Laning & Wave Control

The Role of the Clash Lane

The clash laner's job is to defend and push the clash tower, coordinate ganks with the jungler and mid laner, initiate teamfights, soak damage for the team, and target the enemy carry (damage dealer).

The best heroes for the role shift with every major patch, but hero choice itself isn't that important aside from counters. How deeply you know your hero and how well you understand the game itself is what lets you dominate with anyone.

Three Scenarios for the First Wave

The enemy roamer is off the map：A lot of people make a mistake at the 1:30 mark. They think they can just run in and get a kill, and end up dying instead.

Your goal is to reach level 2 on this wave. If the enemy roamer isn't visible on the map, don't immediately engage the first wave.

There's a tactic where the roamer hides in the clash lane bush, and if you dive in without checking, you can get ganked 2v1. On the international server it's rare for now, but make it a good habit to check.

Your skills are weaker than your opponent's：Level 1 skills vary in strength from hero to hero. Trying to brawl with an opponent who has a strong level 1 is a bad play.

If your skills are clearly weaker, keep your distance, poke, and play the first wave passively.

Your skills are equal or better and you've confirmed the roamer's position：In this case, clear the first wave with confidence. Hit level 2 first, and if your opponent is reckless, you can even grab a kill.

As a rule, balance your attacks between the enemy hero and the minions to some degree. If you focus only on the hero, your opponent will hit level 2 off the minions and reach it faster than you.

If you only hit minions, you become vulnerable to their attacks. Watch who reaches level 2 first.

Don't force a kill on the first wave. Chasing too far will get you killed.

Watching for Ganks

After the first wave, check the enemy mid laner and roamer's positions. If they're off the map, play the second wave passively.

By around the third wave, the enemy jungler will be level 4 and looking to gank. Don't commit to a fight until you've confirmed their position.

If the jungler ganked the farm lane first, they'll usually come to your lane around the 2:30 to 3:00 mark. It varies with the hero's speed and the jungler's movements.

Signs of a gank also show up in changes to the mid and jungle activity. If an enemy who was playing passively suddenly gets aggressive, it's a signal that one or two reinforcements are on the way.

If they chase you despite being low on HP and having no advantage, help is almost certainly coming.

Playstyle by Hero Type

Support type：Don't spend too much time clearing waves. Teamfights and ganks are your bread and butter, so prioritize them from level 4 onward.

Even if it feels like you're missing gold on the wave, you'll earn gold by helping your teammates. Just sitting alone in lane is a poor play.

Assassin type：Similar to a jungle assassin, you hide in bushes and create opportunities with ganks. Protect your vision and stay off the map as much as possible.

You're not suited for the front line; ambush at the right moments instead.

Tank type：Your job is to initiate fights and provide vision. Lead the way, check bushes, and guide the group.

If your team has no roamer who can tank, picking a tanky clash laner makes teamfights much easier. There are two keys to engaging: target the enemy backline (the hidden mage or marksman), and don't prioritize the enemy tank.

Chasing a slippery tank is far less rewarding than going after the real damage dealer.

Invader type：Heroes that are slippery and strong at invading the enemy jungle should steal as many enemy camps and buffs as possible. To do it well, you need to understand jungle play.

Keep an eye on camp respawn timers; the more you steal, the more you set the enemy jungler back and force them onto the back foot.

Playstyle When Ahead or Behind

When behind：Above all, don't die. You don't need kills, and you don't need to take every wave perfectly.

Survival comes first. If you're behind, it's fine to farm under your tower.

If you die, let alone start feeding, you'll lock in a 1v1 loss. Next, use your teammates' help.

Even if you can't kill on your own, you can secure the kill by coordinating with a teammate's gank. Watch the map and engage the moment your jungler or mid laner gets close.

The enemy gets frustrated because they should be stronger, yet you only fight them when your team arrives. If no help is coming, learn to play cat and mouse, alternating between approaching and rotating away.

