If a player is new to League of Legends: Wild Rift, he would want to get better by looking for ways to climb easier and faster. In this article, we will present our exclusive Wild Rift Laning Guide. This guide discusses many elements of winning a lane. This includes farming, wave management, trading and its perks, and many more associated with Laning in Wild Rift. But before anything else, if one is entirely new to the game, there are several terms that a player might not be familiar with. Players can head over to several FAQ guides listed on the League of Legends: Wild Rift page here.
Wild Rift: Laning Phase
Laning in Wild Rift is one of the most essential phases in the game. It refers to the first thing which happens every game. It is important to make the best of it and spend your time efficiently. With laning, one can always have the best start to the game in Wild Rift possible and go into mid/late game with a solid foundation.
Farming
In lanes, there will be minions spawning once every 30 seconds. As one knows, minions give off gold and experience which will remain an extremely important factor even until the end of the game. Hitting the killing blow on minions is also called last-hitting. This will give off double the gold and get compared to when you miss them. The experience is still the same whether one hits the killing blow or not. However, it is safe to say that last-hitting the minions is very important.
Two good bases for comparison of doing good in lane is to compare the following stats:
- Gold income to that of the enemy laner which is updated real-time in the in-game scoreboard.
- Experience points can be checked next to a champion’s health and resources bar in-game.
If a player is beating them in the numbers, he will have successfully gathered more resources than the opponents which will power up more quickly. This will ultimately lead to advantages both in the lane and into the rest of the game. It is also a good indication that the player is stronger than the enemy laner in the given time.
Having a consistent gold income is very vital on how you will progress into the mid-game phase where fights and skirmishes will be more present. This is why farming is one of the most important factors in Wild Rift. A player might die a couple of times in a game, but always try to keep a consistent gold income by farming every chance you get. There will be a situation where you will not be able to do so. This will be discussed later in the Wild Rift Laning guide.
Wave Control
Since farming is so important, it is also very important to know how to manipulate a minion wave. While the idea is simple, there are a few things that are essential to understand. At the start of the game, the minion waves will crash right in the middle of the lane.
Pushing
Pushing is the act of damaging the minions in such a way that the equilibrium is broken, and the minions move farther up along the lane, towards the opponent’s turret. Since a player is dealing more damage to the enemy minions, he will be able to achieve many things by pushing.
Advantages
- The player will gain experience and gold faster than his opponent because their minions are dying faster.
- For important levels, like level 2 or level 5, many experienced players will push the lane and get the level quicker. This will allow them to fight the enemy with an advantage.
- The enemy must remain in lane longer. Since they will be left out to clear the incoming minion wave which is called “Lane Priority”. Lane priority is having control over the lane by being able to push the wave into the enemy turret without the enemy laner being able to stop it. This allows the player to look for roaming plays, scout forwards or even place deep wards into the enemy jungle and lane.
- This gives the player some breathing room to back and buy items or contest objectives on the map.
- The minions will now be attacking their turret and are vulnerable to a dive. This situation will be discussed further in the guide.
- Their turrets will fall faster, and the minions will be able to grab more gold.
- They must now time their attacks to match the turret. This does a significant amount of damage and results in a few missed last hits.
However, pushing in Wild Rift also comes with other disadvantages which you should always be mindful of, so you do not get punished.
Disadvantages
- The player will be extending deeper into the side of the enemy laner. He will be more susceptible to ganks and rotations if you ever decide to stay in the lane.
- If the enemy laner is ahead of you, you will be in the range of them and can be risky.
There are two types of pushing, slow pushing and fast pushing.
Slow Pushing
Slow pushing refers to the method of only last hitting. It is something that is done in the later stages of the Wild Rift game. However, in the mid lane, it is more commonly used during the laning phase so you can roam. Slow pushing is used to create big waves. It is used to apply pressure while you’re away doing something different.
This technique will allow your minions to take less damage, and as a result, your minions will be able to slowly push the wave to the enemies turret. This is because your minions will last longer and not die quickly. After all, they will always have the numbers advantage over the enemy.
Slow pushing is a term that is used in this sense of gameplay because your minions will, even with the numbers advantage, take some time to kill the enemy minions.
How to Slow Push
Slow pushing is very simple to understand. To slow push a wave, all you need to do is kill the caster minions in the enemies wave. You can do this with your basic attacks as well as using your abilities to take them down faster. Another way of setting up a slow push is just by having a minion advantage. Whenever you have a minion advantage over the enemy, the wave will slow push.
