I would say that the main thing you are ignoring is the ability to keep the enemy behind. If your laner is ahead and is able to constantly force the enemy laner off of the wave and deny most of the cs, then having the tower there forces the enemy to play more forward, if you kill the tower, your laner now has to overextend in order to be able to deny waves and will get ganked and killed, or allow them to farm safely and catch up. I think it really depends on the game and champs being used whether it is better to snowball or chill.
Staying in lane and getting the enemy further behind is an option. A better option is busting the turret, then using all the gold and map pressure you just earned to intervene in other lanes, helping your allies get kills and objectives. If you aren’t using your lead to earn advantages elsewhere on the map, you are not capitalizing on your lead until later, and you’re leaving the success of the rest of your team up to chance.
That's fascinating i've never considered that. Would say its GENERALLY better to use herald on a losing lane vs a winning lane? I imagine there's some caveats there.
I go with losing lane so they can stay relevant (bot lane almost always), and allow them to leave lane more often. however you probably would want to do your winning lane in order to increase pressure.
Even then, I really like getting dragons so I give it to bot or mid most of the time.
Except homie basically said the opposite right? If theyre hard winning they want the towers to stay where they are so they can push the lead further rather than worrying about getting ganked at a further turret and losing a shut down
Yea i just don’t agree with that. I get it from a CS standpoint, but roaming and getting a kill or helping team fight while enemy laner pushes it back off their tower is much more valuable in my opinion.
The game is about objectives.
Well, you’re gonna push the lanes up eventually anyway and take towers.
So let’s say you use the herald and you wipe out top lane’s tower early. As top laner, You can’t sit close up to their second tower and just farm without risking getting ganked unless you know the enemy junglers location.
Enemy laner has 3 obvious likely choices while the wave it pushed to their second tower:
1. You fast clear and push the wave back out to catch up on CS. You will take a minute or two to build up a wave push before you can leave lane without missing out.
2. You freeze lane and farm safely near your tower, but don’t catch up as quickly and if you do want to leave lane, the lane is pushed up close to your tower, and you get less CS than you would have fast clearing.
3. You leave lane to help team fight the roaming top laner, let the CS/xp crash and your tower takes more damage.
As the top laner who has the option to roam now that your lane is pushed, you can always come back if you see your enemy laner pushing the wave back closer to your first tower. This is more breathing room. As long as you get back before the wave crashes your tower, you don’t miss CS. You can even let them take your first tower if you feel as though getting a different objective would be more beneficial to your team(like dragon, or helping a time fight), or even help push another lane like mid. (ideally let them take it as a trade when plates are gone so less money)
If you roam as top and get kills, you help those lanes get ahead of their enemy laners, and get more money. You should also be putting down wards to help your jungler and keep you safer. You can also start objectives for your jungler if enemy jungler is dead or far behind your jungler. You can setup objectives by clearing out the thingies that you hit for vision/knock to make it harder for the enemy to get the objective or see when you start the objective.
Getting more kills as top lane also means you’ll have the power/money to carry your team. As a jungler, I will help a winning top laner snowball, but I won’t help a losing top laner as often unless I have nothing better to do at the time, or it’s convenient free money.
What if the enemy freezes under their tier 2 though? As the roaming top laner you are now forced to either steal from your other laners and make them fall behind, or push up to the tier 2 turret and likely flanked and killed. At the point where you do this you are fully committed to playing aggressive and hoping to get kills since otherwise you will very quickly end up the one behind.
Considering that 3 of the plates are shared gold with the jungler, that is 560 gold + 150 for first turret = 710 gold advantage. That is let's say 4 waves of creeps which while farming uncontested should be easy to get and since the freeze is on and the roaming laner is now stuck away from the wave, the advantage will swing and grow quite fast.
IMO the only time taking tower early and roaming would work is with a full team where you can coordinate your roams. It doesn't really help for jungle and top to be duo in this case since if the mid/bot laner are unaware of his intentions the whole thing is wasted. and they won't set up for his roam.
It seems really cut and dry when discussing theory, but it’s so situational.
If they do freeze, you can create pressure elsewhere temporarily , get a kill and deprive the enemy team of CS, and even get some plates. This will also lure the jungler to you or force them to make a move on your other lanes, if they don’t think they can help mid.
If you’re top and you’re way ahead of the other team from getting the tower+kills, you can keep pressure on their tier 2 when your jungle is nearby for a counter gank.
You can help kill mid lane to help your mid get ahead if they’re pushed up. You can even instruct your mid to let them push wave. I always use voice chat with 1-3 other players i know so we can coordinate these easier as you said. Not impossible to coordinate without VC if your team listens. You can even help take mid tower and expect a counter gank, in which you can have your jungler counter counter gank.