When the enemy clash laner leaves to help their team, focus on clearing the wave and pushing the tower; when they come back, you go help your team. Avoid the 1v1 while still getting work done, and force your opponent to play to your rhythm.

When ahead：If the enemy is hiding under their tower, scared, don't sit there with them. Once you clear the wave, move up the river to support around the center of the map, and if nothing's happening, head back to clear the next wave.

Covering half the map is enough for support; if you're going farther than that, use teleport. The time it takes to sweep half the map is roughly equal to the time it takes the wave to reach the center, so you won't miss out on farm.

A lot of players forget to defend their tower and let an entire lane get pushed in, so always defend your tower. If the enemy clash laner is reckless, lean into your lead, stack up kills, and take the tower; but if they're hiding out of fear, don't overchase and just play productively.

The Importance of Minion Wave Management

Managing the minion wave is extremely important for gaining an edge against certain opponents. By learning it, you can slow down the enemy's experience and gold income while getting ahead yourself.

How to Slow the Enemy's Growth

Instead of quickly killing all the enemy minions, aim only for the last hit (the killing blow on a minion) to reliably secure your own gold and experience.

This slows your own minions from reaching the enemy tower and creates a situation where the enemy is forced to clear minions in front of their tower (a freeze).

By freezing the enemy, they're forced to stay under the protection of their tower, which limits their movement across the map. This is called zoning, and it slows the enemy's experience and gold income even further.

Minion Wave Management as Anti-Gank

Freezing the minion wave also protects you from enemy ganks. Since your minions don't push too deep into enemy territory, you can farm safely near your own tower and reduce your risk.

Macro Play and Contributing to the Win

By keeping up this kind of minion wave management, you'll get ahead in gold and experience and be able to overpower the enemy. Combining rotations that read the whole map and act appropriately with the macro skill to grasp the overall flow of the game and make good decisions will lead your team to victory.

Early Laning Strategy (Handling Heino)

Biron can easily tank the poke damage from Heino's ranged attacks. When Heino switches to melee form, his melee damage is low, so ignore him until you reach level 4 and focus on managing the minion wave and earning gold.

There's no need to play aggressively early. This lets you avoid unfavorable trades and keep your gold income in lane going.

Applying Pressure and Rotating in the Mid Game

Once Biron hits level 4, start applying pressure to Heino. It's important to dodge Heino's skill 1.

When you engage, activate Biron's ultimate to gain a shield, and attack while absorbing damage. Keep fighting until the shield expires.

If Heino does nothing and the lane stays in a stalemate, leave the minion clearing to your jungler and rotate around the map to build an advantage through other lanes and objectives.

Heino's Weaknesses and Cautions in Teamfights

Heino has poke potential in lane, but he's a hero with many weaknesses in teamfights, especially in the late game. Even with a damage-oriented build his damage output is limited, and with little CC, he can struggle to contribute to the team in the fast-paced tempo of high-rank play.

In teamfights, aim to kill the enemy's squishy damage dealers first and foremost. Once you take out their main source of damage, you can keep the teamfight in your favor for longer.

Before entering a fight, keep at least 2 stacks of Biron's passive built up to bring out his full power and avoid diving in too far.

Overview of the Farm Lane

The farm lane is mainly handled by the marksman (a hero that attacks from range). The terrain is relatively safe, making it well-suited for farming (earning gold and experience).

Early Game Play

In the early game, you can gain more gold by killing the ranged minions (enemy minions that attack from a distance) that appear in the farm lane. The goal is to power up your hero quickly this way.

Mid Game and Beyond

Once you've completed 2 to 3 core items (key items that greatly influence your hero's performance), don't stay in lane; rotate around the map to support your teammates. Then look for teamfight opportunities (chances for large-scale battles involving multiple heroes) and join in to contribute to your team.

Kaizer Overview and Choosing a Build

Kaizer is a hero with high durability, sustain, and damage who becomes powerful in the late game. He's mainly played as a tank jungler, but he can also be used as a clash laner (a solo-lane player).

