League of Legends: 3 Questions that Will Help You Win Any Lane
By Josh Tyler
Putting It Into Practice (The Other Side)
If you only win all-ins…
You basically have to win the matchup by waiting for an opportunity where you can take an all-in. This could be a scenario where you get jungle or roaming mid laner in your lane, or even if you have your wave bouncing towards their tower, giving you an advantage.
If you are the Talon facing a Xerath, that’s basically your lot in life. You need to dodge as much of the ranged harass as possible and ideally get the wave pushed to your tower. If you have a jungler with a lot of hard CC, you can just ping him to come and help you collect the easy kill.
If you only have a range advantage…
In this lane, you will need to use your ranged harass as much as possible to try and get your opponents low enough to dissuade them from diving you. Even though you can’t push them to their tower and threaten a dive with your weaker wave clear, you should be able to survive as they shove your wave.
In the Kog’Maw/Janna vs. Vayne/Brand example, Kog and Janna can certainly land poke between Tornado, Caustic Spittle, and Living Artillery at Level 6. As long as they can survive any dive attempts and/or get jungle help, surviving the lane should count as a win.
If you only out-push the enemy…
You need to take advantage of your pushing power and shove the wave as quickly as possible. Doing so not only dissuades the all-in (because they will be missing minions under tower to go in) but it also frees you up to roam out of the lane to drop vision and (more importantly) avoid being whittled down by their range advantage.
Playing as Cassiopeia into Zed, you want to avoid being in lane against Zed as much as possible, instead opting to scale up and be able to beat him later. If you use Noxious Blast and Twin Fangs properly, you’ll out-push Zed, making it very difficult to hit you with spells (which he may need to farm).
If you do not out-push, win all-ins, or have a range advantage…
In this last lane, you really don’t win lane in the traditional sense. Instead, you simply try to not lose lane.
As Nasus playing against Heimerdinger, your job is basically to farm under tower, dodge as much of the poke as you can, and not die. Eventually, you will outscale when you’ve farmed enough stacks and have your ultimate. The key in a lane like this is to not fall so far behind that your enemy prevents you from ever outscaling him by having an item advantage.