Will Burton
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9 Min read Getting a lead in League of Legends is relatively easy, but keeping it and furthering that lead can be challenging. A good player can gain a lead, increase it and become stronger and stronger.
Through consistent fights and favorable trade, to good micro and macro, gaining a lead and keeping it is key if you want to improve at League of Legends.
In this Mobalytics guide, we will break down some tips and tricks to further your lead in the lane and take over the map.
Here are the topics we’ll be covering:
Snowballing in League of Legends is where you have a lead and try to increase it further. You can do this in a plethora of ways. For instance, you can look for more frequent fights with the enemy laner, look to take objectives or help your team.
There are tons of different ways you can increase your lead, and you mustn’t settle for a small lead but instead try to further it along.
All-in-all, snowballing is incredibly important, and if you want to improve at League of Legends, you need to learn how to get, keep, and further a lead.
A good snowballing champion is strong in a 1v1 and can increase their lead once they get one. Usually, these champions are damage dealers, but technically speaking, anybody can snowball. It is easier to snowball on a champion who has a lot of kill pressure and damage compared to a Support or a tank.
Strong snowballers include:
Katarina is powerful in a 1v1. She can also abuse her lead by roaming around the map and helping her allies. If she is given a small lead, she can be tough to play against. Her Ultimate is powerful and deals a ton of damage.
Image and ones similar are taken from the LolWiki.
If you want to learn how to take over the map as Katarina, check out Katarina’s champion page.
The more gold Master Yi gets in his pockets, the more frustrating he will be to play against. Not only will he get his core items quicker- his Q will deal an insane amount of damage.
Learn the way of the Jedi by checking out Master Yi’s champion page.
Fizz has short cooldowns and is obnoxious to play against. Give him a kill or two, and his level of annoyance is multiplied by a billion. If he gets one kill, he can quickly make that into two, three, and maybe even four once he hits level 6.
Learn to hop, skip and jump with the little fishy in our dedicated Fizz champion page where you can learn his build, his combos, and much, much more.
To get better at snowballing, it’s important to understand the stats related to your performance.
You can check this at any time by plugging in your Summoner name and seeing your GPI scores, as seen in the image below.
With these stats in mind, you can see how well you get a lead and how good you’re at increasing a lead once you have it.
Roaming around the map is an excellent way of furthering your lead and giving your allies a lead too. In some matchups, you will not be able to snowball your lead further against the enemy anymore. They could be worth so little gold, or they could be playing incredibly safe. So it makes sense to try and spread your lead to others.
If you stacked up a wave, you can push it into the enemy tower and immediately check your minimap for roaming opportunities. If a tower is already low, it’s usually the best option since you’ve likely forced the enemy to recall even if your roam doesn’t result in a kill. However, there are tons of other roaming timers. If you want to learn when you should and shouldn’t roam in League of Legends, check out this in-depth roaming guide.
How to roam as a Mid laner. Image is taken from our in-depth roaming guide.
To make the most of roaming, you should make sure that you’re going to have an impact and help your ally. You do not want to give your laner some breathing room and an opportunity to pick up some gold and XP for free while you waste time somewhere else.
Like we said, check the minimap before roaming. There’s no point roaming and moving around the map if you’re not able to get anything out of it.
If you are unsure if you can get anything out of your roam, it’s better to stay in your own lane and push and earn more gold.
When you have priority, you can make the call for nearby objectives such as the Dragon or Rift Herald. If you can take these objectives off the map, you will not only increase your lead, but you’ll open up the map (if you take the Rift Herald), and you’ll give your team a buff (if you take the Dragon).
Ping for the objective before making your way there. Do not make the call for Drake when your Jungler isn’t nearby. You should also only ping for the Rift Herald if your Jungler is nearby to help you or if you’re able to solo it. However, this tip is best suited for strong Top lakers.
Taking these objectives not only offers you a ton of benefits, but it also takes them off the map, which means the enemy cannot take them and potentially use these resources to get a foot back in the door.
Good times to call for the Rift Herald are when:
Make the call for Dragon when:
If you don’t take these objectives at the end of the day, the enemy might do. If the enemy can secure both Rift Heralds, they could get multiple towers with them and get back into the game. Similarly, if the enemy can secure multiple Dragons in a row, they could get the Soul Dragon which can be quite challenging to play against.
