Why Taking Towers Is Losing Games

Hello guys. It’s Librarian Husky here today, going to League Of Legends here. Towers are widely regarded as some of the best objectives in the game. They open up the map, give gold, and can help snowball a lane. So, what if we told you that taking them was losing your games?

What you’re thinking? This is a ridiculous claim, but by the end of this guide, you’ll see that you probably need to put a little bit more thought into WHEN you take towers instead of just defaulting to it if you can. We’re not saying to take them, but there’s more than one case where you don’t want to.

QOTD

What do you think is a misunderstood part of the League of Legends? Tempo is the obvious answer. It’s often players have different definitions or misunderstandings. In the comments below, let us know how you define it, and answer our questions. With that, let’s get right into the guide.

When Taking Towers is Wrong

In our first example, udyr takes the rift herald around 11 minutes in. He’s looking for a place to use it. He goes top a few minutes later and secures the first turret. What was wrong with this play?

• The most obvious thing is that the top tower was extremely low when herald was used. Shelly does anywhere from 2000-2750 actual damage to towers depending on her level.
• So by using Herald when the top tower was lower than 1000 health, more than 1000 damage is just wasted.

Rift herald should ideally be used on a just about half-healthy tower, as towers have unique properties that make them tankier when they get lower. Herald’s actual damage is unaffected by these resistances. However, there are some exceptions to this. It may be tempting to rush to get the first tower, but you must consider the game’s overall state first. If we look at the minimap, we can tell that none of the blue team’s towers are close to being taken down, with both top and mid towers at five plates remaining and the bot tower at 3.

LoL teams

Additionally, every lane for the blue team is ahead or relatively even, and the jungle is also winning quite hard. There is very little danger for the blue team NOT getting the first turret in this game. Kennen would likely get the first tower on his own without the help of a herald, and we would much prefer to use it mid for more gold from getting plates that are about to disappear and damage a more critical structure. Mid-lane tower is by FAR the most important one in the game. As it is destroyed opens up both sides of the map, while side lane towers only open up one.

The sheer value of vision

The sheer value of vision makes the mid-lane tower twice as valuable as the other outers and a much higher priority for damage to be dealt with, as your snowballing potential will be higher. If the overall map state was more volatile, and there was a question over whether the enemy team would take the first tower, using herald top would be much more okay, as getting first tower gold is nothing to scoff at. However, it presents a few other problems: it allows the enemy team to catch back up. Once outer towers go down; you put yourself on a timer, similar to how taking an inhale too early can become deficient. It would help if you used the pressure it creates to do something, or it soon becomes negative.

Sideliners position

For example, in this position, sideliners can freeze these waves for a long. Tf could easily walk into the wave here, tank the minions, then drop angrily to stop the enemy team from indefinitely farming this wave while getting gold for himself. This is a huge issue, and in lower elos, it goes unpunished.

• Most of the time, laners will walk up and kill the wave-like TF does here.
• Most players don’t know this is a mistake because the enemy team will rarely capitalize.

But in higher elos, this will become a source of gold and experience that the enemy team has to fix intentionally. If you find yourself in TF’s position, as a laner or a jungle, freeze these kinds of waves, don’t just immediately push them out.

Invitably comes to push

You’ll deny yourself every wave until the enemy inevitably comes to push again instead of freezing, allowing you to farm again. It requires someone to come over to break the freeze, and if you see where Yasuo needs to be to do this, another glaring issue arises.

Even with mid-tower broken in this game, laners do an abysmal job of knowing when to overextend and when not to, so they’ll often be punished like Yasuo.
This is a significant reason why laners in lower elos often have decent CS throughout the laning phase.

Overextend

How does someone overextend to this point while avoiding death? It’s even more complicated if the mid-lane tower is still up, as controlling the enemy jungle becomes extremely hard due to the enemy being able to rotate from here safely. Yasuo would need his team to put pressure on mid by shoving the wave and have his teammates rotate over to support him and give vision so he can break the freeze. In solo queue, however, we know that this will never happen.

