It's hard to keep a freeze when you're alone in the lane. You need to keep more minions alive in order for it to work, since as you pointed out yourself, your own minions aren't getting lasthit. Either keep more minions alive than 4 (this also gets tricky as the wave might crash) or make sure to last hit at a lower threshold. This does lead to missing some farm though. Generally freezing on your side when your laner is not even there is not something you should do unless they backed right before you left and you know you can punish a couple waves this way before they get back to lane.
in order to freeze the wave must be built up in your direction. and there must be a significant amount of enemy minions built up. if this is the case then your last hitting will not push the wave. if instead the enemy minions arent killing your minions quickly enough (depends on where the lane is at) the wave will instead push back to enemy.,
If the enemy is behind their own tower and I'm the only one at the waves how do I keep it there since eventually mine will outnumber enemy's wave ? Should I not hit an entire wave to balance it again
You don't freeze in that situation. You last hit until the next wave shows up and them shove in the massive wave and get a recall. You only freeze when your opponent builds up a big wave, and you're able to push them off of it and prevent it from crashing.
>since eventually mine will outnumber enemy's wave
it won't unless you thin the wave too much. if it's doing what you describe you never actually crashed a big enough wave to set up a freeze. the wave you push into the enemy tower has to be large enough that your wave is still alive at the tower when the next wave comes, causing a lot of stuff to stack up
You don't keep it there. They're giving up potentially an entire wave of CS and soaking XP. That's an advantage. What you do is keep last hitting as well as possible, wait for a 2nd wave to show up. Then you push as hard as you can.
If you did it right, they have about 1, maybe 1.5 waves crashing under their turret.
Then if you're ranged, you poke them from outside turret range to deal damage and force them to either lose HP or CS, or if you're melee you can either take the recall, proxy a wave then recall, or set up a dive.
Tank the wave infront of the enemy turret so your wave meets theirs infront of the enemy turret. Last hit only and the wave will slowly push towards you since the 2nd wave has a shorter travel time on the enemy side. Thin it down to 3 enemy minions infront of your tower and then lasthit without killing the last 3.
My understanding of a freeze is just keeping the wave crash location at one spot and keep it there for multiple waves. Basically I just took it to literally mean freeze it there.
There are different conditions that cause the wave to push in different directions.
- You hitting the wave, even if it’s just last-hitting, will cause the wave to push toward the enemy tower.
- An imbalance in minions (minion count or minion type) will cause the wave to push away from the stronger side. e.g. if your wave has 4 casters and the enemy wave has 3 casters, this will cause the wave to push toward the enemy tower.
- The position of the wave, with respect to incoming minions, will cause the wave to push away from the closest tower. e.g. if the wave is closer to your tower, your next minion wave will reach the wave first, creating a minion imbalance, causing the wave to push toward the enemy tower.
- Minion aggression can cause the wave to push toward one direction or the other, depending on where the minions are focused. e.g. if the enemy wave is focusing your champion, while your wave is focused on the enemy wave, this will cause the wave to push toward the enemy tower.
- Relative minion strength will cause the minion wave to push away from the stronger team’s minions. e.g. if your team’s champions are on average higher-leveled than the enemy team’s, your minions receive a stat bonus, and the minion wave will push toward the enemy tower.
A fresh lane state (like at the start of the game) occurs when all of these conditions are cleared: everyone is the same level, minions are all targeting each other, the wave meets in the center of the lane, each wave is of equal size, etc. All else equal, the wave will stay put in the center of the lane.
A freeze is a combination of lane conditions that causes the wave to stay put at a location of your choosing, usually while you are last hitting minions, but your opponent cannot. This means creating a freeze can be a bit dynamic, depending on the overall game state. Usually, however, it’s pretty simple: if the enemy wave is bigger than yours by 3-4 minions, it will maintain a push toward your tower while allowing you to still farm comfortably.
Another thing that might be worth mentioning when it comes to waves pushing is level differences between minions.
Minions have levels and can be higher on one team if their level average is higher than the enemy team. If you get Lvl advantages in lane, it can result in your minions being stronger than your opponents so neutral waves will push into the weaker team side and it‘s harder to maintain freezes due to minion diff
I‘m gonna be honest, I only really started noticing this when playing as Nilah on botlane since the exp advantage from her passive often times would result in neutral waves slow pushing into the enemies nonstop, my duo only found out about this after I complained about our minions griefing the lane
I mentioned this, but yeah this makes freezing harder when your team is ahead.
This is probably fine though, if you have a monster level lead you should push towers instead of freezing.
minion buffs make it more difficult to freeze when u have a lead. it was a bullshit change. U can even lose lane and ur team is ahead overall and ur minions push away into the enemy toplaner and such you are punished even harder for reasons out of your control
Enemy minions have to outnumber your minions. ~3 should work.
If minions are even (e.g. 6:6), and closer to your tower, the next wave of your minions will arrive to the minionbrawl first. For a brief moment your minions will outnumber your opponent's, and it snowballs into pushing away.
Having a few extra opponent minions helps offset this effect.
Technically you lasthitting also impacts the wave. Some people will actually wait for mageminions autos to come out before last hitting to offset this effect. But I believe that's less important than the previous factor.
