The Mid Laners of Summoners Rift tend to be, on average, the best players on the team. The role itself helps to develop a League of Legends player into a “jack of all trades, master of quite a few” sort of competitor.
Mid Laners are pieced together with the macro of the Top Laners, the mechanics of the ADCs, the vision dominance of the Supports, and the map awareness of a Jungler. Naturally, this makes the role attractive for competitive players who think they have something to prove and would like to show off their would-be skills while climbing the Elo ladder.
This coin has another side, and that is the fact that this all-encompassing position is also the position that loses unprepared players a ton of LP. The Mid Lane might be the best role to demonstrate individual skill, but it is also the most taxing role in terms of required agility:
A good Mid Laner is a support for the Jungler, a carry for the Top Laner, and a Top Laner for the ADC and Support. These three responsibilities are always a task for the best Mid Laners to adhere to, yet most Mid Laners, practiced or not, only consistently accomplish one of these facets of their jobs, if not two by happenstance.
The following advice is aimed at players who are new to the Mid Lane. The advice will initially start as pragmatic areas of interest Mid Laners should focus on to improve their game, and will slowly expand into more niche, philosophical matters that benefit Mid Laners of every level.
Either read ahead or use the list below to move to the advice that you might need most:
- Step 1) Pick a Champion (or Three) to Main
- Step 2) Play at the Pace of Your Jungler
- Step 3) Apply Pressure
- Step 4) Understand the Macro Game
- Step 5) “Tradition is the Corpse of Wisdom”
Step 1) Pick a Champion (or Three) to Main
This is the first and easiest part of playing any lane: Pick a “main”.
When playing in the Mid Lane, a League of Legends player needs to be flexible in their role. The Top Lane is rigid, the Jungle is filled with improvisation, and the Bot Lane is filled with sacrifices and a focused goal located at the end of a mentally taxing marathon. The Mid Lane needs to be, and have, all of these things. As such, the champions played in the Mid Lane, too, need to be and have all of these things.
A main is a champion that you mainly play and should be complimented, at most, by two other picks that you play when your main is banned or when your main would not compliment your team’s composition in any way.
If you want to play champions that help lock down opponents and thrive in 5v5 environments, consider maining a champion like Galio, Swain, or, if you’d like to develop as an improvisationally gifted player, Neeko.
If you want to play champions that can “delete” enemy players from the Rift in a blink of an eye and spur teams on into quick victories, consider maining champions like Annie, Zed, Talon, or, if you’d like to develop as a mechanically gifted player, Qiyana.
If you want to play champions that “scale” into the late game, becoming strong after the 20 minutes and unstoppable after 30, consider maining late game champions that revolve around playing slow such as Kassadin, Aurelion Sol, or, if you’d like to develop as an all-encompassing hyper carry, Azir.
Lastly, if you’d like to play champions that can fit all of these roles in an imperfect way, consider maining champions whose greatest strength is their flexibility such as Orianna, Lux, or, if you’d like to develop in a way that makes all champions feel easier to play, Hwei.
Once you find a main, understand that your game and perspective on the game will tilt in the direction that their playstyle demands. Since you should only be maining one champion per split (if your goal is to win), this is a huge decision that should be given a modicum of thought, at the least.
Step 2) Play at the Pace of Your Jungler
In other roles, the easiest way to cipher how fast one should play is dictated by whether or not playing in that way will get you killed. In the Mid Lane, understanding one’s optimal play speed is not so simple.
Instead of looking at what will give you the biggest advantage in the lane, instead consider what will give your Jungler the biggest advantage in-game.
Often times, this means trying to outplay your opponent by using your resources to win lane priority. Believe it or not, most games sub-diamond Elo are won or lost by the Mid Laner’s ability to gain reliable priority in the first four minutes of the game.
“Priority” in lane means you have the first Priority in decision-making. If your Jungler is contesting Scuttle and you cannot aid them for one reason or another, you do not have priority.
The most common tactic used in gaining priority is crashing large waves under your opponent’s tower, effectively tethering them to the lane. If you move to fight in a skirmish under these circumstances, your opponent can’t follow you without losing valuable XP and gold, which means they’re always losing something regardless of what they do.
Although common, this tactic isn’t the only one used to gain priority. If a Zed, who can easily threaten opponents with fast assassinations, wins a health advantage so great that their opponent is at risk of being killed, being shoved under tower is no true loss of priority since the health difference between the two might mean that roaming to help a friendly Jungler will result in Zed’s opponent being killed regardless.