If the minion wave is crashing on your side of the map, you will need to have a 2/3 minion advantage on the enemy. In case it’s crashing on the side of enemies, you will need a 4 or 5 minion advantage. If the enemy has 2 minions alive in the lane, one would want to have 5 on your side. If it’s past the middle of the map and on the enemies side, you want to have at least 6 minions alive for the enemies 2.
Fast Push
Fast pushing is a term used in Wild Rift to create immediate and attention-seeking behaviour. Such action needs to be addressed quickly by the enemy. Without these, enemies could take liberty and be gone for a long time without missing much. Fast pushing is used to force the enemy to return to the lane.
There are two types of fast pushes in Wild Rift. The first, and something we won’t really go into detail about, is clearing the minion wave. This is what most people do when they hear the term ‘push’. A very useful thing to do while clearing the minion wave quickly is making your minions move around the map. This will allow your minions to get to the objectives quicker. They will not be stopped by a minion wave.
The second type of fast push is used when one wants to recall/ leave the lane. We will go into more detail about this subject briefly. The two types of fast pushing are both really good at denying the enemy minions. One could also force them to come back to a lane.
How To Fast Push
To fast push a wave, one needs to kill all the melee minions (the front minions) as quickly as possible. This also adds up to the cannon minions in the lane. You should use your auto attacks as well as your AOE abilities to make the wave clearing quicker.
Fast pushing requires one thing which is more minions. The more minions you have compared to the enemies, the faster and more powerful the push will be.
Freezing
Freezing is one of the more complicated types of wave management to perfect in Wild Rift. Because the player needs to manipulate the enemy and keep a constant eye on what they’re doing. Using the technique in Solo Queue, it is best done to be ahead of the enemy. This also works if you’re even with them. It is quite difficult to freeze when behind. When freezing, one would want to be able to zone the enemy off the farm. This could also make them overextend if they want to get any farm.
If you want to freeze the wave, one needs to last-hit the enemy minions at the last possible second. Although it sounds simple, it’s going to get a bit more complicated. Whenever a minion is damaged through auto-attacks or ability-use outside of last-hitting, one needs to match their damage.
Some allied minions will die quickly with less health. As a result, the enemies wave won’t be pushing towards you. When the damage has been matched, all the minions being allied and axis will die roughly at the same time. This prevents the wave from pushing in either direction, thus creating the freeze.
If the damage isn’t matched or auto-attacking the minions is randomly started, the wave will not freeze. Instead, it could start pushing in a direction one wouldn’t like. While attacking too little, the wave will push against you. In case one attacks too much, it’ll push harder.
How do you setup a Freeze
Depending on where the freeze would occur, one needs to manipulate the enemy minion wave for it to stay there. Being closer to the turret, one needs more enemy ranged minions in the lane. This is because the reinforcement minions will get to the lane quicker, compared to the enemies.
If there wasn’t any minion advantage for the enemy, the allied minions would start pushing. This, however, could leave a few minions alive which will prevent the wave, from pushing towards the enemy. Making the concept super simple, one needs to count the number of full-health enemy caster minions in the lane.
We can see how many enemy minions you will need in different parts of the lane for the minion wave to freeze. This is to be noted that this works for the Baron and the Dragon lane. We will, later on, discuss the mid lane.
If neither a player wants to push at a minion wave nor wants the minion wave to push towards him, all he needs to do is make sure that the minion wave stays in the yellow zone. For this to happen, there need to be no additional extra minions left alive in the lane (on either team). If someone has 3 minions alive, the enemy needs to also have 3. Most commonly, the player will find 0 minions against 0 minions in this area for the wave to stay here. This is because around this area (the white line) is in the middle of the lane, where minions traditionally meet. At the start of the game, if the minion wave is not contested or pulled in any specific way, the minions will start forming here and fight in the middle of the lane.
If the players want to have the minion wave to be slightly closer to your side of the lane, he needs to have 1 extra healthy (100% or close) enemy ranged minion alive. If one has 3 caster minions here, he needs to have the enemy to have 4. The closer one gets to the turret, the more extra minions the player would need the enemy wave to have. In the purple area, one will need 2 extra minions, and in the green, you will need 3 extra minions.
Once minion waves start building up, they can very easily and very quickly take down your minions and your turret. They can also force the wave to bounce leaving the player in an unfavored position. One does not want them to start attacking your turret and instead as one would want them to focus on himself. If the player is healthy and has a reliable source of regeneration, he needs to walk up to them and start tanking the minions. One must pull them away and out of the position of the turret. Forcing them to focus on the player either standing still or making them walk slightly back on themselves is highly beneficial for the freeze to stick.