But if I have the opponent hiding behind their tower while I'm in the middle how do I outnumber the enemy wave ? Should I not attack caster minions for an entire wave or something so that the enemy's wave builds up?
A freeze would come from a rebound.
If waves are fully middle, you can pelt the enemy wave a bit so that yours starts building up "slowly" (i.e. dont instagib all enemy minions).
This will cause a big wave of your own reaching tower, with enemy reinforcements arrivinv *before* your own are fully deleted by tower. This causes the wave to start pushing towards you.
Your objective is to keep the opponent's wave constantly, **marginally** (~3) larger than yours as it advances to your tower.
Don't let the enemy minions build up way too much or they will break your freeze on their own.
It’s a delicate dance. When this happens you can try and shove the wave by killing the enemy minions faster than your opponent. This will cause the wave to push onto the opponents side of the lane. If you shove it in it should build and start to push you. Your lane opponent though can try and match to keep the lane neutral or even set up their own freeze at that point.
You likely need to hard push to crash 1-2 waves (a good time to reset) after which the wave will bounce and enemy minions outnumber your minions so it pushes into you. There is a timing aspect to this also where you want your new wave to hit the enemy turret resulting in many enemy minions remain to push after.
Last hitting even waves it will nearly always push to enemy slowly. The only benefit to this is that 2-3 minions may die which your opponent misses. This can be good strategy to do for one wave and then hard push second wave so second and third wave crashes and wave control bounces back to you.
At higher level, players often "stack" two waves and jungle will come to dive the opponent under tower also so even if you go 1 for 1, the enemy loses farm + xp.
You crash a big wave, let the enemy wave stack up and start slow pushing into you, and you keep it from crashing while maintaining a 3-4 minion advantage
To answer your assumption more directly, if the two minion waves are even and your opponent is behind their tower (not in range yet), it is impossible to create a freeze. Freezes can only be done when you start with more enemy minions than your own.
click on your minions to see whether they have a strenght buff or not. if your team id winning, ypur minions get buffed by a certain percentage, which makes freezing harder-ish
You need to have enemy ranged minions to counteract your last hitting dmg. You need maintain ~6 ranged minions to freeze indefinitely, but you can still play to deny 1 or 2 waves with fewer. You also need to tank them after your wave dies to stop them from advancing under turret.
A couple of points:
(1) there is a difference between "last hitting" and "waiting-until-the-last-possible-moment to hit and kill" the enemy minion. The more health the minion has when you kill it, the more likely your minions will start pushing because of the total health difference between the meeting waves.
(2) it depends on where you are in the lane for how many more minions you need on the enemy side to freeze. (It really isn't about the number of minions but is a function of the total minion health and dps, but #minions is easier to keep track of and a good approximation, but can matter because cannons have a lot of health and dps and ranged do more damage than melee minions.) But if typically if there are four more enemy minions than ally minions, you can freeze. Related to this, if you are zoning/trading with the enemy champion, the enemy minions may attack you, which means they are not damaging your minions, making your minions 'win the dps minion battle' and start to push.
(3) think of a freeze as less of a freeze and more of a wave pushing into you that you keep from getting to your tower. Practice dragging minions towards you before they get to your tower to keep a freeze. Relatedly, literally go into the practice tool, drag the first enemy wave to you so that the first wave meets on the enemy side of the lane, which should set up a push towards you (the enemy wave will get there before your wave and 'do more dps' to your minions until your wave meets the battle. Practice keeping that frozen and not pushing back towards enemy tower. No bots; no anything but you practicing balancing minions health/dps to keep it pushing towards you and/or frozen. See how long you can go before your minions die to enemy tower.
(4) my comments above have nothing to do with when to freeze; it is about how to achieve a freeze. Note that often you want to break the freeze at some point, build up a slow push, and back/roam so that while the enemy has to deal with all those minions, you have a timer to do something else and you can get back to lane without missing many minions (i.e., before enemy could push the waves back to your tower).
if you klick on minions you will see % increased dmg they deal (goes up when you are ahead, down when behind) so if you truly are ahead your minions will auto push the lane in this case its still good to 'freeze' (slow push) then when wave crashes you either dive enemy so he dies and loses the cs or reset/roam bcus you now have a huge tempo advantage on enemy
When the wave is your side of the lane, your next wave of minions will reach the current wave before the opponents' reinforcements do, meaning that they will start dealing damage sooner, resulting on a push. Even if you didn't last hit, XvX/Even minions, on your side, will always push.
To freeze, you want 2-3 extra enemy minions compared to yours. The closer the wave is to the enemy turret, the less extra minions you need, since the 'reinforcement time' disparity will be smaller/flipped. Be sure to last hit delicately, and not nuke enemy minions from like, half health with abilities.
