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Time in League of Legends has been evolving for a long time. And I’m not talking about Zilean and Ekko. We used to have to save ourselves when the Dragon or Baron gets up. Today, we even get information about the rival’s buff spawn on a platter. But there are timers that are worth keeping in mind. Want to meet them?
5:00-5:30 – Spawn of remaining Blast Cones
Changes in the spawn time of some Exploding Cones (interesting name by the way) changed relatively recently, because in patch 8.4. Here you can see exactly what the change was and which Plants are affected.
When can you use this information? Even when you’re afraid of gank. Blast Cone is another opportunity for the opposing jungler to surprise us. If we know that Pinecone will spawn within 30 seconds of the 5 minute mark, we can go down to it and just destroy it. I recommend this when you play a range champion. You won’t even have to go through the wall. And even if you don’t want to destroy it, just harden it. Such info is also useful for us when we play jungle. We then know that we have another opportunity to gank or escape after entering the opposite forest.
5:30-6:30 – Midlaners reach level 6
Testing on sandbox, you can see that the earliest wave of minions that will allow us to reach level 6 is the cannon minion wave that goes out at 5:05. This means that if you haven’t lost XP before and are pushing hard, you’ll unlock your ultimate as a midlaner around 5:30. Usually, however, the mid gets to level 6 around 6 minutes, because he often returns to the base at least once and tries to finish off most of the creeps rather than push the lane towards the opposite tower. But there are also cases where the midlaner is eg 3/0, so he is ahead in experience and will probably reach lvl 6 as fast as a person who does not return to the base.
This knowledge allows you to anticipate the gank from the opposing midlaner. Level 6 and unlocking the ultimate is the perfect opportunity to roam other lanes. For many mid laners, level 6 is a power spike and they want to make the most of it. For example, a double on a bot.
Let’s not just talk about midlaners. Toplane reaches level 6 in a similar time frame. Champions like Camille and Pantheon may be looking to roam mid. There are also characters that have map-wide abilities. Shen or Gangplank at 6 can help their team a lot. Then it’s better not to risk a random 2v2 on a bot around 6 minutes.
10:00 – Some runes and Herald spawns (9:50)
The rune rework introduced a lot of interesting things. Among other things, some of them become active after 10 minutes. Which are the runes? Conditioning (8 armor and magic res + percentage bonus armor and MR), Magical Footwear (free boots for kills and assists), Perfect Timing (Stopwatch can be used after 10 minutes), Transcendence (free 10% CDR) and Gathering Storm (AD and AP every 10 minutes). You have a picture of these runes below. When will we need it? When, for example, we want to dive an opponent who has a free Stopwatch. If we see that 10 minutes are approaching, it is rather a bad idea. We also know that, for example, an opponent with 0/0/0 will be a bit faster than before 10 minutes, so he can, for example, come to the lane faster and further push of the rook can be risky.
It is also worth remembering that the Herald appears after 9 minutes and 50 seconds of the game. We can then predict that since there are no more interesting objectives on the map (mok, red and blue taken), the opposing forester can go there. The same applies to us. If we have no idea as a jungler and it’s 9:50, we can head towards baron pita.
20:00 – Spawn of Baron Nashor and activation of Homeguards
Nothing will surprise you here. This point is for new players who don’t yet know when the most powerful creature on Summoner’s Rift spawns and when they will run faster from the base. But remember! Just because you know the Baron spawns at 20 minutes doesn’t mean you don’t have to do anything about it. I’m not talking about doing it for 25 seconds with the whole team. I mean vision. Around the 19th minute, it is worth to harden the area and be sure that the rival is not going to do it soon. We’ll also see if rivals are also giving vision to Nashor. If we see that they are not, then we can play fast Baron, because we will be sure that rivals do not know that we are here. You can also make a trap, because since the second minute has passed since the creation of Nashor and the rivals still have no vision, they will eventually have to put it. And when they notice that you are not there, it will speed up the whole thing. And then they fall into the trap.
29:00 – The next dragon is Elder
The Elder Dragon can only spawn after 35 minutes. A normal dragon takes 6 minutes to spawn. To have the earliest Elder Dragon, we need to kill the predecessors at exactly 29:00. When can this information be useful? If we want to extend Elder’s resp. Sometimes it pays to take the dragon around 23:00-28:59 so that the Elder will appear as late as possible. Thanks to this, we can avoid the appearance of the two most important buffs at once. Then we will not have a dilemma whether it is more profitable to give Baron to rivals and take Elder, or vice versa.
Do you think there are other important timers that should be on the list? Feel free to write!
