A Mid Laner's Early Game Guidebook for League of Legends

17 Sep 20

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Phantome

A Mid Laner's Early Game Guidebook for League of Legends

Introducing and explaining strong and weak sides as well as exploring priority further. 

With the second half of the 11th year of League of Legends now fully underway, it can be hard for many to grasp the fact that some 80 million people grace Summoner's Rift with their presence. Between the sheer number of summoners and our various personal obligations, it is not hard to see why most of us might never amount to the mechanical prowess of professional players. Thankfully, League is a complex game in which macro and decision making carries as much weight as insane mechanics. Having good game knowledge is something that everyone can strive towards that, when mastered, offer an alternative path into the upper echelons of Masters and beyond. In this and coming articles, we will delve into the options and objectives that are available to mid laners throughout the early game, the period before champions attain their 2-item powerspikes and outer towers fall.

Win Conditions

As always, you have got to know what your win conditions are since they dictate the options you have to close out games. Unfortunately, expecting everyone to know this is wishful thinking as most people play the game for fun so they just pick whatever they feel like picking. If you enter a game with a bad draft, my advice would be to assume this game is a loss and use this game as an opportunity to limit test and try new things.

Otherwise, your team will generally fit into 1 of 2 categories, early-and-mid game dominant composition or a late-game-scaling composition. Early-to-mid game compositions have winning lanes that open up junglers to counterjungle and secure objectives in order to generate advantages early while late game compositions have 1-2 scaling champions with other champions built around them to protect or enable them. Mid laners tend to be early-to-mid game threats, provide utility and teamfighting, or scale. While not many mid laners are hypercarry champions, there are some choices. Remember, it's not about carrying the team by doing the most damage, it's about carrying the team by getting your team ahead and enabling them.

Champion Pool, Strong & Weak Sides

Whether you are a early-to-mid game power spiking assassin, a late game scaling control mage, or a utility-teamfighting mid laner, you need to know when your powerspike's are and how they can contribute to the team. Ideally this occurs in champion select and involves you understanding the enemy and your own team's win condition. But, as a general rule of thumb for us casual players who have limited time and want to climb, pick 3-4 champions that fulfill different roles and stick to those.

It is also handy to consider the strength of the enemy team's picks in relation to yours. This is important to know as a mid laner because it lets you know where you can make plays. Whichever side lane beats the opponent's for a team is considered their "strong" side. Ideally, teams will have a strong side and a weak side. It is possible, and often likely, that through a horrendous champion select that all your lanes are losing lanes. In which case, it is up to you to pick a winning lane that can impact other lanes. Try to avoid making plays on the side of the map where your enemy is stronger. This is especially important for when we get into securing priority as strong side lanes almost always have priority. Finally, strong and weak sides are mainly laning phase concepts that can be dynamic as is the case in matchups like Jayce vs Wukong where Jayce has the advantage until level 6 where Wukong's R gives him all-in potential. From that point on, Wukong only gets stronger while Jayce loses strength.

In the 2 team comps below, decide the strong and weak sides for both teams throughout the laning phase (up till around the 15 minute mark):

Team 1

VS

Team 2

Spoilers in 3......2.......1......

On paper, Renekton should have a pretty good time against Ryze, Nocturne is a farm till 6 and then exert immense pressure champion, TF is kind of the same, while Kai'Sa and Janna both scale. On the other hand, Ryze scales, Gragas is strong early game, Yasuo scales, and Cait and Naut should exert a lot of lane pressure. Therefore the strong side for Team 2 should be bottom side while the strong side for Team 1 should be top side. This dynamic then shifts once level 6 arrives. While Gragas + Yasuo is an amazing combo, Team 1 has got amazing pick potential against Team 2 with Nocturne and TF ultimate. Team 1 can look to take fights with numbers advantages by pushing out mid and looking for a 4v2 or 4v3 bottom with double ultimates. This can be difficult however if TF gets set behind by early ganks or Gragas snowballs bottom hard enough and is present for counterganks post 6. Identify your strong side and make plays, both offensive and defensive, around that side.

Getting Priority and Using It

Everybody knows that priority just means putting yourself in the position to rotate first. This is normally done by shoving the wave under your opponent's tower. Before closing this article and pushing like a maniac, it is worth noting that constantly pushing into your opponent's tower leaves you vulnerable to ganks. As a general rule of thumb, Only look to push the wave and get priority in lane for a reason. Priority allows you to rotate to help your jungler, deploy wards, and roam to other lanes. But deciding when to secure priority requires foresight. Below I will walk you through the thought processes of when to secure priority using the first neutral objectives that spawn on the map, scuttle crabs at 3:15.

As the mid laner, it is important to know that these crabs spawn a few moments after the 4th wave crashes mid. This wave crashes at around the 2:57 mark and is easy to identify as it is the wave after the first cannon minion wave. When the game starts, you should be able to determine which crab your jungler and the enemy jungler are going to finish at. It is generally the opposite side of the jungle from which they started, which can be determined by which of the enemy's side lanes arrived late to lane. With this information you can decide whether or not you will need to secure priority. If both junglers are securing opposite crabs then there is less of a need to purposefully get priority. In fact pushing might get you ganked.

Referring back to the concepts of strong and weak sides and the above 2 team compositions, if you were Team 1's TF and your Nocturne decides to start top side and finish at bottom side crabs, where the enemy jungler is also predicted to finish. Then the best you can do is to push out your 4th wave and push out shallowly into river, not going past pixel bush. You are only here to stop your laner from collapsing on him and providing him with an escape path towards Raptors/Blue (depending on side) should your jungler get collapsed on by the strong side enemy bot lane and jungler. Committing past pixel bush allows Yasuo to block your escape and gets you stuck in a 2v3 or 2v4 scenario. Conversely, if your jungler makes plays on the strong side (top), feel free to go deeper into river if necessary. You want to be creating plays and forcing fights on this side of the map.

Also important to note, after gaining priority and before moving to help your laner, check to see if the other lanes are moving as well. Do not assume that because your side laner has priority that he will automatically rotate as well. There are a million reasons that people do not rotate and generally it is because their map awareness is zero. Even if your jungler is going for a strong side scuttle crab contest and you did everything right as a mid laner, if you see their side lane moving and yours oblivious to the action, ping your jungler back and maintain a shallow push into the river to stop the enemy mid from collapsing on your escape path.

Wrapping Up

I think that is enough for now, wouldn't want to overload you with too much new information. Try your best to understand these 2-3 concepts as they are vital in improving gameplay and are used in every rank all the way up to the professional scene. The only difference is professionals play every champion and always rotate. In order to understand properly execute these concepts you also need a firm grasp of the basics of laning phase which includes concepts such as trading, map awareness, managing waves, and so on. A rundown of those concepts can be found here. Hope this helps you improve! Good luck!

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