You're definitely not the only one. Most good lich players do that. Munch one when the creeps come out, deny another one or two manually, your skill will cool down in time for another creep, and the first wave is gone. Extremely irritating to the enemy. He gets a creep if he's lucky, and you begin to harass the heck out of him with nova at lv 3. Lich can easily deny to the point that if laned against 2 heroes, both of them will be lv 4 by the time he's lv 6.