Hey everyone, when it comes to wave control, most experienced players think they now know
it all.
League has been around for quite a while and the way minions work hasn't changed that much
over the years.
Most of the fundamentals have remained the same.
However, here at Skill-Capped we're known for teaching the most advanced concepts that
nobody knows about, so when we decided to make a wave management guide, instead of teaching
something that's already been taught hundreds of times, we've compiled a list of the top
8 wave control tricks you WON'T find anywhere else.
As a disclaimer, this guide is for those who know the fundamentals of wave management already,
such as: pushing, freezing, bouncing and so on.
And be sure to stick around until the end since the last one is something you don't
want to miss.
Let's get started!
Our very first tip is something that only very few professional players are starting
to actively use, which is to Check Minion Buffs.
A couple of our latest videos have featured this minion buffing formula.
Basically, if you're higher level or have more towers in a specific lane, your minions
get stronger than your opponent's minions.
This is information you *can't* forget, because it literally changes how you manage your waves
entirely.
For example, let's say it's 25 minutes into the game and there'a a completely neutral
wave in the bot lane.
If your team has the turret and level advantage, then your wave is going to slow push into
the enemy.
You could potentially use that knowledge to pressure around Baron while a slow push builds
in the bot lane, pressuring the enemy tower.
This can get a bit confusing, and while you should have an approximate idea of how much
stronger your own minions are, it can sometimes be a bit tricky to calculate in your own head.
What if you have a tower lead, but your opponent happens to be 2 levels higher than you.
Whose minions are stronger then?
Thankfully, Riot added a buff tracker on the minions themselves.
As Miss Fortune recalls, she realizes that her wave is in a tricky spot.
To decide what to do next, she clicks her own minions.
On the top there we can see that her minions do 5% bonus damage to minions and take 1 reduced
damage from minions.
Typically, with the even minion rule, the wave would push into Miss Fortune's side,
because the waves are crashed closer to the enemy's side
But because her own wave is stronger, by the time she recalls and walks back down there,
her wave would have pushed far into enemy territory.
Not only would she have nothing to farm, but the enemy ADC would pick up a huge wave of
their own.
That's why Miss Fortune immediately bolts towards bot lane.
Instead of missing all this farm, she quickly clears the waves, crashing them into the enemy
tower before retreating to safety.
By understanding Minion Buffs, instead of losing a ton of farm and falling behind, she
instead gets all her CS while also denying the enemy ADC farm as it dies to the tower.
Number 2: The Teleport Freeze Our second tip is using your teleport to set up freezes.
To do this, you need 2 neutral waves.
Take a look at Vi.
She's going to clear these minions before her wave crashes into the tower.
That means that both waves are going to crash in the middle, in a completely neutral state.
Should this happen, it's complete RNG as to whether it'll freeze for you or push towards
your opponent.
What you can do is teleport to a Cannon Minion, or a caster minion if a cannon isn't present.
This causes a momentary minion disadvantage for your side, resulting in the enemy wave
pushing towards you for a freeze.
This is *especially* useful if you know your jungler is on the top side of the map.
Now that he's guaranteed a freeze, Ryze immediately calls for his jungler to come, knowing that
Cho'Gath will eventually be in a bad spot.
Olaf thankfully listens, and the gank is super easy.
We just want to point out, that the wave was still in the middle of the lane, so this tactic
wasn't the main reason why this kill was acquired.
Just keep in mind that junglers can sometimes take a bit longer to get to lane.
The wave was guaranteed to freeze, so even if Olaf did an extra camp or 2, then the wave
would be around here, still leading to a kill.
A cheater recall is when you setup a base timing without losing anything for it: this
works best on the third minion wave of the game which is a cannon wave.
The idea is that you push a cannon wave into the enemy tower, then recall, and come back
to lane while your opponent is stuck in lane clearing minions.
Giving you an item advantage without losing anything at all.
The steps you want to take to achieve a cheater recall is to first: acquire a minion advantage
within the first 2 waves.
2 to 3 minions will do the trick.
When the third wave comes in, you'll want to use your wave advantage to hard crash your
slow push into the enemy tower, enabling you to recall.
This is strongest on the third wave because your opponent isn't strong enough to clear
the wave under their tower quickly enough to punish you for it, so now they're literally
just stuck in lane.
As we can see, our Yasuo acquires a 4 minion advantage as the cannon wave arrives, he completely
ignores Malphite and shoves the wave to the enemy tower.
Malphite now spends the next 43 seconds last-hitting, while Yasuo has walked all the way back with
a second doran's blade.
The trade-off?
Yasuo has only lost 3 melee minions.
Once he equalizes levels, he uses his item advantage to force flash and setup a freeze.
The free recall for an extra item in lane is partly why it's been tagged as a 'cheat',
the other element to this though is how you can literally trade your health bar to achieve
this outcome.
In this example, we see Taliyah apply a cheater recall against a challenger Sylas, she doesn't
care about getting out-traded whatsoever, so long as she shoves the third wave, which
gives her a free recall, into a roam, while Sylas is stuck in lane.
It's common knowledge that having more minions than your opponent allows you to win trades.
We also know the first three levels can decide a lane outcome, as an experience lead leads
into literally having an extra ability over your opponent.
The trick here is to quickly gain a minion lead without actually hitting the enemy minions
to begin with.
