A slow push is when you control a wave so it slowly builds momentum toward the enemy turret. You last-hit only, leaving extra enemy minions alive on purpose. Each surviving enemy minion adds another attacker to their wave, but your reinforcements arrive faster than the wave can resolve. After 2-3 waves, you have a giant minion stack rolling toward their tower while you recall, roam, or set up an objective. Slow push is the highest-leverage wave state in the mid game because it converts time spent in lane into a free crash later.
How a Slow Push Forms
The mechanic is simple but counterintuitive: to push slowly, you do less, not more. Stop using abilities on the wave. Stop auto-attacking minions that aren't about to die. Just last-hit.
Because you're only last-hitting, every enemy minion that survives keeps attacking your wave. Your minions die a little faster than theirs, so the wave drifts toward the enemy side. But the next reinforcement wave arrives every 30 seconds (every 25 seconds after 14:00, every 20 seconds after 25:00) and merges with the wave already in progress. The merged wave is bigger and pushes harder than either wave alone. The wiki describes the math clearly: how much a wave pushes is a function of the minion health and number advantage at the wave line over the time advantage. Keep the advantage small but positive, and the wave snowballs across multiple cycles.
The key word is slight. A big advantage clears the wave fast, the minions hit the enemy tower, and the wave resets to the middle. That's a fast push, not a slow push. A slow push needs you to leave the enemy melees alive and only kill the casters first (casters do most of the wave's ranged damage, so killing them is the gentlest way to keep your edge). Some players reverse this and last-hit melees first to build the push faster. Both work; the trade-off is how many waves you have to babysit.
Cannon Wave Timing
Cannon (siege) minions are the spine of any good slow push. They're tankier than regular minions, deal more damage, and turrets prioritize them above melees and casters. A wave with a cannon minion in it forces the enemy turret to spend extra shots on the most durable target while the rest of your wave eats turret HP for free.
| Game time | Cannon spawn rate |
|---|---|
| 0:00 - 14:00 | Every 3rd wave (first cannon at 2:35-ish) |
| 14:00 - 25:00 | Every 2nd wave |
| 25:00+ | Every wave |
The early-game pattern is what most slow-push setups revolve around. Three waves with one cannon among them is the standard "stack and crash" rhythm. Start the slow push two waves before the cannon spawns; cash in on the cannon wave itself. The accumulated wave is large, the cannon tanks turret shots, and you have a clean recall window while the enemy laner deals with the crash.
Past 14 minutes, cannons spawn every other wave, which is why slow pushing scales harder into the mid game. You can chain crashes. Past 25 minutes, every wave has a cannon and slow pushes resolve almost immediately, which is part of why the late game becomes a slot-machine of side-lane minion crashes.
The Payoff: Cashing In a Slow Push
A slow push isn't valuable on its own. It's valuable because it lets you do something else without losing CS or tower HP. The three main cash-ins:
- Recall window. The wave crashes into the enemy tower while you're back at base. The enemy laner has to either eat tower shots clearing it or lose the entire wave to their tower. You arrive back in lane on a fresh wave with full mana and items.
- Roam. Crash the wave, then walk to the next lane. The enemy laner is stuck under tower farming the crash. You get a 4v3 fight elsewhere on the map for free.
- Lane shove for safety. A crashed wave bounces back toward your side. You get the next minute of farm safely near your own tower. This is the reset button when you're low on HP and your jungler is on the other side of the map.
The numbers attached to a slow push are real. A 2-3 wave stack at 15 minutes represents roughly 230-350 gold of denied enemy CS plus whatever turret damage the wave deals. That's a meaningful fraction of an item component, free, every time you set one up.
Slow Push vs. Freeze vs. Fast Push
All three wave states use the same lever (minion health and number advantage), just at different settings:
| State | Advantage | Wave moves... | Use it for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Freeze | Slightly negative (enemy has more) | Stays near your tower | Denying CS, gank setup |
| Slow push | Slightly positive | Slowly toward enemy tower | Recall timing, roam, dive setup |
| Fast push | Heavily positive | Fast toward enemy tower | Tempo right now (recall now, roam now) |
The most common mix-up is between slow push and freeze. They look similar at a glance because in both cases you're only last-hitting. The difference is where the wave starts. If the wave is on your side and you only last-hit while the enemy out-numbers your wave slightly, you're freezing. If the wave is roughly even and you only last-hit while you out-number theirs slightly, you're slow pushing. For the full freeze breakdown, see our guide on freezing.
The mix-up between slow push and fast push is the opposite problem. A fast push uses every ability and auto to clear the wave as quickly as possible. The wave hits the enemy tower fast, you leave fast, and the wave bounces fast. A slow push deliberately leaves enemy minions alive and accepts that you have to stay in lane through 2-3 wave cycles. Slow push is patient; fast push is impatient. Both are correct in different situations.
When NOT to Slow Push
Slow pushing locks you into lane for 60-90 seconds. That's a long time in League. Don't slow push when:
- The enemy jungler is bot-side. A slow push leaves you visible in lane, low on the map, with a wave that telegraphs exactly what you're doing. If the jungler shows up, you either die or burn flash. If you can't track the jungler, default to a fast push or a neutral wave.
- You can't trade with the laner. Slow pushes assume you can stand in lane and last-hit safely. If you're losing every short trade, your opponent can shove your wave through you, and the slow push becomes an unfreezable wave that crashes into your tower instead of theirs.
- The enemy can roam to an objective faster than you can cash in. If Dragon spawns in 40 seconds and your slow push needs 60 to crash, you're throwing free pressure to the enemy team. In that case, fast push and rotate now.
- You're already ahead and want the game to end. Slow pushing is patient. If you have a kill lead and good items, a fast push that lets you take a tower or roam for another kill turns tempo into structures. Slow push when you need a window. Fast push when you can already end the play yourself.
- Your support or jungler will overhit the wave. Bot lane slow pushes die when the support chunks the wave with poke abilities. If you can't communicate, just fast push and accept the simpler plan.
How to Break an Enemy Slow Push
If the enemy is slow pushing into you, you have a narrow window before the wave gets too big to clear safely. Two options:
Chunk the wave without pushing it back. Use one or two AoE abilities on the wave to kill the back-line casters but stop short of clearing the entire wave. This shrinks the enemy's number advantage without flipping the wave state. Done right, the slow push stalls and the lane drifts back to neutral. Done wrong, you push the wave hard, it crashes into the enemy tower, and you've handed them a free reset. The trick is partial wave clear.
Hard shove it past their tower. If the wave is already too big to chunk, the only answer is to commit fully: use everything you have to clear the wave faster than they can build it. The wave crashes into the enemy tower (now a fast push, not a slow one), the tower kills your minions, and the wave resets to the middle. You'll be low on HP and exposed to a gank, so ward first.
Letting the wave crash and farming it under your own tower works as a fallback. Turrets reduce minion HP before your last-hit, so a competent player can convert most of the crash into CS rather than tower damage. You lose tempo, but you don't lose gold. This is the right play when both shoving and chunking are too risky.
The Takeaway
Slow push is the most rewarding wave state to learn because it converts time you'd spend doing nothing into pressure you cash in later. The execution is small (last-hit, leave melees, watch the cannon timer) but the result compounds: free recalls, free roams, free turret HP. It also has the steepest skill expression of any wave state because the timing windows are narrow and the failure modes are real (jungler shows, laner outpushes you, objective spawns mid-stack).
If you only learn one wave-management skill this season, learn this one. For the broader picture of when each wave state fits, see our wave management guide.
