I had a game last night where we were 3 levels behind. The enemy team got lvl 16 while we were lvl 13. 2/5 of my teammates refused to do anything but soak and kept saying “we need to soak.” The remaining 3 players were trying to find picks around the map as we had 3 assassins. The 2 soaking players couldn’t grasp that there was no way for us to soak enough to make up the 3 level gap. If we refused to fight at all and just try to soak, the game would be over before we ever caught up. It’s obvious that we lost that game, but it made me realize how prevalent this notion is of “dont fight, we must soak!” even when it’s absolutely the wrong choice.
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So your only recourse is to feed by engaging the enemy 3 lvls down?
Hmmm, you learn something new every day!
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No, but getting a kill while under leveled is very much worth it due to how exp gain scales with levels and is the best way to catch up. We had 3 assassins, and we had many opportunities where a kill could’ve been secured if the other 2 players attempted to help us.
Being down 3 levels is already a bad situation. Doing nothing but trying to out soak a winning team that is taking every objective on the map is a guaranteed loss.
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The amount of exp needed to reach the next lvl is lower the lower lvl you are so whether you get that exp by kills or by soaking, you’ll still lvl up faster than the enemy team so yes, you can soak the exp needed to match their level. The goal is to get on equal footing as possible so you can contest them again without getting crushed due to disadvantages.
A winning team isn’t going to just let you get pick unless you’re playing against potatoes. If they’ve sequestered you into your base, they’ve got minion vision everywhere and will not hesitate to mobilize once they see your foolish faces moving on the mini map.
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If you’re at or before the objective that will decide the game, and you are 2-3 levels down, soaking won’t do anything for you. The enemy team will still outlevel while they push with the objective
So in that situation, the best course of action is to try to ambush them and win a fight, which will get you Lvl 20 and likely the objective as well.
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I mean, I THOUGHT that went without saying but I guess not lol. I mean, if you’re about to lose the game on ToD because the obj will end it, then duh, soaking isn’t going to do anything and situations like that is not what I’m talking about.
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Im not sure how some of it is accurate after last exp/globe changes but:
Exp needed to level up increases every few levels.
Exp given by minions scales faster/more than exp needed to level up (you need to soak less to level up later on), although this one depends on time, not levels.
“Underdog bonus” works even if you are the same level as enemy, less experience is enough (minor benefit tho).
Soaking is a good idea, but many people oversoak for no reason. Exp bar filled to 99% doesnt give you more benefits than exp bar filled o 1%. Quite opposite, you lose the underdog bonus and you take a risk that enemy team will level up before you TF.
Its less about breaking even and more about leveling up as much as possible before (game ending) objective and/or enemy team getting talent lead.
how is it “the wrong choice” to soak instead of fight while down in levels? also how did you even manage to be down in levels? that means nobody cared about soaking from start only want to “fight” like bronze people do brawling mid lane then wonder why they can’t climb up but mommy i’m stuck in that rank cause system sucks no son you’re just bad
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It’s refreshing to see posts like these once in awhile because it’s counterintuitive to the false narrative that soaking is the most important thing in the game.
In the examples he gave. Soaking is not always the right decision. If you’re almost to the next level, sure, do it (especially if it’s a talent tier), but you’re not magically going to gain two levels worth of experience from soaking while there are other things going on in the map because the enemy isn’t going to just let you safely soak and not exploit objectives, camps, and other advantages while you soak.
You’re better off teaming up, utilizing defenses to your favor, and try to gang up from their overconfidence and outnumbering them to get kills which equalize you much faster than soaking ever would. The truth is, if both sides safely soak, you will NEVER catch up, and that’s the thing that some people just don’t seem to understand.
Unlikely, it’s more like your team constantly died a lot so they lost experience AND got out soaked. Ironically, this is sometimes caused by allies prioritizing to soak instead of helping. No one makes that kind of multilevel deficit just by forgetting to soak.
that’s what happened for sure however i still think no one soaked while they were close to level up so they just wanted to fight and kept dying and giving the enemy team more exp and that way they couldn’t catch up.
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Some of my easiest games are the ones where we overpower mid because enemies decided to soak. Then we just roam around, outnumbering the soakers. Deaths get staggered, which makes it even easier to kill enemies, and then we just soak and get a huge level lead. Then the survivors double down on wanting to soak, and never actually mount a credible defense because they’re split.
Soaking is good, but it does not happen independently without consequences. You can not divorce soaking from combat engagement, you choosing to be somewhere and soaking, makes somewhere else without your presence, and that’s where you have to juggle the balance.
The OP is not saying anything about not ever soaking, just that it’s often not worth catching up in experience solely from soaking when you’re that behind.
Eh, there are just too many variables involved to make any hard and fast rule about catch up soaking, other than specifically soaking for levels after 20 is pointless. How pushed out are the lanes? How fast can you clear and rotate? Do you have vision on where the enemy is at the moment? Is there anything valuable on the map that doesn’t require risky pathing?
If you have a hero like Dehaka who can clear and rotate fast enough to soak up some XP and still be able to dig in when needed, it absolutely makes sense for him to try to reduce the level gap. I agree, there are many people who prioritize soak to a ridiculous level, but there are also times when just safely soaking instead of trying to force a fight when you are at a disadvantage is the correct call.
If you know the enemy is split and overextending, absolutely take advantage of it. But I have seen far too many staggered deaths because a team fell for an obvious bait or were ambushed in rotation when they were already behind.
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It really depends on enemy though. If i have a three level lead im not going to be soaking alone im going to be grouped with my team to boss, take your camps, objective, or push forts. Trying to get a pick on someone would be pountless if we’re close enough to jump in and assist.
