered between the jungler and their bot lane.

Now, it's possible, if you have the range, for you to harass the enemy jungler off of the dragon, maybe long enough for your own jungler to get to the pit. But to do that, you basically have to red ward over the back wall and be able to poke from back there, so you'd need to be playing something like Xerath or Ziggs, where you can just be a pain in the ass for the enemy jungler WITHOUT exposing yourself to having your retreat cut off by either lane. I'm assuming by the way you talked earlier that you weren't playing hyper-long-range though, because you had to flash over the dragon pit wall to get out and you were at low health, so you engaged the jungler at a range where they could fight back.

So, I would argue that B is the right choice, but A isn't a wrong answer either, assuming your jungler is paying attention and you're able to keep tabs on mid and bot lane while you do it. A wrong call can end up being successful, and a right call can fail. It's just how things work out sometimes, thanks to human error.

I wouldn't say you made a wrong call at any point though (at least in the context of this story, there's not enough info to call for option C). If you have a chance to stop a fire drake from being taken, you should do it, especially if it's a situation where the enemy lanes are ahead (you said bot was, and given your jungler died in top lane, I assume it was too).