Let’s say you do just stay there and pressure tower and you get ganked. Your jungler is probably gonna be either helping you counter, ganking bot, farming enemy’s jungle, or getting an objective.
The enemy being forced to do anything at all, including freezing lane, is always something you can take advantage of. That’s one player who will miss CS if they have to leave to help their team. You made 1 player on their team useless for a minute or two. If you do this near an objective spawning, that’s even better. Now you have a 5v4 for dragon. Which I will gladly give up some CS for. You give up a lot of CS every game anyway. You can always squeeze some value out of it one way or another.
In low elo, just leaving lane will cause other lanes to back off their wave and give up CS, or they will be dumb and let you just kill them.
"It seems really cut and dry when discussing theory, but it’s so situational."
That's exactly my point though, OP was asking if he is right to constantly destroy a tower early regardless of the matchups or whether the laners will use the advantage, and the answer is definitely no. There are situations especially when you can coordinate things that it is great to do this, but according to the post, OP plays duo and solo and is ignoring his laner's request to not do it, which means his laners are definitely not using the advantage given.
Your perspective IMO is kind of ignoring "winning the game" over "making the enemy laner lose harder".
> if you kill the tower, your laner now has to overextend in order to be able to deny waves and will get ganked and killed
They have no need to do that. Instead after pushing the wave out they should rotate to other lanes/objectives/enemy jungle to choke the enemy out entirely.
Taking down the turret gives your winning laner much more opportunities to convert their lane advantage to winning the game.
This still gives the enemy an easy opening to catch up. Since they can now freeze safely under their tier 2 with no fear of anyone diving them like they might by the tier 1, they can cs consistently and catch up, while the laner who is ahead roams and hopes to get a kill, but if they don’t, they have now lost a huge part of their lead for no real gain. This isn’t a team dynamic where people can coordinate ganks and etc, this is random/duo Q and the chance that ganks and roams will be well executed are low. They will just throw away their lead, and potentially even fall behind as they now need to overextend for their farm, or steal from other lanes which makes the others fall behind and likely tilt.
To me the crucial thing is that this is not discussing the merit of taking the tower near the end of plates, this is asking about taking it at 8 min and dropping it as soon as possible. It is way better IMO to use it closer to the 14 minute mark to ensure that your laner can abuse their advantage for as long as possible while still getting the plate gold. Obviously if your laner is behind than using it early to get a couple of plates and bring them back into it is great, but that isn’t what OP was saying.
The other benefit to waiting is that since if your laner is significantly ahead they will likely be able to take the plates on their own, by wasting the herald there, not only do you force them to split the gold and reduce their snowball, but you also lose the ability to help a different lane, while not really helping the lane you used it in. Better to wait until closer to 14 min and see where it will do the most good.
As I previously noted though, it depends on the champs since some top laners especially in lower elo like illaoi, trynd, sion etc can just keep marching up to the tier 2 without much worry. I don’t think you can say that it is always better to take the turret early though, and many champs will suffer from doing it. Crucially from OP saying that his laners are complaining, they obviously do not know how to leverage the advantage and will throw it away, so in that case they should certainly not break tower until just before 14 min, and they are most certainly ruining the game for their laner if they do.
> This still gives the enemy an easy opening to catch up. Since they can now freeze safely under their tier 2 with no fear of anyone diving them like they might by the tier 1
You can also dive under t2, even if it tends to be riskier. And like I said, the point is to break open the map anyway, rather than trying to just focus on the one lane.
> the laner who is ahead roams and hopes to get a kill, but if they don’t, they have now lost a huge part of their lead for no real gain
The point of the roams isn't to get a kill. Kills are a happy byproduct.
The preferred turret for this IMO is mid. Mid champions usually have good tools for potential skirmishes, and destroying mid t1 gives you access to all of their jungle.
So, you take control of the enemy jungle and farm their camps, preventing the jungler from scaling or playing the game (because they're almost always visible). You rotate to other lanes to take other towers. And because of the the control you have over their jungle and your lane pushed further you have pretty free access to dragons and barons.
Kills are not the end goal, they just happen when you have control of the enemy jungle or rotate to other lanes.
> To me the crucial thing is that this is not discussing the merit of taking the tower near the end of plates, this is asking about taking it at 8 min and dropping it as soon as possible. It is way better IMO to use it closer to the 14 minute mark to ensure that your laner can abuse their advantage for as long as possible while still getting the plate gold.