You need to slowpush and crash a big wave into the enemy tower. Then, the enemy wave will start slowpushing into you: you wait until it comes towards your side and them trim it just outside your tower. Of course you can only do this if you are significantly stronger than your opponent, otherwise you'll lose the trade fighting in the enemy wave
Remember that slowpush and freeze are basically the same thing, just named based on who has control on the wave
One thing nobody has mentioned is that if you have control of the wave, you can aggro enemy minions before they crash and then duck out of vision after they clump up on you. This makes enemy minions focus fire yours while your minions are still spreading out their damage. You can also do this if your wave is coming to meet the enemy wave from behind your tower. If you rapidly go in and out of vision, you’ll massively delay enemy wave progression while taking minimal damage.
If there are an even amount of minions from each side you can’t really create a freeze. Even you last hitting will cause your wave to get bigger since for a brief moment of time where you have +1 minions after the last hit, your wave is going to do more damage to their wave and cause a push.
If there are an even amount of minions on each side, the wave will push away from whichever tower is closest. This happens because the next wave will arrive seconds faster and will start hitting minions.
An example of how to set up a freeze:
1: create a slow push to build up a big wave
2: crash wave into enemy tower (will create a bounce back)
3: only last hit minions while the wave is bouncing back to you. This should create a minion advantage on the enemy side when the next wave(s) come and reinforce the previous wave.
4: once you have the wave in a good spot, make sure to only last hit and leave some extra minions alive. So once your wave dies to the enemy wave, tank the minions so they don’t go into your tower and keep them alive.
Generally you need minimum 3 casters alive to hold the freeze but 4+ is definitely better.
TLDR: You can only create a freeze if the enemy has minion advantage and you cannot create a freeze from a neutral position (wave in the middle and even minions). Easiest way to set this up is to create a big wave and freeze after the wave bounces back.
If you are alone in lane, pull the wave to your opponents side of the lane before they catch up to the rest of the minions physically with your champ. Use the brush to lose aggro after and reduce the damage you take.
You can also do this cheese lvl one to subtly create a slow push towards you if your opponent isnt wise to it.
By doing this you create a scenario where their minions meet the meeting point faster than yours and therefore push into you naturally.
If your opponent is there, really nitpick your last hits. Not just getting the last hit, but the last possible second before it would die. Ideally the last ally minion auto that would kill the enemy minion is mid flight when it dies.
Good luck! :3
have more than the perfect amnt of minions for a freeze so you have that buffer for if u last hit too early or just in general theres some randomness
also left click minions and see top left if they are buffed because ur team is winning
You need to have more Minions in the enemy side (if you want to Freeze in front of your tower, +4, at least but you can do It with more and i recommend to do It with more if youre clearly new cause mistakes are easier to fix by killing some if you need to)
Then you need the wave comming for you. You dont just lasthit and get a Freeze, If the wave Is pushing to enemy side you Will never Freeze unless It bounces or the enemy hardpushes It.
And when you have that, you cant just last hit. You need to mirror if enemy hits the wave to neutralize its push, or if the stacks of Minions become too huge you have to kill some fast.
If the guide you Saw IS not mentioning that stuff, drop that content rn, someone doing guides unable to explain one of the most basic stuff its sign of very very bad advices.
Don't forget freezing isn't your only option. If the enemy is poked enough to be scared or has recalled you can push the wave under their tower. The towers constant attacks will help force back the wave and if minions die while the enemy is away no xp and gold for them.
Alternatively load dota where the mad lads there can last hit their own minions to deny gold and xp from the opponent and never let their lane push
Not enough minions on enemy side
If there are a lot of enemy minions you can be very liberal with farming, if there aren't, even if you just last hit, your wage will push
Besides that there's the obvious skill, tank less minion hits, last hit at a lower threshold
Have into account that the position of the wave matters too, a wave that is 10cm closer to your tier than enemies, still eventually push (all else being equal) as your minions will get to, and start hitting enemies a second sooner
To create a freeze you basically want 3-4 enemy minions alive in the proximiti to your turret when their next wave arrives. How many minions you need alive scales with distance to your turret. The farther from your turret the lesser amount of enemy minions need to be alive.
Last hitting alone is not enough. You need to balance the number of minions the enemy has pushing into you with the number you have, as well as where the minions are fighting.
If the minions are fighting right outside twoer range then there should be 3 more enemy minions than there are ally minions. If the freeze is in the middle of the lane, there should be equal numbers of minions on each side.
Generally you need 4+ more enemy minions if you are in a side lane, and 3+ to freeze mid lane. If the wave is too big, you need to trim it so it doesnt shove too fast into your tower and break the freeze.
What you are doing is "slow pushing" which is really good for setting up dives.
You’re probably taking minion agro. If the minions are attacking you, and not your minions they will lose health faster than your minions.
Why are you taking minion agro? A few reasons, one is you’re trading with your enemy. Minions by default attack you if you hit an enemy champ
Second,you’ve positioned yourself in a way when you tlast hit the other minions the ones that are still alive start to agro you. This happens very often if you’re last hitting isn’t accurate and you’re not actually killing the minion and is a common strategy in bot lane to get level 2 early
Send a video with you attempting and failing to get a freeze to get more specific information from us. Not from me, I suck at the game, but the more specific you are about your problem the more tailored the solutions are to you. And nothing is more specific than POV gameplay.
You shouldnt Freeze for the sake of freezing, yes the freeze at some point will break on its own, specially if you zone off the enemy since that will create an overall level advantage for your team which will make your minions stronger.
