Everybody has their own story about how the position where the minions were in in a certain stage of the game has completely turned the way the game was going. Being it taking way too much minion damage in the early levels or being too far pushed up so the enemy jungler had a great opportunity to gank your lane and butcher you, and in the more populated lanes, your lane buddy.

The ABC of Freezing

Freezing the lane is the way you try to set up the minions in order for them to be in a stationary battle position. The way to achieve this kind of position where the minions stay stationary can be achieved in a couple of different ways. The way freezing works can be generally explained as the fact that the amount of minions you have on your side is greater than the amount that your laning opponent(s) has on their side, regardless of the position they are mobbing in, as long as it isn’t in range of either one of the lane’s turrets. The way minions work is that they spawn on the same time and move to the lane at exactly the same movement speed. So in regards to this, and as a useful tip, you can check exactly where the opposing minion wave is by simply checking where your minion wave is and mirror this on the opposing side of the map. It does not matter to which side of the map the lane is pushed, because the side with the least minions will be the one that gets frozen, if executed properly.

Freezing the wave can already be set up at level 1, something we mainly see in professional play. The trick here is to get a player in the bush closest to the opposing turret and, whenever the first minion wave comes in sight, walk out the bush, make the first three melee minions stacks on top of each other and then pull a Shaco –disappear back in the bush. This will cause the minion wave to focus the first minion from the friendly wave and strip down the wave a lot faster than yours is able to.

Image courtesy of RHealism

However, any time your opponent leaves the lane without bouncing the wave off the turret (making sure the minion wave gets cleared by the turret so the lane will more or less “reset” and force the minions to meet again in the centre of the lane), a freeze can be set up. All you have to do in order to successfully maintain a freeze is make sure you only take the last hits so the enemy always has a number advantage when it comes to minions, when your lane opponent isn’t going for a hard push into your turret. Most of the time, however, the opponent will try to break the freeze by pushing a large wave, eventually hoping you will not be able to hold the freeze and thus lose the advantage. In this case you can either try to force your opponent out of lane by picking a fight with him, which is quite risky in the early stages of the game, as the minions will do a significant amount of damage, or the more desirable way: just trying to do force a hard push to counter his, and thus keeping the minion wave more or less equal in size.

Why should you freeze?

Back in season 3 lane freezes used to occur a lot more frequently than now. And although there is definitely room for counter play when a freeze is forming (e.g. putting pressure on another lane by roaming, or simply getting deep wards easily so tracking the opposing jungle won’t be a big deal), it can still be a very effective tool in the early stages of the game.

A freeze can result in more than one of the desired purposes, and mostly all the objectives you’re aiming for will/can be achieved in one single freeze.

First of all, especially on higher elo’s, the opposing player will be afraid to overextend just to increase his creep score, which will eventually make him fall behind in gold as well as experience when the freeze was executed properly for an extended period of time.

Secondly, whenever the opposing laner(s) is bold enough to come quite close in order to get the precious last hits, the jungler can easily pay a visit, leaving the opponent with a sour taste for his daring move and making him lose more than he initially would have.

And last, but definitely not the least, initiating a freeze can prevent the opponent from freezing on you, and thus keeping yourself safe from any potential jungle threat or falling behind due to zoning, as described in the aforementioned.

Image courtesy of Cirath

When to freeze?

Generally, freezing is something people do in the early game. In all the later stages of the game, where probably some turrets have gone down, it is quite risky to give up some map control and allow the opponent to create four versus five situations due to the fact someone is sitting in a safe spot trying to rack up some CS.

The general mind set behind freezing a lane is to either to get the opposing laner behind more than he already is, or to try and catch up when things didn’t go your way the first few minutes of the game. Nonetheless, in an actual game, it might not be as easy as was described above.

Freezing is done on a few “standard” occasions, although there can never be an analysis that covers 100% of when to freeze. The safest way to pull off a freeze is when there are no real objectives to take and there is a relative good map dominance from your side (e.g. wards, scuttle crabs and a jungler that’s making everyone feel just a tad safer). However, the most common situation when freezing is about to happen, even when it’s not done intentionally, is when your team is forced in the defensive. Inhibitor turrets are commonly known as the hardest line of turrets to crack, so a freeze just outside the allied base is quite safe, as well as it gives you and your allies the opportunity to come back from a deficit and surprise the catch the enemy off-guard. And who knows, after some successful freezing, a lost game might be turned around and become a won game.

Thanks for reading and best of luck on Summoner’s Rift!