Hey everyone.
So im sure you all know that wave control is one of the more important things about
mid lane.
It can be daunting trying to learn exactly how to control the wave but its really not
as complicated as you think to just learn the basics, and the basics can improve your
gameplay drastically.
So today thats what were going to go over.
Everything you need to get the basics of wave control down will be in this video, and like
I said, dont worry its not complicated.
Now lets jump right into the guide.
The first important thing you need to know when it comes to wave control, is the different
kinds of pushes.
There are 2 main ones.
Slow pushing and Hard Pushing.
To slowpush, you just get the push advantage over the enemy mid, then basically last hit
to slowly push the wave.
And to hard push, you basically just spam your abilities and clear the one wave and
crash it on the tower before the next wave arrives.
How do you know which to do?
Well lets talk about the pros and cons of each.
With a slowpush, you will be building up at least 2 waves before crashing it on the tower,
sometimes even 3 waves.
By doing this, you will have a pretty big experience advantage because you have killed
2 or 3 waves that the enemy mid hasnt collected yet.
So where would that be more useful?
In the early game of course.
There are a few reasons for this: First, it requires less exp in the early levels to level
up.
So, if you slowpush 3 waves in, you will definetly have at least 1 level lead while pushing.
But if youre level 7 or 8, 3 waves wont be enough exp for a level, so you wont have a
level advantage.
The next reason these slowpushes are so strong early, is that minion damage is a much bigger
factor in early fights so if youre slowpushing and they try to fight you in a big wave, you
will almost always win even if you just stood still and right clicked them.
The minions will do so much damage it wont matter if you dont use abilities.
On top of those 2 things, champions have way less wave clear in the early game so they
cant just clear the entire wave like they would be able to at level 8 or 9.
Lastly, levels 1-4 its very unlikely you would get 3 man ganked.
If the jungler tries to gank and you have a level lead plus a big wave, you can 1v2
a lot of the time.
But the later the lane goes, the more roam timings the enemy support will get and you
might die trying to slowpush.
As for hard pushing, you want to start doing this in the later parts of the lane, around
level 7 or 8 because that is when your main ability will be maxed out.
by clearing a wave quickly with a hard push, it gives you time to get vision, clear enemy
vision, or roam, which is what you will be doing a lot more of in the later stages of
the lane.
So basically to sum it up, slow push early, hardpush late.
We will get into some examples soon, right after we cover these basics.
Now lets talk about freezing.
Freezing is one of the biggest noob traps in low elo when it comes to wave control.
A lot of you seem to think you should freeze almost every game if you can when in reality,
if you watch high elo games, somone will freeze for a wave or two and thats it.
This is because to freeze a wave, your wave has to be smaller than theirs, so naturally,
they will have the trading advantage.
This isnt something you want as without the trading advantage you cant win trades, which
means no pressure, and pressure is everything in league.
So, when do you freeze?
You freeze when the wave is pushing to you and the enemy mid for some reason leaves the
lane.
For example, lets say you won a few trades, crashed the wave and it pushedback to you,
you can freeze while they recall and let the enemy wave kill your wave the entire time,
and they will miss at least 1 entire wave.
Another common scenario is if the enemy mid roams without fully crashing the wave.
This part is important so pay attention.
Lets say youre playing Orianna vs Katarina.
The wave is pushing to you and she runs into top river looking to roam to top lane.
First, youre going to freeze while waiting to see what she does.
If she never appears top lane, you just hold the freeze untill she gets back.
If she actually shows up top, you start hardpushing right away.
This is because of turret plating.
One of the reasons tower plating was introduced was to give more counterplay to roaming.
If you just freeze the whole time you deny them a few waves before they get back.
If you ahrd push you deny waves plus get the gold from tower plates.
The reason why you dont want to start pushing untill you see them is because they can fake
roam, you break the freeze, then they just collect the wave and you dont get any advantage.
Alright so these are the 3 main wave control fundamentals that you need to know, so lets
look at some actual gameplay now.
Alright, so in this game Im plaiyng Zed vs Katarina in grandmasters.
Were focusing purely on wave control here, not as much matchup specific stuff, but some
context is important.
In this matchup, Im stronger at level 1 as zed, so this gives me control of the first
3 waves at least.
If I start pushing, I will have the level advantage, so she wont be able to walk up
to the wave to control it or do anything to it.
And remember, in the early game, slowpushes are better, so thats what im going to do.
But I have to decide if I want to build up 2 or 3 waves before crashing.
3 waves is what you should be going for in most games, but in this one, I wanted to do
2 waves so I could get an earlier ward as I thought I was going to get ganked very early
and I wouldnt be able to 1v2 as zed.
So after build up 2 waves, I finish clearing the enemy minions to make sure the wave crashes
on the enemy tower before the next wave arrives.
That part is important becuase if you crash it as the next wave gets there itcould get
frozen infront of the enemy tower if the tower is in range to hit your melee minions.
As soon as im done clearing, I go drop vision like I wanted, and now we have another small
concept to talk about.
So after you crash the waves, the wave is going to rebound off the enemy tower and push
back to you.
Naturally this is called the rebound wave.
Do you see how the waves are even here but its closer to Katarinas tower?
This wave will slow push to me because of the even minion rule.
If the waves are even, whichever side they are closer to, it will push the opposite way.
This rebound wave is important for both sides in multiple scenarios.
In this specific game, do you see how these blue minions are all focusing down the one
red minion?
This is what will happen on these rebound waves so Katarina will clear these next 2
minions faster than I can, and hit level 3 before me so I have to be very careful and
back off.
This is when you should be looking for all-ins if you are the one with the rebound wave.
For exmaple if youre on fizz vs Orianna and she pushes the first 2 or 3 waves into your
tower, you want to look for an all-in on the rebound wave as they will be further from
their tower as a squishy mage, and you will have the minion advantage.
Now lets say the Katarina messed up a lot in the first 2 levels when I was pushing and
I chunked her to 30% hp.
I know the wave will rebound to me, so after I crash, I let the wave slowpush and zone
her.
If shes low enough that I know I will win even through minions, I can use the rebound
wave to set-up a freeze like we talked about before, where I freeze while she resets to
deny at least 1 whole wave which straight up will win me the lane, or I kill her when
she overstays.
This wave control doesnt stop in just the first 3 waves either.
Katarina will slowly push the rebound wave back to me, and it will hit my tower and rebound
back to her.
I cant prevent that unless I get a huge chunk to where I can freeze like we just talked
about but thats hard when she will have the minion advantage.
As the lane progresses, the speed that I clear the wave will increase.
Im level 6 here, and I clear this cannon wave to get level 7.
This gets me my fourth point in Q which is a lot more waveclear than earlier stages of
the game.
So for the next wave I hard push it, and move into the enemy jungle while my jungler is
on dragon and put a ward on enemy raptors.
By hard pushing, Im not in lane too long so I have a small chance of getting ganked, and
it got me prio so I can roam first or get vision like I did.
And remember, if you want to improve fast and get the rank you've always wanted then
check out skill-capped.com, Link in the description below.
Alright guys so with the information we just went over, you should have a good idea on
how to start controlling the wave, and why you would fast or slowpush in different scenarios.
Like I said these are the basics that you need to get down before you can get into advanced
wave control which will be a different video.
But thats going to bring us to the end of this one, we hope you enjoyed it and thanks
for watching!