A fight on three fronts

Introduction

In every game of League of Legends, you will come to blows with your opponents. You both want to break the other team’s nexus, and if someone is in your way, what better options do you have than to forcibly remove them? Unfortunately, fighting is a little more complicated than a polite request. Your opponent probably doesn’t want to leave, and would rather you return to base first. Besides their unwelcome input, combat can bring with it a more personal set of obstacles. The strong emotions linked with fighting, as well as the intense focus and execution, can often interfere with learning and applying any knowledge you take into combat. For many players, improving at fighting comes with strong frustration. “Why can’t my hands just do what I want them to?”

Fights happen in many situations at many scales, but they all share common skill tests regardless of the participants or goals. Even if fights operate on a more instinctual level than strategy and tactics, much can be learned by watching a fight play out. In this piece, we will observe a few fights with a magnifying glass to watch what happens during a fight.

Trades

The first you might encounter in League are trades, small exchanges of damage and resources in lane without the intent to kill. Below, I have an example of a trade between Lux and Syndra from Lux’s point of view. While you watch the clip, try to track Syndra’s cooldowns relative to Lux. At level 1, Syndra Q has a 7 second cooldown, while Syndra W has a 12 second cooldown (not accounting for runes).

The clip begins with Lux freshly hitting level 2 (notice the pending ability upgrades) and just having spent her E, Lucent Singularity. Syndra has the minion advantage here: her wave has an extra melee minion over Lux’s, so the minions as a whole are expected to push slowly towards Lux’s tower. Syndra chooses this moment to walk forward and prepare her W, Force of Will, to try and hit Lux.

Lux recognizes she can’t fight back effectively since her E, the main damaging ability in her kit, is still on cooldown, while she guesses Syndra’s Q, Dark Sphere, is ready. She opts to back off out of Syndra’s W range and give space. Seeing Syndra use her W on the red-side minions, Lux feels confident to step back towards the wave to resume collecting her last hits.

However, before Lux commits to moving back towards the wave, she guesses that Syndra might try to tag her with a Q during her walk back towards the minions. Lux preemptively dodges just in case, and her caution is rewarded with a dodged Syndra Q. The backstep takes enough time for Lux to lose a melee minion for it.

With Syndra’s cooldowns now burned, she backs off completely. She leaves Lux’s E range before it comes back up and stands behind her minions to avoid getting tagged by Lux’s Q, Light Binding.

Before the next wave arrives, both Lux and Syndra attack the wave. Lux attempts to catch Syndra with her E, guessing that Syndra might walk up to poke her.

Syndra steps backwards, avoiding the Lux E. At this point, Lux guesses Syndra has her cooldowns, ready to whiff punish her missed E. Lux chooses not to instantly detonate her E to force Syndra to walk around it, preventing instant retaliation from Syndra.

Syndra attempts to punish the Lux’s E cooldown anyways by looking for another W + Q. She walks around the Lucent Singularity and past her minions to aim a W + Q at Lux right as the next minion wave arrives.

Lux recognizes that Syndra is looking to trade very aggressively past her wave, while Lux’s minions are nearly in range. She walks forward very slightly to increase the odds of landing her Light Binding and roots the Syndra while barely avoiding the Syndra W.

Lux goes on the offensive. She walks forward with the support of her minions and does as much damage as she can with her attacks and E. Syndra trades back briefly with a Q of her own and a couple basic attacks as she leaves. Both sides disengage once all ability cooldowns are burned and the minion waves fully collide, and the fighting ends.

You might have noticed the general flow of Lux’s decision-making in this trade. Many of Lux’s actions were taken conditionally, contingent upon Syndra’s cooldowns and range. If you read between the lines from Syndra’s perspective, you might also notice similar patterns: recognizing Lux’s cooldowns and “hittability” and acting after evaluating the situation. The collection and tracking of resources strongly inform both players’ decisions—each wants to act when the other cannot respond.

Duels

At some point, you will have an encounter where you and your opponent do agree to put your lives on the line. In a duel, an isolated fight to the death, the stakes increase, but the process remains the same. Let’s take a look at a duel between Garen (PoV) and Volibear to illustrate the same process in a very different position. This time, watch how both champions are facing and moving during the fight.

