The Great Art of Shotcalling: Part 1

Today I want to start a series of guides on "How to be the shot-caller on a team" in League of Legends. This will help you if you want to improve your outcome of solo-queue games ("win lane – lose game" syndrome) or are part of a team which benefits greatly from coordination. I will divide this series into parts to keep these articles manageable:

     1. Global shot-calling in teams

     2. Team-fight shot-calling in teams

     3. Global shot-calling in Solo-queue

     4. "Active" vs. "passive" shot-calling

 

In this article I want to start with global shot-calling in a "competitive" League of Legends team. Global shot-calling comes with the terms "objective control" and "rotations" and if you master it, you can reach heights that you would have never believed to achieve. What are those key words?

- "Objective control" describes the ability and actions of a team to produce global pressure and gold by taking dragon, baron, towers or even buffs. In the early game the jungler of a team has to provide a huge amount of objective control, the mid laner can help him with that due to the roaming-potential of mid lane.

- "Rotations" describe the movement of a team over the map to achieve global objectives or acquire kills to come back into a game or create advantages. Rotations have a huge part in the mid- to late-game success of a team.

The best suitable roles for a shot-caller in a team are jungle or support since they are able to maintain the highest amount of map-awareness of a team. Due to his nature a midlaner is capable of doing it aswell but this applies more pressure on him and this distraction lowers his potential to make plays. The role of a global shot-caller doesn't necessarily need to be fulfilled by only one player but the decisions should still be made fast and followed by all players.

Today I want to show you how to get dragon, towers and baron without the need to even fight (without being too far behind). This can be achieved by correct pushing of lanes followed by right rotations.

 

How to get dragon(-control)?

There are three possible ways to get into the strategic position to do dragon:

- gank bot lane and kill someone/push them into base

- gank and kill the mid laner

- outnumber them with the help of the top laner

Ganking these two lanes is relatively obvious to get a dragon. Important for teams is the third option to do so. To free your top laner to secure objectives, your teams needs him ahead or equipped with the summoner spell Teleport, without the enemy top laner having Teleport or when it's not up.

If your top laner is ahead (even without Teleport) he can start to proxy the enemy minion wave behind the enemy tower. Two things can happen here: the enemy jungler appears at top lane and you can start dragon with yours; or your top laner backs and comes to dragon so you can outnumber the enemy and secure this objective. With a Teleport, your top laner can push his lane (no proxy needed) and back to group at dragon with his team. He can then use his Teleport on top to be there right in time.

As the game progresses, dragon is much easier to achieve or bait. Push out the mid and bot wave and group for dragon after you cleared and warded the surroundings. You can start it if the enemy team doesn’t react or get a fight in your favor. Always be sure that the enemy team doesn’t go for baron while you are at dragon. Most of the time, they will finish it before you can even contest, so a ward placed at baron can save your day.

 

How to take and siege towers?

Without your team being too far behind you can take towers after a successful gank on one of the lanes (easiest lanes for that are mid and bot). If your jungler and the laner(s) took a tower, you should consider moving this group to the next tier one tower on the map. If you destroyed the bot tower your team should rotate mid (same after getting top-tower) or get dragon. If mid-tower fell you should tower dive botlane 4 vs 2 or 4 vs 3 and secure the next global gold income for your team through that.

To get the inner turrets or tier one towers on lanes that were losing too hard, you can follow these six basic plans:

- Split pushing a lane (needs a strong 1vs1 player or Teleport on a champ that doesn’t die 1vs1 against the strongest opponent)

- Sieging a tower (strong combined with a Teleport split push)

- Outrotating the enemy

- Catching an enemy out of position

- Baiting baron (see: "Prepare, bait and get baron")

- Diving with a dive composition (no further explanation)

Split pushing and Sieging:

I put these two basic plans together  because they synergize pretty well with each other. Your team needs a good split pusher with a way to join an upcoming teamfight to outnumber the enemy, should they ever get a good initiate. Suitable for this is a strong bruisers with Teleport or Shen. To siege a tower your team needs a strong poke champion and the overall poke of your team should be higher than the enemies (Nidalee, Jayce, Karma and other AP champions fit this playstyle). Your team also needs a good disengage in case the enemy team has stronger teamfights (probably the case) and lands a good initiate. Still your team needs a strong initiate, too, to dive a tower after you forced someone back with your poke (best option is to poke the enemies support since he is the team's disengage in most cases and is really squishy).

Rotations and Catches:

Now a more complicated topic: how to win in objectives without teamfights. If you know your basics and your team listens to your calls, this is an easy way to carry on a lead or build one up. For example you need to have bot and/or top lane pushing for your team. You can then group mid and waveclear/siege. The support uses this time window to ward the opponents' jungle. If one of the waves on the side lanes reaches a tower, your team can leave mid and put damage on this tower (vision and map control provide the necessary pressure). If an opponent goes for depushing this lane, you can either move to the other side lane to push or start a fight where you outnumber the enemy (towerdive).

 

Prepare, bait and get baron

It doesn't matter what you want to do around baron – you need vision control over it - starting around 17 minutes in the game – depending on the opponents team composition. Your support and jungler should manage to clear the baron area and ward it. The rest of your team readies themselves to assist them if a skirmish breaks out or take another objective (turrets) if they are too far away.

If your team is far ahead of the opponents you should consider to force baron. Clear vision in the area, ward around you and start baron. If the enemy appears – peel off and engage. If you are behind or even with the opponents, then you can use a vision advantage to engage from inside baron pit. With kills generated through that you can either get an easy baron or/and push towers/inhibitors.

Another way to achieve baron when behind to come back into the game is to rush baron after the opponent overstayed at an inhibitor with low health bars. Your whole team should rush baron at that moment and should be able to get it before the enemy team even groups up.

I hope you liked the first part of this series and continue reading the other parts following soon. For discussions, tips and article improvements – please contact me on twitter: https://twitter.com/Man1acMole

 

Marc 'Man1acMole' Schneider

Special Tanks to Manuel "Noise" Lüdtke and Jan "SirMysto" Helbrecht for the image-work!