This week, we’re going to be looking into Roaming. We’re going to be looking at what roaming is, when to roam, how to roam, and some tips and tricks to help you get more kills.
WHAT IS ROAMING?
Roaming is when you leave your lane during the laning phase and move to gank another lane. It is a great way to create pressure and help out your other lanes. It is especially useful because it is like having a second jungler around.
Ganking is one of the most effective ways to change the flow of a lane. Being able to turn around one of your other lanes is a great way to impact the game in your favor.
Roaming can get you more gold from kills to help win your lane even more. You can use it to pull your enemy out of the lane to deny him gold and experience. Finally, you can use it to help snowball your other lanes even harder.
HOW TO ROAM
1.) SETUP YOUR LANE
This is the first step to a successful roam. You have to be out of your lane for a good minute or so for you to roam. So by doing this, you’re always risking losing gold and experience from minions. There is a way to reduce this loss by setting up your lane.
You push your wave as fast as you can to the enemy turret and as soon as you’re out of the enemy’s vision, start your roam. This will cause the enemy to choose between two things. Either they lose gold and experience by following you or allow you to roam. After you shoved your wave to their turret, it will take about 45 to 60 seconds for it to crash back at your turret. That is when you start losing gold so the clock starts now.
2.) TRAVEL EFFECTIVELY
The second step is about moving across the map and avoiding wards.
You can use the image above as a reference to areas to avoid when roaming between lanes. Avoid these spots at all costs. You want to think like a jungler from this stage. You want to avoid wards and get between lanes as fast as possible.
3.) EXECUTE GANK
The third step is about the gank itself. Like a jungler, you want to try to position yourself between the enemy and their turret. Try to land any Crowd Control abilities you have on them. That should allow your other laner(s) a chance to capitalize on the fight. Unlike the jungler, you have to go behind the enemy to do an aggressive gank. You don’t have the time to waste setting up a good lane gank. This is because the clock is ticking since you left your lane.
WHEN TO ROAM
To learn when to roam, you need to learn to read the map. To do this, you need to take notice of the positions of both junglers and how pushed the lane you wish to roam is.
- ENEMY JUNGLER
If you think the enemy jungler is on the top side of the map, there’s no point roaming top. It will be too dangerous and could often turn into a 2v2. But if he’s on the bottom side of the map, then it might be a great idea.
- IS THE LANE PUSHED?
Something else to look for is how pushed the lane you intend to roam to is. Also, it’s good to take note of what Summoner Spells do they have. If they have no escapes, you have a good chance of picking up some good kills. This is why you try to roam as soon as possible.
- ALLY JUNGLER
Finally, you want to check where your jungler is. You can often coordinate with your jungler. As he ganks a lane, you gank another lane when the laners don’t expect it. You can also choose to gank the same lane as your jungler and go for other objectives after that.
Once you’ve analyzed the map and decided it’s a good time to roam, you need to leave in a time that works well for you. This means after you’ve shoved your minions right up to the enemy turret or your enemy laner has recalled. It’s also important at this moment not to walk out of lane within your enemy’s vision. It’s better to walk back and around than let him know which direction you’re going. If you disappear and he doesn’t know where you’ve gone, he has to warn all the lanes. This way, you’re creating pressure in both the other lanes by not being on the map.
TIPS AND TRICKS
A great trick you can use is where you leave the lane every now and then. Between waves, you walk out into a bush and go out of vision. This will make your enemy worry all the time about where you’re going. After a few minutes, even when you’re missing, he’ll stop calling MIA. This means you get free roams. After your first successful roam using this method, every time you walk out of lane from now, he’ll call MIA. This way you will be creating pressure on two different lanes, forcing them to play passive which can help a lot.
When roaming, you also don’t always have to roam into another lane. If you think you know where the enemy jungler is going to be and you are strong, you can always roam into the enemy jungle. They rarely expect this and can put them off quite a lot. The good thing about ganking their enemy jungler is that you don’t even have to kill the enemy jungler. You can put them off a camp or push them away and delay their clears. You can even take the camp yourself. Whichever path you take, you are putting them behind.
Another strong tactic to use to kill a very passive enemy laner is to pretend to roam to another lane. It’s important that you do this in an obvious manner and allow them to see you leave. Then, you stop somewhere and wait. If the enemy laner follows you to help the lane you’re about to gank, you will have them near you and get a free kill off it.
That’s all for now! I hope you learned something from this article. Good luck on the Rift!
