Strategy: What do we need to learn?

Alright, another one of those strategy topics.

This one comes from a simple observation: Sometimes we all know what we have to do (from a strategical viewpoint) but are unable to do it cause lack of mechanics / no tactical understanding etc.

1. Vision

Alright, by now everyone has understood we need to put wards and have more vision but in every single game we observe we failed to have vision. What is exactly the problem? Everyone of us buys pinks whenever available and we have the trinkets, so it can't be lack of wards. Do we lack the time to put wards? In general, yes, I think this is the reason, a conclusion is that we spend too much time doing useless things ingame, we just have to find out which. An example is the often seen prolonged stay, aka overextending. In general staying at a lane that is defended by the enemy is only worth if we distract them from something (so we either splitpush or take an objective at the same time, in that case we don't want to fight at all), or we have enough power to win a teamfight / push a lane while ignoring the fight / both. In either case, we can decide it at the very start of such a situation and act accordingly (--> coordinated retreat without risk or staying but then stick to either engage/disengage). Especially after having pushed a bit, it's a nice time to put some deep wards in the enemy jungle, or when they are grouping at one side of the map someone can put some wards at the other side.

2. Defending

While it might seem obvious I'm convinced some of us don't have a real clue of how to defend efficiently. The first question we have to ask ourselves is: "Is it worth to sacrifice a life to defend a building?". I'd say that depends but a general rule could be: Sacrifice anything for the nexus, it's ok to let someone die for an inhib or nexus tower, in other cases it's generally not worth. The reason: We are powerful together, so the enemy can easily exploit being 5v4 to take further objectives after the fight / push.
So in a situation where our nexus is heavily threatened, it might be worth to wait for allies to respawn (if they do in time) before initiating a desperate all-in, but at some point the desperate all-in has to happen anyway.
For defending minor structures like towers let's always ask ourselves: "Are we able to defend it without losing more players than the opposing team. If yes, we do it and risk a (team)fight at that tower. If not, it means immediate retreat or not coming at all.
In general, if the enemy can destroy a tower without a minion wave, it means they are strong enough to prevent us from defending anyway. Otherwise, it might be worth to destroy the minion wave before it reaches our tower, even at the cost of spells to render the enemy push useless. Does anyone know when / if it's better to attack champs / minions when both of them are already at the tower?

3. Avoiding a fight

A basic technique.
When to use: When the enemy team is stronger at the given point / to distract them.
How to: Avoid being caught by surprise in the jungle, have enough vision to know where the enemy is, if no information retreat to base / towers.
Example: Sometimes the pure presence is sufficient to successfully defend ; that's the case when neither of the teams has a clear teamfight advantage. Thus, consider the enemy pushes a lane and we know they are not much superior than us, we can put 1-4 of us on that lane, only moving with the enemy without letting a fight happen. They can't destroy any building, and our 5th guy (or others) can freely move around the map.

4. Turtling

Another basic technique.
When to use: We get completely rekt and lost any control over the map, enemy is far stronger at the current point.
How to: Ward the border of our base, after it no one leaves our base, we group at towers and do the most safe defending possible, never chase anyone.
Example: We'll encounter enough of these I can promise. :p

5. Not dying during laning

Alright, no excuses. We die too much in early game. I think in classical laning there are two different types of deaths (we skip pro strats like early gather of whole team with t2 towers pushes or similar things for now).
The first type of death is due to mis-calculation. On any of the three lanes trades and mini-fights happen, and sometimes even all-ins. Now usually an all-in attempt of the enemy can be denied by predicting / disengaging, so I guess these kinds of mistakes happen because actually both parties go for an all-in (in that case, obviously one of them calculated incorrectly). At least at my current midlanes it's the no.1 reason for my and my enemy's deaths.
How to prevent: There is no easy solution because we NEED to grasp opportunities and try to all-in if it's possible, at least for the sake of learning. Because this is all about knowledge / experience / mechanics, we'll all get better with our estimations.
The second type of deaths is due to lack of awareness, aka successful ganks. Certainly, the enemy jungler is there for a reason, however, there's no reason we should ever die to a successful gank in early game.
How to prevent: At the start of the game, consciously look who is the enemy jungler, and ask yourself how he'd gank your lane in both scenarios (warded / not warded). As pointed out on the jungle thread the earliest gank is at around 3:35 minutes, and we can partially predict the lane. The bot and top lanes have two paths for ganking, later in the game both should be permanently warded. At the start / very early game it may not be the case, hence the reflections about the jungler and his gank behaviour. Ask yourself how would you react to a gank at any current moment and don't get baited into a fight unless you know the jungler isn't there.
Totally obvious things but no one does it.

