A couple additions to freezing the lane mechanics:
You can think of the minion wave as having both a force, and a resistance.
The waves each apply their force to each other, and it is offset by resistance.
y = your wave, e = enemy wave
F = force, R = resistance.
if (Fy - Re) > (Fe - Ry)
The wave will push to the enemy tower (how quickly depends on how much the left side is bigger than the right side).
If (Fy - Re) < (Fe - Ry)
The wave will push to the your tower (how quickly depends on how much the left side is smaller than the right side).
And most importantly:
If (Fy - Re) = (Fe - Ry)
The wave won't move.
The 'force' is the damage the minions can do.
Cannon minion has a lot of damage. Caster minions have a decent amount. Melee minions have very little.
The 'resistance' is how much HP the minions have.
A cannon minion has a lot, melee minions have a decent amount, and caster minions don't have very much.
To manipulate the wave, you need to adjust those variables.
How?
-
You can reduce the resistance of the enemy side by attacking or using abilities on the enemy minions. Note that even last hitting will do this (lets say enemy has 50 health left and you last hit it... that 50 health would have soaked up a few more minion attacks, you just pushed the wave a little by reducing the enemy wave's resistance by a bit.)
-
You can artificially act as resistance by tanking the enemy minions if you have no minions left. Running sideways can save a bit of your health while still leading them around. This is a good thing to do if you need to stop them from going into range of your tower.
Alternatively, you can do this by autoattacking your opponent while near their minions; their minions will attack you instead of hitting your own minions.
So, a couple tactics then:
- If the enemy wave is bigger than yours, and you want it to stay just outside your tower range:
a) If the wave is MUCH bigger than yours, kill off some casters (to reduce the force of their wave).
b) Once it isn't TOO much bigger (you'll have to practice to get a sense of the right size), only last hit, and try to do so as close to 0 HP as you can. (E.g., hit it when it has 10 hp left, not 70, if you can help it)
c) Due to being bigger, their wave will destroy your wave eventually. When this happens, you RUN INTO THE MIDDLE of the enemy wave to keep it from walking into your tower.
d) When your minions arrive, the enemy will engage them instead.
This costs you health, but if you have decent armor & lifesteal, you'll get it back. You can freeze indefinitely by doing this, so long as you try to ensure that the enemy wave keeps a lot of casters around.
Note that if the enemy wave isn't reasonably bigger than yours, this will not be able to last indefinitely--you'll slowly widdle their wave down in size until your wave is bigger, at which point you'll slowly push.
You want to find equilibrium where the enemy wave kills yours pretty darn fast, but not so fast that you can't tank them in between waves.
If they don't kill your wave fast enough, they'll get widdled down and you can't keep it up. If they kill it too fast, you'll take too much damage tanking them.
Note that in situations where the enemy wave is slowly widdled away, your side will build up a massive minion wave that will push forward very quickly.
- Resetting. If you push a wave into a tower (or the enemy wave hits your tower), a few different things can happen.
a) If there are no other minions around, the waves will RESET. This means the force & resistance will be completely equal in the next wave. (In which case minor bits of luck will determine who pushes--if on one side all 3 casters target a different melee minion, but on the other all 3 casters target the same minion, the side with the focus fire will push forward.)
b) If there are minions around (on the same team as the tower), they will get a bit damaged (they get focused over the tower). This will cause the wave to slowly push into the tower again.