How Does Execute Work In League of Legends?

A competitive game of League of Legends can snowball extremely hard under the right conditions. If you do not keep the gold difference between you and your enemy in check, the game might spiral out of your control. Thankfully, there are some mechanics in the game that allow you to die without rewarding the enemy for it.

If a champion dies without getting damaged or debuffed by any enemy champion in the last 13 seconds, their death is considered an execution. Such deaths do not reward the enemy any gold but will give nearby enemies experience. Executes do not reset gold bounties or kill streaks.

Pulling off an execution is a tough task and requires the utmost understanding of timings and map awareness. You must understand how far you can push yourself before being forced to execute. We will go over the basics of how this mechanic works so that you may use it more effectively.

What Is An Execution?

An Execution (or most commonly referred to as an “execute”) is simply the death of a champion that does not give kill credit to any of the enemy champions. It is a mechanic designed to make accidental (or sometimes intentional) deaths not be rewarding for the enemy without any contribution from them towards this death.

Conditions

In order for a champion to be executed, they must meet the following two conditions:

• Said champion must not have been damaged by any enemy champion in the last few seconds.
• Said champion must not have been debuffed by any enemy champion in the last few seconds.

As you might have guessed, a lot of sources of damage can deceive you in this regard. For example, the burn damage from items such as Liandry’s Anguish, Demonic Embrace and other sources such as Challenging Smite and Red Buff may keep resetting the timer, allowing the execute timer to take a few more seconds than usual to count down.

Similarly, some debuffs can give you the false impression of safety as they may not deal direct damage. Since players are not careful about this and only look at damage taken to execute, they may find themselves gifting free kills to the enemy team.

Timer

Execution can only take place if the two conditions listed above are met for 13 seconds before the champion dies. You must not have taken any damage from enemy champions in the last 13 seconds or received a debuff from these sources. If you do take damage or debuffs, this timer resets and continues to refresh until the last tick of damage/debuff lasts.

This is the most critical aspect of the execution mechanic because when carried out intentionally, the player must count the time from the last tick of damage/debuff to make sure they don’t end up gifting free resources to the enemy champions. There are a lot of sources of damage in the game that can throw you off guard regarding this timer.

Also read: League of Legends Position Guide

Cause

An execution can be caused by one of these sources:

• Turret – This is most commonly seen in lanes as players may try to execute themselves to the tower to prevent the enemy from catching up to them and collecting the gold bounty. Towers deal a lot of damage in the early game, making them a safer option for executing.
• Minion – You will observe champions getting executed to minions while proxying in the first few minutes of the game. This was (and sometimes is) a valid strategy for laning with Singed or Sion as these champions can collect waves reasonably fast and then execute to avoid getting killed.
• Monster – This option is mostly available to Junglers. This is also the least utilized option of the three because there it is practically useless to execute yourself to a jungle monster intentionally. Junglers can get executed if they are trying to clear camps at low HP or if they try to kill Epic Monsters (Baron, Dragons, Rift Herald) without any help.

Lost Resources

When a champion gets executed by any of the three sources given above, the bounty gold for killing the champion is lost. Thus none of the nearby champions are granted the kill gold or the assist gold as this death isn’t categorized as a kill/assist for any of them.

What isn’t lost, however, is the experience. If one or more enemy champions are found near you when you execute, the EXP from your death will be shared among the enemy champions. If only one enemy is near you, they will get the solo exp of a kill.

Strategy

This mechanic can be used for your own benefit in a number of ways. If you are proxying a wave, you may collect the wave and then walk under a tower to execute so that the enemy laner and jungler can’t chase you down and kill you. Similarly, after killing your lane opponent, you may execute to a tower when you are low HP and fear getting killed when the enemy laner returns.

In the past, this mechanic was also abused by Sion players who would constantly execute whenever the enemy laner was missing. This would allow them to hit the tower for more damage and then simply revive and walk back to the lane. Supports would also walk up to the tower before minions spawned to proc Spellthief’s Edge on the enemy tower, dying to the tower in the process.

In ARAM, an execution is much harder to pull off. However, if you manage to execute in ARAM, it can prove quite beneficial. There is no real way of recalling in ARAM, which means you are unable to return to base to reset your Health and Mana pool and buy items. Executions allow you to get a free reset on your resource bars, all while spending all your gold without gifting any to the enemy team.

Effects On Kill Streaks

In order to prevent this mechanic from being abused, Riot Games prevented Executions from resetting important gold values of a kill. These include:

• Gold Bounties, which are gained due to a gold difference. These can either fall off when the gold gap closes or can be collected upon killing the opponent.
• Death Streaks, which are accumulated when a champion continues to die without getting a kill. Death Streaks lower the gold value of a champion when killed.
• Kill Streaks, which are accumulated when a champion keeps gaining kills without getting killed. These streaks increase the gold value of the champion, allowing their death to be a potential comeback tool for the enemy team.

Difference In ARAM

Executes can be very strong in ARAM. This is because you are unable to recall and return to base whenever you please. So a mechanic that lets you die without providing any gold to the enemy team would be very useful. For this reason, the timer for execution in ARAM was changed from 13 seconds to 20 seconds.

Conclusion

Execution is a very fun and unique mechanic in League of Legends as it can prove to be detrimental or beneficial to your plan depending on how this death occurs. If you fear that you might get collapsed on by the enemy team, it is usually better to execute than look for an unsafe recall spot.

Also check out our article that explains the inner workings of fear in League of Legends.