Laning: When it Comes to Push and Shove

Laning might seem like an easy enough concept to grasp, however it surprises me how many people don't understand how to fully control their lane, and minion waves. The goal of this article is to explain how a lane works, and ways to control and maintain it.

A minion wave spawns every 30 seconds after gametime reaches 1:30. It's important to learn how to control your minions because it is vital in order to maintain lane control. A few terms you need to know are:

• Pushing- Pushing your lane involves forcing your minions towards the opposing tower. This usually requires killing off enemy minions quickly so your minions are free to continue down the lane.
• Maintaining- Maintaining your lane means keeping it where it is. This often requires very little minion interaction, other than last hitting. The main idea of this is that you want the minions to slowly work each other down and cancel each other out. This gives incoming minion waves time to reach the front, and stall the lane more.
• 'Letting the lane push'- basically what it sounds like, normally refers to letting the enemy champions and/or minions push the lane towards your tower. This requires playing a little passive, and doing as little possible damage to the minions.

In order to maintain control of your lane, you will need to be able to do each of those things at a point in the game. If the enemy champion is out of your lane, you might want to push the minion wave into the tower so that the tower can be damaged, and the tower ends up killing the minions rather than your opponent. This is called Denying because it denies the enemy the gold and experience from those minions.

If the enemy jungler is camping your lane  and you can't CS without being ganked, it might be better to allow the lane to push so that you can farm under the protection of the tower. It also helps to allow the lane to push when you know your team is coming to gank. This forces the enemy champion to farm farther away from his tower, leaving him more vulnerable to ganks.

Maintaining your lane is optimal when you have good ward coverage, and both sides of the lane are farming. This is the easiest way to farm without the tower taking minion kills, and allowing your lane to be gankable. It allows full utilization of the bushes for your team, and puts you in a good position to shove your lane (Push it very quickly) if your team wants to go for an objective like dragon, or try and take down the tower.