Macro & Game Sense

Scout the enemy jungler's starting position early

The first step of good macro is figuring out where the enemy jungler begins their clear. If they're starting on the blue buff side, the red buff on the opposite side is often left undefended, so if your hero clears quickly you can grab that red buff for free.

But the point isn't just the immediate gain. By taking buffs and checking the location of the enemy's buffs, you learn where the jungler currently is on the map, which lets you predict whether they'll gank the top or bottom lane next.

Track buff respawn timers and keep invading the jungle

Once you've seen the enemy's blue buff, it's important to note its location and timing carefully on the minimap. Buffs respawn at roughly fixed intervals, so if you keep invading the enemy jungle in sync with the respawn timing, you can continuously stunt the enemy jungler's growth.

If your whole team stakes out the spot a little before the buff comes back, you can ambush the enemy coming to take it and steal both the buff and a kill.

Draining the enemy's resources while your team fattens up—that's the goal of invading.

Help your lanes to set up the next gank

On your way back to your own lane, if your mid teammate hasn't finished clearing their minion wave, help clean it up and push it back quickly. When your teammate clears waves faster, it frees up time for them to move, which sets up ganks in your own lane.

Macro is about stacking up these cross-lane rotations to constantly create a numbers advantage or a timing edge. Even if the enemy mid overextends alone, in the early game before their damage comes online, you can deal with them by outnumbering them.

Rotating to teamfights and securing objectives

If a big teamfight looks like it's about to break out in a top lane and both teams' mids are moving toward it, the right call is to rotate in and match the numbers.

But before diving in, think about whether you can set up an ambush from a bush or similar spot. In a messy fight where even the enemy support has arrived, prioritize landing your ultimate reliably on the biggest threat (their damage dealer).

Once you win the teamfight, ride the momentum to take the respawning buff, knock down a tower, and snowball the resource lead.

An early lead ripples across every lane

If you can shut down the enemy jungler early, the impact ripples across every lane. When the jungler falls apart, support to their teammates dries up and every lane starts to fall behind in a chain reaction.

Put another way, if you can break just one player badly in the early game, you can steer the whole match in your favor. It's also important not to overextend the front pointlessly—clinging alone to the most advanced tower after your teammates have already left gains you little; rotating to the next objective or teamfight contributes far more to the match.

Different strategies work at different rank tiers

In Honor of Kings, low/mid rank, high rank, and pro matches are practically different games in terms of the knowledge and skill they demand. Pro-level drafts and rotation logic don't just carry over to low/mid rank, because the people around you aren't operating on the same logic.

Watching tons of guides and still not winning comes from this—what matters is making decisions suited to the environment you're actually in.

When you shouldn't pull an enemy in with your ultimate

Enemies with purify：If the enemy has a purify-type spell and you haven't confirmed they've used it, don't use a pull-in ultimate. Your long-cooldown ultimate gets canceled in an instant, leaving you with nothing but a window of vulnerability.

Enemies who can cleanse themselves：Using your ultimate on a hero with built-in CC cleanse or invulnerability is a total waste—they escape with one button press.

Enemies you can't beat 1v1：If you know you can't win the duel with your own damage, pulling them in is just throwing away your ultimate, and you may even get turned on and killed instead.

Enemies already near death：Using it on a low-HP enemy your teammates are already finishing off is a wasted cast. While your teammates handle them, it's far more valuable to instead pull in the enemy's carry (damage dealer) to temporarily remove them from the fight and break the enemy's formation.

When to use your ultimate, and keeping your return point safe

The right time to use your ultimate is when the enemy is down in numbers, has mispositioned, and you can punish an isolated player. But don't overextend into the enemy's ranks just to land it.

This kind of pull-in ultimate returns you to where you cast it when the effect ends, so if that spot is dangerous, you get surrounded and instantly killed the moment you're back.

The ideal is to create a safe setup—pull in an enemy who dove under your own tower, so the tower handles them when you both return. The duration is about 7 seconds, so your teammates should keep that timing in mind, prep their skills, and finish off the returning enemy.

In teamfights, if you can pinpoint the biggest threat and remove them for 7 seconds, you can dramatically change the outcome.

For mid, choose your rotation by resources, not kills

Mid's job isn't rotating to hunt kills—it's rotating to the spot where you can secure the most resources. Rotating for a kill and failing is a bad trade that costs you the resources you could have taken too.

