Is it beneficial to sacrifice yourself so that your team might possibly get the baron steal?

Is it beneficial to sacrifice yourself so that your team might possibly get the baron steal? Like say the enemy team is taking baron and your close enough to rush in and possible take the baron steal without smite, is it worth it? or are you just hurting your team by making it at 4v5 against the baron buff?

Solution 1:

It's generally only beneficial if you are a) the jungler and have smite up and b) have current vision of the Baron so you can see the life

If both of those are true and you can properly watch how fast the health is dropping, then it is possible to jump in and actually steal it. If you can flash over, noc ult, or the BEST WAY to steal Warwick ult the Jungler when it is low and steal it then it's worth it as a way to "bring back" your team from losing.

The reason WW ult is the best way to steal is simple; WW ulting "surpresses" his target, meaning they can NOT cast ANY spells including Summoner spells. So by ulting their Jungler when the Baron is low you ENSURE he cannot smite it, and most of the time your ~800 damage smite can ensure a steal.

As a side note - if dragon is up and A and B are not true, it may be the best bet to go and steal the dragon/take a tower before backing and defending your base.

Solution 2:

There's some relatively safe options that should always be tried because they deal enough damage to steal Baron without putting the champion at great risk.

• Gangplank's Cannon Barrage
• Zigg's Mega Inferno Bomb
• Nidalee's spear throw.

The medium safety options involve putting your champion into the Baron fight with some significant advantage, generally with massive AOE damage:

• Fiddlestick's surprise party Crowstorm
• Pantheon's Grand Skyfall
• Vlad's Hemoplague/Sanguine Pool.

Then there's the very risky steals. These abilities require the champion to be very close to Baron and are easy to stop. Flash is necessary to pull these off, and without proper coordination the champion will likely die in the process.

• Nunu's consume
• Cho Gath's feast
• any character's auto-attack

In order for any of these to be successful, vision of Baron is essential. You have to know exactly how much health he has to time the steal just right.

Don't just rush into another team fighting Baron hoping for a lucky auto attack. Without some sort of plan, it's always better to destroy a turret, steal dragon, creep the jungle, etc. This gives your team some advantage without giving the enemy team a bonus kill.

tl;dr: Some abilities are safer than others. If you can't safely steal, it's better to get a different objective than to suicide.