One of the biggest aspects of League of Legends resides in the interaction of your lane, not with just your opponent, but with the minions! Having the knowledge and ability to control the minion waves allows you to control what your opponent does. Being able to control your opponent means being able to control the game. We will be taking a look at our overlooked little lane companions and how we can manipulate them to take control of the lanes you are playing in.

Wave Composition

On a basic level, a minion wave is composed of three melee minions and three caster minions, with every third wave before twenty minutes having a siege minion and every other wave after twenty minutes having a siege minion. Keep in mind that over the course of the game, a minion’s value (gold worth) strength and experience increase.

It is important to know that caster minions do the most damage, melee minions have more health, and siege minions are a combination of both damage and tankiness. Knowing this will help you farm the minions more efficiently, especially under tower. If you find yourself under tower, don’t frantically start hitting minions to try to farm, but instead know that there actually is a sequence of attacks that can ensure you farm these little demons efficiently.

A caster minion will die from 1 tower shot (TS) and 2 auto attacks (AA). You can prime your caster minions by auto attacking them, waiting for the tower shot, and then auto attacking them again to secure that glorious gold. A melee minion will die from 2 TSs and 1 AA. Similarly, you can farm effectively from waiting for the turret to hit the minion first. So, don’t attack a melee minion with full health, wait for the turret to hit it twice. A siege minion will die from 7 TSs and 1 AA. Same logic here that is with the melee minion. Wait for the turret to hit the siege minion first, until you can secure the gold with a single auto attack.

This bit of knowledge on how minion waves are composed will help you with your early laning phase and farming. Keep in mind that the above scenarios are based on if the minion wave has taken zero damage. Obviously that’s not going to be the case most of the time, though having the knowledge on how much damage a minion can take is going to be widely beneficial for your early farming and wave control. Aside from knowing what makes up the minion waves, something that is even more important to know is how to manipulate these waves and therefore, manipulate your opponent and the game.

Wave Manipulation

There are three main ways to manipulate minion waves no matter what stage the current game you are playing is in:

1. Freezing
2. Slow Pushing
3. Fast Pushing

Each variation of manipulation has its advantages to controlling your lane and overall helping your team on a large scale across the map.

Freezing

To freeze the lane, only last hit minions. Don’t attack them nonchalantly and mindlessly farm. Only hit a minion when your auto attack is going to kill them. What this is going to do is freeze your wave from pushing forward, allowing the enemy’s wave to push further into the lane because your wave will die faster. In the example above, I am only last hitting the minions and leaving the rest alone, this is freezing my lane so that the minion waves are going to reallocate in that same position. As you can see, there is a melee minion in the top right of the image, that is the front of the next minion wave that is about to come join the party.

Freezing your lane will force your opponent to over-extend to farm and allow you to position more aggressively as you are closer to your tower and can punish your opponent for walking up to kill a minion. This will force your opponent to take the bad ends of trades from you to simply just farm, which ultimately will make them have to back and potentially miss a substantial amount of experience and gold, or risk the chance of being ganked because they are over-extended and positioned poorly, giving you a chance to kill them and snowball. Once your opponent is forced to back, you can then go ward without being spotted, granting your team crucial vision in the jungle or river.

There are a few situations that you can look for that are good indicators that freezing is a viable option for you. If:

• You’re being pressured by the enemy jungler.
• Freezing your lane closer to your tower makes it harder for the enemy jungle to gank you without diving you, allowing for a potential outplay under tower.
• To deny enemy gold.
• When you’re ahead in lane and can zone your opponent off of minions to deny them gold
• If the enemy backs.
• Instead of clearing the wave, freeze it so that the wave doesn’t push back into your tower if your intention is to back as well.

While all these situations are viable to freeze the wave, the most optimal time to freeze is when you’re ahead in lane. Being able to freeze the lane close to your tower and zone your opponent away from the minions forces them to lose minion farm and ultimately puts them further behind because they will also lose experience.

Slow Pushing

To slow push, you simply have to kill the caster minions. This will cause the enemy wave to lose damage against your wave, as caster minions do the most damage. Allowing your wave to slowly push and welcome more and more minions to the party (like in the image above), eventually creating a very large wave that will shove under the enemy tower and allow you to rotate with your team to pressure objectives elsewhere on the map.

After amassing a large wave and rotating to join your team, you will force your lane opponent to make a decision: stay and farm the giant wave and watch their team fall to a numbers disadvantage, or rotate to help their team but miss a large amount of farm and experience.

