Stolen Kills and Why They Aren't the End of the World

Normals, Ranked, even in Arena. No matter what gamemode you play unless it’s a 1v1 you’ve probably seen these two letters “ks” appear in chat more than once. If you didn’t catch on from the title of this article or are new to the MOBA scene these two letters mean “Kill steal”. In its essence, kill stealing is simply taking a kill that somebody else thought they deserved. Obviously a kill is a kill and having somebody on the enemy team die only has positives but the concept of kill stealing turns this around and can even cause infighting within teams simply because of who got the accolade.

 

So why does this happen? Why do people care who gets that extra number added to their score? While people generally accuse others of killstealing for one of 3 reasons.

1. Somebody felt was rightfully theirs due to dealing a majority of the damage to the target.
2. Somebody felt that they had already taken measures to ensure the kill and feel you’ve wasted time or mana trying to “Confirm” said kill. 
3. They feel they deserved the kill more than you or could have gotten better use out of the gold bonus.

Scenario one has 0 merit to it so we can just throw that out the window right away, but scenario two and three can both have an air of truth about them. For example if an Ah Muzen Cab with 50hp left was stunned and left at the mercy of a full health Anhur you can probably let that one go, Ah Muzen Cab has almost no method of escaping even if the stun wears off before he dies and Anhur has his Sand Pillar and his jump to catch up to him. If an Ao Kuang used his blink to get to the AMC before Anhur could finish him off and decided to ult him, that would obviously be a kill steal. Sure maybe Ao Kuang could put better use to the gold since he scales better into the lategame but Ao Kuang probably could have put both his blink and his ultimate to better use, both of which are now on cooldown. However that is a pretty specific action and one that won't happen very often in higher level play where as scenario three actually has a lot of potential value and optimization if you take the time to understand it.

Optimization means you need to decide who does best with what amount of gold and you should be picking and choosing as often as possible who needs the most gold and how they can achieve that. If players fall behind and need to be brought back into relevance or if somebody is simply playing a god who simply does well with having a lot of gold. This is why each role has a class that’s best played in it. Warriors are mainly seen in the solo lane because the front liners can tank and generally disrupt the enemy team a lot more if they have more items. While supports on the other hand often roam to give their adc more experience and gold because support characters often have higher base damages than other classes and don't need a lot of items to be useful. If you have good communication you can try and divide kills amongst each other but it requires an understanding between all five members.

But using kills to this effect is often difficult to do and will end up in lost kills as well as arguments over who deserves kills so it’s only recommended to distribute kills in this fashion if the kill is guaranteed. As for deciding who gets the kill I’ve made up a quick tier list as to which characters benefit the most from kills. So next time you get into a teamfight and see potential for a kill, tab out right quick and bring up this resource. Look for the god playing it and if you don’t see any gods above it that are also on your team, the kill’s all yours.

Jokes aside, at the end of the day unless you take a kill from a Kali or Ao Kuang who are about to die you shouldn't be worried too much about it. Optimization can extremely risky if you don't know what you're doing and I certainly wouldn't try it unless all 5 members of the team have voice communication and are familiar with each other. People who type out "ks" Are people you can afford to mute. Just be happy somebody on the enemy team died, no matter who gets the kill it will help you take a lead or put you even further ahead of the enemy team. Not caring about who gets the kill and giving assists more valuable is going to help you out in the long run and it's something every player should strive to do. Doing that will not only help out your entire team but help with your personal sanity as well.

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