My Thoughts About Positioning

1. Introduction

Most of the things I do is not about what is right, it's more or less about what I think. The things I do are not always right, but it's my thoughts and I hope it can help others think more about their actions both in the game and in the real world. With this said I'll be talking about positioning in this ”guide”.

I see a lot of people losing fights when they're infront, they're stronger than the enemy team but they end up losing the fight due to their bad positioning, their supports get picked up. The initiater doesn't get to initiate you get initiated upon instead of vice verse et cetera, et cetera. If you want to win a teamfight you'll have to think about your positioning. People don't do this, I see lots of people clustering up against ES, SK et cetera with daggers.

Hopefully this will help a lot of people.

To understand the rest of this guide you'll have to take a look at this colourscheme

It seems there has been a lot of discussion as to the definition of a 'tank' and I wish to clarify things. When I say 'tank' I do not mean a hero that takes all of the enemy's attacks whilst your allies lay waste with dps. I mean a hero that can take damage or is 'tanky'. To have a tank at the front of any formation is not for the purpose of 'taking all the damage'. It is simply a positional based play that forces them to initiate on the hero they least want to initiate on. If instead a squishier hero were to be at the front, they would die instantly and it would be a lot harder to punish the team for having used their spells and cooldowns as they could just instantly retreat. This is a rule of thumb and is not absolute, just be thinking these types of thoughts when you're moving with your team and deciding on a formation.

2. Doing a Smoke Gank

You might think there's not a lot of positioning in doing a smoke gank, you're wrong. It's very important who's infront and who's not. You'll want someone that is able to initiate and take some damage in case you're running into more trouble than you can handle.

I've taken this screenshot from a match I played with some of my friends. In this case we're positoning pudge infront, he's very tanky and he's able to initiate upon the enemy if we find anyone. His hook is a skillshot and it therefore might not hit, but it's a chance we have to take due to being on the backfeet and we therefore can't afford having a less tanky player infront. Enigma is right behind able to throw a stun off if anything should happen, he'll also be able to pop off a black hole we would've ran into more than one enemy.

3. Sieging a Tower

This is probably one of the most important cases to think about positoning, when you're going to siege a tower you're on your backfeet. You need to execute well and you need to bring down the enemy as fast as possible without anyone dying.

This is an example of how you can siege a tower (Note that this is just an example and it's very hard to execute at the tier 3 tower, much easier at tier 1/2 towers. You'll need to be slightly/more powerful than the enemy to do this at tier 3.)

Now, this is where the colourscheme comes in handy. When pushing a tower you'll want your tank infront. The tank will be hitting the tower thus forcing the enemy to react else you'll take a free tower. If this is executed well it'll be hard for the enemy to get the upperhand in the fight even though there's a tower. There's a few reasons why the utilities are behind the tank, but not as far away as the supports. In a lot of games your utilities will be carrying meka, pipe, etc. and they'll need to be able to pop those on the tank. hitting the tower in case the enemy is going in.

Let's say we're having Skeleton King as tank, Mirana the yellow circle, Chen the dark blue circle, es being the green one standing further behind and then the light blue circle being Windrunner with a pipe. ES is standing further away as he doesn't want to get initiated on, he needs to be able to blink in, use his spells and deal some damage to the enemy while they smack on the tank. Chen is standing a little closer, he's having the meka and he's able to send people back, he needs to get in there, use his meka and be able to send anyone back if it gets too troublesome. Mirana is standing closer, she'll be able to attack but she can easily get in/out with her leap. Windrunner is standing closer too, she's able to use pipe on the tank while hitting Chen and Mirana with it too.

This way you'll be able to get your support items on everyone, they're forced to go on the tank or you'll take a free tower and you'll have the upperhand in the fight if everything is executed correctly. This case is obviously if the teams have quite equal farm and no one is stomping the other team.

4. Going Uphill

When you're going uphill you wont have any vision of the enemy most of the time. You'll be in a bad condition to do a fight and the enemy will most of the time have the upper hand. You should avoid uphill fights most of the time. There might be cases where you'll be forced to take a uphill fight, in case this happens you should try to have some summons infront to give you vision of what's awaiting you up there. Going uphill is kind of like sieging a tower, just the fact that there's no tower. You want to make your tank / summons walk up there first, in this case you can't force them to attack the first player walking up but it'll give you vision and he'll (hopefully) be able to survive. You want the utility behind so they're able to support the tank so he doesn't die and to be ready to take the fight. The supports are even further behind. The problem with going uphill is you're really exposed, it's hard to position your supports and utility heroes in such a way they can't be initiated upon. As said before, avoid fighting uphill it's bad for you.

Ending Words

I hope this made you think about your positioning and your way of going into a fight.
Remember this is theorycrafting, there's a difference between this and the real game. This is very simplified and most of the time the games wont run like this.
If you're wondering if your positioning is good or not, you should watch through your replays, figure out what you do right. What goes wrong and what you should do to make it better.

As always feel free to private message me on IRC I'm Ivz @ Quakenet

-Ivz

(Happy easter!)