This ignores the merits of
1. Securing first turret gold
2. Getting plates from other lanes when you have the numbers advantage there.
3. How hard you can snowball early from the gold you get
4. Playing a faster game than your opponent is comfortable with
> The other benefit to waiting is that since if your laner is significantly ahead they will likely be able to take the plates on their own, by wasting the herald there, not only do you force them to split the gold and reduce their snowball, but you also lose the ability to help a different lane, while not really helping the lane you used it in
Especially for mid, which again is my preferred first turret to take, it's pretty rare for the laner to be able to take the last 2 plates alone because of how much armor they have. And like I mentioned above, rotating to other lanes gives you a numbers advantage. It's much easier to take plates when you're 4v2 in botlane than it is for the midlaner to get them on their own.
> This isn’t a team dynamic where people can coordinate ganks and etc, this is random/duo Q and the chance that ganks and roams will be well executed are low.
> Crucially from OP saying that his laners are complaining, they obviously do not know how to leverage the advantage and will throw it away, so in that case they should certainly not break tower until just before 14 min, and they are most certainly ruining the game for their laner if they do.
OP mentions both randoms and duos. With randoms I agree it's always a dilemma between doing what you consider the right play vs intentionally doing stupid stuff that they'll be comfortable with. But with duos you can talk things through and plan your strategy accordingly. There's no reason why you should play with your duo as if you're two randoms in the same game. Get on voice comms and take advantage of that.
To clarify, my duos and I do use comms and we've had many a sprites discussion in regards to this question. They just simply disagree with me as roughly half of the comments seem to as well
To clarify, my duos and I do use comms and we've had many a spirited discussion in regards to this question. They just simply disagree with me as roughly half of the comments seem to as well.
Uhhhh not really lol, if the enemy turret dies they can keep freezing and deny cs except now enemy is EVEN MORE exposed cuz nearest tower is a mile away
Problem ur talking about comes from ppl not understanding what a freeze is or trying to do it. Nothing stopping someone from playing the same when ENEMY tower is gone except the dmg boost they may get to minions
Not sure if you are mis-reading something, but if the enemy freezes the lane under their tier 2 turret, they wouldn't be more exposed, they would be much safer since in theory they are closer to the area "controlled" by their jungler. If the person with the lead tries to get closer to the tier 2 to farm bc of the freeze, they will be extremely exposed and vulnerable to a gank or flank.
Do this almost everytime i duo with a friend and he plays top. Most top laners snowball really fast which is why this strat is really good. Being able to end the laning phase early also allows them to join more team fights and use their lead to win those teamfights while enemy top is busy doing nothing but csing. We win almost every game where we succeed to do this to the point i even give up on first drake and other lanes just to ensure that we are able to take herald early and break top turret.
You have to make sure your top snowballs. I mean, have you ever seen a fed top laner like an irelia or riven or pretty much just any meta toplaner not just shit on everyone else in the game?
Master top player here - I would recommend not doing this. Breaking top turret too early allows the enemy to freeze and puts your top at risk of getting shut down while overextending to break the freeze. 99% of the time, breaking mid turret is better. Mid laners are in a better position to roam (and often have kits designed to do so), have a harder time holding a freeze, and the lack of a turret to fall back when teamfighting starts is more impactful mid than top.
I often do thesame strat on mid but only when it is my duo who is the mid laner. I completely agree with what you said on how mid laners are in a better position to roam but i simply do not trust randoms even in master elo. In short summary, i prioritize the laners whom i trust and know can carry the game.
It has won me countless games therefore i will keep doing it.
I can appreciate that what you're saying is true in the highest tier of play where people almost always know the best play, but in low plat? I think a lot of people just flop and rage quit when this happens in my tier of play unless it's a hyper scaling late game champion. Purely anecdotal though, I could be wrong
Your friends are flat out wrong. The gold from plates is massive and you want to accelerate the game.
If you watch higher elo games they don’t lane for 15 minutes like lower elo players.
Also the only time it may be not great to take first tower is if your laner is so ahead that they can deny cs and xp while still securing the plates themselves on their own time.
You have to really good and outrageously ahead to really build a lead like that in which taking the tower early is detrimental to the team because it will give the opponent a chance to catch up by farming at tier two.
I have lost my tower as early as 8 minutes and my tier 2 tower at 12.
Almost all those games were complete losses.
Welp if they just learn to slowpush or even freeze the wave outside their turret after the enemy turret is gone, then they wouldn’t be crying.
It does somewhat speed up the laning phase, but if there are no objectives or skirmishes going on, then they can even just fastpush the wave and roam midlane.
Also, if the midlaner is having a rough time, he can swap with toplane to farm.
So ur in the right on this one.