This video focuses on his damage build. Each build has its pros and cons; in the current meta, the tank build is dominant, but the damage build is also viable depending on the situation.

Early Laning Strategy

In the laning phase, first focus on earning gold and experience. Kaizer is weak in the early laning phase, so avoid forcing 1v1s with the enemy.

You should hold off on initiating fights until your ultimate, which restricts the enemy's movement and actions, is available. Maintain the lane by spamming skill 1 to manage the minion wave, and be careful not to push too far carelessly.

This makes it easier to prevent ganks from the enemy jungler. Freezing the lane (holding the enemy minions in front of your own tower) is also effective.

Applying Skill 2 and Dealing with CC

Kaizer's skill 2 can be used not only to knock back enemies but also for fine control to dodge enemy skills. On a damage build, it's extremely strong against opponents with little CC, but weak against heroes with lots of CC or slows (movement speed reduction).

So on a damage build, watch out for enemy CC; you're especially fragile when your ultimate is on cooldown, so take extra care. With a tank build you can fight without worrying about CC, but this is a major difference on a damage build.

Macro Strategy and Damage Output

As an overall macro strategy, since Kaizer needs to grow faster, actively seek out available jungle camps (spots of neutral monsters). Stealing the enemy jungler's camps is also effective.

Kaizer's damage output relies heavily on critical hits, and comes largely from attacking the enemy's squishy backline heroes (marksmen, mages, etc.), so try to attack from the flank whenever possible.

In the farm lane, poke while you farm

The basics of a farm lane, like for a marksman, are to poke while you farm. Get creative with how you land your skills—if you fire them so they also catch the enemy hero standing behind the minions, you rack up gold from last hits while chipping away at the enemy's HP at the same time.

Keep the enemy low enough and you can finish them off easily later. If your hero has no poke tools, don't force it—focus on farming and leave the poke to your support.

If neither you nor your support has poke, play it safe and just commit to farming.

From mid game on, precise mechanics decide the fight

From the mid to late game, the quality of your fine mechanics suddenly becomes critical. Kiting to attack one-sidedly from a distance, sidestepping to dodge attacks, reacting to and dodging the enemy's skills, tracking what skills the enemy has left, and your own positioning—all of these are needed to come out ahead.

Positioning in particular is the foundation for dealing damage while staying alive.

Watch the enemy's skill status to decide when to commit

Whether or not you go for the kill comes down to always keeping in mind which skills the enemy has just used. For example, if you know the enemy's ultimate is on cooldown, there will be many situations where you can push through even if they fight back.

Conversely, if the enemy still has their trump card, don't dive in. Remembering what the enemy has used gives you the information to judge when to fully commit.

In teamfights, only target enemies you can reach

In teamfights, narrow your aim to only the enemies you can reliably reach with your attacks. If you push too far forward just because you want to deal damage, you get left in a terrible position and go down first.

The marksman's role is to deal massive damage to support the team, so it's fine to end up with more assists than kills. First, prioritize reliably chipping down the enemies safely within reach.

Prepare healing reduction against enemy healers

If you sense the enemy has a hero that sustains through continuous healing, prepare an item that weakens healing (healing reduction) to counter them.

If you don't cut into the enemy's survivability, no matter how much damage you deal you won't finish them off, and the trades just drag on. When it gets hard to invade the jungle, or during stretches when your teammates are pulled to another lane and you have little to do, it's also an effective play to poke the enemy's HP down without forcing anything.

For scaling heroes, patience in the early game comes first

Scaling heroes like Charlotte, who are weak early and grow strong late, should commit to farming until their core items come online in the early game.

If this type of hero trades aggressively from the start, they lose the exchange. Don't force fights—keep your HP high and hold the lane, consistently.

What matters here is discipline; if you lack discipline and keep dying, your growth stalls. If you know your hero is weak early, prioritizing growth is the key to winning most of your matches.

