Tempo in League of Legends refers to time. Specifically, it's the time in which you are free to act on the Rift, but your opponents are not and have to react to you. Tempo isn't the Lethal Tempo rune, and it also doesn't refer to playing fast.
Tempo. A buzzword used by everyone from casters (without explanation) to your jungler after they fail to gank in solo queue, yet almost nobody knows how to harness or even define it. Tempo allows you to convert small advantages into bigger leads (i.e. towers), but it is leaked left and right unless you understand the importance of (current-patch) timers. Learn how to control tempo and make sure to spend it before it's gone.
What Tempo in League of Legends Means
Tempo usually means being efficient with time. The player with tempo picks the next move, and the enemy is forced to answer it. Examples of this can be crashing waves of minions, a jungler they haven't seen, or an objective timer ticking down. All of these force the enemy champion to respond, so they play on your terms.
Tempo is a term from chess, in which it literally means a turn. If you are able to force your enemy to use a turn on defense, you've taken a tempo off them.
Since League is a real-time multiplayer online battle arena, this doesn't exactly apply, but League does have its turns: minion waves. As of patch 26.1, the first wave spawns at 0:30 and another follows every 30 seconds until 14:00, after which waves spawn every 25 seconds. Skip one when your opponent can't, and you've banked a time advantage.
The concept of tempo is really about putting enemy champions into difficult decisions where all options are bad. This can range from taking the minion wave or helping at dragon to recalling now or staying and losing plates on the tower. Standing still also costs them gold.
Tempo Is Not Lethal Tempo, Game Speed or a Gold Lead
Tempo has nothing to do with the Lethal Tempo keystone (aside from having a word in common). Lethal Tempo is a keystone rune in Precision that stacks attack speed in-fight.
Tempo isn't the speed of the game, and high tempo doesn't mean playing the game in a faster/aggressive way. A gold lead can give teams tempo (and so can map pressure) without being the same thing, and your team can hold a tempo lead while being behind in gold.
Tempo can also get confused with priority. However, priority refers to who can leave lane first, while tempo refers to who has free time (overall).
How to Gain Tempo in League
The only thing that produces tempo is having a situation in which your opponent has to waste time while you don't. Good tempo comes from three areas: your wave, your opponent's resources, and your reset timing.
Crash the Wave Before You Move
Crashing the wave is the most reliable way for laners to gain tempo. If you can push the wave into the enemy tower and force them to either catch it or lose minions, you are guaranteed some amount of time to roam. The bigger the wave, the longer the window. A slow push that stacks melee and caster minions over two or three waves buys far more time than shoving one (our wave management guide breaks down how to build it).
Now if you can crash the wave so that they can't catch it, you're winning tempo as a mid or top laner, because you get to dictate what happens next. They'll also be losing CS and tower plates. Make sure you check the wave state to figure out when the next wave would crash into your tower and then leave lane. If the next wave would come to your tower in fifteen seconds, you have fifteen seconds.
Trade Health, Mana and Cooldowns for Time
Tempo comes in the form of spending/denying your opponent's resources. Their Flash, a death, forcing them to recall because they're too low on mana or health, etc. all give you tempo.
Say your opponent dies. How many seconds is that worth? You have the entirety of their respawn timer (16s at level 6, or 35 at level 11, or longer if it's over 15:00), plus however long it'll take for them to get back to lane.
Say you force them to recall, then they have to stand there for 8s, plus however long it'll take to get back to lane, plus every minion that dies in between. A burned summoner spell costs nothing now, but Flash takes minutes to return, and missing summoners decide where the next ganks land.
Winning a fight matters less than what it gives you. Levels and gold mean nothing if they don't eventually turn into stats in a fight. Power spikes (level 6, getting a full item, etc.) are tempo, because what could be stats eventually are stats.
Reset Before the Next Objective Spawns
Remember that recall timings are a tempo play. If you're going to back to town, make sure that you've shoved the minion wave towards the enemy side and will return to lane before your opponent. Backing with minions pushing to your side of the lane will mean that they'll die at your turret while you're shopping, which means you'll return to lane behind in minions/plates and thus, tempo.
The above concept also applies to objectives like dragon and grubs. Try to recall roughly sixty seconds before the next objective spawns, so that when you return from fountain, you'll be at full health with empty pockets while they will most likely still be shopping. In this patch, the first drake spawns at 5:00 and respawns five minutes after each kill, Voidgrubs arrive at 8:00 and Rift Herald at 15:00, and Baron is back to a 20:00 spawn.
How to Use a Tempo Advantage
A tempo advantage expires, because a crashed wave buys twenty or thirty seconds that don't carry over. "The next twenty seconds buy me..." what? Before you crash your waves and walk out of lane, you should know what you plan on doing with your tempo. If you can't make a play with it, you have a walk, not tempo.
Tempo plays in rough order of value:
- Take/set up an objective
- Get deep vision control by warding deep or invading the enemy jungle
- Gank/roam side lane(s)
- Get some tower plates
- Recall and get your items for the next fight
Example: playing mid on the red side of the map. At 7:35 you crash a three-wave slow push into the enemy mid tower. At 7:38 the enemy jungler shows on bot side for a gank. At 7:40 you can ward their blue and walk up top river.
