League of Legends (LoL) Question: Lane freeze.

At first, lets remember the mechanics of minion waves. Creeps spawn every 30 seconds, and they take 20-30 seconds to reach each lane (mid lane 20, side lanes 30). Minion waves consist of 6 minions each, and every 3rd wave spawns an additional cannon minion: much stronger than the normal caster minion. When minion waves clash, the first three minions stand in the front (frontline minions) and the last three minions stand a little back (backline minions). The back-line minions are the support points of each wave. Every point and click ability (as of s8) draws minion aggro. Minions form a half-circle around a tower when they siege objectives. When you're freezing lane, you want your first wave to clash with the sieging half-circle. You want your next wave of reinforcements to arrive BEFORE you have finished clearing your sieging minions so that your next wave is empowered. Generally, if you want to push lanes you want to weaken the enemy backline minions, stopping only to last-hit the front-line minions. If you want to freeze your lane, you want to ONLY last hit minions and NOT poke the enemy with spells. It will both draw minion aggro, allowing your lane to push in and forcing you to take damage, and it will scare your opponent off, defeating the purpose of setting up minion pressure on yourself.

Usually, one freezes a lane in order to ease some of the lane pressure on them. When you freeze lane, it means you want minion wave clashes to happen on your side of the lane. Powerful laners like Sivir or Caitlyn will constantly be hitting minions, trying to get a creep advantage and pushing lane into tower. Weaker laners like Twitch or other late-game scalers will try to freeze lane by ONLY last hitting minions and letting the enemy wave push. The advantages of pushing your lane are obvious: you can siege tower early on, and your opponent's farm is much more restricted than yours (farming under tower is NOT easy). However, freezing lane allows you to resist the pushing of the enemy laner, and to just wait them out until you hit your powerspike in midgame. Although farming while pressured is hard, it is doable with good timing and (if you're playing ADC) good help from your support. Also, enemy pushed lanes allow easy ganks from your middle laner or jungler.

Not all champinos who freeze lane are late-game scalers. Many people who let the enemy wave push in are waiting for the next allied minion wave to hit the enemy wave while they are under tower. With the momentum gained from the minion clash under tower, your empowered minion waves (with your help) will be able to push the whole way into tower. 12-15 caster minions are a deadly tool, and with those minions you are almost guaranteed a tower. A pushed in lane and a bit of damage on your tower is well worth it if you succeed in allowing your minions to group up correctly. Of course, pushing your lane like this will be impossible against a strong early game wave clearer like Dr. Mundo or Fiddlesticks.

To summarize, reezing lane is a gambit. You give up some laning pressure in the hope that you'll end up with a creep/objective advantage in the near (or not so near) future. Make sure to keep studying minion aggro formulas and other characteristics. Good luck!

If you are freezing a wave you want a creep disadvantage. This is because of the law of "backup". If a wave is pushed towards one side of the map and both waves are even, eventually the wave will push towards the opposite side of the map. This is because a new wave will crash earlier or later depending on the location and travel time of waves.

Once you aggro caster minions (ideally in the yellow zone) you must ensure that two caster minions are alive once the enemy wave has crashed. You also need to ensure you last hit properly; early last hits could deny enemy minions from an auto-attack to maintain a freeze. If your wave begins pushing, push towards the yellow/blue zones without tower hitting your wave. The law of "backup" will apply again and you'll find enemy reinforcement will push the wave towards you.

This graphic may be outdated (I'm unsure how minion waves have changed) so I usually account for an extra minion to ensure what I want to accomplish.




Good luck and stuff.

If you watch any of these videos, it should help out.

Phylol

Professor Akali