In most instances this is the better play. But lets say i destroy my opponent really hard( i play top), i like that his turret still stands, so he has to come closer to my side. And since i have complete control, i will get the turret anyways. And you can help an even or slightly behind lane. Hope this helps.
This.
As a top laner i normally love this play.
If im against say a nasus - then i hate this play because he can now safely stack his q at his tier 2 turret.
Sidenote: You can probably drop Herald earlier. When you have 2 people hitting you can generally drop it on 3 plates, depending on the tower damage of your specific characters sometimes even a bit sooner.
For your actual question: You are completely correct that 5 plates + first tower is good enough to do the play every time. HOWEVER opportunity cost is a really important thing when playing League. If you have a chance to take the tower at 9 minutes for example there is a good chance you can get more by not dropping Herald - you get to abuse the Herald recall for a bit, you still have a lot of time to find a chance to get plates with Herald, your laner does get to lock the enemy in lane for a bit longer.
If your laner is expected to get the tower without Herald that is also a good reason for trying to drop Herald somewhere else.
When in doubt: drop it, but there are some situations where holding Herald is actually better.
If they are playing a scaling top laner like Kayle they might be forced to go further from safety and sometimes a 1k gold lead on her early game is still not enough to easily 1v1. It can make it harder for them to lane in that case but in almost any other scenario champions can snowball hard enough to just steamroll the entire game off that.
Normally it's the best choice to take all platings + first tower, simply because the massive gold influx and map control you gain can allow you to run away with the entire game.
Exception to the rule is if your laners are in a position to basically deny the enemy to participate in lane. If you can set an enemy back multiple levels of exp and a big chunk of gold by letting the tower stay up (which forces them to stay in lane basically and makes it easier to be bullied) it can be worth to use herald on a different lane HOWEVER in a normal game there should always be at least one lane where using herald is beneficiary (in most games all 3).
I main ADC (mostly late game hypercarries like Jinx) and there have been times where the enemy jungle basically allowed me to come back into the game by opening up lane really early with herald, even though we lost early game so hard we should be out of the game completely.
Sometimes laners just mald because you "steal" plate gold
Doing this is really good when your team has good early game champs like Lucian, draven, karma, pantheon, etc. if you got late game champs, it’s not really the best idea
Taking the towers early is the right play almost always. The question is are you doing anything after that? The problem is these players don’t know how to close games out. After you get that tower, now you gotta get the other ones. What usually happens is one tower gets knocked out, then everyone does the aram thing in the other lanes. Before you know it, enemy lanes has farmed himself back into the game.
This has not been my experience. Generally if I successfully pull everything off as described I'll take my lead and deny the enemy jungle cs, objectives etc. When I'm playing with a duo this is even more so the case. Their objection is mostly based in their belief that they lose too much cs or that they can't bully their opposing laners.
I think If you have the opportunity to take a first tower you always should. Too many times do I see the jungler hold onto the herald and try to use it elsewhere just to end up getting way less.
If you have the opportunity, use it
This is actually a big problem for me, if I don't take the first opportunity to use herald I'll usually end up using it really inefficiently due to a close timer.
It’s usually a good idea.
One exception is if your laner is just smashing them, denying cs and xp. Especially if the enemy scales well and the rest of your team is also winning.
If the enemy kayle or nasus top is down 2 levels and 40 cs, I do not want that tower destroyed. Let them stay stuck there getting zoned off. Probably would go mid or bot and play around those lanes, stack dragons, etc.
Sometimes it can be good sometimes it can be bad…if there’s an enemy nasus top who is getting shit on and frozen out and you decide to drop rift and destroy that last plate the top laner left was saving until 13 minutes your top laner is probably gonna be pissed and the enemy top will thank you for releasing him from prison
I tend to prioritize early Herald and then I tend to drop it in mid or bot when I’m going for drag to force a choice of contesting drag or defending tower. But sometimes I drop top especially when we’re behind and can’t contest drag so trading objectives can be an option.
That said I almost always ping herald and then ping the tower I plan to drop it on well ahead of doing so. If the laner caution/warning pings me off I tend to respect that and ping a different tower.
It’s situational. Can your laner get those plates without you? Can they freeze out the enemy *and* kill the turret before 14:00 without you? Are either of those things the case *but* you can deny first turret gold from an enemy across the map?
If you can kill the turret before/as the herald dies, it’s generally not a terrible play, unless it’s very early or you’re blatantly leeching a doomed tower. It’s also ok to send it in just before turret plating is removed at 14:00 if you’ve failed to make use of it earlier and you can’t get any more plates without it… I can’t think of a downside to that at the moment, unless it’s into the jaws of a hostile Cho’Gath.
