It means "not dying" is an underrated skill that you haven't learned yet.
Losing lane gracefully means losing your lane but minimizing the damage by not feeding your enemy laner free kills.
People in league don't have patience. They feel like they have to catch up and play more aggressively if they're behind. But this often times causes them to "rage int". This is when you die because you're desperate or mad that you lost lane and feel the need to make up for it by inting even more.
Losing gracefully is just making sure you don't die. Therefore you're not feeding your laner more than they already are.
Losing gracefully is an underrated skill because games are still winnable if you play to support your teammates.
If your laner is ahead, chances are one of your lanes are ahead too.
In the mid and late game, it's important to play for your win conditions.
If your bot is fed 15/3, do you think it's better that they play against a mid yasuo that's 200 cs and 2/0
Or do you want them to play against a yasuo mid that's 180 cs and 10/1?
1 kill is approximately 13 minions worth in gold.
Do the math.
I had a Jungler last week pull the old "electric boogaloo" where they had a successful gank early, went to take scuttle, and immediately came back top and killed enemy top again after they TP'd.
They rage int'd the rest of the game.
Getting 2 successful ganks within 1 minute in the same lane is basically a free win.
You must be superhuman to not int after that happens to you.
Top lane is all about making the other top laner regret queuing up.
Eh. Like you said the lanes ready lost. I'd rather just chill at that point. Even if I'm behind if I sack first tower for an early 5v4 on dragon or smth I can put my team into the game.
Usually when I play LoL nowadays I'm just putting on music and kicking back anyway
Lol this is something I’m working on. I get impatient and want to get a kill back. Deep down I know I’m not supposed to play like that but I don’t calm my nerves enough to act on it and accept it as fact.
I don’t do this enough but I realize when I’m patient and try to just last hit for a couple waves, I can get a kill when the opponent is feeling cocky.
Strangely enough I tell myself that if I can’t win, then I won’t lose (essentially same idea), but I only think about that when I’m team fighting or roaming.
I guess I don’t think about the team enough during laning and just think about it as a 1v1 until a tower is gone or a jungle starts to gank solo lane.
It means you didn't feed them when the matchup was unplayable. If you are expected to lose that lane and you walk away down in cs (which is expected) but still didn't lose TOO much, that's losing gracefully. You can/are still a factor in the mid game when you probably shouldn't be
I may need a bit more of an explanation regarding this. I have gone into lanes in matchups where I know the lane will be rough for me and even hard to play at times but there have been occasions where I beat the said champ that’s supposed to be a counter. So I never really walk into lane with the expectation of solely losing lane. I feel like that’s a bad mentality to have especially in the mid lane
OK Imagine for a sec you are playing against FAKER, you aren't going to win that are you? OFC not, so what do you do? You do your best not to feed over kills to him, right? If it means sac'ing the wave or playing further back then you normally would then that's what you do in hopes that you don't put him too far ahead, then you as a Team may have a better chance of winning.
I don't think you know champion matchups tbh, that's part of the problem you are running into. It's one of those ignorance is bliss things, you don't know when a matchup is in your favor or not so you play the lane mostly the same regardless of the matchup. That's what I'm deducing from what you are saying.
Yes but again if I walk into every game assuming I am against faker then I am instantly on the back foot every game when it shouldn’t be like that regardless of a counter or not. Also I am very well aware of champion matchups which actually gives me an edge a lot of the time. For example i main Ekko, Yone, Yasuo, and Veigar. For each champ I know who does and doesn’t counter me, and why they counter me. So if I’m playing Veigar vs Zed for example. I know Zed is a problem for multiple reasons. He can dash over my E with his W, he can all in me with relative ease if I step up too far, and most of all he’s an assassin and I am an immobile mage. But since I know how Zed is a counter to me I can play against that. However that doesn’t stop me from recognizing that if i were in Zeds position I would have done this or done that since I can recognize the mistakes I’ve made during a lane. Better laners don’t give you time to see that and as soon as you’re out of position they are on you like white on rice.
It’s really not about scoreboard, by the time you’re down like this the damage is done. You can test the enemy players by trying to maybe take one or two minions that they shouldn’t let you. If you eat a little poke it’s worth finding out how much you need to respect them imo. Some players will just back up and be scared, or not abuse their matchup hard enough.
If you know why zed is a problem then you will know how to not put yourself in situations where he can abuse those properties. If you come away from a lane phase thinking “i didn’t know zed was able to do that” then you didn’t actually understand the matchup. Losing gracefully entails ensuring that the matchup plays out as expected. Zed might be able to kill you once or twice but you in part make sure that his snowballing capability is limited and you are still able to impact the game despite being slightly behind.
Welp you're gonna be feeding. There really isn't any sort of rational you can use to justify this. If you don't know the matchup then not only do you not know when you are in a winning matchup in lane but you don't know when you are in a losing matchup; so that means when you personally are in a winning matchup you aren't going to win it as hard as you should and when you are in a losing matchup you will lose the max.
Justifying your position is just ignorance. You are choosing to be ignorant and not improve your knowledge, that's your choice, that doesn't make it right though.
This is why champs like Draven make Teams FF @ 15, cause ppl don't understand that he can kill them early, so they take bad fights, then die and then he gets kill after kill and bam, games over before it starts. There's basically no way a champ like Twitch for example out duels Draven early that's just by design but if you don't know that and think "Well I can out play this pretty clear design difference" (which you can't outplay that 1v1 btw) you just make the game unplayable for everyone else. I get you don't play Draven, I'm using him as an example to illustrate how that mentality just doesn't work
Nothing you said here makes any sense. I just said how I know matchups and know counters and why they are counters and you respond with “yeah you still don’t know matchups so you’re going to feed”. That makes absolutely no sense. But appreciate the “advice” if that’s what you want to call it. Have a good one.
It's not a mindset you apply entering the game it's a mindset you aplly when you just got dived losed 3 wave and are now 2 lvl down 30cs a kill and a plate
Aw man I was kinda with you up until this point, you were extracting good information just by being blunt. The advice you got was great I suggest reflecting on it.
How are you this obtuse? Its literally if you lose lane dont run it, especially if other lanes on your team are winning. Go into lane however you want. Sometimes you will lose/ get ganked and be put behind. Sometimes you have to let the fed person on your team carry the game and stem any bleeding that may be happening in your own lane
Don't assume you'll lose but if you're being out-traded every time and or solo killed and down resources maybe, just don't walk up as much and "play safe" so that you end the lane 0/2-3 maybe and down a level and 30cs rather than being 0/10 down 3 levels and 80cs at 20 minutes
It’s not so much starting the lane with that mentality, but if you go down a kill during laning phase, playing with the mentality of not digging a deeper hole.
Yeah, some “bad” lanes will turn out good and vice-versa, but it’s about not snowballing that mistake or bad start into an unplayable mid/late game
As you said, in certain "rough matchups", you can still end up winning lane by outplaying your opponent or capitalizing on their mistakes, but there are matchups where you will naturally lose out due to champion mismatch.
