Hey guys! We’re back again with another quick tips piece! This time it’s for all you Mid Mains out there, and we’re going to go over some essential Mid Lane Trading Tips that’ll boost your game. So, if you’re struggling to find your windows to create advantage, or if you’re wanting to just sharper your game that much more, this guide’s for you!

When the Opponents Defensive Ability Is on CD

Most Mid Laners, especially Assassins, pack some form of mobility packaged into their kit. And if it’s not a strict mobility move, it’s about zoning and creating separation from an opponent. Oftentimes the trade-off on these abilities is their extremely long cooldown in relation to how powerful they are.

Abilities that fit this description are Akali’s Shroud, Fizz’ Troll Pole, Zed’s Shadow, Syndra’s Knockback, and Vladimir’s Pool. Though oftentimes these are used to secure kills or avoid incoming damage, you can bait them out through light rotations of your spells.

For example, as a Melee Mid, going against Syndra can be a pain as you go for last hits. If you’ve taken enough damage, you can feign going for last hits to hopefully bait out her burst combo. Which subsequently removes all her ability to avoid an all-in, at this point you can easily go for an extensive trade and maybe a kill on the susceptible mage.

As Mages into Assassins like Akali, you’ll typically have the range advantage like mentioned above. So, you want to be well-timed with your poke as the opponent last hits. Hold your big combo for when the enemy greeds for an important last hit like a cannon, or the minion that’ll push them into the next level. Getting a feel for these windows creates a great trade opportunity to lane down solid damage against your opponent and force them into the gray screen or out of lane.

When Your Jungler Is Near

Well-timed aggression in association with ganks is a great way to bait your opponent in. Naturally, you’d like to land that stun combo or force the over-extend to give your Jungler the best angle, but sometimes that’s just not possible.

Be you ranged or melee, positioning aggressively and auto-attacking is sometimes enough to draw your opponent a bit too close and make them susceptible to the gank. This aggressive way of trading is more of a bait, and less of a practice to truly adopt, but against laners like Pantheon or Zed that often blow all their utility on engage, it’s a great way to sure up an easy gold donation.

When You’ve Got a Stacked Minion Wave or Your Wave Is Larger/Crashing

Stacking waves in Mid is harder than it is Top or Bot, but with some careful pulling you’re able to manipulate the Minions to hold just off turret range, right by your lane walls. If you can get the Minions stalled and build them up, even just slightly, to create a numbers advantage against the enemy Minions, you’re going to force a response from your opponent in one way or another.

If the enemy sees their Minions are being out-numbered, their first instinct will be to clear it, forcing them to toss damage down and giving you a better window to poke and all-in. If they don’t go to thin the wave, then they’ll play safe until the wave is on their side, all the while you can poke and clear safe of all-ins from them since your wave will hit them back for a ton of damage should they try and play back. Once that big-ole-wave is up against the turret, you can continue your dance in and out of turret range with poke and force your opponent only to respond to minions for the previously mentioned point again. But, be careful at this angle, if you’re not warded up you’re exposed to ganks against your opponent's turret and you can toss out that aggression should you eat it here.

If You’ve Got the Item Advantage or Stronger Components

Players buying weaker components is something see a lot at lower ELOs, but it can sometimes mistakenly creep into higher ELO players as well. Be it through auto-pilot or just not understanding the value of raw states like HP, some players just buy the wrong items and components to those items for whatever reason.

So, if you’re tabbing appropriately like you should throughout the game, you can always keep a beat on how strong you are relatively to your lane opponent. So, if you’re enemy Mid has backed and botched their buy with a Sapphire Crystal instead of Amplifying Tome, then you’ve noticed your window and can make your play.

The same goes for situations where you’re against a lower mobility Champion as a higher mobility Champs like Zed or Akali. Boots are a vital purchase, and it’s not uncommon for lanes that need to kite longer for their kits to be more effective or are picks that simply need to be in lane quicker to rush them. Picks like Viktor or Malzahar come to mind. Scaling picks like Viktor or heavy lane focused picks like Malz want to be in lane and as safe as possible so they can sometimes rush boots to push this idea of their kits. But, if you’re one of those Champions that can easily out-maneuver them via mobility or utility, you can take advantage of their relatively low movespeed if it hasn’t been compensated for via boots.

Remember, not all Champions need damage alone to be effect. Even the slightest boost in mobility can turn a Champion online. Which brings us to the next mark of…

Play Around Your Level and Item Spikes

This one feels obvious, but I’ve seen Akalis lose melee matchups they should dominate since they didn’t go aggressive when they spiked level three before their opponent. I’ve seen Ahris hard dominate other Mages who don’t respect her Assassin like mobility at level six. And I’ve seen plenty of Mid Laners just cheese it to uncommon picks like Renekton or Irelia that have a surprising amount of all-in potential.

It’s important to understand when your mobility is online, and oftentimes that comes at level three. At this point the full of your kit is unlocked and it’s at this moment that you should try to make an aggressive play. Even if you can’t secure a kill, an aggressive trade when you have the level two to three advantage can turn the state of your early game in your favor. And at the level five to six point, you can completely begin to take over the game if you understand how to utilize your kit to maximum potential.

Trade Back If Your Opponent Is Trading with You

This one seems a bit silly since oftentimes you want to be escaping from damage, or at least that’s most mindsets, but in reality you can both attack and defend by kiting your opponent back to your safe zones like to your wards or turret.

Why do you want to fight back instead of straight up running though? Well, you always create a trade-off situation for your opponent that they may not be able to fully factor in when fighting you. If you narrow escape an all-in trade from your opponent while peppering them with an adequate amount of damage you may create situations of choice for them where they potentially won’t choose correctly.

For example, as Neeko, you get all-inned by Zed at level 6. You’re able to narrowly avoid a death, but you also slap him without damage that he’s sitting about half health as you retreat to base. Wanting to keep aggressive, he does his best to shove in against you, but that low health of his ticks off your team’s Warwick and gives him the speed to come in and catch the clean up kill. You trading back with him made him make the choice to try and greed off of his won all-in, and in turn, you caused him to ultimately lose.

Or, if you’re an Assassin that’s just narrowly lived a burst combo from a Mage, you can push the same situation by dancing around the enemy’s poke and forcing them to waste mana. No mana, means no push, which forces the mage to stay and auto to crash the lane leaving them susceptible to ganks, or forces them to leave the wave in a bad state so you can easily come back for the catch.

Also, hitting back when a neutral objective is coming up is a great way to send an enemy to a fight on low HP. Especially with Dragon as such a priority this season, if you can send any opponent to engagement weak, it’s better to try and create that advantage for your team if you believe it could net in a positive gain for everyone. So basically always slap back, you never know what situations you force out of never giving anything for free.

Closing Out

That was a quick one, but every so often we like to pump out content that you can just eat up and apply. So, let us know what you guys think about pieces like this, and let us know if it helped you reach that next rank! Good luck in Solo-Queue!