Why Objectives Are More Important Than Kills

You see it in the LCS all the time. One of the teams is ahead in kills. They have a mid-laner that is 8-0 and a jungler that camps the lanes and helps the team get ahead. It seems like they are going to absolutely demolish their opponents and get a surefire win, but then something happens. The other team sees an opening and start pushing their lanes. Turrets go down and inhibitors are taken. Using that as an advantage, they advance towards baron and siege it. With this newfound power, they power through the enemy’s base and take down the nexus in a seemingly come from behind win. The team that had a kill advantage is left wondering what happened.

Just because a team is ahead in kills for most of the game doesn’t mean they know how to use the gold gained from those kills effectively. Objectives are the main focus, and I am going to outline in this article why focusing on objectives is more important to simply trying to get kill after kill.

 

1. Accomplishing Objectives Allows You to Do More Than Picking Up Kills

In late game when one team is ahead and pushing their lanes, they may be tempted to pick up kills on enemies that are forced to defend their base. However, it isn’t always worth it. If you end up getting a kill on a 0/9 support, you aren’t going to get much out of it. Yes, you earn gold, but not much at all.

Picking up that kill doesn’t allow you to do much. If your team’s minions are pushing into the enemy’s base and everyone there is forced to defend, so that towers and inhibitor’s don’t go down, it is better to go for a big objective like baron. If you know the team is forced to stay behind and they are in no position to try to contest it, then the timing is right to try to take baron. Baron also gives your team a lot of important stats like increased attack damage and ability power, along with bonus mana and health regeneration. Having those increased stats let's you and your allies accomplish more and allows you to snowball and take the other objectives on the map.

 

2. Going After Kills May End Badly

A team fight goes your way and your team ends up getting a couple of kills out of it. Then you notice two enemies fleeing from the battle in an attempt to escape. Many would be tempted to chase and try to secure those last two kills, but in most cases it is not worth it. Let’s say you are playing an ADC champion with a high damage output and the enemy Nidalee is the one trying to get away.

If she has built enough AP, with a few spears and a Pounce/Swipe combo, she can take you down to nothing and you may be forced to pop a summoner spell like Barrier or Flash in order to survive the skirmish. Even if an enemy is low health, they can turn around and surprise you, so you definitely need to be on your toes and realize and understand what some champions are capable of. Are two wasted summoner spells worth chasing after an enemy? Or is using that successful team fight to your advantage to secure objectives more important? If you know it is a bit too risky to enter a fight, then don’t do it.

If you are a fan of the League of Legends pro scene, watch some of the players' streams. While some pros are more aggressive than others, they rarely chase after others just to pick up a kill. Instead, they take what they can get and use the kills they already got towards something useful so they can gain map control and win the game. Sometimes just letting a fleeing enemy go is the best thing to do if it means you can instead easily siege an objective.

 

3. You Don’t Play League of Legends to Get Kills

Again, most feel a sense of accomplishment when they rack up a ton of kills in a game. Getting a triple, quadra or pentakill feels great, but it’s not the point of the game to solely get kills and ignore other aspects of the game. You do need kills, but mainly just for getting objectives. In AP heavy comps it is important to get a few kills early so one can snowball in lane, but they shouldn’t be your sole focus. You need to think about your teammates and what you can do to get ahead as a team.

Using those early kills to your advantage is key. One shouldn’t be killing enemies in lane just because. They should be taking down opponents to use that as an advantage towards being able to siege dragon, counter jungle or destroy turrets. If you get a ton of kills but aren’t using them for anything, you are essentially wasting all the work you have put in thus far. I see so many people with a high KDA in a game and end up wondering why they lost. They blame their team, trash talk and try to shift all the focus to others, but maybe it’s because you don’t seize the opportunity to do something with your kill advantage. Kills, while they can do a lot, aren’t everything.

Going out of your way to kill champions when you should be sticking together with your team to close out the game is not the way to go. Kills don’t win games and there is more to League of Legends than bragging about having a high KDA.

Many people ignore objectives because they just want to plow through the other team and get a ton of kills. But that isn’t the point of League of Legends. Many a times there has been a team ahead in kills. They get cocky and go around the map chasing after enemies and they lose focus of the task at hand and end up losing the game because of their short-sightedness. Don’t let yourself and your friends be a team like that. Sieging objectives is a big part of League of Legends and putting your attention and focus towards goals on the maps will help you and your allies more in the long run than going on a wild killing rampage on the map.