6. Pushing

Somehow I lack ideas about pushing. I don't see any non-obvious things (maybe that's because they are non-obvious) to know about it. I will call for pushes ingame and how to do is basically clearing the minion waves as fast as possible (also with spells) until reaching the target (tower / inhib / nexus) and killing it as fast as possible. Of course the enemy might be defending. But it's only a matter of deciding between being able to push without risking a fight and retreating savely or cancelling the attempt totally.
So, if someone has ideas or a link to a great guide, post it. ^^ Otherwise I'm happy to have something where we at least not seem to suck and we can focus on the other things.

7. Farming

Alright, we all suck at farming. I wanted to put a link to a great guide but I can't seem to find it in my zillions of bookmarks. :/ I suppose it belong to the general laning mechanics we all get better with training and time.
Just a quick overview:
Farming, in my opinion, is the process of getting gold (inb4 "i farm champs" xD). Instant conclusion: The most important thing about farming is to not die because while being dead you can't get any additional gold. So, be safe even if it means giving up on a few minion waves.
If the enemy minions reach our tower: melee minions die by 2 tower hits and one autoattack, caster minions die by 1 tower hit and two autoattacks, or you can just use spells to lasthit, the advantage of farming under our own towers is to be protected. The disadvantage is that the tower also receives damage and will be destroyed sooner.
Apart from that, it might be worthy to know how to freeze a lane, i.e. controlling the location where the minion waves meet, preferably at a point as near as possible to our tower but out of its range. I know there is a lot of techniques and knowledge about freezing and I never learnt it, I do it intuitively by observing how much the enemy is attacking the wave. Once again, if anyone knows a great guide, put a link.
Finally the other case is pushing by ourselves. Advantage: The enemy has to defend the tower, may have difficulties getting every lasthit, allows free poke, one doesn't really miss minions, the waves reset itself to a better point to freeze because the tower helps pushing it back (especially champs with a huge range on botlane can make use of it). Disadvantage: Easily gankable even if warded, so make sure you know the location of the enemy jungler / midlaner.
Apart from that, the usual stuff, having lasthit accuracy (only training helps I suppose), lasthit minionis with spells that also poke enemy champs, siege minion goes to support if he has relic, siege > melee > caster in terms of gold, etc.

8. Teamfights

We heavily lack coordination for now. It's crucial because often the enemy can force a teamfight in any game so we mustn't suck here.
Teamfighting properly is an art I suppose because every team composition is different. Now, we used to play a specific (wombo)combo for now which is a very simplified form of teamfight and we couldn't even succeed in that.
Then again, I don't have the feeling we can devote time to improve our teamfights significantly at the moment. After the basics are ok (basically all other points in this post), we can start to methodically try to get better at teamfighting, with any kind of composition.
For now we kind of rely on having the advantage, so just keep in mind:
Without full vision on the combat area / all enemy champs we don't want to start.
We choose before who initiates the fight. And the chosen one won't be any of the enemy champs if possible. xD In most cases something tanky / cc (for example Gnar or Amumu). Positioning: tanks / bruisers frontline, mages hit as many targets as possible and retreat while having cds, adc stays away from everyone and attacks targets IN RANGE (not low hp and not even target priority).
Focus: non-tanky with gamechanging cc before used --> most dangerous squishy carry --> other carries --> other champs --> tanks.
But these are only ideas, we have to adapt heavily depending on the enemy positioning and strength and behaviour. We might want to discuss focus before starting the fights though, and the general teamfight behaviour at the start of the game.

