Rotations: The Key to Securing Objectives and Building a Gold Lead
Last week, I talked about Freezing. This week, we’re going to be looking at Rotations.
ROTATIONS
One of the most important, if not the most important, factors in winning Gold+ games is teamwork. Teamwork can often trump individual skills. Initiating a team-level strategy can be an effective way to help your team be confident about winning.
Rotation is the term given to when you move across the map into different lanes to focus on objectives. Doing so allows you to try and push an early-game advantage and snowball your lead.
THE VALUE OF ROTATIONS
Rotations are the very first step to pushing your advantage early. It can also be a great way to transition into a strong midgame. If you are the first team to rotate, you almost always secure objectives before the enemy team has time to react.
This is what makes rotations so strong. Rotating gives you a gold lead and allows you to control the game's tempo. If your team holds the tempo of the game, it means the enemy team is always playing catch-up.
This forces them to defend objectives instead of trying to take any of their own. Against uncoordinated teams, this can put a team into a position they don’t know how to get out of. All you need to do is to rotate.
ROTATION TIMINGS
You should aim to rotate as early as possible. The second you feel pressure on another lane, you want to move. If you kill the enemy laner(s) at 10–15 minutes or take their turret, you want to rotate to another lane after getting the wave.
Generally, this ends up being Mid lane because they have the most valuable outer turret. It is also easy to attack, as only one person is defending it. Once there, you want to focus on knocking down that turret quickly.
You only need to be careful to monitor the lane from which you’ve rotated. They may take their time to try and counter-push your turret. Now, if you see them doing this, you want to keep stomping your way through the lane you’re in.
As long as you outnumber the people in your lane as a team, you will push faster than them. In the end, you will force them to retreat, and you will win that rotation.
ADVANCED TACTICS
- Chain Rotations
This means being able to rotate across many objectives one after another. For example, you could take all outer turrets while rotating from bot to top. This is a common pro-play strategy to build their gold lead against the enemy.
Gold leads acquired in the early game are almost always achieved using this tactic.
- Diving during a Siege
When rotating, you will outnumber the enemy around the tower that you are trying to push down. This allows you to try and bait them into defending the turret. If they do, dive them.
You will always retain a member of your team if played well. Also, killing enemies as they’re defending is a great way to extend that push to even an inner turret.
- Defending a Siege
One of the best ways to defend a siege during a rotation is by sending champions to that lane. It’s best to send those with strong wave clear or hard CC to discourage the enemy from diving them.
Usually, this means sending in the support and the mid lane. Often, these two champions could defend up to four people. This allows your other members to apply pressure on different lanes. This also means that if you are the team that’s rotating and they use this tactic, don’t stick around.
You will be wasting your time, and there’s a chance you’ll also end up at a disadvantage. Instead, rotate to a different lane or go back to your lane.
That’s all for now! I hope you learned something from this article. Good luck on the Rift!