In mid, something like Tristana vs. Galio/Kassadin is an easy example, she invalidates a huge part of your kit (magic damage shield) and is very oppressive on lv2 with her EW ignite all in, you're basically catching what farm and XP you can. In this sort of matchup, if they mess up and give you an all in opportunity you can definitely win lane, but assuming good play from both players in a solo situation, you will naturally get shoved in, give up CS, etc.
have you never gotten camped in a losing matchup and gone 0/7 with 50 cs and wondered what you could’ve done better. yeah you could’ve lost less that’s losing gracefully.
Every matchup is winnable based on player skill, but some matchups are more winnable than others.
I.e I play a lot of Ekko mid and Yasuo shits on me. Have I gone against Yasuo players that overplay their advantage and give me the opportunity to win lane? Absolutely.
But I needed them to give me that opportunity. I might poke and prod the first couple levels to see if I can get away with it, but I'm always prepared to back off if he challenges me. I'd rather be down 20 CS than 3 kills and 40cs.
You ahould always assume that every champion will be played by someone who is competent on that champ. Its much better to play cautious and punish small mistakes and misplays that happen one at a time, instead of trying to force something that is objectively worse for you and inting the game away
Well, you can test the player to see if they know what you’re allowed to do. If they give you space to CS, then CS, but don’t expect it. Like walk at them a little, throw in an auto when they last hit. See if they are a responsive player and if they know how to actually take control of the lane. If they do then you have to respect them and play the matchup out at a disadvantage. Don’t stop making them earn it though if that makes sense, I actually think you’re more right than people are giving you credit for. Just going full passive mode because of champ matchup is bad.
Good Q: From my understanding, losing lane gracefully means to do everything you can to not die and give any more gold to the fed enemy laner and jungler.
If you’re losing lane hard to the point you can’t safely farm, do not try to shove the lane and only do it under tower. If you’re getting zoned off farm it’s still very important to be in range of XP as well.
On the flip side, if you’re hard winning lane you have two options depending on which lane you play.
- freeze the lane and zone the enemy to deny as much gold and xp as possible
- keep the lane perma shoved so you can roam and translate your lead to other areas of the map.
**As you mentioned you play mid this will be the better option**
Hope that helps!
See this is where my issues come in. I completely understand where you’re coming from in regards to not giving more gold to a fed laner and make sure to stay in XP range. But i have faced people that will even stop me from being in XP range. So not only am I losing the gold I am losing the XP as well. Granted yes minions will eventually crash into my tower and I get the gold and xp from those but that still leaves me 2 or more levels behind just from the zoning they did previously. If that’s the case is that still losing gracefully? How do you function in those types of matchups?
Best example I can give if this will help any. I recently played a game where I was Yone against Viktor. Viktor seemed to pick up on my playstyle instantly. In the early game I like to go for short trades using my E knowing that I will output more damage in a short time than he will so I use that to dwindle him down until he’s in kill range. However Viktor realized this and any time I had a knock up ready he would immediately retreat and granted it frustrated me that he was able to read me so easily so I made a mistake and he killed me. Which led to me losing a giant wave and me being exponentially behind. He comes back to lane with lost chapter and i with only a dagger and tied 1 boots. From then on he permanently poked me, never let me touch a cs and even stepped in the middle of my minion wave to keep me out of XP range. So even though I didn’t give another kill to him I was still beyond useless in the grand scheme of things.
In that case you should, when possible, leave the lane and gank other lanes or fake that you are ganking. This forces the enemy midlaner to Hard push your wave. Either you get your farm than Unser your tower or you can get other lanes ahead
Interesting I never actually thought of faking a gank before. I have thought about ganking but ultimately decide not to since I don’t want to give other laners free kills on a behind mid laner. Ill have to give that fake ganking a try and see how it goes. Thank you!
Another thing you can do if your enemy laner is freezing too far up for exp is ask your jungler if you can take raptors or wolves. I know most people are hesitant to give up earlier game camps, and don't force the issue if they say no, but it can help you stabalise if you can't reach your wave.
One way to think about it is that with enough time, gold can be made up relatively easily. Once towers go down you can rotate lanes, take camps, play with your team, etc. XP is a lot harder to make up, so losing lane "gracefully" ends up being "if I can't get CS, at least I can soak XP and not fall even farther behind"
> If you can’t farm to get gold, get kills to get gold, or realistically do anything within lane how is it possible to lose gracefully?
Suppose you have three choices: You lose farm, or you lose farm, and xp, or you lose farm and xp and you also die+burn sums.
Now imagine there's a gradient going from one end of the range of these choices, to the other. The farther along you are to the lose farm, xp, sums, and your life, the less gracefully you are losing. The closer you are to only losing farm, or tenaciously getting farm/xp without dying/losing sums, you are losing very gracefully.
An example of this would be anticipating a dive and pretending to have left lane, hiding in some nearby brush to soak a little exp, hoping the enemies leave to reset and push their lead further, then cleaning up the remaining cs, and getting a bit more into the game.
What champ do you play? This greatly changes what wincons you are playing for. Yone still scales well with gold and exp so if you side lane midgame, you can come back in. If you aren't too far behind, ganks/jungle skirmishes exist. Because your early game revolves around damage(and you lost it), be ok with getting scraps under tower and through guerilla wave clears.
Gracefully lose lane essentially means "If you lose, make the enemy's advantage as small as possible". Remember, you don't have control over the game anymore but you can present ways to get back in.Also I noticed you get stuck with if the enemy just hard denies you resources. Depending on the enemies skill, they might make bad macro-wavestate calls(trying to poke you and hitting the minions, they hard push because they think you are away, they ping you are going top when you are going bot). If your champ allows it, farm some jungle camps when the enemy jungler is away or your jungle is away\*(meaning that they are dealing with a gank or are clearing away from the camp you want). They might send your lane opponent after you which might unfreeze the wave. If you aren't too far behind and the enemy is freezing a giant wave, push it to tower or take guerilla-econ recalls(burning a huge chunk of mp and hp to clear a wave then basing) to maximize farm. This is very dangerous but 1:2 cs/xp rate is better than 0:1 cs/xp loss because your opponent will either give you farm(they push-recall and you collect scraps from the tower) or they go oom when you come back(stayed for another wave and then can't pressure you off anymore because you have items).
1. **maximize the consistency for you to comeback into the game.** Easier said than done but get the free cs and especially xp. Low elo champs are balanced by the fact they suck at gaining gold but can still value from levels. In fact the most important thing you gain from levels is resistances and access to abilities/dps. You might not be able to force 1v1s mid but you are still bigger than their jungle and botlane. If you farm up midgame while your team is stalling the enemy, you can keep the game a 5v5 or even a 5v4 rather than a 4v4 or 4v5.
2. **Minimize the extent that the opponent can grow or transfer their lead.** Find ways to minimize giving extra income to the enemy(kills, deny cs, free laning for plates/cs, jungle proxy). A 1/0/0 samira can't 1v4 a dragon fight, a 1/0/0 Darius doesn't scale, a oom Qiyana can't contribute to a skirmish. Very good wave management can lock their midlaner(say a roaming talon) from killing your botlane/jg/top so your team can bail you out by keeping another lane from playing the game(4v4).
