I think I can safely say that most players enjoy playing ranked with a buddy. Not only is the game simply more fun when you play with a person you know, but it takes away one extra slot in matchmaking, meaning you've got one less random player on your team. I think we all prefer someone we know we can depend on and can trust to have our back when it counts instead of a random player, right? Right. That being said, the ranked buddy system allows you to fill two out of the five roles in League of Legends, which actually gives you some very important decisions to make if you want to have success as a duo queue. How do the two of you play together? Is there a certain playstyle or way of thinking that you both lean towards? Are you more team-focused, roam-focused, or lane-focused as individuals? These questions may not seem too important at first, but the role synergies play a crucial part in how successful duo queues may be. Less synergy can cause some duos to falter. Highlighted in this article are six out of the ten possible unique role combinations for duo queues, and the key strengths and weaknesses of these role pairings.

ADC + Support

El Clásico. Crème de la Crème. The tried and true. I can't count the number of times I've seen "duo bot" called in my League career. This is one of the most, if not THE most, called duo role pairs in the game. It makes sense. You and your buddy are in the same lane, up against another pair of players with communication, trust, and friendship as your tools. No surprise that a duo queue wants to lane together. However, your synergy and teamwork has to be on point if both of you are bot, as this is the most isolated pairing. In the early stages of the game, you have next to no map presence, and even less global pressure. As a duo bot lane, bot is your island. You have to mesh well and play well together, because if not, you could single-handedly lose your team the game if the enemy ADC gets too far ahead.

However, there are some benefits to being a duo bot. First of all, you have a very large zone of control when it comes to vision. Your bot side jungle, the bottom half of the river, and the enemy bot-side buff all fall under your warding concerns. Control the vision game, and you can feed your team a lot of information. Another integral part of going duo bot is your dragon control. If you can put pressure on bot and win the lane hard, the first 2 or 3 dragons should be guaranteed for your team, especially if you get kills at the right time. On the other hand, die to a gank or lose the 2v2 at a bad time, and you could just as easily see the enemy team taking dragons. Bot side is a battle of numbers when it comes to dragon, and those with the higher numbers tend to control the dragon.

Mid + Top

This combination will sadly put you in different lanes. Some might even say you're breaking the friendship circle. All jokes aside, this role combination gives you the most lane control. It's just simple math. As a duo, you have presence in 2 of the 3 lanes. This has a few implications. First, you can put pressure on multiple lane opponents, and if you do well in both lanes, you can easily snowball the game. The enemy jungler can't be in both lanes at the same time, so by pressuring multiple lanes, you're also pressuring the enemy jungler, diverting his attention away from the bot lane and perhaps allowing your team to get the third and final lane snowball rolling. You also have the ability to roam to each other's lanes fairly easily, allowing you to still utilize your buddy system to some extent.

Also, with this combination, you'll have the most interaction with junglers. As the mid, you'll be rotating over to your blue buff, and also helping to secure dragon a bit more than top, theoretically. As the top, you can help secure scuttlers or invade the enemy top-side buff with your jungler. As a duo in these positions, you will also be receiving the majority of the ganks from both junglers, and your warding not only keeps track of the enemy jungler, but can help yours know when it's safe to invade as well.

Image courtesy of GisAlmeida

Top + Jungle

This role combination can be very synergized or barely synergized at all, depending on how you play it. If the top laner wants to hold their own while the jungler does their thing, that's one approach. On the other hand, with excellent communication and coordination, this pairing has the highest global gank pressure, assuming that the top laner takes Teleport. Due to the jungler's natural inclination to roam around the map and look for gank opportunities, a teleporting top laner lends itself very well to that task. In fact, if you run this combination as a duo and you don't take teleport, you're probably doing it wrong. As a pair, you can have so much pressure by ganking together whenever top's Teleport is available. Depending on which turrets are still standing and where exactly your team's wards are standing, some Teleport ganks will naturally be more viable than others, but are highly rewarding when successful. Another benefit of duoing as the top and jungle is that this is the most team-focused pairing.

