[Gameplay] You're behind, what do you do?
Hey all. I'll preface this all by saying that I reached Silver III last season and hovered between Silver III and IV. I did dip to V at one point, but got all the way back up to Silver III before the reset. The reset happened and I was dropped to Bronze II. It's been a struggle, but I'm back up in Bronze I, trying to do my best to carry myself back to Silver.
I'm not a Diamond player. I'm not even a Gold player. So, while I definitely feel like I can hack it in Silver, it's incredibly difficult to carry myself when playing in a skill level that's not really that much different from my own. I want to get better, and that's what the point of this thread is about. I'm zeroing in on a specific issue that I run into that I need to be able to address to win games.
You're behind... It happens. Top lane is losing. Mid lane is losing. The jungler is dinking away. You're in bot lane and, because you're not a couple tiers better than the other laner, you probably don't have 4 kills in the first 6 minutes and you're either winning in farm barely, even in farm, or possibly behind if your lane is getting constant pressure from their mid and/or jungle.
Towers are falling, perhaps even yours. They have complete control over dragon and your jungle. Your vision is inadequate. At level 9, as an ADC, you've upgraded your yellow trinket in order to help out, but you rarely have vision of the river.
What do you do? I like to play Caitlyn, because my favorite ADC, Vayne, requires such a high level of skill to compete. By contrast, Caitlyn feels like a safe laner. I can do well on her no matter what the situation, even if I fall behind. With her Q, one would think that I wouldn't have issues keeping up in farm. However, I often find myself on teams where waves are constantly getting pushed out by the mid and top who have been behind all game and have easy wave-clear abilities that easily surpass my Q.
The result is that I get further and further behind. I've tracked my gold in losses and it's always sub 350 GPM. I'm cognizant of this in games, and yet every time I try to get farm I find that I either can't push waves very far because we have no vision, or that the lanes are already pushed beyond what I can safely farm because someone else has gotten to them while I was off defending another turret or buying or whatever.
The other problem I've run into is that when I DO find a wave that I can go take, it almost always feels like as soon as I get there that my team is getting into some sort of fight. Either someone gets caught out, or someone chases a kill they can't close out quick enough, or the other team is just executing a coordinated push down a lane. Either way, if I stay and farm, we lose my team and we lose an objective. If I leave the farm, I continue to fall behind in gold.
When things go right, but not quite right... The last situation I'm curious about is when things are almost perfect, but not quite. We have vision, so I can safely push the lane. My team has probably gotten caught out a few times, but they aren't doing it so often that I don't have the breathing room to farm.
However, every time I get the wave up to turret, 1 or more members of the other team show up. My team isn't pushing or jumping into fights, so they can't take advantage of it and I have to back off. Understanding that objectives are THE key in a game and that map control is really nice to be able to equalize, I try to make these turrets my priority. However, I never feel like I can get them down.
What do I do when my team won't group for a turret? What happens when I split and my team doesn't take advantage of it? I can't rely on or control what my teammates do. I know that better players than I can take these situations and make something of them, but I can't seem to. So I'm wondering how to make better decisions to help me win these games?
Any advice is greatly appreciated.