The two laners have different win conditions for a fight. Garen has distinct uptime and downtime. His abilities have high instant value but long cooldowns, so he wants to limit interaction once his abilities are used. Volibear is strong in very extended fights, with his W, Frenzied Maul, giving him a large burst of HP and damage if used consecutively on the same target, so he wants to stay on his target for as long as possible. Neither player has summoner spells, so all results are final. These conditions heavily inform each player’s intentions during the fight.

The sequence begins with a whole lot of nothing as both Garen and Volibear uncomfortably hit minions near each other. Both players are wary that the other is very willing to take a fight, but want the other to initiate it first. Garen waits for his W to come off cooldown, since its brief tenacity and damage reduction is useful against the stun on Voli’s Q, Thundering Smash.

As Garen’s last melee minion walks toward the Volibear’s wave, it creates a little space for Garen to walk up. He knows Volibear wants to collect this minion so he decides to pick a fight at the same time. Volibear obliges, instantly jumping on Garen with his Q stun and W to mark him as the fight begins. Garen, having guessed that Voli tends to start off fights with his Q and poised to react, casts his W to negate as much damage and crowd-control as possible, allowing Garen to return the damage with a Q and E of his own.

Voli disengages, running towards his own tower as Garen E ends. Garen also backs off slightly, now that his cooldowns are spent. He doesn’t think his R can kill the Volibear immediately, and he can get another chance at his head later.

Voli, however, notices that Garen is still marked by his Frenzied Maul as a target, and begins to reconsider. If Voli can get off another W, he heals a significant amount (pulling him even further away from the kill range of Garen R) and dealing high damage to Garen. Voli W is also a lower cooldown than Garen’s tools. As such, he turns around to look for a second bite.

Garen recognizes the situation as well. His lead over Volibear, while not insubstantial, doesn’t necessarily mean all situations are winning for him. All of Garen’s basic abilities are on cooldown. If he chose to continue the fight now and gave Voli another chance with Frenzied Maul, their healthbars could very easily switch places before Garen’s damaging abilities are fully back up. There’s a decent chance that Voli wins the duel, and he thinks Volibear sees it too.

But Garen’s abilities are up soon, and if he gets them off, he can bring Voli into his ultimate’s kill range. He just needs to keep Voli interested for long enough while waiting for his abilities to come off cooldown. As such, he also turns, just briefly, to tempt the Voli into chasing further.

Voli’s fully committed at this point. His W mark lasts for quite a few seconds, and he’s very close to getting it off and maybe winning the duel (or at least regaining some HP), and he’s slightly faster than Garen due to his boots, so it’s natural for him to continue walking forward.

Voli takes a bite out of Garen. As promised, the HP bars momentarily reverse direction: Voli shoots up while Garen drops. However, this bite proves more than he can chew. Voli is far from the safety of his tower and Garen’s tools are nearly back. The movement speed from his Q isn’t quite available yet, while Garen is more than ready to turn the fight. Voli begins to back off, but Garen tails him in hot pursuit. One Q -> E -> R later, and Garen smites him down.

You and your opponent are not so different in every fight. Both of you want the other dead, both of you have ideas of a plan, and both of you are constantly working to realize your plans while thwarting the others. Realizing that every fight is a two-way street of intentions and implementations gives you another avenue of information to explore and exploit: the players behind the champions.

Teamfights

Eventually, you’ll hit a stage in the game where fights cannot be contained to only you and your lane opponent. Past around 14 minutes, fights become teamfights as upwards of all 10 players in the game convene to practice Big Stick Diplomacy. As the number of players in a fight increases, however, so do the variables at hand. In full-blown teamfights, the amount of information to collect and process grows far beyond the capability of humans. In situations like these, what do you watch?

This teamfight begins around Elder Dragon. Despite the fact that the red side has Cloud Soul, the game is in a pretty even state. Red team is a two-threat composition, with only Yone and Ashe able to contribute significant damage. The blue side has high target access, which poses a problem for the red team. Despite the fact that Ashe is notably strong in this game, she is under extreme threat from the dive potential of Wukong, Zed, and Nautilus, making it difficult for her to live long enough to contribute damage. In previous teamfight (not shown), several blue team flashes were blown to kill Ashe, resulting in a won teamfight for blue.

In this situation, Ashe’s highest priority is straightforward: stay alive. Ashe can die in many many ways, but her primary concern is avoiding the blue team’s sources of “guaranteed” setup: Wukong E -> R, Nautilus R, and Zed R. A secondary concern is Draven—althrough she is generally more useful in a full teamfight than him, Draven can kill her extremely quickly if left undisturbed. She narrows the blue team’s threats down to those specifics.