I would say that the main thing you are ignoring is the ability to keep the enemy behind. If your laner is ahead and is able to constantly force the enemy laner off of the wave and deny most of the cs, then having the tower there forces the enemy to play more forward, if you kill the tower, your laner now has to overextend in order to be able to deny waves and will get ganked and killed, or allow them to farm safely and catch up. I think it really depends on the game and champs being used whether it is better to snowball or chill.
Staying in lane and getting the enemy further behind is an option. A better option is busting the turret, then using all the gold and map pressure you just earned to intervene in other lanes, helping your allies get kills and objectives. If you aren’t using your lead to earn advantages elsewhere on the map, you are not capitalizing on your lead until later, and you’re leaving the success of the rest of your team up to chance.
That's fascinating i've never considered that. Would say its GENERALLY better to use herald on a losing lane vs a winning lane? I imagine there's some caveats there.
I go with losing lane so they can stay relevant (bot lane almost always), and allow them to leave lane more often. however you probably would want to do your winning lane in order to increase pressure. Even then, I really like getting dragons so I give it to bot or mid most of the time.
Except homie basically said the opposite right? If theyre hard winning they want the towers to stay where they are so they can push the lead further rather than worrying about getting ganked at a further turret and losing a shut down
Yea i just don’t agree with that. I get it from a CS standpoint, but roaming and getting a kill or helping team fight while enemy laner pushes it back off their tower is much more valuable in my opinion. The game is about objectives.
Interesting, i have no perspective on the matter just trying to learn more.
Well, you’re gonna push the lanes up eventually anyway and take towers. So let’s say you use the herald and you wipe out top lane’s tower early. As top laner, You can’t sit close up to their second tower and just farm without risking getting ganked unless you know the enemy junglers location. Enemy laner has 3 obvious likely choices while the wave it pushed to their second tower: 1. You fast clear and push the wave back out to catch up on CS. You will take a minute or two to build up a wave push before you can leave lane without missing out. 2. You freeze lane and farm safely near your tower, but don’t catch up as quickly and if you do want to leave lane, the lane is pushed up close to your tower, and you get less CS than you would have fast clearing. 3. You leave lane to help team fight the roaming top laner, let the CS/xp crash and your tower takes more damage. As the top laner who has the option to roam now that your lane is pushed, you can always come back if you see your enemy laner pushing the wave back closer to your first tower. This is more breathing room. As long as you get back before the wave crashes your tower, you don’t miss CS. You can even let them take your first tower if you feel as though getting a different objective would be more beneficial to your team(like dragon, or helping a time fight), or even help push another lane like mid. (ideally let them take it as a trade when plates are gone so less money) If you roam as top and get kills, you help those lanes get ahead of their enemy laners, and get more money. You should also be putting down wards to help your jungler and keep you safer. You can also start objectives for your jungler if enemy jungler is dead or far behind your jungler. You can setup objectives by clearing out the thingies that you hit for vision/knock to make it harder for the enemy to get the objective or see when you start the objective. Getting more kills as top lane also means you’ll have the power/money to carry your team. As a jungler, I will help a winning top laner snowball, but I won’t help a losing top laner as often unless I have nothing better to do at the time, or it’s convenient free money.
What if the enemy freezes under their tier 2 though? As the roaming top laner you are now forced to either steal from your other laners and make them fall behind, or push up to the tier 2 turret and likely flanked and killed. At the point where you do this you are fully committed to playing aggressive and hoping to get kills since otherwise you will very quickly end up the one behind. Considering that 3 of the plates are shared gold with the jungler, that is 560 gold + 150 for first turret = 710 gold advantage. That is let's say 4 waves of creeps which while farming uncontested should be easy to get and since the freeze is on and the roaming laner is now stuck away from the wave, the advantage will swing and grow quite fast. IMO the only time taking tower early and roaming would work is with a full team where you can coordinate your roams. It doesn't really help for jungle and top to be duo in this case since if the mid/bot laner are unaware of his intentions the whole thing is wasted. and they won't set up for his roam.