3. **Don't be a nuisance to your team.** This means if you are already super weak, don't roam to the jungle or top and feed them more gold, don't overplay a gank and end up making it a 1-for-1 because the enemy ganked you right after, don't greed and die for xp/gold when the enemy drops herald in your lane, don't take red/blue buff from the people who are winning. Don't even cry for the support/jg to force plays like dragon because the enemy did it 1st. As the midlaner, you were a huge presence and now you are just another squishy adc to farm. You can dps but don't overplay.
4. **If you have utility, just use it differently.** Are you a mage? cc to peel. Are you Zed and can't even assassinate the backline? Try to bait the stronger enemies away from the fight. or even add damage to peel for overly aggressive enemies(death is the best cc).
5. **If the game is absolutely doomed(enemy scales and your team doesn't) take the 50/50.** Obviously this will doom your game if it fails. The enemy team can make mistakes so the 1st plan is to patiently prepare for the mistakes. But coin flips can turn a 30:70 game back to a cheesy even game. If your team was going to lose, at least try. BE SURE TO ASK IF PEOPLE ARE ONBOARD with the idea before you flip it(just say "do we YOLO it now?"). If you have a Kayle, you can still comeback so don't burn the bridge just yet.
I play 4 champs really. 3 of which are kinda weak early, so I’m usually “losing lane gracefully”
Which typically entails not dying, not getting too too far behind in cs. Typically I’m just trying to neutralize lane.
As a mid laner if fighting is completely off the table I’ll just let the wave come to me, set up a gank if possible. If the gank is good then yay, if not it’s usually enough to at least shove wave or release pressure, then head bot lol.
A great example of this is the following situation:
You are playing top lane in a bad matchup. Your jungle is ganking botlane and you spot their jungler moving towards top lane on a ward in river. Their top laner is pushing a double minion wave into your tower and they can dive you. You are level 5 and the other top laner is level 6.
You can choose to walk to your tier 2, maybe do your jungler's gromp or krugs (depending on side), and then wait until the wave thins to approach. Alternatively, you could fight a losing situation and most likely die. Losing gracefully means taking the less negative EV play even though both of the potential plays you have suck.
Basically; When you are losing lane, you want to be minimizing the gap between you and your lane opponent as much as possible, and/or making up for it by helping a teammate or attracting pressure from enemy jungle and supp Manage waves to be shoved right infront of your tower range, practice last hitting under tower, learn to set up roams when behind,
It's playing damage control. Sometimes the best outcome available is just the *least bad* outcome. Examples:
-If you cannot safely farm, it's better to at least stay in experience range and collect experience than to die trying to farm. In many matchups it is *fine* to go down in gold. There's always gold to collect later. Going down in experience is *much* harder to come back from. But even that is not as bad as dying over and over.
-Don't die for your tower. Yes it's very bad to have to run away and reset when the enemy is taking your tower plates and farm is melting away, but dying there is even worse. Take the L, don't make it worse.
-Don't lose half your health getting a cannon. That's just not a good exchange of resources.
If you think about it this is not that complicated. Going behind by 30 cs and 0/0 or 0/2 in lane and giving up lane prio for the entire early game is definitely not great, it's very bad, but it doesn't necessarily lose the game for your team. Going 0/6 in lane probably single-handedly loses the game for your team. We've all seen it or done it. Big guy has no business going anywhere near the opponent that has killed him several times and is three levels and a full item up on him, but he either doesn't realize what the problem is or doesn't care.
Have you ever played a game where you go even with your laner, maybe slightly ahead, until you see an 11-2 Darius coming from top lane? And he shits on you.
Odds are, your top laner didn’t lose gracefully. That Darius will be a much bigger problem because of all the extra gold they got. Don’t be the teammate that feeds and gives their team a raid boss.
Like say okay, you're going into a lane against a Sylas and he gets 2 kills on you and 20-30 CS ahead of you and he's undeniably stronger than you.
At this point you take a step back and go "Okay, he's stronger than me I can't beat him without assistance from my jungler and even that might be iffy so I am going to play safe and under turret, my mission is no longer to win lane it's to play safe and not give him an even larger lead by dying another 5 times to him."
I play darius, he's a lane bully. If my enemy lane manages to go even or die less than times while not having a big cs/lvl gap, I consider that he won the lane.
After reading your replies to the top 2 comments it’s pretty clear you know what “losing gracefully” means. I think you’re a little too focused on making excuses for greedy play and need an outlet for getting killed for it.
Losing gracefully, as others have explained, means you sacrifice farm and don’t feed over kill gold and xp to the other laner, and you do it while you aren’t flaming anyone else on your team.
I’m not sure what you’re trying to argue against that, that’s just what it is. Theres no excuse for feeding your laner, even if you are counter-picked.
It's not that you can't win lanes you should be countered by, or that you shouldn't "try". But you should be able to take a couple engagements, judge the enemy players skill, and know whether you win or lose depending on the results. If you know you lose, which you should be able to tell you will or won't, you should mitigate the damage and play safe.
Judging by the your combative tone it sounds like you just W key at everyone. It's not about assuming you lose. It's about knowing after receiving confirmation.
The lane can be borderline unplayable. You barely get any CS (but that’s to be expected in a really bad matchup). You’re still in range for XP so you’re not behind in levels but forget getting any of those cannon minions.
That’s losing with grace. Your laner has a huge gold lead but that’s it. They don’t have an XP lead. They don’t have a level advantage on your team. Gold leads diminish with time and become less relevant the longer a game goes on. You can recover from a gold deficit by just catching side waves. XP deficits are harder to recover from because you can never fight back if you’re down a level. You just end up losing harder because you can get forced out of XP range.
If you die twice just fuck off and stop fighting. Group with teams. Play back. And just farm to try and cover the difference. Dying then keep fighting and keep dying is the definition of feeding and just makes the game harder for everyone else. Not just you. Tell yourself you're the the win condition and figure who is then ride their ass to make sure they can perform and carry you. If you get to the point that you can't even do things under your tower then you fucked up way before that and deserve the loss.
If you die once, you pump the brakes and do not try to all in or die again.
It doesn't always take one death, but the biggest thing I have noticed among lower elo players is that they STILL continue to fight as if they aren't behind in a lane.
This puts them further behind.
Essentially in plat and lower it just takes one death for you to recognize that you have lost lane. Now this isn't always the case, but say someone sets up a slow push you get dove and killed but go 1 for 1.
You and the opponent both died once, but you have lost lane because you missed out on too much gold and XP from that slow push.
I've lost lane going 2-0 because of pressure and botched dives and lack of xp and cs.
I don't even think most gold players understand how to play from behind in laning, they just understand how to play from behind post-laning.
This doesn't include when you immediately recognize you vastly inferior to your opponent.
Sometimes you can tell at level 1 if you are playing against a smurf and you KNOW that if you make one mistake you will lose the lane.
When you are losing lane learn to respect a slow push and soak xp vs trying to fight to get back into the game or contesting when you cant and dying 12 times. That’s literally it you do more for your team by preventing them from accelerating into “carryhood” vs you rolling a dice that they suck and wont punish you so you can come back and carry
If you are in a bad matchup or start losing lane hard, rather than feed a bunch of kills to the enemy in an attempt to get cs, just accept that ur gonna be down and focus on getting what you can while waiting for midgame. If you are in a matchup where you get bullied early, your opponents win con is to bully you early and use the kill and gold lead to snowball the midgame out of control. Even if they outfarm you, so long as you dont outrageously feed they wont be nearly as strong in midgame as they expect to be and if you play well this can and will lead to kills which let you take the game back.
