Let’s break down each and every lane’s major focus in League of Legends. As we do that, we’ll unpack how you can both improve at these skills while offering scenarios to think about to apply them in game!
In League of Legends, there are five lanes/roles: Top, Jungle, Mid, Bot/ADC, and Support. In this guide, we’re going to go over the core-concepts of each lane and tell you what you need to be focused on to master your chosen role. This piece will be great for all you Summoners out there looking to transition from one role to another, or if you’re a new player looking to learn your way into quickly understanding what you need to focus on to improve.
We’ll be starting from the Top of the map down to the bottom, so we’ll first talk about Top Lane. Top Lane is a very volatile lane on Summoner’s Rift and has been known for multiple seasons now as the ‘Counterpick Lane’ in Solo Queue. The reason for this is that a lot of Top Lane’s matchups are just flat out decided by who is forced to pick their Champion first. While this doesn’t mean there aren’t ways to win and affect the game through your Champion disadvantage, it does lead to this role being quite snowbally and catering to those that like to outplay their opponents and then snowball off their leads from them.
We’ll first breakdown Wave Manipulation in Top Lane. Wave Manipulation as a term is a bit self-defining, but to simply say, “Learn to manipulate or manage your waves” as a tip would be insufficient. So, we’re going to go over the three main phases of Wave Manipulation: Fast Pushing, Slow Pushing, and Freezing.
But before any of that, I’ll be using the terms and phrases relating to neutral, even, or return to such going forward. When a lane state returns to a neutral/even state, it returns to its starting state, or when the minions are crashing in the center of the lane. So, keep this in mind if I say something that references this state going forward.
Fast Pushing is a great tactic when you want to create a situation that your opponents need to respond to immediately. If your opponents don’t respond to your Fast Push, they risk giving more resources to you and risk losing resources themselves. With that in mind there are methods and considerations when Fast Pushing that you should think about.
The first and most common of these is simply creating a “push”. This is done by using your abilities and auto-attacks on the minion wave to clear them out quickly, thus allowing your minions to push and crash into the enemy’s side of the lane and hopefully into the turret. This is a great move to generate a lot of pressure quickly and force your opponents to decide between what you could be doing or what they get from the wave. Fast Pushing in this regard generates what we call lane priority which is a state where you have the agency to move away from your lane to other areas of the map when needed. You could Fast Push your wave and then get down to an anticipated skirmish in river, you can fast push to give yourself priority to establish vision around your lane, you could fast push to move down river to take Herald, you could fast push even to invade the enemy Jungle if you’re feeling spicy.
The second instance to consider Fast Pushing in is when you want to get in a recall or back. Fast Pushing in this instance often occurs when you have the lane to yourself, and you know you’re not vulnerable to ganks or bush cheese from your opponents. Creating the push on your wave when your opponent isn’t in lane is going to force them to miss out on the minions that hit the turret, naturally. But, by the time you haul your butt back to lane, you’ll have missed very little since the wave state should be geared to come back towards you and will have likely met your wave. As a note towards enemy response, if an opponent is forced to last hit under turret, they typically begin to generate a Slow Push towards you. Which is something we’ll get into later. But, in this instance, if they’ve last hit the wave back towards pushing to your side of the map, you can simply farm what you can get safely and then reset the wave into a neutral state once you’re in a safer lane position. If your opponent doesn’t last hit, and instead tries to clear the wave quickly, they might miss CS and create a Fast Push back towards you that you can stabilize into a neutral wave state.
We’ve discussed some pros and conditions to look for when Fast Pushing, but what are the cons? Well, to put it simply, Fast Pushing makes you vulnerable. Using your abilities on the wave, positioning yourself aggressively up the lane to meet waves and clear them, all these things put you in a gankable position for the enemy team. So, especially through the earlier phases of the game, it’s important to take note of the Jungler’s starting position, and if they’re pathing towards your side, and what tools your lane opponent has to set up for their Jungler.
