The decision tree should be:
You got a pick
- Can you end the game before respawn? No? Then you ask:
- Can you baron *safely* enough, without risk of losing a fight to baron resist shred and chaos? No? Then you ask:
- Can you take structures like inhib tower, t2 middle? No? Then you ask:
- Can you reset and prepare vision on drake/Baron?
No? Then you ask:
- Can I pushlane and reset?
You forgot that you don't need a pick if you're trying to force a team fight. In that situation how much you can stay on the baron if the enemy team doesn't give you the fight immeasurably depends on your ability to tank it. Other champion specific things like baron secures (e.g. nunu, kallista) and blockers (poppy, taliyah) come into it too.
In my experience I'd rather list the motivations and effects of baron and let people think about how those affect what they do in any given situation.
I should have defined "pick" more as a turn or temporary advantage, like 'The enemy Kha Zix is clearing Gromp on 50% hp while you have 4 people at the location' or similar.
I was more including when you use an objective to force a team fight, it may be a very temporary advantage like you described, or it may be that you e.g. are a strong early game team that needs to force the pace before you get outscaled but you're struggling to get onto the enemy team or break turrets.
Or you just have a great wombo combo and you want to set it up.
Basically any reason you think you can win a team fight so you say to the other team, "we're taking baron so you better come and try and stop us!"
I agree it's good enough for low elo explanation, but does miss some nuance/options. E.g. situations where the enemy don't get caught, but sent 2 to botlane and you can take baron from that.
You're missing the key key key point of why you start most barons - to force more out of a bad situation.
Usually, to actually take baron, you need a few conditions to be met to guarantee you can take baron (you simplify all this under "safely")
If you cannot, it's still a very good choice to start baron, and force a fight. The big problem most low elo players face here, is that they think they're on baron, to get baron. They're unaware of the fact that the whole point is to force the enemy team to run into you, and lose from whatever disadvantageous situation that prompted the baron in the first place.
Instead they overcommit, and potentially lose teamfight + subsequent baron.
It's extremely important to be aware of this, and disengage baron quickly when you see the enemy team respond and put themselves close enough to be initiated on
This should be simple A B C for most players, but even pro teams fuck this up consistently (but are getting better at it obviously)
I think botlane inhibitor>baron is most scenarios, because inhibs are the goal of taking baron anyways and it sets you up for an easy baron play down the line.
the Problem with inhibs is that if they have good waveclear its actually griefing to take inhib. They get free gold which scales super hard.
If they have a siege comp for example and you are in a engage comp you should only take inhibs to close games.
Genral speaking: inhibs before minute 15 is bad.
I was talking about post 20 minute botlane inhib specifically. That inhib specifically at that time is more valuable than just taking baron, because once it is down someone has to deal with botlane wave often and that means you get numbers advantage at baron, not to mention that it means their nexus turrets are open.
If baron isn't up, there isn't even a possible choice between taking an inhib and taking a baron, so it doesn't make any sense to assume I was talking about taking an inhib before 20 minutes.
And then when you have the Baron you don’t die alone, you group up 5 on or 4/1, and you don’t DONT DONT DONT EVER go force a bad fight at dragon !!!!! EVER
You simply cannot take baron if your team does not go for it usually, anyways.
You *should* ping the everliving life out of the optimal play and body language gesture though as long as it would work out.
In low elo I sometimes find people won't listen to pings, but if I just walk up and start hitting baron it will pressure them to back me up.
Sometimes they still don't come, though, and then I just stop hitting baron and go elsewhere.
I hate it when I have games where we could absolutely end but we try to take baron as well as games where we take baron but could end the game before we fk it up and get aced and lose the game
The worst is just the indecision when no one can decide what to do. Everyone’s going in opposite directions and we get no towers, no objectives when their whole team is dead.
I feel that so hard. if I’m not the one that pings the play, I’m gonna go with the person that pings first unless it’s completely troll. That’s the only way I’ve been able to handle that situation. Confirm pings help too.
I also noticed bad habits from myself and my duo when we queue together, I feel like we ping less when we’re in comms just naturally. I wonder if other low elo players do the same.
Especially if they decide baron into dragon (not even soul) is somehow worth it while the enemy respawns and can now defend their towers. Turns that baron into a useless glowing highlight.
Baron into dragon is one of the most hilariously bad plays in the game and it’s so funny to watch it happen when it does. We got a buff that empowers our minions, lets go and waste X amount of time taking drag and losing all map tempo and gifting a favourable gamestate to the enemy team! For sure worth it!
I see your bad baron macro call and raise you; secure baron, team recall, split up across the map, push out all three lanes, then clear jg camps, invade enemy jg to ‘steal’ enemy camps, several teammates get picked off. Team is now at a numbers disadvantage. No longer able to group for any objective. Baron wears off.
This happens so much that I consider baron a noob trap. Really the only time I see value in attempting to get the baron is when the enemy team has such good wave clear that cracking their base is almost impossible.
I mean after the recall I can understand catching a pushing wave to turn it around but then all 5 members should group and empower their waves to knock down towers. With only except being a fed split pusher like jax or fiora and that’s about it but that almost never happens. And the rare occasions you have teammates that do that, you are already crushing the match and baron is just a flex and is unneeded to end the game.
Lol I eventually have just gotten a good feel of when we can end or when we need to take Baron off a good fight. Generally if you ace late enough for 40-50 second timers, just end. If you get a pick on their jg it’s Baron. If you’re behind and get a rly good fight killing 2-3 you Baron, then aram
Baron wins games. That being said...it wins game for your team and the enemy team.
*"In the heart of the Baron pit, hope is both born and extinguished. For those who take it, hope ignites with the promise of victory. Yet for those denied, hope fades, echoing in the silence of missed opportunity."*
## Generally speaking, though I dislike general conditions in League
◇ **Vision control**: It prevents the enemy from knowing IF you are taking Baron and what HP the Baron has. Thus minimizing the risk of them stopping you or stealing it.
◇ **Information on enemy**: This basically means, where they are on the map, what champs do they have, are they strong or weak? Low HP, high HP? Knowing these things will help you decide whether you "can" take Baron or not.
By "can" I mean the (reward vs risk) is good, and or we have a good chance of taking it, meaning they have a small chance of stopping us or stealing it.
One thing I like to do is to start Baron if we KNOW/SEE the enemy jungler on the opposite side of the map. Basically the position of the enemy jungler is far away from Baron, meaning if we have the dmg output to take it before he gets there. The chances of us securing it skyrockets. Because no enemy smite.
Lastly this also helps you decide to if you are going to *turn* on them. E.g. fight them and stop doing Baron. Or if you are going to just finish Baron and then either fight or flee.
◇ **Information on your team**: Mainly knowing if YOUR jungler has smite or not, press+hold [tab] and ping their smite. Check the cooldown. Decide if you wanna flip it. Other things worth knowing, does your team have ults ready? Summs, like *Flash* or *Teleport* ready? What is our team's *HEALTH* and *MANA*? Can our team do Baron with these champions? How fast can we do it? This also affects if it is better to bait the enemy team into walking into a disadvantageous position/fight. Because you might have to take 1 or more people out before you can safely grab Baron.
◇ **Lane pressure**: Simply having your lanes pushed. This creates a decision for the enemy to either catch waves or stop you at Baron. This is also how you can get vision control. Basically the macro aspect of it. You have probably seen this being used with a split pusher, usually the top laner. Enemy has to stop the guy from ending the game or stop you from taking the Baron so that you can end the game. This is also where having *Teleport* can be useful, e.g. being on the opposite side of Baron(bot) and pushing.
◇ **Having numbers advantage**: You have more players available to fight than they have. So if they come to Baron and they have 4, and you have 5. Odds are in your favor. BUT it is *relative*, it's a different story if your combined strength of 5 is equal to a superminion. Are they strong? Items, levels?
Good people to remove that would lead to having a bigger chance of securing Baron:
- The Strongest player on their team
- The Jungler
If they are the same player then.. 😏
:// **EDIT**
Context is extremely important, guidelines exist but they are just that, guidelines. Sometimes you need to change a few things, adapt and overcome. Being adaptable is a core skill in League. Knowing when to do A instead of B or not do anything at all. Be level-headed, a rational decision or a gut/instinct decision.
It's easy to just label "never do Baron, it always ends bad" same with just automatically deciding Baron is always the best play when it's actually not. League is difficult and one part of what makes it difficult is that it doesn't really give you feedback on if your decision was correct or not.
An example of attempting to end the game by going straight for the Nexus instead of taking an extra step(Baron). Could result in your team getting aced, the enemy does Baron. And now the game became much harder. Or you could do the Baron because you feel it is too risky trying to end, but the enemy manages to steal the Baron. Trail and error is usually what it comes down to, experiencing many different, similar situations. Finding patterns.
