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Advice on wave management?

Zoz0··5 votes·6,345 views

Hello. I've currently been watching a lot of VODS and I'm having a hard time understanding when to freeze/push/auto minions.

For example, I watched a high-elo Ahri VOD against a zed, and it was recommended to freeze the minion wave by her tower. But doesn't that give Zed the chance to roam, or take control? And then you can't do anything about it cause you have that wave? So why would she freeze in this instance? (Aside from the fact her jungle could get a kill on him if he didn't roam.)

Also, as a mid, when you get to lane, do you want to start autoing the minions instantly? Yes for level two? Is there a certain amount of minions you're suppose to kill and then you stop autoing (or else it begins to push)? I'm having a hard time understanding and I think it's holding me back from progressing to higher ranks.

I see VODS and it's like "why are you autoing those minions??" And its like "Why ARENT you autoing those minions??" with no explanation on why they would be doing either.

Any help is appreciated, thank you.

(I'm Gold II BTW, peek GOLD I).

19 Comments

Chainman34 votes

I really appreciate players like this honestly. Looking for help when you don’t understand is the best solution yet so many players don’t do it and instead take it out on others but let me get to your questions.

start reading here if you wanna skip my cry baby rant So as you pointed you there’s 3 options to manage the wave Freezing Pushing Allowing it to push in to you

There are sub types to these such as a slow push. This is where you’d have the minion wave closer to your tower while keeping the minions even on both sides. Since your incoming minions would reinforce your minions before the enemies it’ll slightly push more and more on each wave until you’ve built up 2-3 waves of cs to push to crash into the enemy tower.

But we’ll focus on the 3 main ones, when to do them, and why.

Freezing- freezing is a tactic used when you want to A.open your opponent up to a gank from your jungler B. Keep yourself safely farming without being concerned for ganks unless it’s a tower dive. C. Zoning your opponent off the cs to deny them gold and exp (you’ll have to be stronger than your lane opponent to do this) D. When you’re the weaker champion (in that stage of the game) but against a melee champion or a champion who isn’t very good at poking and harassing. This is where the ahri vs Zed matchup comes in. Due to ahri being mana dependent and weaker than zed in the early game because zed has all in potential on her if she’s shoved by freezing the wave just outside her turret she avoids giving zed any chance to harass or all in her without leaving himself vulnerable. Since zed’s main escape is his W if he chooses to harass ahri with it if he gets ganked while shoved up that far he’ll have to burn flash and he still would most likely die. On top of that he can’t all in ahri because he’ll draw tower aggro and ahri is free to harass him every time he walks up for cs with no consequences to the ahri player as opposed to if ahri was shoving she’d be risking being ganked or zed all in’ing her.

You can freeze a wave by holding 4 caster minions outside turret range tanking them. Once the waves crash at the spot you froze the 4 casters your wave will always die first leaving again 4 casters and you can rinse and repeat as long as you can tank them safely. To break an enemy freeze you need to shove in the wave and force your opponent back so he can’t tank the minions this is usually done with jungle help so you don’t end up getting ganked and killed while playing aggressively.

Pushing-pushing is a tactic used to apply pressure on the map. The times to push A. When you want to roam B. When you want to pull the enemy team to one side of the map to take an objective on the other side (split pushing is an example of this) C. When you want to deny exp and gold from your lane opponent who you just killed, forced to back, or is currently roaming. D. If you want to back but this one is circumstantial because sometimes you don’t have the health or mana to push it fast enough depending on the situation

Most of these are self explanatory so I’ll just jump into how to push. Of course one way is to spam abilities to hard push as a mid laner but what majority of players don’t know is you don’t need to do that to push. Just auto attacking the back line minions and killing them will cause your wave to push because the back line deals more dmg which means by killing them your minions won’t die as fast so you’ll have more minions dealing dmg to their melee minions and you can still last hit them without losing anything.

If you should push for level 2: depends on the matchup. Take for example I’m playing ahri into talon I know at level 2 talon wins and is very strong so I’d last hit and harass him with abilities to discourage him from attacking me but I wouldn’t push the wave instead I’d let him push it to me. I wouldn’t auto attack the talon because if you do you’re going to draw minion aggro which will then have the wave push into him since his minions arent attacking your wave anymore. In the case of ahri vs ryze I would push because it’s really hard for mages to farm under tower and it’s better to have them spamming their mana on the wave to get it rather than allowing them to farm with autos while harassing me with abilities. Be mindful of the level 2 and 3 jungle ganks tho.

Lastly allowing it to push into you. A. You don’t wanna be ganked B. You’re too weak to fight or contest your laner C. You’re sitting on too much gold or are low on resources (health or mana) D. If you wanna set up a gank but normally freezing is better for this option because you’re opponent would have to press up to get farm.

Most of the time you want to stay in range of exp but if you’re being zoned it’s best to stay out of vision of your opponent because they’ll either assume you backed or you’re roaming in which case they’ll shove and then you can safely farm under tower.

If you have any questions or I missed something feel free to ask or add to this.

Zoz02 votes

{quoted}

I really appreciate players like this honestly. Looking for help when you don’t understand is the best solution yet so many players don’t do it and instead take it out on others but let me get to your questions.

start reading here if you wanna skip my cry baby rant So as you pointed you there’s 3 options to manage the wave Freezing Pushing Allowing it to push in to you

There are sub types to these such as a slow push. This is where you’d have the minion wave closer to your tower while keeping the minions even on both sides. Since your incoming minions would reinforce your minions before the enemies it’ll slightly push more and more on each wave until you’ve built up 2-3 waves of cs to push to crash into the enemy tower.

But we’ll focus on the 3 main ones, when to do them, and why.

Freezing- freezing is a tactic used when you want to A.open your opponent up to a gank from your jungler B. Keep yourself safely farming without being concerned for ganks unless it’s a tower dive. C. Zoning your opponent off the cs to deny them gold and exp (you’ll have to be stronger than your lane opponent to do this) D. When you’re the weaker champion (in that stage of the game) but against a melee champion or a champion who isn’t very good at poking and harassing. This is where the ahri vs Zed matchup comes in. Due to ahri being mana dependent and weaker than zed in the early game because zed has all in potential on her if she’s shoved by freezing the wave just outside her turret she avoids giving zed any chance to harass or all in her without leaving himself vulnerable. Since zed’s main escape is his W if he chooses to harass ahri with it if he gets ganked while shoved up that far he’ll have to burn flash and he still would most likely die. On top of that he can’t all in ahri because he’ll draw tower aggro and ahri is free to harass him every time he walks up for cs with no consequences to the ahri player as opposed to if ahri was shoving she’d be risking being ganked or zed all in’ing her.

You can freeze a wave by holding 4 caster minions outside turret range tanking them. Once the waves crash at the spot you froze the 4 casters your wave will always die first leaving again 4 casters and you can rinse and repeat as long as you can tank them safely. To break an enemy freeze you need to shove in the wave and force your opponent back so he can’t tank the minions this is usually done with jungle help so you don’t end up getting ganked and killed while playing aggressively.

Pushing-pushing is a tactic used to apply pressure on the map. The times to push A. When you want to roam B. When you want to pull the enemy team to one side of the map to take an objective on the other side (split pushing is an example of this) C. When you want to deny exp and gold from your lane opponent who you just killed, forced to back, or is currently roaming. D. If you want to back but this one is circumstantial because sometimes you don’t have the health or mana to push it fast enough depending on the situation

Most of these are self explanatory so I’ll just jump into how to push. Of course one way is to spam abilities to hard push as a mid laner but what majority of players don’t know is you don’t need to do that to push. Just auto attacking the back line minions and killing them will cause your wave to push because the back line deals more dmg which means by killing them your minions won’t die as fast so you’ll have more minions dealing dmg to their melee minions and you can still last hit them without losing anything.

