Hey Summoners, welcome to another ProGuides video. My name is Dan and today
we’re going over the most important tips for climbing as a mid laner.
Our Challenger Analysts have discussed it and we’re going to show you what’s up.. Even if you don’t play mid,
some of these tips can apply to any role and learning more about other roles indirectly helps you out as well.
Feel free to leave and feedback or comments in down below, we’re always reading them! The tips
in this video DO apply to every rank, but we’ll highlight which ranks they matter most for.
But before we get started, make sure to go to Proguides.com
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Our first topic is roaming. Roaming is a concept that’s important for players of all ranks, so we’re
going to give out tips that will help all players, but specifically help players of particular brackets.
Roaming for pressure - Diamond +
Diamond players making the push for higher ELO’s will especially find our first tip useful. Lower ELO players
might not find this as useful, but it’ll still be successful at times and will also develop good habits.
Most players by now understand the best times to roam
- when you’ve pushed a wave into the enemy turret.
Many players focus heavily on winning their lane and creating
leads during the lane phase to solo carry their games.
The thing is, a player who goes even in lane can still hard carry their games with pressure. As a disclaimer, not every
roam has to lead to a kill for it to be a great one. In cases where they do result in kills, that’s just a bonus.
Players above Platinum typically understand match-ups well enough to at least
take favorable trades in winning ones. When you’re playing mid, think about
your side laner’s matchups. If your top laner is playing Vayne vs Darius, you
should know that she’ll likely be constantly poking him and pushing to turret.
On the other side of the map, you have a lane like twitch soraka, being shoved
under turret by a caitlyn morgana lane. In either of these cases, you can
pressure roams onto those lanes. Even if you don’t walk all the way to either
lane, pushing in your wave and disappearing from the map creates pressure.
Instead of trying to auto the turret a couple of times, you can create more impact by leaving your lane.
Sure, you miss out on a couple of auto attacks or some potential poke on your
opponent, but the potential to create leads or alleviate pressure in another
lane is usually more important. That Darius who’s poked and farming under
turret now has to think about whether the enemy mid laner can dive him or not.
Based off of the fact that he’s at a quarter health and that the enemy mid laner is
coming to him, the best option would be for him to recall, thus losing minions to turret.
In the cases that he continues to get poked under turret while you’re starting your roam,
you can commit and pick up a free kill and then deny him the next waves to turret.
For that pesky caitlyn morgana lane that’s constantly pushing, they now have to consider
backing off when they would instead want to be taking turret plating. Allowing your
bot lane to go even is a huge win when they would otherwise get crushed. In the cases
that they don’t respect your roam, you can pick up kills on the overextended lane.
Dive top - Diamond +
While we just gave an example about it, our next tip is about diving top.
We’ve mentioned this in other videos, but top lane is simply the easiest lane
to dive. You should always look for opportunities to do so, especially when
you’re playing champions like Ekko, Lissandra, or Leblanc who excel at it.
Top lane is the easiest lane to impact, and also the easiest to pick up kills in. Since it’s long, creating small leads
allows either player to dominate with them. Since it’s typically
trade heavy, this usually means it’s easier to roam to.
Making plays there with your jungler is also much easier. You can make 3v1 plays in the top lane,
while in the bottom lane, you’ll be 4v2 with the potential of a teleport from the enemy top laner.
Although this might seem biased towards top laners, this IS
absolutely a mid-lane tip. Think about it like this, if you’re almost
guaranteed to find kills or create leads by roaming top, it’s always
going to be better than making your opponent miss a couple of minions.
You could instead make the enemy top laner miss entire waves, or pick up
takedown gold over minion farm. After a successful dive, feel free to tax your
top laner too to make up for the minions you miss mid. Clearing waves ensures
the wave pushes back to them so you can make the same play again later.
Fake Roaming - Silver to Plat
One thing you want to get in the habit of doing is figuring out
when to fake roam. Players between silver and platinum are still in
the mindset that they need to match their opponent’s plays. They
all hate it when the enemy mid laner roams, while theirs doesn’t.
