The Midlane, one of the most popular yet challenging roles in League of Legends. From support mages to assasins, pokers and casters, everything is represented in the midlane, and some may work better than others. Since people enjoy playing it so much, and since season 5 has changed a lot, here are some tips to increase your skill in the midlane.

Farming your advantage

Farming is the most important thing while playing mid. The usual misconception is that when you kill your opponent once or twice in lane, you’ve won the battle in mid. While that is true in most of the cases, it doesn’t really matter if he’s got the same cs as you. Your first kill on your opponent grants you 300 gold, which might seem a lot to you at first, but when you notice it’s roughly the same amount as killing 15 minions you’ll start looking at it from a different perspective.

Here is a table that shows you the perfect creep score per minute.

While it may seem impossible at first, try and come as close as possible. Pro players such as Froggen have mastered farming while trading blows with your opponent in lane, and after practicing this for a while you’ll start noticing you’re getting your items way faster, thus getting stronger in the early parts of the game. Some tips for improving your farm is to go into a custom game without Runes and Masteries, and to practice last hitting. Do this for about 5 games and you’ll already start seeing a difference when you’re playing with your usual set up.

Another tip is by doing the beaks inbetween waves. When playing champions that can clear waves pretty easy, push out the wave until it’s under your opponent's tower and then go and farm your jungle. This way you’ll rack up some extra gold and xp and it will help you gain a bigger lead over your opponent.

Turning the Teamfights

While playing midlane, you’ll usually have the most impact in teamfights. It’s important to fully understand your role and posititioning in teamfights, so here are some general examples for playing your teamfights as two ifferent roles: The Assassin, and The Mage.

Assassin: While playing an assassin, getting on their carries is your primary goal. It’s important to note, though,that you shouldn’t go in blindly. Wait until the enemy team has burned their crowd control and peeling spells, then make your way into the teamfight. For example, when you’re playing Zed you should wait until the enemy team has used their Janna ult and then look for an opportity to place your ultimate on their Adc or Apc, whichever one has a bigger lead. By picking someone off like that, you’ll almost guarantee a successful fight for your team and proceed to snowball the game.

The Mage: While playing a mage role in teamfights it’s important to completely understand your role and team composition. Most of the mage champions have some kind of AOE, so look out for enemies who are clumped up together. Nothing is more satisfying then hitting three enemies with a Syndra stun, or landing a five-man shockwave when playing Orianna. Another thing to note is that you should position yourself in the back of the fight. Most of the mages don’t have an escape ability, so look out for enemies diving on top of you. Ask your team to peel for you or even build an early defensive item, and control the fight from the backline.

The midlane is very role and teamcomp dependant, but when you truly understand your role and part of the compositions, you can swing the fights in your favour.

Roaming and Running

It doesn’t matter whether you’re playing an assassin or a mage, roaming is a very important aspect of playing mid. Since mid has such an easy acces to the other lanes, it’s very important to understand when, and where to roam. With season 5, roaming became a lot more difficult with the introduction of the scuttle crab and the value of the new dragon. More value equals more wards which leads to less succesful roams. This means you have to think ahead, which is a bit dificult sometimes.

But let’s start small. The first thing you need to do is look at the minimap. Is top under pressure, or is bot having a hard time? Also look at the enemy champions, and more important, your own teammates. Who has the most cc, can the enemy dash away from me easily? These are all important factors to keep in mind while planning to roam. Secondly, make sure you push your lane out. You don’t want the unnecessary pressure on your turret, and this way the enemy midlane can’t easily follow you.

The last thing to keep in mind is to not get spotted by wards. This may seem very obvious, but this goes wrong more often than you think. When roaming towards a lane, always look at how the enemy reacts. When it’s different from how they were behaving before, you’ve most likely been spotted. This also means you’re going to have to keep track of the other lanes before you plan a roam, and watch how they react to certain things.

Roaming seems like an easy thing to do, going from your lane to another and killing someone, but there’s a lot more than meets the eye. But if you can roam efficiently, you don’t only help yourself, but your teammates as well, which leads you one step closer to victory.

When playing midlane, you can put the whole team on your back. While everyone has a different playing style, there’s always a general line of how you should play. I hope this guide brought some new informations and strategies to you and I hope you improve. See you on the rift!

Boiya