Introduction
We will discuss on everything you need to know about How To Always Win Lane By Freezing In LOL.
Did you know that freezing lane is one of the best ways to recover a losing early game?
We will break this down in three main ways:
- How To Counter Lane Freezing
- How To Start Lane Freezing
- How To Maintain Lane Freezing
- How To Lane Freeze In Top and Bottom
I have used this tactic with great success in various elos generally in Gold and above as this is where I find it’s more useful. If you are playing a late game champion this guide will be of outmost importance to you and help you a lot with your early lane until you level up and scale into the game.
While the main focus here is in the longer lanes such as Top and Bottom we will talk about everything. Just keep in mind that freezing makes more sense and it’s much more efficient as a strategy if you are in the Top Lane.
What Is Freezing A Lane In League Of Legends
Freezing lane is basically the concept of you controlling the minion wave and keeping it either close to your tower if you are behind or close to the enemy tower if you are ahead and want to roam. Since freezing the lane closer to the enemy tower can be difficult most people refer to freezing when you are keeping it close to your tower to deny the enemy champion farm and to keep him at a vulnerable position such as over-extending.
How Do You Counter Freeze Lanes
While this depends on which lane you are in you can assume that the general concept is basically pushing the wave too hard by not allowing the enemy champion to counter and match the minions you are killing. Basically you have to do this either with spells and at the same time prevent the enemy of doing that.
While this may be impossible if you are behind as you will likely lose a massive trade and be forced back or straight up die to them it’s doable if you ask from help from your jungle. The idea is your jungle comes and helps you push the wave together to make the minion wave reset into the tower and go back to normal. This is by far the safest and easiest way to do it and it’s generally a well known concept in higher elos. If you are in a lower elo you may have to ask specifically your jungles to do it and explain it to them.
How to Freeze Lane in Top Mid and Bot Lane
Whenever players look to improve their play in League of Legends, they often think about what it means to carry a game. Usually, these players see that as the player with the most kills and the least deaths. This mentality will lead these players to focus on surface-level statistics and analytics like K/D/A. Unfortunately, League of Legends is not that simple, and there’s a lot more to winning a game and approaching it with a consistent play style and will work across games and metas that you’ll encounter throughout your climb!
Using KDA to Justify Playstyle
The better concept to consider is what approach you can take to consistently take an edge over your opponent early in the game that can snowball into a more considerable lead and, eventually, the game. The answer to this is in gold and experience denial. More specifically, in the gold and experience differential, the difference in gold and experience you can gather over your opponent. Of course, the most effective way to do this is with wave control, and ideally, freezing.
What Is Wave Management
Freezing is a wave management concept with the player manipulating the enemy wave to continually make contact with your spawning minion wave in a specific area. By doing so, when the player has priority over the lane area, they can easily transition this advantage into gold and experience denial.
How To Initiate The Lane Freeze
Freezing can be pretty complicated and is certainly a more advanced technique in League of Legends, but keeping an eye out for this opportunity and using it to your advantage creates immense amounts of pressure for the enemy to overextend. For the most part, this technique is only an option when you have a lead over your enemy, but when you’re behind if you can get assistance from a teammate to apply pressure and gain that priority, then freezing is a potential way to come back!
How Minions Naturally Meet
The most common method for initiating a freeze is minimizing your damage to the enemy minion wave aside from last hitting the enemies at the last moment. This method creates a push towards your side of the map when your enemy is also attacking your minions.
Once the waves collide at the ideal position, you’ll need to match the damage that the enemy is applying to your minion wave to keep the minions in the same position.
Unfortunately, even then, it’s not that simple. In addition to matching the pushing damage that the enemy is applying to your minions, you’ll also need to account for the fact that when minions collide closer to your base, your minions will reach the fight sooner!
As such, you’ll need to understand where the ‘sweet spots’ are in each lane. These sweet spots are where you’ll be confident knowing that the wave will freeze if you follow the previous rules, depending on how many more minions the enemy’s wave has!
Once the freeze is formed, the only way to break it is to increase or decrease your damage output compared to the enemy. Regardless of how long the freeze lasts, it will require the opponent to overextend and risk their life. The freeze creates an immediate pressure where the enemy will slowly bleed out and fall behind in gold and experience until they can break the freeze.
The best way for opponents to attempt to regain control and break the freeze on their own accord is with the assistance of their jungler or another teammate. While this is inconvenient for the player creating the freeze, when the enemy requests assistance to break the freeze, you’re drawing pressure away from other areas of the map and alleviating pressure off your teammates.