So, if you decide to break these outer tiers 1’s, you must ensure that the tier 1 mid-tower is quick to follow, or your side laners will start losing CS very quickly or die trying. Still, afterward, you’ll see side waves never be touched for ten minutes, which is not even an exaggeration. So now that we understand a few of the problems that arise after taking the tower, let’s rewind a bit to when udyr decided to rift top and talk about a few more.

The Problem with Sharing Gold from Plates

At this point, udyr is already ahead of the curve, while Kennen is pretty much even. Udyr has already hit his significant spikes with gold and experience, while Kennen has not. Sharing gold is often not the best idea in a spot like this.

• For example, putting 300 or so gold on both udyr and Kennen can be fine if it helps udyr reach a specific item before a dragon fight or some other important timing, but in general, having gold isolated onto one player early game is much more impactful since total item completions are where big spikes happen.
• Getting 600 plus gold onto Kennen can mean he has his phonies or death cap WAY before the enemy expects it and can completely turn the tide of a fight.

Think about who scales better with gold or who can use it immediately to snowball, and put your gold on that player. Supports often make this mistake by taking tower plating with their ADC when it’s often ideal for letting them get the solo gold and reset instead.

Junglers rift bot tower

Another example that will come up quite often is when junglers rift bot tower at relatively high health and stay afterward to hit plates. Towers have another unique property that makes them tankier the more players around. This significantly diminishes returns when more than two players hit a tower at once.

Not only because it takes much longer to kill the plates but also because you’ll be sharing plates among three or more people, which, as we explained, can reduce the overall value of the influx of gold, it can often be much better for the jungle and support to use the priority they gain to take time instead to invade on a camp, securing 100+ gold as well as experience, and distributing the gold more efficiently.

Snowballing by Keeping the Turret Alive

Let’s look at another example to discuss why leaving a tower can be beneficial. Riven demolishes her top lane matchup vs. Akali, scoring several solo kills and going up quite a bit in gold and experience. Riven realizes how far ahead she is and opts to freeze the wave.

• When the freeze breaks, she slowly pushes, building a huge wave, and dives into the Akali quickly.
• Akali quite literally didn’t farm for over 3 minutes, and Riven can basically on repeat do this same tactic over and over again UNTIL the tower goes down.

This denies Akali HUGE amounts of experience and gold and helps Riven extend her lead by a monumental amount. Unfortunately, riven completely spoils her lead by greeting the first tower in a game where none of her towers are threatened.

Dying in the process

Not only does dying in the process, giving up her 3-level advantage and shrinking it to just 1 level, but also allows Akali to break this cycle by crashing a wave to the rivers tower, getting plates herself, and equalizing the lead by quite a bit Lots of jungle here would rift top and ruin this as well, so this advice applies to a lot of roles. Just don’t take this tower at all. There are zero reasons to, as the rift is already down, so opening up the top side of the map is relatively useless. Instead, allowing riven to even proxy farm between the top two towers.

• At the same time, vi would result in Akali getting zero XP and gold for the next segment of the game until minions kill the tower.
• Riven now has to overextend quite a bit onto the enemy side of the map to get her subsequent waves to crash.
• She gets ganked by three people and fortunately manages to outplay at least part of it, but not being results-based and claiming that that makes this a good play here is quite important.

Gone bad quick

I think it’s relatively easy to see how this could have gone bad very quickly, and Akali could’ve potentially gotten this kill and then frozen this wave for a few minutes. These are just a few examples of why taking towers in the early game can cost you massive advantages.

The league is a game with infinite possibilities, so it would be impossible to lay out every single scenario that you shouldn’t take a tower. We hope this guide has made you think a bit harder about WHY you want to take them and consider at least a few of the consequences. Thank you for reading this guide. My name is Librarian Husky – I am your faithful companion in the world of League Of Legends. Please check our League Of Legends Guides main mage for more valuable articles.

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