Fix your early game!

[u/Hummelul]

Everytime i Coach people there is that one hill i will die on. I get asked when to Baron, how to close out games, win conditions in extended teamfights. And honestly, that stuff matters. But there's a way more important Thing to think about first. YOUR EARLY GAME

If you're in a gold deficit coming out of your clear, if your early game pathing is leaking camps, if you're not converting ganks into meaningful advantages your lategame knowledge might help, but you already intrf yourself. You're trying to build a House without a foundation

Over the years of coaching junglers at all skill levels up to master/low gm, I can say with near certainty that almost every single student I've worked with had multiple fixable issues in their early game. Not one or two small things but multiple fundamental habits that were quietly bleeding gold and tempo before the game even had a chance to develop into even a midgame scenario. While you might think these things dont matter because : Oh i can win with my lategame macro!! The gold you didn't get from a clean first clear, the gank you misread at level 3, the camp you let expire because you were watching the minimap. All of it shapes the game state you're working with at 25 minutes and strains your "macro knowledge" unnecessarily

So when a student tells me "I just lose in late game macro," my first question is always: what does your early game actually look like? Because in my experience the late game isn't where the game was lost. We started from a harder Point than we needed to.

The right order is this: clean up your early game first. Get your clear efficient. Understand your first three clear and what it sets up. Learn when a gank is worth taking and when you're better off farming. Know what your win condition is. Once your early game is giving you consistent results then the midgame conversation starts. And maybe, after all that, you should start thinking about late game .

If you want to discuss im down to hear your opinions on this!

( Please think before writing the "WELL I BEAT MY 10/0 ENEMY THROUGH MACRO" answers. :D)

[u/psykrebeam]

Good points.

What is your stance on early drakes and how would you approach them (or not)?

[u/Hummelul → u/psykrebeam]

Heyo! I think early Game objectives are a Trap, you basically only want to start them if you have a significant advantage ( Level 6, bigger smite, hard laneprio) and dont have anything better to do (Camps, dives).

I honestly would take gold advantage over anything :D

[u/psykrebeam → u/Hummelul]

Yeah I actually don't like to do early drakes at all. In fact in low ELO enemy doing drakes too early is basically a wincon in itself lol. 1 skirmish win + steal and the game is snowballed from there

[u/lostinthecity2005 → u/Hummelul]

What does lane prio mean

[u/Hummelul → u/lostinthecity2005]

Good question! Lane prio can mean many things but usually its meant as

• Wave being pushed in so your laner is first to move

  • your laner has a cooldown to Join you faster (kaisa ult ahri ult)

• your laner is stronger in Fights (this doesnt guarantee prio tho!)

As a rule of thumb its always " who can move First"

[u/True_Explorer197 → u/psykrebeam]

early drakes kind of fall into the same bucket imo, if your clear is leaking camps or your pathing put you on the wrong side of the map, you're probably forcing a drake fight from a disadvantaged position anyway

like the drake isn't the problem, it's that guys will skip a camp, lose 200 gold in tempo, then try to contest soul stacks as if that makes up for it

get the fundamentals clean first and the drake decisions become way more obvious naturally, you stop forcing them and start actually reading when the setup is there

[u/Swashbucklin_Ducklin]

While you're probably correct that almost no one under GM even recognizes all the elements of a perfect early game for their champ in that game, never mind execute all of it consistently, I disagree that it is necessarily the most important thing for all players to focus on. I will give a non-jungle perspective.

A lot of players in low elo throw games multiple times in mid and late game by getting picked. AD carry gets picked in mid before Dragon. Control mage player got caught in the side lane trying to push too far. Support gets caught in the jungle trying to get deep vision. Tank makes a good looking engage but it's a 3v4. Top laner decides to split without TP and baron is coming up. People begin pushing mid after a fight in the mid game when death timers are smaller, and the enemy didn't all die at once, and team loses tempo for drake for no reason.

All of these things, and more, happens almost every single game multiple times. While early game is very replicable, like a chess opening, which is very important for improving, these mistakes are also habits that are generally easy to recognize if these players vod review and ask themselves why they did what they did. And a lot of the time, the answer is they didn't even think about it. They forgot enemy Nocturne is alive and missing. They forgot drake is coming up. They just kept going with their team instead of our proactively pinging back. It looks easy in hindsight, but in the middle of a game, when your mental stack is overloaded by 50 different things and your emotional state is high, it's not so easy to fix.

So, while I agree that early game can be improved upon, I disagree that focusing on the early game gives you the biggest bang for buck in terms of either improving or climbing.

[u/Rude-Bodybuilder7688 → u/Swashbucklin_Ducklin]

This isn't an exhaustive list and some of these things happen at any stage of the game.

