Trading Against Mages in LoL: Punish Spells Spent on the Wave

A mage's best spell can hit you or it can hit the wave. It can't do both, and every time it goes into the minions you get a free window the exact length of its cooldown.

Laning Guide

Trading Against Mages

Cooldowns, Waves and Windows

A mage's best spell can hit you or it can hit the wave. It can't do both, and every time it goes into the minions you get a free window the exact length of its cooldown.

It's a simple idea, and it's the one that makes mage lanes stop feeling like a shooting gallery. A melee champion or a marksman clears with basic attacks, which cost nothing. A mage mostly clears with the same buttons they'd use to hurt you, and they have to choose.

Why the Window Exists

Look at what the classic lane mages are actually spending when they shove a wave. At rank one, Xerath's Arcanopulse [Q] is on a 9 second cooldown. Syndra's Dark Sphere [Q] is 7. Brand's Pillar of Flame [W] is 10. Each of them also costs mana (80 for Xerath's beam at rank one), which early on is its own limit on how many casts a mage has before they're walking back to base.

So when the spell lands on the caster minions, you know two things for certain: it isn't coming at you for several seconds, and your opponent just paid for a wave with it. Walk up, trade, and be back out of range before it comes off cooldown.

The short rule: spell on the wave means step forward. Spell held while they last-hit with basic attacks means they're saving it for you, so stay back.

Watch the Right Spell

Not every spell a mage throws at the wave opens a window. What matters is the one that punishes you for stepping up, which is usually their crowd control or their longest-range poke.

Lux is the clearest example. If she clears with Lucent Singularity [E], she still has Light Binding [Q], and walking up into a 10 second root is the trade you'll lose. If she throws the binding at a minion, that's your window. And don't count on the wave to hide you from it either: the binding can hit two targets, so one minion in front of you only means you're the second.

The same logic applies to Brand, whose stun only comes from Sear [Q] hitting a target that's already burning, so one thrown at minions is your opening. Xerath's stun sits on a separate button from the beam he farms with. Learn which button is the dangerous one on each mage you face, and you'll know what to watch for.

The Mages Who Break the Rule

I went through sixteen mage kits for this, and it turns out very few of them get around it. Here's the short list that does:

Cassiopeia

Twin Fang [E] is on a cooldown of under a second. She pays mana to farm, a bit of it every cast, but she never pays a cooldown, so there's no gap to find.

Karthus

Lay Waste [Q] comes back every second. His real limit is mana, so this lane is about his mana bar rather than his cooldowns.

Anivia

Glacial Storm [R] is a toggle she can park on the wave, and it leaves her Flash Frost [Q] free for you. The storm clears, the stun waits.

Malzahar

His Void Swarm [W] Voidlings and Malefic Visions [E] do a lot of the wave work, which keeps Call of the Void [Q] in reserve more often than you'd like.

Orianna sits halfway. Her Command: Attack [Q] drops to a 3 second cooldown at rank five, so the window is real early and very short later.

Using the Window Well

Two things decide whether stepping up works. The first is the minion wave. Hit an enemy champion while you're standing near their minions and those minions turn on you, so the window is worth much more when their wave is small or already dying.

The second is timing. A mage's early cooldowns are at their longest, so levels one to three are when the window is widest (and when their mana is tightest). Count it. If Xerath threw his beam at the casters, you have about nine seconds at rank one, and most players take two and walk back without using the other seven.

The same idea shows up in how you should handle the wave itself. Our wave management guide covers freezing and slow pushes, and the minions guide goes deeper on exactly when minion aggro switches on and off. If the mage you keep losing to is in the bot lane rather than mid, we looked at that side of it in mages in the bot lane.

The Flip Side

Everything above works in reverse when you're the one playing the mage, and I think it's the harder half to learn. Every spell you spend on minions is a window you're handing to the laner opposite you. Last-hit with basic attacks when you can, keep your crowd control for the champion, and clear with the spell that doesn't matter.