A new season has arrived and that means new Mid Laners to the Solo-Queue pool. Whether you’re a long-time main or a new recruit, let’s cover some fundamental Mid Lane tips under the guidance of Dignitas QNTMPAY’s own professional mid laner, Ersin “Blue” Gören.

The Number One Most Important Fundamental to Have Mastered - Farming

Not missing CS is very important because every gold and CS matters. Focus on this, especially if you’re learning or are in Gold or Silver, because this is going to be a skill that not only matters for Mid Lane but is also one that is going to carry if you get auto-filled.

- Blue

Farm is king. It’s been beaten into the ground at this point, but it needs to be covered over and over since the damage of League’s meta-game keeps ramping and people keep playing for these aggressive all-in approaches. Farm is going to be the most consistent way that you stack up a lead over your opponent. If you are able to out CS your opponent, especially as a Mage, without dying through your time in Mid Lane, you’re going to approach each and every situation of a fight or trade with an advantage over your enemy, since you theoretically should be able to translate your CS lead into stiffer item components.

Their Amp-Tome versus your Lost Chapter means you win not only in terms of flat-out damage, but that you also win the push and sustain battle. Same for Assassins when it comes to their pieces. Two Long Swords versus a completed Serrated Dirk favors the Serrated player in the 1v1 every time.

Missing last clicks on Minions quickly becomes an expensive mistake, giving your opponent a larger lead every time. Additionally, going for a last hit makes you predictable, so you need to farm while dodging your enemy’s skill shots. That’s why we recommend the HyperX Pulsefire Haste gaming mouse. With this lightweight mouse, you can quickly dodge skillshots while still securing that last hit on the Siege Minion.

Set Up a Champion Pool

Before we go on to any techniques, let’s first talk about what you want to do as a Mid Laner. Are you the type that enjoys playing high-risk high-reward Champions? Maybe the Assassin life is for you. Or, are you a player that enjoys gathering as much in the way of resources as you can and eventually dominating the game? Well, Mages might be right up your alley.

It’s important to define what style of play you enjoy so that you can pick a pool of appropriate Champions that can facilitate this style of play in game for you. You want to establish a pool with similar play patterns so that you’re always looking for and seeing the same opportunities and not changing the conditions that you’re playing the game under drastically. Additionally, this will build Champion mastery and get you off on the right foot as far as matchup knowledge and muscle memory in the tightest and most stressful of moments in game.

As of patch 12.2, a very Meta pool of both Mages looks a little something like Lux, Vex, Viktor. Popular Meta Assassins are Katarina, Zed, and Akali. Small pools of 3 Champions are the best way to focus your skills and recognition towards fast improvement. You can expand this pool to 5 if you plan on featuring these more meta focused picks since they’ll likely be in high contest in Mid and other lanes.

Practice Your Map Awareness

Alongside CS, focus on your map awareness. Look at your minimap after every CS you take. One of the best ways you can get into the habit of this while also improving at your CS is by going to the practice tool and laning against a Bot. Set them at a higher difficulty so they trade more, but practice against CSing and dodging poke, or CSing while poking to go further. Push yourself towards that 10/min mark as best you can.

- Blue

Map Awareness can also be refined by what Champion you play or what type of Champion you play as well. Weirdly, Assassins with their tendency to want to roam and make plays, are going to more quickly develop a sense of the map and enemy movement due to their innate playstyle. And picks like Aurelion Sol, Twisted Fate, and Corki can also really drive home the importance of balancing Farm alongside being a Map presence.

Traditional picks that help you hammer out CSing and wave manipulation like Malzahar, Viktor, or Veigar may have teamfight potential and effects that can define a fight, but what they lack is a requirement to master mobility. Instead, they build you up to play around a lack-thereof. So, if you want to train yourself up to be a Map Aware menace, selecting Champions that have a natural inclination towards roaming to get ahead is going to help build up that skill quickly for you.

How to Improve at Trading

Improving at trading takes time. First of all, you not only have to know the limits of your Champion, but also know the limits of the enemy Champion. You have to always think one step ahead of your opponent. If you make a move, you need to know what move they will make to respond. Thinking like this will make you into an aggressive player that knows how to look for aggressive trades.

- Blue

Thinking a step ahead can also make you a safer player and help you evaluate your win-conditions as well. If you find yourself in a difficult or counter-matchup, knowing exactly what your opponent is going to do to stall your ability to impact the lane should lead you to developing a eye towards how to conquer them. And this can come in the form of conditioning.

If you’re a Leblanc against a Lissandra, for example, if you W into her, she’s likely going to W you in return to lock you down for poke. Testing the waters on a once or twice attempt to trade is going to build up conditioning for her and cause her to repeatedly look for this. So, you can gameplan around this by thinking a step ahead. Cut your dash just beyond her range before using your ult to dash in for the poke-to-blink back or bait her CC with your movement and call for your jungler to gank immediately following since she has one less disengage tool under her belt at this time.