So, how do we create a Slow Push? To create a Slow Push, you simply need to kill the enemy caster minions when the lane is in a neutral state, or last hit when coming from under your turret. Both generate a minion advantage for you, and through last hitting, you maintain the advantage by relying solely on the minion’s damage to push the wave forward. Naturally, this is a slow process thus the name ‘slow push’. But, generally speaking, you need to have a 2 to 3 minion advantage over your enemy’s wave to generate a slow push if the wave is on your side of the lane. If it’s on the opponent’s, you’ll need a 4 to 5 advantage.
Why should you slow push and what is the advantage of this wave state? Like with Fast Pushing, Slow Pushing creates a wave state that the opponents will need to respond to. But unlike Fast Pushing, it doesn’t require an immediate response from them. Instead, Slow Pushing puts the opponents on a timer and gives them a window to move and respond around the map, just as it gives you one.
But, when a Slow Push has made its way to the opposing lane’s side, the window closes near instantly. I like to think of it like this: Whereas a Fast Push is a suggestion to farm the wave, a Slow Push is a demand. If a properly mounted Slow Push doesn’t receive a response, it alone can take turrets and stay mounted on the opposing side and generate a ton of value and pressure if left unanswered.
So, a massive amount of mounting Minion pressure is one advantage of Slow Pushing, but are there others? Well, as a Slow Push mounts, you create a lane state where you are at your safest while over-extending as a Top Laner. Should your lane opponent attempt to interact with you during this time, they trade not only into you, but also into the Minions that you have mounted. This also factors in for a Jungler’s ganks. If you are playing a particularly dominant lane Champion like Darius or Illaoi, having a Minion advantage alongside your extremely deadly kit can be a sign to opposing Junglers to ‘cease and desist’. Additionally, when your Slow Push crashes, it creates a perfect opportunity to pressure your opponent under turret and dive them. If your opponents attempt to thin the wave, you can harass them freely, if they ignore the wave, they trade into the Minions, if you and your Jungler coordinate well or have aggro-juggling moves, you can bounce the turret aggro between yourselves and the minion wave to dive, all while having your opponent’s damage and pressure limited
Slow Pushes are also great to set up as they allow you to make plays around the map while your Minions put in the tower work. They afford you recall time and generally allow you to be absent for Top Lane for extended periods without losing much for yourself.
What are the cons? Well, you get the most value out of Slow Pushing in the Mid Game onward, or the transition period just before it since the pressure generated ties heavy in with objective play. Additionally, you’re still over-extending as you crash this wave. If any additional members roam Top, like a Mid Laner or roaming Support, or you’ve overestimated your abilities you can quickly flip that stacked wave into a massive gold advantage for your opponents alongside your death.
The final wave state, Freezing is the process of ‘freezing’ the wave on your side of the lane and creating a situation where your opponent must look to put themselves at a disadvantage to contest farm. Freezing is oftentimes best executed when you’re leading in lane, since your lead or Champion advantage over your opponent creates favorable fighting situations for you. Additionally, freezing also exposes the enemy to over-extension making them vulnerable to Jungle pressure.
Freezing typically forces a series of responses from your opponents that you can play around. The first of these is for the enemy Jungler to come and break the freeze alongside his Top Laner. By creating a temporary 2v1, the pressure from the combined players forces you to back off and allows for them to break the freeze by clearing your wave and pressuring theirs into your turret to naturally reset it. The second of these responses is for the enemy Top to roam, either to Support his Jungler or look for a gank angle on Mid. The third of these is to force the enemy Top to scrap by farm from the topside Jungle camps, pinching gold and exp away from their Jungler.
While freezing is often seen as a state with only positive outcomes, there are negatives to it. The first of these being that you’re committed to maintaining the freeze over anything else. This prevents you from moving towards fights around your lane if your Jungler gets into a scuffle. Additionally, while the Minions are frozen on your side, to trade with your opponent you’re oftentimes positioning yourself between your wave and them and playing further up from the freeze towards the middle of the lane, thus putting you in a vulnerable position if you’re on a more immobile top or have poor vision.
