Covering Lanes in a 4v5

Not another 4v5...

Playing a 4v5 is not fun, and winning a 4v5 can feel impossible. Late game is its own beast, but what about when someone DC's at 5 minutes in and you're still in laning phase but just past the remake option? Some people say surrendering at 15 minutes is the best option, but if you're 2-2 in your promo and trying to get promoted without playing another five games minimum, surrendering is not an option.







Check out our guide on covering lanes below, we'll cover the mid to late game in another article!

Not another 4v5...

Playing a 4v5 is not fun, and winning a 4v5 can feel impossible. Late game is its own beast, but what about when someone DC's at 5 minutes in and you're still in laning phase but just past the remake option? Some people say surrendering at 15 minutes is the best option, but if you're 2-2 in your promo and trying to get promoted without playing another five games minimum, surrendering is not an option.

Check out our guide on covering lanes below, we'll cover the mid to late game in another article!

Who Disconnected?

Depending on which role disconnected, the style of play that your team will need to take on varies widely. As a result, we've broken down this article into different sections for the different meta positions.

Mid AFK

In many cases, this is the worst case scenario.

The mid lane usually has one of the highest levels in the game and also asserts the most map control as a result of the central tower. Letting the tower drop for free is not an option, and you certainly don't want to let the enemy team shove to your inhibitor.

Support Swap?: At first glance, the most obvious decision is to put your support mid-lane to soak XP and gold. On the other hand, this is often the worst idea. It makes your bot lane into a 1v2 and puts your weakest member of the team against the strongest member of their team. This also disables the support's gold item and makes it a waste of 450 gold, especially since it will never end up transforming into a Sightstone.

Jungle Swap?: This is ultimately going to be your best option short of rotating the top lane into mid based on wave positioning and where the jungler wants to clear. However, the jungler will want to mostly soak XP when the wave crashes and not lane the entire time. The reason for this is that jungle items have a severe  penalty for champions that have greater than half their gold in minions compared to jungle camps. if you have sight on the enemy jungler you can also gank mid-lane, who will be overconfident since they haven't been laning against anyone.

Top AFK

Top lane is similar to mid-lane in that you'll likely want your jungle to be the ultimate one to cover the lane. It's not as important to keep the tower up, but there's one major difference.

The curve around top lane makes it significantly easier to gank than mid. As a result, if mid is able to push and roam or fake roam by hiding in a bush, it asserts high pressure on top lane not to shove to turret. In a best case scenario, the enemy top laner will freeze the lane near his own turret and you can just play the game as you would in a normal 5v5.

Support AFK

If you don't have a support on your team, bot lane will  be a 1v2. Generally speaking, this means that the enemy team will be pushing to the turret with a potential of diving. If your jungler notices that the enemy team is strong enough to dive, make sure to position yourself to counter. 

Often, teams get complacent in 1v2 lanes and try to force dives to deny XP from the solo laner.

Jungle AFK

In some ways this is really the easiest 4v5 to play around .If your Jungler is AFK, then play as if you just had a bad jungler to begin with. Lane carefully and only play aggressive when you spot the enemy jungler on the map. Keep Dragon and Baron warded. Since the enemy jungler may know your jungler is AFK, they may try and force objectives with low health.

Marksman AFK

Having a marksman AFK is similar to having a solo lane AFK. The first thought would be to have the support CS and end up as a mage. However, this fully denies the gold item from being used and transforming. While you might let the support soak XP and gold 1v2 for a bit, later on the jungler will want to come down and soak some minions so the support can generate gold and activate her warding power.

After the gold item is fully stacked, the support can CS freely.

Conclusions

Having an AFK on your team sucks and most players would gladly quit at 15 minutes to escape. However, if your team is up in kills it's not necessarily worth surrendering for free. By covering lanes effectively and strategically, you can still win 4v5s despite the player disadvantage.

Thoughts on playing 4v5? Agree or disagree with the conclusions above? Comment below!