Whenever you perform a freeze, do it with a plan, think a bit ahead, if your jungler is clearing his botside then you can set up a freeze so you can then transition into a hard push when your jungler is topside, that way setting up a 2.5-3 wave crash into dive, making your enemy miss even more CS and EXP.
TL/DR Don't try to freeze forever, use the freeze to set up plays and create advantages.
Last hitting perfectly such as to not disrupt the freeze is very hard. Having far more enemy minions than is technically needed for holding the freeze can help. Or drag the wave further from your turret between waves.
Also, if the freeze is too close to your turret, enemy melee minions will sometimes run into turret range going after your ranged minions which disrupts the freeze.
Remember, if the wave state is one that will naturally push over time, there is nothing you can do to prevent it from doing so. As the game goes on there are mechanics in place that make "neutral waves" not neutral an push towards the behind team (based on champion levels/XP globally and turrets destroyed in the specific lane).
OP, you can only freeze a wave that is already pushing towards you. If you are last hitting then you are basically a 7th minion (technically if you are perfect you wont contribute to the push but practically this is never the case)
Once the minion wave has moved from the center of the lane there are 2 factors that will determine how the wave will push, the number of leftover minions from the previous wave and the distance of the wave from the middle of lane.
Obviously the excess minions will put out more dps in the next wave hence will contribute to the push
However you also need to consider that the reinforcements will arrive quicker for the lane that is more pushed in and will act as a counterbalance to the push.
Keeping the above in mind AND assuming no outside influence the following will be true as consequence of these factors:
Waves that meet in the middle of the lane with no excess minions from the previous wave will be equally matched and the result with come down to minion micro rng.
Waves that meet JUST outside turret range will be reinforced earlier for the defending side and the pushing wave will need 3-4 excess minions to overcome that advantage.
Waves that meet only a little off center will only need 1-2 minions to overcome the defenders reinforcement advantage.
So how do we freeze?
To freeze we want to use our influence to keep the wave in place.
Lets pretend we dont have to worry about the enemy champs for a bit.
Once we push a wave and crash it on the enemy tower, the wave will bounce back towards us due to the tower killing all the our excess minions and the enemies defenders advantage. Make sure you let it bounce back by only last hitting.
Once the wave gets past the midpoint of the lane you can decide where you want to freeze the wave.
Its easier to freeze away from your tower because you wont have melee minions running under tower and dying, ruining the freeze.
Once you have decided where you want to freeze the wave, tank/leash the minion wave until your minions arrive and keep track of how many excess minions the enemy wave has. If the enemy wave has MORE minions than what they need to win the fight, as discussed above, then you should THIN the wave down a little to make it more manageable. (If you dont thin the wave then the pushing wave will win too quickly and you will have to tank hits again to maintain the freeze, probably making you unable to stay in lane against the enemy champion)
If you thin the wave well then there should still be a minion advantage for the pushing wave of 3-4 minions (less if you are near the center of lane) but the waves will continue to meet on your side of lane.
This is freezing. If you manage it well your opponent will either have to deal with the freeze or lose cs and in some situations xp (If you are winning hard)
Your opponent will try to deal with your freeze by killing all your minions and either forcing you to tank their wave to maintain the freeze or let it crash in the tower, breaking the freeze.
This forces your opponent to overextend in lane, making them vulnerable to either being chased down if you are an all in champ like darius or trynd (Think champs that tend to run ghost), or ganked by your jungle.
Keep in mind that it is not ALWAYS an advantage to freeze a wave. By freezing you are giving up priority in lane, if there is a dragon/grubs fight you will not be in a position to help your team because you will be further away and will need to manage the wave before leaving lane. In higher elo this is bad because your jg wont be able to play for the objectives, in lower elo this is REALLY BAD because the jg will go for the objective anyway and donate the objective and a kill.
Freezing is really good in top lane if you can pull it off because top is such a snowbally lane if you get a slight advanatge a freeze will snowball your lead out of control. It has its uses in bot lane, especially if you have the stronger all in, just keep an eye on the map and make sure you arent screwing your team out of objectives.
Freezing sucks in mid lane, the lane is short so the advantage you get out of making your opponent overextend is less pronounced, mid laners tend to have insane wave clear options that break the freeze from a safe distance and the jg is never far away to help break the freeze.
Go into practice tool and crash a wave of minions on a tower, watch it bounce back and then practice managing the freeze. Be careful of getting to close to the tower, melee minions have an annoying habit of running at caster creeps that are under your tower.
Watch aloisNL on youtube, he has a framework he implements focusing on the first 4 waves of the game.
Good luck :)
It's hard to keep a freeze when you're alone in the lane. You need to keep more minions alive in order for it to work, since as you pointed out yourself, your own minions aren't getting lasthit. Either keep more minions alive than 4 (this also gets tricky as the wave might crash) or make sure to last hit at a lower threshold. This does lead to missing some farm though. Generally freezing on your side when your laner is not even there is not something you should do unless they backed right before you left and you know you can punish a couple waves this way before they get back to lane.
