League of Legends 101 – Teamfighting tips & tricks

Teamfighting can be a daunting task for many beginning League of Legends players, so let’s take a deeper dive into getting better at it.

How am I supposed to perform when there’s way too much happening at once? Wait a minute, how did I just get stunned out of nowhere? Well, we know your struggle, so here are some tips to help you out in one of the hardest parts of the game.

Planning Ahead

Before teamfighting, it’s important to prepare yourself for the daunting task ahead. Firstly, you need to understand what your champion should be doing in fights. Divers should be diving. Enchanters should be protecting. Marksmen should be right clicking. While the class of your champion often suggests what you more or less should be doing, it’s more effective to single out small objectives to complete for yourself.

Let’s say you’re playing Zed, a champion that’s hard to teamfight with. Before teamfighting, you should create a mental list of things to look out for. An example list may look something like this:

  1. Check for Lulu’s Polymorph and Malzahar’s Ultimate, and wait for Ezreal to use his E.
  2. Wait for your frontline to keep the enemy team busy so you can slip into the backline unnoticed.
  3. Check if your fellow divers like Diana or Wukong are about to go hard.
  4. Wait for Ezreal to take even the smallest misstep, giving you an opening.

Now that you have a couple bullet points to work with, you suddenly have a way higher chance of success, as you are actively looking for key moments in fights that could let you change the tide. Overlooking basic planning and heading in head first may lead to a quick demise, as you may just get a Polymorph or something similar thrown into your face, and it’ll be your fault alone.

Not only that, but because you know what you are looking for while the fight is happening, you can almost always ignore everything else. People who think professional players see everything overestimate them, because even they can’t (fully) do it. You really have to filter information to your brain so you can focus on the important bits, while leaving out the less important ones.

Keeping Cool

Now that you have some of your sub-objectives lined up, you’re ready to go in. While teamfighting, things may become ridiculously chaotic. Even while teamfighting it’s important to keep small mental notes of what you want to achieve while fighting. Once again, this differs per role, but let’s talk about AD carries.

AD carries are extremely hard to teamfight with, as they’re often victims to divers and assassins, while also being forced to kite while dealing as much damage as possible. While chaos ensues, a lot of AD carries often forget how much of a target they are for the enemy team to dive on top of, and they can get careless with their positioning.

You should always try to avoid such a playstyle. While playing champions like Kog’Maw, you should never feel forced to always be hitting the frontline. Sometimes it’s fine to back off just a little bit in favor of staying alive. As long as you’re alive, the enemy team can feel uneasy with your existence, as one misstep from their side will let you melt them within seconds. Playing patiently is very often key, especially with AD carries.

Some champions are forced to dive in, and there’s no stopping them once they’ve started, like Renekton or Hecarim. These champions should focus heavily on when the time to go in is right, as not rushing such engages is equally as important, and thus part of playing patiently and keeping it cool.

Quality over Quantity

This goes for tanks too. Sometimes it’s okay to take a bit of time off, you don’t need to be spamming spells. Especially slow casters like Ornn and Sion need to know how to properly time their spells, instead of spamming them. Try to focus on quality over quantity, on every champion you play.

For instance, don’t just spam Ezreal Q off cooldown, use it when you feel like you can guarantee a hit. Missing a Q would be a huge dropoff in your overall Damage Per Second. In fact, waiting a full three seconds before firing it to guarantee a hit is still more DPS than missing one.

Timing your key CC abilities correctly is extremely important too. Playing Viktor means you should wait for a perfect time to use your “party tent” W stun. When playing Jinx, you should put down your chompers when they matter the most. Don’t throw them down because the fight has started and you feel the need to do as much as you can as soon as possible. Throw them down when you think you can contribute the most with them, for instance, during CC chains or when trying to zone or split up the enemy.

Of course, most of teamfighting prowess comes with lots and lots of experience, but actively looking to improve your teamfighting by understanding key concepts will accelerate your learning process by a hundredfold. In short: Keep a mental list, be patient and calm during fights, and always, and absolutely always, quality over quantity. Good luck.

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