I noticed this last night during an Alterac Pass game. The first objective was between bottom and middle lanes. When the objective was starting I had pushed our top lane so both team’s minions were full waves meeting in the middle - no towers down, no forts/keeps down in either of those lanes.
The fight over the objective was long and both teams were taking time in between to soak mid and bottom waves, but neither team went top at any point. After the objective, I noticed that our top minions had pushed to their cannon towers and had destroyed them.
I also notice when creating a custom game and just hanging around that lanes will naturally push in favor of one side. What causes this? Is it intentional?
It’s caused by asymmetry. No matter what, one minion wave will start the dmg first or just deals more affective dmg due to some beneficial positioning or domino effect.
It’s usually “who shoots first” (it’s Han Zolo).
Minions will randomly have their AI beat the other teams AI.
They’ll path a bit better, and it will happen over and over sometimes for one side until it wins.
I suppose it technically is intentional, as one could code the AI to not let one side win over a certain amount of time, but the difficulty in eliminating all edge cases would be insane.
Part of it is intentional so that games naturally head towards an outcome if no intervention is taken.
It also is balanced because when one side hits the towers, the opposing side builds up then pushed all the way back to their towers and the cycle then repeats.
Sooo… does that mean every lane on every map has a “preferred” team so to speak?
I mean, I would understand 1 or 2 minions from a wave surviving and then walking up and dying to the towers, but I’m having a hard time understanding how “equal” lanes could allow one side to actually push through the towers/gate on their own.
nope!
If you did enough games, you would get closer and closer to 50% of which team wins which lane on which map.
This is something that can be automated to test, so if there are “favored lanes” that would be concerning.
they’re equal at the end of everything.
But if, say, due to pathing, a ranged minion on one side spends 10 seconds walking back and forth not attacking, so one side wins, than both minion groups come again, and the winner has more, so they win again, and after the third wave, you have 10+ minions at full HP going to damage towers/walls.
It’s not just about which side shoots first, but what they shoot at.
If the minions stack in a way so on one side spreads their shots, while the other ends up focus firing, that could influence it also.
I think it might be slight differences in terrain that cause them to arrange differently.
Okay, I understand this, but I’m trying to mentally play it out in my head and I can’t see this scenario happening. Let’s say you’ve got bad pathing, so one range minion isn’t attacking like you mentioned. That side loses the fight. Doesn’t the winning side push up to the losing side towers and die with almost no damage and then the next minion waves meet again on relatively even terms?
I guess that obviously isn’t the case, but it’s what my brain thinks should be happening. I remember way back when I used to watch championships the teams would try to slow down the first minion wave and I never really understood how that worked. I kind of assumed it was poppycock until last night when I saw a lane naturally push through a gate with no player intervention.
Like Planar said, even if 1 side’s minions are favored by random chance in one game, it equals to 50% in the long term over millions of games.
Neither the red or blue team’s AI is inherently statistically favored to get a one up on the enemy archer, mage minion etc., it depends on pure luck if you leave them to fight it out.
That is a legitimate strategy (at the very highest MMR). It makes it harder for the enemy fighting in the middle to collect the first wave of EXP from you, and easier for you to collect theirs (their wave will be close to your gates, as will yours)
Ahh, so the idea behind that is to fight under your towers so enemies couldn’t soak the exp? It wasn’t like a way to manipulate the lane in your favor?
Yes - you could think it’s an insignificant advantage, but small things like that (body blocking your first wave so enemy has difficulties killing them, as they will be under your towers instead of middle of the lane)
really add up in professional games where games are often very close between teams and there are rarely any big stomps.
It also makes the team doing it reach level 10 slightly faster.
This strategy is unseen and irrelevant in 99,99% of games played in lower MMR though.
it depends, because minion waves take a while to kill each other, often if there is no hero, the minions won’t be done fighting when a new wave shows up.
Due to generally it JUST being the archers fighting, the melee minions have to path around their allied archers.
This can create lopsided battles, where one side has it’s archers firing on the enemy archers, which causes that side to get ahead:
Now, I forgot to pause, so it fast forwarded while I was typing, but a 3rd wave entered the fight on both sides, and the red team ended up winning with almost all their archers from those fights alive, and got damage on the towers.
yea, it really is one of those odd things.
Just the timing of the “next wave” is timed in a way that the fight should keep happening, and one side getting a small advantage can turn into a big push.
Not for minions but there are for some other things. Infernal Shrines is in favor of left side because their bruiser is less likely to die on their own while right side often walks into turret range.
Cursed Hollow siege from bot right side may attack mid keep if minions pile up and give them vision, but top left side doesn’t unless forced via forcewall or something else that alters path. I can only assume their pathing was done manually rather than mirrored which causes this. It makes them less likely to end game but at same time they can threaten keep. You can manually trigger this by shooting hanzo scout arrow, Tyrande owl or other vision ability to give vision on mid keep as giants are walking near close to former bot keep.
Hanamura favors right side but this is purely because players have agreed to 4 man bot as the standard. It lets right side to get turret and they can use it to invade left samurai if they so choose. Likewise right Samurai is safer because it’s deep into their area away from the 4 man group hence longer to rotate for enemy.
None of these things are particularly major but against ignorant opponents they can give further advantage to one side. For example Hanamura you could always force 4 man to be top as left side if you got superior siege to turn the advantage in your favor. Camp pathing generally won’t make much difference either way since other team will or should clear them anyway.
Even though I do kind of agree Hanamura favors Right team because of the social rules governing hots (solo laner is top, it’s just something agreed upon, their Samurai is top, plus it will get a ton more value against a solo laner than against 4 enemies like on bottom lane)
I think the other maps you mentioned are a bunch of baloney. There’s no advantage of any sort on CH or Shrines.
I appreciate you taking the time to point out what is happening. I didn’t know the next wave normally enters the battle before the first wave is done fighting, so now I understand how one side can pile up and push with a large group onto the towers. I can see this knowledge actually being very valuable in the late game when teams aren’t watching lanes quite as closely. I think the next chance I get in late game, I’m going to try pushing one of my lanes to mid and then just picking off 1-2 of the enemy minions to see if I can get my lane to snowball on it’s own. It would be interesting to see if I could create extra pressure on a lane while spending less of my time outright pushing it.
you’re most welcome!
Another “random hint” before I move onto Lyras, is that if you want your wave to stack, you’re better off killings enemies ranged minions over melee minions. As ranged minions deal more damage and die faster.
To add a bit more responding to Lyras now:
the funny thing about some of these “aids” are they can do the opposite!
Because Azmo’s general kills some minions outright, and buffs your allies damage, it can sometimes result in your wave reseting the lane in the short term by causing the wave that they push with to die at towers and the lane to “reset” to the next waves on each team meeting in the center.
Azmo’s general is better used for it’s bonus damage on already stacked waves, generally speaking.
The left team have a very short way to get to their samurai while right have to go across to get it.
Also the 4 stack with samurai can be a lot more agressive while pushing with it. For example, you always want to push with the objective, not the other lane to get more value from it.