As a result, many players have built bad habits of habitually following
roams and you can take advantage of this by fake roaming. After either
pushing a wave, or when you see an opportunity in a side lane, walk into
the top or bottom jungle, allowing your opponent to see which way you go.
Don’t commit to your roams, choose a brush and use a ward if necessary; if your enemy follows,
you can get a free all-in opportunity. If they go for a safe ward, this is still an
opportunity for you to get a free trade on them if you’re able to ward for vision before-hand.
You can walk back to lane with a health advantage simply by punishing a bad warding attempt.
In the case that your opponent decides to shove, you haven’t committed to the roam. You can quickly return to
lane to either freeze the wave, since you baited your enemies into pushing it, or quickly push the wave back.
Punishing Roams - All ELO’s
We just mentioned that it’s a “bad habit” to always follow roams.
While sometimes it is the right call, it’s often safer to push to turret. The
reason for this is that if your enemy is roaming, it’s usually because
they see an opportunity AKA, your teammates are overextended or low.
Hypothetically advantageous for your opponent already, you’re
simply balancing the body count in a fight you’re usually already
losing. While there’s always potential to clean-up a fight, this
comes down to your confidence and experience on your champion.
Whenever you’re uncertain, pushing the wave and hitting turret is the best way to
punish your enemies roams. In the cases that they were faking their roam and freeze the wave,
you can use this opportunity to ward or sacrifice your wave to roam yourself.
If they push back the wave, you can ward, and return to a wave that’s been reset.
When your enemies commit to their roams, you can at least trade back some
turret plating and deny the enemy mid laner minions. This will at least
equalize the gold if your enemy picks up a kill. If their roam is unsuccessful,
you’ve instead created a lead for yourself in both gold and EXP.
With an EXP advantage, you can look for all-ins or trades on level power spikes.
Regardless of your rank, this is a pretty staple answer to your opponent’s roams.
Warding
Our next topic is warding. Consistency is paramount as a player and
understanding concepts behind warding is a key fundamental to it.
Hugging a side - All ELO’s
An easy way to avoid dying to ganks is hugging a side of your lane. Which side you choose
is determined by your wards. That’s plural because you have 3 kinds; yellow trinket wards,
pink wards, and the one that moves around clearing the jungle. Jokes aside, it honestly is
paramount that you consider all 3 of these forms of vision and we’ll explain why in a second.
The simplest application of this concept is just using your vision to choose a side. Let’s say you
pushed in a minion wave and then warded the enemy ramp to raptors. Since you have vision on that side,
it’s much less likely that the enemy jungler will be there. The easiest way for you to get ganked in
this situation is from the opposite side of where you warded, since you won’t have any vision there.
By this logic, if you’re hugging the side where you have vision,
but get ganked from the side where you don’t, you’re already
distant enough from the enemy that you can walk into the jungle and
dodge the gank. With pink wards, you can make this even safer.
A ward at the ramp alone won’t cover all options the enemy
jungler has. You could place a pink on the same side’s
pixel brush (tiny brush in the river). This would cover
nearly every possible route the enemy jungler can take.
Sometimes, you don’t have a ward or the enemy team cleared your vision. In these
cases, you still have your third one, your jungler. Watch your junglers pathing, you
can use them as a safety net and hug their side. If the enemy jungler is on that
same side, your jungler will either spot them or be in position to counter-gank.
In the case that you’re ganked from the side opposite of your jungler,
you’ll force your opponents to expend abilities to close the
distance. This creates an ideal counter-gank scenario for your jungler
and you’ll already be close to them since you hugged their side.
Choosing a side to ward - Diamond +
Our next tip goes off of the same concept, but goes more in depth. This
likely won’t matter too much for lower ranked players, but the higher
you climb, the more relevant it is. When you’re choosing which side of
the map you want to place your vision, consider your win-conditions.
