Team strategies and rotations for premade 5v5 games

Question

Some friends and me compete in 5v5 tournaments and the 5v5 ranked ladder. We're all decent laners, but when it comes to mid / late game, we're kinda screwed by the lack of strategies and tactics to defeat the enemy team. That's why I'm asking about overall strategies and good ways to rotate after the laning phase. What are good ways to:

Win against a push combo

Let's assume, enemy team has good pushers (Cait, Ziggs) and every siege is in vain, since the minions always never reach the enemy tower? How do we rotate smart, to gain an advantage?

Turn around when the enemy team has the momentum

Enemy team had a slight advantage in laning and is now pushing all lanes hard, maybe even with a global Ult split pusher like Shen. How do we react to this?

Win with a Poke combo

Obviously we try to siege and when we got them low, we can engage. Does this mean, we should pick a good dive champ, since we eventually want to do that?

These are just some scenarios I could think about. Maybe there is also an online resource with overall strategies / guides how to make a good teamcomp according to the strategy we want to play?

Answer 1

The thing with teamrankeds is that the laning phase isn't the same as in soloqueue. In soloqueue the rotation isn't really there. While it would be good to have one, most of the time those 5 random people that are matched together just don't have enough teamplay to rotate right. In 5v5 Premades you can communicate better and you can try to get help from another lane. What I basically wanna say is: Focus on rotation right from the beginning and don't try the "I'll win my lane so I can carry" because most of the time you won't carry alone and as soon as you have an advantage you won't have to rotate too much. Also try to 3 or 4 man gank botlane a few times early because ADC is by far the most important role to get fed in premades.

So to answer your 3 questions:

How do I win against a push combo
Pusher comps usually have a lot of movementspeed, poke, splitpush or waveclear. They can siege very well and they can also take objectives down either because of high range or because of high objective-burst. Now what a pusher comp usually lacks is definitely the ability to teamfight. The best thing to do is Initiating on them as soon as someone who attacks the turret stands too close. I assume you named Caitlyn as an example because of her 650 range with autoattacks. But think about it: 650 Range may be huge but she still is vurnerable as soon as she starts attacking the turret. Also If a bruiser attacks the turret just ignore him and punish him for not protecting their squishy roles. Usually as soon as an ADC gets stunned he should be dead. Another thing that should be taken into concideration when playing against a pusher team is taking a champion with good waveclear. You actually have to take just one champion that can clear a wave fast and they can't really push (Cait won't risk a turret shot if there is a chance she gets stunned while having turret aggro).

How do I turn the game arond when the enemy team has the momentum?
Well this is actually pretty easy if they really push all lanes. Ward the jungle and go 5 man mid. Unless you haven't screwed up completely you will push a lot faster than they do and if you ward properly you can catch them as soon as they wanna stop you:

Example.
Shen pushing top
Their jungler is somewhere in top jungle
Supp/adc/mid pushing bot.
Now what you wanna do is Go mid as 5. Usually Botlane will stop pushing and come to you. Shen will wait till he can ult to the ADC/Midlaner. Since you know that they are coming from bot and that shen will ult you also know that their jungler isn't there. The jungler is usually rather tanky and in midgame teamfights tanks are the biggest problem. This means that you can go bot as 5 since there are 2-3 squishy targets with the potential of a tank teleporting in but as soon as one of the targets is dead there won't be enough damage to kill you 5 just because of a missing bruiser. Of course this isn't the only imaginable situation but I hope you get the point. Try to find somewone where you have a big chance of killing him.

Now if they aren't pushing all lanes and are sieging you have to clear waves again and try to find their mistakes. If they really are just as good as you and they have an advantage your only chance to win is by their mistakes (but don't worry they will do mistakes). You can try to make them feel overconfident by sending someone to a place that seems isolated while you are wating somewhere near. Another thing to try is if you have better scaling champions. If this is the case just try to stall.

How do we win with a poke combo?
Well there are two options as an addition to the poke part of your team:
Either you pick champions that can push well or:
You pick a champions with high mobility.

I really wouldn't recommend picking an AOE initiater or something like that since poke usually comes from the Midlaner/ADC and most of the champions that can poke well are rather poor teamfighters (sure there are exceptions but not too many). The main argument that speaks against picking an initiator is that you will lose against a team with a stronger teamfight midlane/ADC.

So as I already mentioned the best tactics here are: Hit&Run and Ultra siege.

Also try to make them feel unconfortable by baiting them to baron. This allows for poke and pushing potential (Just make sure that everything's warded) since you can't really take baron / dragon against a poke comp.

Now if you wanna know how to find good team comps just go for statistics (I made a small summary of the most common team comps here and what their strengths and weaknesses are if you're interested, but It's by far not everything you can say about teamrankeds). I assume that you know that guides won't help forever if you say that you play teamrankeds/tournaments. There are no guides but only statistics and small tips that will improve your playstyle after a certain level.

