How important is laning phase in games/ other aspects

Mody bird·Mar 5, 2016·1 votes·535 views

Is laning phase the most important aspect of the game? by this i mean if you win your lane every game, but are decent/bad in other aspects, how far will you climb.

Btw this is a debate between me and my friend. He says laning phase is 75% most important skill wise. True? not true?

2 Comments

EndlessSorcererMar 5, 20162 votes

You don't have to win lane every game to climb. Quite frankly, a lot of people underestimate the important of not losing lane.

While winning your lane and snowballing can be quite useful for deciding games (especially in lower ELOs where people make mistakes aplenty), all the really matters is that you become as strong as you can. Farming well and (most importantly) not dying to your opponents will bring you much further than playing aggressively to crush your opponents since it is far safer and more reliable.

For a lot of champions, "winning" lane can be defined as reaching your core items at a reasonable time or going even in lane (i.e. late-game champion against a lane bully).

I'd say that there are three very important abilities which will easily carry a play to Gold (at minimum) with little effort.

Farming (to reach your champion's power spike and to have a reliable source of gold).
Rotations (knowing where you have to be and when, shot-calling for your team, predict what the enemy team is doing or wants to do)
Maintaining a positive attitude (stay positive, maintain team morale, try to prevent or end fights)

After a certain point, all of these become instinctual.

Another tip is to play to the ELO you are in. For example, I found that Silver players would often:

Pick damage-heavy and squishy champions
Had horrible laning mechanics
Would constantly group around objectives at poor times
Didn't know how to close out games.

To take advantage of these weaknesses, I played a significant amount of Gragas, Varus, Ziggs and Nasus. When we grouped around objectives, I would poke them down. When someone mis-positioned, I would catch them out. My lane opponents wouldn't know how to play against me and shut me down, so I would scale. And when teamfights began, I could lock them down and split them up.

Dark NephthysMar 5, 20162 votes

It's important but not entirely the most important thing in league. It's more important to not feed your lane opponent honestly than to win your lane. I'm a very very passive laner and in the end I just focus on trying to farm, get my items and not die to my lane opponent. They're are times when I might not even attempt to fight my lane opponent at all and force the lane into a farm lane (Which is why the one champion I hate the most in the game is Nasus because it forces passive players like me to play extremely aggressive.) If I know I have an advantage then I'll obviously fight them or if my jungler is coming then I'll fight etc. The only champions that I am very aggressive and I never play passive on is Shyvana Aatrox Kennen Anivia Azir are the champions I play often that I am actually very aggressive on.

But the point I'm getting at is I wouldn't say lane phase is the most important, because since this is a team game all that matters is if you can get an advantage as a team and press it and win. Even if all your lanes win and even the jungler is ahead, that doesn't mean that you will easily win the game, since the rotations and knowing what and when to take objectives is what actually wins the game. When I play, I just want to aim for going even in lane, sure winning my lane would be nice but in the end I feel just going even is all that matters.

I feel the only time that laning phase is the most important thing in the game is if you are playing an early/mid game champion that falls off late game unless fed. In those cases, then it would technically be for your sake, though even then it still comes down to which team is more coordinated in rotations and team objectives.