If one of your side lanes is in a losing match-up, but
is your win-condition, you should place your vision
on their side. As a mid laner, your wards cover half of the enemy jungler’s gank routes to your side lanes.
While your top laner or bottom duo can ward tri brush or
the river, the enemy jungler can still loop around to
dodge those wards. By warding the river on either side,
you can make that side laner’s wards more effective.
In cases where one side is self-sufficient, you should place
vision on the opposite one. You’ll want to provide vision for a
more volatile lane so that you can safely look to roam there
later, leaving your self-sufficient lane to do their own thing.
If both side lanes lose, use your vision based off of which dragon spawns. If it’s a
high priority dragon for your team, ward bottom side and otherwise ward top side.
Warding the middle of the lane - Gold +
If you frequently watch competitive games or high ELO players, you might
be confused why they sometimes ward the middle of the lane. This ward is
placed slightly passed the middle of the lane and is a situationally strong
ward. What it does is it let’s you see where your opponent is going.
You’ll want to use this ward when you have difficulty keeping lane
priority. When your opponent resets, you can push the wave and
place this ward right before your own. While alive, this ward will
inform you of your enemies roaming habits or if they’re recalling.
Especially versus champions like Taliyah, Twisted Fate, or Aurelion
Sol, you’ll be able to help prevent their roams on your side laners.
Laning
Let’s talk about laning now.
You don’t need solo kills - All ELO’s
Repeat after me. I don’t need solo kills to carry. Mid lane is the
lane that’s least reliant on solo kills. In fact, because it’s
safe, it’s also the least likely for you find them in. We’re not
saying you shouldn’t level 6 all in with Zed, don’t misunderstand.
What we’re saying is adopt this mindset: I don’t NEED solo kills to carry.
Don’t force yourself to make risky plays, just praying you find solo kills.
Be intelligent about it. Of the three lanes, mid lane has the most impact on
the map. You can win using various concepts, including ones from this video.
Small leads, lane priority, exp advantages, roams, and
pressuring dives are all ways to hard carry games
without solo killing your opponent. Honestly, a lot
of these are even better than picking up solo-kills.
Pressuring Minions - Iron to Platinum
Our next tip is a straight-forward one - pressure every minion. To do this, you need
to consider what your champions strengths are. If you have a range advantage, make
sure to take advantage of this. Poke your enemy every time they go for a minion;
eventually you’ll get them low enough that they’ll have to reset or fork over a free kill.
Other examples include power advantages - if you have strong all-in, make sure
to move forward aggressively and make your opponent think twice about farming.
They might even have to waste mana to safely farm. Regardless, the point
is that you want to make your opponent expend resources whenever possible.
Even if you don’t find kills or CS leads, making your opponent waste resources let’s you take lane
priority. An absolute fundamental for roaming and any lane, you can use lane priority to win you games.
Help your jungler/move with them - Plat +
Our final tip is to help your jungler. Don’t be so focused on winning your own lane. Helping
your jungler ultimately benefits you as well. If they can pull ahead, they can control
skuttle and also provide more control of the map. With those, your own roams are safer,
you can get deeper vision for yourself, and you can be less afraid of the enemy jungler.
Especially in the early game, remember that having a small minion
advantage in the mid lane isn’t as impactful as a CS lead for the
jungle. They can dictate the flow of the game much more heavily,
so early game leads on junglers are by far the most effective.
Put into practice, this means that you might need to push your
lane when you would rather freeze. If your jungler can’t handle
fighting the enemy jungler early, you can create roam timers for
yourself and collapse on the enemy jungler if yours finds them.
This also means that if you see your jungler looking to
gank a lane, consider the possibility of moving with them.
It’s not uncommon that, pushing your lane in and pressuring
a double roam or dive with your jungler wins you games.
Alright guys, thanks so much for watching! And remember, you can check out our youtube channel or
Proguides.com for more content just like this. On Proguides.com, we’ve partnered with
pro players to create courses designed to help you take your game to the next
level, so don’t miss out! Good luck on the rift, and we’ll see you all next time.