Enemy Requiring Aid to Break Freeze
How To Maintain the Lane Freeze
Depending on the lane you are in and the stage in the game, executing a freeze can be quite different. Early on in the game, when the first-tier towers are still alive, the general rule of thumb is to ensure the enemy wave has two to three more minions than your own, depending on where these minions are located in the lane. The closer you are to your own tower, the more likely you’ll need the three minion difference.
The exact positions where this freeze can occur are the same in both top and bot lanes but are different in mid lane. The featured image below shows the best places to freeze the minion wave, starting with the bot and top lane.
The Sweet Spots for Freezing with 1, 2, and 3 Minions
In the first example, there only needs to be one additional minion for the opposing team because the collision point of the waves is only slightly off-center. While this makes the frozen state easy to accomplish, it’s also much easier for the enemy team to overextend to break the freeze.
There must be two additional minions for the opposing team in this second example because the waves meet even closer to your turret. In this situation, you’ll likely be able to start denying some gold, but not necessarily experience.
For the most part, only gold can be denied in this setup because the player can position towards the caster minions where they can get a free trade whenever the enemy attempts to last hit or push to break the freeze. Despite likely being unable to get all of the minions, they will be able to stay within range to experience the dying minions.
The final example is the most common picture people have in their minds when they think of freezing. In this example, the player will hold three additional minions from the opposing team in this area because it can be frozen as close to the safety of their own tower as possible. In this position, it is extremely difficult for the player(s) that are behind to overextend to break the freeze or even absorb the experience from the dying minions.
In the mid-lane, things are slightly different because the lane is shorter! In addition, the mid lane can be vulnerable to both sides of the map, making it much more dangerous to try to pull a freeze or aggressively hold one without allies nearby and ready to help! Nevertheless, here is where you will ideally position the wave when there are three additional enemy minions.
The Sweet Spots for Freezing in Mid with 1, 2, and 3 Minions
What does Freezing Do
There are many things that freezing can help you achieve in your lane. Ultimately, the central concept behind freezing is to deny the enemies’ experience and gold, but it can also incorporate other facets of the game. The most common example is to freeze a lane when the enemy attempts to recall so that you can match their recall and not lose control over the wave.
As a byproduct of this strategy, you’ll likely cause the enemy to not recall out of fear that the lane will be frozen. In turn, this can cause them to overextend in even riskier situations where a gank would likely result in a kill. In this case, a kill while having the lane frozen allows you to recall for free and return to a state you were just in but with the added benefit of a free kill!
Freezing for a Free Recall
The other common strategy out of freezing is to control the wave to ensure you are safe when you are most vulnerable to a gank. For example, when junglers hit level three, they will likely look to gank a lane. If this is a vulnerable time for the champion you are playing, you will make ganking your lane incredibly unattractive by setting up a freeze. In fact, an even better situation will result in their jungler coming to your lane (wasting their first gank opportunity) just to help the laner break their freeze. If this happens, your jungler will have a massive advantage that can make it easy to track their jungler for the rest of the game and stay one step ahead of the enemy!
Freeze to Avoid Vulnerable Window for Ganks
Now, you may be wondering how this is impacted when your tier 1 turrets have fallen, and you still want to apply these principles. Luckily, freezing is still an option; however, you’ll need more minions and ideally only do this in the side lanes because the mid lane is often too highly contested, and the lane is just too short. In the side lane, you’ll again want to freeze the wave as close to your tower as possible.
In this area, you’ll need to experiment with the balance of your minion wave and the enemy minion wave and likely need to tank the minions between waves while your reinforcements arrive. While this may seem cumbersome, it can be a valuable tool for hyper carries and stacking champions to come back after a lost lane and potentially get ahead of their matchup (champions like Nasus, Kayle, Veigar, or Vayne, for example).
Holding a Wave to Freeze it Before Your Second Tier Tower
Conclusion
There are many positives to freezing lanes, and we have only scratched the surface. In your own games, it is essential to hypothesize about when a freeze is optimal and what the freeze will cause the enemies to do in response. If you can force them to make decisions, it will be easier to stay one step ahead. If they do not create a play to attempt to break the freeze, they voluntarily allow themselves to ‘bleed out’ in terms of resources. Although it’s not the flashiest of strategies, it works impeccably well and is one of the most consistent ways players can generate and snowball their advantages into victories!
What is your favorite lane to freeze?
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