Early Game & Objective Guide for Tomb of the Spider Queen (Patreon)

The best early game start on tomb begins in the drafting phase. The most important thing to have is wave clear advantage(priority). 

Tomb is a map where wave clear is the most important thing, both for getting priority so you can turn in or do camps first and for defending the enemy spider pushes. If you have better wave clear and push the waves first, then you can leave the lane first and either attempt a turn in or do a camp in the time that the enemies are stuck clearing the remaining wave in the lane. 

Camps are better before the teams have 50 gems for turn in, as gems do not give any advantage until you have the full 50. You can do either camp first on this map, usually it will be the one you deem safer to do, this will change depending on the game and where your opponents are currently showing on the map. 

Once you have a full turnin, then turning in becomes more important than camps, but it is still best to do both if you are given the space to do so. Once both teams have turn in, the optimal play is to always have someone watching both turnins so you never let the opponent turnin for free. 

Once you get the turn in, make sure to immediately push out all your lanes as much as you can in the 10 second window before spiders arrive. Spiders will start losing hp every second they spend traveling towards the enemies so you want them to spawn as close to the enemy buildings as possible. If a spider spawns near your keep because you didn't push that wave out, it could almost be dead by the time it reaches the enemies buildings without anyone even hitting it.

Important: Once you have the spiders pushing, the best strategy to push is usually to mirror the opponents setup. If they have 1 bottom 4 mid, you should also have the same split. If 1 person moves top, you should also send 1 person top right away. 

You never want to let someone clear a spider for free because heroes can kill a spider very quickly without taking damage if uncontested. However when contested, it is very difficult to clear a spider and the spider will get much more push done. A spider in an undefended lane also gets a lot of push done even without a hero in that lane to help it, so mirroring the opponents team is by far the best way to get the most amount of push. 

When defending, you should try for the opposite, try to find a spider that is undefended and clear that one first. Most people, even most grandmasters don't understand this and you will generally see teams giving free spiders left and right which amounts to giving up tens to hundreds of gems in a game for free for no reason.