Four states, four sets of allowed plays
The wave has a position and a direction, and together they give four states worth naming. Each one permits some plays and forbids others, and most lane deaths in a review are a play attempted in the wrong state.
- Pushing toward the enemy. Your minions outnumber theirs and the wave is moving to their tower. You can trade, because their reinforcements arrive later than yours. You can dive with help. You cannot roam or reset without losing the wave to their tower.
- Pushing toward you. Their minions outnumber yours. You can farm safely near your tower. You can reset after the wave crashes. You cannot trade aggressively, because their wave adds damage and blocks your retreat. You cannot roam.
- Frozen near your tower. The wave sits still on your side. You can farm forever and the enemy must overextend to contest. You cannot leave, because the freeze breaks. This is the state that punishes an enemy's overextending, and the state you should want when behind.
- Frozen near their tower. The mirror. You are the one who has to overextend to farm. This is the state that produces the deaths tagged overextending, and the correct play is usually to give up the farm and reset.
What it looks like in your footage
The recording shows the wave, and the coach reads it: how many minions of each colour are on screen at the decision point, and which way the line is moving. The wave-state tag goes on moments where the play was fine in principle and wrong for the wave.
- A trade under the enemy's minions. The player starts a fight with more red minions than blue on screen. The trade is even on champion damage and lost on minion damage.
- A roam with the wave pushing out. The player leaves the lane with their own wave stacked near the enemy tower. The tower takes the wave and the plates; the roam gains less than that.
- Farming a wave frozen near the enemy tower. Every minion costs a walk into range of an enemy who has the reset behind them.
Why wave state gets misread
The wave is on screen the whole time, so the information is never missing. It gets misread because players count champions and not minions. The eye tracks the enemy laner; the minion line is background. Three habits fix that:
- Count minions before every trade. Not exactly. Just: are there more of mine or theirs. If theirs, the trade is worse than it looks.
- Note the direction before every roam or reset. If the wave is moving toward the enemy tower, leaving costs the wave. If it is moving toward yours, leaving costs nothing yet.
- Ask which freeze you are in. If the wave is sitting still, someone is being punished for farming. Make sure it is not you.
The one change
This is slower than instinct for a few games and then becomes instinct. The payoff is that a whole category of deaths disappears, the ones where the player did the right thing at the wrong wave.
A drill for your next five games
At each of your own deaths, before you respawn, look at the wave on the death screen. Count minions of each colour and note the direction. Say the state. Most players find that a majority of their lane deaths came in states two and four, and that they had not once considered the wave before making the play. That recognition is most of the fix.
How the coach catches it
Leaguio Coach reads the minion counts by colour on the decision frame and the direction of the line over the previous seconds. It tags wave state when a trade, roam or reset was made in a state that forbids it. The storyboard shows the decision frame, so you can count the minions yourself, and the readout under it says what was measured. The tag sits alongside overextending when the state was a freeze near the enemy tower, and alongside recall timing when the reset broke a wave that was about to crash.