Freezing a wave
Can someone give me some tips on learning how to freeze a minion wave? I know it's important to know how to freeze so you can farm safely and open up ganks for your jungler. I just don't know how.
5 Comments
If the enemy champion isn't there or is trying to freeze himself, you only last hit. Try to do as little damage as possible.
If the enemy champion is trying to push, you'll want to attack the cs too, but only so that you have a roughly equal amount of minions.
Ie, he uses Q on all the casters in the back, so you should kill 2 casters so you don't get shoved to turret.
Unless you're able to just tank the minions. Then tank the minions to keep them off turret instead of attacking them.
Pretty simple, freezing involves last hitting at the last possible moment and when you leave lane, don't push it out. Count what his wave consists of and if it's less, don't touch anything and if it's more, last hit a few to balance it. Freezing's just balancing waves.
If they push, top or bottom use bush vision to pop in/out of the bush to reset minions constantly (they practically stand still) keep them at your edge of the river without going into turret range, or tank them flat out just outside of your turret range.
Mid tank as many minion shots as safely possible until your minions can arrive to prevent the wave from fully pushing. no bush to weave from :(, but still...
Doing this with last hitting only guarantees not only will you be able to STAY in your own turret safety range, but if the enemy wants to fight you (and your jungler doesn't have the iq of a potato kappa 
), your jungler will be able to literally walk to your lane and get a kill.
The best tip I've had is that the enemy's minion wave should always outnumber yours. I think the number is 2-4 minion in the favor of the enemy minion wave. So I always shoot for 3. Easiest way is to clear out the melee minions on the enemy wave, and let the next wave crash straight in so your wave would be fighting 6 against 9, those 9 being 3 melees and 6 casters.
This may sound stupid, but make sure you're only last hitting, don't blow abilities on the wave, don't do anything to clear the wave faster, just sit there and take the final hit, no extra auto attacks or anything, and it should stay frozen for quite a long time.
If it's towards the mid game, or at any point you can take a bit of minion damage, maybe there's a shield from Janna or Karma in your lane, you can kill the melee minions and tank the casters to allow the two waves to meet where you want them to, typically right about in line with the river's walls coming into bot lane is a good spot to lock the minion wave, obviously mirror this for. It's out of tower range, but far enough that the enemy lane is easily gankable, and has a long way to run to escape.
In lower elo it's difficult to pull off a freeze, because if minions are remotely close to your tower, typically the jungler shoves it. I've had it where I froze a lane, but got dove, the lane freeze wasn't breaking any time soon, and the jungler comes by and sweeps up the full batch of CS, then doesn't push it all the way, and it freezes against me instead. It's a complete nightmare if people don't understand minion wave control.
Lasthit minions when they are just about to die and that's all you have to do in order to freeze your lane.