9. Starting the game

I observed a few things:
Sometimes some of us go afk/brb during the load screen. We shouldn't do that, instead talking about necessary things (for example teamfights / ganks) and generally plan ahead. When the game starts, we should buy our stuff and instantly leave the base. It's an advantage to arrive on the map early. Ideally we want to put some early deep wards, maybe some protecting wards, sometimes invading or protect our own buffs. That is done by going together in a coordinated way (aka at the same time) and do vision control as early as possible. If possible, we talk about what to do at the start during the load screen.

10. Splitpushing

Basic technique. Push multiple lanes at once by splitting our team. The enemy has to react to all threats. There is not a lot to say about it because doing is easy, we just have to know when to, and I guess that's my concern. ^^

11. Creating auto-pushing waves

When to use: Before leaving a lane, basically. It ensures the lanes is defended during following fights, and can add serious pressure to the lanes without actually being there, to an extent that the enemy team sends certain players to defend the lanes, giving us an advantage in number. I believe this can greatly be used in conjunction with points 3 and 10, for obvious reasons.
How to do: Kill a minion wave. Kill the caster minions of the next one. This works because the melee minions are more tanky and the casters got the damage, so it will take a while for the wave to get rid of the melees, without losing too many own members. The own waves have more time to join then, resulting in a monster wave of minions over time.

12. Lobby

I refer to the pick/ban phas. We did quite a few mistakes in that stage already. I think we learnt that adapting to the enemy picks should have priority over any pre-made combo. The topic about picks depending on enemy champion is already a great start. At least I will create a list for my own midlaners, with situations when to pick and when not to pick, also depending on what's needed for our own combo, considering every single possible champ. I believe bans are not really important for now.

So long!

WOW. Ok, this is a huge post. I understand better now why you asked for the limit of the post. (fyi, the limit of superforum post has been reached in this topic. The post was more than thrice the limit of caracters, and this has been divided in four posts - I wrote it, sadly it's french.)

First : great topic, it makes much sense. Beside, we now have quite a few topics about similar sujects, and we speak in every single one of them about what we should do, and what we actually do. Therefore i will create another forum in the strategy forum, in which we will ONLY speak about our mistakes, and the way we can fix them. As fixing mistakes is related to making progress and thus proposing new compositions/combo, it will probably be quite tough to stick to the topics. Therefore, I won't autorize the creation of topics in this forum, but will set a few precise ones. If you think something is missing just send a suggestion to Konsti - he has also the rights on this - or me.

Then : As there is a lot of things, i'll react per category.

Vision
I must admit I do not buy so much pinks. I always buy some at start, like within the ten first minutes, but afterward I'm more likely to focus on my build. In fact, the games in which we suffer the most from the lack of vision are the games we're losing. And when we're losing, especially to some op ennemies, we won't to catch up and get stronger. So then, it's quite understandable that we kinda don't wanna put 50 gold into buying wards. The things I would say or agree with are :
- None should die by warding. It's almost always a mistake. I'm refering to the case we don't check out where ennemies are, or we wanna ward the bush where they might be to know if they are there or not, and die by learning that... yes, they were indeed. They all are cases which shouldn't happen, there is actually no good reason for such mistakes.
- Overextending is one of the worse mistakes of all, to me. By saying that, I'm just meaning that it's the one I hate the most. Mostly it's very stupid because it's quite easy to avoid, and obvious to understand. It's like having an advantage and losing it by missusing it. We absolutely have to work on it.
- As you said, the moment we should use to ward, overall in their jungle, is when we did a successful push, or know that a pack of them is somewhere else.
- Finally, we can't have wards everywhere. But by having regular looks on the minimap and spotting their moves thanks to our wards, we just need to use this information to think about where they are likely to go, according to the direction they went. Mostly the jungler, will certainly do a gank/a camp, and it's quite predictable when we have some wards in their jungle.

Defending
Of course the best case is the one we all are wrecking, and don't need to do anything else than blow their mind everytime as soon as they respawned. But at some point, we will always have to defend, in any game. So the usual when/how/where questions are important.

a general rule could be: Sacrifice anything for the nexus, it's ok to let someone die for an inhib or nexus tower, in other cases it's generally not worth. The reason: We are powerful together, so the enemy can easily exploit being 5v4 to take further objectives after the fight / push.

