Struggling to get into League? Wanting to off-role for a bit, but don’t know where to start? Wanting to find an easier path to Ranked success? Well, start here as we break down the intensity of each role in League of Legends.
Lately, I’ve been walking some new players through the ‘Introduction’ period of League of Legends. You know, those first few weeks where everything is crazy and wild, and you’re building AP on Jinx when she has no AP-scalings to really rely on? The ‘fun’ phase of the game.
But as my friends have started to settle in and establish their favorite Champions and their comfort on them, many of their pressing questions to me have been, “Can I play -insert Champion- in -insert role-?” And many times, they’ve been dismayed to find that their favorites don’t necessarily fit into their idea of a role or vice versa.
So, this brought me to retool the way I talk to them about the game. Unless they’ve fallen in love with a single individual Champion, I’ve been coaching them up from a role perspective. Helping them gain the insight of what each lane provides in League of Legends, as well as explaining the how and why as to why certain Champions go into each role. While this has helped some of them solidify their way into becoming more ‘meta’ players, others are still struggling with the mental stack that League requires and are wanting an easier experience while still getting to play the game with their friends.
Their own research even led them to asking, “Tea, what is the least mechanically demanding role in the game?” which led to a ton of discussion. Of course, that sparked this article’s topic of discussion today. So, we’re going to be unpacking each role in terms of their mechanical demand.
To no one’s surprise, Support ranks as the easiest role in terms of mechanical demand. Why’s that? Well, the main reason is that Supports do not have to farm. Every other role in LoL is based off of farming and maintaining a high gold advantage through farming well, and Supports get to entirely void that section of mechanics from their brain.
Additionally, since they aren’t a farming-based role, they are often the lowest threat generator on the team. You won’t see Sona walking away with a Pentakill because she hard carried a fight. You’ll instead see her Kog’Maw taking things over, which makes the Kog more of a priority to enemies. This means that Supports also don’t have to dive too intensely on positioning and can instead early default to what their Champion does to get them going. Tanks play forward, Enchanters and Mages play back. Easy to understand from the start. Though, of course, as threat assessment gets better with rank, Supports can find themselves needing to get this concept down, lest they suffer.
Winding back to farming, knowing how to farm will make the Support player better because that comes to translate into understanding wave states and how to manipulate and punish around them, which is a huge portion of playing Support at a high level. But, in terms of starting from square one, Supports don’t have to learn this from the start and instead can focus on the execution of their Champions, Warding, Roaming, or understanding Threat Assessment, which, I would argue, are larger concepts for Supports to learn. Especially so if you’re planning on duo-ing regularly since you can rely on your Bot Lane partner to understand the wave manipulation aspect of the lane.
Overall, Support is a more macro-focused role which means it’s a more knowledge-based role. You gain macro-related understanding through experience and through watching VODs and understanding timers. You can’t necessarily practice macro to the same intensity as you could say practice the various combos that Leblanc or Zed have at their disposal since macro-play is only replicable around distinct timers in-game. And so, for all this, that means that Support is the least mechanically demanding role in the game.
Put the pitchforks down. While Jungle may be the most important role in the game, that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s the most mechanically demanding. Sure, there are Champions like Nidalee and Lee-Sin who are infamously difficult to execute on if you are as practiced as a Master-tier player, but there are also really simply Champions like Nunu and Zac that can enable players with less mechanical giftedness to really shine in game.
Jungle shares a huge chunk of difficulty with Support for being the macro-focused role in League of Legends. It’s a role centered around timers, ganking, and the largest objectives on the map, Dragon and Baron. So, this means everything a Jungler does is centered towards working to secure pace and tempo around the timers of these objectives which are always static. The only thing not static about these timers is when they are taken by teams which are entirely based on who is and isn’t winning and where bodies are located on the map.
These concepts can be understood and executed without a ton of practice. In fact, perhaps the most mechanically demanding thing about Jungle, besides a few individual Champions in terms of execution, is clearing. Good clears require practice and understanding how to manipulate the camps in certain ways to both maximize the damage dealt to them, and minimize the damage dealt to you. This does take effort, but it’s also something that you can easily practice via the practice tool. It’s a resource that’s almost always available to you and gets a bit easier when you have players leashing alongside you.
Overall, once again, a more macro/knowledge-based role means that learning Jungle is going to be easy, especially since a chunk of its gameplay is PvE. Mastering Jungle is extremely difficult and requires far more than just understanding timers and knowing when camps spawn and how to clear them. The deep-end of Jungle is like an ocean, and while you can play on the kiddy-pool side of things and play safe, to be a dominant Jungler requires much more than knowledge.