Ashe begins the fight awkwardly postured in the jungle as Elder is started off by her team. She knows the blue team is postured behind the dragon pit and that the bottom river isn’t safe, due to a lack of vision. Her team controls the red side blue quadrant jungle, so she constantly kites toward it.

Nautilus shows his face in the river and his body language indicates that he is interested in courting Ashe. However, neither his team nor himself are close enough for a guaranteed snap engage on Ashe, especially if she steps into the banana bush above her and out of blue team’s vision. Ashe, knowing that a Nautilus engage right now would put his team in a bad position, holds her ground and pressures the Nautilus to choose as both teams converge.

Nautilus does not seem to come to the same conclusion. Instead, he moves even deeper into the river as the red team closes in to stop him from walking further. Red team begins hitting the Naut, including Ashe, who tanks it for a few seconds. He manages to press his R, Depth Charge, on Ashe, putting her in danger of blue team follow-up. Depth Charge’s knock-up and stun are guaranteed to hit Ashe eventually, so instead of continuing to deal damage to Nautilus, she opts to let her team handle it and run as far away from the enemy divers as possible. When the CC finally does connect, Ashe is too far from any action for the blue team to kill her. One key threat down.

Ashe is completely out of the fight momentarily as she backs up as far as possible. In the meantime, Yone gets bursted down by Draven, Wukong, and Zed, unable to contribute much damage before death. The fight is in full force with Ashe contributing a tiny bit of non-lethal damage on the Nautilus.

The red team’s AP Nunu provides some solace: he channels his ultimate in a bush and catches the unsuspecting Zed, instantly killing him with Rell’s finishing touch. A second key threat down.

The blue team pushes onward. They know that Nunu ult and Yone ult are now down, two key teamfight abilities for red team. Wukong has also held his ult this entire time, since he didn’t need it pick off Yone. Ashe, seeing both a potential Wukong engage and Draven just around the corner, continues to retreat deeper into the jungle.

K’Sante, caught in the middle of the enemy team, ults Wukong to get back toward the red side. His ult makes his much more lethal, but also much more vulnerable to damage, and blue team picks this timing to fully commit to the fight. Aatrox, Draven, Nautilus, and Wukong all walk towards the K’Sante, the only target in range, and Wukong presses his R. Rell slams her own ultimate in response. Everyone converges on the ramp to the river. A third threat diminished.

With Wukong’s first Ult charge down, Rell in the way dragging the blue team towards herself, and the attention focused on the K’Sante, Ashe finally gets a window to begin attacking. She kites back just a moment longer to ensure Wukong can’t run to her (he briefly dips into the bush and out of vision), then fully commits to hitting the closest target.

At this point, even though Nunu is completely removed from the fight, blue team has no remaining ways to finish off Ashe while their damage dealers are mostly incapacitated. All Ashe needs to do now is not die to a random Draven axe, and she does so unimpressively. K’Sante and her clean up the remainder of the fight without further hassle.

Teamfights contain multitudes. In the torrent of information present in a teamfight, parsing it effectively is a problem posed to all. When inevitably confronted with these situations, it is not just important, but necessary, to simplify the given information into useful decision points. Getting overwhelmed and dying to factors outside of your mental stack happens frequently to everyone, and the best way to avoid it is to decrease the load of ideas to think about.

Conclusion

Parsing a fight is a nontrivial task. Fighting tests players on collecting, processing, and executing upon information, but on the order of seconds or less. To top it off, the stakes of a fight are deeply visceral: we might feel terrible when our screen turns grey, just as easily as we might feel amazing when we scrape by on a sliver of health. Because fighting happens so fast, and wrestles control from the strategic part of your brain, it can feel correct to avoid fights whenever possible and build advantages elsewhere.

However, this viewpoint of fighting is ultimately incomplete. At League’s base level, combat is the membrane through which players interact with each other through League, so any plan for winning the game will inevitably concern fighting of some sort. Beneath the veneer of strategy and tactics lies a fundamental truth: fights aren’t inevitable so much as they are valuable.

This is the first of a series of essays on learning to fight in League of Legends. The goal of this series is to reintroduce the study of fighting to League: the submission that fights are both a puzzle to solve and a solution to puzzles.