Basic Wave Control Terminology for League of Legends

A lesson in strategy

Freezing the Wave

This is where you keepthe wave in a specific spot where the enemy minions out number your minions. This effectively denies creeps from the enemy and is done on your side of the map, making yourself safe from ganks. Required number of minions to freeze in between tier 1 towers.
Middle of the lane — 1 minion
Slightly onto your side — 2 minions
Near the side brush / catwalk area of mid — 3 minions
Right outside tower — 4 minions

Stall — similar to freezing, but the goal is to essentially continuously fight back the enemies push to keep your wave close to your tower. This can be sometimes used to buy time while the enemy jungler is in the area, setup a gank, or burn the enemies resources on the wave constantly until you have an advantage in resources (mana pool usually)

Bounced Wave

Occurs when one sides minions crash on a tower and the enemy minions bunch up to fight the crashing minions. The bunching up part is important since those minions will then move out to fight the next wave with stronger single target focus.
Typically minion waves move in a single line so they turn into a ball of random 1v1 2v2 fights when crashing into each other, but when one side is bunched and the other is a single line… that first minion in the single line is running into 2 to 3 other minions.
ALSO, minions in a single line move faster since they are uninterrupted. The bunched minions are slower and will collide closer to your side of the map. Then the reinforcement minions (next wave) will arrive first for the bounced wave.

So stronger single target focus and numbers advantage on next wave.

Reset Wave

This is when a one sides minions crash into the tower and all die before the enemy’s minions can arrive in time. Both sides minions will keep their single line and intercept in the normal area.

Slow Push

This wave push is typically formed on your side of the map. The goal is to last hit the minions or trim them enough to not completely kill your wave. Then the incoming reinforcements build up your wave more, creating a big/fat wave for the enemy to deal with.
This strategy holds several key usages across all stages of the game.

Laning Phase:
1) You have good poking tools and know you can get chip damage down on the enemy while they deal with trying to CS 10–12 minions under their tower.
2) Your wave is going to bounce, you get to eat one wave sooner than your opponent thanks to the enemy feeling threatened to take creeps that are under your tower. You have a experience advantage and a creep advantage. Get to the next level sooner than your opponent and all in.
3) There is an objective on the map the team wants to take like Herald / Dragon / Red Buff / Dive somewhere. Build a wave to make the enemy laner declined from following you or they lose 200–300 gold. You can simply return to lane without doing anything since you essentially killed your lane opponent.
4) Your match-up has more threat, but the minion advantage gives you safety in completing a push. Push leads to a nice reset where the items you buy helps deal with the match-up better.

Mid Game

Major objective like Baron or Dragon is coming up. You create a slow push in a side lane. This wave builds up to 10–20 minions. This pressure of the wave can deal good damage on your opponent’s tower. It also is effectively denying gold from your opponent.
If someone shows on the wave, force start the objective in mind and wait to see what your opponent does. They could TP to the objective,
If no one shows on the wave, then look to bait objective (assuming you have vision control).

Another usage is creating dilemmas for the enemy to deal with when facing sieges. Here are some scenarios to think about.
1) Both side lanes have slow pushes created. 3 players are mid. The player in bot rotates mid. The enemy needs to deal with the bot wave while no one covers it or else it gives an option for the advantageous team to rotate there if the mid push fails.

So the enemy sends one player over to bot, but now it’s a 4v4 mid vs a 5v4. The enemy team successfully takes care of bot and loses some of their mid tower health due to the siege. The advantageous team now rotates to top that now has a 2–3 wave build up. One player stays mid to keep that wave to pressuring mid tower. The enemy player who is bot now is dealing with the mid tower. They may be in a bad match-up, it isn’t their choice.
The advantageous team takes top tower with their big wave. Mid is weak enough that they can contest it afterwards.
All of this was thanks to slow pushes created in both side lanes.

The key concept to realize here is if you are the defending team in such a situation, you most likely will need to force engage on one side and take the loss in another. Doing nothing will basically destroy your own base.

2) This is a similar example, but one side lane is able to slow push their wave. Four mid. The side laner rotates mid and you brute force mid lane tower with your stronger team fight. That lane is destroyed.
If the enemy does not deal with the slow push lane, then the advantageous team will rotate over and repeat what they did mid. If you use one player to deal with that side lane, there will be no possible chance to fight mid. Sometimes the game state requires a disadvantageous fight, whether that be because of worse scaling or the loss of an inhibitor may be too detrimental.

Notice a pattern here? The defending team must have an action in plan before any of these wave setups happen. They must have the foresight of what is to come. This is why things like the “Fnatic Deathbrush” were so useful. An ambush before the wave setups breaks up the disadvantageous map state.

As the offensive team, take precautions in approaching the setup. Get vision in the jungle that is between the two lanes you wish to play around. Destroy flank vision (TP wards). Have a very watchful eye on enemy numbers since they will want to make a move. If you never get in their initiation range then they may try to over force on the engage, leading to an easy fight win. If they don’t engage, it will just frustrate them and possibly lead to a different mistake.

Fast Push

This should be quite obvious what it means. You kill the wave as fast as you can. This wave typically won’t get reinforcements, but the goal of this push is for the following:
1) Free up your time to move for an objective sooner or take a base
2) Scared of the enemy being able to freeze the wave so you want to get the wave to crash (bounce)
3) Don’t have much time to contest a tower so you want to get the damage in you can now vs trying to build a 8–12 creep wave.

Pull / Drag the Wave

There are a few different ways to pull the wave and all serve different purposes.
1) Gaining aggro through attacking an enemy champion
- The goal of this play is to make the enemy minions get closer to you. It can make csing much easier since you don’t need to walk farther up in lane to attack the ranged creeps.
- It can also bunch up the enemy minions better, leading towards higher AOE efficiency / mana usage.
2) You have no minions, the only player the minions can attack is you. You drag them away from the tower since the goal is to create a freeze. If possible, use a brush to deaggro the minions and then quickly come out of the brush to reaggro them. The brush helps minimize the damage the creeps will do to you.
- This strategy should be used to help an ally not lose minions or to create a personal freeze that hurts your opponent. Both cases are good since it will deny minions from the enemy while preserving gold on the map for the team.

Baiting

This is another more obvious term. Bait means exactly what it says, you are trying to bait or deceive the enemy into attacking or going towards you. Here are some different types of baits that players will use.

1) Your wave is slow pushing out and can be rather dangerous. Unless the enemy uses spells on the wave, you will be exposed. You walk inside your own wave, into the enemy’s range. He uses an AOE spell to hurt you. However, the spell does enough damage to alter the push back into you. You essentially take a trade loss to correct the wave.
2) Again you have a slow pushing wave. This time you want to bait the enemy into committing an all in because you want to utilize the minion advantage. You walk to the side of the wave, entering their range. They opt in for it. You retreat into your own wave while they push on. They suffer a devastating HP loss or even possible death.
3) The wave state is even, you bait your opponent to hit you once or twice to force your minions to aggro onto him. You do not return attack them. The enemy’s minions will keep DPSing your minions, creating a push into you. This is fantastic strategy in the early stages of laning phase where preventing an early death to a gank is so important.

There is so much more to discuss for league of legends. The tiniest actions can have big impacts when looking at an entire laning phase. The professionals will recognize these quickly, leading to some big punishments. For the average league player, having a grasp on what these different strategies and terms will greatly benefit their ability to lane. If you have better fundamentals then the match-up typically doesn’t matter.

The mid game implications of these strategies are also important for understanding lane assignments (where each player should get gold / farm) and how to effectively attack / defend a base. Best of luck in your games.