I have noticed that midlane is often the most important, but have no facts to back that up. From experience, what is the most carriable lane?
League-of-legends – the most important lane to carry (mid, bot AD, jungle, or top)
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Mid champs exist for a couple of reasons. Mid champs are normally blue dependent and have a very strong early-mid game. Mid therefore is good place for them since:
- It's always closest to blue
- They can roam to top and bot for ganks plus help the jungler if necessary since they are central
- It's closer to dragon
The reason for having two bot goes way back to the fact that dragon is the home of bot lane (therefore you wan't the two champion lane closest to it). You don't necessarily have to have AD/support there however it has been proven game after game that baby sitting your AD with a support bot lane works really well. Since AD carries don't scale as well with level as bruisers/caster it also make sense to just give them the farm but not the full XP.
As for top champions they are normally beefy or have escapes since they tend to push up very far and can be very exposed to ganks.
As for which champions go into each lane that is very dependant of the current meta and will likely change in the future.
I won't go into explaining why you have a jungler but it's been proven that having one is a lot better than not.
A "kill lane" in bottom is a different strategy of winning your lane. A very general definition of "winning your lane" is that you have generated more gold, experience, and map presence than your lane opponent(s).
In bottom lane, the standard strategy is to get a lane with high sustain and ranged attacks which reduces the potential for being harassed and reduces the impact of harassment by having heals, shields, or other damage mitigation. This is essentially a "farm lane." Your goal is to get as much creep score (CS) as possible, and hopefully some kills along the way to bolster the amount of gold and experience you receive (as well as reduce the amount your opponents receive).
By contrast, a "kill lane" is one where the focus is on killing your opponents. Usually this is accomplished by having two characters with crowd-control, at least one of whom can also deal fair damage. You would normally pick a kill lane to counter a farm lane, which often has at least one character considered "squishy" (low hp, armor, and/or magic resist), making the kills easier. Commonly chosen combinations are Jarvan and Leona, Sion and Nautilus, and (more antiquated due to Taric's lack of damage) Taric and Sion. The reasoning is that each of these groups either have a large amount of CC, burst potential, tankiness (so they can tower-dive and are hard to get out of lane), or a combination of all three.
Sion makes a great choice because of his stun and burst potential. You can also build AD Sion and rely on your extra damage from Enrage in combination with your stun. Leona has fair damage when paired with someone else because of her passive ability, and also has three crowd-control mechanisms at level 6. Jarvan is a good choice with her because he has two crowd-control measures of his own and has similar mobility. Nautilus is prized for the same reasons as Jarvan, but his passive gives him an additional crowd control opportunity (though he lacks the same damage and farming potential as Jarvan).
While it's obvious that you get gold and experience from repeatedly killing your lane, those numbers become less significant as the game goes on (assuming you're even successful). Additionally, at first glance, it seems like you wouldn't be able to generate as much gold for your lane as a strict farm lane could (given the diminishing returns of killing the same player over and over). However, there are important indirect results of the kill lane:
- First and foremost is that your opponents become easy to zone out of experience and CS even if you don't kill them. Killing them of course means they spend more time out of lane. So while you may not be generating as much if you were simply farming, they are generating far less as well.
- Killing your lane gives you the chance to gank mid, top, or counter-jungle which not only gives you some extra gold, but also increases the gap between your allies and their respective lanes.
- Repeatedly killing your opponents gives you more opportunity to push the tower which can be an important gold, experience, and map presence boost early on. It also aids in accessing the lower portion of your opponent's jungle.
- A kill lane plus your jungler should easily be able to take down dragon very early, again providing an important gold bonus to your team and helping to establish control of that objective.
Related Topic
- League-of-legends – How to Efficiently Farm Top / Mid Lane
- League-of-legends – Would it be viable to run an AP champ in bottom lane with a support and put your ranged AD carry in mid
- League-of-legends – When/how to start farm Wraiths on Mid Lane
- League-of-legends – Where should the AD Carry be in the Mid Game
Best Answer
There are two questions built into this: Which lane is the most carry-able (that is, easiest to carry) and which lane is the most important to have carry.
First, let's just come out and say that, given a sufficiently fed or farmed character, any role can carry. Getting into that position is more or less difficult depending on more factors than we can reasonably cover. However, I won't address those long-tail style situations and focus on the core of the problem. I'll also be assuming that everyone is of equal skill and the champions are all equally balanced for their roles.
Second, strong play is always going to be the defining quality behind "carrying." It just usually starts with getting a significant lead in the laning phase. This isn't a requirement, just a general observation.
Third, a quick TL;DR:
In which lane is it easiest to carry?
1v1 and 2v1 lanes are definitely the answer here. The reason being that in a duo-lane you have someone else looking out for you. Either they're a support and they mitigate anything that happens to you (either by enabling kills of your own, mitigating damage, or healing) or they're another power-house which enables you to go back, heal, and buy items. However, in a 1v1 lane, if you can establish dominance, your opponent has few choices but to play cautiously and wait for you to make a mistake. Jungle ganks are the equalizer, here, but given equivalent quality and quantity of jungle ganks, the person in the lead is the one who will dominate that lane. It also means that you're getting more gold and CS than your opponents and allies. The faster you're getting your levels and items, the more you're going to carry.
This means that, traditionally, both top lane and mid lane are going to be the easiest to carry in, all else being equal.
In which role is it the most important to carry?
I swapped to "role" rather than lane just for clarity, no other reason.
This question hinges on how you intend to destroy the nexus. Do you siege turrets and inhibitors, disengaging whenever the enemies approach? Are you going to ace the opponents and take the opportunity to take a turret or two? Are you just going to bully through with multiple tanks and push turrets like dominoes?
All of these are perfectly valid strategies that fit within the current meta. The most common by far is acing the other team and then pushing, of course. There are too many variables to effectively cover the math in this situation, but in general you'll find that AD carries will do more damage to turrets than AP carries will. Why? It's all about damage per second to a turret.
Source
Let's take a base case that you're playing Annie who does (49 + (2.625*18)) * 0.712 = 68.53 damage per second at level 18 (ignore runes, masteries, and that "AD Annie who really carried that one game"). Let's say you have 1000 AP, which we can all agree is exceptional (both in the degree of its quality and the fact it's an exception to the norm). That means you'll be doing 68.53 + (400 * 0.712) = 353.33 raw damage per second to that turret that has 50 armor (for the outer turret; I don't have data for others).
It doesn't take much to imagine an AD carry being able to dish out significantly more raw damage per second to that turret, even taking into account that critical strikes and armor penetration don't apply. Let's all just pause right here and also recognize that adding a Lich Bane to that AP build would tip the scales significantly. But that only covers some AP carries, and I'm trying to be general.
Clearly, if your goal is to push down turrets, either by using a bully-tank based approach or a siege, you want your AD bot to be carrying.
If you're looking to kill the enemy team, however, an argument can be made that having extreme burst damage that you traditionally get from an AP carry makes the most sense. This math is less straight-forward as the turret's static values aren't in place. Suffice to say that the burst from your AP role in the mid-game is designed to be more powerful than you AD, and is often area-of-effect, increasing the total damage done to ridiculous proportions.
In short: Late game and siege-based teams would do well to ensure their AD is well farmed and prepared to carry, whereas roaming gank squads and kill-based teams should focus on making sure your AP is ready for action as soon as possible.