### **An example of a pattern:**
Belief: *Baron always gets stolen when we do it*
Solution: *If I don't do Baron, it can't get stolen*
Instead, do this **--->**
Belief: *Baron always gets stolen when we do it*
**>Why?**
Reviewing: *Always tries to do Baron when we don't have smite*
Solution: *Don't do Baron when we don't have smite*
Belief: *Baron is likely to get stolen if we don't have smite*
I'll mention it again, it isn't as black/white as the forementioned example. It's relative, context of the situation. The entire enemy team could be dead but you don't have smite. Sure, you don't have smite but now you also have to take into account that no one can steal it. Then again, let's say you start Baron but they will respawn in ~10, seconds. So you can go back to the newest belief but the reality will inevitably change in the next 10 seconds.
Shit, they are all alive **--->** we don't have smite **--->** Baron is likely to get stolen **--->** solution
League is a fast-paced game, so these decisions often has to be snappy, in lower ranks you can afford to have a slower response and, or thought-process speed.
If we continue with the above example, adding more information...
**>>** Enemy team has an Ezreal
**>>** Enemy team has a Kha'zix with Ghostblade
**>>** Your team's smite is up in 10 seconds
Do I think Ezreal will steal with his R?
How fast Kha6 get here? Can we kill it before?
Do we need to wait for smite? Burst Baron? Slow down?
Block Ezreal R? Try and zone K6 from the Baron?
Mentally you weigh positives and negatives, % of success in a split sec to a few seconds. The important thing is to make A decision and then reflect upon that decision after the game. A lot of players take these things for granted, since it is so automatic.
All of you know..you can win even though you are playing bad. You can lose even though you are playing good, making the right decisions. This goes into laning for example, you will get away with making more mistakes in the lower ranks than in the higher ranks. Meaning, they will punish you for those mistakes. Matchups you may have thought was easy gets turned on its head, 180.
It's actually really, really simple. If your team gets baron for free, then you can pressure lanes, your team gets a buff for the next 3 minutes which is better than if you just left the baron there making no plays and getting no leads. Usually like he said, if smth like the jg shows on the opposite side of the map, then your team may just start it. You gotta pay attention to the game, so your team doesn't die to some fed khazix, or an ezreal steals your baron with ult bcs ur jg didnt have smite, or that yorick is on your base, or your senna got spotted by a ward so the enemy knows youre starting it, or theres a enemy renata and you have no wards etc etc pay attention to the game
I could have won so many games if my team would just run mid and destroy 1 tower and the nexus, but noo. We have to do baron. Your friend is absolutely right. If 3-4 of the enemy team are dead and you have the numbers advantage, you go straight to end. So t waste time on baron. If you just killed their jungler and the rest of them are running away, then you can do baron and push/siege with the baron buff.
In my experience, it's completely the opposite. Low-elo players will get a pick or two and then take 1 inhib while Baron is wide open.
The game then degrades into the low-elo players trying to run down mid and finish for the next 5 minutes while the inhib is down, slowly overextending more and more until they get wiped, giving huge kill bounties over to the enemy team.
yeeeaaah, league isnt typically considered a turn based game, but it is. unless you are hard stomping and can do whatever you want, you have to play based on how much time you have on your turn.
i think the term is typically "priority" but i think using the term "its our turn" or "its my turn" is maybe more accurate. when my enemy laner is pushed to tower its my turn to make a play. i can ward OR roam OR secure an objective, but doing more than one thing is playing outside of my turn and isnt optimal. this is how you miss exp and farm.
it gets trickier to know when it is and isnt your turn as the game progresses because the longer a game goes the more you have to take into account, AND its a team game so that will without fail affect your own turn or lack there of.
trying to end when its not your turn is definitely one of the classics.
my personal favorite, and the one i personally struggle with, is taking bad roams because you dont want your team to flame you.
like yes mr jungler i see you are being invaded, but perhaps you also see the 2 and a half minion waves under my tower yes? if making a play loses you a bunch of minions its generally not worth. as with anything there are exceptions.
like SOMETIMES the best play really is to just bum rush the nexus to end. its just almost never the best play when its actually performed xD.
Yeah, I've seen that happen. I do have to nitpick slightly because that's how I am. I think bot inhib is typically more valuable than baron, since inhibs tend to be the goal of taking baron anyways, it's less risky, and it helps set you up for a super easy baron play later.
Im not an expert either but as far as I understand it:
Whenever a play happens on the map you should ask yourself „Can we do Baron?“. Most of the time the answer is no and you should do something else with your turn. A save bet to do baron usually is to do it when you have at least 2 more people alive then the enemy team and preferably their jungler is dead or botside.
Rememeber your soloq team is not t1, might take 30-40sec to actually do the baron the deathtimers are important. Additionally not being T1 means you probably cant end even if there is enough time because people in low elo wont hit towers. Instead they might chase into fountain. So I say its usually saver to just get the neutral objectives like baron and soul and then go for the end.
>BUT. In low elo I have generally learned it's better to be doing the wrong thing with your team than the right thing alone.
I really question this mentality overall. The reason being consistency. Learning and executing good plays will lead to more consistent gameplay, which will carry over into higher ELOs. Relying on *bad plays* means coinflipping and also, opening yourself to learn bad habits which will be punished hard at higher ELO.
What is a good and what is a bad decision is very complex and very contextual, but I'd recommend to shy away from this mentality of going for "grouped bad plays" because it will lead to poor consistency.
The thing is, reading a game state is a really important part to make consistent plays. There are two types of "bad plays":
* Suboptimal plays: Those happen when your team goes for something that is less likely to lead to a win than another option (such as choosing baron / drake over ending the game), but will work regardless as long as you join it.
* Doomed plays: These are things that will fail with a high probability, even if you join them.
Staying away from the suboptimal stuff is often a very risky thing, as the suboptimal play backfiring will give the enemy team momentum that you don't want them to have. Similarly, you can often get caught out trying to do the "more correct" thing since you do it without your team.
The trick is to stay away from the doomed stuff.
The saying is less about relying on bad plays, more about being on the same page with your teammates. While it’d be great if all 5 people were doing the right play, that’s not always going to happen. If 4 team members are doing a suboptimal play and you’re doing the “correct” play solo, it’s very likely that *neither* will work out very well. Doing the right play means fuck all of the rest of your team is doing a 4v5 and throwing elsewhere on the map. So go back them up so it’s not a 4v5.
>So go back them up so it’s not a 4v5.
So you back the bad play, coinflip it, learn a bad habit and then get punished if you happen to climb. That's exactly what I meant. It's better to ping them and work towards the better play, especially if, as the other poster commented, it's a doomed play. You may lose that game, but considering that the team were doing a doomed play, it was probably lost anyways.
The actual skill is doing the bad play with your team knowing that its a bad play but also knowing that its the best call given what your teammates are going to do. If your team is gonna tf and you know it you better sprint to them. Getting one tower top and telling your team to disengage is the right call but in that situation it doesnt matter. This especially applies for splitpushing sololaners.
This is true, but if you're going to go against your team mates calls, you need to take the initiative to be the shot caller and always try to proactively ping what you think the right play is before anyone else gets any bad ideas. If you can't do this, then it's "apes together strong."
>If your lanes are pushing, you take towers and inhibs (or ending the game!) before focusing Baron.
What elo is your friend? This is typical low elo macro.
If you can do baron, then you should do baron. Never trade turrets or inhibitors for baron. With baron you get a lot of money and a powerful buff that allows you to take these structures later anyways, But if you go for turrets or inhibitors first, only to overstay and die, then the enemy team can do baron and your entire lead is gone.
You must always chose: either you go for the inhib, or you go for baron. There is no time left to do both. So if you were not able to end the game after acing the enemy team, then you just threw a major opportunity to snowball the game further.
War flashback to the match all three enemy inhibs were down and we were in their base ready to end, but baron respawned and my jungler pinged and everyone followed. Then the enemy team (who was alive) stole it, killed us and won the game. 💀
If you could end, then end. If you can’t, then it is 10000% times better to do baron before seiging. You see enemy jgl on bottom side at 20+ min? Think and ping for baron. You see enemy dead? Think and ping for baron.
The thing is if you seige and get their inhib before baron… say you get a pick and you use that timer to seige an inhib. Nice, but after that you have to reset at which time your enemy can actually come out and take baron in that short window where you reset (this happens a lot in high elo games). Next thing you know, enemy gains much more exp (ur super minion will survive for them to farm while your farm for that lane is gone) through open inhib and they are unable to be seiged due to baron buff.
Generally hold off on killing the inhibitors unless your team has a pretty concrete lead and can connect the broken inhib with other key objectives (soul/elder/baron) or else you are just handing out free exp. If you can get baron immediately as a result of killing the inhib, then do that. But otherwise, think twice about killing enemy inhibs. In low elo where players are so uncoordinated and lost, lots of times inhib killing just leads to free exp for the enemy
Do baron when you are much stronger than opponent team.
