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How To Freeze Lane - LoL Wave Control Basics

Wave control, including knowing how to freeze a lane, slow push your wave and deny the enemy as much experience as possible is an essential mechanic in League of Legends. And it's certainly one that you'll need to master if you ever want to touch high ELO (even with a 10-foot pole).

 

This is an especially important skill for lower ELO players to master as it's one of the mechanics that either gives you an absolutely insane advantage or puts you at a tremendous disadvantage, depending on how you play around it.

 

As such, we thought that we'd put together a quick all-in-one comprehensive guide to freezing a lane, slow pushing, and other crucial wave control skills.

 

What Does "Freezing A Lane" Mean In Lol?

The whole concept around freezing a lane revolves around the idea of keeping both side's minions in one place for a long period of time.

 

For example, if you're behind, but you know that your enemy can't poke you under tower - it may be a good idea to freeze the wave just outside of your tower's attack range. This way, they're not only risking their lives every time they go to CS under your turret, but they're also completely overextended, giving your jungler limitless gank opportunities.

 

Why Are The Benefits Of Freezing Your Lane?

While some of the benefits that come with making the decision to freeze a lane are pretty apparent, others are a little harder to see at first glance. Here are the three most typical reasons that high ELO players freeze their lane.

 

1.    You deny the enemy a ton of experience as your opponent has to either fight with you (if you're ahead) or try and farm under your tower (if you're behind) just to CS.

2.    You force them to overextend in lane, allowing your jungler to come and gank them.

3.    You create a VERY safe space for yourself to farm in certain matchups where they can't poke you down under tower before diving you.

 

How To Freeze Lane in LoL

The simple answer here is - try to do as much damage to the opponent's wave as yours is taking. However, when it's explained like this - it might sound a bit tricky for most players. And unfortunately, it's just one of the mechanics that come with consistent practice and experience.

 

Despite this, here are two useful tips you should keep in mind when thinking about how to freeze a lane in League of Legends:

1.    If you're ahead and want to push to create lane priority, you should try to do more damage than your opponent to the wave, which will naturally start to creep towards their side of the lane. This can also be transitioned into a slow push or a full crash if you want to deny them exp or push your advantage that much further.

2.    If you're behind and want to farm in a safe manner without being punished for going up to CS, let the opponent out-damage you and try to either tank their pushed-up wave of minions right outside of tower range to start a freeze.

 

How To Maintain A Freeze Successfully?

Once you've got the basics of freezing a lane in LoL down pat, the next step is to learn how to maintain it!

 

Keeping up your freeze while you're ahead allows you to deny the enemy even more experience, force their jungle to come up and deal with you while letting you capitalize on your advantage that much more.

 

On the other hand, if you're behind - your opponent will be stuck between a rock and a hard place having to take whatever CS they can get while being forced to leave the lane or repeatedly die to ganks from your jungler. All in all, you're able to catch up and maintain a strong lead in tough matchups.

 

The only trick to holding a freeze on your lane is to keep the minions out of the range of your tower. Whether you tank them yourself and soak a bit of minion damage, or try and last hit as late as possible, if you manage to stop your tower from damaging the enemy wave - your freeze won't be broken.

 

Closing Thoughts

In League of Legends, a freeze is one of the most powerful ways to push an existing advantage or catch up to an opponent who is ahead quickly by denying them the opportunity to snowball.

 

Freezing a lane is one of the trickiest skills to master, but it's also one of the most rewarding as it's something that you can exploit, utilize and punish the misuse of, in all tiers of ranked play.

 

We hope that our guide on how to freeze lane in League of Legends has helped shed some light on how the mechanic works, and what you can do to start practicing it today.