Mid Lane has been a hectic place to make your home recently. There have been invasions of AD champions such as Zed, Jayce and Kha’Zix which at times have completely invalidated the traditional AP pick. Mid-to-Bot lane swaps have become more common putting a Mid-laner into an uncomfortable 2v1 situation. Having said that everything seems to have calmed down recently. Plentiful use of the Morello Nerfhammer ™ is probably to blame as well as the simple fact that players adapt. What this means is that once again the majority of champions in Mid are the APs, much to the delight of AP players. It also means that there are clear patterns in the common AP picks which I want to go into today. As you will already have seen above is an infographic of the most commonly played AP Mids in weeks 5-7 of the LCS in NA and EU. It’s worth noting that these are the picks that were taken by the Mid-laner and not the picks which went into Mid Lane.

It is my opinion that all of the champions I list here today are well balanced, with the exception of Twisted Fate. Always banned or always picked and probably the single most contested pick in competitive play right now this guy is without a doubt the king of Mid Lane. During weeks 5- 7 of the LCS he was let through to be picked more than any other AP Mid. He also has a reputation of being the single best champion to carry in ranked with, but why?

Well I could write a whole other blog regarding why Twisted Fate is so strong but I will keep it relatively brief here. In the hands of a skilled summoner Twisted Fate has the unique ability to control the game through his Destiny/Gate ultimate throughout the entire game.

Early game he can just push, look for opportunities, lock a gold card then teleport to another lane for a kill or two. It works well in solo queue because little team coordination is needed but in competitive play it is even more lethal with good team coordination to follow up.

During the sometimes chaotic mid game Twisted Fate has excellent potential to catch people out of place with his ultimate and short-cooldown gold cards. A single kill like this can start the snowball of objectives and lead to a win.

Late game he turns into the splitpushing monster. With a team who can apply pressure elsewhere as he does his thing he can be a constant and annoying pest anywhere on the map with the possibility to instantly be with his team for a teamfight. He pushes fast with his Wild Cards and (even more so with Lich Bane) his Pick-A-Card ability shreds down turrets.

If Twisted Fate is the king of the AP Mids, Orianna is the queen. She is the one who does everything. She is an extremely safe lane, very difficult to directly counterpick without leaving holes in a team composition and even if she gets counterpicked she is very difficult to shut down. She is excellent at harassing, farming and zone control. She has a very strong shield, can slow down enemies and speed up friends. Her straight up burst damage may be weak early game but late game she is a terror to anyone squishy. She even has autoattacks which hurt throughout the whole game. The only things lacking are sustain and a gap-closer but we can’t have everything can we?

All this just makes her strong and consistent however. What really sets her apart is her ultimate. In the hands of a skilled summoner her Command: Shockwave is a tool of limitless potential. A 3000-elo Shockwave may be difficult to pull off but, as has been shown time and time again, it only takes one to win a game. Then there’s all the synergies and “ball delivery methods”. Shield an Elise, Zac or Nocturne. Let them fly or jump into the enemy team. Press R. Win. With or without good team coordination Orianna can be a game changer.

It isn’t possible for Orianna to be in a situation which she doesn’t have a response to. On top of this she is strong in nearly any team composition, particularly with the rapid increase in gap-closers as “ball delivery systems”. In short she is incredibly flexible and safe with the possibility to be game changing; no wonder she is so popular.

Ahri is on this list because of MYM Czaru. In the LCS Spring Split she just wasn’t played, it was almost as if she was forgotten about. Then came the new teams and Czaru’s “always-with-teleport” Ahri was hurting dominating. People quickly realised her strength and started playing her again. Ahri is another champion who is an extremely versatile pick. Like Orianna she farms and harasses well whilst being very hard to shut out of lane. Unlike Orianna, Ahri has very strong kill potential in lane post-6. With her ultimate up Ahri can turn a single hit Charm into a kill and becomes impossible to gank. In fact it isn’t uncommon to hit a Charm during a gank and use her 3 dashes (4 with Flash) to get a 1v2 kill then escape. When Ahri “gets going” she is hard to stop, she snowballs crazily well.

On release she was a “build-tanky-kill-everyone” type of champion. Nowadays I would class her as “opportunistic”. In team fights she hangs back getting as much damage on everyone as possible without using her ultimate. Then the moment there are 1 or 2 enemies who are low she goes for it, using up to two charges of her ultimate to dash around dealing damage whilst avoiding taking much then if necessary another to escape or chase. Outside of teamfights an Ahri player will constantly be looking to hit a charm on a key target or catch someone out of position and kill them before escaping.

