When to Bait Baron

I'd like to bring attention to a widely disregarded subject: the question of when to "bait Baron". Baiting (or "forcing") Baron means that you want to force the enemy team to engage in a fight with you by starting (or making them believe you started) doing Baron. Obviously they will want to prevent that. First of all: baiting Baron is always a risk, but in some situations it is a risk worth taking. Don't forget that the main goal is to start a teamfight, never give the enemy a chance to steal Baron. NEVER. Simply put, this means that you don't want to put Baron in kill range while ANY enemy is around.

You can increase your chances of it going in your favor by following some simple guidelines.

Why bait Baron:

• You have a hard time pushing towers due to your teamcomp (lack of range, none of your champs can easily splitpush)
• You have a hard time pushing towers due to the enemy's teamcomp (aoe waveclear, global splitpusher, hard engage)

When to bait Baron:

• Your team should be noticeably ahead
• You have to be absolutely confident that you can win a teamfight, even after being chunked by Baron
• Know your teams dps
  Even when you are ahead, it doesn't mean that you can actually do baron fast. Some champs are better suited for this task than others (Cass, Karthus, Ryze, Jax, Lee, Udyr to name a few)
• When the enemy team is down a man or two (due to them being either dead or on the other side of the map/going back to base)

When not to bait Baron:

• If there is a serious danger that the enemy can push into your base while your team lingers around in the Baron area
• When your jungler's smite is on cooldown

How to prepare:

• Make sure that there are no wards in the area (oracles or at the very least a pink at Baron itself)
• Ward the entrances of which you expect the enemies to come from, aswell as brushes near Baron
  Warding the brushes makes teamfights a lot easier. Do this in any fight in the jungle if you have wards in your inventory.

How to behave during the process of baiting Baron:
This can go multiple ways.

• If the enemy has no vision, and no skills that provide vision, you might not have to start Baron at all (works especially well if you are on purple side)
  You can just sit in one of the brushes and wait for the enemy to come and check Baron, usually netting you a free kill or two. After that proceed according to the situation.
• If the enemy is too afraid to check Baron or oblivious to what you are doing, try killing Baron as fast as possible
  Don't hesitate on doing that. If you are not confident in your dps or how long you can tank Baron and still win a teamfight, you probably shouldn't be baiting Baron at all.
• This one is absolutely vital and the main reason I decided to write this guide: DON'T HIDE IN THE BARON PIT AS A CARRY
  I don't know why I see this so often. As I said before, the goal is to start a teamfight. As soon as your front-line can engage on the enemy GET AWAY FROM BARON. The purple worm will kill your puny ranged carry ass.
• If the enemy jungler tries to be a hero and wants to solo steal Baron, stop all dps IMMEDIATLY and focus him down
  What usually happens in this situation is that people keep dps-ing Baron since he is oh-so-low, giving the enemy jungler a free chance to smite-steal it, followed by collective blaming of your own jungler. Just.Don't.

Here is the deal about smiting (and I am honestly baffeled that so few people understand this): people always expect the jungler of the team with the higher number of people to get whatever objective is being fought over. This makes no sense. Thing is, your jungler's smite isn't any better than the enemy's. Don't blame your jungler, it literally is a 50/50 chance of who gets it. The only thing you can blame is that you tried doing Baron when there was a chance of losing it, or that your team didn't react accordingly to the enemy's jungler arrival.
If for some reason you can't stop the enemy's jungler from coming to Baron and your team is determined to finish Baron, remember to stun the enemy's jungler when he is still outside of smite range as you can smite while stunned (but not while suppressed). Use displacement abilities like Alistars Headbutt to keep the jungler at bay.

When trying to apply all of this in solo-queue, don't expect your teammates to have the same knowledge as you. Communicate. Let them know what to do. Although all these tipps seem trivial once you know them, most people simply didn't put any thoughts into the subject.