When choosing where to rotate, if bottom has the support and marksman plus your jungler also rotating, that's a 3v3 and you can't take resources, so in that case rotate top instead.

Top, you secure the Spirit Chest (treasure) together with your clash teammate and help clear the wave. When doing this, especially when helping the marksman, be careful not to steal the last hits on the enemy minions.

After that, take the nearby monster camp together too, then return to mid to clear the next wave—keep that cycle going. Pick up kills only from the opportunities that arise the moment the enemy mispositions.

Fine tips on skill leveling and positioning

Early on, prioritize leveling your AoE skill to clear the first wave fast and create time to move. After that, adapt to the enemy: against mobile enemies, level the skill that counters their movement (one with stun, movement speed, or a shield); against low-mobility enemies, level the skill that deals the most damage.

If you fall behind, keep your economy up by having your marksman or another lane share their jungle camps. Junglers can be reluctant to give up camps, but no one complains about a side lane's camp.

While you're hiding in a bush, always keep a finger on your ultimate (or your highest-damage skill if you have none) so you can instantly counterattack even if you're ambushed.

While your ultimate is up, take the initiative and pressure the enemy; when it's down, commit to farming and rebuild—that's the basic rhythm.

The tempo of the match transforms at 4 minutes

Once you hit the mid game (4–10 minutes), the flow of the match changes dramatically. At 4 minutes, epic monsters start spawning and the jungle's damage-reduction effect wears off, so invades become frequent.

Junglers start fiercely contesting camps and neutral objectives, and siege minions that deal heavy tower damage appear. On top of that, tower shields also disappear at 4 minutes, so towers fall much faster and are harder to stop.

The mid game is faster, riskier, and a phase where the whole team moves together.

Roles split between support types and scaling types

Support types：Support-leaning clash laners like Guan Yu or Sun Ce line up with the tank to form the front line and protect the backline of their teammates (especially mid).

For them, their own lane's first tower isn't that important. It has a bigger impact to push the enemy side together with your marksman and knock down the enemy's tower.

Since the marksman rotates to your lane and pushes in your place, you can keep pushing the favorable lane and constantly pressure the enemy side.

Scaling types：Scaling types are weak early, so they commit to farming and growing. By picking up nearby jungle camps, neutral objectives, and waves to get core items online quickly, the sooner they reach their power spike, the more they can carry teamfights and steer the match.

The common goal is to limit the enemy's carry (damage dealer)

Stick to them head-on：Camp right next to the enemy's damage dealer and apply pressure by your very presence. Even if you can't kill them, just being nearby makes them back off or hesitate, so they can't deal damage freely.

Dive the backline：If you have a mobile or sustain-heavy hero, cut into the enemy backline and chase the damage dealer around. Even without a kill, forcing them to keep running breaks the enemy's formation.

Pressure without diving：You don't necessarily have to commit directly—just loitering near the backline and showing that you might engage keeps the enemy's damage dealer on constant guard and unable to fight with confidence.

Fight on the side with vision; don't rush into the dark side

For mid-game wave management, the rule is to fight on the side where your team has vision. If your teammates are near mid or on the right side of the map, push bottom; if they're on the left, push top.

Match your team's formation and don't recklessly push into the dark side with no vision. If you don't have vision yet, don't rush forward—wait in a nearby bush.

Without vision you can't tell whether the enemy is one player or the whole team, and by the time you notice it's too late. Dying alone on the side with no vision costs you not just the lane pressure but your team's overall initiative and map control.

At 9–10 minutes, set up your waves for the empowered objective fight

Around 9 minutes, the focus shifts to the 10-minute empowered Tyrant/Overlord fight. During this window, stay in lane as much as possible and prioritize positioning and wave management over rotating too early.

The goal is to have your wave in a favorable position (pushed onto the enemy side) before the empowered objective fight begins. That way the enemy clash laner is tied down clearing the wave and can't join the fight, while you can rotate early or split push another lane.

That said, at this stage a single death can cost you the entire empowered objective fight, so when you have no vision and your teammates are far, don't force it—clear the wave safely from a bush.

Macro starts back at the lobby screen

The clash lane is one of the hardest roles in the game—surrounded by neutral resources and constantly a gank target. Macro doesn't start when you step onto the field; it starts at the loading screen.

Here, check both teams' compositions and spells. For example, if the enemy mid Kongming has a teleport-type spell, you know in advance that you should avoid early trades.