When It Comes to Roaming

Thinking about the map awareness and map impact, when you roam, you always want to make it worth your time. Ideally, you will be roaming off the back of a push which should force your enemy to respond to the wave before following you, giving you time to get to wherever you roam first and safely. And if they do follow you immediately, they’re losing out on gold and exp as a trade off, you know? But regardless, in every situation, whenever you roam, always get something for it. Be that a kill, assist, a wave, some plates. It doesn’t matter. To improve at roaming you want to recognize when it’s ‘worth it’ to roam so you always want to look for a situation where you’re going to get something every single time, since there is the potential for you to lose out if you just walk down to Bot and get nothing.

- Blue

As a Mid Laner, it’s your job to be a carry and focal point for your team. You want to always be sucking in some form of income or gold or generating some type of advantage for your team by being a pressure point. So, as Blue mentioned, whenever you roam you want to get something for your time spent roaming. Otherwise, you’re just missing out on exp and gold, right?

But, there are situations where you can justify the loss if it means a gain for your team overall. Champions with extremely threatening brush camps like Diana, Leblanc, Ahri, and Pantheon can all sacrifice a little off of a wave if it means that they can set the edge for a pick around a big neutral objective like Dragon or Herald. These early objectives and the over importance the low ELO can place on them, can sometimes be the ideal bait and pick scenarios that you can snowball from.

To talk about conditioning your opponent once again, controlling vision is a super huge point when it comes to roaming. You want your primary roam paths clear or pinked up so that your opponent never knows where and how far you’re going. Keeping your vision lanes clear can help you set up pick situations or even generate pressure where there is none.

A common strategy for Mid Nocturne, Galio, Pantheon, and TF players is that once they hit six, they’ll hard shove their waves and just immediately walk out of vision. Even if they’re not roaming, their pressure of just being off the map makes their side lanes fall back because they have abilities that get them into ganking so quickly and safely that it’s hard to punish if you’re extended. You can employ this on non-global Mids as well by showing early your desire to roam too. Getting to a skirmish first, or showing that you’re consistently clearing vision to one side, should have your opponent communicating your intentions.

And then once you’ve conditioned them to think that you’re ‘definitely roaming here’ and they over-extend… DARKNESS and boom. You’ve netted yourself a solo-kill on their over-extension or their roam into fog of war.

Teamfighting As a Mid Laner

Teamfighting depends on what you’re playing. For example, if you’re playing a Qiyana, and a fight’s going to happen. You know that the enemy team is going to want to target you since you’re a big threat in teamfights thanks to your ult. So, you need to come from a way that the enemy won’t expect or can’t target you from. This might mean that you take a flank or wait to come in after a fight has started, ya know? Or, you can take initiative if you are ahead and flash quickly out of nowhere for insta kills on squishies before escaping out. Just examples. But if you’re on a Mage, like Orianna, you want to be at fights early and you want to be controlling space with your ball. You want to put the ball in chokes, threaten approaches with poke, and the threat of your ult. But also be aware of how vulnerable you are as a Mage, so you position a bit closer to your team and try to move with them when contesting these.

- Blue

This is a textbook example of Mages versus Assassins when it comes to teamfight and it all depends on what class you’re playing and in some particular instances what Champion of those classes you are playing. Blue used Qiyana as an example and she’s a common Assassin pick that has HUGE pressure around neutral objectives thanks to her wide hitting ultimate. It can control space and change teamfights instantly. Orianna and her ball control are quite the same.

And so when you think about this, I want you to think about our earlier point about Champion familiarity. You need to be familiar with your Champion and the strengths and weaknesses they have so that you can play your teamfights appropriately. You might win your lane every time as Xerath, but if you’re the Xerath that’s trying to play in the range of an Orianna and control space in the same way, then you’re just exposing yourself to a potential dive and not playing towards the optimal spacing that Xerath can employ.

If you’re rocking Corki and have gone for his poke build but are unfamiliar as to when it comes online and you miss-itemize because of it, you’re going to have to stall out until you have the necessary items to control a teamfight, or depending on the composition of the enemy team and what your team likes to accomplish, you may have to alter your build path to more appropriately fit in with the identity of your team and play more around effects like your Package over something like your Rockets. Thinking about these things ties into familiarity and thinking a step ahead, and this all comes to fruition for Mid Laners in the teamfight phase.

Closing Out

There you have it folks. A little bit of everything you need to be familiar with to become the best Mid Laner you can be, and ways to improve at these skills to boot. Thanks to Blue for sitting with me and coaching me up for this piece, and thanks to you all for reading. Good luck in Solo-Queue, and if you wanna catch more Blue you can follow him at these social links:

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