Junglers, the most pressured role in the game, has a lot to be concerned about. Gank pathing, timing, which order they want to clear their camps, how they match against their opposing Jungler and what they can do to win the matchup... All of these things and more go through the minds of a Jungler at the early stages, but overall I believe the core thing that Junglers should focus on is playing towards their game’s win-condition.
What does this even mean? Well, it’s a concept that concerns itself with the evolving state of the game. From level one, as most players do, evaluate yourself as the wincon. What actions you take as a Jungler early on are likely going to dictate the first 10-15 minutes of the game, so it’s important that you play to your Champion’s strengths and identity at that time.
If you’re a Nocturne, unless the enemy Top is literally at your Top’s turret, then your goal is to farm and ping caution for your Top by tracking the enemy Jungler with pings. If you’re Xin Zhao, you want to be putting an emphasis on pathing towards the lane that has the least amount of mobility so that you go for kills or force Flashes out for your team. Whatever you do though, needs to be leading to a set-up for your next play.
After you’ve set your pace though, consider which of your laners is your biggest win-conditions and play towards them. If you’re on that gank-focused Jungler like Lee or Xin, that might mean ganking the Maokai lane that can easily set you up. If you’re on a team that features a comp that really doesn’t want to teamfight, then putting your pressure on the lane with your split-pushing Fiora might be the call. If your team is reliant on scaling, then gatewarding the enemy Jungle and calling out the Jungler’s pathing could be playing towards your wincon. It’s a multi-faceted mindset when it comes to playing towards your win cons, and since Junglers can be literally everywhere over the course of the game, they’re the best ones to decide what side of the map gets attention and what the process should look like.
Mid Lane, next to Jungle, is one of the most difficult positions to play in the game. It requires not only all the capabilities of a laner, but also a Jungler as well. To that end, Mid Lane’s core concepts are twofold: Roaming & Farming.
Let’s start first with Farming, like your Top Lane cousins, Farming is a huge aspect of your game in Mid. As a primary carry for the game, your responsibility is to achieve as close to perfect CS as possible so that you’re constantly generating income that keeps you ahead of the curve. So, this means successfully last-hitting your creeps, and absorbing Jungle camps that you can at a seemingly constant rate.
Like Top Lane, Mid does have wave manipulation tactics that can be employed. And again those are Fast Pushing, Slow Pushing, and Freezing. And, honestly, the context for both works pretty much the same. But, in the shortened lane of Mid and where there is more wave clear present with the Champion choices there, your windows to act off a fast push are smaller, slow pushes can be more easily disrupted, and freezes, while dangerous, aren’t as dangerous as they are in a longer lane.
The way you create these states also differs too. With your freeze and slow pushes coming off of tanking or pulling those 3 minions you need to establish those states, you expose yourself to a little more risk, especially through the early minutes of the game. But, knowing when and how to successfully time these states is key.
Roaming and playing towards your Jungler ties right in with wave manipulation too. Recognizing what style of Jungler you have can help you select your Champion to complement their style or allow you to adjust your playstyle to fit their appropriate phase of the game. Let’s use Zilean for our example Mid Lane pick, since Zilean has two very successful playstyles that fit well into our discussion here.
Zilean, in isolation, is a very scaling and utility-focused pick. His damage comes online with items, so that means he values controlled game states and farming over extremely sporadic ones. Come late game, his ultimate is teamfight changing and his ability to control zones and lock down opponents is near oppressive. So, you’ll not typically see Zilean players really contest throughout the early phase as they’re just trying to absorb to reach this god-like enabler state. But consider that you have an aggressive Jungler, like a Lee Sin or Jarvan.
These Champions want tempo throughout the early game. They want to gank a lane, take a kill or Flash, and then transition into more tempo plays around camps or even more ganks and dueling. It’s the antithesis of what your standard Zilean player wants. But, if you watch high ELO Zilean players, they recognize that their Jungler’s champ style is key to what they can accomplish throughout the game, so they adapt their playstyles. These Zilean players become less absorption bots, and more akin to roaming Supports.