This is called being “shoved out of lane”: A phrase that most often describes what happens when a player is so low on HP that they cannot effectively do anything without giving the enemy team kills.
Using these tactics, and more that you’ll find are unique to the champion you play, you can find priority in the early game and use it to play with your Jungler. If you play consistently enough, this strategy can often result in games being won (or lost!) within the first four minutes of a match.
Step 3) Apply Pressure
When you step out of lane, you need to be doing something as a Mid Laner. If you’re backing, you need to be backing to gain an item and resource advantage. If you’re placing wards, they need to be wards that gain your team information. If you’re trying to trade with your opponent, the trades need to be gaining you a resource advantage that will actually transfer into wealth and XP for your team.
The reason the pressure on the Mid Laner is so high to use their time wisely is down to splash benefits: Splash benefits are benefits your other lanes gain access to thanks to effective use of your time in the Mid Lane.
When a Mid Laner gains vision dominance, the Bot, Jungle, and Top Lane gain vision dominance. When a Mid Laner freezes out their opponent from CS and XP, the Bot, Jungle, and Top lane become that much stronger during skirmishes/teamfights in the mid to late game.
These are examples of benefits you gain for yourself in the Mid Lane splashing into the rest of the team. But the inverse works just the same! If you gain disadvantages due to slow play or inefficient use of time, those disadvantages become your team’s burden.
While a Top Laner can afford to back off of a wave and, sometimes, leave a lane to avoid getting ganked, the Mid Laner needs to be doing everything in their power to apply pressure, stay on tempo with their opponent, and keep their Jungler (and therefore team) dangerous on the Rift. This means playing in such a way that makes getting shoved out of lane, especially early on, impossible.
To apply pressure effectively, maintain a high CS-to-minute ratio (ideally 10CS per minute by minute 10), keep your opponent tethered to their turret by maintaining prio, aid your Jungler during skirmishes, clear and place effective wards, and, if your main excels at it, roam to the Bot (or Top) Lane and either chunk opponent’s HP or kill them outright.
Step 4) Understand the Macro Game
Macro is a term in League of Legends that usually (although not always) encompasses everything not related to individual champion mechanics. “Game knowledge” is a similar term. For a Mid Laner, the Macro game revolves around many of the tactics we’ve already discussed: wave management, tethering opponents to towers, roaming to other lanes, and maintaining effective ward dominance.
But one particular facet of the Macro game, and arguably the most important in the mid to late game, goes unloved in modern solo queue: Measuring your Top Laner’s pressure.
When a Mid Laner approaches an objective with his or her team, the most valuable piece of information they can pay attention to is their Top Laner. Oftentimes, Top Laners will opt to apply pressure on the side of the map opposite of the objective. This is called a “split push”. A push that splits the map.
The wisest of Mid Laners will always measure their Top Laner’s split push while approaching objectives. If the enemy team has not matched the split push and instead is opting to take the objective with five members, a Mid Laner should have the leadership qualities necessary to ping their team off of the objective and to instead gain tempo on other parts of the map.
The lost objective will be made up for in tempo gained from gold, XP, and towers gained from the unmatched split. Inversely, if a Mid Laner sees that an enemy Top Laner is split pushing with no match, they should have the leadership qualities necessary to force their team into burning down the objective.
If the enemy team chooses to contest, they risk losing an outmatched 4v5, giving your team an objective and tons of gold and XP. If they don’t contest, they are giving the objective away in trade for tempo.
Lastly, if a Mid Laner sees that their Top Laner is splitting, but cannot account for the resources spent on matching that split, said Mid Laner should have the patience to lead their team into waiting for more information before acting.
Remember, decisions made without full information in League are no true decisions, but gambles. And Mid Laners should avoid coin-flipping Elo for their team.
This is one aspect of the macro game a Mid Laner should focus on, but easily represents the most ignored and at the same time valuable facet to keep in mind at all times, especially in the mid to late game.
Step 5) “Tradition is the Corpse of Wisdom” -Zed
“Often” the best choice in your next game will be the best choice in the game after that and the games that come after that and so on. But “often” is not “always”, and when a highly trained League of Legends player begins to become complacent, they degrade their ability to improvise over time.
Always remember that the Mid Lane is a role that demands great flexibility, and that’s true in both playstyle and decision-making. When you go, your team will follow, and that kind of power has the potential to make or break games in an instant.
Stay flexible, don’t autopilot, and obey the philosophies above to achieve a great presence in the Mid Lane.