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When is it ok not to roam?

twchris13579·7/25/2016, 5:16:26 AM·1 votes·1,668 views

As a rule, if you are going to downvote this please comment with your thoughts first and what experience you have (rank and what you main) that allows you to claim what you're going to say.

So I would just like to address something that has been on my mind for a while now with Mid laners. During the laning phase (By this I mean pre Baron spawn or first tower falling) it's inevitable that your mid lane opponent will roam to top or bottom. Now as a support main whenever I notice the mid laner MIA I tell my adc to back up under tower and 9 out of 10 times due to proper warding on my part we spot the roam coming in, when this happens pre level 8 most of the time they will not try to dive you, at which point they will sit in the bush and wait while we laugh. Unless you are expecting a full dive (meaning jungle is bot too or the lane is pushed under tower and both your laners are low HP) the mid laner on your team (typically) should not match the roam. Why you ask? Because in the 60+ seconds the enemy spent walking down to the lane, waiting in the bush, then recalling or walking back to their lane, your mid laner can deny them 2 or 3 waves of farm (which is around 350-400 gold, the same amount a kill is worth) put damage on the tower or even take it. This puts your mid laner ahead in both exp and gold. Now this is only beneficial if the roam fails for the enemy mid lane, if they get a kill then it was all worth it for them. So this is a PSA to all top and bot lane players. If the mid pings MIA and didn't see where the enemy laner was going IT IS 100% YOUR FAULT IF YOU DIE TO THEM. You are responsible for warding your lane and watching for that roam. You are responsible for backing up and playing safer if you don't have vision on the enemy team. And sometimes it makes no sense for the mid lane to even try to match the roam when you have a bot lane comp like bard/sivir, they have so many ways to escape the gank coming in so long as THEY warded like they should. Also sometimes the enemy jungle will be sitting in river bush and when you try to follow the roam you get jumped 2v1, at which point the other lanes will still say you are bad.

I just had an argument with a friend (who was playing sivir) who actually said by not following every roam no matter what that I was sacrificing the other lanes. Now, as someone who has played more than 500 ranked games in bot lane I can't really remember the last time I was dove on by the enemy mid laner unless it was a 4 man dive (or because we really screwed up our positioning) simply because I always kept wards up to spot the roam, played towards the safer side of the lane (bushes on bot are further from tower than playing near river and a Yi, kat or other fast champ can walk through your warded tri bush and still get to you before you can get under tower) and whenever the mid lane or even top lane was MIA for more than 5 seconds I was pinging my adc to fall back until we spotted them.

Losing a few CS is better than getting ganked, losing 2-3 waves, giving the enemy team gold, and losing lane pressure. So to the former friend who called me toxic for trying to explain what I just did here I hope you become a little more understanding with people.

Is what I said always the case? No. Sometimes you should follow your opponent, but you gotta know where they went dont you?

The funny thing is, after reviewing the match that sparked this in more detail it was a failed roam from my bot lane (sivir/bard) to mid that started snowballing my lane opponent at 10 minutes in, allowing her to get ahead of me and freeing her up to roam other lanes. When you are already behind in lane your priority shouldn't be on following your already fed lane opponent around trying to scrape a kill here or there, you usually end up dying (which I did after he kept telling me to follow the fed syndra) which puts you more and more behind, then the team fights start and you are just finishing your second item while the other guy is halfway done with his 4th and you can do nothing to really help anymore. Guys this isn't team death match. 2 minion waves is worth almost as much as a kill and there is no reason to have your mid laner who is behind by several kills and 30 something cs go running around the map trying to fight everyone. You all as a team should play safer, 4 man push lanes, keep vision so your teammate who is behind can safely farm and get back into the fight and stop picking fights with the enemy when they are ahead of you. Force them to fight under your towers, kill 1 or 2 and then use the momentum you have to push back and take a tower for yourselves. Thats how you stop throwing games, thats how you go from 0/5 to 17/8. You work more as a team, WARD WARD WARD, and don't blame anyone for you getting dove under a tower when you knew 15 seconds ago the mid or top lane might be roaming down that way.

This is really coming from a support main on why the mid lane doesn't always need to match the enemy roam. I'd rather my mid laner stay mid, get farm, get more ahead in levels and push tower while we make the enemy mid waste their time in bot lane because I know how to position correctly to avoid ganks and dives.