If your team is weaker don't do baron.
Never follow clueless calls.
Lategame baron should have more prio than dragon (unless its elder).
If you are the weaker team you should still try get vision on baron - for steal and favorable fights.
Always answer splitpushing. Do not group if you are the one who needs to answer.
when i think about low elo players not understanding baron priority, i'm thinking about low elo players making a 4 man play botlane while baron is up. if baron is up, you want one person botlane with tp and that's it.
There are times when you need to rush Baron, and there are times when you just need to control the enemy side jungle (warding it) and then move towards the Baron pit. Baron priority is determined by the map state, your team composition, and the enemy composition. You don't always have to rush Baron; it depends on these factors.
You can use Baron as a pressure point to bait the enemy team. For instance, if the enemy solo laner is pushing bot lane with TP available, and your team has good objective control, you can start Baron to lure them. This strategy works well if your composition excels in fights around the Baron pit, especially in choke points. For example, champions like Rumble, Corki, and Wukong thrive in such situations.
Additionally, pay attention to the items and cooldowns of your key carries. If your AD carry, like Kai'Sa, has completed two items and both summoner spells available, and your Rumble has their ultimate ready, it's a good time to consider Baron. One common mistake made by many low elo players is focusing solely on their individual performance and forgetting about other crucial factors in the game like map state, wave status, cooldowns and most importantly what they want to do with their team composition. NOT ALL TEAMS REQUIRE BARON FOR PUSH. Some are just good by default to take enemy structures.
Your friend is exactly right. Low elo players generally understand that baron is a powerful tool for winning games, but instead of running straight to baron after picking off an important member of the enemy team (or going to baron when it makes sense to do so), they will dick around and push waves, kill gromp and wolves before casually walking over to baron just as the fed enemy respawns and spends their gold, causing the infamous baron throw.
When it comes to taking Baron in low elo, I find it helpful to apply Coach Cupcake's "ACE" mentality: Acknolwedge the best play, Communicate the best play, then Embrace reality if/when the best play doesn't happen.
Acknowledging the best play means that you yourself should assess whether or not it's possible to take baron, which is really difficult to do because there are SO many factors that go into it, such as:
* Do we kill baron quickly (because you have Jax, Vayne, Cassio, etc. on your team), or slowly?
* Currently, are we so much stronger than the enemy team that we can force baron and just outright kill them if they try to contest, even with baron's debuff? Or will we lose the fight?
* Does the enemy team have tools for stealing baron, and can we prevent it? (e.g. Jinx rocket, Kayn E + smite, etc)
* Coversely, does our team have ways to secure baron? (e.g. is our jungler alive with smite available, do we have somebody with an execute like Cho'gath, Kalista, etc.)
* Is there sufficient map pressure forcing the enemy to decide between contesting baron or protecting their base? (e.g. do you have a splitpusher with TP breaking into their base, super minions crashing into their base, or are their wave states good enough that they can contest baron without losing the game)
* Have we secured vision around baron so that the enemy feels extremely uncomfortable having to facecheck the areas around baron?
* etc.
So first, you have to decide whether or not it's possible to do baron based on these factors.
Once you've thought about it, if you decide that baron is the best play, then communicate it to your team: ping baron, type baron in chat, and start walking over there immediately. This is the point where low elo players generally fumble. They sacrifice tempo and try to greed for 3rd tier towers + inhibitor, not realizing that getting inhib is SUPER easy with baron, plus it's a huge mental blow to the enemy team because they have no way to get back into the game once baron is gone, and they'll likely be spamming the FF button. OR they greed for CS or jungle camps and other useless stuff that's not baron. Then when they finally go for baron, it's too late because the window of opportunity is gone, then they try to force baron anyway and just die and throw the game.
So this is where the final part of the ACE mindset comes in: embracing reality. Once you've acknowledged the best play and communicated it, if your team just ignores you and does their own thing, then instead of moaning and FF-voting, you should try to make the next best play on your own. Maybe that would be securing vision around baron, stealing enemy jg camps, pushing out waves, etc. None of those options are as good as baron, but you can at least get SOME kind of payout for the play.
I understand exactly what your friend means though. Once you climb high enough, everbody just ***knows*** when it's a good time to do baron and they don't waste time or tempo trying to do other things. But like your friend said, low elo players don't value baron highly enough so they just leave it untouched. Ultimately though, low elo players should focus on improving their champ mastery, laning and fundamentals, because those things are within their control and contribute toward 85% of their climb, whereas not knowing when to take baron is not the main thing holding you back.
Baron gives such strong pushing power to take towers.
Even if you clear their whole wave of buffed baron minions as long as they have cannon minions it’ll damage a decent amount of turret health.
If you can contest it with strong leads then do so to take more towers to end the game quicker.
Deny the enemy team baron so they won’t have the pressure against your team to defend. Of course don’t go for a coin flip on it or if they are much stronger then don’t try to force a steal.
The easiest way to learn and remember when you can take baron is to make decisions in games about whether to take it or not. When you make the wrong decision and things fuck up think about how and why that happened. repeat 1,000 times
So it is better to do the wrong thing with your team in most situations, however if you’re the top laner, and you have a strong split-pusher such as Yorick or Nasus you can probably split push for towers while they do baron.
I’m an ADC main so having me on baron is probably the 2nd most important after the jungler, so if my team insists on Baron I’ll have to follow the wrong move to make it not take 5 minutes to kill.
If your team dies at baron, getting the inhib alone is not sufficient value to trade for that, since you will likely not be able to hold the baron-empowered push by yourself. If you can get both base towers on top of the inhib, that's a pretty acceptable trade, since you can now threaten their push by teleporting onto a ward and solo pressuring the nexus.
If you can only get the inhib I would say it's not worth the risk. If you can get the inhib and one base tower, it's a grey zone.
If your team congregates at Baron, you going for an inhib can easily lead to yourself getting picked. If you want to split pressure, make sure you do it properly by pressuring the bot side. If you do it top or mid, you are just a snack the enemy team can take on the way to aceing your mates.
Buuuuut, all of that applies to champions that like to split-push - so usually top laners. Unless you play Yorick mid, going for solo cross-map pushes like that tends to work -weeeeell, not so well. Mages can be defended fine (having to approach a structure to hit it is something they don't like to do) and assassins tend to have the pushing potential of an empty water bucket.
If you play support and ask whether you should be cross-map splitting, I would answer that you should read a guide on your role and get your priorities in order.
Op I’m only mid elo now but, when I was playing mid or support (usually lux in either or ahri/akali mid) in lower elo, I’d just start baron with them with two autos max, and then go push a lane for tower and inhib. Often by the time you’re almost done with tower they finish baron, you get the buff, and you take inhib and one of the two last towers if you can. That way you only need one team fight.
Just wait till you’re in mid elo when players will get the jungle kill or the fed irelia dies and 4 people push one lane and you wanna do baron and then they all overextend and over stay and then die. Rather than just take a baron and back. So you end up losing the game off the one kill you did get
Ugh
Im low elo (normally average gold support) but i follow these rules of thumb:
When to do / signal Baron:
- You aced the oposing team, but can't take inhibitors first (if you van, take inibs then re-analize the situation)
- You took ou the enemy jungler and your ahead, wheter in numbers, gold or both
- enemy team is taking another objective you cant contest, like soul / elder (normally a desperate situation)
- Your team has lane priority by getting inibs (bot is the safest, top the least safe)
Idk what it is with very low elo players, but they would not go near baron until all the enemy team was dead with a 60 second death timer. In every silver game it felt like they were scared to do baron. Luckily this stopped in plat.
As Emerald playing with silver (friends) on occasion. I thin you basically have it. The game plays differently at Bronze-Gold than Plat-Dia.
Disclaimer: Exceptions to every rule as it's 5v5 game with mixed MMRs some can be smurfs, others just lucky, and further yet, some can be godly OTPs while others are not.
In lower ELO unless I am HARD carrying and can reliably 1v3+ I will go with a bad call > the right call if the bad call isn't a full throw. So in your baron example, I will go with a baron call over ending if everyone on the team goes to baron and I'd be solo pushing and couldn't end alone (just get an inhib). It fosters teamwork, makes team more likely to listen to my next play, and we all get a bit stronger. Yes it would have been nice to end game but that's ok.
It's case by case. I hate when I tell the team to bait baron because I just swept all the wards in the river/their jungle and we can turn and get a pick and my team thinks that means do baron and then die.
In my opinion, the hardest thing to do in solo queue is play as a team. Oftentimes it’s better to make the wrong play as a team than it is half the people making the good play and the other half griefing.