If you should push for level 2: depends on the matchup. Take for example I’m playing ahri into talon I know at level 2 talon wins and is very strong so I’d last hit and harass him with abilities to discourage him from attacking me but I wouldn’t push the wave instead I’d let him push it to me. I wouldn’t auto attack the talon because if you do you’re going to draw minion aggro which will then have the wave push into him since his minions arent attacking your wave anymore. In the case of ahri vs ryze I would push because it’s really hard for mages to farm under tower and it’s better to have them spamming their mana on the wave to get it rather than allowing them to farm with autos while harassing me with abilities. Be mindful of the level 2 and 3 jungle ganks tho.

Lastly allowing it to push into you. A. You don’t wanna be ganked B. You’re too weak to fight or contest your laner C. You’re sitting on too much gold or are low on resources (health or mana) D. If you wanna set up a gank but normally freezing is better for this option because you’re opponent would have to press up to get farm.

Most of the time you want to stay in range of exp but if you’re being zoned it’s best to stay out of vision of your opponent because they’ll either assume you backed or you’re roaming in which case they’ll shove and then you can safely farm under tower.

If you have any questions or I missed something feel free to ask or add to this.

Thanks so much for this! :) I'll definitely keep looking back at it to remember. I'm doing some of these right! My biggest concern was not doing the right wave management in the right scenario.

But you've explained the scenarios. Now the Zed/Ahri match up makes total sense. I just get so worried sometimes when I'm being pushed in/frozen that my teammates wont take into consideration my warning pings of a roam. So I always feel like I need to keep pressure, and this can sometimes get me killed or harassed. I almost feel like, if I'm not pushing, I'm not winning, which is totally lame cause that's not true. It's all about the gold income and not dying.

But, if the enemy does roam, I just need to understand that at least they've lost some EXP and that I'm gaining gold they're not (unless they pick up a kill, but that's not guaranteed).

So if they do roam, that is when I want to push the wave to their tower so they lose that CS? That is what I usually do in that situation. I wouldn't follow them? Sometimes I get blamed if I don't follow.

I also heard that is can be good to push the lane in when your jungle is going for a scuttle, so that you can be around to secure it if something goes down. I wonder if this applies?

Also, sorry for all the continuations, haha! But I heard of "bouncing" too. A new concept to me. Like, you want to push the wave into their tower early on, so that it bounces back to the middle and then you bring it to a freeze kind of? And this gets you to level 6 safely or something? All the while you're poking and trading.

Thanks for your help! After watching a lot of VODS, I keep hearing that wave management can be the sole reason you win/lose games, so I'm definitely trying to get better at it!

Chainman32 votes

In most cases, your teammates wont listen to the ping and die. Just keep spam pinging and pray. This is one of the main reasons people consider assassins to be op, when in reality its the nature of the players which make playing an assassin easy.

You can follow roams, the issue with following tho is if you're weaker than your laning opponent for any reason he could just turn on in the river and kill you thats a strategy used to pull players from their safe spot under tower when their managing their wave properly.

As long as your team respect that zed roaming will eventually cause him to fall off and be useless as long as they dont die and respect his roams, you'll eventually get to the point where zed is a nonfactor.

GOING TO START ANSWERING YOUR QUESTIONS HERE Just some side info above.

"So if they do roam, that is when I want to push the wave to their tower so they lose that CS?" Normally yes, but remember what i said about staying out of vision in the last post to get your opponent to shove then showing back up to catch the wave. Normally you want to wait until they show up on the map unless you're planning on following the roam.

"I wouldn't follow them?" Timing is also a key factor if your lane is shoved in you need to push it off your turret otherwise the opponent could just wrap around back to lane and you end up losing cs and gold for following. So take this example. You push me in then show that you're going to roam bot. lets assume you got every cs and none of the cs died randomly. 6 cs to 0 cs if i leave to follow you and you decide to come back i just lost cs to tower or minions and worst case scenario it stays 6 cs to 0 cs. Rinse and repeat each wave, 12 cs to 0 18 cs to 0 and so on. This is why you cant just follow for the sake of following. Now i can push the wave to make it 6 cs to 6 cs then follow but if you're already in bot lane by the time i started to follow, its pointless the fight will be over by the time i get there so instead i shove my wave. Now if my team respected your roam and backed off, depending how long it takes me to push in you could end up getting back to lane with your cs dead to your turret so 6 cs to 12 cs in my favor for not roaming.

"I also heard that is can be good to push the lane in when your jungle is going for a scuttle, so that you can be around to secure it if something goes down. I wonder if this applies?" This is where the concept of "lane priority" comes from. Who can rotate first to get to a fight and who loses for rotating. If your lane opponent rotates first he'll get to the fight first if you rotate first you'll get to the fight first, but who loses out. In this case the 2 junglers are fightng for scuttle but they need to understand their matchups in the other lanes. Lets say you're playing ahri and im your jungler and your against a zed. I dont expect you to have priority in lane so im either going to path towards the opposite scuttle basically trading scuttles with the opponent or if the opposing jungler is weak early game like kayn im going to stall out the fight over scuttle so you can push your wave off your turret and get to the fight assuming we win the 2v2. If we lose the 2v2 your jungler should never be opening themselves up to a scuttle fight in the early game.

To sum this question up, you do want to push for scuttle but certain champions are better at prepping for scuttle than others, you dont want to put yourself at a disadvantage over a scuttle that your jungler shouldve pathed to the opposite scuttle. Take for example you have the weak jungler and you're playing a weak early game laner. He should path to the opposite scuttle especially if the mid laner is a strong early game mid laner like talon and the jungler is like udyr or khazix or lee sin.

Bouncing is a form of pushing. Thats why i was talking about there be sub types to the 3 main forms of wave management. As you said its where you would crash your minion wave into the tower as fast as you can basically a hard push. Because you want to perform a "reset" on the wave. You can think about it like this, If i shove in the wave and leave the lane. My opponent cant kill me but i shoved the lane so i still got the gold and exp. This is one way mana hungry mages manage their lane to avoid fights with their laner while ramping up at the same pace. Champions like xerath and veigar. You're basically minimizing the window of time where your opponent can fight you, especially if you get it to the point where you shove lane, then recall for an item, then they catch wave recall you get to lane while their recalled and shove wave then leave they get to lane and then have to push so they cant follow. And when they do push they can either stay in lane or rotate in which case you probably finished your play by then and are recalling and coming to lane to push again to their tower. Basically removing all chances of your opponent fighting you. You can do when you're behind or you dont feel comfortable laning with your opponent in the lane for whatever reason. Its normally used by mages or weak level 1-5 laners because they have really good waveclear and can abuse their waveclear speeds. Like the veigar and xerath i mentioned earlier and champions like kat can do this as well into specific matchups.

Wave management is always important. The one thing you need to take from this is you can play correctly and your team will still harass you at times. Because to the jungler they dont care whats good for you to bot lane they dont care whats good for you. Players dont care about matchups heck majority of the time they dont care about whats best for the team. They dont care about how much you're going to struggle if you follow roams you're not supposed to or if you fall behind, all they care about is "your laner roamed we cry now". What i mean to say is even if your laner roams its not always your fault matchups need to be respected and theres a certain strategy to the game to be as efficient as possible that doesnt revolve around getting kills because kills are never guaranteed, successful roams are never guaranteed and if players listened to pings majority of the time ganks would fail. Just make sure to always ping your teammates on their lane when your lane is missing. Pinging your own lane usually gets overlooked.

Zoz02 votes

{quoted}

In most cases, your teammates wont listen to the ping and die. Just keep spam pinging and pray. This is one of the main reasons people consider assassins to be op, when in reality its the nature of the players which make playing an assassin easy.

You can follow roams, the issue with following tho is if you're weaker than your laning opponent for any reason he could just turn on in the river and kill you thats a strategy used to pull players from their safe spot under tower when their managing their wave properly.

As long as your team respect that zed roaming will eventually cause him to fall off and be useless as long as they dont die and respect his roams, you'll eventually get to the point where zed is a nonfactor.

GOING TO START ANSWERING YOUR QUESTIONS HERE Just some side info above.

"So if they do roam, that is when I want to push the wave to their tower so they lose that CS?" Normally yes, but remember what i said about staying out of vision in the last post to get your opponent to shove then showing back up to catch the wave. Normally you want to wait until they show up on the map unless you're planning on following the roam.

