How to recover from behind and win games...

I saw a post recently about how to get fed in lane and just completely disagreed with it. The post really just explained basic things that everyone should be doing in lane and should be taking time to master. It got me thinking about what my team mates need to know in order to win more games. Recovering from behind and proper defense came to mind. I hope you take the time to read what I've written because it will help.

1. Stop Feeding. A joke right? Am I being toxic with this post? No. It's really not a joke, I'm serious. But I don't think people know how to stop. It's OK to lose a trade. It's OK to have that JG come from no where cause your trinkets down and you get behind. But how do you stop dying at that point? What choices do you have? For top and mid this is fairly easy. Your goal is to freeze the lane at your towers outermost range. This way you can be under tower and cs while minions don't get hit by the tower. Additionally, give up the first tower if they force it. A lot of tops mids and bots will assume they HAVE to protect the tower at all costs. In fact, it's actually easier in laning phase to have your first tower destroyed. It means if you freeze your lane at your tower the enemy team has to push REALLY far into your territory in order to cs in that lane. The downside is that they may roam and you'll need to call MIA's and counter roam if needed. There's a few other tricks that'll help but I'll get to them. The general idea is that feeding is a choice. Your enemy is not a god and they haven't countered you. The won a trade, just stop dying, give up the tower, cs in OTHER LANES if needed but do whatever you have to do to stop dying. For bot a great idea is to continually grab the nearest jungle camp. JG's don't get mad. This doesn't set you behind.

2. Level. This is HUGE. There are two factors to being behind that are debilitating. First is the gold disadvantage which isn't as bad as you might think. The second is level difference. This is really bad. You can't win a fight when you're 12 and they're 16. It just doesn't happen. This means even if you get them to run, DO NOT PUSH. This is the BIGGEST mistake I see people making. They finally get a break. They force their opponent to back or get a kill cause the enemy made a mistake and then they go balls to the walls pushing up mid and end up getting smashed into the ground by the rest of the team. The break in lane is key to recovering. If you get them to recall, this is the time to clear your minions, but not push them out. And run into jg to grab extra cs and xp and help other lanes push and grab objectives. This allows you to level. There's a rare chance that JG is cleared and dragons down and no towers are close and ganks aren't really possible. But it's rare. As the game goes on, this becomes more important because it forces throws. You need to stop playing on the enemy teams terms. You'll need to force them to come to you, or they can't get kills. Running 5v5 into dragon like it's LSC doesn't help if you're all 2-3 levels behind the enemy team. It's just helping them. You're doing what they want. At mid and end game you want to control the map, not the players. You want EVERY lane pushed, EVERY jungle camp cleared, EVERY objective and in that order. This forces the enemy team to run around clearing minions, and wonder where you are, stops them from getting kills because you're all together and gives everyone tons of xp and buffs and all that fun stuff.

3. Ward... for the love of god ward....

4. Did I mention you should ward?

5. PLAY AS A TEAM. Your goal after laning is to protect your adc and let their damage carry you. Your stuns and knock backs should be used to protect them or prevent the enemy team from getting to them. I play ADC a lot. It's their goal to get tons of cs, and a kill or two. Even if behind, the adc is your golden ticket to winning from behind. They will easily catch up if you're protecting them. This also means though that you can't rush up mid and leave them in the dirt. Building also helps here. Items that support your team or help you be more effective vs. a particular enemy team should be stressed. Basics are MR vs AP, Armor vs. AD, Armor pen vs. tanks... etc.

6. Control the map. I touched on this before but it's very important. There's a natural flow to every game. There's a time to push and a time to defend. The real key to winning each part of this is how you, as a team, control the map. By this I mean you need to set up your top and bot (or the two lanes you're not pushing) so that they push themselves. This will limit the time the enemy team has to fight in mid (see last parentheses) or burn down towers and eliminate minions which means they gain less xp and gold. Warding and killing scuttles helps during this team too because you can catch people off guard and bait.

7. Set traps. Bait. This is harder to do when behind but your enemy will typically be fairly excited about being ahead. If you go out and give him the proverbial raspberry and run into a bush that he thinks is safe with 3 of your friends there, it's a good chance he's gonna take the bait and get stomped. To do this, you'll need to have the right trinkets to make sure there's no warding that can give you up.

TLDR:

1. Stop Feeding a. Freeze Lane b. give up first tower c. cs in jg/other lanes when appropriate d. call MIAs, counter roams

2. Level a. don't fight enemies when behind b. get xp and gold any chance you can, any way you can, as efficiently as possible c. help get objectives vs. fighting in your lane where you might die again d. you can't kill a higher level opponent (or at least it's really really hard to)

3. Ward... Please T_T

4. JUST DO IT. WARD.

5. Play as a team a. Protect your adc b. don't go off on your own into non-warded territory c. counter build

6. Control the Map a. mid/end game lanes should be allowed to push on their own while you 5 man push mid b. get objectives together, clear jg and enemy jg as available. c. Pushing doesn't help, if you get a kill or 3 fine, but not if you just forced a back and only killed a sup.

7. Set Traps a. Call for jg to come, sit in a bush and bait.

There's more but this is all BASIC defense. There's a lot more advanced tips and tricks but I'm not going to do that now. Hope you all learned something. There are also sites like mobafire that offer guides on a particular champion. I HIGHLY suggest checking those sites out and watching youtube videos about the things I've suggested above.