Since my recent Kennen winning streak it’s been tough to stomach losses, and I’ve had my fair share. In a few of the most recent encounters I’ve felt confident of the win but we managed a pretty severe loss. Our team comp looked great, but we just couldn’t initiate well and once we initiated it seemed everything went to hell.
Then I saw an encounter that explained to me a lot of our problems. We had just won a gank-turned-teamfight fairly handily. All five on our team were up with just two of theirs. We started to backdoor a turret because we were close and our creeps were on the way. Two of my own teammates were injured and when our two standing opponents made a show of defense, our whole team ran off. Luckily we were on Skype so I stood my ground, encouraging everyone to fight. We killed off one of the remaining two and pushed the turret.
It made me realize that sometimes you just need to sack up and fight. Early in the game it seems people are willing to take risks to get some kills, but once late game hits, everyone is so conscious of the consequences that you forego a number of chances to get an ace or simply win a teamfight and gain time to push.
In a more recent encounter, my teammates and I were pushing a turret on TT. We had already taken the bottom inhibitor and, though were low, we stayed to try to push. As our opponents slowly respawned, we fought back just to get aced. Over the course of our skirmish, though, we pushed their last remaining inhibitor turret down to just 15% health and their bottom inhibitor respawned and was subsequently killed by the wave of super minions our opponents weren’t there to stop. Sure, it sucked getting aced, but overall it was a successful push. We shackled them to their base for defense, respawned, regained map control and pushed for the win.
Long story short – don’t be afraid to fight, especially if you have a good initiator. If your team is standing around, drop Tibbers on the next person to get close. Your allies will get the message and go all in.
