Basics of Laning

Knowing how to lane can make or break certain match-ups. Pick a scaling champion vs an early game champion and you try to aggressively trade vs them? You will lose more games with this kind of play style. The enemy snowballs and wins the game before you can become relevant.

See the problem?

Farming vs Trading

The first skill set any laner should develop is learning how to properly farm. Having a high CSPM (creep score per minute) is vital to basically every champion in the game. Even if you don’t have any kills, getting as close to 10 CSPM will result in a net gain of roughly 220 gold per minute. If your opponent is CSing worse than you then suddenly there is a ever growing gold difference between you two.

How do you get better at farming? One, go into practice tool and just last hit. This will help you judge the damage of your auto attacks. Once there is consistency built here, learn to farm under tower. Being able to farm under tower can make or break a lane since some match-ups will require you to get constantly shoved in. However, imagine you are playing Kassadin who has no pressure. Does that really matter to you if you are getting every creep under tower? Not really. In fact, it’s more beneficial to you in a way since it means you can’t die to any ganks (assuming HP is good).

Finally, it’s time to get reps vs actual players. Really focus on last hits. If you can do this effectively vs other players then trading becomes the next area of focus.

Trading is equally as important as being able to CS properly. Chipping down the enemy into lethal range can set up those big 300 gold kills. If they have no teleport then it’s usually possible to either create a freeze or crash the wave, denying creeps from your opponent, but when is the right time to trade?

The easiest timing to trade is when your opponent wants to last hit a creep. They want the gold which typically means they won’t be looking to trade onto you. Throw a skill out or an auto attack. Done, easy.

Second easiest timing is when your wave is building up. A bigger wave means you have more creeps to back you up if they try to trade onto you. In other words, more damage. It also typically means you will have an experience lead since your opponent has not killed as many creeps yet. If you notice you will level up before them, look for a trade. The only reason not to is if you are worried about getting ganked or somehow the enemy is still stronger than you, regardless of a level difference.

Poking. Throwing skill shots or auto attacks at the enemy without the intention of full committing. Syndra is a great champion for working on this while also having great kill threat when needed. Syndra can cast her Q (ball) to poke her opponent. More importantly, since this is not a targeted attack it means it won’t pull creep aggro. The reason why creep aggro is so important is because the creeps will run to you and change their targeting to you. Assuming your opponent does not attack you back, your creeps will continue damaging the other creeps. This can create a push. Pushing the wave is not good unless you believe you can be safe when pushing (jungle ganks) or know your opponent cannot freeze the wave.

When poking, do not use all your mana on the enemy. Why? It means you have no mana to control the wave. The opponent could use their health pool as a defense vs your poke, heal back up, and then have full control of the lane while you either base or waste time sitting in lane, having no pressure.

There are three different objectives when it comes to poking. Either forcing the enemy out of lane so you can create a creep score advantage. Getting them low enough to be in lethal range or getting them low enough to make them feel unsafe to all in you (because their lane win condition may be killing you. They can’t safely do it if they are too low).

The all in. What do you think the objective is? Killing them. However, the way you go about this is different than general trading. This one requires you to know the total damage output of your combo. There are a number of ways figuring this out. One, you do the math. Boring yes, but knowing the exact damage out put is critical. Two, you just play the game and naturally figure out the feel of the damage. Will you be as precise? No, but you can reach a point where it’s pretty close to mathing it out. Three, watch others play the champion and watch for when they all in. What items do they have, runes, skill order, and spell order. Copy this and test it out. Guess and check basically.

Lane Win Condition

How well does your pick scale? A Kassadin will not want to fight before level 6 unless necessary or if their opponent is playing like a monkey. The win condition is reaching level 6. If the match-up is still hard after hitting level 6, then the win condition moves onto reaching your first item without dying.

Pantheon, a strong early game champion with the ability to tower dive thanks to his E blocking tower damage. His goal? Get kills or force the enemy out of lane to grow a creep advantage. Pantheon has great early game damage and trading patterns with an execute on his Q for targets below 20% HP. If the Pantheon player fails to get a kill before level 6, then his next goal is to use his ultimate to find a pick in another lane or on the enemy jungler.

See the differences? The scaling pick is okay with not getting a kill, not having too much impact right away, and holding on. The early game pick must get ahead to be useful. If they don’t and their opponent have better scaling picks, they will find that even being ahead 1000 gold isn’t useful enough because of the scaling (think about how a Pantheon vs a tank won’t do much damage if they are even or if the Pantheon has one tier 2 item over 150+ armor).

How do you learn what each champion needs? One, read the abilities of each champion on the league of legends wiki page. Are the AD or AP ratios high? Is the base damage high? If the base damage is high, but the ratios are lower then the champion is meant to do well in early game. Flip the scenario and then you have a scaling champion because they get stronger with more items and levels.

If the champion so happens to have both good ratios and base damage, they most likely are one of the better picks in the game. Their win condition can be gained through both early and mid/late game.

Take in what you know about farming, trading, and apply it towards the win condition the champion requires.