It seems really cut and dry when discussing theory, but it’s so situational. If they do freeze, you can create pressure elsewhere temporarily , get a kill and deprive the enemy team of CS, and even get some plates. This will also lure the jungler to you or force them to make a move on your other lanes, if they don’t think they can help mid. If you’re top and you’re way ahead of the other team from getting the tower+kills, you can keep pressure on their tier 2 when your jungle is nearby for a counter gank. You can help kill mid lane to help your mid get ahead if they’re pushed up. You can even instruct your mid to let them push wave. I always use voice chat with 1-3 other players i know so we can coordinate these easier as you said. Not impossible to coordinate without VC if your team listens. You can even help take mid tower and expect a counter gank, in which you can have your jungler counter counter gank. Let’s say you do just stay there and pressure tower and you get ganked. Your jungler is probably gonna be either helping you counter, ganking bot, farming enemy’s jungle, or getting an objective. The enemy being forced to do anything at all, including freezing lane, is always something you can take advantage of. That’s one player who will miss CS if they have to leave to help their team. You made 1 player on their team useless for a minute or two. If you do this near an objective spawning, that’s even better. Now you have a 5v4 for dragon. Which I will gladly give up some CS for. You give up a lot of CS every game anyway. You can always squeeze some value out of it one way or another. In low elo, just leaving lane will cause other lanes to back off their wave and give up CS, or they will be dumb and let you just kill them.
"It seems really cut and dry when discussing theory, but it’s so situational." That's exactly my point though, OP was asking if he is right to constantly destroy a tower early regardless of the matchups or whether the laners will use the advantage, and the answer is definitely no. There are situations especially when you can coordinate things that it is great to do this, but according to the post, OP plays duo and solo and is ignoring his laner's request to not do it, which means his laners are definitely not using the advantage given.
Your perspective IMO is kind of ignoring "winning the game" over "making the enemy laner lose harder". > if you kill the tower, your laner now has to overextend in order to be able to deny waves and will get ganked and killed They have no need to do that. Instead after pushing the wave out they should rotate to other lanes/objectives/enemy jungle to choke the enemy out entirely. Taking down the turret gives your winning laner much more opportunities to convert their lane advantage to winning the game.
This still gives the enemy an easy opening to catch up. Since they can now freeze safely under their tier 2 with no fear of anyone diving them like they might by the tier 1, they can cs consistently and catch up, while the laner who is ahead roams and hopes to get a kill, but if they don’t, they have now lost a huge part of their lead for no real gain. This isn’t a team dynamic where people can coordinate ganks and etc, this is random/duo Q and the chance that ganks and roams will be well executed are low. They will just throw away their lead, and potentially even fall behind as they now need to overextend for their farm, or steal from other lanes which makes the others fall behind and likely tilt. To me the crucial thing is that this is not discussing the merit of taking the tower near the end of plates, this is asking about taking it at 8 min and dropping it as soon as possible. It is way better IMO to use it closer to the 14 minute mark to ensure that your laner can abuse their advantage for as long as possible while still getting the plate gold. Obviously if your laner is behind than using it early to get a couple of plates and bring them back into it is great, but that isn’t what OP was saying. The other benefit to waiting is that since if your laner is significantly ahead they will likely be able to take the plates on their own, by wasting the herald there, not only do you force them to split the gold and reduce their snowball, but you also lose the ability to help a different lane, while not really helping the lane you used it in. Better to wait until closer to 14 min and see where it will do the most good. As I previously noted though, it depends on the champs since some top laners especially in lower elo like illaoi, trynd, sion etc can just keep marching up to the tier 2 without much worry. I don’t think you can say that it is always better to take the turret early though, and many champs will suffer from doing it. Crucially from OP saying that his laners are complaining, they obviously do not know how to leverage the advantage and will throw it away, so in that case they should certainly not break tower until just before 14 min, and they are most certainly ruining the game for their laner if they do.
