The Importance of Rotations in lower elo SoloQ

I Am Rare·7/9/2015, 9:05:16 AM·1 votes·1,213 views

I'm Silver 5, I think I just made a breakthrough to mass improvement. I was dying a ton because I was either over - extending as a carry, or Joining already lost team fights. I found I was becoming underfed if I just sat at my turret, so I figured ROTATIONS! Enemy Team is destroying our team while in enemy blue side blue jungle. It would be better for me to farm under our botside tower which is half health and hard shoved than to join my team or farm ally jungle than to sit there mid... Any higher ELO's with further insight?

2 Comments

Telegraphi7/9/2015, 9:11:04 AM1 votes

Thats not what a rotation is thats adapting to the map lol. over extending is map awareness same with joining late fights. You are basically just figuring out what map awareness is lol

Mylon Requiem7/9/2015, 11:28:21 AM1 votes

Let's get something straight real quick: in Solo Queue, high level rotational play is extremely rare, even in Korean Challenger. Rotations have a number of possible definitions, but here is possibly the best existing definition given by the one and only "king of rotations" and OGN caster, MonteCristo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5XZGudkaNPU

Let me make the distinction that map pressure and proactive/reactive plays are all encompassed in this idea of "rotations", and that on an individual level the decision-making that goes in to responding or not responding to certain map activity is not really relevant to the concept of "rotations" on a macro level. League of Legends is, as many strategy games are, based almost entirely around positioning, on the micro (unit-by-unit basis with champions in reference to a contrasting position) and macro (where everything is at any given time and place and for what reason) level.

What you're actually talking about is both individual positioning and game-knowledge combined. The first thing you were referring to about overextending (this can be a mistake on a micro level as well), joining suboptimal teamfights, and failing to create map pressure are macro level mistakes that, rather than necessarily involving rotations, are just you as a player being unable to properly identify when and where to be to have a desire positive effect on the game for your team. This ability usually improves over time through experience due to being subjected to hundreds of thousands of situations, but it can also be improved by just paying more attention to things such as minion wave location, summoner spell and ability cooldowns, buff/objective times, team compositions and how champions interact together or against one another.

If you're looking for specific insight, then you must first offer a specific scenario to be addressed (best displayed by an image or VOD of the actual game used as an example), since League of Legends is not a game where there is always one right answer to every single situation no matter what.