One must be careful not to walk too far away from them as he might drop minion aggro and avoid tanking them for too long. One must do so as long as they can start attacking your minions again outside of your turret range when they arrive.
When the allied minions die, start tanking the wave again and pull it away from your turret. Rinse and repeat, and it will indefinitely freeze the enemy out of gold. However, if one cannot freeze like this due to health or items problems, players might need to thin the wave down to an easier number to the tank.
Be Prepared to trim the Minion Wave
At the beginning of a game, champions are incredibly weak. Until the laning phase gets underway, the player will not have much damage and no real way of protecting yourself. This is what can make freezing difficult and tanking them rather risky. If there are too many minions left alive and one is not able to tank them, it is recommended to kill all the melee minions, and all of the ranged minions but leave 3 caster minions alive. One must not forget to kill any cannon minions if possible.
One also needs to avoid tanking for extended periods of time because it might not allow the enemy to engage or kill the player. A player must also need to make sure that there are not too many minions coming at him because they are overwhelming.
If there are more than 4 additional minions in a wave, it will always be pushing no matter what. If one is unable to tank the bonus minions, he will have to thin the wave down.
Mid Lane Wave Control
So far, we have only really talked about the side lanes and how they can be used in wave management. Since the middle lane is much shorter and as the minion waves arrive much quicker, wave management is less effective in some aspects.
In the middle lane, most champions lack the ability to hold and freeze waves. This is because many of them do not buy defensive items until later on in the game. They are neither tanky enough to hold the minions in place. Another reason is that many mid-lane orientated picks have damage and have high kill potential that makes freezing quite risky. With that being said, one can still freeze in the middle lane, should do so when the player needs to.
The zones are much smaller in the areas where it is safe to freeze and other wave management techniques are used. The issue is that many champions can often break all your hard work and ruin what has been done. This makes wave management in the mid lane not useless, but very situational and quite difficult to work with if one doesn’t know what you’re doing.
Compared to the side lanes, the mid lane has the same features of freezing except the zones are smaller. One must be beware when holding or dragging the minion wave as the enemy may be able to engage on you.
Wave management in the early game or the middle lane is all about where is the wave. It also depends on what the enemy can do for the player. As the middle lane is the most gankable lane in Wild Rift, one needs to have the wave in a favourable position to avoid cheesy ganks.
Lane Dynamics
Along with Wave Control, there are a few more things that are influential to the lane.
Pressure
Pressure is what one feels when that enemy Blitzcrank weaves in and out of the bushes with his hook ready or when you feel like the Zed across from you hasn’t missed a single shuriken and is going to hit level 5 soon. Although they have not done anything yet, the threat is there. One must play around it or else suffer the consequences.
There are also external pressures like when the enemy Jungler has high mobility and the allied wards keep getting swept away. One has to play safe and be careful with the fights. This is because he would have no idea whether or not they have a backup.
Trading
Trading is when the champions try to deal damage to each other. Of course, both players try to deal more damage in the exchange so it is a “trade“. This is what happens between the minion farming. If one is not actively last-hitting a minion, one needs to be ready to deal with the opponent.
A good example is usually found in the bottom lane. This is because both of the carries and supports are actively looking for spots to throw an attack. If the player is auto-attacking a minion, he cannot fight back if the enemies throw their attacks on him. The support must then be ready to dish out a counterattack, therefore the player must be ready to fight back if they continue shooting.
This must be balanced because if all you do is shoot each other, no one is properly gathering the minion gold. Skilled players that have a very good grasp of their champion’s potentials and limits will usually win in these regards. They will be able to do the maximum damage with every trade and avoid fights they know they cannot win.
Positioning
Positioning is also a key factor while laning in Wild Rift. If one can position themselves within a lane, he can take advantage of the strengths, whether they are range, mobility, etc. The opponent will be hard-pressed to do anything to you.
What if Teemo farms at a range and blinds the Nasus every time he comes in? What if the enemy ADC is constantly sitting at the maximum auto attack range and is never out of position to be engaged on? The opponent will be forced to play your game until they can come up with a plan to deal with you. If they make a wrong move, they will be punished.
How to Win Laning Phase
That being all said, we will now talk about the necessary things to win the laning phase in Wild Rift. A combination of the above fundamentals will lead you to success.
Use Your Advantages
Let us say a player has a range advantage over his opponent. Trading is going to go in the favour. This is since, the player can attack the enemy, without them being able to retaliate. If they do try to harass them while farming, he can hit them before they leave the attack range.