Now at 8:00 grubs will spawn, and you and your jungler can take those uncontested. Their jungler is on the other side of the map, and the enemy midlaner has to clear those three waves under tower.
Using tempo away from the enemy, on the opposite side of the map, is often worth more than forcing a skirmish into them. Fights are a coin flip, and uncontested grubs are free objective control.
Different lanes are going to use this in different ways. Top lane has a very long walk, so if you can crash your waves, it's free plates, free grubs, free Herald, free Teleport to dragon, etc.
Mid lane has the shortest walk to either river, and the role quest now grants 8% bonus AD and AP. Bot can coordinate with their support to shove waves and recall together and utilize their tempo with free plates, vision around dragon, a roam to mid, etc.
Jungle Tempo and the Jungler's Clock
Jungle tempo is very pure because, unlike other roles, junglers are not tied to managing waves.
As junglers, you gain tempo through fast clears, clean jungle pathing (finish clears next to a lane with a crashing wave or priority), and by staying alive. You then spend that tempo by ganking, taking Scuttle, counter-jungling, or getting objectives. With Rift Scuttler spawning at 2:55, your first clear has a built-in destination.
High tempo junglers aren't necessarily the fastest clearers. You can clear super fast but then finish your clear next to lanes that have no prio, in which case you're just hovering around until something happens.
However, say your clear isn't the absolute fastest, but you end your initial clear next to a mid laner whose wave is crashing. Now you have tempo because you can potentially gank mid with a 2v1 follow-up. If there's no intent behind your clearing speed, there's no value to it.
Another thing you can do to gain tempo is pay attention to where the enemy jungler is. Say the enemy jungler shows top, then all bot-side jungle and Scuttle are free for you for however long they take to walk across. Now you can either take their jungle, ward their next path, or you can head over to lanes where waves are crashing in order to keep the tempo.
If you feel like games are still slow after your clears are nice and clean, it's probably a pathing intent issue, and that can be fixed within one session with a jungle coach.
Champions That Bend the Tempo Rules
It's worth looking at the enemy team comp, because several champion kits counteract distance-based tempo and thus devalue your lead. Examples of such abilities include global/semi-global ultimates (Shen's Stand United, Twisted Fate's Destiny, Pantheon's Grand Starfall, Galio's Hero's Entrance).
Ryze's Realm Warp reduces the long walk to a two-second portal for him and any allies standing in it. The Teleport summoner spell does the same for whoever takes it, upgrading to Unleashed Teleport at 10:00 (top laners in particular may get a free TP from their role quest). Safe and robust waveclear counts too. Against champions like these, crashing a wave is not always as valuable as it may initially seem, especially post-level 6.
Common Ways to Lose Tempo
Tempo can also be given away more subtly. There are lots of examples, but here are a few:
- Walking around the map with no objective/without a clear path/just in case is pointless.
- By far the biggest tempo trades are made through deaths (you lose your wave, have to walk back, and they can do things on the other side of the map before your champion respawns).
- Staying on the map at 30% health (or very low mana) is functionally equivalent to being off the map.
- Having 1,500 gold you're saving up is equivalent to having nothing.
- Using your Flash/cooldowns on a fight that buys nothing will cost you a more important one.
- Recalling when the wave is going to run into your turrets (you'll lose minions and plates while you buy stuff).
- Taking an objective (drake for instance) without a follow-up objective while waves crash elsewhere (your top laner could lose two waves because of this, for instance).
- Chasing down the enemy jungler for a revenge kill deep into their jungle (you just ceded the next minute to the enemy team).
You lose tempo in small leaks, and tempo can easily flip on one mistake. Any lead not spent is reset by the time the next objective spawns.
How to Play for Tempo When Your Team Is Behind
When your team is behind, stop challenging fights/objectives, because you'll just lose and feed their tempo. Instead, trade cross-map: if they get dragon, get grubs/tower on the other side of the map. Jungle camps count as well. You don't need to win every teamfight/objective; trading dragon for grubs is perfectly acceptable.
Clear your wave (safely under tower if possible) and get something else on the map. Let them have objectives you can't contest, since quiet games help your late game champs get close to their power spikes.
Get one good pick/teamfight (often they'll overstay a push), and tempo will swing to your side. Slowing down a game can also be a plan for the whole game if you're scaling better. Remember, their tempo lead doesn't matter much unless they can capitalize on it.
How High Elo Players Track Tempo
High elo players don't use a feel for who has tempo but continually check it with a simple glance at the minimap every few seconds.
Where is the enemy jungler (or where were they last seen)? Which waves are crashing, and where? Which summoners are down, and what's the next objective timer? After addressing these four points, you should have a good idea of who is able to control the tempo in that moment.
Take a look at a recent solo queue game that you lost. Pay attention to who has tempo each time minions crash, someone recalls, and jungler full clears are complete. Pause the VOD and follow this minimap checking procedure. Try and say out loud who has tempo and what that tempo is spent on.
Chances are you'll realize that you didn't really lose in any teamfights, but in one of the many quiet twenty-second moments in the game when nobody bought anything!
This tempo review is also something your coach will look at during your VOD review. If you'd like someone to tell you who's getting tempo in your games, you can get your VODs reviewed by a high elo coach. Next time you crash a wave, finish the sentence before you move.
