Week 3: Where is the lane, and where do I stand?

Creep equilibrium, pushing against holding, and why the ground you fight on is something somebody chose

8 March 2027

Open the slides

This week’s decision

Last week you learned to take gold off a creep. This week is about the fact that the place where you do it will not hold still. A wave has a balance point, that point drifts, and both sides can move it deliberately — so the ground you are standing on was chosen, either by you or for you.

The mistake this week fixes is standing at the front of the creep wave. It looks like participating. It is taking creep aggro and enemy spells at the same time, and pushing the lane while you do it.

Mechanics

Where the lane sits is decided by how fast each side’s creeps die. Every extra attack you land moves it toward the enemy. Nothing about this is mysterious once you know to look for it.

Holding near your own tower is the beginner-friendly state. You are close to your tower, far from their support, and your escape is short.

When pushing is right. You are going home, you are going to the jungle, or you want the enemy taking their last hits under their own tower. Pushing is not the error; unconscious pushing is.

Positioning. Where you stand decides whether the enemy can hit you without taking tower damage, and whether creep aggro works for you or against you.

Where the waves meet is not the middle of the lane. In mid it is: the two sides meet at the centre of the map. In a safe lane the meeting point sits closer to the safe-lane team’s own tier-1 tower — which means the off-laner across from them meets the wave far from their own tower and close to the enemy’s.

That asymmetry is the structural reason the off lane is the hard lane. It is not a matter of the off-laner being outnumbered or the hero being weaker; the neutral resting place of the wave is simply somewhere worse for them, before anybody has done anything.

Two panels, both drawing a lane as a strip with your tower at the left and theirs at the right. The first shows the same lane in three states — the wave held near your tower, in the middle, and pushed up to their tower — with the first marked as the one this week recommends, and arrows underneath showing that attacking more pushes the wave toward their tower while denying or attacking less pulls it back toward yours. The second shows that the wave's resting place is not the lane's middle: on a safe lane you meet it near your own tower, in mid the waves meet at the centre of the map, and on an off lane you meet it close to the enemy's tower.

The resource lens

Space traded for safety. Holding the lane deliberately gives up map space in exchange for safety and clean last hits. You will spend the rest of the game making versions of this trade; this is the first time you make it on purpose.

Before the lecture

Valve’s in-game tutorial, section 1 — basic mechanics.

This week’s hero

Wraith King — Vampiric Spirit. It is the ability-shaped answer to “how do I stay in this lane longer”: lifesteal lets you trade health for last hits, and the skeletons give you some say over where the wave sits. Set it beside week 2’s Dragon Blood and the comparison is the point — two different solutions to the same problem, and which one you prefer says something about how you want to play.

This week’s item

Magic Wand. The first item that reads the enemy. Its charges come from the enemy spending spells, so it turns “what is the enemy doing” into something you can bank and spend later. Week 9’s information lens shows its face here for the first time.

After this week you can…

Teaching team