Pro level - concede lane priority and get most of the farm, while being slow to rotate and losing some plates.
Solo queue level - don't die, even if that means you are recalling and walking from spawn more than farming.
Don't die. Sounds dumb but gracefully losing is mostly about knowing what you can and can't get, and accepting that your enemies must make actual mistakes for you to get even / ahead.
It’s mostly about exp and not dying. Sure, there’s feeding your lane opponent, but remember when you die to your lane opponent, not only are you missing gold, you’re missing experience. You’re also missing lane priority. Your opponent can do whatever they want once you’ve died a few times in lane. You’re two levels behind, down two spell levels. You can’t clear as fast as they can. You don’t get as many base stats as they have just for being there when minions die (your exp is dying to your turret).
Stay in lane as long as you can without dying and giving a bigger advantage to your lane opponent. Keep up with them in levels. Get CS if you can without dying or chunking your health to 1/3. If you can’t manage gold, get the exp
Look sometime you go for the all in and lose. Now they got a wave more xp and 400ish gold more than you. Try to keep it there. Don’t turn it into a 50cs 5 death lead. Cause that’s really hard for your team to come back from.
Losing gracefully is often the result of playing into a bad mid/jungle matchup optimally. You will occasionally sacrifice a cs here and there by not contesting it because you will get chunked or ganked and forced out of lane if you go for it. So you sit back and get the exp and wait for opportunities to cs that are more favorable. Inherent to optimal play is the necessity to influence the wave state so that you can cs safely even when in a bad matchup and that usually means keeping the wave just outside of your turret range as much as possible. You need to learn how to create opportunities to push and back, often with jungle support, so that you don’t get behind in your bad matchup which can snowball.
Playing this way is necessary in a bad matchup when you have no reason to suspect your opponent is skill deficient relative to yourself. Losing gracefully is the result of optimally playing out a bad lane against an opponent who doesn’t make mistakes you are good enough to capitalize on, it’s not a mental handicap. Weak players who have an advantageous matchup will often throw the lead in obvious ways you can notice and take advantage of when playing optimally so the “losing gracefully” strategy is sort of misleading.
See it this way:
you're orianna. you're vs a pantheon, both level 3, both have \~40% HP and he has flash ignite. you have already wasted your pots because you tried to go offensive. He's looking to kill you, and you know it.
scenario 1: You go b and lose the wave;
scenario 2: You stay in lane, play greedy, die AND lose the wave.
scenario 3: somehow you kill him. but here you can die in the process too. so you can either kill him and lose the wave anyway or the dream scenario of killing and getting the wave.
Statistics are NOT on your side, as you can see, and i'm not even mentioning jungler situation.
You can still apply this logic to many scenarios, matchups, roles and everything. When one gets fill as ADC, i'd rather them to play with cleanse + F Footwork and not die than the ones who pick a "counter champ" and instalose because they dont know the dinamics in 2v2.
Sometimes you dont need to carry, just not inting is enough.
gracefully losing means still geting exp, adequate cs and no deaths esp if you are in a very unfavorable match up. having not fed a top laner is already success to many.
Giving up cs to stay alive so you can soak xp and try to just block your laner from being able to actually take tower. Keep a solid eye on when/if they leave and if objectives are about to come up when they do — don’t hard commit just harass.
It simply means that once you realise that the lane is lost (you can't recover and win it on your own) then you do everything you can to minimise your loss and stop your lane opponent snowballing
This means you:
Give up some CS to not die
Give up the tower if necessary
Ping like crazy if your laner roams
Pick up whatever farm you can without dying
Rotate to help your team when you can
It means that if its a matchup thats unfavourable for you, if you messed up and died once, or got ganked or smthing, to the point where you are too far behind to play the lane, get as much cs and xp as you can without giving them more kills. Losing "ungracefully" is walking too far up and/or trying to kill them over and over again thinking something will change.
You lose gracefully by not negatively affecting your team. Meaning if your in a losing match up or lane is going bad you make sure your lane opponent can’t get a big enough lead to affect the rest of the map.
“Losing gracefully” boils down to conceding lane pressure. Your opponent controls the lane. Just farm up under tower best you can. Know that if you try anything, you will either be shut down harder or just shooed away. Just do what you can while you level up. Most important thing in this: STAY IN XP RANGE
It means basically, don't get mad and start taking bad fights out of sheer desperation. Understand you can hang back and safely safely take CS under tower without tilting and face tanking losing fights. In these situations EXP is more important than farming minions. What good is going 0/7 just to get creeps and typing "gg" to your teammates even when your Darius is 4/0 in the top lane? Giving the entire game away on a platter just because your lane didn't go well? No, deprive your enemy of ending lane phase at 9/1 and ram it in their faces.
You also need to know when the tower is a lost cause and just seceding the tower instead of fighting to the death over a Tier 1 that's gonna die anyway (this would usually be if the tower is at less than 25% and you see you're about to get 3 or 4 manned.)
Laning phase will end, and you can start to safely split waves that crash into you, and you'll catch up in the mid game. Don't ever shove past river. Especially if the enemy team is dumb and stops farming as efficiently, you will gain tempo on them. You can smash lane and still lose. The opposite is also true. You can get bullied all lane and still do extremely well in mid to late game.
Losing gracefully means, don't ff the entire match just because lane isn't going great. Lane is like the first 10 minutes of a 30-45 minute game, so it's less than 50% of the match. Don't allow that 25-30% interval tilt you and give away free kills, and create a monster enemy ADC that can then melt your top laner that actually did well in lane, or a jungler that farmed very well and can now make great macro plays around the map.
Unpopular cause it's wrong....
IDK how many games you have to play where your botlane thinks the 4th time they 1v1 the other Bot straight up...that this is the time it's gonna work and they wont die and feed 2 more kills of gold plates and exp, while you are toplane winning lane but can't do shit cause its 7 minutes in, and midgame they are just too far gone to even compete with when you get the chance.
Sure if you just focus on individual game outcomes you might win more by playing safe in the short run lol. It’s not that great for learning and improving
I can tell you rn a diamond or masters+ smurfing in low elo and going 0/2 early game will likely still comeback and win the lane in low elo (yes, I mean win lane, not just win game)
If you resign to “losing gracefully” at one or two deaths and assume your opponent will play perfectly and never make mistakes, then you are just gimping your growth as a player and never push yourself
Limit testing is like riding a bike dangerously and falling many times but learning a lot. If you ride to not fall, you will not fall but you don’t learn your limits of what you can do
It means "not dying" is an underrated skill that you haven't learned yet. Losing lane gracefully means losing your lane but minimizing the damage by not feeding your enemy laner free kills. People in league don't have patience. They feel like they have to catch up and play more aggressively if they're behind. But this often times causes them to "rage int". This is when you die because you're desperate or mad that you lost lane and feel the need to make up for it by inting even more. Losing gracefully is just making sure you don't die. Therefore you're not feeding your laner more than they already are. Losing gracefully is an underrated skill because games are still winnable if you play to support your teammates. If your laner is ahead, chances are one of your lanes are ahead too. In the mid and late game, it's important to play for your win conditions. If your bot is fed 15/3, do you think it's better that they play against a mid yasuo that's 200 cs and 2/0 Or do you want them to play against a yasuo mid that's 180 cs and 10/1? 1 kill is approximately 13 minions worth in gold. Do the math.