Freeze the wave to farm safely

Even if the enemy is looking to gank, if you manage your minion wave properly you won't overextend and can keep farming safely under your own tower. This is wave freezing—a playstyle where you take only the last hits and don't push the wave any further forward.

This keeps the clump of minions lingering near your own tower and denies the enemy their experience and gold by keeping them away from the minions. Even if the enemy comes to finish you, with good wave management you won't go down easily.

Build a lead through trades and saving skills

In trades, use your survival skills sparingly to hang in there, then wait for cooldowns to come back before committing again. Land your offensive skills on the enemy to build up stacks and passives, and steadily stack up your damage.

Even if the enemy flashes away, with good management it won't matter much overall. If you time your ultimate or empowered states to match the enemy's CC, you can reduce the damage you take while pushing the trade in your favor.

Watch who the tower is targeting before you dive

When you dive under a tower, it's important to know who the tower is currently targeting. While the targeted hero is soaking the tower's damage, you can dive in safely and finish off the enemy.

Conversely, if you're the one being targeted, don't dive in. Reading this correctly lets you get dive kills while minimizing risk.

Once you have a lead, keep the pressure on and cut off the comeback

After you get a lead, keep pressuring the enemy while making not dying your top priority. If you don't throw your life away, you deny the enemy any material for a comeback.

Even a hero with modest damage can finish enemies off with teammate support, so playing in sync with your team to push in reliably is more stable than forcing things solo.

The Mid Role and Hero Selection

Mages typically function as the team's secondary support. They help the team by providing plenty of damage, CC, and healing reduction.

Heroes that thrive in the mid lane generally have the ability to clear minion waves quickly.

Wave Clear and Jungle Management

Being able to clear minion waves quickly opens up more options for your next move. For example, you can easily steal gold and experience from the enemy's jungle camps to build a gold lead.

Tracking the enemy jungler's movements also lets you predict likely gank spots and give your team valuable information.

Securing Vision and Positioning

An essential part of playing mid is constantly providing vision for your team. Working together with your support makes this even easier.

Mages also excel at ambush attacks, so use bushes and similar spots to set up effective ambushes.

Proactive Play and Resource Management

Always play proactively and don't waste time just waiting for something to happen. Once the mid tower is down, it becomes easier to invade the enemy jungle camps.

At this stage, controlling the enemy's resources and denying them farm is the key to victory.

What Wave Management Is and Why You Use It

Wave management is the practice of controlling the minion wave at a position and state that favors you, so you can gather more resources than the enemy marksman. Done well, it lets you get ahead in gold and experience while denying the enemy the farm and experience they want. There are three broad approaches: zoning, which keeps the enemy off the wave; pushing, which shoves the wave into the enemy tower; and freezing, which holds the wave on your side. You use each depending on the situation.

Steal Farm and Experience with Zoning

Zoning is a playstyle that shuts the enemy marksman out of the wave. Every time the enemy steps forward to last-hit a minion, you land a poke on them, forcing a choice: go for the minion and take the poke, or back off and lose the gold. Either way, you come out ahead. You can increase the pressure by standing near the enemy's minions, but this is very aggressive and leaves you exposed to a gank from the enemy jungle. Always secure vision and ward the bushes and other spots before doing it. You don't need to land a skill every single time; landing one occasionally to make them back off is enough to chip away at their resources.

Pushing Works, but Watch for the Reverse Risk

Pushing is a playstyle that shoves the wave toward the enemy tower. The enemy is forced to last-hit under their own tower and has a harder time focusing on fighting back, so you get to choose whether to harass them or chip at the tower. However, pushing can backfire, and it isn't always the best option. Shoving the wave under their tower makes you an easy target for the enemy jungle, and if they have a support with strong CC, you risk getting caught under the tower and burst down. Against enemies with knock-ups, immobilizes, and the like, think carefully before you push.

