Last time we talked about split pushing, we talked about what a split push actually was and how your team's Darius AFK farming top lane doesn't qualify under that definition. Now we're going to talk about the more mechanical grit of split pushing as a team, which is how to manipulate and manage minion waves to your team's advantage.

Minion Management

One of the things that was discussed last time is how split pushing is, by its very nature, a team exercise. Going off on a solo mission might work once or twice, but to truly gain the benefits of a split push, a team needs to coordinate their timing. Part of this coordination comes in the preparation of minion waves. Knowing how to properly "bounce", "stack" and "crash" waves allows your team to manipulate what opportunities for split pushing will present themselves.

When you build up a minion wave, your goal should be to allow two or more waves to join up into a ball of pushing. A properly built up minion wave forces the enemy to react around it, giving your team the opportunity to ward the map, take objectives and set up a split push play. Built up waves also provide a degree of safety for the split pusher, as the minions make trades difficult for duelists who might want to challenge him. There are two ways to build up waves - reactive, called "bouncing the wave", and proactive, called "stacking the wave".

When bouncing a wave, it's very important to kill off the enemies that are targetting your minions first so you can build up a wave. Once you accomplish this, start last hitting the tower's targets.

A reactive "bounce" is made once the enemy minions attack your turret. While you might instinctively want to kill off the enemy wave, you should stifle that urge and just last hit. While your turret takes damage, your minions will build up into two waves before the first enemy wave is destroyed. You can then take this built up wave (which has taken no damage from enemy minions) and push forward with it. The disadvantage of bouncing a wave is that you aren't choosing what time to start the push - it's going to occur immediately after the enemy stack is dead. A bounced wave will normally have six caster, six melee, and one cannon, with the third wave arriving 20 seconds after you hit the enemy turret.

By killing the indicated minions and letting the melee minions die a natural death, you can ensure a lane pushes in the direction you want, when you want.

Proactive "stacking" involves clearing the enemy caster and siege minions while leaving the melee minions to stall the push. The casters and cannons are the DPS of the enemy push, so by killing them you minimize the damage done to your wave while the melee minions absorb each other's punishment. By doing this for two straight waves, you should get to an enemy turret with four melee minions, six casters, and one cannon, which will be reinforced with another wave in 20 seconds. You should start stacking on a cannon push so that your stacked wave has the benefit of two (three after 35 minutes) and will easily shove down the enemy structures.

In either case, building up waves waves gives you a number of options - it allows you to do a 4-1-1 split push, where one of the 1s is a minion push that is able to push even without having super minions and can allow less traditional split pushers to participate in a 4-1 split push. The best part of this is that your split pusher doesn't need to initiate this sort of push, any character can effectively stack or bounce a wave and then rejoin his team while the split pusher comes in to take care of the dirty work of taking enemy structures.

Crashing a lane allows your minions to do as much damage to the turret as possible while preventing the enemy from bouncing the wave back towards your structures.

Not every split push will result in you taking an enemy structure. Sometimes, you'll realize the enemy is coming to kill you immediately after you start your shove. In these cases, you can make sure they aren't rewarded with gold, experience, or a bounced wave of their own by "crashing" the minion wave against the enemy turret. Your goal is to quickly clear the enemy minions under turret and then back off immediately. The turret will take care of your minions if it is a normal wave, but in the case of stacked waves, you're going to be unable to ensure the lane resets without putting yourself in danger. Luckily, the gold a stacked wave represents often means the enemy will clear it without trying to bounce the lane back towards you.

Split Pushing with Managed Minions

Playing around stacked waves is very much like playing around super minions in the late game and you should make decisions much like you would in the late game. The advantage of stacking super minions is that you get to make the decision over where and when the minions pressure the enemy. To take advantage of this, you will need to "time" your minions so that they attack a turret as you attempt to take an objective.

While this might seem daunting, it isn't actually that difficult. The minion wave is going to be on the turret for a while, so your margin of error is large, and it's easy to time as the waves spawn in 30 second intervals. And stacking waves is something that you can do during the set-up for objectives. While your support and jungle are establishing vision control over dragon a minute before it spawns, try stacking a wave instead of clearing it to create some pressure.

If you're the split pusher, stacked waves give you plenty of options to on how to play around it. If you push with a stacked wave, you are able to teleport away from it without giving up the split push. The minions also provide you with safety from skill-shots and threatens massive amounts of damage for people who try to duel you inside the morass.

A proper 4-1-1 split push makes committing multiple people to deal with dangerous duelists like Jax impossible.

Pushing away from the wave makes a 4-1-1 split push, spreading the map even thinner. The enemy is forced to commit one person to the minion wave, one person to you, and leaves them with only three to deal with the objective that your team is taking with the distraction. If you're playing a dangerous duelist, like Jax, Fiora, or Zed, it makes things even more difficult for the enemy team and almost gives your team whatever their goal is for free.

Next time we'll look at how to stay safe when split pushing and why you shouldn't always panic and try to save your split pusher when the enemy goes to stop them.

Academy Ahri (NA server): NA1809WVR42UU467AXXUR8V6A