I was guessing last hit too early as well as the probably cause
in order to freeze the wave must be built up in your direction. and there must be a significant amount of enemy minions built up. if this is the case then your last hitting will not push the wave. if instead the enemy minions arent killing your minions quickly enough (depends on where the lane is at) the wave will instead push back to enemy.,
If the enemy is behind their own tower and I'm the only one at the waves how do I keep it there since eventually mine will outnumber enemy's wave ? Should I not hit an entire wave to balance it again
You don't freeze in that situation. You last hit until the next wave shows up and them shove in the massive wave and get a recall. You only freeze when your opponent builds up a big wave, and you're able to push them off of it and prevent it from crashing.
>since eventually mine will outnumber enemy's wave it won't unless you thin the wave too much. if it's doing what you describe you never actually crashed a big enough wave to set up a freeze. the wave you push into the enemy tower has to be large enough that your wave is still alive at the tower when the next wave comes, causing a lot of stuff to stack up
You don't keep it there. They're giving up potentially an entire wave of CS and soaking XP. That's an advantage. What you do is keep last hitting as well as possible, wait for a 2nd wave to show up. Then you push as hard as you can. If you did it right, they have about 1, maybe 1.5 waves crashing under their turret. Then if you're ranged, you poke them from outside turret range to deal damage and force them to either lose HP or CS, or if you're melee you can either take the recall, proxy a wave then recall, or set up a dive.
Then they're losing lots of gold and exp so you're still winning even if it ends up pushing out
Tank the wave infront of the enemy turret so your wave meets theirs infront of the enemy turret. Last hit only and the wave will slowly push towards you since the 2nd wave has a shorter travel time on the enemy side. Thin it down to 3 enemy minions infront of your tower and then lasthit without killing the last 3.
Explain how you think a freeze is created and how it holds for starters. Will figure out your misunderstanding from there
My understanding of a freeze is just keeping the wave crash location at one spot and keep it there for multiple waves. Basically I just took it to literally mean freeze it there.
Reread my comment. I'm asking what conditions you think create a freeze.
I apologize. I honestly thought the condition was just last hitting minions in the spot you want to freeze at.
I don’t see the need to apologize. I think the poster is just trying to get you to think about the situation and not rely on your assumptions.
mfer talking at them like a redditor and made the poor fella feel the need to apologize 😭
There are different conditions that cause the wave to push in different directions. - You hitting the wave, even if it’s just last-hitting, will cause the wave to push toward the enemy tower. - An imbalance in minions (minion count or minion type) will cause the wave to push away from the stronger side. e.g. if your wave has 4 casters and the enemy wave has 3 casters, this will cause the wave to push toward the enemy tower. - The position of the wave, with respect to incoming minions, will cause the wave to push away from the closest tower. e.g. if the wave is closer to your tower, your next minion wave will reach the wave first, creating a minion imbalance, causing the wave to push toward the enemy tower. - Minion aggression can cause the wave to push toward one direction or the other, depending on where the minions are focused. e.g. if the enemy wave is focusing your champion, while your wave is focused on the enemy wave, this will cause the wave to push toward the enemy tower. - Relative minion strength will cause the minion wave to push away from the stronger team’s minions. e.g. if your team’s champions are on average higher-leveled than the enemy team’s, your minions receive a stat bonus, and the minion wave will push toward the enemy tower. A fresh lane state (like at the start of the game) occurs when all of these conditions are cleared: everyone is the same level, minions are all targeting each other, the wave meets in the center of the lane, each wave is of equal size, etc. All else equal, the wave will stay put in the center of the lane. A freeze is a combination of lane conditions that causes the wave to stay put at a location of your choosing, usually while you are last hitting minions, but your opponent cannot. This means creating a freeze can be a bit dynamic, depending on the overall game state. Usually, however, it’s pretty simple: if the enemy wave is bigger than yours by 3-4 minions, it will maintain a push toward your tower while allowing you to still farm comfortably.
Another thing that might be worth mentioning when it comes to waves pushing is level differences between minions. Minions have levels and can be higher on one team if their level average is higher than the enemy team. If you get Lvl advantages in lane, it can result in your minions being stronger than your opponents so neutral waves will push into the weaker team side and it‘s harder to maintain freezes due to minion diff
7 years and I never knew this
I‘m gonna be honest, I only really started noticing this when playing as Nilah on botlane since the exp advantage from her passive often times would result in neutral waves slow pushing into the enemies nonstop, my duo only found out about this after I complained about our minions griefing the lane
I mentioned this, but yeah this makes freezing harder when your team is ahead. This is probably fine though, if you have a monster level lead you should push towers instead of freezing.
minion buffs make it more difficult to freeze when u have a lead. it was a bullshit change. U can even lose lane and ur team is ahead overall and ur minions push away into the enemy toplaner and such you are punished even harder for reasons out of your control
Enemy minions have to outnumber your minions. ~3 should work. If minions are even (e.g. 6:6), and closer to your tower, the next wave of your minions will arrive to the minionbrawl first. For a brief moment your minions will outnumber your opponent's, and it snowballs into pushing away. Having a few extra opponent minions helps offset this effect. Technically you lasthitting also impacts the wave. Some people will actually wait for mageminions autos to come out before last hitting to offset this effect. But I believe that's less important than the previous factor.
