There’s no secret that some roles in League are easier than others. But, how do each of the roles stack up in comparison to one another? What are the defining aspects of each role that make them so difficult to learn?

Well, sit with us as we discuss all that and more as we define the learning curve of each role in League of Legends from easiest to hardest.

Easiest Role - Support

There’s a reason that Support is often recommended for beginners to pick up and for players to learn as an off-role to their primary lane. It requires the least amount of micro/mechanical ability of any role, and instead focuses on a macro-oriented playstyle that’s less about execution and more about set-up and anticipation.

Supports are defined by their ability to establish vision, provide information, mitigate advantages, enable carries, and make flashy plays. While this seems like a lot, at a base mechanical level it doesn’t tend to be a heavy workload since warding is simply ‘click here for vision’, the play making buttons are often one ability on each Support, occasionally coinciding with Flash to get in range, and the other aspects of their kits are often simply ‘put shield on ADC’ or ‘hit CC wide-range CC on enemy’. And if you were unaware, I say this all as a Support Main. Folks, our role isn’t hard.

That doesn’t mean it doesn’t have nuance though. Becoming a good Support comes down to game management, identifying win-cons, thinking two steps ahead of your opponents and crafting pathways to punish or waste an enemy’s efforts. And when you pair this with the expectation that you are the pick in Bot that defines who wins or loses the game, it can be difficult for some. But, even still, there are more ways to work past the pressures of Support in comparison to other roles, and that’s largely thanks to the presence of your duo partner. Who, conveniently, is next on the chopping block.

The Second Easiest Role - Bot Lane

I can already hear the shouts and feel the poke of the pitchforks. Yes. We’re defining Bot Lane as the second easiest role. Why? Well, it’s because you have three responsibilities as a Bot Laner: farm well, position well, and do damage. All things that are made easier by the existence of your Support, and all things that are relatively quick to learn in comparison to the workload of other lanes.

Now, of course, that’s a very basic layout of responsibilities and those can be unpacked further. So, let’s step back before the fire of the Bot Lane tongues burns the pixels off their screen. Farming ties into understanding wave states, knowing when and how to set up freezes, fast-pushes, and slow pushes. Concepts that other Laners must learn as well, and they often have difficulties mastering them since Minions can be nuanced little NPCs. However, unlike Top or Mid, you get the luxury of a lane buddy that (hopefully) understands the importance of wave states too. Great Supports often pull or trim waves into perfect alignment for their Carries, and thanks to their beefier stats in most cases, they’re able to soak damage from the waves and enemy that you might not be able to as a Bot Laner to see through a perfect setup.

Positioning is also a bit more nuanced than ‘don’t die’ despite what any Korean Challenger will tell you. It requires a deep familiarity with your Champion’s ranges on both their auto-attacks and their abilities. Additionally, it requires the game sense to understand threat assessment and understanding who is the priority target on the enemy team. Is it the fed assassin that’s looking to blow you up every fight? Or is it the safely positioned mage or enemy marksmen that’s trying desperately to play front to back hoping to fulfill their third requirement? When you answer these things, Positioning becomes an intricate game about managing your mobility and damage against that of your opponents’, and when you consider the paper-thin defensives of Bot Laners, this can be a risky game to play that requires a ton of skill to pull off successfully.

The last responsibility ties into the second in that you need to pump out the DAMAGE. When you master positioning, you almost simultaneously master this skill as being aware of the enemy’s threats allows you to position to slap away at your opponents, but we’ll take it a step further and instead talk about trading, poke, and punishment during the lane phase. One of the ways that Bot Laners can dictate the outcome of their lane in Bot is by peppering their opponent with damage as they step forward to last-hit. Doing this to create a health advantage for yourself not only takes pressure off you in lane, but also dials in your Support and expands their mind to extend for creative and aggressive plays.

Mid Tier Difficulty - Top Lane

PUT THAT PITCHFORK DOWN!

I’m well aware of Top’s volatility and counter-based balance. It’s a lane where if you’re not feasting, it’s an absolute famine. Of all the roles, it’s probably the most micro/mechanically intensive in the game. All of the things attributed to it being an extremely difficult to execute lane and many players find it hard to thrive and impact the outcomes of its games due to it being so far away from everyone else.

However, isolation is exactly why it's in our middle tier. Being isolated in Top Lane lets you nearly entirely focus on the 1v1 matchup, and as long as you aren’t turning your brain off and playing to push constantly, there’s rarely a reason that the enemy jungle should camp you unless your lane opponent is his duo. Additionally, even if you catch a bad matchup, say a Mordekaiser into Mundo for example, you can be adaptive in your approach. There’s more than one way to skin a cat after all.

