Beginner’s Guide to Taking Down Towers in League of Legends

Written by: Milawe • Edited by: Michael Hartman
Updated May 18, 2011 • Related Guides: XP

Take down towers fast as the key to winning in LoL. Kills are great, but nothing wins as fast as taking down towers and pushing. Use these tips and strategies to learn the basics of taking down a tower and then how to do it fast.

Level Up in League of Legends

The key to effectively taking down towers is to level up so that you have enough hits points to take a shot from the tower if you accidentally hit an opposing champion or if your last minion dies without notice. You can level up by laning (killing minions in a lane) or jungling (killing mobs in a jungle). You can also gain XP and coin by killing other players, but they are a lot harder to kill than the computer-run minions who pretty much walk in a straight line to die by your hands.

Gear up in League of Legends

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Gear up to either deal damage or take damage depending on the champion you choose to play. You need to be able to do enough damage to a tower to make it worth coming into its range. You also need to be able to take a little bit of damage should there be an enemy attacking or if you end up gaining a bit of tower aggro. In order to gear up, you need coin, so get coin either by laning or jungling. You need to land the last hit to gain extra gold.

Stay Behind the Minions

Towers will attack minions first, so make sure that you go in with a herd of minions, also known as “creeps”. The tower will kill most of the creeps in two hits, so make sure to pay attention to how many are left alive. If you are playing a range character, simply wait for a creep to hit the tower first. Then you may begin attacking. If you are playing a melee character, just wait for the tower to target a minion first. Then you can safely attack until the last minion dies. Run before it dies and wait for the next creep wave to come back. If you kill all the opposing minions at the tower, you may never have to leave the tower to wait for the next creep wave.

Keep Their Minions Killed

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This seems like it should be obvious, but many teams forget to do this. Make sure that the opposing team's minions stay suppressed. This makes way for your team's creeps to push the tower. They can do quite a bit of damage to an undefended tower, so do not neglect destroying the opposing teams minions and keeping them destroyed. This clears the way for your own minion waves, and it also provides plenty of opportunities for allied champions to teleport further into enemy territory for a push. Never underestimate how much pushing the minion waves can do for you.

Be Ready to Push in League of Legends (LoL)

If your team manages to down two or more champions and send them to the spawning pool at the same time, be ready to come together and push. Simply call for a push, follow a creep wave into a tower and destroy it quickly with the help of your teammates. The more you can plink away at a tower before this happens, the better your chances of a successful tower dive and push.

Plink Away in this MOBA

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If you are a player playing a champion with ranged attacks, simply run up whenever you get a chance and launch. You can run away before the tower can target you or kill you. Make sure that you are quick on your feet with using this strategy, but you can easily whittle down a tower even against champions that can kill creeps quickly.

Be Careful Where you Aim

If you are attacking a tower and use any kind of attack on an opposing hero, the tower will automatically focus on you. You can get tower aggro simply by right clicking on a nearby enemy hero or hitting that hero with an AoE or cone damage shot. If you are going to hit a hero, make sure that you do it on purpose and be ready to run as soon as you do. The tower will try to defend its champions.

Conclusion

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Many, many other strategies exist for taking down opposing towers, but this guide simply lists the basic strategies for doing so. Teamwork and excellent communication is the best way for taking down towers quickly, and this can only be accomplished by knowing your part and practicing. While getting kills can be exciting and fun, taking down towers is the only way to win the game. Many high kill teams have lost the actual game due to the fact that they ignored their towers and did not push their opponent's towers. Certain characters, especially at high levels, can take an undefended tower with one or two creep waves, so these characters should never be ignored when they are soloing a tower.