12 Comments

Maximum Morde7/25/2016, 1:40:37 PM2 votes

It's okay not to roam when not roaming gives better results than roaming.

Jetjoe7/25/2016, 5:31:40 AM1 votes

This game is filled with idiots from bronze to plat elo, the only thing that matters in this game is fucking luck.

Rock MD7/25/2016, 5:35:51 AM1 votes

This was unnecessarily long-winded so I'm just going to drop my own comment.

When you can get more out of roaming than sitting mid, you roam.

When the enemy is freezing or pushed and you have nothing better to do, you farm wraiths, ward up, and roam.

When you're significantly stronger than the enemy mid and you can reach the lane before they do anything significant, you roam. That means if TF lands in bot while you're sitting in mid you'll push up to his tower, unless there's a GP ultimate or something to deter TF's team from picking up 2 immediate kills.

General idea there.

Requiemsfire7/25/2016, 6:00:36 AM1 votes

If you're roaming always have a goal in mind for what you want to achieve before roaming such as:

Warding jungles both enemy and allied gaining an assist and helping snowball another lane so you can take the tower Taking objectives Counter jungling Grouping with allies Roaming with allies

In most cases do not roam if: Enemy laner is in lane Your lane is pushed Enemy Laner is a heavy snowballer(Unless he/she roams) You're support and laning phase botlane hasn't ended Complete lack of vision Your laner is roaming but you're not strong enough to deal with it effectively

QQsha7/25/2016, 6:40:37 AM1 votes

You ask when is it okay to not roam, and you throw this spiel about how people should just not leave themselves open to roams, but doing that leaves objectives open.

In your true ELO, not answering roams is a bad way to go about the game. If the other guy is as good as you, then them getting a lead means you put yourself in a bad spot. Short of picking something that will outscale them soon and make that lead negligible, that's always a bad move because they can snowball the game out of control before you can find a way to close the gap. If you're playing below your true ELO, then just farming for the teamfight phase is fine if you know for a fact that you're so much better than everyone that you'll just outplay them all in teamfights. But by the same logic, if you're so much better than them, why not just shit on them in lane and deny their roams? The other guy should be so scared of you in lane that he always sits under tower (or he's dumb and is feeding you). To be fair though, Deft used to be the guy who always got shat on in lane but came up big in teamfights.

Now sitting in lane and farming 2-3 waves doesn't remotely make the difference of your mid laner roaming to get kills. 2-3 waves is 230-400 gold (assuming you hit everything, which you won't), and a kill is worth 450. And following that up with a tower is another 900 gold. So if mid lane roamed bot and got both kills and the tower with his jungler, there is no way in hell that you, by yourself, in 3-4 waves could make up 1800 gold (and that's not including the gold differential earned through the minion denial in that lane, which is roughly the same as what you got). And it's not even just the gold. Bot lane is then free to roam the map after pushing up their lane and pressuring other lanes. This means more towers will fall and the gold gap will increase. Sure, the relative difference between the two mid laners might be small, but the difference in all the other roles will be massive.

If you opt not to follow, you can either roam top or call your jungler to help you take mid tower, then at least the gold difference won't be as big. For mid lane, the answer is almost always to do something productive (which doesn't include AFK farming). The situation is significantly different for bot and top though. Bot outscales every lane, so they have to weigh the situation and figure out which decision has the highest expected yield. Top lane has Teleport. They can just opt to farm the lane then Teleport the instant the situation looks like it could go badly. This leads to issues with being down Teleport later, but the top laner could use their lead to roam and force fights with their advantage. And on that subject, if the mid laner doesn't follow, the top laner will be hesitant to use their TP to help, which could be the factor that turns the fight. Being afraid of dying while roaming shouldn't be an issue, just pick a safer route to walk (or take TP) or get some damn wards out before it becomes dangerous to be in the river. And knowing which way the other guy went is a stupid argument as well. If you either put out wards or used your brain, it should be pretty obvious. Just ask yourself where you'd go in their position. Oh, shit, my bot lane looks juicy as hell, the guy is probably looking there.

The only time it's okay not to roam is when you're significantly better than everyone else, you've analyzed all your possible options, and somehow concluded that farming the lane has the highest expected value of gold gain, and you're playing to hit a specific power spike as quickly as possible so you can single-handedly wreck the enemy team. But if you were that much better, you'd probably be roaming and counter-roaming all the time because all you see are free kills, so you'd almost never come to the conclusion that not roaming would actually give you more gold.