When should I leave the lane?

Week 4

The first honest “it depends”

The lane stops being the only place worth being.

Pulling, stacking, the camps between the lanes — each is time spent somewhere other than where the experience is.

Each is a small bet that what comes back is worth what you gave up.

The habit this week breaks

Leaving the lane “to have a look”.

Beginners do not fail by being afraid to leave.

They fail by leaving without a reason — trading certain experience for nothing at all.

The jungle runs on the clock

Camps respawn on the match clock

Not on a timer that starts when you cleared the camp.

On the game clock — at the same moments for everybody in the match.

And only if the camp is empty.

So is there anything in the jungle right now is a question with an answer.

One camp, one cycle

A camp's cycle drawn as a clockwise loop. The spawn check sits at the top; it fires on the game clock and does nothing if anything is still in the camp. An outer arc over most of the loop is the pull window; a shorter arc at its tail, running up to the next check, is the stack window. A second panel shows a dry camp staying the same all game while a river camp grows.

Pulling

Draw neutrals into your creep wave, so they clear it for you — or so you take creeps and neutrals at once.

It is not a general technique. Lane creeps ignore most camps.

It works from a few specific camps only; the lecture page names them.

Stacking

Pull a camp out just before its spawn check.

The camp reads as empty, and a second group spawns beside the first.

No risk in it at all. Only attention.

Blocking

A ward placed where a camp spawns stops it from spawning.

That is half of what a ward does.

The other half — watching people — is week 9.

The courier

It separates I need this item from I must go home.

That is what makes staying in lane a decision rather than an endurance test.

Time traded for experience

Name what you went to get

Leaving means giving up a certain share of experience for a possibly bigger return: jungle gold, a rotation, a camp you stacked earlier.

The trade is only good when you can say it in one line:

“I gave up X to get Y.”

This week’s hero

Lion — Earth Spike

The most common payoff for leaving a lane is catching someone standing in the wrong place. Earth Spike is the plainest tool for it.

A support leaving lane is not giving up farm. They are going to earn it somewhere else.

This week’s items

Observer Ward. Sentry Ward.

This week a ward blocks a camp. That is all.

Using wards to see people is week 9.

After this week

Say which camps can be pulled into a lane, and why the others cannot.

Give the reason you left the lane: I gave up X to get Y.

Tell an early-game jungle from a late one.

Lobby Lab 4

Stack against the clock.