Therefore, it is important to position oneself so that if they even try to go for a minion, they must take multiple hits. If he gets an advantage from minion gold and manages to outpace them in items, the player must start to position even further ahead. This is so that, he can either straight out deny last hits or bait them into a fight and win with your item advantage.
If a player is afraid of a gank, it is recommended to freeze the lane like mentioned above technique. One must continue the range denial, now with more gold and a smoother entrance into the midgame.
Position oneself to an advantage. If one is sure that trading will lead to a loss, he must push as hard as he can. This is to force the opponent to focus on last-hitting under the turret or freeze the wave. So, the opponent is reluctant to engage with the player.
Zoning
Zoning is where a player stands in-between the minion wave, or in an offensive position in the lane. This is where he could potentially poke or fight the enemy. Zoning is not just fighting the enemy, it is also about applying a kind of mental pressure on them and making them respect, or even fear you.
When a player tries to zone an enemy champion, he would need to keep a few things in mind. Firstly, he must have the advantage or the ability to out-trade them, if they decide to fight. If he does not have this advantage, he cannot really zone them. Secondly, one needs to have good ward coverage so you do not get caught out, while you’re overextended.
Zoning, as a whole, is a great way of getting poke down on the enemy and denying them last hits.
Press Your Leads / Snowballing
If he gains a last-hit advantage or maybe grab a kill or two, use it to the best of your ability. If one is ahead and know it, make sure your opponent feels it too.
Many times, a single item lead will result in just that last few HP during trades, which leads to a bigger gap in power, which leads to an easier time. Make sure you position yourself properly and respect your opponent’s damage.
Overconfidence will lead to you giving the lead back to the opponent. Be watchful of outside influences, such as a mid lane or a jungle gank. But one must not be afraid to take battles you know you will win if your opponent has bad positioning or decides not to respect your leadership.
Keep it Together
Sometimes, one will be the one on the back foot. An early jungle gank can get them rolling or the player might have played a fight wrong, losing some kills. It is recommended to position well and try to freeze the lane in a good place for you to farm up and get enough gold to still compete. One can still deny them some farm this way and hold them in a good position until the jungler comes to help you.
If one needs to deal with an annoying opponent, one can always ward up to make sure there is no other outside factor, and then play safe and wait for the opponent to slip up. You’d maybe just be flat out, being better at farming and don’t even need to do anything to make up for the gold deficit.
If the opponent freezes the lane to stop one from coming close, there are a few ways to break the freeze.
- Harass the opponent as they focus on maintaining minion equilibrium. They will eventually be forced to back up, and then you can flush the wave into the turret and bring it back to the center.
- Bounce the wave with superior waveclear. Basically, the same concept as above but you make use of your character’s skill kit if you have it.
- Call your jungler over to hopefully get some kills and even the gold back up. Having and extra person also means you now have a chance to push the wave to the tower.
- Back and return to lane. This needs some explaining.
- If you back, you will have refreshed your health/mana and come back with more powerful items. You will be able to fight for control of the lane now.
- You know they won’t be pushing if they freeze, so your tower is still safe.
- If they do push when you back, you now have a reset lane when you arrive back. With some luck, you might catch the end of the push and be able to start your own freeze.
In the same vein as the idea above, one could just leave the lane, helping the jungler with an objective or bother another lane. One is still making an impact on the game with pressure. He can be sure to return and farm after he is done. Being out of the lane means no one from the team is collecting the farm/experience in that lane are actually sapping it away from your team if he’d remain in another lane.
Just Don’t Deal
Many times, if one has better wave clear, one can simply just push the lane out. One must get all the last hits and leave the opponent to their own devices. This also means they get some uncontested farm. One must not be dying for them, making them stronger. It is guaranteed to get all the resources from the lane and can hope to help the team later in the game.
It is worth noting that this is an extreme option, as one is essentially giving the opponent lane control. But if the scary Fiora has 5 kills on you and can blast you, even under the turret. It is maybe the best that one does not continue giving her more kills.
Final Thoughts
Laning in Wild Rift is extremely important because a player has to do it every game. One will gradually get better at it and it will lead to solid midgame objective control and late-game teamfights. It is to be understood what to do and when is the biggest thing, which comes with practice.
This Wild Rift Laning guide went over the basics of laning and focused on a few things to make your laning phase go smoother. Best of luck with your games!
That’s all for today’s League of Legends: Wild Rift Laning Guide. How do you manage your laning in Wild Rift? Let us know in the comments section below!
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