By Mechachomp

Jamie Gilbertson

League of Legends: Turret Warfare

Thu 28th Jun 2012 - 4:36pm Category: League of Legends

During the laning phase of a typical Summoner’s Rift match, typically you'll be facing off against opponents in your lane and fending off the occasional gank while slowly whittling down the health of the turrets in your lane. But what a lot of people don't seem to think about is the decision to destroy a tower. There are so many things you need to look at before just running in and finishing it off.

Are you winning the lane?

Are you completely suppressing your opponent, stopping them from getting any last hits while gaining a heck of a lot yourself? If yes, no way do you want to take down that tower. The longer that tower is there, the longer you get free farm. Once you've taken it down you give your opponent the opportunity to fall back and freeze the lane, and you can't dive in without over-extending a horrific amount. This will not only nearly completely cut you off from your main source of income, but it will also allow your opponent to free farm more easily than you were a minute ago.

Instead of taking out the enemy tower (which you can most likely do at will) just ward up and kill minions all day long. If you can farm yourself to overpowered-ness and completely suppress the person you're against, you've effectively reduced him to irrelevance and made yourself a powerful asset to your team.

Next, are you losing your lane?

If what I described above is happening, but you're the one being dominated, then you should still not take out the tower. Even if you get the opportunity to do so, don’t destroy it. If you do, you'll do the same as above and make farming even easier for him. In this situation, the goal is to try and keep him in your lane as long as possible while trying not to allow him to further his advantage. If he is already free roaming despite your best efforts you might as well kill the tower. There's nothing to gain by leaving it alive and nothing to lose by taking it down.

If you are really hard pressed by your opponent then you should ask your jungler for a gank sometime soon. If your enemy is overconfident enough you may be able to lure them in and kill them. If you can keep doing this you may be able to catch up and bring yourself back into the game.

In the meantime all you need to do is stay alive and keep the difference in your cs (creep score) the same, or lessen it by catching up. If you are really being absolutely dominated then you may even want to consider giving up your tower. By doing this it will make it easier for you to farm and harder for your opponent. However, this will give them a free pass to roam, which means you'll need to be ready and willing to run to another lane when your nemesis appears there and starts pushing another tower down. You should never let your tower die if your team has more than one tower less than the enemy. Losing more towers will lose you a large amount of map control.

So when should you take out a tower?

There are a couple of situations in which you can go ahead and just destroy the tower, So here are a few of the more common ones.

If you’re dominating so hard that you're three or more levels above your opponent, and your team-mates aren't doing particularly well in their lanes, then you can consider taking out your turret. I know, I've just contradicted myself, but hear me out. If you can free yourself up from this lane then that means you can start roaming. If you're powerful enough then you can supplement your lost farm with kills and assists that you can gain from just ganking and being more powerful than other lane champions that aren't quite at your level. However you do need to keep an eye on your lane and make sure your own tower doesn't go down, or you'll lose map control.

If another tower has already gone down then you could also take your tower down, unless you’re raking in the farm, then just keep farming away. But if you're losing your lane or you're at a stalemate then you can take it out. To make this decision you need to consider several things.

You need to take into account the composition of both teams. How well will your team benefit from you gaining extra map control? Do they have the mobility and range to take advantage of being in control of the other team’s jungle? If the tower in the adjacent lane has gone down, then by taking out your lane's tower then you gain a stronger hold on the jungle between your lane and the next. If the other tower that has gone down is the one on the opposite side of the map (top or bottom) then this will mean that you have to take out the mid tower before you can continue to progress elsewhere, but you’ll gain more routes of attack on the middle lane when the inevitable full-team siege occurs.

Jungle control if crossed out towers are down

If all the other lane’s towers are down and your lane’s tower is still up, take it down ASAP, before the rest of the enemy team arrives to stop you. If all three of the towers at this level (outer, inner, or inhibitor turrets) are destroyed then you gain a massive amount of map control over lanes, river, baron, dragon, and the jungle buffs.

Ideally if you could co-ordinate well enough that you could take down all towers at each level simultaneously, then that would be brilliant. However, it requires all of your lanes to be dominating, and your jungler to be keeping the enemy jungler on his toes and unable to push you out of your lane. Imagine if the enemy team took out all three of your towers down at the exact same time. It would look pretty awesome.

Please register or login to post comments