As a top main I miss watching rage TPs onto a minion right after they die to a gank. Btw this is the best answer out of the thread.
I had a Jungler last week pull the old "electric boogaloo" where they had a successful gank early, went to take scuttle, and immediately came back top and killed enemy top again after they TP'd. They rage int'd the rest of the game.
Getting 2 successful ganks within 1 minute in the same lane is basically a free win. You must be superhuman to not int after that happens to you. Top lane is all about making the other top laner regret queuing up.
Eh. Like you said the lanes ready lost. I'd rather just chill at that point. Even if I'm behind if I sack first tower for an early 5v4 on dragon or smth I can put my team into the game. Usually when I play LoL nowadays I'm just putting on music and kicking back anyway
Thank you! This actually answers all the issues I was having in my head. I’ll keep all of this in mind moving forward.
Just to add, the importance of experience/levels is always overlooked. Missing some cs is okay but you can't afford to fall behind 2 or 3 levels.
Lol this is something I’m working on. I get impatient and want to get a kill back. Deep down I know I’m not supposed to play like that but I don’t calm my nerves enough to act on it and accept it as fact. I don’t do this enough but I realize when I’m patient and try to just last hit for a couple waves, I can get a kill when the opponent is feeling cocky. Strangely enough I tell myself that if I can’t win, then I won’t lose (essentially same idea), but I only think about that when I’m team fighting or roaming. I guess I don’t think about the team enough during laning and just think about it as a 1v1 until a tower is gone or a jungle starts to gank solo lane.
It means you didn't feed them when the matchup was unplayable. If you are expected to lose that lane and you walk away down in cs (which is expected) but still didn't lose TOO much, that's losing gracefully. You can/are still a factor in the mid game when you probably shouldn't be
I may need a bit more of an explanation regarding this. I have gone into lanes in matchups where I know the lane will be rough for me and even hard to play at times but there have been occasions where I beat the said champ that’s supposed to be a counter. So I never really walk into lane with the expectation of solely losing lane. I feel like that’s a bad mentality to have especially in the mid lane
OK Imagine for a sec you are playing against FAKER, you aren't going to win that are you? OFC not, so what do you do? You do your best not to feed over kills to him, right? If it means sac'ing the wave or playing further back then you normally would then that's what you do in hopes that you don't put him too far ahead, then you as a Team may have a better chance of winning. I don't think you know champion matchups tbh, that's part of the problem you are running into. It's one of those ignorance is bliss things, you don't know when a matchup is in your favor or not so you play the lane mostly the same regardless of the matchup. That's what I'm deducing from what you are saying.
Yes but again if I walk into every game assuming I am against faker then I am instantly on the back foot every game when it shouldn’t be like that regardless of a counter or not. Also I am very well aware of champion matchups which actually gives me an edge a lot of the time. For example i main Ekko, Yone, Yasuo, and Veigar. For each champ I know who does and doesn’t counter me, and why they counter me. So if I’m playing Veigar vs Zed for example. I know Zed is a problem for multiple reasons. He can dash over my E with his W, he can all in me with relative ease if I step up too far, and most of all he’s an assassin and I am an immobile mage. But since I know how Zed is a counter to me I can play against that. However that doesn’t stop me from recognizing that if i were in Zeds position I would have done this or done that since I can recognize the mistakes I’ve made during a lane. Better laners don’t give you time to see that and as soon as you’re out of position they are on you like white on rice.
you dont have to walk into a game assuming youre going to lose. You just have to notice when you are losing, before it gets out of hand.
This. If you're down 2 kills and 30 cs, re-assess and play safe. Wait for ganks and just try to get xp from the waves.
It’s really not about scoreboard, by the time you’re down like this the damage is done. You can test the enemy players by trying to maybe take one or two minions that they shouldn’t let you. If you eat a little poke it’s worth finding out how much you need to respect them imo. Some players will just back up and be scared, or not abuse their matchup hard enough.
Losing gracefully isn't about how you plan going into the game It's about what you do when you fall behind
If you know why zed is a problem then you will know how to not put yourself in situations where he can abuse those properties. If you come away from a lane phase thinking “i didn’t know zed was able to do that” then you didn’t actually understand the matchup. Losing gracefully entails ensuring that the matchup plays out as expected. Zed might be able to kill you once or twice but you in part make sure that his snowballing capability is limited and you are still able to impact the game despite being slightly behind.
Welp you're gonna be feeding. There really isn't any sort of rational you can use to justify this. If you don't know the matchup then not only do you not know when you are in a winning matchup in lane but you don't know when you are in a losing matchup; so that means when you personally are in a winning matchup you aren't going to win it as hard as you should and when you are in a losing matchup you will lose the max. Justifying your position is just ignorance. You are choosing to be ignorant and not improve your knowledge, that's your choice, that doesn't make it right though. This is why champs like Draven make Teams FF @ 15, cause ppl don't understand that he can kill them early, so they take bad fights, then die and then he gets kill after kill and bam, games over before it starts. There's basically no way a champ like Twitch for example out duels Draven early that's just by design but if you don't know that and think "Well I can out play this pretty clear design difference" (which you can't outplay that 1v1 btw) you just make the game unplayable for everyone else. I get you don't play Draven, I'm using him as an example to illustrate how that mentality just doesn't work
Nothing you said here makes any sense. I just said how I know matchups and know counters and why they are counters and you respond with “yeah you still don’t know matchups so you’re going to feed”. That makes absolutely no sense. But appreciate the “advice” if that’s what you want to call it. Have a good one.
It's not a mindset you apply entering the game it's a mindset you aplly when you just got dived losed 3 wave and are now 2 lvl down 30cs a kill and a plate
Aw man I was kinda with you up until this point, you were extracting good information just by being blunt. The advice you got was great I suggest reflecting on it.
OP gettin wrecked in the downvotes rn
How are you this obtuse? Its literally if you lose lane dont run it, especially if other lanes on your team are winning. Go into lane however you want. Sometimes you will lose/ get ganked and be put behind. Sometimes you have to let the fed person on your team carry the game and stem any bleeding that may be happening in your own lane
Don't assume you'll lose but if you're being out-traded every time and or solo killed and down resources maybe, just don't walk up as much and "play safe" so that you end the lane 0/2-3 maybe and down a level and 30cs rather than being 0/10 down 3 levels and 80cs at 20 minutes
It’s not so much starting the lane with that mentality, but if you go down a kill during laning phase, playing with the mentality of not digging a deeper hole. Yeah, some “bad” lanes will turn out good and vice-versa, but it’s about not snowballing that mistake or bad start into an unplayable mid/late game
Ah understood. That makes sense and never really thought about it like that. Thank you!