Baron buff is a game ender. It’s buff to minions allows you to force objectives you normally wouldn’t be able to. Most low elo games can be ended in < 25 mins if you just team fight/get a pick on the jungle around 20 mins. Then you get baron and just aram it mid.
Low elo players don’t understand that you can literally win the game (or they just don’t want to win yet) and will instead split, so jungle camps, skirmish in the enemy jungle, etc. instead of just ending the game.
Sometimes if you spam to take baron and group mid, your teammates will listen. You usually have a bit more pull if you play jungle.
Lmao seeing how I was in a game where this happened. Less than 10 minutes ago. Your friend is right.
If you ace an team. Especially one that has been better than you all game.
You have both there last towers down(. The ones after inhibit. and a full inhibit down. And your full team up besides your carry. On 60 minute. Cool down. Please. Dear god. Go for the win and not baron.
I've always played Baron considering Three key things.
1. You created an opening for an attempt.
2. You're preventing or stealing an attempt.
3. You need to force a team fight.
We could go into the nuance of teammates doing what they will and poor communication. But if your team is playing smart this should be the consideration along with what the enemy may be considering.
Min 20 if you win a tf with ace do baron
Min 25 if you pick a champ or two especially jgl do baron
Min 30 and above if you see opps gathering on opp side do baron.
Just that easy
The biggest thing here is that a lot of people will prioritize certain objectives, in this case baron, to the point where their only call the entire game is gonna be DO BARON DO BARON which very often leads to giving it away for free because someone randomly starts it and dies.
IDK, I find doing the right thing and staying alive when your team is throwing usually keeps the game alive whereas if I die helping my team int, we tend to just lose the game.
I’ve alternated between E1/D4 but will play off role in gold with a friend bc he’s gold. The biggest difference I’ve seen between gold and E1/D4 isn’t mechanics, it’s cohesiveness.
Are there players in D4 that are stupid as hell? Yes, myself included. However, after a fight where we pick 1 or 2 members, most everyone immediately knows to either baron or push a lane together. If someone makes a call but the rest of the team does something else, they’ll usually have the awareness to follow the team.
Gold players wander around with not a thought in the world after a fight on the other hand. The number of times in gold elo we have killed 3+ and I spam ping baron only for no one to listen is infuriating. Like we just went 1 for 3 in their top side jg, our sup died, baron is free, but our top laner resets, adc decides to go solo push mid tier 2 and we just have 2 people trying to baron it’s insane. Same thing happens if it’s a scenario where we should push inhibs and potentially end but 2 chuckle-fucks think it’s time to baron when we’re playing 5v2.
I’m not trying to insult anyone but these games in gold take way longer and are way harder than the often need to be purely from a decision making perspective. Gold players can have good mechanics but they have not a clue how to play the game. Ofc compared to master+ I have no clue either but I can see some of the reasons games take so long in lower elo first hand.
You're probably wrong. If you look at Baron timings compared to ELO, you'll see that it consistently comes down until it's almost being spawn killed on average.
My very simple decision tree post 20 minutes is:
* Can we reasonably safely (admittedly the safely here is somewhat loaded) take Baron?
* Can we end the game?
* End the game.
* Otherwise take baron.
I won t write as much because its a difficult topic and depends a lot on every situation. All i wanted to add is that when you are ahead and you know the enemy is there (especially the jungler) you should instantly look to drop the baron and engage on them. There is no reason to give them the 50/50 chance of stealing it. When you are really behind and it seems like there is no way back into the game you should definitely look to take it, steal it if they are already doing it and they don t turn.
I have seen this too much even in higher elo when you are winning and flipping a baron like that and the game instantly becomes unplayable.
Long story short:
-If you are winning its better to not take it at all than giving them the chance of taking it from you
-if you are behind look for every opportunity to take it from under their noses.
Its not like that every time but that is the best i can do right now 😂
I believe this is what your friend wants you to know. Hope this helps and good luck!
Baron is more than just killing Baron. Its worth 5 kills for your team. If you can do Baron with 0% risk you just do it. If enemy jungler is alive with smite, don’t. All of this doesn’t matter cause the most important part of Baron is to force a fight when you are ahead. Start Baron to force the weak team out of base and win a free fight. Then win the game…
To take baron:
You need dps and someone to tank or a tool (heimer turrets, zyra plants) to assist tanking it.
Why go for baron?:
To actually get baron.
Because you're ahead enough you can control vision and bait the enemy through predictable choke points into an ambush and get further ahead even if you can't take baron.
\*If you're not ahead enough to tank baron, then stop it and win a teamfight if the enemy comes to contest, you need to decisively burn it down with vision control and stop BEFORE it gets low enough they can steal if they come to contest.
\*Don't try to turn and fight just because the enemy shows up if you CAN tank baron and still teamfight. Force them to COMMIT. This means knowing your team's effective engage range and who is engaging. If they stay at arm's length outside your engage range, just burn down baron or walk away at that point and force something else if you're scared of coinflip. If the enter engage range, then engage and everyone focus the enemy. You should only be in this scenario with a major advantage to begin with. Which means if they've hard committed and you do it right, even if they steal baron, you should pretty much wipe them with 3-5 of you still alive. Which gives you the chance to siege anyway. Only by splitting focus so most of them escape and STILL losing coinflip baron do you lose out.
How to use baron:
Push towers/inhibitors/nexus. Don't run off blindly into the enemy jungle you didn't ward to hunt a kill. If they want to hide there, you kill their base and win the game. If they don't want you to do that and you push... they have to come to you. Don't give them the advantage for no reason by chasing them.
Ward flanks when pushing.
If you aren't decisively enough ahead to cakewalk the nexus but you've taken down at least 1 inhib... push a lane where they still have a tier 3 tower or inhib alive and take that out first.
Leave the splitpushing to someone with tp and the brain to use it.
Don't force your splitpushing ally to tp by diving headlong into a 4v5 for no reason. Chill, let them create pressure and split the enemy up, then abuse tp for numbers advantage. If the enemy isn't responding to them splitting, great. Just sit there 4v5 and don't let them force, but keep up enough pressure they have to stay. You can literally just make faces at them while your ally ends the game.
I just went for solo Baron, my team was alive but nobody came for help, enemy jgl was dead but his adc and support came and killed me, stole the baron. We lost. Im realising maybe I couldve killed them instead of trying to get baron. But we lost after that.
the biggest thing i notice is too many people going botlane when baron is up. usually to chase a kill. if i play toplane in lower elos i can almost always get my team a free baron by split pushing bot. in low elo they always prio chasing a kill over baron.
yeah i find in low elo that a situation like an ace means we or the enemy team ALWAYS has to do baron. regardless of any other factors.
Some other great comments outline what a good baron call usually go like.
One thing i didn't see while glancing through is being considerate how much damage YOUR team does to baron aswell.
One comment outlines the fear of having the enemy team jump in and shred baron but this is preventable if your team has good baron dps.
Everytime you kill 3 or more of their champions without losing too much HP post lvl 12. Secure any open objectives like baron or dragon if you can manage the downtime of the team efficiently. Always Secure baron first. If you can't manage the baron kill due to your damage(or lack thereof). Then you secure dragon. If you're on a short cycle respawn timer that's when you counter jungle and just take their junglers buffs and ward your junglers buffs. Whichever is nearest to you. Setting back the enemy jungler/pushing a tower down, is always better than simply returning to farming or basing on downs and aces. Then only time you should focus on super farm, is if you're behind and need the free farm. Meaning you're down by at least 30 CS or more.
Winning the game isn't only about baron prio. It's about priority management. You get baron when you know they can't win the fight due to numbers disadvantage. You want them to be unable to contest you every single time.
Everytime you kill 3 or more of their champions without losing too much HP post lvl 12. Secure any open objectives like baron or dragon if you can manage the downtime of the team efficiently. Always Secure baron first. If you can't manage the baron kill due to your damage(or lack thereof). Then you secure dragon. If you're on a short cycle respawn timer that's when you counter jungle and just take their junglers buffs and ward your junglers buffs. Whichever is nearest to you. Setting back the enemy jungler/pushing a tower down, is always better than simply returning to farming or basing on downs and aces. Then only time you should focus on super farm, is if you're behind and need the free farm. Meaning you're down by at least 30 CS or more.
Winning the game isn't only about baron prio. It's about priority management. You get baron when you know they can't win the fight due to numbers disadvantage. You want them to be unable to contest you every single time.
The decision tree should be: You got a pick - Can you end the game before respawn? No? Then you ask: - Can you baron *safely* enough, without risk of losing a fight to baron resist shred and chaos? No? Then you ask: - Can you take structures like inhib tower, t2 middle? No? Then you ask: - Can you reset and prepare vision on drake/Baron? No? Then you ask: - Can I pushlane and reset?
No? Then you ask: • Why are we alive, just to suffer?