"I wouldn't follow them?" Timing is also a key factor if your lane is shoved in you need to push it off your turret otherwise the opponent could just wrap around back to lane and you end up losing cs and gold for following. So take this example. You push me in then show that you're going to roam bot. lets assume you got every cs and none of the cs died randomly. 6 cs to 0 cs if i leave to follow you and you decide to come back i just lost cs to tower or minions and worst case scenario it stays 6 cs to 0 cs. Rinse and repeat each wave, 12 cs to 0 18 cs to 0 and so on. This is why you cant just follow for the sake of following. Now i can push the wave to make it 6 cs to 6 cs then follow but if you're already in bot lane by the time i started to follow, its pointless the fight will be over by the time i get there so instead i shove my wave. Now if my team respected your roam and backed off, depending how long it takes me to push in you could end up getting back to lane with your cs dead to your turret so 6 cs to 12 cs in my favor for not roaming.

"I also heard that is can be good to push the lane in when your jungle is going for a scuttle, so that you can be around to secure it if something goes down. I wonder if this applies?" This is where the concept of "lane priority" comes from. Who can rotate first to get to a fight and who loses for rotating. If your lane opponent rotates first he'll get to the fight first if you rotate first you'll get to the fight first, but who loses out. In this case the 2 junglers are fightng for scuttle but they need to understand their matchups in the other lanes. Lets say you're playing ahri and im your jungler and your against a zed. I dont expect you to have priority in lane so im either going to path towards the opposite scuttle basically trading scuttles with the opponent or if the opposing jungler is weak early game like kayn im going to stall out the fight over scuttle so you can push your wave off your turret and get to the fight assuming we win the 2v2. If we lose the 2v2 your jungler should never be opening themselves up to a scuttle fight in the early game.

To sum this question up, you do want to push for scuttle but certain champions are better at prepping for scuttle than others, you dont want to put yourself at a disadvantage over a scuttle that your jungler shouldve pathed to the opposite scuttle. Take for example you have the weak jungler and you're playing a weak early game laner. He should path to the opposite scuttle especially if the mid laner is a strong early game mid laner like talon and the jungler is like udyr or khazix or lee sin.

Bouncing is a form of pushing. Thats why i was talking about there be sub types to the 3 main forms of wave management. As you said its where you would crash your minion wave into the tower as fast as you can basically a hard push. Because you want to perform a "reset" on the wave. You can think about it like this, If i shove in the wave and leave the lane. My opponent cant kill me but i shoved the lane so i still got the gold and exp. This is one way mana hungry mages manage their lane to avoid fights with their laner while ramping up at the same pace. Champions like xerath and veigar. You're basically minimizing the window of time where your opponent can fight you, especially if you get it to the point where you shove lane, then recall for an item, then they catch wave recall you get to lane while their recalled and shove wave then leave they get to lane and then have to push so they cant follow. And when they do push they can either stay in lane or rotate in which case you probably finished your play by then and are recalling and coming to lane to push again to their tower. Basically removing all chances of your opponent fighting you. You can do when you're behind or you dont feel comfortable laning with your opponent in the lane for whatever reason. Its normally used by mages or weak level 1-5 laners because they have really good waveclear and can abuse their waveclear speeds. Like the veigar and xerath i mentioned earlier and champions like kat can do this as well into specific matchups.

Wave management is always important. The one thing you need to take from this is you can play correctly and your team will still harass you at times. Because to the jungler they dont care whats good for you to bot lane they dont care whats good for you. Players dont care about matchups heck majority of the time they dont care about whats best for the team. They dont care about how much you're going to struggle if you follow roams you're not supposed to or if you fall behind, all they care about is "your laner roamed we cry now". What i mean to say is even if your laner roams its not always your fault matchups need to be respected and theres a certain strategy to the game to be as efficient as possible that doesnt revolve around getting kills because kills are never guaranteed, successful roams are never guaranteed and if players listened to pings majority of the time ganks would fail. Just make sure to always ping your teammates on their lane when your lane is missing. Pinging your own lane usually gets overlooked.

Ah yes! See, when watching videos, my brain soaks in the information, but I really need someone to explain it to me personally for me to really grasp it. When a roaming mid shows botlane, it's usually too late to rotate (exceptions always apply tho im sure). I would just be missing CS and wasting time if I followed. I saw that issue in a lot of coaching vods, people following for no reason. It's something that is so obvious, but in the moment you kind of don't connect the dots.

I just played a normal match where I tried to use all these tips and I practiced freezing the lane as an Ahri VS Qiyana. Not sure if that was the right thing to do or not in this matchup, but I got an early kill on her as she was over extended and took a tower shot due to charm, and then later my jungler ganked her twice and she was pretty much useless.

Because I froze the lane, I couldn't push it with the amount of mana I had, so I let it sit and recalled. When I came back, it was building on my side and that is fine cause I was just testing this approach. I just wonder if I lost more CS than I would've if I didn't do that freeze? But I believe she couldn't farm effectively when it was that far up. So I think what I did was good? Haha.

The timing of follows makes sense. And the staying out of vision to catch a wave. I'm gonna bullet point these on a sticky note, haha! (I'm a nerd.......... wow).

I think I'm trying to improve so much, that I'm thinking outside the box of midlane. You're right that the jungler needs to know his capabilities and if he can take whatever creature! It's like I'm wanting to do his job as well. Honestly, just anything to help my teammates. It's so scary having teammates that get behind.

My favorite champs to play are mana hungry mages, so I'm familiar with shoving before backing. I just never knew that there was a whole science behind it! The prevention of fighting, the gold gain, them losing minions, etc. It's really important.

I actually never ping on my enemies lane when my lane is missing, I ping on my own... you're right. Pinging the midlane probably is getting overlooked. Thanks, I'll implement that.

You have a lot of knowledge on this stuff! Thanks for helping! OwO.

My to-do lists are:

  1. Get better at wave managements and know when to use which type.
  2. Learn how to track the enemy jungler better, such as timers and rotations.
  3. Understanding matchups better. Like who to pick into who, or who to pick to further help the team.

Practicing these... I should get a lot better. It'll just take time.

Chainman32 votes

Sorry for the late response just woke up.

"Because I froze the lane, I couldn't push it with the amount of mana I had, so I let it sit and recalled." This is where you couldve auto'd the backline minions to get a push going and only last hit the melee minions and slowly your doran's ring will regen your mana enough for you to cast 1 Q to push the wave so you can recall before your laner gets back. You'll probably lose 3 minions in that situaion but the kill would be worth it.

And freezing was the correct thing to do against qiyana because shes still a melee assassin. And many mid laners will make the mistake of playing too aggrro and end up grabbing tower aggro especially against ahri's charm. Once you get this down you'll find mid laner a lot easier and other mid laners will seem easy to take advantage of.

Matchups and team comps are a little harder to deal with because you'd have to have a pool of like 5 champions you know really well and each having different playstyles and tendencies. Take for example the Lissandra vs Zed matchup Lissandra gets an easy win but so many players screw it up because they play aggro with lissandra when lissandra isnt built as a 1v1 champ, she can do it if you harass with her Q enough but its so much safer to just farm up get your items and dominate teamfights while restricting zed from anything with your ult.

Team comp is more difficult because you'd have to analyze your team then pretty much guess how they plan to play their champions. Maybe you have a team like Riven Khazix Draven Brand. In this case your team has more than enough dmg what they lack is engage and tankiness. Lissandra can fit the bill there perfectly with her E in W enemy team R herself Hourglass. And if you need more time stopwatch as well. gives you about 7 seconds of immunity. And of course you'd have to adapt your build to match what you want to do. In this example, building Rod of ages, Hourglass, Liandrys, Abyssal Mask, Sorc boots/tabis/treads, with 1 situational item. Could be a frozen heart to cap off your cdr and give you a bit more armor on top of hourrglass as well as lowering enemies atk speed around you while you're sitting immune in hourrglass and your ult. You can also go randuins for more hp and lower dmg on crit strikes and add tabis on top to lower the dmg even more. You'd have your 2k base hp then 500 from rod of ages 350 from abyssal mask 300 from liandrys and if you go randuins 400 more for around 3.5k hp. With aftershock and your ult and hourglass it makes lissandra pretty hard to kill. If you choose the aura route you'll still have around 3.1k hp with 200 armor and 80 to 100 magic resist and still again hourglass and your ult and with the frozen heart aura you'd lower the enemy team's dmg and with the abyssal mask aura you wouldnt just raise your dmg but the dmg of any magic dmg dealers on your team like the brrand in this case. While using aftershock to tank the first 2 seconds then ult yourself for 2 seconds and hourglass for 2 seconds and if you need more time stopwatch for 2 seconds. Thats 8 seconds for your team to pop off.

