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How To Slow Push - LoL Wave Control Basics

If you want to rank up to challenger quickly in Season 10, you've got to master both micro and macro play alongside champion knowledge and mechanics.

 

However, one of the easiest concepts to get the hang of early on that can help you dominate your lane in each and every game is being able to slow push a lane in League of Legends.

 

To help you understand this important mechanic and master using it to your advantage in ranked games, we've put together a quick and comprehensive guide of everything you need to know when it comes to slow pushing and controlling your wave.

 

What Does Slow Pushing A Lane Mean?

Slow pushing is the technique of stacking up your minions by pushing the enemy wave slowly, allowing you to effectively push with 1.5 - 2 waves of minions instead of a single wave that's already taken damage.

 

This mechanic works due to the fact that you're not clearing the enemy's minion wave while allowing your own secondary wave to arrive before the enemy's minions die.

 

Sounds easy right?

 

Despite not being all too complicated of a wave control mechanic, you'll need to keep two important things in mind.

 

Firstly, stacking up your minion wave to slow push only works for the outer towers (tier 2). It doesn't work at all for the inner towers, or inhibitor towers. Secondly, you'll want to make sure that your initial wave always has more minions. This is the foundation for building a successful slow push.

 

What Are The Benefits Of Slow Pushing Your Lane?

There is a number of handy benefits that come with slow pushing, which you can leverage to dominate your opponent in lane, provide an extra bit of security and take their towers or inhibitor very quickly.

 

First of all, building up a giant wave early on during the first few minutes of the game allows you to have a staggering damage advantage if your opponent tries to all-in you early. If this results in a successful kill, they'll be missing out on at least 3-4 waves of experience, which, as you might imagine, sets them very far behind you and allows you to snowball off of that lead with ease.

 

Additionally, the added wave of minions is fantastic for taking plates or demolishing the enemy laner's outer tower after a successful kill in lane. And if their jungler comes up to try and contest you - don't worry, you've got a huge damage advantage on them - and if you're playing the right champion, this could even help you secure easy 1v2 kills in lane without having to respect the jungler's pressure and fall back.

 

Lastly, slow pushing also allows you to keep the enemy occupied while you take advantage of lane priority to roam, secure objectives with your team, or go back to base without losing experience.

 

How To Slow Push A Lane

Slow pushing is very simple. If you're laning against an enemy, you'll start out the same way that you would if you were trying to freeze lane in LoL.

 

However, once you've got the mirroring component down, you want to start out-damaging your opponent. You can throw some poke into the mix to make them back off, allowing your minion wave to slowly push up while more and more minions arrive. In the end, you'll have a massive wave that will help you push your opponent out of lane, chunk their tower for several plates, and ward off jungler ganks.

 

Depending on how you play your cards, you could even freeze the wave as it resets, denying your opponent even more gold and, in this case, experience as well.

 

Closing Thoughts

Learning about wave control and mastering the mechanics behind it allows you to control your minion wave and create incredibly advantageous leads to catch up if you're behind, deny your enemy and really push your advantage that much further.

 

Slow pushing your lane is one of the most important wave control mechanics to keep in mind, as when it's combined with freezing your lane at the right time, you're able to absolutely dominate your lane every single game, regardless of the matchup or the enemy team's jungler's presence.

 

We hope that our guide on slow pushing helped you understand the ins and outs behind this simple but powerful mechanic, allowing you to start applying it in your own games to gain tons of ELO. Best of luck!