Protip in plat: CS is not everything.

BluePolarizer·5/11/2015, 6:15:56 PM·4 votes·940 views

You know in bronze, people tell you "just keep CSing, you'll climb"?

Forget that in plat.

I just had an ADC follow that to the letter. Enemy pushing mid? CS top. Enemy doing dragon? Great idea to hover near dragon, then go off to CS mid just as tanks engage. Enemy doing baron? Probably is the time to CS bot. Meanwhile enemy ADC has been grouped with the team since minute 15 and taking objectives, winning teamfights and dealing damage.

His excuse? "Let them dance mid and waste time. I'll just get really big and roll them all later."

Turns out they don't dance mid. They hard engage 4v5 and we don't have our sustained damage. 1 kills and 2 assists is 50 CS. You get that from 1 teamfight, but you need to farm how many waves for that?

7 Comments

Drunk Rummate5/11/2015, 6:24:17 PM3 votes

What I've started to notice as I get better and play against better players is that people tend to go a lot harder in lane phase and fight a lot more. As someone who always enjoyed playing defensively and getting a 10+ CS lead as a result, it started to irk me when I'd look at other solo lanes with 3+ kills. They were farming terribly, recalling constantly from their ridiculous fighting, but they were full levels in experience and tons of gold up on me to a point that my impact on the game was insubstantial.

I started to realize that you need to gain a bigger advantage over your lane opponent than a simple CS advantage. I dropped all my scaling runes, went to flat, and I've started to play a lot more aggressively to hilarious effectiveness. As a result I've learned a lot about lane power spikes for the champions I like to play and I'm learning when I can afford to go stupidly aggressive in lane, and it's really paying off. I'm carrying games a lot more often instead of being an average bystander at the whim of my 5 kill (or 5 death) teammates who went hard and succeeded/failed.

As far as people who leave objectives for CS, yeah for sure. Obviously it's more situational though. Sometimes a big wave is worth more than a kill, dragon a lot of the time isn't worth a fight if your teams behind already AND missing a big minion wave for it. Also consider that pushing the wave gives you map control and allows you to take more objectives if you win a fight.

EX: Just yesterday I was clearing a wave of about 500 gold in minions bot lane, our inhibitor tower was down and that wave would have taken the inhibitor. Our ChoGath managed to get caught trying to ward baron and started flaming me because I wasn't there. I made it up in time to deny their baron attempt, but for him to assume it was my fault he got caught because I was farming and doing something productive is just silly. Especially considering he could have just waited for our ADC who was on his way with scrying orb to check it out.

If you have a player off solo farming, don't go into a position where you can be engaged 5v4! If there's an objective that you need to contest, only do it if you're sure you can disengage safely. If someone is off farming, maybe they're making a mistake, but that doesn't give you an excuse to throw the game because of it.

Commit Sudoku5/11/2015, 6:29:00 PM1 votes

agreed

Simplicate5/11/2015, 7:26:09 PM1 votes

One of the higher elo tips I picked up was to just always go to your team if the enemies are grouped waiting for an engage. Even if there is some huge wave top still go to the team fight because if the enemy plays that fight well then you're left alive farming some wave of 15 minions while the enemy team takes down 2 mid towers.

Krigjer5/11/2015, 7:27:57 PM1 votes

I feel like the best advice is to learn how to adapt to what's happening in the game. Learn when it's safe to farm, poke, teamfight, disengage..

I know it's easier said than done, but there isn't really a magical piece of advice to follow.

TehNACHO5/11/2015, 9:49:53 PM1 votes

I would think the moral to the story is learn to CS really well while fighting (for example) the enemy laner. A CS lead is great and all, but a CS lead AND kill lead in a solo lane will absolutely shut down your enemy laner. I mean, something similar could be said about chasing kills. Waste so much time being dead or injured and recalling to base that you begin to fall behind in levels relative to other players in the game.

Everything is about finding balance. Do nothing but CS and your (presumably) equally skilled opponent will match you. Or, you can kill the opponent and establish dominance, but you could potentially be losing out on your long term investment if you waste too much time. This and that tend to add up to a lot.

BluePolarizer5/11/2015, 10:50:20 PM1 votes

in mid-game, if you are a squishy carry and there are objectives up, stop farming without wards. group instead. It is very risky because starting at the 30 minute mark, kills on carries ARE objectives. Sometimes it is that pesky Jinx or Vayne that will roll your team that's stopping you from winning/wrecking your team and breathing down your neck. Sometimes its that 20-0 Annie that wrecked your instalock 1st pick Kat mid or feed guy. Maybe its the 15-0 Master Yi that just so happens to be in every single lane bush your ADC farms in. If you take these guys out, you open up other objectives or prevent yourself from losing the game. If you don't take these guys out, they'll suppress YOUR carries and eventually win the game.

Alot of people don't realize that killing an enemy late game is actually one of the most important objectives. That's why teams group at late game - without grouping, it is alot easier to get a free kill on an enemy champion then siege the opponent's base. Even taking out an enemy support can be HUGE because the enemy team might now be missing half their CC if they picked a carry top or jungle and an assassin mid.