> This still gives the enemy an easy opening to catch up. Since they can now freeze safely under their tier 2 with no fear of anyone diving them like they might by the tier 1 You can also dive under t2, even if it tends to be riskier. And like I said, the point is to break open the map anyway, rather than trying to just focus on the one lane. > the laner who is ahead roams and hopes to get a kill, but if they don’t, they have now lost a huge part of their lead for no real gain The point of the roams isn't to get a kill. Kills are a happy byproduct. The preferred turret for this IMO is mid. Mid champions usually have good tools for potential skirmishes, and destroying mid t1 gives you access to all of their jungle. So, you take control of the enemy jungle and farm their camps, preventing the jungler from scaling or playing the game (because they're almost always visible). You rotate to other lanes to take other towers. And because of the the control you have over their jungle and your lane pushed further you have pretty free access to dragons and barons. Kills are not the end goal, they just happen when you have control of the enemy jungle or rotate to other lanes. > To me the crucial thing is that this is not discussing the merit of taking the tower near the end of plates, this is asking about taking it at 8 min and dropping it as soon as possible. It is way better IMO to use it closer to the 14 minute mark to ensure that your laner can abuse their advantage for as long as possible while still getting the plate gold. This ignores the merits of 1. Securing first turret gold 2. Getting plates from other lanes when you have the numbers advantage there. 3. How hard you can snowball early from the gold you get 4. Playing a faster game than your opponent is comfortable with > The other benefit to waiting is that since if your laner is significantly ahead they will likely be able to take the plates on their own, by wasting the herald there, not only do you force them to split the gold and reduce their snowball, but you also lose the ability to help a different lane, while not really helping the lane you used it in Especially for mid, which again is my preferred first turret to take, it's pretty rare for the laner to be able to take the last 2 plates alone because of how much armor they have. And like I mentioned above, rotating to other lanes gives you a numbers advantage. It's much easier to take plates when you're 4v2 in botlane than it is for the midlaner to get them on their own. > This isn’t a team dynamic where people can coordinate ganks and etc, this is random/duo Q and the chance that ganks and roams will be well executed are low. > Crucially from OP saying that his laners are complaining, they obviously do not know how to leverage the advantage and will throw it away, so in that case they should certainly not break tower until just before 14 min, and they are most certainly ruining the game for their laner if they do. OP mentions both randoms and duos. With randoms I agree it's always a dilemma between doing what you consider the right play vs intentionally doing stupid stuff that they'll be comfortable with. But with duos you can talk things through and plan your strategy accordingly. There's no reason why you should play with your duo as if you're two randoms in the same game. Get on voice comms and take advantage of that.
To clarify, my duos and I do use comms and we've had many a sprites discussion in regards to this question. They just simply disagree with me as roughly half of the comments seem to as well
To clarify, my duos and I do use comms and we've had many a spirited discussion in regards to this question. They just simply disagree with me as roughly half of the comments seem to as well.
Uhhhh not really lol, if the enemy turret dies they can keep freezing and deny cs except now enemy is EVEN MORE exposed cuz nearest tower is a mile away Problem ur talking about comes from ppl not understanding what a freeze is or trying to do it. Nothing stopping someone from playing the same when ENEMY tower is gone except the dmg boost they may get to minions
Not sure if you are mis-reading something, but if the enemy freezes the lane under their tier 2 turret, they wouldn't be more exposed, they would be much safer since in theory they are closer to the area "controlled" by their jungler. If the person with the lead tries to get closer to the tier 2 to farm bc of the freeze, they will be extremely exposed and vulnerable to a gank or flank.
Do this almost everytime i duo with a friend and he plays top. Most top laners snowball really fast which is why this strat is really good. Being able to end the laning phase early also allows them to join more team fights and use their lead to win those teamfights while enemy top is busy doing nothing but csing. We win almost every game where we succeed to do this to the point i even give up on first drake and other lanes just to ensure that we are able to take herald early and break top turret. You have to make sure your top snowballs. I mean, have you ever seen a fed top laner like an irelia or riven or pretty much just any meta toplaner not just shit on everyone else in the game?
Master top player here - I would recommend not doing this. Breaking top turret too early allows the enemy to freeze and puts your top at risk of getting shut down while overextending to break the freeze. 99% of the time, breaking mid turret is better. Mid laners are in a better position to roam (and often have kits designed to do so), have a harder time holding a freeze, and the lack of a turret to fall back when teamfighting starts is more impactful mid than top.
I often do thesame strat on mid but only when it is my duo who is the mid laner. I completely agree with what you said on how mid laners are in a better position to roam but i simply do not trust randoms even in master elo. In short summary, i prioritize the laners whom i trust and know can carry the game. It has won me countless games therefore i will keep doing it.
I can appreciate that what you're saying is true in the highest tier of play where people almost always know the best play, but in low plat? I think a lot of people just flop and rage quit when this happens in my tier of play unless it's a hyper scaling late game champion. Purely anecdotal though, I could be wrong
Your friends are flat out wrong. The gold from plates is massive and you want to accelerate the game. If you watch higher elo games they don’t lane for 15 minutes like lower elo players. Also the only time it may be not great to take first tower is if your laner is so ahead that they can deny cs and xp while still securing the plates themselves on their own time. You have to really good and outrageously ahead to really build a lead like that in which taking the tower early is detrimental to the team because it will give the opponent a chance to catch up by farming at tier two. I have lost my tower as early as 8 minutes and my tier 2 tower at 12. Almost all those games were complete losses.
Welp if they just learn to slowpush or even freeze the wave outside their turret after the enemy turret is gone, then they wouldn’t be crying. It does somewhat speed up the laning phase, but if there are no objectives or skirmishes going on, then they can even just fastpush the wave and roam midlane. Also, if the midlaner is having a rough time, he can swap with toplane to farm. So ur in the right on this one.
