How to Win from Behind

Sidewayzz·Oct 23, 2015·1 votes·913 views

Hi guys. Recently started a ranked 5 teams with some guys from school and our first two placement matches went really well. We won our lanes and completely dominated objective control, vision, and the entire game. However, the last 3 placements were the polar opposite. We got behind early and then ended up surrendering before 30 min every game because we saw no way back into them.

So, my question is this. What steps do you take as a team when you're really behind in the mid game? How do you come back to win?

7 Comments

Frank The DankOct 23, 20152 votes

Well lets just use an example of you scale better so try to make it to late game. Things you might want to focus on are funneling farm into your carries but only farm in safe areas don't overextend to where you will just die. When you are really behind you just want to keep up with warding your jungle and buy sweepers to deny them vision by trying to get picks it could lead to towers, dragons, even a barron. Try not to pick fights you know you won't win 5v5's so avoid them until you catch up otherwise you will just keep falling behind even more.

OkainOct 23, 20152 votes

Playing defensively helps a lot,Try to keep vision on objectives (and Buffs) and try to wait for enemies to make mistakes or stray too far from safety.

Loco LittleOct 23, 20152 votes

For reference, my team is currently gold 3, not amazing, but enough experience to give some handy tips.

Tips:

Don't get behind and kill nexus. You're well on your way to become an Osu Champion!

Oh wait, wrong game, anyway, vision is extremely important, once you're behind, if the enemy plays perfectly, they'll win because stats and advantage snowballing. But the idea is noone plays perfectly. Vision helps you get back in the game by catching that cocky adc who thinks he's invincible and overextends.

On a side note aswell, just like when you trade in lane with your opponent. You never want to give free poke and harass, so try to not give free objectives either. Most of the time, an objective is gonna go sooner or later, their 5 man is stronger and they are pushing down mid, what can you do? Well you can't def mid outer with 5 men, but you can def mid inner with 4 men. so send one of your guys preemtively to top lane, and while they take a free tower you take a free tower back.

It's all about trading in these situations, don't get too far behind, and look for anything to get back in the game.

Map awareness is absolutely key here aswell, you see 4 men pushing mid, your immediate reaction shouldn't be ALL mid, it should be 'top wave is pushing towards us, the 5th guys is gonna turn up sooner or later, lets make sure it isn't top lane so there's no splitpushing'

To be honest it takes alot of experiance, you've got to recognise at what point the enemy is going to deploy a strategy, luckily in ranked 5's the strategys before plat and gold are pretty linear, so you can pick it up quickly, start preempting.

Another tip: Play to your team's strengths! If you always find your team going behind early game, you've got to respect this as your teams own weakness, so choose a scaling comp, you're going to lose early game anyway, so employ a strategy where you can pull out all the stops late. Then do a few norms together and practice your early game. Iron out these trends you're noticing.

RandomoniumOct 23, 20152 votes

Best thing to do is stall the game. A 3k gold advantage is way bigger at 10 minutes than at 50 minutes.

Focus on farming and keeping vision up. Do NOT team fight the enemy team. If they go for a dragon or tower just take another tower on the other side of the map. The only dragon that matters is fifth dragon.

They will start to make mistakes and get frustrated that they can't close out the game. They'll start going for riskier and riskier plays and that's where you can punish them and get back in the game.

IcyPepperOct 23, 20151 votes

Taric

SidewayzzOct 23, 20151 votes

Thanks for all of the help everyone! One thing we did do (apparently wrong) was try to fight. We kept grouping and trying to fight them and see if we could get an ace to get baron or multiple towers and come back into the game. Is that the worst thing you can do?

DarkwindOct 23, 20152 votes

Depends on the team and how far down you are. If you're only behind 1-3 kills or something and you have the better teamfight team, that might actually be the best thing to do. You'll still have to get vision of the area you're fighting in though. If you're 20 kills down, it isn't gunna work out for you.

Also, something really really critical in 5s and tournaments is having a good, reliable, safe source of waveclear under pressure. Usually this is the mid laner (Viktor and other control mages), but Sivir or Caitlyn can be decent at this as well. If you have waveclear like this, it enables you to make the types of objective trades the other people were talking about.

Finally, some control mages have the ability to force the enemy into a really bad siege. For example, Anivia. Sieging vs her is INCREDIBLY difficult, not only because of the wave clear her ult provides, but also because she can wall enemies INTO the tower, allowing her team to safely catch out anyone that tries to shoot it. Baron isn't even as effective vs her as might be expected, because her Q can safely damage (and often 1-shot) the cannon creep, and even with strong minions the enemy STILL cannot safely attack the tower.

Counter-sieging is basically poking, wave clearing, and attempting to catch the sieging team out. Anivia is an example of a champ that's good at this. Others (to greater and lesser degrees) might be Annie Ashe Azir Lux Orianna TwistedFate Veigar Viktor Xerath Ziggs Caitlyn Sivir Gangplank