This is something I’ve been meaning to write about for a while but just haven’t quite had the words or experience to force me to do so. I finally had that moment though, so here’s the post.

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.

We’ve all been on the receiving end of a good old-fashioned beat down at one time or another. The other team bangs out a couple early kills and suddenly you and your teammates are stuck 3 levels down and your towers are getting steamrolled.

This situation happens frequently enough that Riot is looking at ways to change it. According to a post from Zileas, they’re trying to discourage the 5-man roam that has become so popular. Here’s his post:

Our philosophy on this issue is that individual snowballing is good, and team snowballing is bad. Right now, team snowballing occurs too much — one super carry twitch is a lot easier to handle than 5 guys who are 3 levels higher than each of you.

We are going to make some experience table tweaks to reduce team snowballing without hurting individual snowballing much. We are also going to make a new 3 lane map that is larger, has less cross-map connectivity (so that there is higher cost to 5 man roam, and less shutdown of the farming/laning phase via the first tower being down), etc.

We probably will nerf flash.

We wont be nerfing snowball items. Emotional highs from the game you super carried make this genre sticky. We removed it too much in the beta, and it cost us. Sorry, but being super carry annie or super carry corki once in a while gets a player through the 8 defeat in a row streak they hit the next day.

I’m on the fence about early gold for kills. It’s been something we have been talking about, for the reason you cite. OF course, an early kill is also harder than a late kill.

I can appreciate the thought behind this, though I worry about the pace of the game. The roaming gank squad has already taken its toll on pace. I’ve had a number of games recently where safe play from both sides led to more than 20 minutes without a death. Discouraging ganking seems like it will just make the laning phase that much longer and more painful. There are plenty of games in which I feel like losing my outer turret is the best thing that could happen because it breaks me out of the laning mentality. I realize that this is the point – to keep people from leaving lane – but that’s where the fun of the game is.

If anything, I think the best solution is the 3-lane map with less interconnectivity. That at least gives you the option to farm a lane once the tower is down with some potential for intra-lane ganking so long as there are enough hiding spots.

What do you think? Are there too many games in which snowballing is a serious problem or are you okay with the 5-man roam?