How to Counter Roams in League of Legends

How to Counter Roams in League of Legends

Roaming is an amazing strategy that players use to exploit weaknesses around the map to create pressure and get kills. Sometimes you can follow roams and prevent them with ease. In other cases, you’ll need to understand how to make the best out of a bad situation by staying in lane or denying enemy resources.

However, it’s not always obvious how or what you should do to counter a roam in League. In this Mobalytics guide, we will discuss several tips and tricks to help you counter roams in League!

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5 Tips to Counter Roams in League of Legends

1. Maximize Pings When Enemies Roam
2. Match Teleports
3. Push the Minion Wave
4. Punish Them for Leaving
5. Keep Them Pushed In

1. Maximize Pings When Enemies Roam

Even if you’re prepared to follow the enemy, you must spam ping the enemy laner when they leave your lane. Spam pinging generally attracts the attention of your allies, and it will hopefully give them enough time to react and back away.

What you do next is up to you, and we will discuss various options in the following tips, but failing to give a heads up to your allies can lead to massive momentum swings if the enemy team coordinates a tower dive.

For champions who have insane roaming potential like Talon, ping any unconventional routes that they might take. When in doubt, it’s better to be safe than sorry, and timely warnings will often result in your allies trying to return the favor when their lane opponents leave the lane.

2. Match Teleports

Teleport is a very good Summoner Spell that can help you impact different lanes from afar. Until a recent patch, you could Teleport anywhere on the map, but now, you can only use it on allied towers. However, don’t let that change disgruntle you from helping your allies.

If you see that the enemy team is using their Teleport to help another lane, you should try to match it and use your Teleport to make the fight more equal. Pre-14 minutes, you might have to Teleport far away, but you can still be impactful.

Post 14-minutes, don’t be afraid to Teleport close to the action. Literally Teleporting in the same spot as the enemy can be very helpful, and you’ll be amongst the fight as soon as you get in.

However, keep in mind that these situations are always contextual to factors like the champions that are being played, your experience level, and purchased items.

Suppose you cannot match the enemy’s Teleport, but you have a CC tool. In that case, try to interrupt the Teleport play with that spell (such as Malphite Ultimate) as trading an Ultimate for Teleport could be highly valuable and work more in your favour.

3. Push the Minion Wave

Another option for when you know that the enemy is planning to roam around the map is pushing your wave into their tower as quickly as you can. By doing so, you can deny them minions, gold, and XP. If their roam results in a failure, they will fall behind.

In addition to denying enemy gains, pushing the minion wave into their tower can lead to destroying the enemy’s tower, gaining gold from tower plates, and preparing for objective control.

If you choose to take this route instead of following them or matching with a TP, as soon as you see the enemy leave the lane, throw your abilities and auto-attacks at the minion wave. Getting it pushed into their tower as quickly as possible offers you a variety of options that we will talk about more as we go through this guide.

Champions like Syndra, Anivia and Orianna can quickly push the minion wave thanks to the AoE abilities they have in their kit.

Generally speaking, you would do this in the mid or top lane. You may wish to do this in the bottom lane, but more commonly, it will be a 2v1 lane rather than a 2v0 lane. However, if the ADC is gone too, don’t be afraid to push.

It’s important to note that you need to make sure the enemy has actually left lane before pushing, as they could be baiting you into pushing and then all-in you.

4. Punish Them for Leaving

You’ve decided that you can’t follow the enemy laner, so you need to push the minion wave into their tower and start applying pressure to it. Pre-level 14, you can earn a ton of extra gold which will help you get your items quicker. Post 14, you’ll still deal a ton of damage and take the tower.

From LoL Wiki

It’s pretty simple actually. You just need to watch the map while pushing the minion wave and auto-attacking the tower. Be on the lookout and fall back if you see the enemy laner returning to the lane. Also, keep an eye out for the enemy Jungler as they may try to gank you while you’re overextended.

5. Keep Them Pushed In

We briefly touched on it already, but keeping the enemy pushed into their tower will make it near impossible for them to roam around the map. This is a very good strategy that is the preferred method against champions like Talon and Twisted Fate as they cannot leave the lane while an enemy is knocking at their tower.

This might not be possible in the very early game as you may not deal enough damage to the minions with your abilities. However, you shouldn’t have too much to worry about once you’ve completed your first component item and put a few points into your main damaging ability.

A good tip for you is to try and aim your abilities, so they hit the enemy and the minion wave simultaneously. This could also potentially allow you to get kills if you deal enough damage to them while trying to push the wave.

Keeping the enemy pushed in with your superior wave clear is highly favourable and will make it impossible for them to roam. Furthermore, it may even allow you to set up your Jungler for tower dives.

Summary

Roaming in League of Legends is a very strong strategy that gets teams ahead. You need to learn what to do to counter it, so make sure you use everything we have discussed in this guide to make the best out of a lousy roaming situation!