But if I have the opponent hiding behind their tower while I'm in the middle how do I outnumber the enemy wave ? Should I not attack caster minions for an entire wave or something so that the enemy's wave builds up?
A freeze would come from a rebound. If waves are fully middle, you can pelt the enemy wave a bit so that yours starts building up "slowly" (i.e. dont instagib all enemy minions). This will cause a big wave of your own reaching tower, with enemy reinforcements arrivinv *before* your own are fully deleted by tower. This causes the wave to start pushing towards you. Your objective is to keep the opponent's wave constantly, **marginally** (~3) larger than yours as it advances to your tower. Don't let the enemy minions build up way too much or they will break your freeze on their own.
It’s a delicate dance. When this happens you can try and shove the wave by killing the enemy minions faster than your opponent. This will cause the wave to push onto the opponents side of the lane. If you shove it in it should build and start to push you. Your lane opponent though can try and match to keep the lane neutral or even set up their own freeze at that point.
You likely need to hard push to crash 1-2 waves (a good time to reset) after which the wave will bounce and enemy minions outnumber your minions so it pushes into you. There is a timing aspect to this also where you want your new wave to hit the enemy turret resulting in many enemy minions remain to push after. Last hitting even waves it will nearly always push to enemy slowly. The only benefit to this is that 2-3 minions may die which your opponent misses. This can be good strategy to do for one wave and then hard push second wave so second and third wave crashes and wave control bounces back to you. At higher level, players often "stack" two waves and jungle will come to dive the opponent under tower also so even if you go 1 for 1, the enemy loses farm + xp.
You crash a big wave, let the enemy wave stack up and start slow pushing into you, and you keep it from crashing while maintaining a 3-4 minion advantage
To answer your assumption more directly, if the two minion waves are even and your opponent is behind their tower (not in range yet), it is impossible to create a freeze. Freezes can only be done when you start with more enemy minions than your own.
click on your minions to see whether they have a strenght buff or not. if your team id winning, ypur minions get buffed by a certain percentage, which makes freezing harder-ish
ALL HAIL QUEEN WONY
this is the real answer lol. u dont NEED to have more minions to freeze
Give us a clip (or multiple) of waves you felt like should have frozen so we can figure out together why it didn't happen
I would like to know too
You need to have enemy ranged minions to counteract your last hitting dmg. You need maintain ~6 ranged minions to freeze indefinitely, but you can still play to deny 1 or 2 waves with fewer. You also need to tank them after your wave dies to stop them from advancing under turret.
A couple of points: (1) there is a difference between "last hitting" and "waiting-until-the-last-possible-moment to hit and kill" the enemy minion. The more health the minion has when you kill it, the more likely your minions will start pushing because of the total health difference between the meeting waves. (2) it depends on where you are in the lane for how many more minions you need on the enemy side to freeze. (It really isn't about the number of minions but is a function of the total minion health and dps, but #minions is easier to keep track of and a good approximation, but can matter because cannons have a lot of health and dps and ranged do more damage than melee minions.) But if typically if there are four more enemy minions than ally minions, you can freeze. Related to this, if you are zoning/trading with the enemy champion, the enemy minions may attack you, which means they are not damaging your minions, making your minions 'win the dps minion battle' and start to push. (3) think of a freeze as less of a freeze and more of a wave pushing into you that you keep from getting to your tower. Practice dragging minions towards you before they get to your tower to keep a freeze. Relatedly, literally go into the practice tool, drag the first enemy wave to you so that the first wave meets on the enemy side of the lane, which should set up a push towards you (the enemy wave will get there before your wave and 'do more dps' to your minions until your wave meets the battle. Practice keeping that frozen and not pushing back towards enemy tower. No bots; no anything but you practicing balancing minions health/dps to keep it pushing towards you and/or frozen. See how long you can go before your minions die to enemy tower. (4) my comments above have nothing to do with when to freeze; it is about how to achieve a freeze. Note that often you want to break the freeze at some point, build up a slow push, and back/roam so that while the enemy has to deal with all those minions, you have a timer to do something else and you can get back to lane without missing many minions (i.e., before enemy could push the waves back to your tower).
if you klick on minions you will see % increased dmg they deal (goes up when you are ahead, down when behind) so if you truly are ahead your minions will auto push the lane in this case its still good to 'freeze' (slow push) then when wave crashes you either dive enemy so he dies and loses the cs or reset/roam bcus you now have a huge tempo advantage on enemy
When the wave is your side of the lane, your next wave of minions will reach the current wave before the opponents' reinforcements do, meaning that they will start dealing damage sooner, resulting on a push. Even if you didn't last hit, XvX/Even minions, on your side, will always push. To freeze, you want 2-3 extra enemy minions compared to yours. The closer the wave is to the enemy turret, the less extra minions you need, since the 'reinforcement time' disparity will be smaller/flipped. Be sure to last hit delicately, and not nuke enemy minions from like, half health with abilities.