Orianna is always good with wombos paired with malphite/amumu/wukong/ jarvan/and add yasuo on top for more synergy.

If you dont want to go the lissandra route and you have a bruiser on your team you can play Lux with max cdr 4 sec shields for 600hp to your entire team while taking revitalize to make your shields stronger and boneplating so you cant be bursted. Add barrier wtth hourglass then as long as you're positioning correctly and max W second after E you can poke and make your team extremely beefy. And of course you'd still be building AP to wipe carries when you land that crucial snare.

If you have a split push comp with a shen top or jax tryndamerre you can play champs with waveclear like anivia/xerath/ziggs who make it hard to siege against you as your split pusher splits to his hearts contentt.

If you have a poke comp like gnar top ezreal adc you have the option to play peel champs with the lux idea or poke champs to make your team siege even better. Champs like azir/xerath fit this really well azir better for disengaging with his wall xerath better for more aggressive poke.

If you have yi in the jungle or any 1 man carry type champion. YI twitch vayne. You can pick morg mid and spell shield them while locking down targets for your team. Also gives you that team fight monstrous ult with hourglass.

And the lists goes on and on.

Malzahar is always a good pocket pick for enemy team's using 1 man carries like jax yi vayne yasuo or assassin based teams with khazix zed talon fizz.

Tips for tracking junglers: Each camp is 4 cs so if the jungler ever shows up on the map. Hit tab and check their cs and you'll know which camps they did or can at least estimate what they did, in which case, you'll know which side they'll reset to and be able to judge their paths and times based on where they show on the map.

For example normally junglers gank at level 3. If they have 16 cs by this time then you know they probably did Red buff > Chickens > Wolves> Blue if they start red side and if they start blue side Blue > Grump > Wolves> Red or Blue > Wolves > Chickens > Red depending on how well that champion can farm chickens. A champion like lee will skip a champ like kayn or hecarim will farm them.

(Scuttle can take the place of one camp as well.)

Lets assume for the sake of example they did Blue > Grump > Wolves > Red then ganked You'll know theyre gonna path towards top side from base because they want to do Krugs > Chickens > Wolves on spawn > Grrump on spawn > then gank or Chickens > Krugs > gank
in either case you'd have to cautious around their red side jungle after their recall for around 40 seconds in which case after about a minute if they havent shown up they're probably full clearing to blue side.

Keeping track of where scuttles are spawning will help with this, because most junglers will path towards a scuttle when its going to spawn.

Thats about the first 5-6 mins of tracking the enemy jungler. You'll know which side he starts on based on the lane which comes late to lane.

Zoz02 votes

{quoted}

Sorry for the late response just woke up.

(Couldn't show the whole quote because it wouldn't let me type anymore characters! LOL.)

{quoted}

[sg-lux] Ahhhh! This is getting me so fired up! Hahaha. I just recently associated the amount of mana with the ability to clear. Even though it seems like a no brainer, I just never though of saving it or waiting for enough to come up just for a little push. Because up until now, I didn't understand how important wave control was!

Ah, definitely, I can envision that lissandra vs zed scenario. And I can see me messing it up too, without using proper farming/wave management and being too focused on aggroing him. Literally before this week, I just would always shove the lane in and play safe around that little push. But I actually don't have much control in that scenario. Maybe I did sometimes on accident, but never deliberately.

I absolutely adore the idea of filling in for that engage/missing tank on the team. I quite frequently get a squishy comp, and being able to at least fill that role in a little bit, would be a blessing, I'm sure. I absolutely see what you're saying about filling in for your teams needs in this scenario. It's honestly kind of embarrassing that I haven't really grasped this earlier. And that's an amazing alternated build you explained for the situation.

Say I go the Lux route, but what if the bruiser on my team is behind or not doing well. Would I still do the options you said?

I had googled how many cs each camp was but couldn't find a current 2019 answer! So thank you for this! I'll begin watching some videos on common jungler paths and certain champions to really grasp the routes. Jungle is my worst role so I've never had a strong understanding on them.

Let me try to put together an imaginary matchup and see if If I'm debriefing it correctly.

Ahri VS Fizz. w/ enemy Khazix jungle

My thought process, after all this knowledge, would be: Soften the minions up, autoing a few times... while getting some autos onto fizz.

If I manage to poke him w/ Q and get CS at the same time that's fabulous. I want to bully him a bit before he gets levels. But no random Q's that 'push' the wave. Instead, shove it into the tower manually while poking to get level 2 It should bounce back and then reset. [Is this pushing and letting it bounce back a thing? That could open me to level 2 ganks? Should I be trying to do this? Or just keep the lane in the middle? Like there might be no reason to do that push?]

At this point, I find myself wanting to possibly freeze the lane towards my tower, as Fizz can go pretty aggro and if I miss charm I'm really messing myself up. So I force him to farm towards me, while being safe because he can't all in me properly that far towards my tower. _ [Just a side question. We've been talking about melees, but a lot of my matchups are ranged mana champs as well. So freezing could be hard with them cause they can just break it by shoving in the lane to tower, correct? So freezing wouldn't be ideal here?? Instead do I want tooooo.... build up a slow push possibily? Just keep it middle of lane? Push it if I'm abusing them enough? My thought process, which is probably wrong, would be:

  1. If I am struggling, try to get some what of a freeze while poking them the chances I get. Cause I don't want to be extended and fighting for farm I keep losing trades on. If I have to, farm under tower, but I do lose some CS this way sadly. I'm rusty on that.
  2. If I'm going even... keep the lane even in the middle and just farm normally while trading.
  3. If I'm dominating, I can push, bounce to by items, look for roam if team needs it. Or I can freeze and bully them.]_

Meanwhile, I noticed bot came late to lane, so IK Kha started blue, probably went frog, then wolves, red and maybe top scuttle or red? Either way, he may be around the top area, so I can hold the other side of lane, while warding it just encase. Or, if I warded 1:20 on top scuttle bush, I would see him. After this, whether he ganks a lane or not, he has to back eventually and will probably do krugs, wolves (not sure if he skipped this or not but his CS would reveal to me if I see him) and start towards his bot jungle again. I'm sure this is all very messy in terms of understanding but it's more of a grasp than I've ever had on it.

Now let me try to understand a good team to pick Ahri with:

She has a nice CC ability and a gap closer, so I want to say I would pick her for a cheesy engage/catch. So... if my team had a lot of engage already, like Vi + Jax + Pyke, maybe I would go for a more sustainable and supportive mid... Like, Lux, Lissandra, Oriana for the combos, Maybe even Mal for the waveclear and picks or even defensive ult on their Fizz.

However, I think its personally fun to play her with another chain CC, like a stun from supp Lux or pyke hook. So that person is chained and most likely dead if squishy.

I have pretty okay wave clear come mid/late, so I think she would be viable with a split pusher?

So that kind of sums up what you taught me? I wonder if I am grasping it okay? I bet when I implement it into games, it will take time to really get a feel.

Chainman31 votes

"Say I go the Lux route, but what if the bruiser on my team is behind or not doing well. Would I still do the options you said?" Well you wouldnt know in champ select if your brusier will be behind, so you're going to have the barrier + runes. So the only real thing you can change is your skill maxing order, but because you have revitalize that'll give you around 5% stronger shields meaning the more points in your W the more you'll benefit from that rune. 600 hp shields with revitalize would make your shields 30 hp stronger. https://leagueoflegends.fandom.com/wiki/Revitalize Now most bruisers and tanks dip into the resolve tree so if you plan to go this build and let them know that revitalize will make your shields stronger on them then you're looking at not only the 5% shield buff but also 10% if theyre lower than 40% health and another 10% for them having it as well. Making your shields overall 25% stronger so a 600 hp shield turns into 750 hp shield. Applying this on 4 teammates (-10% because not every teammate will take it you'll have maybe 2 teammates have it).150+150+30+30 = 360 hp shield just from the rune every 4 seconds as well as allowing your teammates to heal up (stalling for your supports healing cd or your darius' Q or triumph procs).