Fix the Wave on Your Side with a Freeze

Freezing is a playstyle that holds the wave just in front of your own tower, and it's most effective when you're ahead. By locking the wave near your tower, you force the enemy to overextend deep into the map to reach the minions. Coordinate with your support or jungle to zone them there, and you can deny a huge share of their resources. When you're behind, you can also use it to fall back and settle the wave down.

How to Create a Freeze (Hold It with a Minion Count Difference)

The key to freezing the wave is keeping the enemy's minion count higher than your own. For example, if you have four allied minions on your side, the enemy needs at least five, and the more enemy minions there are, the more the wave pushes toward your side. Be careful, though: if you let your own tower attack the enemy minions, the push evens out and the freeze breaks, so positioning that keeps the tower from hitting them is essential. Ideally, hold the wave at a point away from both your tower and the enemy, keeping more enemy minions than allied minions, and the wave won't move forward or back, giving you complete control.

Why You Can Win the Lane and Still Lose the Game

You get early kills, you even take down the tower, and yet you still lose the game. This is a familiar experience for marksman players. The cause is usually not weak teammates or mechanical mistakes, but a failure to correctly understand your role in the lane.

A marksman's real job is not to chase flashy kills. It is to become the most reliable source of damage on the team, the one who keeps dealing steady, uninterrupted damage once a clash breaks out. Your starting point should be to treat yourself as the team's insurance policy for the late game, and to align every decision you make in lane with that purpose.

Never Give Up Guaranteed Gold and Experience

The quietest way to lose a game is sloppy resource management. Many players get so caught up in attacking the enemy marksman that they ignore the wave of minions dying right next to them.

During the 10 to 15 seconds you spend chasing a low-HP enemy to the river, you can miss an entire wave. What you should be choosing here is not the poke damage in front of you, but the gold you are guaranteed to collect. In the early game, damage alone does not win, and whoever completes their items first becomes stronger. Make securing your farm your top priority.

Ask Not Whether You Can Fight, but Whether You Should

Once you get comfortable farming, the opposite mistake tends to appear: fighting too much. This is the state where you treat every moment the enemy steps into range as a signal to fight.

What you should re-ask here is not "Can I fight?" but "Should I fight?" These are two completely different questions. A good marksman commits not because a fight is available, but only because they have the advantage. Avoid engaging just because an enemy is present, and hold to the principle of taking a trade only when you are clearly ahead.

Read the Minimap and Predict Ganks

A major reason for dying early is not paying enough attention to the map. Almost every time you get ganked and think "Where did that come from?", you simply missed the flashing warning signs.

When the mid laner disappears, move carefully, and when both the mid laner and the jungle are off the map, assume you are the target. If you have no vision, accept that you can be collapsed on by multiple enemies at any moment. A great marksman does not react after seeing danger; they read the minimap like a script and move ahead of time, before the danger can reach them.

Clear the Wave Before You Rotate

Another misconception is thinking you must always rush over the instant a clash begins. When a fight breaks out in mid but a wave of minions is pushing into your lane, the decision is not so simple.

If you abandon the wave and head over immediately, the fight may already be over by the time you arrive, and you will have lost only gold and experience. But if you first clear the wave quickly to secure the gold and then rotate, you will be stronger even if you arrive a few seconds late, and you will not actually fall behind. Do not move just because there is a fight; create the conditions to move on your own terms and then rotate. Only after you have cleared the wave do you earn the freedom to help your team.

Reliably Hit the Nearest Safe Target

What separates an average marksman from a great one is not mechanics or hero pool, but positioning. Many players push too far forward trying to reach the enemy marksman or mage, overlook the assassin, and die before dealing any meaningful damage.

The principle to remember is to hit the nearest safe target, not the highest-value one. If the only thing you can safely attack is the tank, then attack the tank. A marksman who survives through the clash and keeps dealing damage is far more valuable than one who dies chasing the backline. Once you become strong, you will be the priority target, so stay behind your frontline, let teammates check the bushes, and never walk alone into fog where you have no vision.