The jungler's objective is to snowball the lanes and be there to countergank. The top's objective is to look for Teleport opportunities, whether it be for ganking or contesting/securing objectives. You can easily control the pacing of the game with this particular grouping of roles.

Mid + Jungle

Another of the more popular combinations. These duos have the ability to cause the other mid laner to get pretty salty, as one way to play these two roles together is to just camp mid lane and make the enemy mid terrified to leave the safety of their turret. However, that's not the way that I recommend you play these roles together, as they have the most gank potential. A mid laner can not only roam quickly, particularly if you control the scuttlers, but can also do so without being punished in several cases. Is their mid laner getting blue? Are they low? Did they just recall? These are all good situations to roam towards either bot or top, as the enemy mid laner will have an awkward time trying to stop you. If you roam together with your jungler friend, then you should have a drastic advantage in terms of securing the kill or getting enough damage off to force a back. Depending on the timing, these kinds of roams can easily be turned into a tower kill or another objective.

However, since this is a roam and gank focused pairing, good vision control is paramount, particularly deep vision. You need to have advanced warding in place not only to know whether their mid laner is following you or not, but also to maintain knowledge of their jungler's exact position. Is their jungler top side? Then you'll want to roam bot. Or, if you'd like to take the even more aggressive approach, invade their jungler while they're doing a buff. Regardless of whether your roams focus on enemy laners or the jungler, deep wards and sticking together as a squad will improve your chances of success.

Image courtesy of vesner

Mid + ADC

This is for the duos who take pleasure in high risk/high reward gameplay. You'll be dealing out the majority of your team's damage, therefore it's completely on your shoulders to get the job done in teamfights. If you don't do the damage, you won't win. Period. For those duos who are confident they can fit the team in their backpack and carry hard, this is the pair of roles for you. Just keep in mind that the roles you're filling represent the highest threat to the enemy team, and they WILL come for you. When occupying these two roles, one misplay or being out of position could cost your team some serious momentum.

That being said, since the two of you have all the damage, you can also coordinate where that damage is going quite well. Is their frontline too far up and getting isolated? Focus down their tank and leave the backline without peel. Are you in good positions to quickly burst down an enemy carry? Go for it. If you coordinate your efforts well, you can burst enemies down very efficiently. One thing to note though is that this duo can be the most impacted by the early game, as you are playing very farm-focused champions. Fall behind early, and your ability to carry the game and do enough damage will be seriously affected.

Jungle + Support

Finally, we have the jungle and support duo. While it may seem like a bit of an oddball pairing at first, these two roles have excellent roam potential. The jungler goes without saying, but the support can also roam between lanes and into the enemy jungle. Supports who build Boots of Mobility can even roam all the way to top lane pretty quickly. Additionally, as the support, you're not punished much at all by roaming. You can catch XP from other lanes, help the jungler clear camps, or get XP through assists. As long as your ADC is farming, then don't hesitate to roam every now and then and look for opportunities to make plays around the map. Since you have a friend in the jungler position, you can coordinate your roams/ganks similar to how a mid + jungle duo would.

With these roles in particular though, I'd like to address something that I didn't really talk about in the other pairings. As the support and jungler, you have the most engage potential. Almost all competitively viable jungle picks have some kind of engage tool, and the same goes for the supports with a high pick rate in competitive. With all of the crowd control and engage tools at your fingertips, you can start a fight anywhere and anytime. This is particularly useful in the later phases of the game, when the focus shifts from farming/laning to more of an objective and teamfight focus. Coordinating your engages together, particularly on the right targets, can carry a game just as well as doing damage from a carry role can.

Conclusion

Ultimately, how you choose to duo is up to you. There are, however, clearly distinct playstyles for some of these roles in regards to how they synergize together. You are going to play together very differently as the mid and ADC than you would as the jungle and support, for instance. If both of you know your playstyles well, maybe a certain pairing of roles is particularly well-suited to how you both play as individuals. This can, in turn, lead to improved results when you duo queue together. In either case, I hope you've taken something away from this article that can help you climb the ladder. Thanks for reading!

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