I can’t really mention Czaru and his teleport without talking about teleport on Ahri. In short, it is really scary. With her ultimate and charm there is no chance to escape a tele-gank. Late game she can splitpush in complete safety and just ultimate away if things go badly. I would consider her to be one of the strongest champions to run teleport on in the game.

Ryze is one of the oldest champions in the game but is still one of the most popular AP mids. Before you get all pedantic, yes I know “AP” isn’t his primary method of scaling but I say he still goes into the category.

Unlike everyone else on this list, Ryze isn’t burst or cooldown dependent, he is more of a DPS turret. Also he isn’t as safe or versatile a pick as Orianna or Ahri. He can’t push at all which makes his roaming weak, since he doesn’t stack AP his turret damage is terrible and early game he is weak abusable. It’s not all bad though.

Remember I mentioned players adapting to all the AD champions in mid? Well that’s why Ryze is picked. His snare makes the life of anyone with melee-range autoattacks hell and he isn’t penalised by stacking armour as much as other AP Mids.

One other thing, he is one of the best scaling “mages” in the game (with the possible exception of Karthus). He scales with mana so builds items like Rod of Ages, Seraph’s Embrace and even Frozen Heart. Notice something about those items? Well noticed, they all scale exceptionally well into lategame teamfights and make him harder to kill. He gets harder to kill as he builds damage, nice right? You do not want to be against a lategame Ryze without a team with really strong scaling to back you up, trust me on that.

Out of all of the champions on this list, Kassadin is the one who doesn’t fit into the utility-DPS category. He is the one who is easiest to counter. He has little CC. He is weak pre-6 due to his melee auto attacks. However post-6 he turns into an extremely strong lane bully against mages due to his long duration silence. With his Riftwalk he is an extremely strong roamer and ganker if he hasn’t been shut down totally in lane. Lategame he uses his Riftwalk to dip in and out of fights dealing huge bursts of damage on isolated targets whilst being very difficult to pin down and kill. Oh and did I mention that he can splitpush well also?

A late game Kassadin can almost be described as being a combination of Ryze and Ahri. He combines the scaling and tankiness of Ryze (but toned down) with the high-mobility and opportunistic playstyle of Ahri. Ouch.

Fear not though. If you find yourself facing a Kassadin who your Mid-laner doesn’t want to face, consider a lane swap to put your Marksman and Support champions against him. A 2v1 lane is the thing Kassadin players have nightmares about, his silence is useless against Marksmen and he has no good early farming tools (especially since Void Force pulse requires spellcasts to

“charge up”). He doesn’t even have ranged autoattacks to farm with.

I was originally going to keep this as a “Top 5” list, but then I read into Lissandra a bit more and changed my mind. Lissandra only has 5 picks (in Mid Lane) over the 3 weeks and all of them are in EU. She is also a common pick in Top Lane and is a common ban whilst still being relatively new. To me this makes her worthy of a mention.

Just like Czaru bought Ahri into play, Lissandra was bought into the scene by Alternate’s ForellenLord. From the first weeks in the LCS he used Lissandra for scary engages making use of her Glacial Path (or “Claw”), her AoE root and of course her stun/Zhonya’s ultimate. This is what Lissandra excels at. She doesn’t do huge damage, even when built glass cannon but she is one of the few extremely strong engagers who can be found in Mid Lane. Her Ice Shard is very strong at pushing and farming which she can do in complete safety due to her Claw. Ganking her is nothing short of incredibly difficult. Not only do you need to get past her Claw but also her root and if things to especially bad she can stun you with her ultimate. The only silver lining is the is likely to be very easy to kill if you manage to get to her.

Since Lissandra is still new to the game arguments are still raging regarding build (What damage-to-survivability ratio is best? ) and playstyle (Frozen Tomb yourself to stay alive or someone else for extra damage after diving in?). My personal build involves building the more tanky-AP items to make yourself very difficult to kill and get multiple skill rotations off during fights. As for who to cast the ultimate on it is really situation dependent, there is no best way. I could write a whole new article on just Lissandra, in fact I might just do that…

As ever, thanks for reading and feel free to discuss this article. Constructive Criticism is always appreciated.