Answer 2

First off, always always always be looking for an opportunity to capitalize on your enemy's mistakes; if they are ahead and go to do dragon, but their adc goes to get red, either force a fight at dragon (make sure dragon is still leashed on them!) and have the 5v4 advantage, or pick off the enemy carry.

If you are doing 5-mans, someone on your team should definitely have teleport. It's one of the strongest spells, especially with distortion boots.

So, for question 1: If the enemy is doing an objective and they have their cait or ziggs pushing hard to keep you busy, get your jungler or top to TP behind the pusher and take them out. Press your 5v4 advantage to get a tower. Don't overstay your welcome, though - they ARE still ahead of you.

If the whole team is pushing your base, hold them off as best you can and have your jungler back door a turret. If shit gets nasty at your base, he can TP back to the tower and be part of the team fight.

Question 2: Hopefully your jungler is on top of his game. Have the enemy jungle warded and start by taking his buffs if you can, and go to a lane that's pushed hard and secure some kills. If he has teleport he can side-brush gank and take them completely by surprise - no one expects to back up into a brush and find the enemy jungler there. (I'm assuming you ward constantly by the way, no excuses in season 4).

Question 3: Remember that no matter what kind of team comp you are building, your objectives are to take down enemy towers or to get dragons or whatever, and team fights are not the most important part of the game. But generally with a poke comp you want to push them further and further back, get to a tower, and take it down as fast as you SAFELY can while they are zoned. Current meta seems to be more of a tanky jung+supp+top to jump in and stun lock while carries do as much damage as possible, so that doesn't mix too well with a poke based team, but that doesn't mean it isn't possible. Remember to keep track of your objectives. Oh, and if you have them heavily poked, a TP from behind can start a team fight that they seriously don't want to engage in, so again, teleport should be practically mandatory.

Best of luck and comment if you want more info.

Answer 3

Win against a push combo Basically, you want to know how to win vs a good waveclear team because they are near impossible to siege. There are typically things you can do in order to achieve this. You push to their turret but can't hurt it because of their clear. Well from here they are locked to that turret. This allows you to properly set up wards all over and also to work on clearing their wards near a baron/dragon. You can use this ward advantage to set up a bait on baron or dragon forcing an engage that should be to your advantage. Alternatively, if you have some good splitpushing or dueling champions you can have them shove other turrets. At this point you need to make sure that the people sieging the enemy turrets that they are clearing from do not engage or get forced into an engage. You absolutely don't want your team to get forced into a 4v5 or 3v5 fight because of doing this. If they send people after your split pushers, they have to send someone stronger than your pusher or send 2 people. If they send 2 people, often this can lead to a safer siege because you can play more aggressive on the defenders making it difficult for them to clear. You can also do a 1-3-1 push so that every turret of theirs is being pressured. The key here is to always make sure you don't take any unnecessary risk to die just to do a little more damage to a turret and to make sure everywhere is well warded so you can see the movements of their champions.

Turn around when the enemy team has the momentum This can be very difficult and vary per game. At this point vision is extremely important. You need to make sure you can always have vision of the map and try to deny the enemies. This let's you travel safely without dying and potentially allows you to catch 1 or 2 of them as they try to get additional vision. If Shen is splitpushing, the best counter to this is to send someone who can duel him and win, but can also stop him from teleporting out as soon as the duelist gets to him. Someone like jax works well since he can duel and then stun as soon as he tries to teleport out. Shyvanna with her ult up can actually work also for example or trundle with a pillar. Basically, try to win the vision war and take objects like towers/dragons when you can.

Win with a poke combo The point of the poke combo isn't actually to kill the enemy champions. The point of it is to zone the enemy so you can safely take objectives without ever fighting. Let's say you have like a nidalee/cait/Mundo/Zyra/Kha'Zix. The point of this comp is basically to spam your abilities to 1) Damage the enemy, 2) clear waves. When the enemy takes damage, it will force them backwards away from the turret. This might allow cait/nid to get close enough to get like 1-2 attacks off on the enemy turret. You just continue this long process until the turret slowly falls. Zyra/Mundo have some pretty good disengage with the root/cleavers if they ever do try to engage you and so your team should be able to safely kite backwards. You NEVER want to actually engage in a fight. One good thing to do when you are sieging, is to build up super waves in other lanes so large minion waves from your team sieges other turrets. This either forces someone on their team to split off, or causes your minion waves to deal a lot of damage to other turrets or simply kill them out right. In order to create a super wave, you can just leave 1-2 melee minions of a wave alive somewhere on your side of the map. This will delay your waves from going out and so waves will begin stacking up on each other. If an enemy does break off in order to clear these waves, you can use that time to go a little more aggressive with your poke and try to deal more damage to the enemy turret, especially if your poke is wearing down other members of their team.