The best time to decide to slow push is:

• Setting up plays across the map.
• Create a slow push to allow you to rotate and join your team to take an objective, forcing your lane opponent to decide to rotate with you or stay and farm (as described above)
• Creating time to ward, base or roam.
• Slow pushing will buy you time to either return to base and reset with full health and mana and a nice new shiny Luden’s Echo or Black Cleaver, place a ward in the nearby jungle to help your team gain vision, or roam to help another lane.
• Siege towers/inhibitors.
• Since slow pushing creates a giant wave of minions to do your bidding, and you command them to shove the tower, it means that there are more bodies for the tower to target before targeting you - granting you a notable amount of time to siege that tower or inhibitor.

Fast Pushing

Fast pushing, also known as shoving, a lane is quite mechanically opposite of a slow push, if the name of the technique wasn’t enough of a clue. Simply kill the enemy minions as fast as possible, shoving your minion wave under the enemy tower. This will force the enemy to farm under their tower, which makes farming considerably harder, potentially denying your lane opponent gold. Fast pushing is a good practice when you need to base and reset. Shoving the lane and then immediately backing will have the minion wave “bounce back” and will likely be in the middle of your lane or approaching your turret at the perfect time for you to catch it. In the example above I am fast pushing my lane towards Ahri to pressure her under her tower.

The benefits of fast pushing are actually very similar to a slow push:

• Ability to base, ward, or roam.
• Shoving the wave gives you time to roam to a different lane, secure objectives with your team, quickly base, or ward the nearby jungle.
• Deny your opponent gold.
• Forcing the wave under tower makes it harder for the enemy to farm if they do not correctly utilize the tower damage to minions.
• Damage the enemy tower.
• Pushing the enemy minion wave fast and shoving yours, coincides with the idea earlier that is granting you the ability to inflict damage on the enemy turret due to the fact that you have a wave, and your opponent does not.

The only major downside to fast pushing is that it makes you more vulnerable to ganks, because you will naturally be further up in the lane. So, make sure that you have eyes on the minimap and have the nearby jungle warded so you can stay safe in lane while pushing hard.

Mid Lane vs. Side Lanes

Now that we have covered the different strategies of wave manipulation, it is now time to note which strategy is more viable in which lane. While all the strategies are good to understand and utilize, depending on the lane that you are in will maximize the efficiency of the strategy you choose. As a general overview, looking at the map it is easy to notice that mid lane is actually the shortest lane of the three; and thus, there are better wave control tactics to use mid lane versus the side lanes (top and bottom).

Mid Lane

Because mid lane is the shortest lane of the three, it takes less time for minions to get to lane which means that it is harder to set up an effective freeze. Along with this, because the usual champions that are played mid, typically ranged mages, have the ability to break freezes by using their abilities from afar to fast push and reset the minion wave. It is also easier for the jungle to swing by midlane to offer assistant pressure to break freezes.

So, while in mid lane it is best to utilize a fast push or slow push. Doing so effectively will allow you to roam and ward in the river for that crucial early dragon fight, while also staying close enough to pressure your enemy laner to stay in lane. Using a slow push and building a minion wave to crash into the tower will allow you to roam farther and place deeper wards, giving your team that essential knowledge of where the enemy jungler is pathing.

Top Lane / Bottom Lane (Side Lanes)

On the flip side, the side lanes (top and bottom) are the longer lanes on the map meaning that it takes minion waves longer to get to lane. Going deeper into each lane respectively, we will separate them to analyze the most optimal wave manipulation.

Bottom Lane

In the bottom lane, it is the reverse of the mid meaning that it is actually easier to effectively set up a freeze and control where your opponents are. The best place to freeze a lane bottom is closest to the tower, increasing your kill potential for the jungler to come and gank. Setting up a freeze is also the best way to transition to a slow push, gathering minion waves and creating a large wave that will push back into the enemy tower.

During the slow push, communicate with your lane partner to set up a play to attack the enemy duo. Picking a fight during a slow push early is devastating for your opponents, not only are you and your lane partner attacking, so is the giant wave of minions you have accumulated! Utilizing this strategy is deadly in low elo, because the awareness of minion waves is all but not there.

Top Lane

At the top lane, it is a similar strategy to bottom. Being a longer lane, freezes are more optimal and transitioning them into slow pushes to crash into the enemy tower to set up dives for the jungler to come and gank. If the gank is successful you will deny your opponent a huge wave and cascade yourself into a snowball of unkillable grace.

Utilizing a slow push top lane will give you a chance to look for a teleport play bottom to help out on the opposite side of the map either in bottom lane or at the dragon pit. Forcing the opponent to either teleport with you, missing a lot of potential experience and gold, or stay in lane and watch as their teammates fall to brutal fight on the opposite side of the map.

Understanding the different types of wave manipulation strategies, when and where to use them, how to combo them together, and what macro-play benefits come from each is a key way to not only control the lane that you are in, but also control your opponent. Effectively utilizing each strategy at a certain time will help give you team control over the map, whether that be over objectives, gank threats, or rotations, wave manipulation is high level knowledge that can be useful in any elo!

Good luck and have fun!