Fighting three levels down is mostly pointless and your only hope is to defend carefully. Maybe if the enemy team is bad theyll splitup but if they were bad you were unlikely to get three levels behind in the first place.
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ESports champions hate this player for their ONE WEIRD TRICK!
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1 gank at the start gives you +300 xp, 1 big camp gives you similar xp, 1 wave of mobs gives you +450 xp. By the time pleople try to gank or do camps you can do way more xp just killing waves, thats something people usually dont realize.
if you have someone soaking 2 lanes properly while the other 4 guys are just holding the 4vs5(playing safe), you will eventually have a huge advantage; the same will happen if youre some levels behind.
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By the time people do camps, you’re no longer level 1. Your assumption is also that you only kill one person at the start. You also make an assumption that somehow one person can soak two lanes if there is a 4v5, which can only realistically happen if it’s not the middle lane on small maps which is usually what people fight mid over. And the usual stuff like, dead people can’t soak, so you have to calculate potential soaked lost while dead people have to resurrect. Deaths also allow enemy to pressure other points on the map (like getting xp from camps), including making it harder for those who chose to soak to soak without dying themselves. The truth is most fights never last that long in lopsided fights to accrue that big of a lead over a long period of time. If your team can consistently do that, you were already probably going to win if you had just stayed.
Which none of it really matters, because we’re talking about a big level difference after it has already been made, which has nothing to do with level 1 or coming back from a deficit. The truth is if you are 2-3 levels behind, and both sides safely soak, you will NEVER get back to equal footing without engaging on the enemy. You make it seem like that if someone is 2-3 levels ahead, they just pack up and let you soak. It’s incredibly naive. You have to band together and capitalize on mistakes.
How about soaking from the start to avoid having more than a level deficit instead?
What were you 3 assassins doing before that 3 level deficit?
If that was not soaking safely and doing camps i feel bad for the 2 other guys.
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You were 3 levels down. Chances of “securing” a kill are minimal. Chances of your 3 assassins ending up feeding the enemy quite high. Especially if the other 2 people tried to help since that would immediately encourage the enemy to team fight you since they will win by being +3 levels on you.
Ironically the 2 soakers and 3 assassins roaming would be the best shot at winning. As long as no one fed kills to the enemy team you could pressure lone enemy heroes enough so they did not soak while your team does soak. Once the talent advantage is gone and level advantage is within 1 at most then winning a team fight can become possible.
Not happening if you are a talent tier down and the enemy is even vaguely map aware. The enemy does intend to win in which case they will be trying to avoid situations like that and will even try to ambush you since ambushes work even better when you are +3 levels on your victims.
Which raises what I mentioned above. They had 3 assassins roaming around and hence the enemy could not “safely” soak at full efficiency, especially if it was a 3 lane map. The enemy would be trying to push with merc camps and other things to try and hold their advantage until the objective. During that time 1 or so levels could be caught up. The assassin trio could clear merc camps safely as well to act as counter distractions if lone enemy heroes are not visible to gank.
It is not possible to “utilize defences” when competing for an objective. Hence the enemy team will be trying to maintain their level advantage until they get to the final objective. At that stage it will be a team battle to compete and since they are +3 levels they will very likely have an easy win.
Middle cannot really be over powered since it is still 3 heroes of which none will be killed. If you do kill them then they are playing poorly so you kind of already are a winner.
Like wise the soakers should be near impossible to kill since map awareness means they will know you are coming for them long before you get there. The end result will be a lot of time wasted changing lanes during which time their level lead starts. Once they have a level lead they can win the first objective or more easily secure kills and the ball starts rolling in their favour.
Generally my tip for teams that have somehow fallen behind in levels is to soak and safely grab merc camps while avoiding deaths. Every merc camp grabbed will give experience and also act as a distraction for the higher level enemy team buying time. Try to gank/pressure their soakers if possible as well.
If you are -3 levels and a talent tier down by final objective time then chances are you have already lost. Competing is basically suicide unless the enemy team makes some spectacularly bad plays or you have heroes that can make some insanely strong plays (comp dependent). In this situation I generally try to maintain my dignity by minimizing my deaths and join in the final deciding battle, if everyone shows up, so everyone knows we gave it our best shot.
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Also trying to get someone alone in a rotation when you create no lane pressure by clearing or pushing somewhere with camps if you can even pick this at that point is not going to happen.
The only thing you can hope for is that they throw doing a boss with their rear.
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And yet it does all the time ESPECIALLY at lower MMR or a QM situation. It’s this kind of like naïveté and expecting people to play at super safe levels and always point to the ideal outcome when they are actually favored to lose to be astonishing. Sure, in ideal circumstances, yeah, but that’s not really what happens in practice.
If an objective is coming up and you can’t play defense, well, that’s tough lol. But, like I said, it’s usually because you’ve probably already died a lot already, some of which most likely happened at objectives that you are in that bad a shape in the first place. So, it’s MUCH more likely that the deficit happens AFTER the objective has given them a huge lead.
Yeah, which means you are forced back which makes soaking optimally harder. And then they can more easily chip away at your buildings or find some other advantage. Dying is never a great thing. You can of course try to minimize its impacts and adapt, but people just get overly simplistic with MUST SOAK, and it’s more often a detriment, especially once teams know how to rotate.
If you’re near a talent level, I agree. If not, it’s just wasting time while the enemy gets to play the map or capitalize on you trying to soak, which is not so easy or safe when you’re levels behind and split.
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