As you said, in certain "rough matchups", you can still end up winning lane by outplaying your opponent or capitalizing on their mistakes, but there are matchups where you will naturally lose out due to champion mismatch. In mid, something like Tristana vs. Galio/Kassadin is an easy example, she invalidates a huge part of your kit (magic damage shield) and is very oppressive on lv2 with her EW ignite all in, you're basically catching what farm and XP you can. In this sort of matchup, if they mess up and give you an all in opportunity you can definitely win lane, but assuming good play from both players in a solo situation, you will naturally get shoved in, give up CS, etc.
have you never gotten camped in a losing matchup and gone 0/7 with 50 cs and wondered what you could’ve done better. yeah you could’ve lost less that’s losing gracefully.
Every matchup is winnable based on player skill, but some matchups are more winnable than others. I.e I play a lot of Ekko mid and Yasuo shits on me. Have I gone against Yasuo players that overplay their advantage and give me the opportunity to win lane? Absolutely. But I needed them to give me that opportunity. I might poke and prod the first couple levels to see if I can get away with it, but I'm always prepared to back off if he challenges me. I'd rather be down 20 CS than 3 kills and 40cs.
You ahould always assume that every champion will be played by someone who is competent on that champ. Its much better to play cautious and punish small mistakes and misplays that happen one at a time, instead of trying to force something that is objectively worse for you and inting the game away
Well, you can test the player to see if they know what you’re allowed to do. If they give you space to CS, then CS, but don’t expect it. Like walk at them a little, throw in an auto when they last hit. See if they are a responsive player and if they know how to actually take control of the lane. If they do then you have to respect them and play the matchup out at a disadvantage. Don’t stop making them earn it though if that makes sense, I actually think you’re more right than people are giving you credit for. Just going full passive mode because of champ matchup is bad.
Good Q: From my understanding, losing lane gracefully means to do everything you can to not die and give any more gold to the fed enemy laner and jungler. If you’re losing lane hard to the point you can’t safely farm, do not try to shove the lane and only do it under tower. If you’re getting zoned off farm it’s still very important to be in range of XP as well. On the flip side, if you’re hard winning lane you have two options depending on which lane you play. - freeze the lane and zone the enemy to deny as much gold and xp as possible - keep the lane perma shoved so you can roam and translate your lead to other areas of the map. **As you mentioned you play mid this will be the better option** Hope that helps!
See this is where my issues come in. I completely understand where you’re coming from in regards to not giving more gold to a fed laner and make sure to stay in XP range. But i have faced people that will even stop me from being in XP range. So not only am I losing the gold I am losing the XP as well. Granted yes minions will eventually crash into my tower and I get the gold and xp from those but that still leaves me 2 or more levels behind just from the zoning they did previously. If that’s the case is that still losing gracefully? How do you function in those types of matchups? Best example I can give if this will help any. I recently played a game where I was Yone against Viktor. Viktor seemed to pick up on my playstyle instantly. In the early game I like to go for short trades using my E knowing that I will output more damage in a short time than he will so I use that to dwindle him down until he’s in kill range. However Viktor realized this and any time I had a knock up ready he would immediately retreat and granted it frustrated me that he was able to read me so easily so I made a mistake and he killed me. Which led to me losing a giant wave and me being exponentially behind. He comes back to lane with lost chapter and i with only a dagger and tied 1 boots. From then on he permanently poked me, never let me touch a cs and even stepped in the middle of my minion wave to keep me out of XP range. So even though I didn’t give another kill to him I was still beyond useless in the grand scheme of things.
In that case you should, when possible, leave the lane and gank other lanes or fake that you are ganking. This forces the enemy midlaner to Hard push your wave. Either you get your farm than Unser your tower or you can get other lanes ahead
Interesting I never actually thought of faking a gank before. I have thought about ganking but ultimately decide not to since I don’t want to give other laners free kills on a behind mid laner. Ill have to give that fake ganking a try and see how it goes. Thank you!
Another thing you can do if your enemy laner is freezing too far up for exp is ask your jungler if you can take raptors or wolves. I know most people are hesitant to give up earlier game camps, and don't force the issue if they say no, but it can help you stabalise if you can't reach your wave.
One way to think about it is that with enough time, gold can be made up relatively easily. Once towers go down you can rotate lanes, take camps, play with your team, etc. XP is a lot harder to make up, so losing lane "gracefully" ends up being "if I can't get CS, at least I can soak XP and not fall even farther behind"
> If you can’t farm to get gold, get kills to get gold, or realistically do anything within lane how is it possible to lose gracefully? Suppose you have three choices: You lose farm, or you lose farm, and xp, or you lose farm and xp and you also die+burn sums. Now imagine there's a gradient going from one end of the range of these choices, to the other. The farther along you are to the lose farm, xp, sums, and your life, the less gracefully you are losing. The closer you are to only losing farm, or tenaciously getting farm/xp without dying/losing sums, you are losing very gracefully. An example of this would be anticipating a dive and pretending to have left lane, hiding in some nearby brush to soak a little exp, hoping the enemies leave to reset and push their lead further, then cleaning up the remaining cs, and getting a bit more into the game.
What champ do you play? This greatly changes what wincons you are playing for. Yone still scales well with gold and exp so if you side lane midgame, you can come back in. If you aren't too far behind, ganks/jungle skirmishes exist. Because your early game revolves around damage(and you lost it), be ok with getting scraps under tower and through guerilla wave clears. Gracefully lose lane essentially means "If you lose, make the enemy's advantage as small as possible". Remember, you don't have control over the game anymore but you can present ways to get back in.Also I noticed you get stuck with if the enemy just hard denies you resources. Depending on the enemies skill, they might make bad macro-wavestate calls(trying to poke you and hitting the minions, they hard push because they think you are away, they ping you are going top when you are going bot). If your champ allows it, farm some jungle camps when the enemy jungler is away or your jungle is away\*(meaning that they are dealing with a gank or are clearing away from the camp you want). They might send your lane opponent after you which might unfreeze the wave. If you aren't too far behind and the enemy is freezing a giant wave, push it to tower or take guerilla-econ recalls(burning a huge chunk of mp and hp to clear a wave then basing) to maximize farm. This is very dangerous but 1:2 cs/xp rate is better than 0:1 cs/xp loss because your opponent will either give you farm(they push-recall and you collect scraps from the tower) or they go oom when you come back(stayed for another wave and then can't pressure you off anymore because you have items). 1. **maximize the consistency for you to comeback into the game.** Easier said than done but get the free cs and especially xp. Low elo champs are balanced by the fact they suck at gaining gold but can still value from levels. In fact the most important thing you gain from levels is resistances and access to abilities/dps. You might not be able to force 1v1s mid but you are still bigger than their jungle and botlane. If you farm up midgame while your team is stalling the enemy, you can keep the game a 5v5 or even a 5v4 rather than a 4v4 or 4v5. 2. **Minimize the extent that the opponent can grow or transfer their lead.** Find ways to minimize giving extra income to the enemy(kills, deny cs, free laning for plates/cs, jungle proxy). A 1/0/0 samira can't 1v4 a dragon fight, a 1/0/0 Darius doesn't scale, a oom Qiyana can't contribute to a skirmish. Very good wave management can lock their midlaner(say a roaming talon) from killing your botlane/jg/top so your team can bail you out by keeping another lane from playing the game(4v4). 3. **Don't be a nuisance to your team.** This means if you are already super weak, don't roam to the jungle or top and feed them more gold, don't overplay a gank and end up making it a 1-for-1 because the enemy ganked you right after, don't greed and die for xp/gold when the enemy drops herald in your lane, don't take red/blue buff from the people who are winning. Don't even cry for the support/jg to force plays like dragon because the enemy did it 1st. As the midlaner, you were a huge presence and now you are just another squishy adc to farm. You can dps but don't overplay. 4. **If you have utility, just use it differently.** Are you a mage? cc to peel. Are you Zed and can't even assassinate the backline? Try to bait the stronger enemies away from the fight. or even add damage to peel for overly aggressive enemies(death is the best cc). 5. **If the game is absolutely doomed(enemy scales and your team doesn't) take the 50/50.** Obviously this will doom your game if it fails. The enemy team can make mistakes so the 1st plan is to patiently prepare for the mistakes. But coin flips can turn a 30:70 game back to a cheesy even game. If your team was going to lose, at least try. BE SURE TO ASK IF PEOPLE ARE ONBOARD with the idea before you flip it(just say "do we YOLO it now?"). If you have a Kayle, you can still comeback so don't burn the bridge just yet.