They’ll shove their wave, taking as much gold as they can, and then immediately float out of vision to threaten movement around the map. Ideally, they move to play with their Jungler, enabling them on their next ganks, helping them clear a camp quickly, or supporting them on an aggressive 2v1 invade. At worst, this roam away from lane generates map pressure akin to an Assassin moving, especially if the opponents’ lane vision is poor, causing your enemies to play defensive if they’re aware. Or present that roaming opportunity if they don’t seem to respond.
And it’s this level of adjustment that you need to be able to apply in your games as a Mid Laner. You need to be able recognize and play with your number one partner in the game, the Jungler, and enable them. If you do that, they’ll enable you in return. Their benefit is your benefit.
I encourage you to check out Coach Curtis’ video on MagiFelix’s playstyle on this Zilean pick that I mentioned above. This video served as an inspiration to use Zil as my example here, but it also highlights how meaningful your in-game adaptation of a Champion’s normal playstyle can be.
Whether you’re playing a Mage or rocking a more traditional Marksman, whoever you’re filling the Bot Laner position with is entirely focused on farming. The goal of a Bot Laner is to be a primary carry and damage outlet for the team, and to do that you need to hit item thresholds and stay at or ahead of the gold curve. Being a Long Sword or an Amp Tome down can make a huge difference whether you come out ahead of a fight or behind it, so Bot Laners are almost exclusively tunnel visioned on farm as they attempt to reach powerful item spikes that increase their overall DPS.
Marksmen have the advantage of being the class balanced and designed around what is near entirely unavoidable damage. Their range, base AD, and attack speeds carry their kits and theoretically, should an ADC be left alone in a teamfight, they should provide the most damage over the course of that fight due to the nature of their point and click damage. This is why ADCs will likely never not be relevant in any level of play, alongside their ability to provide consistent damage to neutral objectives like Dragon, Baron, and Turrets that Mages and other classes simply lack.
Naturally, there is some variation in approach with Champions like Lucian, Kalista, and Draven all having excellent early game focused kits that care more about the value of their base damages through the early lane phase, but when push comes to shove, what makes Marksmen and DPS Mages like Cassiopeia viable in the Bot Lane role is their ability to scale up and provide consistent fight DPS during the late game, which requires consistent climb of income over the course of the game.
To improve your CS abilities, you can undertake very basic warm-up routines by heading into the practice tool against Bots or simply CSing yourself in Bottom Lane, striving to reach that 10cs/min mark. This is the golden standard that elite players push towards when it comes to farming and they’ll subject themselves to regular warm-ups, bot routines, or drills against other players to balance their abilities to both trade and CS while in lane.
Additionally, mirroring Top and Mid Laners, much of the same Wave Manipulation tactics apply here. Perhaps doubly so since a freeze can be extremely deadly in this lane thanks to not only the zoning potential that ranged Champions have, but also due to the fact that you have a Support whose entire goal is to punish over aggressive and greedy positioning, enabling you to come out ahead even more.
When the Mid Game approaches and item spikes have begun to be reached, both ADCs and APCs can really begin to shine. It’s also at this point things transition to where their damage is most valuable, teamfighting and skirmishing.
To be a great teamfighter requires excellent positioning and threat assessment. You must be aware of where and how to position yourself relevant to the enemy’s largest threat so that you can avoid their damage and consistently pump out your own. Sometimes this might mean you come into a fight a beat behind your team so that the greedy assassin drops their combos on the Mid Laner instead of you, or it could be that you play as the centerpiece of a “protect the carry” comp that’s designed to shuttle you around like an NFL quarterback, enabling you to make the best plays possible. Whatever your designation is in a teamfight depends on what Champion you’re playing, where you’re at in terms of items, what the enemy composition has to threaten you, and what tools (allied Champions/Summoner Spells) you have at your disposal.
Like in our discussion with Zilean, great ADCs can adjust how their mindsets work from game to game. Where one might be playing a more “go hard” Champion like Lucian, if you’re matched against a short-range punishing selection like Caitlyn, Pantheon, or Akali in various positions, then as Lucian you may have to adjust how you apply your dash in fight situations. Where you might typically use it to boldly move forward and follow up with an ally, you might need instead to hold it and use it defensively, kiting back and attempting to extend and last against Champions that want to punish your short range or have ability to get on top of you.