I totally agree to this rule, until we'll be able to know by one look the singular situation (for instance, in a case it's important to prevent them from getting the T3, they are low life, but team is still far, so just go all in and sacrifice to keep them busy and save the tower, allowing your team to chase them down, if you're sure they can).

In general, if the enemy can destroy a tower without a minion wave, it means they are strong enough to prevent us from defending anyway.

it's particularly true, because remember this : towers get 200 bonus armor and mr when no ennemy minions are nearby. So when ennemies can finish towers without minions, they won't give a shit to one ennemy champion, unless he's fed enough (don't get me wrong, 'fed' here means 'reeeeally fed')

Does anyone know when / if it's better to attack champs / minions when both of them are already at the tower?

You knew i'd answer this, right ?xD
Forget about the 'if it's', it's always a 'when' depending question. Actually, there is so many different cases I can't explain all of them, and many of them are obvious. If you have damage and the tower is not in deadly danger, attack the champion. He can't reply without getting hit by the turret, and you will drop free injures on him. If you have few damage, better focus on minions because it will make the ennemy champion retreat (if you can of course, focus on ranged minions, and even better if you get the last hits). Now, two special cases. If there are almost no minions anymore, try to root/stun/grab the champion to make him stay under you turret without his minions. Slows are mostly useless for this. If you have a taunt (rammus, shen..) you don't want to wait for him to lack of minions, but you can immediatly taunt him under your tower. In the second case, the tower is in deadly danger. Even in this situation, many parameters are various. a) The ennemy might want to finish the tower fastly to be able to kill afterward. Mostly, this case is pretty recognizable ; also, he will have anticipate the damage you can deal to him, so don't lose any time by trying to taking him down before, and just go away. b) If now the champion wants your turret very badly, and is ready to die to get it, just do everything you can to kill him before your tower collapse, and if you can't, position correctly to be sure you'll kill him anyway. Be careful tho /!\ it could also be a sneaky version of the case a) for the ennemy can be waiting for an incoming help from jungler or other allies. So be paranoïd, and get your wards ready.

Avoiding a fight
LoL, this made me laugh my ass out. x) It's one of the most basic thing to do, almost noone does it well, and it's both easy and hard to do. In theory, keep from ennemies is easy. But in fact, avoiding a fight is made of having vision, knowing what/when/how to defend and how to turtle, etc.
But basically, i agree with the things you said. I'll just add to this that an easy rule could be we should avoid fight we are not sure to win at more than 50%.

Turtling
I'd say it's not only to use if we all completely rekt. Even if the game is close, as long as there is a temporary danger like a buff (fifth drake/baron) or inhibs down, turtling makes sense.
Your 'how to' is well. Also, in situation where you both have to turtle and avoid the fight, even if it's only in a small scale (in laning phase, and you must hold a sieged tower, see above), focus on damaging and long ranged spell, to focus the minions' destruction. Of course firstly the most dangerous (ranged if numerous, then siege, super minions, ranged if few, melee).

Not dying during laning
It's simple. It NEVER happens in pro games, unless noob mistakes are the reason (by 'noob', i mean challenger, as challenger don't deserve pro teams). Ganks are the only reason imo for one to die in laning. Even so, as you said, vision and attention should prevent ganks to grant the opponents a kill. Also, knowing this we'll still die in laning phase. The first step toward a non-death phase is not to feed. There is a huge difference between dying/losing the lane and feeding. A fed ennemy is really hard to handle. So if you die once, be even more careful, if you twice, don't die anymore ; it's ok if the opponent has more farm, the important thing is to prove we can control ourselves enough to master our fate : either we want to take a deadly unknown risk, or we play SAFE, in the very primord meaning of the word, what ever it implies.
I totally agree with everything else. And in fact I might seem a bit tough, but actually i'm the very first to die three, four, five times before getting some farm and items, to finally be able to be useful.

Pushing

Does anyone know when / if it's better to attack champs / minions when both of them are already at the tower?

good one !xD
I also don't see any thing to say, unless that pushing should never prevent from getting the last hits. One mustn't panic and just throw spells in the wave (ok unless it can save a tower), getting the last hits is still more important than winning one or two seconds.

