The Importance of Grouping
All too often I see games that last entirely too long because of players who refuse to group. All too often I see teams that are ahead lose games because of players who refuse to group.
Whether it be delusions that split pushing is always better, or poor wave control, or poor vision, or simply assuming that your champion is not "team fight material" it's almost always the case that you should group with your teammates (especially past the 30 minute mark or so).
Think about it this way - as 1 or 2 you can probably accomplish some cool things. Especially if you're fed. However if you run into 3 or 4 or 5 people in that scenario, you're going to die. There's no working your way out of that. And don't base your ability to make a big play off of that either, you're still at a huge disadvantage. And if you get caught past the 30 minute mark, guess what happens? Their team groups and takes an objective, and your team as a man down cannot stop them.
Ever been on a team with 40 kills to 20 and lost? It happens more often than you'd think, because the few fed people on that 40 kill team run around solo and get picked constantly, and they lose an objective for it every time.
So here's some tips that will make grouping easier:
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Wards. In the later stages of the game, it's incredibly important to know the enemy team's position. This allows you to farm safely and shove out waves (tasks where it's more efficient to go alone than as a group). If you don't know the enemy's position or at least have your side of the map fully warded, you cannot risk leaving your team to shove out a wave. They either come with you, or you let that minion wave hit the turret.
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Wave control. Later in the game CSing loses a lot of importance, and vision and wave control starts to become a lot more important. Learn how to shove waves properly! The best thing you can do is set up a wave that will slowly build up and push on it's own. There are several ways to go about this, but the basic idea is that you want to kill some of the minions in the enemy wave so that yours is bigger, but leave a few enemy minions there so that your wave freezes in place and the next group can catch up to it and snowball to a larger size. If you get both side lanes slowly pushing like this, your team can group mid and siege while your minions do all the work. If that wave hits their turret, it may be big enough to take it on it's own. Alternatively, they may send a member to clear the wave giving your team a chance to dive them!
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Don't chase people! Especially mobile ones! If you leave your team's side to chase somebody around in circles, you might get caught when you are led into a trap. Your team may even lose an opportunity to take an objective because they don't have your damage or cooldowns to force enemies off of a turret or kill the objective itself.
Hope this helps you all.
-Nasreth
), sometimes not even until I finish a third and my boots. There's a lot of intricate things to know about split pushing in order to do it effectively, and I'm not saying that I know all of them, because I don't, I fail split pushes and occasionally die for nothing.