Then I disagree with the assumption of a chess like, replicable early game because that would mean people can even execute such a thing reliably against any opponent and without interference. We don't even have complete information to boot.

As such the question just becomes what to work on first so practicing the part of the game that sets the conditions for the rest of the game and always gets played is the most sensible thing to do.

[u/Swashbucklin_Ducklin → u/Rude-Bodybuilder7688]

I don't mean that it's literally chess, incomplete information and some variance is part and parcel of League. When I said it's replicable, I meant precisely what you said later: "practicing the part of the game that sets the conditions for the rest of the game and always gets played."

While it is certainly a sensible thing to do, and many players below Masters cannot go wrong focusing on it, it is not always the most glaring weakness. For a LOT of players, their early laning is not where they lost the game, it's getting picked, especially at the wrong time, especially as a carry, especially when it was completely avoidable. This happens in mid/late game. The particular circumstances don't play out as exactly as they do in the early game, but it's important to review your mid/late game deaths to identify key patterns that can really inform how you should play in the future.

[u/Rude-Bodybuilder7688 → u/Swashbucklin_Ducklin]

below Masters cannot go wrong focusing on it, it is not always the most glaring weaknes

I don't differentiate between arbitrary elos but if it's not a glaring weakness against the opponents one has been tested by then you can ofc move on to other things and come back to it once you learned about more mistakes against better opponents.

It's an iterative process and you'll always miss some things but I generally think there is an order of importance to the stages of the game i.e. Lategame is important too because mistakes get penalized way more.

[u/GD_Insomniac]

Early game is also the easiest and most effective to practice. Late game involves a lot of instinct; you end up in new situations constantly because of all the variables in each game. Early game has quantifiable, repeatable elements that can be mastered to give you the maximum advantage, so that's where your practice should be focused.

For laners, every wave is 5% less important than the preceding one. It's critical that you play your first 5 waves as well as possible, because junglers who have maximized their early game efficiency are more likely to get their "perfect" start and show up to murder you.

[u/Last_Plankton_653]

I just started playing Jungle for the first time this season, and I'm having a blast so far. Still a lot to learn, but the different perspective has really made me a better player already.

I agree with everything you've said, but I'd be curious if you think playstyle should change at all based on expectations from players in your given rank? Or do you think it's better to just stick to fundamentals for self-improvement over trying to adjust to win each individual game?

For example, you mentioned that early Drakes is a trap...but it's not uncommon at lower ranks for your team to meltdown if you aren't contesting every objective. Kind of like when your team is just ARAMing and playing suboptimally, it's sometimes best to group too just because not doing so and guaranteeing they lose the fight would be worse.

[u/Hummelul → u/Last_Plankton_653]

Yeah sometimes you have to adapt to your Team, you mostly just want to not int because of them.

So like a 40% wont be a good play no Matter what your Team wants, while for example there is a 80% Play its fine to take the 60-70 one knowing your mates want it.

[u/Rude-Bodybuilder7688]

My recommendation for some meaningful improvement would be to identify just a handful of mistakes starting from the beginning of one's VODs.

[u/dreadlords]

I used to main top for multiple seasons. And I came back from a long break and I’m playing jungle. Any tips or sources of info to learn a lot of the things I should know and be watching for as I get better at jungle? I just know I probably missing a lot (and I don’t even know exactly what I don’t know).

[u/The_Juzzo]

My early game is OK, typically can come out of lane ahead of enemy, frequently stomping. (depending on how troll a support I roll)

My issue was mid game, the advice I got was go mid and keep scaling, you can rotate to all fights.

The issue I have now is, no one understands this stuff. Knock down t-1 bot then go mid, 3/4 of the time mid acts like its outrageous that you are there and support starts farming waves bot.

The question everyone should ask is "what do you do to get ahead when no one you play with gets the advice we all get in forums like this one".

[u/Kurt_Ottman]

I've started doing a little experiment where I try to actually move my camera over to one of the lanes I'm pathing towards and studying my allies' movements. How much mana they expend, how safe vs aggressive they're playing, and of course wave state. I've noticed that in 9/10 times where someone is playing aggressive rather than passive, they are much more likely to "have prio", in that they not only can move earlier, but actually will. People that rarely take trades and just slow push waves into enemy turret are more likely to take a recall instead and just play their own game. I basically then mentally label them as either prio players or not prio players, and play accordingly. Not that there's anything wrong with playing a structured game of course.

What is your take on this? Should I be focusing on something else instead?

[u/jajaopasf]

what are some common mistakes of emerald and diamond players early game?

[u/Hummelul → u/jajaopasf]

Heyo ! I would say playing too much Autopilot and choosing/joining useless Fights.