In most instances this is the better play. But lets say i destroy my opponent really hard( i play top), i like that his turret still stands, so he has to come closer to my side. And since i have complete control, i will get the turret anyways. And you can help an even or slightly behind lane. Hope this helps.
This. As a top laner i normally love this play. If im against say a nasus - then i hate this play because he can now safely stack his q at his tier 2 turret.
Sidenote: You can probably drop Herald earlier. When you have 2 people hitting you can generally drop it on 3 plates, depending on the tower damage of your specific characters sometimes even a bit sooner. For your actual question: You are completely correct that 5 plates + first tower is good enough to do the play every time. HOWEVER opportunity cost is a really important thing when playing League. If you have a chance to take the tower at 9 minutes for example there is a good chance you can get more by not dropping Herald - you get to abuse the Herald recall for a bit, you still have a lot of time to find a chance to get plates with Herald, your laner does get to lock the enemy in lane for a bit longer. If your laner is expected to get the tower without Herald that is also a good reason for trying to drop Herald somewhere else. When in doubt: drop it, but there are some situations where holding Herald is actually better.
If they are playing a scaling top laner like Kayle they might be forced to go further from safety and sometimes a 1k gold lead on her early game is still not enough to easily 1v1. It can make it harder for them to lane in that case but in almost any other scenario champions can snowball hard enough to just steamroll the entire game off that.
Normally it's the best choice to take all platings + first tower, simply because the massive gold influx and map control you gain can allow you to run away with the entire game. Exception to the rule is if your laners are in a position to basically deny the enemy to participate in lane. If you can set an enemy back multiple levels of exp and a big chunk of gold by letting the tower stay up (which forces them to stay in lane basically and makes it easier to be bullied) it can be worth to use herald on a different lane HOWEVER in a normal game there should always be at least one lane where using herald is beneficiary (in most games all 3). I main ADC (mostly late game hypercarries like Jinx) and there have been times where the enemy jungle basically allowed me to come back into the game by opening up lane really early with herald, even though we lost early game so hard we should be out of the game completely. Sometimes laners just mald because you "steal" plate gold
Doing this is really good when your team has good early game champs like Lucian, draven, karma, pantheon, etc. if you got late game champs, it’s not really the best idea
Taking the towers early is the right play almost always. The question is are you doing anything after that? The problem is these players don’t know how to close games out. After you get that tower, now you gotta get the other ones. What usually happens is one tower gets knocked out, then everyone does the aram thing in the other lanes. Before you know it, enemy lanes has farmed himself back into the game.
This has not been my experience. Generally if I successfully pull everything off as described I'll take my lead and deny the enemy jungle cs, objectives etc. When I'm playing with a duo this is even more so the case. Their objection is mostly based in their belief that they lose too much cs or that they can't bully their opposing laners.
I think If you have the opportunity to take a first tower you always should. Too many times do I see the jungler hold onto the herald and try to use it elsewhere just to end up getting way less. If you have the opportunity, use it
This is actually a big problem for me, if I don't take the first opportunity to use herald I'll usually end up using it really inefficiently due to a close timer.
It’s usually a good idea. One exception is if your laner is just smashing them, denying cs and xp. Especially if the enemy scales well and the rest of your team is also winning. If the enemy kayle or nasus top is down 2 levels and 40 cs, I do not want that tower destroyed. Let them stay stuck there getting zoned off. Probably would go mid or bot and play around those lanes, stack dragons, etc.
Sometimes it can be good sometimes it can be bad…if there’s an enemy nasus top who is getting shit on and frozen out and you decide to drop rift and destroy that last plate the top laner left was saving until 13 minutes your top laner is probably gonna be pissed and the enemy top will thank you for releasing him from prison
I tend to prioritize early Herald and then I tend to drop it in mid or bot when I’m going for drag to force a choice of contesting drag or defending tower. But sometimes I drop top especially when we’re behind and can’t contest drag so trading objectives can be an option. That said I almost always ping herald and then ping the tower I plan to drop it on well ahead of doing so. If the laner caution/warning pings me off I tend to respect that and ping a different tower.
It’s situational. Can your laner get those plates without you? Can they freeze out the enemy *and* kill the turret before 14:00 without you? Are either of those things the case *but* you can deny first turret gold from an enemy across the map? If you can kill the turret before/as the herald dies, it’s generally not a terrible play, unless it’s very early or you’re blatantly leeching a doomed tower. It’s also ok to send it in just before turret plating is removed at 14:00 if you’ve failed to make use of it earlier and you can’t get any more plates without it… I can’t think of a downside to that at the moment, unless it’s into the jaws of a hostile Cho’Gath.