League of Legends is a unique game in a lot of ways. While most competitive games try to level the playing field as much as possible, games like LoL reward players who get kills and penalize those who die, creating a snowball situation that can heavily favor those who play well in the early game. I’ve been a part of countless games in a which what appears to be a better picked or much more skilled team loses because of mistakes in the early game. I know, it sounds like a “duh” kind of situation, but I think I have a decent way of describing the situation for newer players to understand.

There are a lot of factors that affect the outcome of a fight, not the least of which is farm. If you play your cards right early, though, you can make the late game much more agreeable.

Here’s your situation: early game your damage is limited by both your spell rank and your mana/energy/cooldowns. As the game progresses, your damage is capped only by your cooldowns in most situations. Because of this, you need to pick your targets wisely in early fights. Choose targets with low health over higher health, even if they may be significantly more difficult to kill when you account for escape skills. When you blow your entire damage pool and your target lives you’re in a very bad position early game. If that target saved you a little love, they will put you in a hole.

The issue here is that the tankier toons, even if they’re the closest target, will only get tankier as the game goes on. If you miss the kill on them early game, they probably do enough damage to kill you. If you miss the kill on them late game, there isn’t much they can do unless they are a toon with a lot of CC. It’s crucial to keep extra gold away from the tanks as much as possible in the early game. Try to focus on ganks you know you can get early, and it will make your life late game so much easier.