How to Play When You're Behind

Sometimes when you take a break from playing flawlessly, you'll find yourself in a game where you, or your teammates, are behind your opponents in total gold and experience. Getting killed is never fun and can ruin your mood, on top of falling behind on gold and experience. When it comes to the state of the game and whether your behind or not, you'll want to keep track of gold, experience, and morale.

Why does Gold factor in to being behind or ahead?
Simply put, more gold equals more items. It's also a good indicator of how much you've been getting kills and/or waveclearing compared to your opponents.

Why does Experience factor in to being behind or ahead?
Base stats and abilities scale with levels. This means if two Thors were to face off against each other with the same items, but one was a level higher than the other, the higher level Thor would have an inherent advantage against the lower level Thor.

Why does morale factor in to being behind or ahead?
How you feel affects how you play. If you're angry, frustrated, or hopeless, you won't be able to make good decisions as easily as when you're focused and level-headed. Sure, you may make mistakes. You may die. You might miss an easy kill. Don't let it throw you off your game.

 

What you need to focus on when you're behind:

1. Be positive, don't rage
2. Avoid more deaths
3. Defend objectives
4. Farm safely
5. Don't let it affect other lanes
6. Ward 

 

Be Positive, Don't Rage (BPDR)

Your first immediate goal should be to preserve a positive mindset. You must avoid 'tilting' from positive to negative at all costs. When you play in a negative mindset, you are more likely to give up on winnable situations, make reckless plays, and lose faith in your teammates.

Raging often has a domino effect, where the first person on your team that rages will cause others to rage, because of pessimism or harassment. This is why you see teams fall apart if they're down a couple kills. They begin in-fighting and embark on the frustrating road to Surrenderville.

This is why you need to focus on staying postitive even when you're a little behind. You don't want to antagonize your teammates, because you're essentially sabotaging your teams' chances of winning by raging. Don't be fooled, this is one of the hardest things to do, because no one likes losing to their opponent. I struggle with it; but I also make an active attempt to stay positive.

 

Avoid More Deaths

Assess what it was that lead to your disadvantage. Were you playing too aggressively? Did you get ganked? Were you out of position? Take stock of what you need to change in your playstyle to avoid falling even further behind.

People often don't change their playstyles after falling behind, which is why you'll see people that died once coninue dying. Contemplate how your matchup has changed and how your positioning has to change.

More often than not, you'll be playing much more passively if you're behind. You won't have the level or item advantage to make plays, unless your opponent makes a huge mistake.

Defend Objectives

When you're behind, your towers are your best friends. They give you a place to go when you're running away, or when you need safety from your lane opponent. The worst case scenario is that your falling behind leads to the other team getting an objective. Don't let them get the global gold when there's something you can do about it.

If you've fallen behind as a jungler, stay vigilant in warding objectives like Gold Fury and Fire Giant. If your teammates are in danger of losing their tower, go to their lane and help them clear waves, or hold the lane while they go back to base.

If their team is going for Gold Fury or Fire Giant, you should look to pressure them enough to stop them from doing it, or look for sneaky pickoffs. Don't let them get objectives without any repercussions.

You want to see this

But not this

 

Farm Safely

Stay close to your tower and let your lane opponent clear the waves first. You'll then be able to clear them with relative safety under your own tower. Junglers should not be looking to make plays in the enemy jungle, but rather farm and ward their own jungle.

Although you'll be farming at your tower, you want to minimize the damage your tower takes from minions. Try to clear the waves right outside the attack range of the tower. It'll provide some safety and strongly reduce the damage your tower takes.

 

Don't Let It Affect Other Lanes

While your opponent is at an advantage, they'll most likely want to roam more often and make plays in other lanes. You must do your part to avoid them messing up the other lanes. If your opponent leaves lane to gank another lane, rotate to the lane they intend to gank. This way your teammates won't be at a disadvantage and it will be a relatively fair fight.

If you can't rotate with your lane opponent, use the voice alert system and pings to warn your teammates. Let them know who's coming for them and what route they're taking to get there. If someone you're losing to goes to another lane and makes a play, your teammates are going to get angry. Angry teammates make an angry team. Angry teams don't win many games.

 

Ward

Buy wards. Place wards. Save lives. You can look at my other article about warding (especially defensive warding) here.

Conclusion

Knowing how to play from behind will be the difference between your team surrendering at 10 minutes and having a chance at winning at 30 minutes. You'll be surprised how many games are winnable after falling behind. Smite is a volatile game and which team is ahead at any given time can change quickly (and drastically).

 

Thanks for reading! Leave your thoughts in the comments section below.

My other articles:

Juking
Movement Prediction
Efficiency and Adaptation in Conquest

Enjoy!