That's because you can watch for the play where they gank your clash instead of going mid and teleport back to their wave, or clear their mid wave and then teleport to join your lane for a 2v1.

Decide your plan in the first 10 seconds

When your jungler is strong：With a jungler who can invade from level 1, push the first wave quickly, then rotate to the jungler and guard their escape route after the buff steal. Getting spotted by the enemy makes it suddenly dangerous, so your presence makes the steal and retreat safe.

When the enemy jungler is strong：If the enemy jungler is strong and you're fragile, go into the river bush and take vision. Even if you miss one or two minions, it's more valuable to reveal the invading enemy so your jungler can defend the buff and clear safely.

The goal isn't to fight—it's to protect your team's jungle.

At level 1, confirm the enemy support and spell positions

The most important thing at level 1 is knowing the enemy support's (roam's) position. Supports like Guiguzi or Guan Yu accompany the clash laner right at the start, make you think there's only one of them, then suddenly appear and take first blood two-on-one.

Check the enemy support's position on the minimap before committing to any risky action. At the same time, know the enemy's spells, and against teleport-holders and others who can gank from afar, avoid early trades and play safe.

Awareness of small pieces of early information prevents big collapses.

Read the enemy's movements at the 1:00, 1:30, and 1:50 marks

At 1 minute, the waves meet and the Spirit Chest (treasure) spawns. Here, watch whether the enemy mid is pushing the wave fast and whether the enemy jungler helped clear the mid wave.

If they helped, the jungler is likely to leave the jungle around 1:30, so you can exploit that delay to push the wave and secure the chest. If they didn't help, they're probably clearing camps fast to aim for an early gank at level 4, so move more cautiously.

You can also estimate clear speed from the jungler's hero—a fast jungler reaches level 4 around 1:15. At 1:50 the small camps (like the boars) respawn, so if you can read that the enemy jungler's clear path is heading toward the gold lane side, take the camps on the opposite side to slow their growth.

Freeze when behind, secure resources when ahead. Weigh the cost of rotating

For the second wave that meets at 1:30, if you judge that your and your jungler's pair is weaker than the enemy's, avoid a head-on clash and freeze the wave in front of your tower.

If you keep the second wave in front of the tower without letting it hit the tower or killing it, then when the third wave arrives the minions pile up in front of your tower, forming a defensive wall.

At 3:45, clear the wave quickly and rotate to the 4-minute Tyrant fight, but if the enemy jungler isn't visible on the map, kill only the ranged minions and don't overextend.

Weigh the cost of early rotations carefully. If you go to help the marksman and fail, you lose your own lane's wave and neutral resources.

In the early game of Honor of Kings, one wave's worth of value is roughly equal to one kill, so don't leave your lane carelessly. The top priority early on is to farm safely, take what you can, avoid needless risk, and grow steadily.

Don't be intimidated by stronger opponents—focus on your own play

You tend to get intimidated facing strong opponents (so-called top Chinese players), but you don't actually know if they're really good. Don't get swept up by names or reputations—doing the best you can is what matters most.

Especially when you're on an assassin and behind, you want to stay calm and not force things out of panic. The match covered in this video is also themed around a comeback from a situation where clash is badly losing and you're at a big disadvantage from early on.

Answer the enemy's invades in kind

If the enemy has a farm-type jungler, they'll often invade your jungle early to steal from it. Even if your blue buff gets taken, you don't need to force a play to take it back.

Instead, invade the enemy jungle the same way—have your teammate throw out a few skills to poke while you steal a buff and get out quickly. The goal isn't to fight—it's to bait out the enemy's skills, buy time, and offset your loss with an equal one of your own.

The enemy attacks assuming you won't invade back, so always retaliating dismantles their plan. Steal and leave immediately; don't turn it into a fight.

When behind, play farm-focused above all

In a match where you're badly losing, the most important thing is not to force fights and to prioritize farming above all. If you panic, get aggressive, and keep dying, the economy (gold gap) becomes completely unrecoverable.

Honor of Kings is a game run entirely on economy, so piling up needless deaths kills any chance of a comeback. When there's no opening, go around your own and the enemy's jungle to grind gold and patiently wait for a chance to come.

Check your gold amount regularly, and if your marksman (like Marco Polo) is farming steadily, be flexible with resource allocation—like giving up the red buff.

The comeback starts with picking them off one by one—commit alongside a CC ultimate

This composition's win condition is picking the enemy off one at a time. Base your judgment on committing only when the roam with CC has their ultimate available, and going right back to farming completely when it isn't.

