Week 4: Trading

A trade exchanges health, resources and position, not just damage numbers — and the same exchange can be a win or a loss depending on what each side can convert it into. Builds on the wave and power concepts from Weeks 2–3 to ask what is actually staked in a fight.

15 March 2027

Guiding question#

What are you really trading when you fight another champion?

A trade has more line items than a scoreboard#

“Who won that trade” usually gets answered by comparing health bars, which is the least informative comparison available. A trade also exchanges:

• health — the obvious one, and the least of it
• mana or resource — spent abilities that need time or a recall to refill
• cooldowns — an ability used is an ability unavailable the next time it’s needed
• summoner spells — a Flash or Heal burned is a missing answer to the next threat, on both sides
• position — where each champion ends up relative to their tower, their jungler, and the wave
• CS and wave control — time spent trading is time not spent last-hitting, and it changes which of Week 3’s wave states the lane ends up in
• threat — what each side can credibly do to the other immediately afterward
• recall timing — whether either side can safely leave the lane to spend what they just gained

Winning the trade, losing the exchange#

A laner lands a strong combo, takes their opponent to a sliver of health, and by the health-bar measure, wins clearly. But landing it burned their own mana and their engage ability’s cooldown, and it happened on a wave that was already slow-pushing toward the enemy tower. Their opponent recalls, buys back health and items, and returns to a lane where the pushed wave is now crashing into that same laner’s own tower — unaccompanied, mana-low, and without the ability that made the earlier trade work — right as the enemy jungler arrives. The HP trade was won. The exchange was not: every other line item above ended up on the other side of the ledger.

Builds on Weeks 2–3#

A trade’s actual stakes are Week 2’s power (whose cooldowns and item state let them keep threatening after the exchange) and Week 3’s wave (what position the fight leaves the lane in, and who that position benefits). Reading a trade by HP alone throws both away.

Looking ahead: Solo Queue Autopsy#

This is the vocabulary Assessment 1 asks you to use on your own games: not “I won that fight” or “I lost that fight,” but what the fight actually traded, and what it changed about what either side could do next.