Now to answer your question why it wouldnt be good to change it even if your bruiser is behind. Is because if theyre behind they're going to be even weaker so to tank they'll need even more help and most of the time maxing Q 2nd will give you better dmg but its the cc you're really looking for in a teamfight from your Q which max cdr will lower the cooldown quite a bit anyways. If we look at the benefits of each side

Q max 2nd 1.Lower cd by 2 seconds 2. Dmg increase (if hitting 2 enemies 360 more dmg)

W max 2nd

  1. Stronger shields (if hitting all 4 teammates potentially 800 hp per cast)
  2. Assassinating carries becomes more difficult
  3. Lower cd on shields
  4. Synergizes well with rune set up

Because the 70% ap scaling on lux's Q her Q's dmg will always be relevant and if she lands her full combo on a squishy theyre going to die anyways from her E and R dmg as well as any teammates who can reach those targets. So maxing Q would more or less give you the overkill dmg. Trading that off to allow your team to feel stronger than they actually are, as well as giving lux a safe laning phase through larger shields+ barrier + bone plating. Overall the playstyle is easier with maxing W and allows you to bring up your team's play at the a small cost of your own.

Heres a game where i used this lux build against a zed and by no means am i good at lux, skill shots are the scariest things for me. https://matchhistory.na.leagueoflegends.com/en/#match-details/NA1/3145406050/218544956?tab=overview You can see garen got first blood on darius and darius still managed to do extremely well to the point where he dc'd in the enemy base and we were able to shield him for long enough to escort him out of their base and kill him alive. And i still did more dmg than the zed while more or less being impossible to kill unless we lose a teamfight.

Short answer: Stick to the build you decided on as your win condition because you had a reason to go that route dont second doubt yourself because of things going on in the game. You can adapt your build to fit the scenario, but dont scrap the idea mid way through the game.

Now to the scenario:

"Soften the minions up, autoing a few times... while getting some autos onto fizz." The instant you do this, you'll draw minion aggro meaning the lane will push towards fizz giving him

  1. All in potential on you when he hits level 3 if the wave isnt pushed in fast enough.
  2. Safe farming where you'll have to extend to pressure him opening yourself up for a gank.

You need to consider if you push for level 2 do you gain kill potential on fizz? (Assuming fizz plays it correctly). If you hit level 2 fizz holds his E and waits for you to attempt to harass him and can E away. So you'll end up putting your lane in a bad spot for you to farm while gaining no real advantage against fizz besides being up a level. Then the wave crashes into his tower, the next wave comes in either just outside his turret or crashes with the other one and fizz hits level 3 first and can flash on your and kill you (you flash away he can Q or E on top of you). Landing charm may help you but thats assuming fizz had to flash + Q to originally get on top of you in which case you would know you zoned yourself from the farm if you're playing that far back.

Poking him with Q is ideal. Because ahri's Q doesnt draw minion aggro, but you also dont want to burn your mana in the early game if you dont have the mana to kill fizz. Because then fizz could lock you in the lane by shoving the wave constantly and just backing off and stop you from recalling because you'd lose a wave or 2 of gold and exp in the early game. Now this can change if you want to play around scuttle for your jungler's sake, but to bounce the wave that early game in the game is extremely difficult and normally only seen in diamond 2+ maybe even higher. Because messing that up will cost you the early game and i dont think the benefit of scuttle is worth the risk of losing lane especially to a snowball heavy champion like fizz. What you've described is the optimal way to play the lane but requires tremendous skill on wave management and wave clear on that champion, but it would build you an advantage of a 2v1 in your favor at scuttle for your jungler where fizz cant respond and if done correctly you'd lose nothing because the wave would reset for you to hit level 3 on it.

If I didnt make it clear enough let me know and ill go over that part again, because i usually go off on a tangent and what makes sense to me doesnt always make sense to the person reading. Ill answer the side questions at the end of the post to keep this going chronologically.

"At this point, I find myself wanting to possibly freeze the lane towards my tower, as Fizz can go pretty aggro and if I miss charm I'm really messing myself up. So I force him to farm towards me, while being safe because he can't all in me properly that far towards my tower." This is hitting the nail on the head. By freezing here as you said he cant all in you and it gives cs'ing advantage over to you and causes fizz to feel uneasy and pressured to farm allowing you to build a larger cs lead.

"Meanwhile, I noticed bot came late to lane, so IK Kha started blue, probably went frog, then wolves, red and maybe top scuttle or red? " Now i wouldnt blame you for making this mistake because khazix can actually do chickens. A good way to know is if a jungler starts talisman they can usually do chickens because it heals them as well as deals dmg to any jungle monsters that attack them, meaning the raptor camp will die fast to them. Khazix's W is AoE and heals as well giving him a good reason to do chickens. One tip on the jungle: Red side camps both give more exp than blue side camps. Chickens gives more exp than wolves and grump. And AFTER the first krugs krugs give more exp than wolves and grump. The first time krugs are killed they have a debuff to their experience, which is why junglers should kill them as early as they can when wanting to scale their levels up.

So khazix would like to go blue > wolves > chickens > red > scuttle > into gank The only way khazix should do grump is if hes planning to full clear than recall into a gank. Basically giving him a level 4 gank instead of a level 3 gank and the gank would be on blueside instead of red side (Usually for his bot lane).

"so I can hold the other side of lane, while warding it just encase. Or, if I warded 1:20 on top scuttle bush, I would see him" I think you meant 2:20 because wards last 60 seconds but either way scuttle wouldnt spawn till 3:15 so khazix wouldnt show on that ward till that time or 5 seconds earlier so 3:10. Its always good to hug one side of the lane especially if your jungler is on that side of the map because if you cant retreat to tower you can always turn it into a 2v2 assuming a competent jungler is present.

The rest of what you said is messy but its in line of what you need to know for your lane. Whether he recalls goes bot or does his krugs none of those will affect you unless your laner is roaming. (in the sense where you cant stop or control these).

"Now let me try to understand a good team to pick Ahri with:" For this part, youre getting it down, but theres bias to what you're saying. I feel like you want to play ahri so you kind of want to fit these roles. Where this isnt necessarily a bad thing (everyone has champs they enjoy playing) dont let that change the way you see the game. Basically in the split push example, sure she has waveclear every mid laner has decent wave clear, but what one mid laner may excel at another may be average at it. The good thing about ahri is shes a "jack of all trades" when it comes to mid lane, she can fit in most roles for that a mid can fill the issue with her is that she doesnt excel at any of those roles. She can assassinate but other assassins are better. Shes has decent waveclear but other mages can do it from further away and larger AoE to handle larger or stronger waves. Where ahri shines is because she can do them all. Shes versatile which puts more power in the hands of the user, but also puts more strain on the user. Take for example, for zed to assasinate his target he R's drops his W around his target lands 1-2 Qs, E's which is almost impossible to miss and autos for his passive proc and then R's to safety. Whereas ahri would first need to land her charm, then W > R > Q > Auto > R while managing her Q's direction coming back and auto. This would normally get a kill if ahri is ahead or slightly doing well. Then she'd have 1 more R to escape. Which again playing ahri optimally as an assassin makes use of her weaving auto's between spells where the most you need to know about zed is he can auto during his E animation, so you auto then cast E and both the ability and the auto will go off.

Chainman31 votes

Continuing the other post: Now on the flip side waveclearing. Xerath we know can do it from years away with his range. Ziggs can put it in place ahead of time anivia gets a large circle to wave clear with her ult. Ahri has to be more or less next to the minion wave's melee minions pretty much opening her up to being engaged on. This puts a strain on the ahri player because now she has to be mechanically sound when it comes to dodging where as other mage players would just be out of range.

