Hey everyone and welcome.
Today, we'll be breaking down an advanced freezing method that Bjergsen used in our
previous daily.
So, what you can expect to learn from this video is how utilize a niche way of freezing
that is only really effective against one dimensional shove champions like Zoe and Azir,
where their harass under turret is sub optimal.
As you may already suspect, the following isn't super useful for players who don't already
have a great grasp on wave management.
If you're not super confident with your grasp on wave control, then your time would be better
spent watching our wave management courses, rather than this daily.
Anyway, let's move forward with this guide where we'll break this one down and teach
you how to use this freezing method in your own games.
Let's first run you through the overview of what Bjergsen wanted to achieve with his freeze
and the outcome.
Zoe has one spell to push and damage with, which gets blocked by minions.
All she wants to do is shove and her Q is both powerful and cost efficient for pushing.
While Bjergsen could match her push on the Syndra, it'd cost a lot more mana to keep
the lane even with multiple spells, than it would for Zoe with her Q. So he wants to contest
Zoe's push so he can hide behind his own minions to be safe from her spells, while looking
for trades.
We've already broken this down in the last daily, but how does he maintain a freeze in
this area without losing too much mana?
So what he effectively does is thin the wave during the early stages of the lane and when
the enemy wave eventually does get shoved, he uses his tower to push the wave back out
for him to get frozen in this area here, constantly.
Okay, so the idea of what he's doing is to thin the wave so he doesn't get shoved too
quickly or too easily, then when he does eventually get shoved - he secures his last hits under
the tower and then continues thinning the wave as he gets shoved again.
That's the simple version of what's happening, what gets complex are the subtleties involved
for how to execute this effectively without getting shoved too easily and harassed, missing
last hits and losing health.
Let's finally break this down wave by wave and figure out how Bjergsen manages to freeze
via a slow push.
As the first waves meet in the center, Bjergsen is going to actively auto the minions pretty
much all the time that he isn't looking for harass.
Auto attacks are a free way to thin the wave or to push, so really try to focus on actively
doing this when you need to thin the wave or push.
Speeding it up, Zoe of course eventually gets the push.
Now it's time to pay attention.
See this three casters?
Well, they are a key part of freezing with a slow push.
When you want to delay your own minion wave in this area here, you need the next enemy
wave to clash with your minions in before they push too far towards the center.
Bjergsen wants to use these caster minions to delay his upcoming wave from clashing with
the opposing wave in the center.
Don't worry if you didn't catch all of this, we're going to see it happen again and again.
He moves forward to secure the CS without losing them under his tower.
The casters don't die before his new wave connects, so they clash in his freezing zone
and now the next minion waves will fight where he wants to keep the wave.
This is a fairly standard way of setting up a soft freeze so far.
Now on the second wave, even though he has soft frozen it, he immediately begins thinning
out the wave once again.
Reason being: Zoe's goal is to push and only push in pretty much every matchup.
Now you will notice he's mostly focusing down the melees.
There's an important reason for that.
He wants the three casters at the back to secure his next freeze.
He wants them to be healthy, so they can tank tower shots if needed without losing CS.
If Zoe pushed to the tower and they were all on awkwardly low health, he'd lose last hits
while executing this strategy, making it unviable to win lane with.
What you'll find is that during this whole lane, Bjergsen lost nearly zero last hits
the whole time.
As the melees die, do you notice anything familiar here?
This is a near picture perfect match to what happened on the first wave, and it's no accident.
Once again, these casters are going to delay the upcoming blue wave, ensuring he keeps
the wave frozen in the exact same spot as last time.
And check this out, Bjergsen has more mana than the Zoe, while freezing as a Syndra AND
spending most of his mana on trading, not wave clear.
The cannon minion pushes forward, but into tower range, so without spending mana, the
tower has helped clear out this cannon and then once more, we're left with the three
red casters.
Alright, so I think you get the picture as to what is happening so far and we're about
to show you the next couple of waves where things start to really speed up.
But let's first think about how do you do this in your own games and when?
So, as we mentioned, this is a niche and advanced freezing method and it relies on your opposing
champion needing to constantly push to win the lane, without being able to harass you
too well under the tower.
Limiting us to well, Zoe and Azir.
The reason why it works vs these guys and not say, Xerath, is because Zoe and Azir are
fairly one dimensional in the way they shove and harass, they can only choose between one
or the other - especially zoe.
Zoe will Q to push and when her Q is down, she can't trade.
Since Bjergsen consistently thins out the wave, it forces Zoe to use every Q on pushing,
without much wave momentum, meaning Zoe doesn't have her Q available to harass with once the
wave gets shoved.
That being said, just understanding this freezing method and why it's used will truly add value
to your mastery and understanding over wave control, where eventually you'll always be
able to put the wave where you want it - backed by a winning game plan with our daily system.
Anyway, let's get back to rounding out how Bjergsen executes this freezing method.
As the lane moves on, we're now on the 4th wave of the lane, we have to remember that
both champions are getting stronger as they level up, so their wave clear is improving.
Bjergsen takes a great trade onto the Zoe but he uses all of his spells for it.
That means the red wave is going to push more quickly than the last as he's chosen to go
for a full out trade rather than save his Q for thinning the wave.
He misses just one melee, not a big deal and these three casters are full life but this
time in tower range.
Again, his next three melees got delayed because of the enemy casters meaning that the waves
clash into the freezing zone once again.
This is now wave five, Bjergsen has invested nearly all of his mana into just trading,
but he's maintained a freeze that he's spent nearly zero mana maintaining, which is insanely
valuable.
On wave 6, Bjergsen setup the exact same thing in the exact same way and has forced Zoe to
recall.
She simply wasn't getting enough done in the early game thanks to this immaculate wave
management and now the Syndra is setup to shove, recall and go for a kill at level 6.
Now you may be wondering, every single time Bjergsen was able to do this (which was every
wave) it all came down to those 3 casters.
How does he always seem to have them ready to setup the freeze at the perfect time?
This is something you'll just have to get a feel for and practice - but this is what
he did.
He knows when his own wave is coming up to the lane by feeling or by looking at the minimap.
This lets him know how quickly he needs to kill the current minion wave, to ensure that
there aren't too many, if any, melee minions alive, which would linger under the tower
for too long.
Since if say, he didn't kill these melees fast enough, then his upcoming blue wave would
hang around for too long in this area here - causing the upcoming enemy wave to go straight
under bjergsen's turret.
If that happened, he'd miss out on CS, have to use more mana and spells on CS'ing instead
of trading and wouldn't have any of the lane dominance we saw him show previously.
Alright!
So that brings us to the end of this one.
Now you guys understand why we couldn't break this down in our previous daily in a satisfying
and applicable way.
Let us know what you thought of this video, since we definitely debated about whether
you guys would like to learn concepts that are honestly pretty niche.
Thanks for watching and we'll catch you next time!