Bot’s next up on the list. And this one might raise some eyebrows due to Bot Lane’s overall importance on League of Legends’ meta. Being so close to Dragon and having the Champion class, Marksmen, which can deal near unavoidable damage at a consistent rate has always made Bot Lane a highly impactful role. And players that master it are often regarded as some of the highest in terms of mechanical ability. Think of players like Doublelift, Uzi, or Ruler for example.
Let’s flesh things out. What do Bot Players have to worry about? Number one has to be farming. Income is so important to their damage, and they always want to be ahead of their opponent to guarantee their strength in a fight. Number two is positioning. Bot Laners are super squishy as a trade off to their high damage. So, they have to be aware of everyone that’s going to blow them up since they’re often threat number one.
Number three would likely be trading. Trading well can secure you control over a lane and threat of a kill, so knowing when you can weave your poke in on an enemy is huge. Honestly, I’d argue that it's more knowledge based than it is mechanical. Right-clicking to do the damage doesn’t require a lot of skill. Kiting things back does, but clicking forward to poke? Hm. Debatable. Thereafter, you have concepts like matchup knowledge, lane assignments, and understanding power spikes, which again I’d say are more knowledge-based than mechanically based.
So, that takes us to the point that Bot Laners really only have two mechanically intense concepts to worry about: Farming and Positioning. Then you throw in the fact that you have a buddy that can help trigger or circumvent the trading, matchup knowledge, and power spike understanding, and you’ve found yourself in a situation where you really only have two things to worry about as a Bot Laner. That’s why they sit in the middle of our list, but again, much like Jungle, the best of the best at Bot Lane are in-tune with far more than just their lane’s two core concepts.
Top finds us from second to last, and many would argue that it should be regarded as the hardest role. Which, I can entirely see. Really, it’s a coin toss of preference on these last two roles. However, I put Top here for one simple reason. Macro Impact.
Roles that concern themselves with Macro can typically have an easier barrier to entry, because as we’ve discussed, it’s a very knowledge-based thing to refine. You can study it beyond playing the game. However, Top finds itself cut at the heels from the hardest role due to it. Why?
Well, it’s because of the role’s lack of Macro Impact. Top Lane is, arguably, the most demanding role in terms of mechanical execution. You need Champion execution, trade execution, farm execution, matchup knowledge, and sheer moxie to play Top at a high level. It’s League of Legends’ fighting game before Project L was even a thing in the minds of Rioters. It’s an extremely intense role that punishes those that can’t execute heavily while rewarding those to god-hood status that can. Some matchups up Top are strictly win or lose and there’s little that can be done to change that.
But, that lack of map wide impact draws them back in my opinion. We’ll see how the upcoming season alters the way Top Lane can mold the pace of the game, but as it’s stood for years, even if a Top Laner gets fed, they have to overcome not only their persistent opponent but also overcome their Champion’s weaknesses against a cast of picks that typically have the range or CC to deal with them from Jungle down to Bot. And unless you’re hard maining a pick like Ornn or Malphite, which is a strictly team focused pick, you might find yourself having difficulties impacting a game beyond your lane on picks like Fiora, Riven, or Jax, who have clearly defined melee-based damage to play around. And even then, on those Tank picks, you’re trading off the micro impact for the macro, which entirely alters your scope of the game.
In truth, I think this is a patch-by-patch discussion on if Top is the hardest role in the game or not. But, historically, it’s always lagged in macro impact, so that’s why I rate it as the second hardest to learn mechanically.
The main characters, the heartbeat of the map, the centers of attention, the Faker wannabes. Mid Lane is an extremely intense role in terms of mechanical demand. They not only have to possess the refined farming mechanics of Bot, but they also have the trading requirements of Top down pat. This is on top of understanding the roaming philosophies of Support and the timer and objective play of Jungle.
Mid is a role that encompasses everything that everyone else needs to know, all while being either a primary or secondary damage source for every game. And this all comes from, perhaps oddly, the safest lane in League.
Mid’s short length allows for Mages and Assassins alike to shine, but it also allows for fun flex picks from Support, Top, and Bot to find their way there. Really, the state of the lane itself allows for the right conditions to favor every Champion in League. Save for maybe Yuumi. This makes the role diversity in terms of pick potential insane. So, not only do you need to have all the raw micro-mechanics down so that you’re constantly a threat, but you also have to have the macro, and general matchup knowledge and workings of every Champion down so that you can properly gameplan around them.
All this is why Mid is our most demanding role.
So ,there you have it! Each role ranked up in terms of their mechanical demand. We hope this serves as a great discussion point for all you beginners out there looking to find your way! Check out more guides and info here at dignitas.gg if you’re looking for more ways to improve your League of Legends gameplay.