Instead, you can attack the enemy champion.
What this will do is aggro all of their minions onto yourself, while your minions are still
hitting the opposing wave.
Giving you a push lead.
This may seem small, and it is, but once acquiring this push advantage - if you hold onto it
by continuing to hit the wave thereafter, you WILL get the push and experience lead.
To illustrate this in a real game, we can see our Kayle use E onto Irelia.
This aggros the minions, causing them to all fire onto the Kayle, while her wave is still
hitting the enemy red wave.
Kayle then maintains this minion advantage into level 2, winning an early trade against
Irelia.
Which as we all know, should NOT happen early on, and this was without even getting a level
up.
Here's another example we got from the vault where our Irelia went in with Q onto a Aatrox,
auto attacked him once and walked away, to snag a minion advantage.
She then translated that into winning the race to level 2, netting her a free kill.
This trick is mostly viable at level 1 in top and mid lane, so keep that in mind when
you're looking for wave control.
When your wave control mastery gets to the highest level, you can start to do things
nobody else would think of to drastically change the outcome of the lane.
This trick is one we've only seen from the highest level players like Ssumday.
Let's play it out and then break it down.
What Ssumday did was identify that his wave would not crash into the enemy tower in time
and instead would meet like this.
This is super obnoxious to deal with especially for melee champions that can't clear those
ranged casters without tanking the tower to crash the wave quickly enough while it's in
this spot.
With Ssumday on the clock before his opponent returns, he knows he can move straight into
the tower and drag the enemy wave away, allowing his own wave to crash into the tower cleanly.
Now he can recall, while it pushes back into him.
This denies any freeze potential from the enemy vayne, and Ssumday scores some massive
style points by flexing his wave knowledge.
And for you support players out there who love to please your ADC's, you can look to
do this yourselves when you find the opportunity.
After clearing up the double kill, Lulu goes the step further and applies the same freeze
denial, hard carrying this lane phase for her Vayne.
Our next tip is a simple, but an important one that leads into some more advanced wave
tactics, which is why we're covering it briefly.
This tip is to always remember that waves are mirrored on both sides, so you can always
tell when the next enemy wave is coming in.
Let's take a look at a quick example of this tip being used.
Malzahar this game is running low on mana and has a ton of gold he wants to spend.
Ideally, he gets a recall off soon.
The problem is that he only has enough mana for 1 full spell rotation.
Knowing this, he notices his next wave coming in.
Instead of wasting any mana on this wave, he instead tanks it and waits for the incoming
wave to crash.
Once it does, that's when he blows all his mana on it and clears both waves.
By understanding a simple concept, Malzahar was able to get a completely clean recall
off.
We bring this up, because it's something we often see players not exploit to the fullest
advantage.
For example, in our recent Challenger Earpiece guide, there was a point where the subscriber
we were coaching missed a kill on the enemy ADC in bot lane.
Had he been aware that waves are mirrored, he would have known that he could chase the
Sivir by dashing onto the wave and closing the gap.
Using this simple tip also enabled the teleport freeze to be used along with Ssumday's freeze
denial, so we HAD to include it in this guide.
Our 7th tip is using minions to get a faster recall off.
Back to the previous Yasuo game, he eventually managed to use the small lead he got from
his Cheater Recall to score a kill onto the enemy Malphite.
The natural response after killing your opponent is to obviously push the wave, get some plates
and quickly reset afterwards Notice what he does.
Instead of hitting the tower until the tower plate falls, Yasuo instead begins channeling
his recall and allows his minions to finish the job.
Compare that to players normally fully killing the tower plate, and then retreating to recall
in the lane brush.
That's around 10 seconds saved of game time.
It may not seem like much, but you can do a lot with those 10 seconds.
Depending on how much extra time you have, you could potentially recall and get a roam
off in mid, before having to go back to top lane.
Or do Gromp or Krugs on your way back to lane with your extra time.
League is a game of seconds and knowing when you can use minions to save yourself valuable
time is a powerful tactic to always be aware of.
Here's a tip that you'll be kicking yourself for not using already, if you play bot.
But, it's also super powerful in other lanes, which we'll explain in a moment.
You'll be using minion aggro to check for vision in a brush without having to use a
sweeper or a control ward.
When a wave is coming in, all you have to do is sit in a brush to check if the enemy
has warded it.
In this case, Annie sits in the side brush and the wave walks right past her, if it was
warded, the minions would stop to attack her.
She now knows that she doesn't have to use a sweeper or a control ward to sweep this
bush for vision.
Therefore, Annie knows Soraka is oblivious to her being in the brush, which allows her
to set up a free kill when Soraka walks up.
So, how can this work in other lanes?
Well, sometimes you'll find yourself with the opportunity to drag a minion wave into
the side brush which is a warding hot spot.
If the minions de-aggro as you enter the brush,then you can place your control ward in another
brush instead.
If you communicate to your jungler that the enemy has no vision in both brushes, it can
set up some easy ganks!
This ward checking trick also works for mid lane as well, so it's applicable for all roles.
Alright so that brings us to the end of this guide!
Which of these tricks are you excited to try the most?
Let us know in the comments below.
Also, if you didn't understand some of these concepts, feel free to drop a question and
we'll try to respond to as many as we can.
Thanks for watching and as always, we'll catch you in the next guide!