Farming
Ok, it's been a while I've been interested in this, and looked for mechanics & guides. So well, among the few things to know, you've said the most important :

melee minions die by 2 tower hits and one autoattack, caster minions die by 1 tower hit and two autoattacks

ok I knew this, i don't know if you others also did, but milo, i want us to do this from now on. Melee minions under tower aren't a big deal, but whenever ranged minions are full life and comes under tower, i'd like you to hit them once, before or with the tower hits if possible, so that i can take the last hits afterward. ^^ I'd say the best default choice is to farm under your tower if you're good at this, or at the meeting point of the waves in a freezing farm mode. Just know that in the first minute, toplaners and midlaners are allowed to max push their lanes to get level 2 before their opponents (first wave + 1 minion) in order to outtrade them.
Last hitting accuracy. Yes. A big, big deal. Well, this is the first thing i've been looking for, years ago. First objective for a medium farming level (i think it's ours) is 100 last hits within the 15 first minutes. For an upper level of farming, aim at getting an amount of last hits equal to 10 times the minutes of the game. This scale is almost unreachable at 15min, it's only doable at 20 imo (even in custom training, you won't get 150 in 15 min). It's supposed to be easier and easier afterward, but as after 20, farming is no more the number one objective, you may lose your nice proportion of farming, it's not a big matter.
To train, I prescribe doing customs (in rift of course) without any mates nor bots. be alone in the map, take a champ (random or one you wanna main) go on lane (anyone, there is no difference, but 11 seconds) and try to get as much cs within 10 mins. Why 10 min ? because it's the most important farming moment in the game, also the hardest (you have no stuff nor level yet). Therefore it's 9999 times more useful to do three 10min training than one 30 min training. I currently try to do at least twice of them every day, and do it with very single champ I own. Also, I personnaly train without masteries nor runes, and I do not allow myself to use my spells (ofc sometimes you got a forced passive #caitlyn#darius#ekko#missfortune etc). It's imo the best way to improve you farming skills. (if possible, don't be on call, don't hear music, etc)

Teamfights
Wow, it's getting late, I'm having a headache. So well, I think actually teamfights maybe the greatest matter in this game. To win, you have to fight, LoL is a teamgame, so teamfights are the key. But indeed, we lack of coordination, and maybe even of knowledge about each another (i can sometimes predict pauline's and konsti's behaviour and reaction, but i don't know you enough yet, milo and youness). So I think first priority, about this, is to improve our personnal skills and mechanics, not with champs (because we do know our mains, although we can always improve) but as LoL players. At the same time, and thanks to this, we'll be able to improve our teamfight opness, our coordination, etc.

We choose before who initiates the fight. And the chosen one won't be any of the enemy champs if possible. xD In most cases something tanky / cc (for example Gnar or Amumu). Positioning: tanks / bruisers frontline, mages hit as many targets as possible and retreat while having cds, adc stays away from everyone and attacks targets IN RANGE (not low hp and not even target priority).

This schematic is perfect. I only found out lately that adc should aim more at dealing perma damage to anyone than focusing a specific. We got a good captain, listen to him, he says nice things. x)
So of course, whenever priority targets are within range, don't miss the focus. mages might be more able in first instance to damage them, than adc. I assume tanks and bruiser will be in the melee, and will have to catch these targets.

Starting the game
I agree with not leaving during the loading screen. I think me and pauline are the more likely to do it, so we'll havec to mind going afk bio/getting food, etc, before even going in queue. Planning the pre-game (before the waves meet on lane) and the teamfights (check lolnexus also).
For the pre-game, i believe botlane should always be carefuly (and fast) ahead to try to get vision on the ennemy team, just to know where their jungler starts.

Splitpushing
Yup, I agree and have nothing to add. Maybe only that we should use this technique when 1) we are sure to fail if we group 2) we got one of their inhibs down and want to use their need of defending the endangered lane 3) we have a nashor buff and want to make the best use of it (without being foolish ofc)

Creating auto-pushing waves
Yep, important thing, though i think it's more useful in mid/late game. It allows us to push a lane without needing to being there. Interesting to distract the ennemies to prevent from taking objectives like drake/nash, or force them to split on different lanes.

Lobby
Well, I have nothing special to say about this, I agree with what you said, even though there wasn't any thing particular either.

Ok now i have no headache and i'm not tired anymore. Fuck this shit.