Let’s face it, things don’t always go as planned. Whether it’s their jungler ganking you at an odd timing, your teammate giving up a kill to your laner or you making a blatant misplay – something went wrong and you find yourself a kill and a bunch of CS behind. The game seems to be slowly slipping out of your control. Here’s how you take it back.





Realize what’s going on

Whatever the reason and whoever’s to blame, you’re now at a disadvantage. So you should act like it. Playing from behind is an important skill for any player that’s willing to climb; I’d even argue that it’s something of a lost art form. It’s simple enough to see the path to victory when you’re dominating your lane, but most players absolutely lose their minds when faced with a difficult situation and consider the game to be over. Well, it’s not. What’s important is that you keep your cool and focus on not making any more mistakes.





Staunch the bleeding

The worst thing you can do is repeating the same play patterns that have brought you here. Stop trying to make that return kill happen, focus on farming, or even hug your turret. Also, take a look at your itemization. If you were going to go full damage, then chances are it won’t work out now. Instead, take a look at defensive items – they’re often times more cost-efficient than their offensive counterparts, and they’ll become your best friends in helping you survive your laning phase. Even if you’re a Yasuo or a Riven, you might want to consider investing into that Sterak’s Gage or Giant’s Belt.

Another common mistake players make is sticking around for way too long after taking a bad trade. Oftentimes, your best course of action is to simply recall. Don’t put yourself in a position where you can get burst down by a single combo. Instead, just avoid the situation altogether.

Speaking of which, don’t be afraid to back off to your inner turret or even to the nexus if you sense an obvious three-man dive coming. It feels gross but it’s better to give up some CS than CS and a kill.





Look for mistakes – and be ready to punish

When you’re behind, you can’t just brute force your way to victory. Outplays have to happen here, and it’s a hell of a lot easier to pull these off by capitalizing on the enemy’s blunders. Remember, players that are ahead tend to play cocky thinking that they can get away with a lot more than actually possible. So they will overextend and they will go for that reckless dive trying to snowball their lead. And that’s exactly when you should be ready to strike. Think of yourself as a sleeping dragon that’s getting pestered by a reckless knight, only to wake up and snap your jaws at the puny human when he gets too close.

Yep, that's pretty much you. Image courtesy of lovetina0726.deviantart.com

Let your teammates do their thing

How many times have we all seen players that are losing their lane start pinging their jungler and spamming chat with cries for help? Don’t be one of them. Chill. Sure, it’s irritating to lose lane, but if you’re already at a sizeable disadvantage, then chances are your jungler will just end up wasting his time trying to assist you. Or even worse, he’ll go for a desperate play that will result in your opponent getting a double kill. So focus on your own game and trust your teammates. You’ve already had your chance to shine; now it’s their turn.





Make them notice you

Just because you’re behind doesn’t mean you should be invisible. Champions like Jax, Tryndamere or Teemo still pose a threat as split pushers. Malphite still is a force reckoned with in team fights because of his game-changing ultimate, and Gangplank can still scale up, catching people off-guard with his barrel combos and cannon barrages. Play to your champion’s strength. If you have some form of CC, it might be a good idea to roam to another lane to try and make a kill happen and snowball your teammates.

Remember, there are four more players on your side and some of them might be doing well for themselves. So make plays together with them, group for objectives, peel for you carriers – if nothing else, you can always be a body that the enemy team has to get through to kill your stronger teammates.

And, finally…





Analyze your play

Whether the game ended in a win or a loss, it’s important to pinpoint what exactly went wrong. Sometimes it can be glaringly obvious like missing a standard level 3 gank, and the fix would be something as simple as putting a ward down or not pushing your lane out too much. In other cases, there might be something fundamentally wrong about how you approach the matchup or even the game as a whole. Study your replay and look back at your play. Did you misread your power spike? Start trading in a minion wave? Turret dive a few times too many?

Even a disappointing game can be a learning experience if you let it.

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