One of the most important concepts in League of Legends is wave management. Unfortunately, this is a concept that is overlooked by many players. In every single professional game of League, you can see teams control waves and manipulate them to give individual players (and the team as a whole) different advantages. Through wave management and manipulation, you are able to give yourself small advantages that can lead to greater advantages. To put things clear and simple: Wave management is essential when it comes to winning games. It can help you regain a lost lane, or continue a strong push to the nexus. Here is everything you need to know about managing your minion waves.

How Waves Work

• Minions begin spawning at a minute and fifteen seconds and every 30 seconds afterward from the Nexus
• Every 90 seconds (4th wave) the minion waves grow stronger, with each type of minion gaining different stats.
• Minions deal 50% increase damage to turrets and deal around 40% reduced damage to enemy champion
• Minions have the same behavior set and walk in a line until they encounter a target

AI Behavior

The great thing about minions are they all act the same - everytime. They are one of the few variables that will be consistent in every single LoL game. Minions will only deviate from their standard behavior to come to the aid of an ally under duress. If any unit is under attack it will generate a call for help, sending nearby minions to action. However, minions will only scan for this "call for help" every few seconds. Meaning that if a champion attacks an enemy champion, the attacking champion will be considered the highest threat for a short period of time after the two have broken off the fight. If a targeted champion leaves sight of a minion, the minion or minions will reevaluate their target.

Lane Freezing

When it comes to managing waves, one of the first things you might think of is lane freezing. Freezing is the technique of lane management that is most pointed out in professional games. That is because it is very useful for two things: Denying more creeps from an already losing lane opponent, and it can allow a losing lane to recover.

To set up a lane freeze you need to make sure the enemy minions will always beat your minions. This is not possible with the first wave, however you can set it up by drawing minions over to the side (walk in front of oncoming minions and guide them to one side of your lane).

This will force the enemy minions to 2v1 your melee minion and thus allows them to push harder. After that you need to judge how many minions need to stay alive in order to keep the lane freeze active. Lane freezes will help you to farm safely while denying farm from your enemy. However, freezing a lane will give up any chance of pressure from your specific lane. Ex. If you freeze bot lane, you are now freeing up pressure allowing the enemy to possible bait/do baron.

If a lane freeze is used against you, the only way to attempt to break it is to hard push. This is harder to do for melee champions as it becomes unsafe for them to break the freeze and puts their life at risk.

Managing in other ways

There is a lot more when it comes to managing your wave. However most of it is so simply, casters and viewers often look past it in a competitive match. You want to ensure that during laning you are as safe as possible from jungler ganks. Well to do that you need to manage your waves in a way that is beneficial to not only your jungler, but yourself. If you have proper vision feel free to continue pushing out lanes. However, you should never push a lane for too long without team assistance. If you're getting "camped" it is most likely because you are making yourself a prime target. Farming becomes second nature. You don't have to think about last hitting. So while farming, take that time to continually look at your wave and any possible disadvantages of its location. If you see danger, either push the wave to the enemy turret or let it crash closer to you.

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