Kill even one player and the enemy is forced to peel someone off to defend; if they don't come to defend, you take that lane's tower. Take a tower and your vision widens, letting you use the bushes and set up combos more easily.

Forcing the enemy to peel lets your other lanes farm freely. The trick is to create a numbers advantage on the opposite side from where three enemies are grouped up and finish off targets reliably.

The Tyrant choice, and finishing carefully at the end

Assassin types (like Nakoruru) get more damage from taking the Tyrant, making it easier to one-shot enemies down. Conversely, the Overlord (the one that pushes your lanes forward) doesn't add damage, so it doesn't mesh with this kind of hero.

If you can precisely engage and crush the enemy's key players (marksman, roam, mage) all at once, the match swings hard in your favor. But against strong opponents, overextending because you think you can finish the kill gets you turned on and one-shot instead.

Even once you've swung into the lead, close it out one move at a time to the very end—never rush—to lock in the comeback.

Handling an Early-Game Disadvantage

In this match, the enemy team's composition can put out heavy damage from the early to mid game. Your team, on the other hand, is a comp that scales into the mid to late game, so you'll naturally fall behind on damage early on.

It's important to understand this imbalance going in.

Farming Gold and Holding the Lane

In the early game, the priority is to avoid getting your lane pushed in too hard. If you get pushed in, the enemy can dive you under your own tower.

Focus on farming gold consistently and killing minions efficiently. Using healing items at the right moments lets you stay in lane longer.

All of this lays the foundation for dragging the game out.

Strategic Decisions in the Mid Game

Even when the enemy is playing aggressively, don't force fights you don't have to take—treat their aggression as a chance to farm gold instead. While their attention is on your teammates, clear extra jungle camps or push out minion waves to close the gold gap.

Taking the mid tower opens up access to the enemy jungle, letting you drain their resources.

Playing Out the Late Game

In the late game, every player is roughly equal in strength, so a gold lead matters much less. Your carries become very fragile late, so it's crucial not to rush into reckless fights.

Wait for the enemy to make a mistake, and look for chances to punish opponents who overextend or overcommit chasing you. Staying consistent throughout the entire game is what leads to the win.

Farm Lane Basics and Building a Gold Lead

As a Marksman, it's not just about farming gold from minions and jungle monsters—rotating to help your teammates around the map matters too. By rotating well, you can pull ahead of your lane opponent in gold and gain the advantage.

Marksmen need a lot of gold in particular, since they rely on completing key items to take over the game.

Managing Minions and Staying Safe in Lane

In the laning phase, managing minion waves properly is important. To protect against enemy ganks, freezing the wave near your own tower is effective.

If you're ahead, put pressure on the enemy aggressively. In the farm lane, always keep your HP high so the enemy can't deny you gold and experience.

Making Use of Extra Camps and Objectives

Beyond minions, clearing extra jungle camps is another way to grow your gold lead. When a big team fight breaks out, or key objectives like the Tyrant or Overlord spawn, rotate over immediately to support your team.

Applying Pressure and Controlling the Tempo

It's important to keep pressuring the enemy while balancing farm and helping your team. Push towers whenever you can, deny the enemy time to think, and take their gold and experience.

Also, keep track of when your team has a numbers advantage and use it to win team fights, which lets you close out the game faster.

The Importance of Macro Play

From the moment the game starts, it's important to keep an eye on the whole map and anticipate the enemy's movements. In particular, tracking the enemy jungler's position lets you read their actions ahead of time and create advantageous situations.

Counter-Ganking and Invading the Jungle

When the enemy jungler is running their normal jungle route, it's easier to predict ganks onto the side lanes. Using that read, you can counter-gank them, or invade their jungle to steal buffs and jungle monsters—stunting their growth and building your own lead.

Resource Management and Pushing Lanes

By clearing lane minions efficiently within the first four minutes and letting your teammates get gold too, the whole team can build up gold and experience. Also, since your jungle item functions like a support item, constantly applying pressure in both the jungle and lanes is the key to draining the enemy's resources.

How an Early Lead Shapes the Mid Game

Creating an advantage early is extremely important. If the enemy falls behind early, the mid game becomes difficult for them and turning the game around gets much harder.

Continuous map control and hero tracking are the keys to holding onto your lead and successfully snowballing it.