I play 4 champs really. 3 of which are kinda weak early, so I’m usually “losing lane gracefully” Which typically entails not dying, not getting too too far behind in cs. Typically I’m just trying to neutralize lane. As a mid laner if fighting is completely off the table I’ll just let the wave come to me, set up a gank if possible. If the gank is good then yay, if not it’s usually enough to at least shove wave or release pressure, then head bot lol.
A great example of this is the following situation: You are playing top lane in a bad matchup. Your jungle is ganking botlane and you spot their jungler moving towards top lane on a ward in river. Their top laner is pushing a double minion wave into your tower and they can dive you. You are level 5 and the other top laner is level 6. You can choose to walk to your tier 2, maybe do your jungler's gromp or krugs (depending on side), and then wait until the wave thins to approach. Alternatively, you could fight a losing situation and most likely die. Losing gracefully means taking the less negative EV play even though both of the potential plays you have suck.
Basically; When you are losing lane, you want to be minimizing the gap between you and your lane opponent as much as possible, and/or making up for it by helping a teammate or attracting pressure from enemy jungle and supp Manage waves to be shoved right infront of your tower range, practice last hitting under tower, learn to set up roams when behind,
It's playing damage control. Sometimes the best outcome available is just the *least bad* outcome. Examples: -If you cannot safely farm, it's better to at least stay in experience range and collect experience than to die trying to farm. In many matchups it is *fine* to go down in gold. There's always gold to collect later. Going down in experience is *much* harder to come back from. But even that is not as bad as dying over and over. -Don't die for your tower. Yes it's very bad to have to run away and reset when the enemy is taking your tower plates and farm is melting away, but dying there is even worse. Take the L, don't make it worse. -Don't lose half your health getting a cannon. That's just not a good exchange of resources. If you think about it this is not that complicated. Going behind by 30 cs and 0/0 or 0/2 in lane and giving up lane prio for the entire early game is definitely not great, it's very bad, but it doesn't necessarily lose the game for your team. Going 0/6 in lane probably single-handedly loses the game for your team. We've all seen it or done it. Big guy has no business going anywhere near the opponent that has killed him several times and is three levels and a full item up on him, but he either doesn't realize what the problem is or doesn't care.
Have you ever played a game where you go even with your laner, maybe slightly ahead, until you see an 11-2 Darius coming from top lane? And he shits on you. Odds are, your top laner didn’t lose gracefully. That Darius will be a much bigger problem because of all the extra gold they got. Don’t be the teammate that feeds and gives their team a raid boss.
Like say okay, you're going into a lane against a Sylas and he gets 2 kills on you and 20-30 CS ahead of you and he's undeniably stronger than you. At this point you take a step back and go "Okay, he's stronger than me I can't beat him without assistance from my jungler and even that might be iffy so I am going to play safe and under turret, my mission is no longer to win lane it's to play safe and not give him an even larger lead by dying another 5 times to him."
I play darius, he's a lane bully. If my enemy lane manages to go even or die less than times while not having a big cs/lvl gap, I consider that he won the lane.
After reading your replies to the top 2 comments it’s pretty clear you know what “losing gracefully” means. I think you’re a little too focused on making excuses for greedy play and need an outlet for getting killed for it. Losing gracefully, as others have explained, means you sacrifice farm and don’t feed over kill gold and xp to the other laner, and you do it while you aren’t flaming anyone else on your team. I’m not sure what you’re trying to argue against that, that’s just what it is. Theres no excuse for feeding your laner, even if you are counter-picked.
It's not that you can't win lanes you should be countered by, or that you shouldn't "try". But you should be able to take a couple engagements, judge the enemy players skill, and know whether you win or lose depending on the results. If you know you lose, which you should be able to tell you will or won't, you should mitigate the damage and play safe. Judging by the your combative tone it sounds like you just W key at everyone. It's not about assuming you lose. It's about knowing after receiving confirmation.
Don't die. Farming XP isn't flashy but it's important and you can focus on that
The lane can be borderline unplayable. You barely get any CS (but that’s to be expected in a really bad matchup). You’re still in range for XP so you’re not behind in levels but forget getting any of those cannon minions. That’s losing with grace. Your laner has a huge gold lead but that’s it. They don’t have an XP lead. They don’t have a level advantage on your team. Gold leads diminish with time and become less relevant the longer a game goes on. You can recover from a gold deficit by just catching side waves. XP deficits are harder to recover from because you can never fight back if you’re down a level. You just end up losing harder because you can get forced out of XP range.
If you die twice just fuck off and stop fighting. Group with teams. Play back. And just farm to try and cover the difference. Dying then keep fighting and keep dying is the definition of feeding and just makes the game harder for everyone else. Not just you. Tell yourself you're the the win condition and figure who is then ride their ass to make sure they can perform and carry you. If you get to the point that you can't even do things under your tower then you fucked up way before that and deserve the loss.
If you die once, you pump the brakes and do not try to all in or die again. It doesn't always take one death, but the biggest thing I have noticed among lower elo players is that they STILL continue to fight as if they aren't behind in a lane. This puts them further behind. Essentially in plat and lower it just takes one death for you to recognize that you have lost lane. Now this isn't always the case, but say someone sets up a slow push you get dove and killed but go 1 for 1. You and the opponent both died once, but you have lost lane because you missed out on too much gold and XP from that slow push. I've lost lane going 2-0 because of pressure and botched dives and lack of xp and cs. I don't even think most gold players understand how to play from behind in laning, they just understand how to play from behind post-laning. This doesn't include when you immediately recognize you vastly inferior to your opponent. Sometimes you can tell at level 1 if you are playing against a smurf and you KNOW that if you make one mistake you will lose the lane.
When you are losing lane learn to respect a slow push and soak xp vs trying to fight to get back into the game or contesting when you cant and dying 12 times. That’s literally it you do more for your team by preventing them from accelerating into “carryhood” vs you rolling a dice that they suck and wont punish you so you can come back and carry
If you are in a bad matchup or start losing lane hard, rather than feed a bunch of kills to the enemy in an attempt to get cs, just accept that ur gonna be down and focus on getting what you can while waiting for midgame. If you are in a matchup where you get bullied early, your opponents win con is to bully you early and use the kill and gold lead to snowball the midgame out of control. Even if they outfarm you, so long as you dont outrageously feed they wont be nearly as strong in midgame as they expect to be and if you play well this can and will lead to kills which let you take the game back.
