Overstaying and You: The Art of Securing Objectives

I suppose it would be worth defining what overstaying actually is before I dive into this. Overstaying is a form of greed that manifests itself in a (usually) team-wide decision that results in catastrophe. A team overstays when they earn some objective or teamfight victory and attempt to gain more advantages than what they can currently achieve. A good example is when you win a bloody teamfight where half your remaining team is low, and then try to take a tower without a sufficient minion wave. By the time you are able to get significant damage on the tower, the enemy has respawned and then are able to wipe what remains of your team.

I've noticed in quite a few of my matches this season that overstaying has made a vicious comeback in the worst kind of way. My goal with this discussion is to try and point out to the lower ranked players how to make better decisions regarding objectives and engagements. There are several points to be made about it and I'm sure I won't be able to cover them all, so I welcome any input on what you the community may have on this topic. The idea is to be able to understand when you should pressure an objective or just back off, and--as so many other things in League--depends on how skilled your opponent may be. Considering I've thus far been unsuccessful in obtaining Gold just yet, I won't be able to comment on anything beyond Silver (which is why I welcome commentary from you guys). And honestly, anywhere beyond Silver may not have the same kind of issues with overstaying as it is a fairly elementary mistake that would not be expected of more advanced players.

THE BRONZE AND SILVER PROBLEM

We are generally overly aggressive, more apt to fight, and more impatient than others. This can be attributed to several possible factors, but those are mostly irrelevant to the point of the discussion at hand; the point is that we are. We want to roflstomp our opponents in every match, and any victory we have tends to feed these fires. We feel we're invincible, even for a brief moment in time, and that we're about to push and end at 18 minutes since we just won a teamfight 4-3. The ranked community as a whole is at least somewhat more emotional and can let things--both good and bad--appear bigger than they are. This demonstrates itself, at times, in overstaying by trying to take an objective that we simply don't have the resources to take at the time.

One of the biggest things to acknowledge is that you have to see the condition of the game as it really is instead of how you think it is or how you want it to be. I'm not talking about Dynamic Queue, New Champion Select, who needs nerfing, what is happening with the Rotating Game Mode, etc. I'm talking about in the current match, where you are looking at who has better items and/or power spikes, death timers, lane pressure, and objective control. Map awareness is critical, which means that vision control is key; however, this doesn't always mean what most people think it means. Yes, warding is the biggest part of it; sweeping is a strong secondary aspect of vision control as well. But with how warding is now, there is a part that I think most people at this elo are simply unaware of or just don't know how to operate around it; playing around negative space.

There are many times, especially as support (the guy whose first two items includes a Sightstone, which means vision is one of his primary goals), where I've found myself with no ward charges but I still know that the enemy jungler just ran from mid towards bot lane. Knowing that somewhere out in that deep dark fog of war there is a Lee Sin just waiting to double Q me or my ADC should make us make some tactical decisions based on where our wave is, where our own jungler is (and his ability to affect any fight with the enemy), and our own strengths compared to his. If we know that the enemy ADC just backed and is probably en route toting a shiny new BF Sword, and we haven't made our first back yet, we should probably be backing off.

Or how about when you are pressuring mid 3v2, and suddenly the enemy top laner is mia but you have no vision in the enemy jungle? You should likely assume that they are incoming, and then consider whether or not fighting is a good idea. Or better yet, consider whether pressuring the lane would be a good idea beforehand considering possible TP flanks. Consider all your options and then make a concerted decision with your team, and commit to it with the understanding that fights are dynamic and a missed or poorly-timed skill shot can turn the whole thing on its head. In the end, knowing that an enemy might be coming from the shadows is just as vital as knowing an enemy IS coming from the shadows. Knowing what to do about it means understanding your team's advantages and/or disadvantages and being able to react accordingly.

Are there any other points you guys think should be made regarding overstaying? Are there issues in other elos that are similar or reflective of this? Is this even worth discussing, you think?

TL;DR: Don't overstay. It's bad, m'k? No, seriously. Stop.