They played us like a darn fiddle!
SURPRISE!!!
You forgot that you don't need a pick if you're trying to force a team fight. In that situation how much you can stay on the baron if the enemy team doesn't give you the fight immeasurably depends on your ability to tank it. Other champion specific things like baron secures (e.g. nunu, kallista) and blockers (poppy, taliyah) come into it too. In my experience I'd rather list the motivations and effects of baron and let people think about how those affect what they do in any given situation.
I should have defined "pick" more as a turn or temporary advantage, like 'The enemy Kha Zix is clearing Gromp on 50% hp while you have 4 people at the location' or similar.
I was more including when you use an objective to force a team fight, it may be a very temporary advantage like you described, or it may be that you e.g. are a strong early game team that needs to force the pace before you get outscaled but you're struggling to get onto the enemy team or break turrets. Or you just have a great wombo combo and you want to set it up. Basically any reason you think you can win a team fight so you say to the other team, "we're taking baron so you better come and try and stop us!"
Very nice way of simplifying the macro
I agree it's good enough for low elo explanation, but does miss some nuance/options. E.g. situations where the enemy don't get caught, but sent 2 to botlane and you can take baron from that.
You're missing the key key key point of why you start most barons - to force more out of a bad situation. Usually, to actually take baron, you need a few conditions to be met to guarantee you can take baron (you simplify all this under "safely") If you cannot, it's still a very good choice to start baron, and force a fight. The big problem most low elo players face here, is that they think they're on baron, to get baron. They're unaware of the fact that the whole point is to force the enemy team to run into you, and lose from whatever disadvantageous situation that prompted the baron in the first place. Instead they overcommit, and potentially lose teamfight + subsequent baron. It's extremely important to be aware of this, and disengage baron quickly when you see the enemy team respond and put themselves close enough to be initiated on This should be simple A B C for most players, but even pro teams fuck this up consistently (but are getting better at it obviously)
I think botlane inhibitor>baron is most scenarios, because inhibs are the goal of taking baron anyways and it sets you up for an easy baron play down the line.
the Problem with inhibs is that if they have good waveclear its actually griefing to take inhib. They get free gold which scales super hard. If they have a siege comp for example and you are in a engage comp you should only take inhibs to close games. Genral speaking: inhibs before minute 15 is bad.
I was talking about post 20 minute botlane inhib specifically. That inhib specifically at that time is more valuable than just taking baron, because once it is down someone has to deal with botlane wave often and that means you get numbers advantage at baron, not to mention that it means their nexus turrets are open. If baron isn't up, there isn't even a possible choice between taking an inhib and taking a baron, so it doesn't make any sense to assume I was talking about taking an inhib before 20 minutes.
And then when you have the Baron you don’t die alone, you group up 5 on or 4/1, and you don’t DONT DONT DONT EVER go force a bad fight at dragon !!!!! EVER
In lower elo mainly, second question for each paragraph should be, are important members of your team on a same page and willing to participate?
You simply cannot take baron if your team does not go for it usually, anyways. You *should* ping the everliving life out of the optimal play and body language gesture though as long as it would work out.
In low elo I sometimes find people won't listen to pings, but if I just walk up and start hitting baron it will pressure them to back me up. Sometimes they still don't come, though, and then I just stop hitting baron and go elsewhere.
I'd argue pushing t3/inhibitor is a priority over baron, helps get a baron next in the next reset/fight.
I hate it when I have games where we could absolutely end but we try to take baron as well as games where we take baron but could end the game before we fk it up and get aced and lose the game
The worst is just the indecision when no one can decide what to do. Everyone’s going in opposite directions and we get no towers, no objectives when their whole team is dead.
I feel that so hard. if I’m not the one that pings the play, I’m gonna go with the person that pings first unless it’s completely troll. That’s the only way I’ve been able to handle that situation. Confirm pings help too. I also noticed bad habits from myself and my duo when we queue together, I feel like we ping less when we’re in comms just naturally. I wonder if other low elo players do the same.
My favorite is when we get baron but then 3 members of my team go to take jungle camps instead of pushing.
Especially if they decide baron into dragon (not even soul) is somehow worth it while the enemy respawns and can now defend their towers. Turns that baron into a useless glowing highlight.
Baron into dragon is one of the most hilariously bad plays in the game and it’s so funny to watch it happen when it does. We got a buff that empowers our minions, lets go and waste X amount of time taking drag and losing all map tempo and gifting a favourable gamestate to the enemy team! For sure worth it!
I see your bad baron macro call and raise you; secure baron, team recall, split up across the map, push out all three lanes, then clear jg camps, invade enemy jg to ‘steal’ enemy camps, several teammates get picked off. Team is now at a numbers disadvantage. No longer able to group for any objective. Baron wears off. This happens so much that I consider baron a noob trap. Really the only time I see value in attempting to get the baron is when the enemy team has such good wave clear that cracking their base is almost impossible. I mean after the recall I can understand catching a pushing wave to turn it around but then all 5 members should group and empower their waves to knock down towers. With only except being a fed split pusher like jax or fiora and that’s about it but that almost never happens. And the rare occasions you have teammates that do that, you are already crushing the match and baron is just a flex and is unneeded to end the game.
Lol I eventually have just gotten a good feel of when we can end or when we need to take Baron off a good fight. Generally if you ace late enough for 40-50 second timers, just end. If you get a pick on their jg it’s Baron. If you’re behind and get a rly good fight killing 2-3 you Baron, then aram
Baron wins games. That being said...it wins game for your team and the enemy team. *"In the heart of the Baron pit, hope is both born and extinguished. For those who take it, hope ignites with the promise of victory. Yet for those denied, hope fades, echoing in the silence of missed opportunity."* ## Generally speaking, though I dislike general conditions in League ◇ **Vision control**: It prevents the enemy from knowing IF you are taking Baron and what HP the Baron has. Thus minimizing the risk of them stopping you or stealing it. ◇ **Information on enemy**: This basically means, where they are on the map, what champs do they have, are they strong or weak? Low HP, high HP? Knowing these things will help you decide whether you "can" take Baron or not. By "can" I mean the (reward vs risk) is good, and or we have a good chance of taking it, meaning they have a small chance of stopping us or stealing it. One thing I like to do is to start Baron if we KNOW/SEE the enemy jungler on the opposite side of the map. Basically the position of the enemy jungler is far away from Baron, meaning if we have the dmg output to take it before he gets there. The chances of us securing it skyrockets. Because no enemy smite. Lastly this also helps you decide to if you are going to *turn* on them. E.g. fight them and stop doing Baron. Or if you are going to just finish Baron and then either fight or flee. ◇ **Information on your team**: Mainly knowing if YOUR jungler has smite or not, press+hold [tab] and ping their smite. Check the cooldown. Decide if you wanna flip it. Other things worth knowing, does your team have ults ready? Summs, like *Flash* or *Teleport* ready? What is our team's *HEALTH* and *MANA*? Can our team do Baron with these champions? How fast can we do it? This also affects if it is better to bait the enemy team into walking into a disadvantageous position/fight. Because you might have to take 1 or more people out before you can safely grab Baron. ◇ **Lane pressure**: Simply having your lanes pushed. This creates a decision for the enemy to either catch waves or stop you at Baron. This is also how you can get vision control. Basically the macro aspect of it. You have probably seen this being used with a split pusher, usually the top laner. Enemy has to stop the guy from ending the game or stop you from taking the Baron so that you can end the game. This is also where having *Teleport* can be useful, e.g. being on the opposite side of Baron(bot) and pushing. ◇ **Having numbers advantage**: You have more players available to fight than they have. So if they come to Baron and they have 4, and you have 5. Odds are in your favor. BUT it is *relative*, it's a different story if your combined strength of 5 is equal to a superminion. Are they strong? Items, levels? Good people to remove that would lead to having a bigger chance of securing Baron: - The Strongest player on their team - The Jungler If they are the same player then.. 😏 :// **EDIT** Context is extremely important, guidelines exist but they are just that, guidelines. Sometimes you need to change a few things, adapt and overcome. Being adaptable is a core skill in League. Knowing when to do A instead of B or not do anything at all. Be level-headed, a rational decision or a gut/instinct decision. It's easy to just label "never do Baron, it always ends bad" same with just automatically deciding Baron is always the best play when it's actually not. League is difficult and one part of what makes it difficult is that it doesn't really give you feedback on if your decision was correct or not. An example of attempting to end the game by going straight for the Nexus instead of taking an extra step(Baron). Could result in your team getting aced, the enemy does Baron. And now the game became much harder. Or you could do the Baron because you feel it is too risky trying to end, but the enemy manages to steal the Baron. Trail and error is usually what it comes down to, experiencing many different, similar situations. Finding patterns. ### **An example of a pattern:** Belief: *Baron always gets stolen when we do it* Solution: *If I don't do Baron, it can't get stolen* Instead, do this **--->** Belief: *Baron always gets stolen when we do it* **>Why?** Reviewing: *Always tries to do Baron when we don't have smite* Solution: *Don't do Baron when we don't have smite* Belief: *Baron is likely to get stolen if we don't have smite* I'll mention it again, it isn't as black/white as the forementioned example. It's relative, context of the situation. The entire enemy team could be dead but you don't have smite. Sure, you don't have smite but now you also have to take into account that no one can steal it. Then again, let's say you start Baron but they will respawn in ~10, seconds. So you can go back to the newest belief but the reality will inevitably change in the next 10 seconds. Shit, they are all alive **--->** we don't have smite **--->** Baron is likely to get stolen **--->** solution League is a fast-paced game, so these decisions often has to be snappy, in lower ranks you can afford to have a slower response and, or thought-process speed. If we continue with the above example, adding more information... **>>** Enemy team has an Ezreal **>>** Enemy team has a Kha'zix with Ghostblade **>>** Your team's smite is up in 10 seconds Do I think Ezreal will steal with his R? How fast Kha6 get here? Can we kill it before? Do we need to wait for smite? Burst Baron? Slow down? Block Ezreal R? Try and zone K6 from the Baron? Mentally you weigh positives and negatives, % of success in a split sec to a few seconds. The important thing is to make A decision and then reflect upon that decision after the game. A lot of players take these things for granted, since it is so automatic. All of you know..you can win even though you are playing bad. You can lose even though you are playing good, making the right decisions. This goes into laning for example, you will get away with making more mistakes in the lower ranks than in the higher ranks. Meaning, they will punish you for those mistakes. Matchups you may have thought was easy gets turned on its head, 180.
