Bausen’s Law in LoL: what it is and the math behind it

What Bausen’s Law is

Bausen’s Law is a laning strategy where you die seemingly for no reason, but you’re actually shoving waves, stealing plates and farming more gold than the enemy gains by killing you. The result is an accumulated advantage for the one who keeps dying. It was popularized by player TheBausffs, famous for doing it on Sion.

The key is the balance, not the scoreboard. The chart shows it as a scale: on one side the gold you generate (plates, waves, tower); on the other, what you give the enemy in bounties. As long as the scale tips your way, you’re winning even if your KDA is a disaster.

It’s not “dying for free”: it’s trading cheap deaths for expensive objectives. It works because the map has gold that doesn’t depend on killing you —plates and towers are worth the same no matter how many times you fell— and that gold is harvested by whoever applies pressure. Where each coin comes from is in where gold comes from.

The math: why it works

The trick is two numbers moving in opposite directions. Your kill bounty starts at 300 gold, but it depreciates every time you die without generating value, down to a 50 floor. Meanwhile, each turret plate gives 120 local gold (all 5 = 600), and that number doesn’t depend on your deaths: it’s the same whether you fell 0 or 5 times. One important catch: that gold is *local* —split among nearby allies when the plate falls—, so you pocket it in full only when solo (more below). The tower itself gives little (50 global; the first adds 300 global once): the big laning-phase gold is plates and waves.

That’s the Bausen mantra: “every plate is a kill, every turret is two.” In raw gold a plate (120) isn’t a whole kill (300), but once your death has depreciated to ~100–150, a plate is worth as much as what you give by dying. There the trade is even or favorable: you hand over a cheap death and take an expensive plate.

There’s fine print too: dying costs experience and time, and feeding a snowballing assassin is dangerous even if the gold per death is low. Riot has been nerfing the strategy (bounty and plate tweaks each season), so the numbers move — but the principle (fixed map gold vs a depreciating bounty) still holds. How to turn that gold into power is in item buy order.

Plate gold is local: why solo split-pushing pays more

Here’s the key correction: not every plate nets you the same gold. Each plate gives 120 local gold, and local gold is split among all allies within 1200 range the moment it falls. Alone, you pocket the full 120; with an ally next to you, 60 each; with two, 40. The chart shows it.

That’s why Bausen’s Law lives on solo split-pushing: on a side lane, with no one to share, you take the full gold of every plate and every minion. It’s the purest way to squeeze the map’s local gold — and the reason the strategy is one player shoving a lane, not grouping.

And there’s a tempo bonus: shoving alone forces the enemy to send one or more people to stop you. Every enemy walking at you is one who isn’t at an objective or another lane. Your presence alone is worth more than your KDA.

Tempo, lane advantage and Sion’s passive

Tempo is a time advantage. When you shove the wave, the enemy has to react: if they don’t come, they lose CS and plates; if they do, they can’t leave to help their team. That window you steal you spend on whatever’s worth most — grubs, dragon, helping another lane, or recalling and teleporting back with nothing lost. More on this in map control and waves.

That’s why dying at certain points is an advantage and at others isn’t. A death right after the wave is already crashed under their tower costs you little CS. Dying when you were going to recall anyway is a free recall (and with Teleport you come back losing no tempo). And dying while you tie up 2-3 enemies is cheap if your team closes an objective across the map. What doesn’t help is dying for free in the middle of the map with nothing in return.

Sion is the poster champion for this thanks to his passive Glory in Death: on dying, he reanimates for a few seconds as a zombie with decaying health and huge attack speed, dealing damage based on the target’s max health. So in death he can still shove the wave, steal a plate or even get a kill. Sion dies “forward” and keeps generating — that’s why he’s the face of Bausen’s Law.

The underlying lesson: even at 0/5, if you deny the enemy’s tempo and harvest plates and waves they can’t contest, your gold and map advantage grows. The scoreboard lies; gold and tempo don’t. How to read that real advantage is in how to climb.

When NOT to use it

Bausen’s Law isn’t an excuse to die. It breaks if: you feed a snowballing carry (an assassin with 3 of your deaths stops forgiving anyone), if you lose more experience than you make up (being 2 levels down makes you useless in teamfights), or if the enemy doesn’t hunt you and simply farms calmly while you hand over deaths.

It works best with champions that push fast and are hard to kill cleanly (Sion, Trundle, wave-clearing tanks), and when your death ties up several enemies or trades you an objective. If you’re going to die, make it for a plate, a tower or a wave under their base — never for free in the middle of the map.

In short: it’s accounting, not madness. Keep track of what you generate vs what you give, just like in CS and gold per minute, and cut the strategy the moment the balance flips.