Harassment in League of Legends pressures the enemy with damage often in small amounts. Harassment has nothing to do with banter and trash-talk!
How is harassment important to you? Whomever wins the harassment battle often wins their lane and can better win the war. You build an advantage in gold, experience, and items. If an enemy is harassed too low, he gets zoned. He will be afraid to last hit and has to sit back to lose experience like the screenshot below:
As you get good at harassing, your setup kills for you. You make it inviting for your jungler to gank. On top of that, you die less. If you get ganked, you can escape. You also can kill the enemy you harassed because he or she is on low-health. I get a kill using this tactic every second game. The benefits of learning how to harass sound sweet, right?
The Secret to Own Any Lane Hard
You auto-attacked the enemy twice, but was that really good harassment? There is more to harassing than giving damage.
If you harass well, you own any enemy hard in lane. The perfect harass is when the enemy takes damage, you take no damage, they miss a last hit, and you don’t miss a minion. Rarely will you get all four against a good player. The more of each you achieve, the better your harassment.
As you seek these four goals, keep in mind harassment is a battle between you and the enemy on three fronts:
- Health. What most players believe is harassment.
- Mana. This applies to mana champions. If you have equal health as the enemy, but you have mana while they are empty, you have the advantage. Non-mana champions like Riven can often harass and exchange damage until the enemy is low on mana.
- Safety. Harassment is more advantageous when the enemy is less safe. Putting an enemy on low health and mana is good, but if you can keep the minions closer to your tower, the enemy is vulnerable to ganks or being chased down.
As you use the following tips to give damage, avoid damage, get last hits, and make the enemy miss last hits, work at achieving the three points of health, mana, and safety.
Harassment Tips to Win Your Lane and Get Kills
Pros are great at following about 10 of these tips. Execute all the tips and you become world-class in lane. Here are the tips on harassment that utilize these 3 fronts of harassment:
Harass when the enemy goes to last hit and you have no minions to last hit. This is generally the best time to harass because the enemy will be closest to you. If you follow only one harassment tip, make this it.
If your lane sustain is better than the enemy, make harassment a priority. Even if you exchange equal damage, with better sustain you heal and become ready to re-harass.
On the contrary to harassing the enemy when you have better sustain, avoid being harassed if you have inferior sustain. In the screenshot above, even though Soraka has superior sustain for Graves, Sona and my harassment is too great.
Intentionally push the lane or not. If you’re confident in your ability to harass the enemy in lane without pushing it, do so then zone the enemy to reduce their CS and experience.
When you’re a melee champion, do not push because you cannot harass well when the enemy is under tower safety. Otherwise, AD carries benefit from pushing the lane because the enemy must last hit while you can move in-and-out of tower range to harass.
Know the auto-attack range and range of abilities for you and your enemy. Caitlyn has the highest auto-attack range at the start but Tristana’s range is the longest come level 18.
When your range is longer, often this means you can auto-attack once then back without getting hit. Take this into consideration when you go to last hit and when the enemy goes to last hit.
Harass at the start of a game if your jungler wants to gank soon for you. This is a great way for top laners to get first blood.
Hit and run with abilities. Champions like Talon and Kha’Zix deal most damage within a one or two second time slot (the average time you have to harass) by harassing with abilities rather than auto-attacks. Renekton and Lee Sin can dive to the enemy, deal damage, then dash out before the enemy and minions deal harmful damage.
Harass when the enemy goes to last hit and you have no minions to last hit.
Auto-attack to harass when you can, but be wary of how close you and the enemy are to minions so you come out ahead. Many times a Kennen has landed his Q on me and an auto-attack while I have not touched him, yet I’ve come out ahead because the Kennen took too much minion aggro. Do not get hit by minions early. Their damage can make you worse off than damage dealt to the enemy.
If the enemy will get minion aggro should they attack you and you will not, you are probably in a better position to harass. Bait them into harassment. Once you harass, most enemies try to exchange your harassment and be worse off because of minion damage.
If you get minion aggro at any time in top or bottom lane, back away or enter a bush to quickly stop the aggro. The quicker you end minion aggro, the less damage you take.
If the enemy missed a skill shot or used an ability to kill a minion, that’s one less ability they can hurt you with. Consider harassing.
If you have full mana, good mana regen, or a non-mana champion, hit the enemy with an ability. In most cases this will cause the enemy to try harass you so be prepared. Use the previous tips in this guide to ensure you come out ahead.
Do not harass with an ability that makes you vulnerable to death. For example, you are Veigar and go to stun the enemy at which time a missing enemy ganks you. If there was no missing champion, you would be safer to harass by casting Event Horizon to stun your lane enemy and setup harassment with Dark Matter then Baleful Strike.
This tip is advanced to execute. If the enemy hides behind a minion to dodge a skill shot like Morgana’s Dark Binding, last hit the protective minion then quickly cast your skill shot.
An advanced tactic to avoid minion aggro is to auto-attack harass when enemy caster minions start an attack. Usually you can’t harass based on minion animation though. The right time to harass is often from a momentary position of the enemy.
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