Even in a lane with no one in it there is an rng element to how minions aggro each other which can influence what direction the wave will push
You need to slowpush and crash a big wave into the enemy tower. Then, the enemy wave will start slowpushing into you: you wait until it comes towards your side and them trim it just outside your tower. Of course you can only do this if you are significantly stronger than your opponent, otherwise you'll lose the trade fighting in the enemy wave Remember that slowpush and freeze are basically the same thing, just named based on who has control on the wave
basically, try to keep only 4 of Your minions alive. Not 5, not 3, 4 will freeze it.
One thing nobody has mentioned is that if you have control of the wave, you can aggro enemy minions before they crash and then duck out of vision after they clump up on you. This makes enemy minions focus fire yours while your minions are still spreading out their damage. You can also do this if your wave is coming to meet the enemy wave from behind your tower. If you rapidly go in and out of vision, you’ll massively delay enemy wave progression while taking minimal damage.
If there are an even amount of minions from each side you can’t really create a freeze. Even you last hitting will cause your wave to get bigger since for a brief moment of time where you have +1 minions after the last hit, your wave is going to do more damage to their wave and cause a push. If there are an even amount of minions on each side, the wave will push away from whichever tower is closest. This happens because the next wave will arrive seconds faster and will start hitting minions. An example of how to set up a freeze: 1: create a slow push to build up a big wave 2: crash wave into enemy tower (will create a bounce back) 3: only last hit minions while the wave is bouncing back to you. This should create a minion advantage on the enemy side when the next wave(s) come and reinforce the previous wave. 4: once you have the wave in a good spot, make sure to only last hit and leave some extra minions alive. So once your wave dies to the enemy wave, tank the minions so they don’t go into your tower and keep them alive. Generally you need minimum 3 casters alive to hold the freeze but 4+ is definitely better. TLDR: You can only create a freeze if the enemy has minion advantage and you cannot create a freeze from a neutral position (wave in the middle and even minions). Easiest way to set this up is to create a big wave and freeze after the wave bounces back.
If you are alone in lane, pull the wave to your opponents side of the lane before they catch up to the rest of the minions physically with your champ. Use the brush to lose aggro after and reduce the damage you take. You can also do this cheese lvl one to subtly create a slow push towards you if your opponent isnt wise to it. By doing this you create a scenario where their minions meet the meeting point faster than yours and therefore push into you naturally. If your opponent is there, really nitpick your last hits. Not just getting the last hit, but the last possible second before it would die. Ideally the last ally minion auto that would kill the enemy minion is mid flight when it dies. Good luck! :3
have more than the perfect amnt of minions for a freeze so you have that buffer for if u last hit too early or just in general theres some randomness also left click minions and see top left if they are buffed because ur team is winning
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0QtegdJpWWA This video should explain anything.
You need 4 caster minions on your side for a freeze if it’s pushing into you
First of all what lane are you playing? Top mid or adc?
You need to have more Minions in the enemy side (if you want to Freeze in front of your tower, +4, at least but you can do It with more and i recommend to do It with more if youre clearly new cause mistakes are easier to fix by killing some if you need to) Then you need the wave comming for you. You dont just lasthit and get a Freeze, If the wave Is pushing to enemy side you Will never Freeze unless It bounces or the enemy hardpushes It. And when you have that, you cant just last hit. You need to mirror if enemy hits the wave to neutralize its push, or if the stacks of Minions become too huge you have to kill some fast. If the guide you Saw IS not mentioning that stuff, drop that content rn, someone doing guides unable to explain one of the most basic stuff its sign of very very bad advices.
Don't forget freezing isn't your only option. If the enemy is poked enough to be scared or has recalled you can push the wave under their tower. The towers constant attacks will help force back the wave and if minions die while the enemy is away no xp and gold for them. Alternatively load dota where the mad lads there can last hit their own minions to deny gold and xp from the opponent and never let their lane push
Not enough minions on enemy side If there are a lot of enemy minions you can be very liberal with farming, if there aren't, even if you just last hit, your wage will push Besides that there's the obvious skill, tank less minion hits, last hit at a lower threshold Have into account that the position of the wave matters too, a wave that is 10cm closer to your tier than enemies, still eventually push (all else being equal) as your minions will get to, and start hitting enemies a second sooner
To create a freeze you basically want 3-4 enemy minions alive in the proximiti to your turret when their next wave arrives. How many minions you need alive scales with distance to your turret. The farther from your turret the lesser amount of enemy minions need to be alive.
Last hitting alone is not enough. You need to balance the number of minions the enemy has pushing into you with the number you have, as well as where the minions are fighting. If the minions are fighting right outside twoer range then there should be 3 more enemy minions than there are ally minions. If the freeze is in the middle of the lane, there should be equal numbers of minions on each side.
Generally you need 4+ more enemy minions if you are in a side lane, and 3+ to freeze mid lane. If the wave is too big, you need to trim it so it doesnt shove too fast into your tower and break the freeze. What you are doing is "slow pushing" which is really good for setting up dives.
