When to back
What is a good time to go back to purchase items? Assuming laning phase is decent, not too much damage on trades, at what gold point do you go back? This is for any lane really.
12 Comments
I would recommend watching a YouTuber named SoloRenektonOnly. I would link you to his YouTube page, but I'm at work and YouTube is blocked (Shhh, don't tell my boss I'm here). He is really good about frequently explaining wave management and back times.
Lets assume that you have killed the enemy champion or forced them to leave the lane. Your goal is to miss as little gold and exp as possible, while also denying the enemy as much gold and exp as possible. To do this you want to clear the enemy's minion wave and push your wave under the enemy's tower. If the tower kills all of your minions while the enemy is not nearby, they miss that gold and exp, .. simple, right?
During this time you don't need to do anything, and you aren't missing out on anything, so this is a good time to back.
HOWEVER, you don't actually want your whole wave to die before the enemy's reinforcement wave arrives. This is the difference between a reset and a bounce.
A reset will cause two fresh waves to crash in the center of the lane. This puts the wave closer to your tower and gives you less time to walk back to the lane. You can make it if the enemy takes just as long to walk back or if they don't immediately hard push when they return. You CAN still be ahead by doing this, but it is not ideal.
If the reinforcement wave arrives while you still have minions under the enemy's tower, you will instead bounce the wave, which will cause the crash point to be on the enemy's side of the lane, and the wave will be pushing out toward you. This gives you the most time to walk back to lane. Even if your enemy returns and hard pushes, you are much more likely to make it back to lane without missing more than 1 or 2 minions, if any.
Almost every time I shove the wave in. Depends on the enemy laner of course. It gives me enough time to buy something and get back to lane to catch the wave under my turret.
Even with 500g I can get a 
or something so it's always worth IMO.
People back too much but tbh, do it when you need to. For example, even though people say it's bad (and it really is most of the time) there are times where I have more than 3k gold on me. There is a reason for this and I will go into detail. Basically, if you're having a lot of teamfights and pushing a lot of objectives and maintaining most of your health/mana then you can continue as long as you can do it without dying. Keep track of what the enemy has and you should be fine. If you backing at full health is going to cost you an important objective (first turret, infernal, rift herald, baron, inhibitor, etc.) then it's wise to not back. The inhibitor is obviously directed towards an enemy inhibitor being taken. Most of the time I back whenever I can buy a tier 2 item (phage, kindle gem, blasting wand). Blasting wand is technically a tier 1 item but I base it on gold value of 800+.
I prefer to back when I can buy at least 1 tier 2 and 1 tier 1 item, but that's not always an option and if I have to I will back for a small item and one of those refillable potions if I think I'll need it a lot + it's OP. Sometimes I make bad trades and realize that I can get dove. Sometimes I bait a dive and get a kill or 2 out of it before I back. Sometimes that's not an option and I need to back sooner. It might cost me a turret at some point but at least I'm not going to be losing much xp or gold myself while giving their team double because "I just wanted a few more minions" or "I wanted to save the turret". Sometimes it's better to lose a few minions and even a lvl or 2 so long as you conserve your gold given to the enemy team. High death count doesn't mean much, it's more about how much gold you give to the enemy that changes things. If you get one kill early and then proceed to die 15 times, I'm not going to think about it much as long as you're not getting 1 kill and dying twice on all 15 deaths. Better to die 15 times in a row than to get 3 kills with 6 deaths imo.
Basically it's not always an easy decision but if you feel like your trades aren't good or "even" as some people like to call it then consider the matchup of Teemo vs Nasus. A good Nasus will beat a Teemo at some point as long as he doesn't die to him and takes into account that he will lose farm and will have to play by the turret most of the time. He will also have to use the b button a lot, and in some rare cases he may even have to run all the way back to the inhibitor, which is OK.
In all honesty you should do it when it feels right. Don't stress because you can't get some cs or a kill. Realize that you're not going to get 350 cs at the 28 minute mark every game against every matchup. The above advice is good as well, I skimmed through it. I don't know that much about the minion waves, I'm basically learning game by game. They have definitely changed since I played but I just learned yesterday that every wave spawns a cannon minion after the 20 minute mark which is something that has definitely changed since I played. I also learned that have 3 inhibs down creates 2 super minions for each wave as opposed to the usual solo super minion. It's a process and I dk where to find all of this information myself so I'm basically learning by playing.
The game has changed a lot from when I used to play. I just started playing after about a 4 year break and I'm in silver. I can probably get to platinum easily without the above knowledge if I just spam a certain someone but I'm just trying to relearn the game and new strategies and don't feel like I'm ready to climb just yet. No point in being platinum+ if your game knowledge is currently bronze.
When it is no longer safe to remain, ideally when the jungler is nearby so they can at least soak xp
When you have pushed the lane, ideally to the tower, and have nothing else more important to do nearby
When you have gold necessary to buy an important item, and can safely recall (wave isnt at tower, item is more important than TP cd, low on resources and tp is up etc)
I'll keep it short and simple: On the cannon wave
I Usually back when I have my wave pushed in and enemy champ isn't in lane. Either I've just killed them or they have back. When they aren't in lane it give you the chance to kill minions, give you extra cash and push a wave into their turret. by the time they get back they have to get rid of the wave and you should be some what quick when buying your items so when you get back in lane the enemy would have finished killing off your wave.