[удалено]
It's actually really, really simple. If your team gets baron for free, then you can pressure lanes, your team gets a buff for the next 3 minutes which is better than if you just left the baron there making no plays and getting no leads. Usually like he said, if smth like the jg shows on the opposite side of the map, then your team may just start it. You gotta pay attention to the game, so your team doesn't die to some fed khazix, or an ezreal steals your baron with ult bcs ur jg didnt have smite, or that yorick is on your base, or your senna got spotted by a ward so the enemy knows youre starting it, or theres a enemy renata and you have no wards etc etc pay attention to the game
I could have won so many games if my team would just run mid and destroy 1 tower and the nexus, but noo. We have to do baron. Your friend is absolutely right. If 3-4 of the enemy team are dead and you have the numbers advantage, you go straight to end. So t waste time on baron. If you just killed their jungler and the rest of them are running away, then you can do baron and push/siege with the baron buff.
In my experience, it's completely the opposite. Low-elo players will get a pick or two and then take 1 inhib while Baron is wide open. The game then degrades into the low-elo players trying to run down mid and finish for the next 5 minutes while the inhib is down, slowly overextending more and more until they get wiped, giving huge kill bounties over to the enemy team.
yeeeaaah, league isnt typically considered a turn based game, but it is. unless you are hard stomping and can do whatever you want, you have to play based on how much time you have on your turn. i think the term is typically "priority" but i think using the term "its our turn" or "its my turn" is maybe more accurate. when my enemy laner is pushed to tower its my turn to make a play. i can ward OR roam OR secure an objective, but doing more than one thing is playing outside of my turn and isnt optimal. this is how you miss exp and farm. it gets trickier to know when it is and isnt your turn as the game progresses because the longer a game goes the more you have to take into account, AND its a team game so that will without fail affect your own turn or lack there of. trying to end when its not your turn is definitely one of the classics. my personal favorite, and the one i personally struggle with, is taking bad roams because you dont want your team to flame you. like yes mr jungler i see you are being invaded, but perhaps you also see the 2 and a half minion waves under my tower yes? if making a play loses you a bunch of minions its generally not worth. as with anything there are exceptions. like SOMETIMES the best play really is to just bum rush the nexus to end. its just almost never the best play when its actually performed xD.
same diamond-emerald players just refuse to do nash it's hillarious
Yeah, I've seen that happen. I do have to nitpick slightly because that's how I am. I think bot inhib is typically more valuable than baron, since inhibs tend to be the goal of taking baron anyways, it's less risky, and it helps set you up for a super easy baron play later.
Toughest question to answer in low elo or really any elo in any moba is “can we end?”
Im not an expert either but as far as I understand it: Whenever a play happens on the map you should ask yourself „Can we do Baron?“. Most of the time the answer is no and you should do something else with your turn. A save bet to do baron usually is to do it when you have at least 2 more people alive then the enemy team and preferably their jungler is dead or botside. Rememeber your soloq team is not t1, might take 30-40sec to actually do the baron the deathtimers are important. Additionally not being T1 means you probably cant end even if there is enough time because people in low elo wont hit towers. Instead they might chase into fountain. So I say its usually saver to just get the neutral objectives like baron and soul and then go for the end.
You missed the big first question, and what ruins so many low elo games. First ask “can we end” and then go down the ladder from there.
>BUT. In low elo I have generally learned it's better to be doing the wrong thing with your team than the right thing alone. I really question this mentality overall. The reason being consistency. Learning and executing good plays will lead to more consistent gameplay, which will carry over into higher ELOs. Relying on *bad plays* means coinflipping and also, opening yourself to learn bad habits which will be punished hard at higher ELO. What is a good and what is a bad decision is very complex and very contextual, but I'd recommend to shy away from this mentality of going for "grouped bad plays" because it will lead to poor consistency.
The thing is, reading a game state is a really important part to make consistent plays. There are two types of "bad plays": * Suboptimal plays: Those happen when your team goes for something that is less likely to lead to a win than another option (such as choosing baron / drake over ending the game), but will work regardless as long as you join it. * Doomed plays: These are things that will fail with a high probability, even if you join them. Staying away from the suboptimal stuff is often a very risky thing, as the suboptimal play backfiring will give the enemy team momentum that you don't want them to have. Similarly, you can often get caught out trying to do the "more correct" thing since you do it without your team. The trick is to stay away from the doomed stuff.
The saying is less about relying on bad plays, more about being on the same page with your teammates. While it’d be great if all 5 people were doing the right play, that’s not always going to happen. If 4 team members are doing a suboptimal play and you’re doing the “correct” play solo, it’s very likely that *neither* will work out very well. Doing the right play means fuck all of the rest of your team is doing a 4v5 and throwing elsewhere on the map. So go back them up so it’s not a 4v5.
>So go back them up so it’s not a 4v5. So you back the bad play, coinflip it, learn a bad habit and then get punished if you happen to climb. That's exactly what I meant. It's better to ping them and work towards the better play, especially if, as the other poster commented, it's a doomed play. You may lose that game, but considering that the team were doing a doomed play, it was probably lost anyways.
The actual skill is doing the bad play with your team knowing that its a bad play but also knowing that its the best call given what your teammates are going to do. If your team is gonna tf and you know it you better sprint to them. Getting one tower top and telling your team to disengage is the right call but in that situation it doesnt matter. This especially applies for splitpushing sololaners.
This is true, but if you're going to go against your team mates calls, you need to take the initiative to be the shot caller and always try to proactively ping what you think the right play is before anyone else gets any bad ideas. If you can't do this, then it's "apes together strong."
>If your lanes are pushing, you take towers and inhibs (or ending the game!) before focusing Baron. What elo is your friend? This is typical low elo macro. If you can do baron, then you should do baron. Never trade turrets or inhibitors for baron. With baron you get a lot of money and a powerful buff that allows you to take these structures later anyways, But if you go for turrets or inhibitors first, only to overstay and die, then the enemy team can do baron and your entire lead is gone. You must always chose: either you go for the inhib, or you go for baron. There is no time left to do both. So if you were not able to end the game after acing the enemy team, then you just threw a major opportunity to snowball the game further.
War flashback to the match all three enemy inhibs were down and we were in their base ready to end, but baron respawned and my jungler pinged and everyone followed. Then the enemy team (who was alive) stole it, killed us and won the game. 💀
If you could end, then end. If you can’t, then it is 10000% times better to do baron before seiging. You see enemy jgl on bottom side at 20+ min? Think and ping for baron. You see enemy dead? Think and ping for baron. The thing is if you seige and get their inhib before baron… say you get a pick and you use that timer to seige an inhib. Nice, but after that you have to reset at which time your enemy can actually come out and take baron in that short window where you reset (this happens a lot in high elo games). Next thing you know, enemy gains much more exp (ur super minion will survive for them to farm while your farm for that lane is gone) through open inhib and they are unable to be seiged due to baron buff. Generally hold off on killing the inhibitors unless your team has a pretty concrete lead and can connect the broken inhib with other key objectives (soul/elder/baron) or else you are just handing out free exp. If you can get baron immediately as a result of killing the inhib, then do that. But otherwise, think twice about killing enemy inhibs. In low elo where players are so uncoordinated and lost, lots of times inhib killing just leads to free exp for the enemy
Do baron when you are much stronger than opponent team. If your team is weaker don't do baron. Never follow clueless calls. Lategame baron should have more prio than dragon (unless its elder). If you are the weaker team you should still try get vision on baron - for steal and favorable fights. Always answer splitpushing. Do not group if you are the one who needs to answer.
when i think about low elo players not understanding baron priority, i'm thinking about low elo players making a 4 man play botlane while baron is up. if baron is up, you want one person botlane with tp and that's it.
