by Tristan Zheng in League of Legends | Aug, 11th 2018
Split-pushing is one of the miracles of League of Legends. Why? Because split-pushers can allow one person to single-handedly win the game by themselves, no matter what their team is doing or how they are doing. In the end, split-pushing depends on you alone and what you do.
If you don’t know what split-pushing is, it’s essentially pushing down a lane while your team fights off other enemies so that you can take the towers in a lane. If you do this for long enough, you’ll eventually reach their Nexus, but most teams are smart enough to back and try to stop you before that happens.
This lets you stay in the game, even if you’re behind, and opens up opportunities to take objectives like dragon and Baron Nashor. At the same time, if you lost lane, you can still split-push, making it something that’s possible to do even if you are behind.
Some split-pushers do the job better than others. In this article, I’m going to be giving you my top three split-pushers you’ll want to use. All three champions possess three things I find crucial to successful split-pushing: sustain, dueling potential, and wave-clear.
Without these three things, you’re essentially powerless and have little to nothing to be able to keep you in the game. I’ve used all three of these champions to the highest success possible and found little to no faults with them when it comes to split-pushing. Let’s get started!
Please note: This article will be in no particular order. All three of these champions are extremely strong and at the same level of effectiveness.
Top Split-Pushers
Trundle
Trundle, at one point, was so strong when it came to split-pushing that he was being played two out every three games on the competitive scene. While he may have also been a strong team fighter in more ways than one, it was his ability to run it down top that made him a threatening champion.
In fact, his entire kit is built around sustaining and dueling, two of the three key factors behind every strong split-pusher in the game and it was already built into his kit, meaning that he doesn’t need to waste gold to become a good split-pusher.
His passive allows for him to heal for a percent of his maximum health whenever a unit dies around him, up to 6%. While they may not seem like a lot, Trundle builds tank mostly, and that means that whenever he’s clearing waves, he could heal up to two hundred health back, meaning he’d be ready to fight within seconds.
His Chomp (Q) is not only an auto-attack reset that deals damage based offset base damage and scaling attack damage, activating Chomp and using it on a champion gives you extra attack damage while reducing their attack damage by half during the same duration.
Plus, with a cooldown of four seconds, this is a great ability to use for duels since it’s low cooldown, provides extra attack damage while also reducing their attack damage by half. The next piece of Trundle’s kit which makes him a great wave-clear champion is his Frozen Domain.
Essentially, Frozen Domain works such that it drops that a large target area, drastically increasing his movement speed and attack speed. Combine this with his Chomp and he’s going to be dealing damage twice as fast as he usually would, meaning that not only is this great for clearing waves because of the extra attack speed, he’s going to be dealing twice the damage.
Finally, his ultimate deals a large chunk of his opponent’s health as magic damage, healing for the damage while also reducing their armor and magic resist, making them prone to more damage during that duration.
This is perfect for long-scale duels against multiple champions because he’ll constantly keep healing and when you add his passive to the picture, you’re going to find that it’s going to be very hard to kill a Trundle.
Sure, he may not have wave-clear that is area-of-effect damage in his kit but buying a Tiamat and upgrading that to a Titanic Hydra or a Ravenous Hydra solves that problem within seconds. He can duel multiple players at once thanks to his ability to heal off of dead units, and his ultimate also heals back hundreds of health throughout the entire duration, extending his survivability.
Finally, the last piece of him which makes him extremely powerful as a split-pusher is that his Chomp (Q) works on turrets. He can chomp every four seconds, meaning that within the first ten minutes, he can take your turret without any problem and that’s an extremely big problem for any player.
Of the three pieces that make a split-pusher strong, Trundle excels behind two of them: sustain and wave-clear. Thanks to his Frozen Domain, he can clear waves efficiently, and he can clear them even faster if he grabs a Tiamat.
His sustain is dominant thanks to the passive that gives him extra health every time he kills a unit, or a unit dies around him. As he gets stronger and receives more health, this only gets stronger. Combine that with his ultimate, and you’ll have a champion that will be almost impossible to kill in a team fight.
Jax
Unlike Trundle, Jax does not have any sustain inside his kit unless you start buying items that can help you do so. However, he makes up for it with a busted dueling playstyle and wave-clear that is unfathomable.
Jax’s main kit works around four parts of him: his passive, his Counter-Strike (E), his Empower, and his Grandmaster’s might passive. His passive gives him bonus attack speed the longer he’s in battle. His Counter-Strike lets him dodge all auto-attacks for a certain period as well as take reduced damage.
His Empower (W) gives him extra damage whenever he hits you with his next auto-attack, and his Grandmaster’s might passive does the same thing, but on every third auto-attack, he deals. This makes him an extremely strong dueler.
