On Facilitating Ganks for your Jungler

Well met summoners! Today I'm going to drop a few quick tips on how you can best set up ganks for your jungler as a solo or duo laner. There are a number of ways to facilitate friendly ganks, but below are the most common (and in my experience, most easily put into practice) strategies you can use to maximize your odds of converting a gank attempt into a kill. All of these tactics I'm about to show you are exercises in the psychological realm, rather than mechanical. If that sounds like your cup of tea, you'll enjoy this article and get a ton out of it! Without further ado, let's jump right in:

1. Stay in lane at very low health (or low enough to risk being all-in'ed). As you've no doubt experienced, going for a kill attempt is an extremely difficult impulse to resist when your lane opponent is at dangerously low hp. In fact, this should send alarm bells off in your head if you see your opponent sticking around at 30% hp while you have your ultimate up. Any decent player MUST know to go back to base if they're that low, right?

You can work this whole situation to your advantage, psychologically. By sticking around in lane at low health, you're sending a message to your opponent that you're either a) an inexperienced or poor player, b) greedy for CS (perhaps to finish an item before you back to buy), c) not respecting your opponent's damage potential, d) not respecting your opponent period, or e) baiting a friendly gank. By simple probability, of all these choices, the chance that the enemy jungler is around isn't as likely as your opponent being a little greedy and making a subtle misplay. But as we've all found out personally, sometimes the jungler is around...

It's time to set up these kinds of situations for your own team! Again, it's very difficult to resist the impulse to all-in and finish off a low-health opponent; recognize this temptation, coordinate with your jungler, and take advantage of it. Make sure to plan ahead and figure out a way you'll survive the fight (a common theme across all of the tricks in this article, as we'll find), but staying in lane at low health is an extremely effective method to set up friendly ganks.

Lee Sin can Safeguard to you and quickly execute his combo if the enemy laner gets aggressive, making him a great jungler to bait for.

2. Initiate a poor trade, letting your opponent come out ahead - encouraging him or her to go on the aggressive. Trades happen early and often in lane, so it's not unusual for one to initiate them. But think back to those trades in which you come out ahead - you'll typically try to push the advantageous trade a bit, and get in as many pecks of damage as you can right? In the process you'll use your abilities aggressively, move forward and perhaps overextend a bit...

You can orchestrate this entire sequence of events and punish it with a jungler gank. Initiate a trade, maybe a miss a skillshot on purpose, and show some weakness. 9 times out of 10, I guarantee your opponent will step up to extend the trade or maybe even go for an all-in! This is the time your jungler swoops in for a clean gank on an overextended opponent. Playing against this tactic on the flip side, don't get TOO greedy to capitalize on a trade, espcially if you're not sure where the enemy jungler is. Take the advantage you've already gotten and bide your time. If you're not reasonably certain you can finish off your opponent, don't go too ham.

Sometimes, your greatest enemy is your own desire for CS. Cannon minions are valuable, but let them go if you think the jungler's around.

3. Deploy your strongest CC abilities when your opponent steps up to grab a cannon minion. This one is devilishly tricky to avoid. How can you NOT go for the cannon minion? It's worth, like, FIFTY gold! Alas, it's often a means to getting baited and stepping just a BIT too far forward to secure the CS. When your opponent goes for that juicy minion, use your strongest CC to get a lockdown and set things up for your jungler. Avoiding this situation happening to you is not easy; it'll take strong ward coverage, and in the absence of that a knoweldge of the opposing jungler's gank paths and a savvy game sense.

4. Force an all-in. All-ins are slightly different from trades, simply because you're expending bigger cooldowns (ultimates, or summoner spells), but the principle behind this tactic is similar. You'll engage your opponent, hopefully expending their important cooldowns, shifting their positioning favorably for yourself, and maybe even distracting them from the impending doom that is your jungler rapidly approaching from their flank.

All-ins are risky of course, because your opponent can simply disengage at the onset of your approach if things look dicey. The trick here is to set up a situation in which your lane opponent believes that he or she can actually counter-agress and win the exchange. When, after you engage, you can get your opponent to believe that he or she's got the upper hand (and subsequently choose to punish you for initiating), that's when you know that you've succeeded and your jungler should move in.

So there you have it: now you've got some tools in your toolbox to think about employing in your next game. Your jungler's the most likely teammate to be ganking your lane, but sometimes you'll have a fellow laner roam to try and make something happen as well - the principles are the same. A common theme throughout all of these strategies is feigning weakness. If you can get your opponent to cooperate and be aggressive, friendly ganks are MUCH easier to set up. The key to this is allowing your opponent to FEEL that they have the advantage, if even for a short time. If you can't facilitate a gank with CC (due to your champion choice or the slipperyness of your opponent's), try out these more subtle strategies to set up a gank.

That's all for today, I hope you enjoyed the article. If you'd like to discuss anything League, have comments/feedback, or just want to say hi, feel free to tweet me @k0nduit (with a zero instead of an 'o') and I'll get back to you.

Until next time.

konduit