Hopefully that explains the weird spot of a champion that ahri is, but thats why ahri is more of a safe pick and can go with any team she can cover multiple holes the team can have but at a cost to the player playing her.

Lastly your questions "[Just a side question. We've been talking about melees, but a lot of my matchups are ranged mana champs as well. So freezing could be hard with them cause they can just break it by shoving in the lane to tower, correct? So freezing wouldn't be ideal here?? Instead do I want tooooo.... build up a slow push possibily? Just keep it middle of lane? Push it if I'm abusing them enough? My thought process, which is probably wrong, would be:

  1. If I am struggling, try to get some what of a freeze while poking them the chances I get. Cause I don't want to be extended and fighting for farm I keep losing trades on. If I have to, farm under tower, but I do lose some CS this way sadly. I'm rusty on that.
  2. If I'm going even... keep the lane even in the middle and just farm normally while trading.
  3. If I'm dominating, I can push, bounce to by items, look for roam if team needs it. Or I can freeze and bully them.]"

In a ranged vs range matchup it becomes more difficult to freeze but its not impossible. Here you need to mirror what your opponent does. They kill a minion from your wave you kill one from theirs. Basically you're doing your best to manipulate the wave to keep it the same with the +4 casters for their wave. Now they can shove it in while your tanking them by forcing you to back off and this is okay. In most cases in iron - low diamond elos when its mage for mage, the winner of the lane is usually the one who farms better and manages their mana better. What i mean by this is in the range vs range matchup usually both sides are shoving as hard as they can because they dont want to be the one farming under tower especially in the early game because thats difficult for mages. Up until the lost chapter buy.

Knowing this, you can see why people are constantly used to shoving and hate the assassin matchups where shoving is actually bad for the mage player. What doesnt usually happen is something i call the "cooldown game". Normally when i play mid even as a mage ill take the loss of the cs to the turret to punish my laner. Im not good at farming with mages other players will do a much better job than me, but instead if Syndra is gonna use her Q on the wave then if im ahri im gonna try to Q her and hit the wave while doing so. To balance the wave while also getting the advantage of chunking some hp off the syndra. Champions usually have one main dmg ability in the early game and if the syndra is too busy spamming that mana on the wave then i get to freely walk up and harass her without having to worry about taking much dmg. An added benefit of this is being able to auto my opponent to draw minion aggro to give my minions a chance to balance the wave as i retreat behind my minions to drop aggro.

What ends up happening overall chronologically: -Syndra uses skills on the wave -I use skills on syndra while also attempting to hit the wave to balance out the dmg and force her off the wave -I draw minion aggro and retreat behind my minions to drop the aggro . -Now syndra loses 20% of her health off the trade (usually more like 30-40% by level 4 assuming all skills land with a couple autos -I back off because now my abilities are on cooldown -Syndra walks up to finish clearing then backs off -I clear whats left of the wave under my tower -Rinse and repeat next wave

By the 3rd wave i can now all in them if they dont respect my dmg and kill them and the minions i lost to the tower i can freely make up by pushing the current wave and the wave on its way into their turret then recalling with the 15 cs from the kill and 12 cs from the 2 waves. Basically making up for 4 and a half waves of cs. As long as you farm decently under tower you can make up for it there.

Now lets say they respect your dmg and recall you still get the wave and the incoming wave for 12 cs to make up for what you lost as well as making them lose what crashes into their tower. And the minions you lost to tower you got the exp for they wont get the gold or exp for them.

Last case they decide to play safe under tower because they cant contest you anymore, well now you're free to do what they did to you, the only difference is now you can push with just autos to basically build back up your mana pool they have to clear the wave with their skills to get as much as they can from it unless theyre really good at farming under tower as a mage in which case you're still pretty much even, and you can possibly dive them with jungle help or poke them off tower if its safe. And if your lanes are being pushed you, you can get a roam off now. Leaving you with options now to build an advantage for yourself as long as you dont just stand there and wait for them to clear the minions. You can also invade the enemy jungle with your jungler starting a 2v1 instantly on them instead of your jungle having to wait for you to rotate.

This is how you'd efficiently get off a 4 man gank bot and then take drake while losing maybe 1 wave if even to the enemy mid laner. Im sure you know the advantages of 4 man ganking bot and taking drakes. And what that does to the mental state of the enemy team.

Ill let you read this part before i actually answer the other 3 questions in that because i think this will change your outlook on how the matchup is actually played.

Zoz02 votes

{quoted}

I reply to both of your posts here OwO.

I'm definitely seeing why that approach to Lux is really good. Especially that game you played with her. If you're thinking about the team fights and mach ups, the shield route would be wise. Cause as you say, her combo/teammates would kill them usually if a Q lands. I'm a strong believer now that solo kills definitely aren't deciding factors in games. It's all about farming and helping the team and objectives.

Oh my gosh... yeah. The minions that are attacking me, won't be attacking my minions, therefore mine will push towards him unless he is autoing them a ton which he probably isn't. I don't know why I never noticed this small detail. Perhaps if I want to poke with auto's in some scenarios, I need to make sure I'm positioned in a place the minions wont aggro me.

Okay so then, I'm going to avoid trying to bounce it back until I get better. And! I'll watch for talisman so I know if they can do chicken. I guess this is where knowing certain champions kits come into play. I've played LoL for a long time, but there are some champs I haven't ever touched. So I never knew Kha healed.

Yeah, my understanding on the jungle route is a bit messy. But, if I know a jungler starts bottom, I can just assume they'll usually end up in the top side. Which is an attempt at being aware for me, haha. I watched a video that said around 4:00 minutes is usually when the first camp (after buff) the enemy jungler killed will be up again. So you can expect him to try to be around there.

I didn't even know scuttle spawned at 3:15. I've usually been putting a ward in the opposite side of my junglers pixel brush at 1:20. However, now that you mention "2:20" I saw in a couple VODS, the coach told the person that if they're pushed in enough, to give it a ward. And it would be around that time in the game I believe. So if I'm able I'll try doing that too.

I feel what you're saying. About how she can do everything, but other champs can do it better than her. Maybe picking her, is more playing around my comfortably and not much my team/match up. Of course she is useful and probably can work in a lot of comps by default, but there can be a more useful champion I can pick in certain games that can be exploited. Like if I know my team is all squishy, maybe I can go lissandra instead of Ahri. Cause I can get kills as Ahri but I can't really protect my team very well. Or like you mentioned earlier, if there's a bruiser and I want to give sustain to my team because maybe I'm worried about how strong the enemy team could get, Lux.

Oh! That totally is making sense. Cause maybe if their team has strong waveclear (Ziggs) and a splitpusher (Trynd)... playing Ahri might not be the BEST match up? Someone could be better in that situation. Because I wouldn't be able to clear the wave as fast, and I'd have to step up really far and I could indeed get collapsed on. Meanwhile, their splitpusher is doing that what he does best... And I'm not even able to push hard enough to ease pressure off a the mid lane lane. So he continues to split and I have to stay mid and clear. Where as if I had a fast wave clear champ, I could've instantly cleared and then used that extra time that it takes for minions to get to lane and helped with the enemy split pusher, or pushed or a different lane, or done anything else than sit mid trying to clear a bit longer than is needed.

... Maybe that is looking too deep into something so little, haha.

I definitely feel that condition on both mages pushing cause neither wants to be under tower. I subconsciously do this. It makes sense though, that it can be okay to farm under tower, if you're able to push/harass at the same time. Especially if they're using skills on the wave. And wow... I never knew drawing minion aggro could be good! But you're right it would give the wave a small chance to balance back out. Obviously I wouldn't want to deliberately do it, but if it happened in that scenario, it can be nice.

I also never have really looked ahead like that. Such as, "yes I'm stuck farming under tower now, but if I end up getting a kill, I can gain back the missing CS easily." I usually zone in on hitting the farm and get kinda bullied. But with this new mindset, I can watch for when they use abilities and then farm/punish them a the same time. Eventually, if I'm landing and dodging correctly, they will be low enough to get ganked/killed/have to recall.

