How should your team composition close out a game?

Closing out games is something that everyone struggles with at all levels of play. From bronze soloqueue players to diamond ranked 5s players to professional teams, people throw games that they should have won. It happens time after time: you have an early lead, and you get out of the early game with no problems. Your midgame is going well, but you just can't close out the game. Suddenly you find yourselves in the lategame, you get aced, and you end up losing the game. How can you avoid this happening?

First of all, when you’re in a game, try to be actively aware of the fact that there are multiple ways to close out games, and that the best one for your team depends not only on your composition and the enemy team's composition but also on who gets ahead, who falls behind, and where the majority of your team's gold lies. There is no be-all end-all single way to close out a game. For example, if you have a weak ADC and a strong toplane, split-pushing might work out better than sieging, even if in the same composition but with your ADC ahead, grouping mid to siege a turret is the correct answer.

 

Let's first take a look at some things you should do in all situations.

1. Go for all of the outer and inner turrets before you go for inhibitor turrets if and only if you're not in a position to take inhibitor turrets.

This might seem obvious---if you can't do one thing, do something else!---but it's still a flaw that many teams, even at a very high level of play, make. Maybe 5 minutes ago you felt like you could push their mid inhibitor turret, but you only got it 50% of the way down, and now it's regenerating HP. While you do want to take advantage of small victories like half-pushed towers or open inhibitors, sometimes these “nicer” objectives are beyond your means. Focus on what you can do safely.

2. Don't put yourselves in a position to get engaged on when you're actively holding onto a lot of gold.

You can have a 5k gold lead at 20 minutes, but if you're banking 2k gold each, it's like you're down by 5k. Don't put yourself in a dangerous position!

3. If one of you is aggressively positioned on the map, make sure you all are.

Split-pushing is frequently the correct thing to do (more on this later). But if you're pushing their top inner turret, and the rest of your team is taking jungle camps, the enemy team will collapse on you with impunity! However, if you're splitting top inner and your team is all grouped pushing bot inhibitor turret, then your team will be able to punish them for killing you by taking their inhib turret---if not the inhibitor itself.

Ok, so with that in mind, what's the best way for your team comp to push against their team comp to close out the game?

OPTION 1: Group as 5 in a lane.

If you ace the enemy team or if they’re out of position farming their jungle for no reason, do this! But let’s pretend your opponents are actually fighting you. :)

You should do this when you have good siege potential, i.e. you can SAFELY get FREE autoattacks onto their turret.

You want to have:

     *A safe person to hit towers (a long-range ADC like Caitlyn, Jinx, Tristana, or even Ashe or a ranged APC with a lich bane)
     *Decent waveclear (should be able to kill the incoming wave within about two seconds)
     *Poke (Nidalee spears are the most classic example, but any longrange skillshots are good: Lux, Ziggs, Twisted Fate, etc.)
     *A movespeed buff to be able to disengage (Sivir, Karma, Sona, Orianna, Talisman of Ascension, etc.)
     *Optionally, a tank with at least two armor champions to soak up turret shots while your ADC hits the tower can help out a lot when sieging.

And you want the enemy to NOT have:

     *Hard engage with a displacement (Gragas, Thresh, Lee Sin, etc.)
     *Strong flanking potential, i.e. the ability to engage on you from behind (Pantheon, Shyvana, Evelynn)
     *Multiple hard-engage gap closers or long-range crowd controls (Leona, Rumble, some champions mentioned above)
     *Excessive wave clear (Sivir, Gragas, Anivia, etc.)
     *Baron buff

You can also group as 5 when you have good dive potential. If you're going to dive, the most important thing is being able to manage turret damage. You'll want to have:

     *A tank with a lot of armor
     *Displacement crowd control
     *A champion who can go untargetable (Elise, Fizz, Maokai, etc.)
     *A plan for diving! Know who you're going to be focusing down and how you're going to get out. This could be killing the turret the rest of the way or de-aggroing forward.

OPTION 2. Splitpush!

The important thing to do when split-pushing is ALWAYS BE APPLYING PRESSURE AT THE SAME TIME. If Jax is pushing top inhibitor turret, you better be pushing as four at mid inner (for example).

In order for split-pushing to be effective, you want to have:

     *Someone with high tower damage who can 1v1 almost anyone on the enemy team (Jax, Tryndamere, Trundle are frequently used)
     *The ability to siege 4v4 in another lane and take towers if anyone who can 1v1 your splitpusher is absent from the 4v4.  If no one can 1v1 your splitpusher, this is not necessary.
     *The ability to quickly and easily take a tower in any 4v3 scenario
     *A lot of ward coverage in the jungle between your group of four and your split-pusher

It's also possible to split-push as 3/1/1 or even 3/2, but most of the time you'll want to be pushing as 4/1, especially in soloqueue where your communication is limited.

OPTION 3. Force teamfights at objectives until you're in a position that you can do option 1 or 2.

If your teamfight composition is strong but you don't have many ranged champions (e.g. Shyvana/Lee Sin/Gragas/Sivir/Leona) then you want to force fights at objectives. Baron and dragon of course count, contest their buffs also. Contest ward spots. Your goal is to make them need to fight you or slowly fall so far behind that it doesn't matter how bad your composition is at pushing towers, you'll still be able to dive them.

OPTION 4. Finally, you can simply move between lanes and attempt to make picks.

This is probably the hardest thing to pull off without voice communication, but fortunately it also works really well against teams that don't have voice comms. Your goal is to deny vision from a large swath of the map and give the enemy team a really good reason why they want to go there anyway. Then you use your large amount of single-target CC/damage to kill the first person who facechecks before the rest of the enemy team can do anything about it. Once it's a 5v4, you can take either an objective or a turret.

In order to make a pick composition work, you will need at least one (preferably two) Oracle's Lenses that you use to sweep wards and a third Sweeping Lens. Try to have at least 2-3 pink wards on the map at any given time as well, and focus vision control in the area that you care about---and make sure that the enemy team cares about the area that you're camping as well. After all---even if they have zero wards in your base, waiting there for them to facecheck at 10 minutes is probably not going to net you anything! ;)

Keep in mind that if you're behind, sometimes none of these options will work for you. But if you exit the midgame ahead and aren't getting outscaled by the enemy team, then you should be able to close out in one of these manners.

Furthermore, closing out a game is definitely an art rather than a science. Maybe you splitpush until you’ve forced all the outer turrets down, and then you group in a lane. Maybe you can siege them until Gragas finishes his Deathcap, and then it’s not safe anymore. These are guidelines that can help you, but the overall situation will call for a lot of instinctual plays, and the only way to improve is by practicing. GLHF!