Who do you personally target in a teamfight? Who should your team target? Like initiation and peeling, making a smart decision on targeting will dramatically increase your teamfight success rate.
Like other decisions, there’s a balancing act between three competing goals: • Who solves the most immediate problem?
• Who most immediately solves a problem? • Who can be killed with the least risk?
To be a little clearer, you want to consider targets that are the biggest threats, but you also want to consider targets that are the quickest to kill. And you need to be realistic about who you can kill rather than diving after the furthest opponent. Here are some qualities of a target you should consider focusing down as a team when given the opportunity:
• Is the target squishy and in range to be bursted down?
• Is the target body blocking, crowd controlling, or directly engaging your vulnerable allies, especially carries?
• If the target isn’t killed immediately, will they rejoin the fight later with a stronger presence? For example, an injured marksman who is able to recover with lifesteal or a Fizz who backs out of the fight and waits on his cooldowns.
• If you lose the fight, will the target be important to taking out your objectives afterwards? For example, marksmen and other pushers are more likely to take towers after a teamfight than supports and tanks.
When there’s not much communication between you and your teammates, there’s one other thing to consider: Who are you teammates actually attacking? Even if they’re attacking a less-than-ideal target, joining them may still give you a better shot at coming out of the teamfight successful.
Let me offer a quick example of how you might make the decision on who to target. Let’s say you have a Sona who flashes ahead of her team to land her ultimate on her opponents and initiate a teamfight. At this point, the Sona probably isn’t the biggest threat on her team, especially since she’s no longer sitting on her ultimate. The bulky Cho’gath right behind to her could very well be a much larger threat.
In this case, it’s a safe bet to burst down the Sona if she will only take a few seconds worth of damage. She may not be the biggest threat but she’s squishy and she’s out of position, which may lead to a very quick kill.
But what if it was a fed Kassadin behind Sona instead? If he’s built any health he may be quite a bit more survivable than the Sona, but as an assassin, he’s also an immediate danger to squishy allies. In this case, if the opportunity arises to focus and burst down Kassadin, and he can be killed before he riftwalks out, the team should probably focus on this kill instead.
On principle I’m not a big fan of the advice to always target the closest player. This works, especially with certain team compositions that have extreme damage (to the point that they can knock out the tankiest opponents extremely quickly), but denies your team the possibility of taking out vulnerable targets. These ‘targets of opportunity’ may be marksmen who have come too close to the front line, assassins who come in range of crowd controls before they unload their burst, or supports moving in to use their ultimates.
As I’ve said earlier, if you are relatively certain that you can knock out a critical opponent, it can be a good idea to take that risk even if it separates you from your team or who your team is attacking. In an absolute sense, squishy carries such as marksmen will virtually always be the highest priority target, especially in the late game. This is a great illustration of why positioning for these champions is so critical – if the team has no real risk in attacking a high threat carry, they’re probably going to do it. When teams get really focused on killing a single player without regard to positioning, they may hold back on critical abilities and allow them to take a lot of excess damage trying to dive onto that player. If you’re in these brackets and you’ve become a critical target, consider using this as a baiting tactic by waiting entirely in the rear of your team, even if you’re a short range champion. This is even better if you’re playing a champion with a channeled ability (such as Katarina), as opponents may be extra careful to hold onto crowd controls for you, possibly taking losses as a result.
And though I’ve said it a few times already, this is a good illustration of why it’s important not to move too far ahead of your own carries without a good reason. You cannot expect marksmen to be able to hit back line targets on opponents and stay safely in their own back line. It can be frustrating both to be the player diving and to be the carry holding back, but ultimately it comes down to keeping the team together and having peels prepared if you expect the carry to move in closer.