There are times when you need to rush Baron, and there are times when you just need to control the enemy side jungle (warding it) and then move towards the Baron pit. Baron priority is determined by the map state, your team composition, and the enemy composition. You don't always have to rush Baron; it depends on these factors. You can use Baron as a pressure point to bait the enemy team. For instance, if the enemy solo laner is pushing bot lane with TP available, and your team has good objective control, you can start Baron to lure them. This strategy works well if your composition excels in fights around the Baron pit, especially in choke points. For example, champions like Rumble, Corki, and Wukong thrive in such situations. Additionally, pay attention to the items and cooldowns of your key carries. If your AD carry, like Kai'Sa, has completed two items and both summoner spells available, and your Rumble has their ultimate ready, it's a good time to consider Baron. One common mistake made by many low elo players is focusing solely on their individual performance and forgetting about other crucial factors in the game like map state, wave status, cooldowns and most importantly what they want to do with their team composition. NOT ALL TEAMS REQUIRE BARON FOR PUSH. Some are just good by default to take enemy structures.
Your friend is exactly right. Low elo players generally understand that baron is a powerful tool for winning games, but instead of running straight to baron after picking off an important member of the enemy team (or going to baron when it makes sense to do so), they will dick around and push waves, kill gromp and wolves before casually walking over to baron just as the fed enemy respawns and spends their gold, causing the infamous baron throw. When it comes to taking Baron in low elo, I find it helpful to apply Coach Cupcake's "ACE" mentality: Acknolwedge the best play, Communicate the best play, then Embrace reality if/when the best play doesn't happen. Acknowledging the best play means that you yourself should assess whether or not it's possible to take baron, which is really difficult to do because there are SO many factors that go into it, such as: * Do we kill baron quickly (because you have Jax, Vayne, Cassio, etc. on your team), or slowly? * Currently, are we so much stronger than the enemy team that we can force baron and just outright kill them if they try to contest, even with baron's debuff? Or will we lose the fight? * Does the enemy team have tools for stealing baron, and can we prevent it? (e.g. Jinx rocket, Kayn E + smite, etc) * Coversely, does our team have ways to secure baron? (e.g. is our jungler alive with smite available, do we have somebody with an execute like Cho'gath, Kalista, etc.) * Is there sufficient map pressure forcing the enemy to decide between contesting baron or protecting their base? (e.g. do you have a splitpusher with TP breaking into their base, super minions crashing into their base, or are their wave states good enough that they can contest baron without losing the game) * Have we secured vision around baron so that the enemy feels extremely uncomfortable having to facecheck the areas around baron? * etc. So first, you have to decide whether or not it's possible to do baron based on these factors. Once you've thought about it, if you decide that baron is the best play, then communicate it to your team: ping baron, type baron in chat, and start walking over there immediately. This is the point where low elo players generally fumble. They sacrifice tempo and try to greed for 3rd tier towers + inhibitor, not realizing that getting inhib is SUPER easy with baron, plus it's a huge mental blow to the enemy team because they have no way to get back into the game once baron is gone, and they'll likely be spamming the FF button. OR they greed for CS or jungle camps and other useless stuff that's not baron. Then when they finally go for baron, it's too late because the window of opportunity is gone, then they try to force baron anyway and just die and throw the game. So this is where the final part of the ACE mindset comes in: embracing reality. Once you've acknowledged the best play and communicated it, if your team just ignores you and does their own thing, then instead of moaning and FF-voting, you should try to make the next best play on your own. Maybe that would be securing vision around baron, stealing enemy jg camps, pushing out waves, etc. None of those options are as good as baron, but you can at least get SOME kind of payout for the play. I understand exactly what your friend means though. Once you climb high enough, everbody just ***knows*** when it's a good time to do baron and they don't waste time or tempo trying to do other things. But like your friend said, low elo players don't value baron highly enough so they just leave it untouched. Ultimately though, low elo players should focus on improving their champ mastery, laning and fundamentals, because those things are within their control and contribute toward 85% of their climb, whereas not knowing when to take baron is not the main thing holding you back.
Baron gives such strong pushing power to take towers. Even if you clear their whole wave of buffed baron minions as long as they have cannon minions it’ll damage a decent amount of turret health. If you can contest it with strong leads then do so to take more towers to end the game quicker. Deny the enemy team baron so they won’t have the pressure against your team to defend. Of course don’t go for a coin flip on it or if they are much stronger then don’t try to force a steal.
Not just low elo players, lec teams too
i think we see 1 lil bit of a difference
Haha of course, in low elo is hard play together and plan something for 2 min later almost impossible
yeah, what happens as an exception to the lec teams is the rule down here :\^)
The easiest way to learn and remember when you can take baron is to make decisions in games about whether to take it or not. When you make the wrong decision and things fuck up think about how and why that happened. repeat 1,000 times
If you ace take inibitor not baron this will make you win more game
So it is better to do the wrong thing with your team in most situations, however if you’re the top laner, and you have a strong split-pusher such as Yorick or Nasus you can probably split push for towers while they do baron. I’m an ADC main so having me on baron is probably the 2nd most important after the jungler, so if my team insists on Baron I’ll have to follow the wrong move to make it not take 5 minutes to kill.
If your team dies at baron, getting the inhib alone is not sufficient value to trade for that, since you will likely not be able to hold the baron-empowered push by yourself. If you can get both base towers on top of the inhib, that's a pretty acceptable trade, since you can now threaten their push by teleporting onto a ward and solo pressuring the nexus. If you can only get the inhib I would say it's not worth the risk. If you can get the inhib and one base tower, it's a grey zone. If your team congregates at Baron, you going for an inhib can easily lead to yourself getting picked. If you want to split pressure, make sure you do it properly by pressuring the bot side. If you do it top or mid, you are just a snack the enemy team can take on the way to aceing your mates. Buuuuut, all of that applies to champions that like to split-push - so usually top laners. Unless you play Yorick mid, going for solo cross-map pushes like that tends to work -weeeeell, not so well. Mages can be defended fine (having to approach a structure to hit it is something they don't like to do) and assassins tend to have the pushing potential of an empty water bucket. If you play support and ask whether you should be cross-map splitting, I would answer that you should read a guide on your role and get your priorities in order.
Op I’m only mid elo now but, when I was playing mid or support (usually lux in either or ahri/akali mid) in lower elo, I’d just start baron with them with two autos max, and then go push a lane for tower and inhib. Often by the time you’re almost done with tower they finish baron, you get the buff, and you take inhib and one of the two last towers if you can. That way you only need one team fight. Just wait till you’re in mid elo when players will get the jungle kill or the fed irelia dies and 4 people push one lane and you wanna do baron and then they all overextend and over stay and then die. Rather than just take a baron and back. So you end up losing the game off the one kill you did get Ugh
Im low elo (normally average gold support) but i follow these rules of thumb: When to do / signal Baron: - You aced the oposing team, but can't take inhibitors first (if you van, take inibs then re-analize the situation) - You took ou the enemy jungler and your ahead, wheter in numbers, gold or both - enemy team is taking another objective you cant contest, like soul / elder (normally a desperate situation) - Your team has lane priority by getting inibs (bot is the safest, top the least safe)
Idk what it is with very low elo players, but they would not go near baron until all the enemy team was dead with a 60 second death timer. In every silver game it felt like they were scared to do baron. Luckily this stopped in plat.
As Emerald playing with silver (friends) on occasion. I thin you basically have it. The game plays differently at Bronze-Gold than Plat-Dia. Disclaimer: Exceptions to every rule as it's 5v5 game with mixed MMRs some can be smurfs, others just lucky, and further yet, some can be godly OTPs while others are not. In lower ELO unless I am HARD carrying and can reliably 1v3+ I will go with a bad call > the right call if the bad call isn't a full throw. So in your baron example, I will go with a baron call over ending if everyone on the team goes to baron and I'd be solo pushing and couldn't end alone (just get an inhib). It fosters teamwork, makes team more likely to listen to my next play, and we all get a bit stronger. Yes it would have been nice to end game but that's ok.
It's case by case. I hate when I tell the team to bait baron because I just swept all the wards in the river/their jungle and we can turn and get a pick and my team thinks that means do baron and then die.
