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The Golden Rules of ARAM

TL;DR

The three golden rules of ARAM are:
  1. Hit the tower. This is your primary objective.
  2. Int with purpose. Maximize your team's chances to hit the enemy team's tower.
  3. Stop the bleeding. Minimize the enemy team's chances to hit your team's tower.
If you want to get better at ARAM, literally say these phrases out loud as you play. Develop and execute plans that align with these objectives. Prioritize these objectives over mindless teamfighting.
Remember that the enemy team will also have objectives similar to these. Disrupt their plans whenever possible.

HIT THE TOWER

Let's start with the basics.
In order to win a game of League of Legends, you need to kill the nexus. Before you can kill the nexus, you must first destroy the towers and inhibitors between you and the nexus. Since there is only a single lane in ARAM, every tower that you destroy marks a significant milestone that literally brings you closer to victory. Therefore, in some sense, inflicting damage on a tower is the only way to actually make progress in ARAM.
This simple observation highlights the most important mindset shift that you can make if you want to get better at ARAM. The champions on the enemy team are not actually your enemy. They are simply obstacles between you and the true enemy - the towers. If you see an opportunity to hit the enemy tower, then you must take it. If no such opportunity exists because of the aforementioned obstacles, then you must create a plan to remove those obstacles.
With that in mind, let's define a simple heuristic for our decision-making framework. We will prefer strategies that allow us to maximize damage to the enemy tower and minimize damage to our own tower.

INT WITH PURPOSE

Your goal is to hit the tower. Unfortunately, those pesky enemy champions are making this task difficult for you. How can you make progress?
In ARAM, it's often necessary for you to int (intentionally die) in order to gain an advantage for your team. The most common examples of this are documented in Tips & Tricks.
This underscores another important mindset shift. Don't overvalue your own life in ARAM. Instead, treat your life like a resource that you can trade to achieve an objective. Dying in ARAM is okay. Intentionally dying in order to create opportunities for your team is even better. Int with purpose.

STOP THE BLEEDING

You've made good progress with hitting the tower, but then something inevitably goes wrong. How can you hold on to your advantage and prevent the enemy team from restoring equality by hitting your tower?
In ARAM, games can easily snowball out of control if you're not careful. It's paramount that you recognize potential failure modes early and take corrective action as soon as possible. For example, the most common failure mode is when everyone on your team dies at the same time. Try to ensure that at least one person is always alive to defend your tower.
This illustrates another important mindset shift. ARAM is very similar to tug-of-war. Your goal is to grab as much ground from the enemy team as you can before resetting to a neutral state. When resetting to neutral, you need to know how to temporarily give back some ground without getting your feet completely swept out from under you. If you start to lose your balance, stop the bleeding.
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© 2023 Flash Groudon | ARAM Macro was created under Riot Games' "Legal Jibber Jabber" policy using assets owned by Riot Games. Riot Games does not endorse or sponsor this project.