Rotating is an essential concept in League of Legends. It describes the switching of positions with a teammate for the purpose of gaining a lead. It’s important to be familiar with all the rotation ideas, as these will allow you to have more tools to work within your games.
A good knowledge of rotating in League of Legends can significantly improve your skill, which would directly influence your ranking.
Rotating as Bot Lane
When it comes to the bot lane, you will usually want to rotate when the first tower has fallen for either team. If you are on the winning team, you will want both ADC and Support to rotate, ideally, to mid-lane. This will allow you to put more pressure on the enemy mid-tower, and potentially grant you the full tower and its gold. If you are playing on the defense in this situation, you would need to match the enemy with at least support. You can let your ADC farm and push the enemy bot tower, forcing the enemy to respond.
Aside from this basic rotation, there are a lot more bot strategies you can utilize. If you are playing for support, and your ADC has sufficient self-defenses to defend themselves from 2v1, you can use that to roam and create advantages around the map. This is an especially strong strategy if you are playing and engage support. You can roam to the mid lane and help the ally mid score a kill, you can also go top and collapse on the enemy top laner. After ganking top you can start doing grubs with your jungler or invade the enemy jungler. There are so many options, and none of these are set in stone. You can always improvise and find efficient methods of getting favorable trades with enemies.
Rotating as Mid Lane & Top
We have already covered one major bot lane rotation scenario, and the first mid-lane rotating scenario will tie into that. For example, when your bot lane destroys the tower and they come to mid, you might want to send your ADC to bot. However, if the ADC is weak and likely to fall prey to enemy champions, you can go to the bot lane yourself. This way you can put yourself in a really great position, as your bot lane would hold or push mid, and you would put immense pressure on the bot lane tower if you happen to be sufficiently strong.
Aside from rotating with bot lane, mid-laners can rotate with top laners as well. For example, if you are dead and your top laner comes to catch a wave mid. The best thing you could do is go to the top lane and catch the top wave. These kinds of small rotations are quite efficient as they can enable your team to pick up a lot of extra gold.
Rotating as Jungler
As a jungler, there is not too much rotating you can do in the traditional sense. However, you can enter lanes from time to time, and clear the waves under the tower. This is a great way to get extra gold when your allies are on their respawn timers.
Final Thoughts
Rotating in League of Legends covers very specific lane swaps between allies. These swaps are usually done to create incremental leads. The most important rotating concept relates to the bot lane and mid-swap in the mid-game. All in all, the most important skill necessary for successfully swapping is knowing the limits of your picks.