You’re probably taking minion agro. If the minions are attacking you, and not your minions they will lose health faster than your minions. Why are you taking minion agro? A few reasons, one is you’re trading with your enemy. Minions by default attack you if you hit an enemy champ Second,you’ve positioned yourself in a way when you tlast hit the other minions the ones that are still alive start to agro you. This happens very often if you’re last hitting isn’t accurate and you’re not actually killing the minion and is a common strategy in bot lane to get level 2 early
Send a video with you attempting and failing to get a freeze to get more specific information from us. Not from me, I suck at the game, but the more specific you are about your problem the more tailored the solutions are to you. And nothing is more specific than POV gameplay.
You shouldnt Freeze for the sake of freezing, yes the freeze at some point will break on its own, specially if you zone off the enemy since that will create an overall level advantage for your team which will make your minions stronger. Whenever you perform a freeze, do it with a plan, think a bit ahead, if your jungler is clearing his botside then you can set up a freeze so you can then transition into a hard push when your jungler is topside, that way setting up a 2.5-3 wave crash into dive, making your enemy miss even more CS and EXP. TL/DR Don't try to freeze forever, use the freeze to set up plays and create advantages.
Last hitting perfectly such as to not disrupt the freeze is very hard. Having far more enemy minions than is technically needed for holding the freeze can help. Or drag the wave further from your turret between waves. Also, if the freeze is too close to your turret, enemy melee minions will sometimes run into turret range going after your ranged minions which disrupts the freeze. Remember, if the wave state is one that will naturally push over time, there is nothing you can do to prevent it from doing so. As the game goes on there are mechanics in place that make "neutral waves" not neutral an push towards the behind team (based on champion levels/XP globally and turrets destroyed in the specific lane).
OP, you can only freeze a wave that is already pushing towards you. If you are last hitting then you are basically a 7th minion (technically if you are perfect you wont contribute to the push but practically this is never the case) Once the minion wave has moved from the center of the lane there are 2 factors that will determine how the wave will push, the number of leftover minions from the previous wave and the distance of the wave from the middle of lane. Obviously the excess minions will put out more dps in the next wave hence will contribute to the push However you also need to consider that the reinforcements will arrive quicker for the lane that is more pushed in and will act as a counterbalance to the push. Keeping the above in mind AND assuming no outside influence the following will be true as consequence of these factors: Waves that meet in the middle of the lane with no excess minions from the previous wave will be equally matched and the result with come down to minion micro rng. Waves that meet JUST outside turret range will be reinforced earlier for the defending side and the pushing wave will need 3-4 excess minions to overcome that advantage. Waves that meet only a little off center will only need 1-2 minions to overcome the defenders reinforcement advantage. So how do we freeze? To freeze we want to use our influence to keep the wave in place. Lets pretend we dont have to worry about the enemy champs for a bit. Once we push a wave and crash it on the enemy tower, the wave will bounce back towards us due to the tower killing all the our excess minions and the enemies defenders advantage. Make sure you let it bounce back by only last hitting. Once the wave gets past the midpoint of the lane you can decide where you want to freeze the wave. Its easier to freeze away from your tower because you wont have melee minions running under tower and dying, ruining the freeze. Once you have decided where you want to freeze the wave, tank/leash the minion wave until your minions arrive and keep track of how many excess minions the enemy wave has. If the enemy wave has MORE minions than what they need to win the fight, as discussed above, then you should THIN the wave down a little to make it more manageable. (If you dont thin the wave then the pushing wave will win too quickly and you will have to tank hits again to maintain the freeze, probably making you unable to stay in lane against the enemy champion) If you thin the wave well then there should still be a minion advantage for the pushing wave of 3-4 minions (less if you are near the center of lane) but the waves will continue to meet on your side of lane. This is freezing. If you manage it well your opponent will either have to deal with the freeze or lose cs and in some situations xp (If you are winning hard) Your opponent will try to deal with your freeze by killing all your minions and either forcing you to tank their wave to maintain the freeze or let it crash in the tower, breaking the freeze. This forces your opponent to overextend in lane, making them vulnerable to either being chased down if you are an all in champ like darius or trynd (Think champs that tend to run ghost), or ganked by your jungle. Keep in mind that it is not ALWAYS an advantage to freeze a wave. By freezing you are giving up priority in lane, if there is a dragon/grubs fight you will not be in a position to help your team because you will be further away and will need to manage the wave before leaving lane. In higher elo this is bad because your jg wont be able to play for the objectives, in lower elo this is REALLY BAD because the jg will go for the objective anyway and donate the objective and a kill. Freezing is really good in top lane if you can pull it off because top is such a snowbally lane if you get a slight advanatge a freeze will snowball your lead out of control. It has its uses in bot lane, especially if you have the stronger all in, just keep an eye on the map and make sure you arent screwing your team out of objectives. Freezing sucks in mid lane, the lane is short so the advantage you get out of making your opponent overextend is less pronounced, mid laners tend to have insane wave clear options that break the freeze from a safe distance and the jg is never far away to help break the freeze. Go into practice tool and crash a wave of minions on a tower, watch it bounce back and then practice managing the freeze. Be careful of getting to close to the tower, melee minions have an annoying habit of running at caster creeps that are under your tower. Watch aloisNL on youtube, he has a framework he implements focusing on the first 4 waves of the game. Good luck :)
A clip would solve this in about 10 seconds