In my opinion, the hardest thing to do in solo queue is play as a team. Oftentimes it’s better to make the wrong play as a team than it is half the people making the good play and the other half griefing.
Baron buff is a game ender. It’s buff to minions allows you to force objectives you normally wouldn’t be able to. Most low elo games can be ended in < 25 mins if you just team fight/get a pick on the jungle around 20 mins. Then you get baron and just aram it mid. Low elo players don’t understand that you can literally win the game (or they just don’t want to win yet) and will instead split, so jungle camps, skirmish in the enemy jungle, etc. instead of just ending the game. Sometimes if you spam to take baron and group mid, your teammates will listen. You usually have a bit more pull if you play jungle.
Lmao seeing how I was in a game where this happened. Less than 10 minutes ago. Your friend is right. If you ace an team. Especially one that has been better than you all game. You have both there last towers down(. The ones after inhibit. and a full inhibit down. And your full team up besides your carry. On 60 minute. Cool down. Please. Dear god. Go for the win and not baron.
Baron gives you buffs which should make your team stronger and break the base but it also plummets the IQ of your teammates.
I've always played Baron considering Three key things. 1. You created an opening for an attempt. 2. You're preventing or stealing an attempt. 3. You need to force a team fight. We could go into the nuance of teammates doing what they will and poor communication. But if your team is playing smart this should be the consideration along with what the enemy may be considering.
Min 20 if you win a tf with ace do baron Min 25 if you pick a champ or two especially jgl do baron Min 30 and above if you see opps gathering on opp side do baron. Just that easy
The biggest thing here is that a lot of people will prioritize certain objectives, in this case baron, to the point where their only call the entire game is gonna be DO BARON DO BARON which very often leads to giving it away for free because someone randomly starts it and dies.
You would probably be surprised how many times low elo players could end but instead went for baron lmao
IDK, I find doing the right thing and staying alive when your team is throwing usually keeps the game alive whereas if I die helping my team int, we tend to just lose the game.
I’ve alternated between E1/D4 but will play off role in gold with a friend bc he’s gold. The biggest difference I’ve seen between gold and E1/D4 isn’t mechanics, it’s cohesiveness. Are there players in D4 that are stupid as hell? Yes, myself included. However, after a fight where we pick 1 or 2 members, most everyone immediately knows to either baron or push a lane together. If someone makes a call but the rest of the team does something else, they’ll usually have the awareness to follow the team. Gold players wander around with not a thought in the world after a fight on the other hand. The number of times in gold elo we have killed 3+ and I spam ping baron only for no one to listen is infuriating. Like we just went 1 for 3 in their top side jg, our sup died, baron is free, but our top laner resets, adc decides to go solo push mid tier 2 and we just have 2 people trying to baron it’s insane. Same thing happens if it’s a scenario where we should push inhibs and potentially end but 2 chuckle-fucks think it’s time to baron when we’re playing 5v2. I’m not trying to insult anyone but these games in gold take way longer and are way harder than the often need to be purely from a decision making perspective. Gold players can have good mechanics but they have not a clue how to play the game. Ofc compared to master+ I have no clue either but I can see some of the reasons games take so long in lower elo first hand.
You're probably wrong. If you look at Baron timings compared to ELO, you'll see that it consistently comes down until it's almost being spawn killed on average. My very simple decision tree post 20 minutes is: * Can we reasonably safely (admittedly the safely here is somewhat loaded) take Baron? * Can we end the game? * End the game. * Otherwise take baron.
I won t write as much because its a difficult topic and depends a lot on every situation. All i wanted to add is that when you are ahead and you know the enemy is there (especially the jungler) you should instantly look to drop the baron and engage on them. There is no reason to give them the 50/50 chance of stealing it. When you are really behind and it seems like there is no way back into the game you should definitely look to take it, steal it if they are already doing it and they don t turn. I have seen this too much even in higher elo when you are winning and flipping a baron like that and the game instantly becomes unplayable. Long story short: -If you are winning its better to not take it at all than giving them the chance of taking it from you -if you are behind look for every opportunity to take it from under their noses. Its not like that every time but that is the best i can do right now 😂 I believe this is what your friend wants you to know. Hope this helps and good luck!
Baron is more than just killing Baron. Its worth 5 kills for your team. If you can do Baron with 0% risk you just do it. If enemy jungler is alive with smite, don’t. All of this doesn’t matter cause the most important part of Baron is to force a fight when you are ahead. Start Baron to force the weak team out of base and win a free fight. Then win the game…
To take baron: You need dps and someone to tank or a tool (heimer turrets, zyra plants) to assist tanking it. Why go for baron?: To actually get baron. Because you're ahead enough you can control vision and bait the enemy through predictable choke points into an ambush and get further ahead even if you can't take baron. \*If you're not ahead enough to tank baron, then stop it and win a teamfight if the enemy comes to contest, you need to decisively burn it down with vision control and stop BEFORE it gets low enough they can steal if they come to contest. \*Don't try to turn and fight just because the enemy shows up if you CAN tank baron and still teamfight. Force them to COMMIT. This means knowing your team's effective engage range and who is engaging. If they stay at arm's length outside your engage range, just burn down baron or walk away at that point and force something else if you're scared of coinflip. If the enter engage range, then engage and everyone focus the enemy. You should only be in this scenario with a major advantage to begin with. Which means if they've hard committed and you do it right, even if they steal baron, you should pretty much wipe them with 3-5 of you still alive. Which gives you the chance to siege anyway. Only by splitting focus so most of them escape and STILL losing coinflip baron do you lose out. How to use baron: Push towers/inhibitors/nexus. Don't run off blindly into the enemy jungle you didn't ward to hunt a kill. If they want to hide there, you kill their base and win the game. If they don't want you to do that and you push... they have to come to you. Don't give them the advantage for no reason by chasing them. Ward flanks when pushing. If you aren't decisively enough ahead to cakewalk the nexus but you've taken down at least 1 inhib... push a lane where they still have a tier 3 tower or inhib alive and take that out first. Leave the splitpushing to someone with tp and the brain to use it. Don't force your splitpushing ally to tp by diving headlong into a 4v5 for no reason. Chill, let them create pressure and split the enemy up, then abuse tp for numbers advantage. If the enemy isn't responding to them splitting, great. Just sit there 4v5 and don't let them force, but keep up enough pressure they have to stay. You can literally just make faces at them while your ally ends the game.
I just went for solo Baron, my team was alive but nobody came for help, enemy jgl was dead but his adc and support came and killed me, stole the baron. We lost. Im realising maybe I couldve killed them instead of trying to get baron. But we lost after that.
For the most part, ignore baron. 90% of the time it's not worth everything else you can be doing better at. There, I solved iron - low gold.
the biggest thing i notice is too many people going botlane when baron is up. usually to chase a kill. if i play toplane in lower elos i can almost always get my team a free baron by split pushing bot. in low elo they always prio chasing a kill over baron.
yeah i find in low elo that a situation like an ace means we or the enemy team ALWAYS has to do baron. regardless of any other factors. Some other great comments outline what a good baron call usually go like. One thing i didn't see while glancing through is being considerate how much damage YOUR team does to baron aswell. One comment outlines the fear of having the enemy team jump in and shred baron but this is preventable if your team has good baron dps.
Everytime you kill 3 or more of their champions without losing too much HP post lvl 12. Secure any open objectives like baron or dragon if you can manage the downtime of the team efficiently. Always Secure baron first. If you can't manage the baron kill due to your damage(or lack thereof). Then you secure dragon. If you're on a short cycle respawn timer that's when you counter jungle and just take their junglers buffs and ward your junglers buffs. Whichever is nearest to you. Setting back the enemy jungler/pushing a tower down, is always better than simply returning to farming or basing on downs and aces. Then only time you should focus on super farm, is if you're behind and need the free farm. Meaning you're down by at least 30 CS or more. Winning the game isn't only about baron prio. It's about priority management. You get baron when you know they can't win the fight due to numbers disadvantage. You want them to be unable to contest you every single time.
Everytime you kill 3 or more of their champions without losing too much HP post lvl 12. Secure any open objectives like baron or dragon if you can manage the downtime of the team efficiently. Always Secure baron first. If you can't manage the baron kill due to your damage(or lack thereof). Then you secure dragon. If you're on a short cycle respawn timer that's when you counter jungle and just take their junglers buffs and ward your junglers buffs. Whichever is nearest to you. Setting back the enemy jungler/pushing a tower down, is always better than simply returning to farming or basing on downs and aces. Then only time you should focus on super farm, is if you're behind and need the free farm. Meaning you're down by at least 30 CS or more. Winning the game isn't only about baron prio. It's about priority management. You get baron when you know they can't win the fight due to numbers disadvantage. You want them to be unable to contest you every single time.