It's easy to tell who's winning when the margin is huge. When it's close, most players read the scoreboard and get it wrong. Here's what a lead is actually made of, ranked.
League of Legends Guide
What Winning Is Made Of
Updated August 2026
It's easy to understand which team is up when the margin is enormous. But most games aren't like that. Most games are close, and in a close game the average player looks at the scoreboard, sees the kill count, and draws entirely the wrong conclusion.
Kills are the most visible thing in League and one of the least important. Here's what actually decides games, in order.
The Hierarchy
The Nexus
The only thing that genuinely counts. Take it and nothing else on this page matters: not your deaths, not your gold, not whether you went 0 and 12. Every other item on this list is only valuable because it moves you closer to this one.
Turrets and inhibitors
Structures are permanent. A kill lasts until the timer runs out; a tower is gone forever. They give gold to your whole team, they hand you vision and safe ground, and they shrink the area the enemy can move through without risk.
Two changes make them matter even more now than they used to. Turret plates are permanent and exist on inner and inhibitor turrets, not just the outer ones, so plate gold is available far deeper into the game. And all turrets take 20% increased damage from melee champions, which makes a melee-heavy team's siege genuinely fast.
Baron Nashor
Baron arrives at twenty minutes and respawns six minutes after each kill. The buff itself is good, but the reason Baron ends games is the aura it puts on your minions: an empowered wave plus five champions is how bases actually fall.
Don't take Baron because it's up. Take it because you have somewhere to spend it. A Baron with no wave to push and no plan is three minutes of buff that expires while everyone farms.
Dragons and Dragon Soul
Individual drakes give small permanent stacking bonuses. The fourth one gives Dragon Soul, which lasts the entire rest of the game and doesn't disappear when you die. That's the objective worth planning several minutes ahead for.
Once a team claims a soul, Elder Dragon starts spawning instead, and Elder executes enemy champions below 20% health. An Elder fight is usually the last fight of the game.
Void Grubs and Rift Herald
Both spawn once and never again. Grubs arrive at eight minutes and give your team bonus true damage against structures, which converts directly into the turrets sitting at number one on this list. Herald takes over the Baron pit at fifteen minutes and exists to knock down a tower.
Because neither repeats, giving one up is permanent. That's a very different decision from giving up a drake you can contest again in five minutes.
Kills, but only as a means
A kill is a window, not a prize. It's worth exactly as much as whatever you do during the time your opponent is dead. Kill someone and take a tower, and the kill was excellent. Kill someone and dance on the corpse, and you traded your position for some gold.
Dying is the flip side, and dying alone in a lane to someone standing right in front of you is still the most common way to lose a game. If you nearly killed them, you're probably about to die.
Creep score
Farming matters enormously, but it comes below everything above because it's a means of funding them. Staying roughly level with your opposite number is what's needed. A perfect CS score while your team loses three towers is a lost game with a nice scoreboard.
How to Actually Use This
The practical version is a single question to ask before every fight: what does winning this buy me? If the answer is a drake, a tower, or a safe recall, take it. If the answer is nothing except the kill itself, you're gambling your position for a number on the scoreboard.
The reverse is the useful half. When you're behind on kills but ahead on towers and drakes, you're probably winning and it doesn't feel like it. When you're 15 kills up with no structures down, you're probably not as far ahead as the scoreboard says. Learning to read the map instead of the tab screen is most of what separates players who close out games from players who throw them.
For exact spawn timings and what each objective grants, we've written the full breakdown of every Rift objective. For the vocabulary used here, the Terms Glossary covers it.
Frequently Asked Questions
Are objectives more important than kills in League of Legends?
Yes. Kills are temporary and objectives are permanent. A kill is only worth what you do with the time your opponent is dead, so a kill that becomes a tower or a dragon is valuable and a kill that becomes nothing is close to worthless.
What is the most important objective in League of Legends?
Turrets, once you set aside the Nexus itself. They're permanent, they pay the whole team, and they take away the ground the enemy can safely stand on. Baron and Dragon Soul matter enormously, but they matter largely because of the structures they let you take.
Why is my team losing when we have more kills?
Almost always because the other team has taken more structures and objectives. Kill leads decay as respawn timers pass, while towers, drake stacks and Dragon Soul do not. A large kill lead with nothing to show for it is a very common way to lose.
Should I take Baron whenever it's available?
No. Take it when you have a way to spend it. Baron's real value is the buff it gives your minions for pushing, so taking it with no wave built and no plan to siege wastes most of it, and contesting it without vision or numbers often loses the game outright.
How important is CS compared to objectives?
It funds them, so it matters a lot, but it ranks below them. Staying roughly level with your direct opponent is what's needed. Perfect farm while your team loses towers is a lost game with a good scoreboard.
What's the worst scoreboard you've ever won with? Ours involved a lot of dying and one very good Baron. Comments below.
What about buying the right items? I feel like that's one of the most important things in the game.
ReplyDeleteThat's a good point, you should always tweak your item build to suit your opponents, I probably should have added that into this post. Thanks! :D
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Update please, after drag gold changes it should be moved higher up and say that at 10-11 mins it's the best time to drag. Also mention that wriggles is a hardly used item now.
ReplyDelete