When You're Behind Early

When your team is getting pushed around or falling behind early, the basic plan is to drag the game out. Avoid reckless fights that only pile on deaths and widen the gap further.

Your first goal is to stall the game as long as possible and buy your team time to recover.

Supporting Your Carry

When your carry is struggling to build up gold and experience, commit to supporting them. Use your skills to disrupt enemy heroes trying to recall, creating openings for your carry to farm minions and jungle monsters.

This helps them complete the items they need to get strong.

Punishing the Enemy's Mistakes

In a losing game, the key is to reliably capitalize on the enemy's mistakes. Look for chances to bait out or ambush an enemy who mispositions and gets isolated.

For example, against a hero like Liu Shan who has skills to harass towers, never try to defend a tower alone—he can easily dive under it and take you down.

Instead of defending, look for opportunities to punish the enemy's openings.

Staying Calm and Focusing on Your Role

Even if your teammates keep dying and feeding the enemy, it's important to stay focused on your own role and contribution. Don't let your teammates' performance drag down your mindset.

Stay patient, cut down your own mistakes, and wait for the enemy to slip up. Landing a shutdown on an enemy who's grown fat off a kill streak nets a huge amount of gold and can be the big play that turns the game around.

Change How You Play When You're Behind

When you're down 3,000, 5,000, or 8,000 gold, playing the same way you always do won't win the game. Your opponents are ahead on items and are simply stronger. Most people panic here: they force extra fights or dive into the enemy jungle trying to steal kills back. All that does is widen the gap, hand the enemy more gold, and speed up your loss.

The right mindset is to slow the game down. Aim to be the most boring player on the map: avoid fights that look even but are actually disadvantaged, prioritize farming and staying alive, and wait for the enemy to make a mistake.

Keep the Minion Wave on Your Side

When you're behind, the minion wave is your lifeline. It's the only thing keeping the enemy from pushing into your base. Don't shove it forward for no reason; keep the wave on your side of the map.

If the wave is in the middle of the lane and the enemy is nowhere in sight, don't touch it. Just take last hits safely and pull the wave back toward your tower. With the wave sitting near your tower, the enemy has to overextend into danger just to farm. This is what's called freezing the wave: you farm safely under tower protection and don't miss any experience or gold. If an impatient enemy dives in and makes a mistake, you can turn your defense into a lead.

Trade Instead of Fighting

A player who's behind challenges everything to a fight to stop the bleeding, but a winning player trades everything to close the gap. This is the single biggest shift in mindset.

Say the enemy starts the Tyrant. You know it's strong, but if you rush over to steal it, you get hit by the enemy support's CC, die, and hand them both the Tyrant and a kill. Instead, while the enemy is tied up with the Tyrant, take down their tower, steal their jungle camps, and push another lane. You lose the Tyrant, but you gain lasting value in map pressure and gold. If the enemy takes the Overlord, you take a tower. The key is never to give an objective away for free.

Make Time Your Ally and Wait

When you're behind, time is on your side. The longer the game goes, the more everyone reaches level 15 and finishes their items. Once that happens, even the 10,000-gold lead the enemy had starts to matter less, because there's nothing left for them to buy.

Around the 20-minute mark, when everyone is close to full build, the weight of a gold lead naturally shrinks. If you can win one good fight around the Tempest Dragon or catch one of their marksmen alone, you can push all the way to the Crystal from there. Don't rush a comeback at 12 minutes out of impatience: defend your high-ground tower, clear waves, and calmly wait for the win to come to you.

Exploit Openings and Pick Them Off One by One

When you're down 5,000 gold, running down mid and forcing a 5v5 isn't a win condition; it's just a handout. To win, you have to catch the enemy off guard. When people get ahead, they get careless. Call it the winner's arrogance: they stop grouping up. A marksman roaming the enemy jungle alone, or a jungler moving without support, is your biggest opportunity.

Even if you've lost control of the map, you know where the enemy will want to go next. Hide with a teammate in a buff area or a chokepoint bush and use your information advantage. The moment an overconfident carry walks by alone, commit fully and take them out. Now it's 5v4, and the enemy that was supposed to be strong loses their carry and collapses all at once. One good catch leads to a free Overlord or tower and can flip the whole game.

Finally, here are the five bad habits to eliminate: challenging even fights when you're behind; overextending without vision; chasing kills and abandoning the minion wave; panicking just because you lost a tower or the Tyrant; and giving up a tower for a 200-gold kill. The only thing that matters is the Crystal.