When to Use Two Heroes in Lane, Gold & EXP Analysis

By Vyzeox

This analysis is for 1.12 and thus some things are no longer relevant currently (1.14).

Support players often play in the jungle, it’s been a meta promoted by most players as well as the developers of the game. This makes sense, you can provide your jungle carry extra gold, clear out your jungle faster, and help fight against jungle invades. We all know that the lane has more gold than the jungle. And, if you’ve been paying attention to the patch notes, the percentage gold you are given from the lane is no longer less than the percentage of gold from the jungle as well as they added a 20% EXP boost per ally in the lane. This seemed incredibly potential for a support with an Ironguard Contract in the lane instead of the jungle - I decided I should crunch the numbers.

Introductory Facts

For now you can just have a look at this Broken Myth page by Keldegar. I’ll list anything that is relevant or outdated below.

Lane

The first minion wave spawns at roughly 00:06

The minion wave takes roughly 21 seconds to reach the center

The three small minions in a wave are worth 41 gold

The big minion in a wave is worth 87 gold

A full wave clear totals 210 gold

Jungle

The first jungle monsters spawn at 00:25

It takes roughly 20 seconds to clear the jungle

The two small monsters (shop camp) are worth 22 gold each

The two big monsters (back camp) are worth 75 gold and 13 EXP each

The two healing monsters are worth 32 gold and 29 EXP each

A full jungle rotation totals 258 gold.

Assumptions/Scenario

There are a lot of assumptions

We are assuming that the maximum gold is achieved (every last hit, support taking aggro in jungle, etc.)

No minion mines are taken

No combative engages with the enemy team happen

The support is always in the lane or jungle (depending on which one we are analyzing)

No bonus gold is awarded to the last-hitter (contrary to the jungle carry) because revealing yourself as double laning is potentially dangerous (I still cover this).

Lane

We’ll need to first look at all the lane minions’ “properties” and then translate it into wave clears.

Let’s look at the following table. It’s a timeline of all the lane minion waves (when they spawn and when they are killed for gold).

MWS = Minion waves spawned | MWK = Minion waves killed

Each wave is worth 210 gold and 30 EXP. Everything looks correct except when you stumble upon 720, the total of all the EXP. Ever since patch 1.11, if you have an ally with an Ironguard Contract active you get 20% extra EXP from lane minions. The support hero gets 75% of all gold from the lane and thus received 3780 gold, 3750 gold is the minimum amount needed to maximize Stormguard Banner’s passive bonus damage. In the lane, EXP is split equally between the last-hitter and the hero with the Ironguard Contract leaving both players with 432 EXP.

Let’s say that, as in the jungle, the support aggros every lane minion to provide extra gold to the lane carry. The lane carry would now have a total of 6930 gold. Because this is unlikely, particularly because of the fact that you would probably not want to only reveal that you’re double laning, let’s calculate how much gold the lane carry would get if you aggro the minions per wave. Now, instead of 210 gold per wave, you would get 288.75 gold per wave.

Jungle

Let’s break down a jungle rotation’s gold and EXP before tackling the total gold and EXP to further our understanding.

The jungle is very different from the lane with different respawn timers for each monster. In this case, we’ll just use 55 seconds and say it takes 20 seconds to clear the jungle. As we did with the lane, let’s make a timeline of all the jungle rotations until 10 minutes.

JRS = Jungle rotations spawned | JRK = Jungle rotations killed

Ignore everything but the totals, unless you want to see how I got them.

Each wave is worth 258 gold and 104 EXP. As with the lane timeline, there’s a twist: the gold for the jungle carry is incorrect, with the support hero taking the hits, the jungle carry gets 37.5% more gold (not 30%, as the game suggests). The support hero gets 75% of the base gold with an Ironguard Contract resulting in 2128.5 gold. EXP is again split equally resulting in 572 for both players. We need to add the lane carry’s gold and EXP without a support to properly compare them and get a team total.

Lane vs. Jungle - A New Meta(?)

Time for comparison!

We added the jungle carry’s gold and EXP (without the bonus gold) to the lane support’s “team” to get a team total. We can now properly compare.

Light Green = Lane Team | Light Red = Jungle Team

The lane clearly beats the jungle in gold (even without any lane minion aggro!) and in EXP. The lane has 105.30% more gold than the jungle and has 107.37% more EXP than the jungle team. From this we can conclude that it is indeed better to stay up in the lane and use your Ironguard Contract there rather than utilizing it in the jungle in terms of both gold and EXP.

Application to the Game

The left represents what your allies and yourself are using and the right represents what your enemies are using. Each hero represents what they’re set in-game as (Joule = lane; Adagio = roam; Rona = jungle, etc.). In special cases you can mix lane/jungle (Glaive, etc.).

Green = Recommend | Yellow = Think twice | Red = Discourage

Several things you need to do to make this work:

Maintain good vision on all entrances of the jungle at all times

Good map awareness

Clear the lane as fast as possible, if your opponent freezes the lane then overextend; your support can prevent a gank

The main thing you’re looking for in the enemy hero composition are heroes that aren’t too good in the early-game and are slow. Watch out for people that can reveal you in the lane with abilities or can threaten your jungle carry. Definitely avoid Koshka and Fortress - both of them (even when not combined) can cause serious damage to a jungle with only one hero.

The main thing you’re looking for in your own heroes are heroes that can sneak into the enemy jungle in case of a jungle invade, can clear the jungle (or lane) quickly, heroes like Joule that can easily escape in case of a jungle invade, and heroes that have good base statistics on abilities. Beware of people with slow clears. Avoid late game jungle carries and slow supports.



The Best Possible Gold/EXP Rotation

If all of the heroes composing your enemy’s hero composition are marked as green and all of your heroes are also marked as green, I would recommend staying in the lane for as much of the game as possible while rotating down every time your jungle carry clears the middle healing monster near the entrance of the jungle.

If you’re up against heroes that are marked as “think twice” (yellow) then stick with your jungle carry for the whole game and clear out the jungle as fast as possible - I recommend buying a Stormguard Banner for this. Once your jungle is cleared, rotate to the lane after you shop (if needed).

If you have a Phinn or Krul on your team or the enemy team has a Koshka or Fortress, the best possible gold/EXP rotation would be to play as the normal meta: always sticking to your jungle carry and rotating up to the lane for ganks occasionally.

If you do use this strategy, your level 1 rotation should be going to your back big camps and collecting the gold from there and rotate to lane after, in which the lane carry should stall until you get there.

Concluding Theory

The lane is more profitable in both gold and EXP for a support. There are certain situations where you should double lane and there are others where you shouldn’t. This all depends on both teams’ hero compositions. If you find the opportunity to, I definitely would recommend it. Prepare to find yourself, as a support, rolling over the other team with extra items.