If you’re ahead in the matchup, you should look to manipulate the minion wave to increase your lead further. There are a few potential wave techniques you can use when you’re ahead.
First off, if you’ve forced the enemy to recall or after you’ve killed them, you can push the minion wave into the enemies tower to deny as many minions as possible. If you’re about to destroy the tower, you should let as many minions die before dealing the final blow. This will deny the enemy some gold and XP, which can put them further behind.
In the side lanes, it’s relatively easy to manipulate the minion wave. If you’re much stronger than the enemy champion, you can work the wave more towards your side of the map, which offers you room to chase the enemy down if they go for CS. This is a powerful technique for champions who have gap closures or strong all-in like Darius or Renekton.
“If you do not want the minion wave to push against you and you don’t want to push it, all you need to do is make sure that the minion wave stays in the yellow zone. For this to happen, there needs to be no additional extra minions left alive in the lane (on either team.) If you have 3 minions alive, you want the enemy to also have 3.”
The enemy will either need to sacrifice CS and gold for XP or sacrifice health trying to get the farm. If you position yourself inside the wave, you can trade with them when they walk up too. All in all, you can increase your lead over the enemy through this method of play.
You can get the minion wave to stay near your side of the map by ensuring more enemy minions are alive in the lane. If you want it close to your tower, there needs to be at least three more enemy minions than you have. This is a very run-down version of minion wave management, but don’t worry, we’ve made a huge minion wave management guide that breaks it down and will tell you how exactly to do it.
To further increase your lead, you could look to rotate around the map and move from one lane to another. Similarly to roaming, you’ll take yourself to a different lane to apply pressure and gain more gold.
Rotating around the map is another way of opening up the map, taking objectives off the board and further increasing your lead.
It’s better to rotate around the map and get more objectives if it’s possible rather than staying in your own lane, overextending and not getting much out of it.
After destroying the enemies tower, you should look to invade the enemies jungle and try to steal away their camps. This is a great way to play League of Legends as these camps can offer you some gold, XP, and they will also be put on a spawn timer.
If you take these away, the enemy Jungler will not be able to secure these camps, which means they’ll waste time trying to see if they’re up and also fall behind in gold and XP as there will be no camp for them to take. Additionally, the enemy laner will not be able to take them.
You will become stronger and stronger while the enemy laner and Jungler will start to fall behind. With this gold and XP increase, you’ll start to gain a significant advantage over time.
When you’re pushing and near the enemies jungle, make sure you place wards around their jungle so you can spot them and back away if you’re not comfortable or sure you’re able to 1v2 the enemy.
Here are some good warding locations if you’re pushing in the top side as the blue team.
Wards for sieging Top tier 2 turret as the blue team.
This image is taken from our in-depth warding guide. You can find more warding tips and tricks for every lane and every scenario.
It’s very easy to get ahead of yourself when you think you’re strong, but one mistake could cost you everything in the lane and your lead will deplete.
You can reduce your chances of making mistakes in the lane by fully understanding your champion’s kit and how much damage you can do in a short space of time. You can do this by practicing and understanding your champion’s combos.
Here is Jax’s featured combo. Find more Jax combos here.
Head over to the Mobalytics site and look for your favorite champion. From there, you can check out various combos for each of them to help you up your game. It will tell you when you should use it and how to perform the combo too.
Take the information presented and head into the practice tool, and start to master it. Once you’ve mastered the combo, take it into a real game and dominate the enemy with it.
We’ve briefly touched on how you can learn combos, but there is definitely more to it. Here’s a separate guide that goes into more detail on how you can learn and practice combos in League of Legends.
Another way of optimizing your damage output is by using tools in the lane to protect you from incoming damage. Proper utilization of the three brushes in the top lane helps immensely with trading.
If you have skills or auto-attacks that pull aggro, you can immediately dip towards the brush to drop minion aggro and minimize the amount of damage taken. Maximizing the effectiveness of your trades when you’re already ahead makes for an oppressive experience for your opponent and allows you to push a lead ruthlessly.
Getting a lead and keeping it is key in League of Legends. If you’re able to snowball your lead, your chances of winning the game will multiply. We hope that this guide will help you understand what you can do to snowball further and win the game.
If you have any questions or want to learn more, check out PicklePants’s stream.
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