And mirroring! I'm ashamed to say I've never even tried that nor knew how to do it. But now I do! So, mirroring is the goal, and if they push in which they probably will, I can farm under my tower while poking them when they go to farm. Do i always want to go this route, or is it good for me to be the pusher during this early game phase? Probably when I am confident and have the dominance over the laner/have an escape/am not afraid of enemy jungler?

Four man ganks definitely rivet the enemy... yeah. It's funny how much of a mental game League can be. I wish to some day be the player that is able to get them on tilt.... not by just continuing to solo kill, but by exploiting the wave/roams/evasions. Just constantly being where I need to be to progress the game.

Chainman32 votes

"Perhaps if I want to poke with auto's in some scenarios, I need to make sure I'm positioned in a place the minions wont aggro me." Normally the only time this is the case is if both champions are a good distances from the minion wave or if you're behind your own caster line when you auto the opponent, this would allow you to walk back a bit and drop any aggro from the melee minions you draw before they can actually hit you. Since you'd be too far from their casters for them to aggro onto you and the melee minions will be too far to actually do dmg to you.

"However, now that you mention "2:20" I saw in a couple VODS, the coach told the person that if they're pushed in enough, to give it a ward." If the coach was telling the player to ward around 2:20 its due to warding at that time gives you 2 things.

  1. Knowledge if the jungler is going to attempt a level 2 gank on your lane from that side (in cases like jarvan, twitch, or shaco)
  2. the ward will last 60 seconds taking you to the 3:20 mark (5 seconds after scuttle spawns) to know if the enemy jungle is prioritizing that scuttle and attempting to take it on spawn. The drawback here is you would need to ward on the side the enemy jungler starts which means you wont have access to the opposite side where they will be when farming for level 3 (Unless they choose to vertical jungle in which case this ward will give it away). Side note: Depending on when that video you watched was uploaded scuttle used to spawn 2:15 to 3 mins around. I think it was like 5 or 6 patches ago they pushed back its spawn time to 3:15.

"So I never knew Kha healed." Khazix's healing has a condition on it, he has to be close up to the champion he hits with his W. If he's close enough he'll heal for about an auto attack worth of hp.

"I watched a video that said around 4:00 minutes is usually when the first camp (after buff) the enemy jungler killed will be up again." Camps respawn 1 min and 40 seconds after theyre cleared completely. This is why some jungers will counter jungle and leave behind a small chicken or 2, to stop that camp from respawning until the enemy jungler takes the time to clear it. The difference between leaving 1 and 2 is also an impact on the game. Take jungling against nunu for example. If you leave 1 chicken up for him he'll come by Q it and keep going, but if you leave 2 he now has to clear the 2nd one with either autos or using his E both of which are going to consume his cooldown/more time (about 2-3 seconds more) in a game where every second matters. This can become huge. Think of a gank going off where your jungler would have been in position to counter gank but was 2-3 seconds behind so you'd end up having to burn flash to escape or dying where if he was just 2 to 3 seconds closer you may have been able to turn the gank into a double kill for your team.

"Maybe picking her, is more playing around my comfortably and not much my team/match up" Dont get me wrong, im not saying ahri is always the worse pick between her and another champion. Take for example a team that lacks both burst and wave clear. Ahri can provide the burst of an assassin while also having decent waveclear that an assassin wouldnt bring to the team. An example of this could be Maokai, Sejuani, Braum, Vayne or Malphite, Jarvan, Thresh, Kaisa. Most adcs besides sivir will fall into this category. The ones that have decent waveclear, come from ezreal, cait, jinx (barely), and sivir and even then besides sivir the rest can still be debatable as waveclear. Most top laners have terrible waveclear in situations where you're being shoved under tower because they'd be forced to leave tower range to clear, in cases like riven, tiamat champions, and malphite. The only position thats really questionable if you need waveclear for your team is the support role because mages are showing up there more frequently, but even then farming on a support when they could be generating gold with their support item by poking seems inefficient not to mention in situations like brand, if the W and E come out hes extremely prone to being engaged on without a reliable way to access his stun without blowing his important ult. In any case these are just some examples where ahri would be a solid pick and contribute more to the team's roles than an assassin or mage would. Side note: When i mention "burst", i know mages can burst but im talking about pick burst potential not just combo burst. A mage roaming to assassinate someone is dangerous because if they get caught they dont have the mobility to escape.

"... Maybe that is looking too deep into something so little, haha." You arent looking into things too deep. This is how the better players build small leads which they then take advantage of by building them into larger leads. The concepts that people complain about when they have a "smurf in a low elo game". The champion the smurf is playing is the same as anyone else playing them, but when you maximize efficiency on the champion, the champion becomes a lot more deadly. Take for example a vayne in low vs a player like Gosu on Vayne. Sure he has more knowledge than low elo players, but there's also little things he does which give him the chance to get fed on vayne early where most players cant. By no means am i vayne main or know all her tips and tricks but just one off the top of my head example. If we only take into consideration vayne's Q and autos the vayne who is standing next a wall would win because tumbling into a wall as vayne can reset her auto attack while also cancelling the animation of tumble to get 2 autos off where if the vayne wasnt near the wall they'd have to wait for the animation of the Q before being able to auto. A small change which gives only a second less of extra time and it could mean the difference between being up 300g or down 300g in a fight. (Same thing applies with the distance you choose to dash when casting lucian's E: Shorter distance = saved time which means you can auto faster).

"Do i always want to go this route, or is it good for me to be the pusher during this early game phase?" Lets say the enemy laner doesnt have kill potential on you and you want to deny them as much cs as possible. While freezing is a good method, zoning a xerath can get you chunked out because he'd be constantly firing Q's from miles away to both farm and harass you. In which case shoving him in would be the better option. Now this opens you up to ganks, so why would you allow that. Take for example, pre 6 rengar, karthus. Where these champions can be strong if they cant gank you (rengar cant jump from a bush onto you because its difficult to gank mid lane as rengar) shyvana in general is a terrible gank champion because she lacks cc. You're free to take this time to shove and roam if you can or harass the xerath while hes trying to farm. That choice would be yours to make depending on how the lanes are going and where your jungler is (if hes planning to invade or being invaded you might want to help him out as opposed to if hes doing camps). Now when playing ahri for example you cant even time frames, take for example you're again j4 jungle with a xerath in mid. You want to shove the xerath in to force him to miss cs without being able to harass you and enable yourself to harass him. If you're level 6 and lets assume j4 is level 6 here. He can E->Q (1 gap closer) and R (1 gap closer) and flash (1 gap closer). When j4 comes to gank you he has to use a gap closer to get on top of you leaving him with 2 left. Ahri has 3 gap closers on her ult and 1 more with her flash. So it'll play out like this: J4 E->Q to get to ahri Ahri R's away j4 ults ahri Ahri R's Away j4 Flashes onto ahri Ahri R's away Ahri suvives the gank and recalls by no means is this perfect thought process im giving j4's ultimate the benefit of the double when really his ult range doesnt line up with ahri's R range, but even with that benefit he still cant catch her.

Now what happened here for Ahri: Pros:

  1. Ahri got to harass and make xerath miss cs under tower. 2.Ahri pressured the map allowing her jungler to gank other lanes without any concern to a counter gank/ is able to invade the enemy jungle and steal camps/ can counter gank and kill the j4 who doesnt have much backup because xerath is probably behind at this point and low on mana/health from having to clear often basically putting j4 in a 1v2 situation. Cons:
  2. Ahri has to back
  3. Ahri burned her ult and maybe flash

The cons are easily dealt with because now you can go back to playing the safe laning style while also knowing xerath is behind now so you still do more dmg in the 1v1 situation. And every 1 min 30 seconds you can go back to shoving and denying him again because your ult would be back up. And j4 is considered one of the stronger gank heavy junglers burning everything to still not get a kill puts him significantly behind especially if your jungler uses that time to make a play or counter jungle and if j4 dies on the counter gank itll cause a rift between him and xerath in which case xerath is now further behind and he'll probably start flaming j4 where j4 was only trying to help him. Usually you can tell when you're about to be ganked even without vision tho because you'll see a change in the pattern of your opponent, they may position themselves more aggressively or try to land their cc on you instead of farming. When you see this shift in playstyle you can assume they know something you dont which usually is in the form of a gank coming from their team. Side note: if the enemy jungler is fed playing this playstyle is extremely risky even if you are fed because normally that means whoever strikes the other first wins and you dont wanna give shutdown gold to anyone let alone someone who's already far ahead (In other words just make sure you're always safe and can survive the gank).