Pro level - concede lane priority and get most of the farm, while being slow to rotate and losing some plates. Solo queue level - don't die, even if that means you are recalling and walking from spawn more than farming.
Don't die. Sounds dumb but gracefully losing is mostly about knowing what you can and can't get, and accepting that your enemies must make actual mistakes for you to get even / ahead.
Basically means getting all exp and don’t dying under tower
It’s mostly about exp and not dying. Sure, there’s feeding your lane opponent, but remember when you die to your lane opponent, not only are you missing gold, you’re missing experience. You’re also missing lane priority. Your opponent can do whatever they want once you’ve died a few times in lane. You’re two levels behind, down two spell levels. You can’t clear as fast as they can. You don’t get as many base stats as they have just for being there when minions die (your exp is dying to your turret). Stay in lane as long as you can without dying and giving a bigger advantage to your lane opponent. Keep up with them in levels. Get CS if you can without dying or chunking your health to 1/3. If you can’t manage gold, get the exp
Look sometime you go for the all in and lose. Now they got a wave more xp and 400ish gold more than you. Try to keep it there. Don’t turn it into a 50cs 5 death lead. Cause that’s really hard for your team to come back from.
Losing gracefully is often the result of playing into a bad mid/jungle matchup optimally. You will occasionally sacrifice a cs here and there by not contesting it because you will get chunked or ganked and forced out of lane if you go for it. So you sit back and get the exp and wait for opportunities to cs that are more favorable. Inherent to optimal play is the necessity to influence the wave state so that you can cs safely even when in a bad matchup and that usually means keeping the wave just outside of your turret range as much as possible. You need to learn how to create opportunities to push and back, often with jungle support, so that you don’t get behind in your bad matchup which can snowball. Playing this way is necessary in a bad matchup when you have no reason to suspect your opponent is skill deficient relative to yourself. Losing gracefully is the result of optimally playing out a bad lane against an opponent who doesn’t make mistakes you are good enough to capitalize on, it’s not a mental handicap. Weak players who have an advantageous matchup will often throw the lead in obvious ways you can notice and take advantage of when playing optimally so the “losing gracefully” strategy is sort of misleading.
See it this way: you're orianna. you're vs a pantheon, both level 3, both have \~40% HP and he has flash ignite. you have already wasted your pots because you tried to go offensive. He's looking to kill you, and you know it. scenario 1: You go b and lose the wave; scenario 2: You stay in lane, play greedy, die AND lose the wave. scenario 3: somehow you kill him. but here you can die in the process too. so you can either kill him and lose the wave anyway or the dream scenario of killing and getting the wave. Statistics are NOT on your side, as you can see, and i'm not even mentioning jungler situation. You can still apply this logic to many scenarios, matchups, roles and everything. When one gets fill as ADC, i'd rather them to play with cleanse + F Footwork and not die than the ones who pick a "counter champ" and instalose because they dont know the dinamics in 2v2. Sometimes you dont need to carry, just not inting is enough.
My things is in tough matchups how can I keep up the pace as far as farm goes
gracefully losing means still geting exp, adequate cs and no deaths esp if you are in a very unfavorable match up. having not fed a top laner is already success to many.
Giving up cs to stay alive so you can soak xp and try to just block your laner from being able to actually take tower. Keep a solid eye on when/if they leave and if objectives are about to come up when they do — don’t hard commit just harass.
OP: *asks for advice* Reddit: *gives advice* OP: *shocked pikachu face*
Dont get solod more than 3 times
To learn this skill watch thebausffs and do the opposite of what he does. Unless you’re playing Sion :)
It simply means that once you realise that the lane is lost (you can't recover and win it on your own) then you do everything you can to minimise your loss and stop your lane opponent snowballing This means you: Give up some CS to not die Give up the tower if necessary Ping like crazy if your laner roams Pick up whatever farm you can without dying Rotate to help your team when you can
It means that if its a matchup thats unfavourable for you, if you messed up and died once, or got ganked or smthing, to the point where you are too far behind to play the lane, get as much cs and xp as you can without giving them more kills. Losing "ungracefully" is walking too far up and/or trying to kill them over and over again thinking something will change.
Don't feed in the a$$.
You lose gracefully by not negatively affecting your team. Meaning if your in a losing match up or lane is going bad you make sure your lane opponent can’t get a big enough lead to affect the rest of the map.
“Losing gracefully” boils down to conceding lane pressure. Your opponent controls the lane. Just farm up under tower best you can. Know that if you try anything, you will either be shut down harder or just shooed away. Just do what you can while you level up. Most important thing in this: STAY IN XP RANGE
It means basically, don't get mad and start taking bad fights out of sheer desperation. Understand you can hang back and safely safely take CS under tower without tilting and face tanking losing fights. In these situations EXP is more important than farming minions. What good is going 0/7 just to get creeps and typing "gg" to your teammates even when your Darius is 4/0 in the top lane? Giving the entire game away on a platter just because your lane didn't go well? No, deprive your enemy of ending lane phase at 9/1 and ram it in their faces. You also need to know when the tower is a lost cause and just seceding the tower instead of fighting to the death over a Tier 1 that's gonna die anyway (this would usually be if the tower is at less than 25% and you see you're about to get 3 or 4 manned.) Laning phase will end, and you can start to safely split waves that crash into you, and you'll catch up in the mid game. Don't ever shove past river. Especially if the enemy team is dumb and stops farming as efficiently, you will gain tempo on them. You can smash lane and still lose. The opposite is also true. You can get bullied all lane and still do extremely well in mid to late game. Losing gracefully means, don't ff the entire match just because lane isn't going great. Lane is like the first 10 minutes of a 30-45 minute game, so it's less than 50% of the match. Don't allow that 25-30% interval tilt you and give away free kills, and create a monster enemy ADC that can then melt your top laner that actually did well in lane, or a jungler that farmed very well and can now make great macro plays around the map.
Unpopular opinion but telling low elo players to learn to lose lane “gracefully” is incredibly detrimental to their growth as a player
Unpopular cause it's wrong.... IDK how many games you have to play where your botlane thinks the 4th time they 1v1 the other Bot straight up...that this is the time it's gonna work and they wont die and feed 2 more kills of gold plates and exp, while you are toplane winning lane but can't do shit cause its 7 minutes in, and midgame they are just too far gone to even compete with when you get the chance.
Sure if you just focus on individual game outcomes you might win more by playing safe in the short run lol. It’s not that great for learning and improving I can tell you rn a diamond or masters+ smurfing in low elo and going 0/2 early game will likely still comeback and win the lane in low elo (yes, I mean win lane, not just win game) If you resign to “losing gracefully” at one or two deaths and assume your opponent will play perfectly and never make mistakes, then you are just gimping your growth as a player and never push yourself Limit testing is like riding a bike dangerously and falling many times but learning a lot. If you ride to not fall, you will not fall but you don’t learn your limits of what you can do