Roaming and Ganking Guide League of Legends

One of the most important tools in setting up kills and giving your team a lead is roaming and ganking. This allows you to pick up objectives, and set your team ahead of the enemy team while giving you some gold in the process.

However, bad ganks and bad roams can leave you severely behind and lead to the loss of a lot of objectives and turrets. There really is an art to roaming and ganking and the better you are at it, the more of an impact you are going to have on a game.

One of the biggest assets a mid lane can provide to his team is the ability to roam and set up kills in other areas of the map. Doing this can easily set up a dragon on get you a turret which can swing the gold lead in your favor.

Good mid laners pick the best times to leave their lane and do not roam when they know that nothing will come off the roam. You must always be aware of the threat of counter ganks and have a six sense of what the enemy mid laner is thinking and doing. Here are some good time to roam to other lanes.

• When you have force the enemy laner out of lane. If you can constantly win trades and force the enemy mid laner to back, this is a perfect time to roam and set up kills. Aggressive farming can get you to high elo, but roaming and good ganks are necessary in carrying games and getting to the top of the latter. The better you are at trading and fighting 1v1 in the mid lane, the more opportunities you are going to have to roam and help your team. This is why it is vital that you get good at the mid matchups and learn all the tricks you can to effective trading.

• When the enemy laner is roaming and you have time to counter gank. This is a big thing and is one of the most important instincts you can have as a mid laner or anyone ganking/roaming. A lot of players will use this strategy as a bait and trick you into getting killed. You need to be aware of your surroundings and what is going on in the other areas of the map. If the enemy roam seems suspicious or you noticed the enemy laner trying to bait before, it is probably a better idea to push the turret instead of trying to follow up on the roam. Do not gank if you do not have time to get there or the enemy mid is already bottom or top. You will never make it there in time and you will just have wasted the time that you could have spent pushing a turret or roaming somewhere else.

• When you notice an enemy jungler or teammember alone in your jungle. This is a great time to push your wave if possible and collapse on the intruder. Make sure that you are maintaining wave control and not allowing yourself to be pushed in excessively, because this will deny you the ability to roam and help your team. It is okay to let yourself be pushed in when your jungler is maintaining sufficient map control. This allows him to gank for you and set up kills but is something you cannot rely on all the time.

• When you notice the enemy laners about to dive your teammates. This is tricky to watch for but when the enemy laners are overextended it is a great time to gank. You can usually tell by the health of your teammates when a dive is going to be coming and you should always be ready to react if possible. Doing this can easily turn a bad situation good and swing the game in your favor.

Try to avoid walking over wards and keep tab of the enemy vision when you are roaming. If you are walking over a ward your gank will be a lot less effective and you will just be wasting your time. That is why it is good idea to take routes through the enemy jungler when you are ganking because you are a lot less likely to be spotted by wards.

Always shove your wave before ganking because it will limit the enemy vision of you and keep the enemy mid laner occupied so they are less likely to be able to follow up.

The reason mid control is so important is because the more control you have of mid, the more control you are going to be of the game. The mid laner that is stronger usually controls the roams and has the chance to bait if he wants to, while the other teams mid has to play reactively. If you find yourself in a losing situations your best bet is to try and farm yourself in the game and make sure that you ping all the roams that other mid laner is going to do. If you watch the map it is pretty easy to see what lanes the enemy mid is going to go to, and you can ping it accordingly.

Junglers are the key factor in setting up kills and giving the lanes an advantage early. Without them, people would be free to play over aggressively and not be punished. Your job as a jungler is to watch your lanes and see what lanes need to most attention

Generally, it is good to gank lanes that are losing so they can stay in the game and the feeding does not get out of hand. The more you can deny the enemy from crushing your lanes, the less likely you will be to lose the game because someone on the other team got out of control and is too fed.

Just as with mid laners, you have to keep a better eye on the vision of the enemy team and where the enemy jungler is located. Counter ganks are the easiest way to sway the tides of the game, and it is usually the jungler that is better at counter ganks and has more map awareness is the one that wins the game.

You can generally tell where the other jungler is going to be by simple buff timing and wards. Never overextend and dive turrets if you are not sure where the jungler is. This is an easy way to turn a good situation bad and set you behind. Small mistakes can easily turn in huge mistakes for the enemy team and it is up to you to play smart and avoid them.

You must stay vigilant and allow the enemy team to make mistakes. The less mistakes you make the more games you are going to win. It is a lot less about making huge plays as it is staying sharp and avoiding mistakes.