What makes a good mid-lane hero?

Question

Reading various guides and doing my first multiplayer bot games, I've seen that there are champions more suited to mid-laning(usually solo).
What characteristics should have a good mid-laner?
Is their role relevant?(carry, tank...)
Is it better to do the mid lane solo or is it just an option?

Asked by Kappei

Answer

First of all we need to see the advantages of going mid-lane solo:

• Faster xp gain
• Easy to gank either top or bottom lane
• Easy to get the runes(+bottle efficiency)
• Better lane protection(this means the enemy doesn't really have so much space to chase you on lane as they would have top/bottom so it's harder to be killed.)

It is good to go solo mostly because of the faster xp gain which is a huge factor.

Considering the facts listed above, we can follow-up with the 2 following reasons to go mid-lane.

1. You are a carry hero. Being a carry hero requires fast leveling/farming and the mid lane offers this to any decent player. If you can't farm that well, still you will level faster anyway. Now, 80% of cases are in the first category. This means you need a carry oriented hero which preferably can also farm/deny. This means most will be ranged, but there are some good melee heroes too. In what follows I will give some examples of some good range/melee heroes for mid:

   • Riki this is my personal choice, but, if you are a begginer do not take this as it is a little hard to manage. Well, riki is one of the best carries in the game due to high damage and smoke screen which is just imba. You will have dificulties in farming especially if you are against ranged heroes. Early smoke will help a lot. Blink/smoke farm will get you easily to lvl 6. Then go gank or keep farming like a boss if opponent is noob and doesn't have wards by now.
   • Nevermore this is a great carry, one of the easyest farmers there are in the game, good ulti with dagger or lothar's , good harass. This will definetely be in the top choices for mid heroes.
   • Bloodseeker Passive for regen from creeps is just great. With axe for 32% damage vs creeps you will never need to go fountain for regen probably. When you hit 6 you can easily gank.

2. You have a good ganker hero. This means you have for instance pudge or mirana which after fastly achieving level 5-6 can go fast top/bottom for gank and get kill 100% sure if they get hook/arrow. Also, take Tiny for example. Getting fast lvl 7-8 when all the other players are level 5 will get you easiest kill ever with avalanche/toss combo. Bane elemental falls easily in this category with level 6. Lion due to ultimate ofc, but arguably better as support/roamer. Tinker just omg so much burst damage at level 7-8. Leveling him fast will be a good idea as he can easily get some early game kills.

3. You are a good harraser. This means you can really slow down the enemy's mid hero leveling/farming. Most of the time you won't see this happening but I've seen this in some games.

Well this doesn't cover all heroes but hopefully will get you a good idea to start with.

Answered by Fofole

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