Shoving waves, fixing lanes, waveclear, de-push, lane pressure, pushing waves... If you've ever read more than one sentence of Dota strategy, you've probably come across these terms. In fact, even if you've only read a single sentence of Dota strategy, it had better be about shoving waves. That's how important it is.
Why does Wave Shoving Lead to Victory?
Pushing waves is what the game is truly all about.
If you're ever not sure what you should be doing during a game, go and shove some waves.
By doing so, you:
Give your team information, because eventually an enemy is forced to show themselves to shove it back (if no enemy shows, you still get information because that means they must be making a move elsewhere)
Give your team space to take objectives elsewhere
Enable your creeps to deal tower damage
Make it harder for the enemy to just 5-man deathball down a lane, because shoved waves enable you to split push and force enemies to TP back or trade
Give you and your team space to farm neutrals
Lastly, when push comes to shove (heh), you need at least one of your creeps to approach the enemy base and enter the backdoor protection deactivation perimeter, or you simply won't be able to destroy the enemy tier 4's and ancient in order to win the game (unless you're in some ridiculous 60+ minute scenario involving Io and Divine Rapiers).
What Makes Heroes Good at Wave Shoving?
Wave shoving is one of the most important parts of any draft, and something that's not always obvious to players without competitive experience. To paint the picture clearly, imagine the following lineup:
Faceless Void carry with a support Bane
Sniper mid
Night Stalker offlane with a support Ogre Magi
Seems okay, right? It has a good variety of damage, lots of BKB-piercing disable, catch as well as teamfight, and even great vision. If they win their lanes, they could snowball to an easy win. But if they fall even a little bit behind, they are almost guaranteed to lose, because all these heroes have one thing in common - they're terrible at pushing waves.
Bane is straightforward; he's possibly the worst wave shover in the game, but why is Sniper not good? Shrapnel is AoE and he also buys Maelstrom, right? In order to understand why, we need to go over the different aspects of wave clearing.
Imagine, what would the best possible waveclear hero hypothetically be?
This unreal SuperWaveKiller3000™ would be able to clear any creepwave on the map, instantly, without expending any mana or cooldown, globally from the safety of their fountain, while also scaring away any enemy trying to push it back, and being able to join any fight or skirmish at any time.
That leads us to seeing the characteristics of wave shoving very clearly:
The 5 Characteristics of Wave Shoving
1. Speed
This is the most important one, because it determines how many waves can actually be cleared in a set amount of time, and therefore how much map control the hero can gain for his team given an opening of limited time (e.g. key enemy heroes dead for 50 seconds).
It's also directly tied to safety, since the longer it takes to kill the wave, the bigger the opportunity for the enemy to react and catch you. As a support Bane, it's not really worth it to take 20 seconds (heroes with such low speed essentially have no waveshove) to kill one wave deep in enemy territory and then just get killed, but as a support Jakiro it's definitely worth it to take 3 seconds per wave (high speed - good waveclear), kill several waves and pressure a tower deep in enemy territory, even if you get killed afterwards.
Lastly, when it comes to generating pressure on the map by pushing in creepwaves, wave shoving speed is also amplified by mobility. For example: Spirit Breaker, Timbersaw and the Spirit heroes are not only able to wipe out creep waves quickly; they also have the ability to travel between lanes fast, making them excellent for the job. Of course, this strength is somewhat kept in check by them generally having lesser potential for building damage.
2. Safety
How difficult or easy is it for the enemy team to catch and kill you while you're clearing waves? For example, a hero like Ember Spirit can safely push waves anywhere on the map, as long as there's no instant catch and sufficiently long chain disable on the enemy team, because all he needs is a split second window to use his zero cast point Sleight of Fist and then Fire Remnant the hell outta dodge.
Furthermore, heroes like Bristleback or Tidehunter may not have any escape spells, but they can be farmed enough to not be threatened by any fewer than 3-4 heroes, at which point it can be safe for them to push waves anywhere on the map as long as they have vision of 1 or 2 key enemy heroes.
Conversely, while a hero like Lina or Sniper might be able to make quick work of a creep wave from a large distance, they are quite vulnerable to getting caught since they are not inherently tanky, don't have great escapes and generally prefer to sit back and not get jumped in the first place. While this makes them excellent at sitting on their high ground and defending their base, they are not ideal when it comes to actually crossing the map and safely applying pressure on multiple lanes.
3. Resource Cost
There are two types:
Immediate resource costs (mana, cooldowns, position and movement on the map)
Prerequisite resource costs (levels and items necessary for your hero to reach a certain wave shoving capability)
In other words: what cooldowns and mana does it cost you to clear a wave, and more importantly: how many items and levels do you need before you can shove waves fast while also making sure you have your full arsenal available in the case of a fight or skirmish?
For example, Ember is arguably the best wave shover in the game, being able to do it for a low mana cost and cooldown with high global mobility, at a long range while being invulnerable - but he still needs some items and levels to get to the point where a single Sleight of Fist is enough to immediately kill a wave. Still, even with just a Maelstrom and a maxed out Sleight of Fist, he is already one of the best.
Faceless Void with Mjollnir and Aghanim's is similarly great, but how many levels and other items does he need, and how easy is it for him to get there? Faceless Void with only Power Treads and Mask of Madness is a terrible wave shover. More on this under heading 5, General Power.
Lastly, do you need to expend moderate to long cooldowns in order to waveclear efficiently? Far too many Gyrocopters and Monkey Kings use their Flak Cannons and Boundless Strikes with zero thought just to take one wave, and are then heavily gimped for 20 or 22 seconds, unable to fight at full strength.