Sacrifice CS, maintain your HP and Mana, push only when you see the enemy Jungler on the opposite side of the map, come back to lane not directly but off from warding first, don’t be afraid to give up a plate to get a kill for your Jungler or Mid on a skirmish. Literally change your approach depending on if you win or lose the counter. And if you win the matchup? Shove that guy’s face in. Freeze on him. Dive him. Make him regret ever locking in Top at role select. You have the matchup power to do that.

And sure, he may be adapting his strategy too, but you’re smart. You’re going to recognize that he’s going to concede pressure to you, and you know what you’re gonna do while you crash a massive wave into his turret? You’re gonna invade the enemy Jungler and steal his camps or kill him outright because you’re a laner with resource advantages.

But, again, the reason why you’re the middle tier difficulty option is because you’re just so far away from having to care about the macro of the game. And today’s League of Legends is all about that macro-play. Sure, micro can enable you to take over that macro, but it’s much more of an uphill battle in comparison to seasons past.

The Hard Tier - Jungle

I’ll preface this section and say this is entirely meta dependent. There are times where Jungle is the absolute dictator of the outcome of the game, and you need to be on your stuff every moment. But then there are times where you can just full clear and find yourself scaling into infinity and beyond.

Regardless, I’ll spoil you and say Mid Lane, our last covered role after Jungle, is regarded as the hardest role in the game. But Jungle is a close second this season. And why is that? Well, Jungle has been in a state of flux not just this season but the past season as well. It’s seen its barrier to entry lowered, but not through methods that I would say take away the pressure of Jungle but through methods that allow for more Champions to find viability in the Jungle. And this alone doesn’t negate the role’s pressure or the community’s demand that this role be played to near perfection, because, at the end of the day, Laners think the game runs entirely through them and no one else, right?

Well, smart players know that’s not the case. Great Junglers can not only be players that influence one lane towards victory, but they can influence an entire map through their recognition of win conditions, their micro-ability on their Champions, and, perhaps most importantly, their setup and clutch-factor around objectives and with Smite.

In reality, Junglers kind of need to know everything in the game. It’s a role that’s entirely dictated around information. And that information can fluctuate heavily depending not just on your Jungle matchup but also on the success and strength of your lanes in entire isolation. And with your eyes and camera moving about at a constant, knowing how to parse that information out into a direct plan is extremely important and can be a taxing task for Junglers when they also have to manage the micro of their Champions.

The one saving grace of Jungle’s difficulty is not having to ‘worry’ about CS-ing. Sure, farm is important. But last hitting is never something you’re going to feel under pressure on as if you were a Top or Bot Laner. In the Jungle is smooth sailing unless you have a Shaco or Kha’zix attempting to terrorize you at every other camp.

The Hardest Tier - Mid

Hey. Here’s that spoiler I mentioned.

So, the reason why Mid is our highest learning curve role is that to become the best Mid Laner you possibly can be, you have to master concepts from all four other roles. And while you can neglect one aspect in favor of another, the way that alters you as a player and the approach likely wouldn’t align with a Faker-like concept of Mid gameplay. As a Mid you’re taking the greedy farm mentality of Bot, tying it in with the combative one-on-one of Top, into a lane where you’re expected to roam and facilitate other lanes if you get a lead like a Jungler while also supporting your Jungler to play around the map like a Support because you are the literal dead center of Summoner’s Rift.

As a Mid Laner, the game passes through you and it’s on you and the Jungler to dictate how the pace of that pass. It could be fast and aggressive with your focus being on Champions like Tristana or Talon, or it can be slow and deliberate coming from Champions like ASol or Anivia. Regardless of whatever approach you take, you have to strike a balance between the game concepts that overlap to create Mid to become a well-rounded player, or you do like many and focus on one or two key areas you’re really good at to promote a quick climb before eventually doubling back to learn what you neglected after you’ve reached your desired rank.

And to add insult to injury in regard to Mid’s overall difficulty, alongside Top, Mid has one of the deepest pools of Champions available to it with picks from all other lanes being capable of being viable Mid. This is due to the lane’s length and overall safety which makes it one of the hardest to abuse as a Jungler. So, off-meta Champions can find their way mid, play safe, and eventually reach their powerful states if left to go unpunished.

Closing Time

Thanks for taking the time to read! We hope that this piece has given you some insight on the learning curve and difficulty of each role, while also offering some advice on how to manage the expectations for them as well! Good luck with your second split climb everyone!