Whenever he can get his passive stacked to its maximum level, he’ll be attacking twice as fast whether that’s at a turret or a minion or an enemy champion. Combine that with his Empower (W) which resets his auto-attack to deal it even faster and his Grandmaster’s might passive; he’s going to be outputting insane amounts of magic and physical damage on an unmatched scale.
Then, if things get a little tight, he can use his Counter-Strike to dodge all the auto-attacks someone sends at him. But there’s more to his Counter-Strike than that. Once his Counter-Strike finishes, he stuns everyone within the area, dealing physical damage as well.
Combine all of these, and you get a dueler who gets scarier the longer you fight him. He’s not only attacking you at nearly two auto-attacks per second, but he’s dealing crazy damage with the extra magic damage brought on by his Empower and his ultimate’s passive. Add on some damage items, and you’re not going to have a fun time top lane if you’re facing Jax.
Tryndamere
Both Trundle and Jax are ideal split-pushers, but they can also be huge in team fights as well. Jax has crowd-control and mobility to help get wherever he needs to in fights and Trundle’s ultimate is key to shredding down tanks.
However, when Tryndamere was released, his sole purpose was to be a split-pushing machine—one that could fight, sustain, and wave-clear faster than the others and that’s exactly what his kit does when it comes down to it.
Tryndamere’s Bloodlust (Q) heals him for however much Fury he has which he generates from attacking. As his Fury increases, he gains extra critical strike chance, meaning that in duels, the longer he fights, the more damage he’ll put out.
His Spinning Slash (E) gives him a little mobility by letting him dash forward and then dealing area-of-effect damage to everything around him that gets hit by the blade. Spinning Slash’s cooldown is also reduced every time he critically strikes.
Finally, the last big piece of his kit is his ultimate, Undying Rage (R), which grants him five seconds of being invulnerable to death while also giving him extra Fury instantly. That being said, his kit is like that of Jax’s dueling potential and Trundle’s sustain combined.
He has pretty strong wave-clear since his Spinning Slash is not only on a relatively low cooldown, its cooldown can be reduced every time he critically strikes, meaning that he can clear waves several times over thanks to his Spinning Slash coming up over and over again.
His Bloodlust (Q) also lets him stay in lane and sustain since, by attacking, he’ll regain health after casting Bloodlust (Q) which heals him based off of how much Fury he has and Fury can be gained by attacking.
Adding onto that, his passive increases his critical strike chance so that the more Fury he has, the higher the possibility of critically striking an enemy. This means that he’s going to naturally out-damage his opponents while also sustaining through the process via Bloodlust.
Finally, his ultimate, Undying Rage (R), gives him the ability to stay in the fight just a little bit longer and potentially get that kill that he needs. That way, if two people come in on him, he can take one out and use his Undying Rage to outlast the second player and look to take him out as well.
If Tryndamere was left alone, he could single-handedly take out the entire base by himself. He doesn’t require mana and can heal back all the damage taken within a few seconds. His Spinning Slash is always going to be up if he can manage to get enough critical strikes off and his ultimate will give him the perfect opportunity to try to secure the kill whenever he’s in a tight situation.
However, there are drawbacks to his kit. He isn’t as strong in team-fights since he has to be in the range of the opponents to be able to kill them. Sure, he has the mobility to gap-close onto his opponents, but if he gets crowd-control thrown onto him, then he’ll have a hard time using his kit to its highest level.
Of course, that’s why he’s a split-pusher, and he’s probably the best one in the game when it comes down to being able to sustain and wave-clear. Dueling-wise, he may be outplayed by names like Jax and Fiora but if you want a champion that can give you their worth, look to Tryndamere.
Conclusion
Split-pushing is a beautiful concept in League of Legends. It essentially lets you win the game without ever winning lane or team fights. This is because split-pushing is based on your ability to shove in waves and take towers, not out-duel your opponents or kill them in a one versus one.
Because of this, you’re going to want to choose a champion that can meet at least two of the three requirements: sustain, dueling, and wave-clear. All three of these are critical to any split-pushers success, and I’ve given you three champions who can do these three things flawlessly if put under the right hand.
One other big advantage to split-pushing is that it keeps your team in the game no matter what’s going on. There are little mechanics to it besides knowing when to push and freeze based off of your opponent’s movements, but those things are much easier to learn than team fighting at the highest degree.
That being said, I highly recommend that you take at least one of these champions and put them inside your kit. You never know when you might find a love for split-pushing and if you do, you can always choose one of these champions.
Jax is great at dueling. Trundle is perfect when it comes to sustaining, and Tryndamere was literally built to split-pushing when we get down to it. If you can at least master one of these champions, you’ll find that split-pushing will be one of the many ways you can help your team win the game, thus leading to you potentially climbing the ranking ladder of League of Legends.