Zoz02 votes

{quoted} Normally the only time this is the case is if both champions are a good distances from the minion wave or if you're behind your own caster line when you auto the opponent, this would allow you to walk back a bit and drop any aggro from the melee minions you draw before they can actually hit you. Since you'd be too far from their casters for them to aggro onto you and the melee minions will be too far to actually do dmg to you.

Oh yeah the video was probably uploaded when the spawn time was different. I believe in 2018 it was uploaded. facepalm

Leaving those chickens really could make a difference! That's interesting and helpful, I didn't realize the ward would need to be placed on the side they started at 2:20. But when I take time to just think about it, It makes sense cause of their routes.

What you're saying makes sense. She can be valuable for more than one thing, if more than one thing may be needed. Otherwise, maybe if there is enough burst, then I could go a more waveclearing champ. And this is what I need to be thinking... going someone the team needs.

Small leads creating wins/advantages is so true I've come to realize. That Vayne fact is interesting, having that knowledge over the enemy totally could create leads. I was in a game as Orianna vs Lux, and the farming phase went even. I could have poked her a lil more as she was winning those trades, but we were pretty much even in farm. I was attempting to mirror. And our team got an early drag and a small fight was breaking out and in the end, Lux got 2 kills, including me. And then sadly, another fight happened in the same area for no reason right after and she kind of snowballed and from there on out, I was getting harassed under tower really bad and I couldn't do much of anything for my team. And the Kalista on our team was 6-1 and it was a terrible feeling to know I could've held mid better, cause in a way I was a reason we lost although her early kills weren't all from me.

Okay so, pushing in mages that **can **farm and harass me under tower is a good option. Just be cautious of the engage/CC of jungler and know my escapes and ward. If the mage **can't **harass me hard and get farm at the same time, mirroring would be a good option, and just trying to outfarm them while trading here and there. When it's melee/assassin, I can freeze and deny them all-in potentials while harassing them. And then when I get ahead in CS, or pick up some kills, I can then shove them under turret and harass them heavily with my lead. And that opens chances for me to roam. Or I can still freeze and deny them most of any farm. This is my understanding OwO ?

Also I think pressuring the map as mid so that my other lanes can get help from my jungler is super important. Also, the enemy jungler would have me to try and focus on, therefore leaving bot lane or top a little less pressured. I feel like that is a big way I can help the team, even if I'm not really winning the lane too much in mathcup. As long as I don't die to ganks of course, haha.

This helped me to see that there's so much more that goes into winning a game than just kills/cs/objectives. While those are important, just the idea behind denying CS, pressuring lane, roaming, deep wards, leaving some chickens, creating small advantages... no game is ever really lost even though it may seem it. Because these little things can add up.

[slayer-pantheon-thumbs] I appreciate your help.

Chainman31 votes

"This is my understanding OwO ?" Yep thats spot on.

Pretty much this entire post is correct, aside from i wouldnt blame you for lux getting fed in a skirmish around drake and the second fight that happened because i know how team's usually fight in silver-plat elos. Anytime they see an enemy champion, "lets bash heads". Not really much thought goes into if their team is around to help them or the enemy team is around to help the enemy champion. 1v1 breaks out in the river with priorities to one side to roam over and this pretty much ends your lane even if you did nothing wrong.

I've played kat into ahri before in around gold 1-plat 3 elo where the ahri took terrible roams and still got snowballing. When i was 0-0 the ahri was 7-1. And when she came back to lane she still couldnt 1v1 me and was turret hugging with her ult ignite and flash up. This is just to show that even if you play properly and the enemy mid makes terrible decisions you still may have a team that gives that enemy advantages for whatever reason. (Not listening to pings, doing terrible drakes too early or too low) The point is here that you cant blame yourself for the games since technically you did play properly.

If you have any more questions feel free to ask. Just some background about myself. I have over 18,000 games on league 14000 in my first 3 seasons (season 3-5). Plat 4 has been my highest rank, but most of the people i played with know i can do better than that but i refuse to grind ranked anymore. Recently I've quit the game because I realized the game is too much for me, if you keep track of these things every game and constantly do them it takes a toll especially in losses where your team is flaming you for not carrying because you're the most fed. I mained mid for about 5 seasons and switched over to jungle because i got tired of the junglers who dont pressure while i get mid, support, and jungler camping my lane and still go even/winning against my laner while my team is still struggling and behind. Those are just some things that tilt me from the game and i dont have the mental after 7 seasons to keep up with the stress and frustration. Ive played every role and got decently understand the kit of all the champions (this is how i grew my knowledge early). Id say i can play every role to a high gold to plat level and mid adc and jungle to a high plat to diamond level. The game just became exhausting for me to keep up with the "stupid" comments and complaints, which is why i really appreciate when i see a player willing to actually learn. I quote stupid because as my friend once told me, "what you see as common sense, others see as 900 IQ". It made me laugh at the time but its also one of the things that makes sense. You can play correctly and do everything right, but the obvious play or the standard of how to play may not be held up by the rest of your teammates. Thats where the complaints about "jungle never helped x lane" comes from. Due to the lack of prepping their lane with the pathing of their jungle. I dont know how many times ive heard top laners cry about not getting ganks while im bot side, then when i get top side like 15 seconds later theyre shoved against the enemy tower. They get solo killed and continue to flame. This is okay when its one person but when 2+ lanes are doing it then it just feels like theyre ganging up and they honestly believe losing 2v2 and 1v1s is the jungler's fault.

Just my thoughts on the game though, hopefully you never experience that sort of tilt. I dont have the mental for it, so i decided to pack it up and cut my losses. I really do hope you climb to where you want to get to. It was a pleasure talking to you.

Ventira2 votes

I can really only answer the first question but... yes, freezing gives Zed a chance to roam, but if he does, he misses out on EXP and gold. He could come back to you having the advantage, and if he does roam, just warn your teammates. Focus on outfarming. There's a reason why in high elo play, it's basically farmfest most matches. Practically everything pros do is centered around outfarming their opponent.

Always remember, minions are the safest, easiest source of gold, and if your opposing laner is spending most of his time looking for kills, he's gonna fall behind unless he guarantees a kill every time he does.

Zoz01 votes

{quoted}

I can really only answer the first question but... yes, freezing gives Zed a chance to roam, but if he does, he misses out on EXP and gold. He could come back to you having the advantage, and if he does roam, just warn your teammates. Focus on outfarming. There's a reason why in high elo play, it's basically farmfest most matches. Practically everything pros do is centered around outfarming their opponent.

Always remember, minions are the safest, easiest source of gold, and if your opposing laner is spending most of his time looking for kills, he's gonna fall behind unless he guarantees a kill every time he does.

Thanks, that definitely makes sense. He's not guaranteed a kill each time he roams, but I'm guaranteed minion gold. Sometimes I get teammates that want me to follow the roam, but I guess I would only commit to that if we could definitely pick up the kills (like if my jungle was there too)., or if I shoved the wave.

Ventira2 votes

When in doubt, ping alert on which ever lane your opponent is headed to, spam it if you have to. Early warnings save lives.

DOUBLE TAPPED E2 votes

Check out SoloRenektonOnly on youtube, he goes over this stuff all the time in his videos.

preternatural2 votes

if you're just starting off with freezing then just try to freeze the wave any time it's on your side of the map.

Yenn2 votes

This is a big topic, and high elo advice doesn't translate to low elo games very well, if at all.

If you freeze at the turret against Zed in a low elo game, he'll roam and snowball out of control. If you freeze against him in a high elo game, your team will probably be aware that he's going to roam and not let him get kills.

This applies to most high elo advice, because there's an underlying assumption that your team mates have at least mediocre game knowledge and awareness.

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