When To Zone?

Acxelion·8/6/2015, 9:32:29 AM·1 votes·677 views

Overall, I am pretty sure on how to zone, just sometimes I am not sure if thats what I should be doing.

For example, I sometimes play Olaf top and I usually charge the adc, during teamfights, in hopes of zoning him from my team and his team in order to stop the adc from dealing damage to more important people on my team, for example a mage or our adc. Should I do this? Or should I just stick with my team to help protect the adc? When should I do this? When should I not?

Thats pretty much what I am asking. The slight difference is that I would like to know this overall, not just with Olaf.

6 Comments

woobee8/6/2015, 10:03:49 AM1 votes

First of all, why would you have Olaf with the marksman, who I'm assuming is in bottom lane?

Secondly, diving (which is what I think you meant when you said "diver") the adc should only happen if you plan to kill them, otherwise you should avoid turret shots as much as possible. The point of a dive is to execute an enemy on presumably low health. Damaging them and taking minion + turret damage is not an effective strategy, and is not considered "diving", but rather taking free unnecessary damage. Don't be stupid.

Zoning an enemy has to do with** presence. If you will surely win a trade with your opponent, you have kill potential. If you can, harass them without taking damage if they try to take a minion. If they're low enough, and you have kill potential if they try to farm more, they are forced to avoid farming. Zoning is to deny farm with presence**. If they can't take minions, they don't earn as much gold. Without gold, they cannot get items.

It is much easier to zone a melee opponent with a ranged poke champion ( Gnar vs Nasus ) but if you're Olaf and you're vs a ranged AD carry, zoning is a bit harder because of their superior poke and range.

A good example of being able to zone is Blitzcrank . He has huge kill/pick potential with his rocket grab, so just with his being there, he can zone enemies from farming.

TouchpadExpert8/6/2015, 10:48:26 AM1 votes

If you're trying to zone in a team fight its good to have back up with you to trade some of the harass onto the ADC that you aren't dishing out. If you're the top laner take the jungler with you or the mid laner. Your support and ADC should be glued to one another if the support is doing their job properly.

You shouldn't zone if you have no way of replenishing the harass. After you zoned him and your team killed or forced forced a back they should continue the chase while you replenish your health in some way through either heals or farming creeps. If farming creeps heals you your team should back off and let you deal with them.

Chatillon8/6/2015, 12:51:36 PM1 votes

I am an ADC main, then supp. I play supports like sona and braum, and when i get ahead, i zone the enemy from cs. It is about being there and them not wanting to get near you because you are a threat. After as braum i pop two flashes botlane with a 3-proc passive, they give me more respect when i move up when they are last hitting.

But being zoned, as an adc, i will tell you what lets me know i am being zoned and well. I had a ranked game vs a leo/varus botlane(i think duo) and they hit 6. Automatically i stayed away from both of them, only going in for farm when my cow was close enough to headbutt. or peel the insane 3year leo cc with varus ult off me. In the same game i went top to finish off the 3 enemies chasing our tank and my cow roamed up from river and me from lane. Leo wasn't fighting, but she stood in the middle of the lane strafing. I couldn't get close because she would stun me and her team could collapse, so i danced around, trying to poke her with rockets while i waited for a chance. It is about a threat of deah or cc that leads to death when i come to an adc

Wakamune8/6/2015, 6:43:57 PM1 votes

At the bare minimum, at least distract more than the adc while your team deletes more people. So while 2 people kill you for example, they kill 3 people so now it's 4 v2, even if you didn't manage to kill the adc/apc.