Last, but not least, Supports. Warding is perhaps the biggest thing that every Support player focuses on. But there’s a difference between applying vision and applying effective vision. Many support players will simply run to common ward locations and drop off their totems and sight wards thinking that because they held common angles that they’re doing their jobs. But warding is an adaptive concept, much like fighting, wave manipulation, and gameplanning is for other roles.
As a Support you not only cover common angles, but you also must keep an eye towards an enemy’s warding habits through the bodies of dead wards, looking to remove their vision in the locations they like to ward, or applying your vision away from their wards, but still at advantageous angles so that you can catch the pathing of your enemy’s roaming Champions. This is double so for Champions like Zac or Kayn who have the ability to take unique pathways in their gank routes that are uncommon in comparison to other Junglers.
Generally, there’s an over-emphasis on warding through the lane phase since this is typically regarded as the weakest phase for ADCs due to their lack of items in Bot, but to be a masterful warder you must also have understanding and control over wards in and around neutral objects or rotational points come the Mid to Late game.
When sieging you’re setting up wards to not only cover your flanks in whatever lane you’re pushing, but you’re also trying to find that window to roam and get forward vision to see the enemies that are approaching you from the enemy side of the map. When looking to claim a neutral objective, you’re not only trying to keep a Pink Ward in the pit to disable enemy vision over the wall, you’re looking to have warded preemptively so your Jungler can see where their enemy counterpart is approaching from so they can win the smite fight, or so that you can engage on the overzealous enemy wandering towards your team.
Keep tuned to our website in the coming weeks when we sit down with DIG’s own Biofrost to cover an in-depth warding guide that should help you up your warding and macro gameplay from Support!
Taking us into the teamfighting spectrum on this note, Supports typically lose their damaging impact as the game drags on and other players pick-up items. So, come the Mid to Late game the focus of Support becomes less about any damage that their kits do and more about what their abilities provide to a team. So, this makes teamfighting very important to every class of Support. Be that Enchanters or Tanks. Mages defy this a smidge by being a damage-focused class that can fill the role, but in a perfect world, they’ll never apply as much damage as a farming Mid Laner does due to having to rely on a lower income and focus their gold towards applying vision over reaching items. But at the same time, Mid Laners do typically package some form of CC in their kits so appropriate application of the CC in a supportive manner becomes important.
To be a great teamfighting Support, you need to have the same eye and understanding that Bot Laners do when it comes to threat assessment, first and foremost. You need to isolate the biggest threat on the enemy team and then gameplan on how you can inhibit them from doing what they want while also supporting your biggest threat to achieving what they want to accomplish in a fight. But, you also have to understand what your role is in the teamcomp and adapt it towards what your team is needing the most in any given moment.
Let’s use Leona for example. She’s a Champion known for her ability to go in early and often, and is the quintessential engage Support that everyone thinks of when they want someone to start a teamfight off. But, if you’re a Leona in a composition that features a Zac or Malphite, maybe your role needs to adapt. Instead of being the one that leads the charge into fights and locks down opponents with CC, you instead become a more defensive playing Warden style pick that uses their CC to peel and protect their carries or disrupt divers that would seek to do them harm. Solely focusing on one note and approach of play allows smarter enemies take advantage of your habits and predict how you’ll approach fights, allowing them to get the upper hand.
So, there you have it. Core concepts for each lane that you need to have mastered. This piece should be enough to get you off the ground and thinking about what your role and lane is looking to achieve. As always, I encourage you to explore the plethora of League of Legends resources out there and take advantage of their services. Like the guides we provide here at Dignitas!
We regularly interview our players and coaches and get an insight towards what’s happening with the Solo Queue metagame, and what you can take from Pro Play and adapt into your game on the ladder. Keep tuned to our site updates and you’re sure to find information that will help you achieve your ranked goals.
With that said, thanks for reading guys! And good luck in Solo Queue!