4. Information Cost
How much information are you giving the enemy team by clearing a wave? If you see a Medusa shoving waves top, you can safely attempt a fight anywhere else that's not near a tower because the Medusa cannot be there, meaning the enemy team will be fighting without their carry.
You can push a tower bot and force the Medusa to TP to defend, at which point she is now stuck farming bottom next to her team and without a TP, meaning you can do whatever you want anywhere else on the map. If you then TP top to take Roshan, her team has to try and contest you without her, or the Medusa has to waste her time running there instead of pushing waves or farming (she won't be able to run there in time if you execute this well).
So, even though Medusa is very speedy at shoving waves, does it safely because she's hard to gank, and her resource cost is low (no mana or cooldowns expended)... She is giving away a lot of information by doing so because she is immobile and because she's a core, meaning her team is unlikely to attempt any moves without her. Her information cost is very high.
This is why Manta Style is a common item on Medusa and many other carries - the two illusions deal less damage, are much easier to kill, and last only long enough to help kill 1 wave - however, they do so while giving away far less information; you know the Medusa is somewhere nearby and that her Manta is on cd, but you don't know if she's now farming the jungle, running to shove another lane or connecting with her team for a smoke.
Compare Medusa to an Ember in all these scenarios - also hard to kill, also shoves waves fast, also impactful in fights - but far more mobile. If you see the Ember pushing waves top, he may just TP somewhere and jump on you not even 10 seconds later. To build further on this strength, mobile heroes like Ember can also buy BoT earlier, at which point seeing the Ember anywhere doesn't really tell you anything anymore since his team can be anywhere else and he will be able to join them. At this point the Ember's information cost is close to zero.
Lastly, there are heroes that can clear waves from a long distance without showing themselves, such as Zeus, Pugna, Shadow Demon, Keeper of the Light, Winter Wyvern, etc. Now, you can obviously still see the spell effects or projectiles and their direction, meaning that even if you can't see the hero you can tell where they are, but the important distinction is that they're not showing themselves on the minimap. Even tier 1 professional players cannot possibly monitor every single creepwave they have on the map to be on the lookout for someone sniping it from the trees. They will still notice it occasionally of course, but they usually won't. The lower the level of players you're facing, the less likely it is that they will, the bigger your informational advantage.
5. General Power
If a hero that's shoving waves meets an enemy hero that also wants to shove the same wave, which of the two will be forced to go back or bring allies?
Consider an Outworld Devourer, for example. He's a core with lackluster wave shoving speed that also gives away a lot of information by showing himself on creep waves - however, he's also usually able to force more of the enemy team back, since most supports will have a hard time keeping their creeps alive and pushing a wave back when facing OD; he can solo kill them quite easily, while they definitely do not threaten him. Even some two-hero combinations may not be safe against him, since he can Astral one guy and kill the other. Similarly, Windranger is one of the best solo killers in the game.
On the other hand, a support hero like Jakiro can shove waves quickly but is rather weak and often has fewer levels and items, meaning nearly every enemy can force him back; many heroes can solo kill him, and pretty much any two-hero combination can definitely kill him. However, being a support, his information cost is naturally low. In fact, Jakiro often doesn't even mind dying, because in the process of bringing two heroes to kill him, the enemy team is revealing the position of those two - still a net information gain for Jakiro's team, especially if he also shoved some waves and forced the enemies to move there in the process, while his team can be doing whatever they want.
A farmed Void is a good example of a generally powerful hero, because when he's ahead he can solo-kill pretty much anyone (including cores) with Chronosphere, multiple heroes are not necessarily enough to make pushing back against him safe since he can obviously Chrono more than one, and he is quite mobile meaning if you do bring back a lot of heroes to safely defend versus him, actually catching and killing him is still difficult.
Cue Loda: "Is that balanced?"
Yes, because his prerequisite resource cost is absolutely massive - I'm sure we've all had plenty of matches where Faceless Void was simply irrelevant and lost the game long before he got to the point where he's level 20+ with 4-5 big ticket items.
The pinnacle of this is the old Morphling who, when farmed enough, was able to blaze through creeps and buildings, jump into 5 heroes, kill one or two and just Replicate into his ultimate's illusion on another lane, ready to do it all over again.
What About Last-hitting & Getting Gold and Experience?
This is the least important aspect of wave shoving, which is something that many players struggle to understand - for all heroes except the position 1, (and even for that hero sometimes) the main goal of shoving waves is not to gain gold and exp; the goal is to make sure that the enemy creepwave dies quicker than yours, so that yours advances. This means that using a nuke to kill only the ranged creep and bring the melees to half hp, and then running away is still a good move - you still pushed the wave.
Getting only 40g and 40exp but killing a creepwave is going to have a much bigger positive impact on the game than getting 200g and 200g exp from neutrals instead. Why? If you're not sure, you haven't been paying attention - the introduction already explains it!
But okay, you can also check out the full wave shoving hero tierlist [COMING SOON]
What's next?
You have finished the article and are already likely to see an improvement in your gameplay and MMR - share it with your friends now so that you can play better Dota together!
To improve further, check the following:
Read my other articles here (if there is any topic you'd like to see, please join my discord and tell me there!)
I hope you found this article informative and I look forward to hearing your feedback! Unfortunately this platform requires you to sign up in order to like & leave a comment, which of course is a hassle, but I would still appreciate it big time. So much so, that I would give a free mini-course to anybody that comments and likes all articles.
Thanks for getting this far, and remember:
Always make the enemy react to you, instead of you reacting to the enemy!