Ranged vs. Melee: How to Dominate your Mid Lane Matchup from Afar

It always feels frustrating when that pesky assassin who is behind you in CS the whole game kills you, or the bruiser you’re against dives you with their ultimate. It seems that one mistake can separate a healthy lead and a deficit that leaves you unable to reach CS. It is important to realize that this is avoidable with the correct laning set-up and execution.

Planning ahead and focusing are crucial to leveling up your play in laning phase. One of the key examples of this is in ranged versus melee matchups. As soon as champions are locked in, you should begin planning how laning phase needs to happen, which includes what win conditions you will play around. This involves being aware of both champions in the matchup and their strengths and weaknesses including trading patterns, timings, key skills, and minion interaction.

Trading Patterns

When discussing trading patterns, there are three overarching categories: extended, burst, and poke trades. Extended trades are characteristic of champions with lower damage abilities that have very short cooldowns or AD champions that can consistently auto attack while running you down. Burst trades are characteristic of champions with abilities that have a bit of a longer cooldown but do a lot more damage in a short window of time if you can find an opening. Poke trades are trades that occur when you have an ability that can reach your opponent from a safe distance for small amounts of damage that consistently build up. As a general rule, melee characters will have to close the gap between you and them to effectively trade, outside of a few specific cases. Ranged characters have more freedom and control over positioning compared to melee characters as they can initiate and confirm their trades from a safer range.

The first step is identifying how the opposing laner wants to trade. Champions like Talon, Zed, and Katarina want to have quick burst trades and then disengage once their cooldowns are used unless they can finish the kill very quickly. Champions like Irelia, Camille, and Rumble benefit from extended trade patterns. There are also champions like Akali, who benefit from both burst and extended trades. Most melee Mids heavily benefit from the burst trading style. 

If the opponent’s trading revolves around burst windows, then your goal as a ranged character is to avoid their burst timing and then using their vulnerability when they disengage from farm or trading to aggress. If the opponents trading revolves around extended trades, then your goal is to hurt their ability to reach you for trades by punishing them when they attempt to reach engage range.

Compare the opponent’s trading pattern to your optimal trading pattern. Champions like Cassiopeia, Orianna, and Corki are some ranged champions that benefit from the extended trading pattern. Champions like Taliyah, Syndra, and Leblanc are ranged champions that benefit from burst trading patterns. Ranged champions can all use poke trades more easily than melee characters with individual abilities that allow for damage from a distance. 

Poke trades are the bread and butter of ranged champions in the melee versus ranged scenarios. They are what the ranged champion will use to control when the trades happen and how the enemy laner is allowed to trade back. You must poke trade efficiently or you risk creating trade windows for the enemy while also draining your mana pool. Efficient poke trading is best utilized in tandem with minion control and cooldowns of key skills, which are elaborated on in later sections.

Timings

Timings describe when you want to be safe, aggressive, or out of lane for vision or roaming. These timings are built on level and item spikes.

When you hit level 2, 3, and 6 in lane, you gain access to an ability you did not have the level before. This is important in any lane but is specifically key to melee champions, who want to use their abilities to engage at moments when you do not have access to your full utility and damage. It is up to you to determine the importance of these level spikes in your match-up and play accordingly. If you can hit these levels before the opposing laner, then you should force them to respect your power by being willing to punish them for attempting trades or stepping forward for last hits. However, it is also true that you must respect the enemy level spikes, depending on how strong they make them, and not lose track of these timings. While mages can generally keep their melee opponent at a range before level 6, a level 6 spike could spell death for the mage if they allow champions like Fizz or Zed to use an effective ultimate.

Item spikes are also important. Any time you have more gold spent than the enemy, it is in your control to play the trade correctly and win it. However, this means if the enemy hits the item spike that allows them to fully optimize their trading pattern, they have a certain degree of control unless you have enough items to nullify this spike from them. For example, a Lost Chapter versus a few Long Swords should allow for extremely unbalanced trades in your favor. On the other hand, if you allow an enemy melee assassin with Youmuu’s Ghostblade to find you overextended in lane, they can (and will) run you down with the extra movement speed and lethality.

How to Implement Trading Patterns and Timings

Understanding trading patterns and timings is crucial to success. However, just knowing the ideas behind your trades is incomplete information. How does one approach implementing poke trades and item spikes? How would you effectively punish the melee character failing an attempted trade? It is when these questions arise that the topic of key skills and minion control become important.

The Impact of Key Skills

Examples of Key Skills (Right to left: Ahri Charm, Fizz Playful/Trickster, Syndra Scatter the Weak, Katarina Shunpo) 

Key skills are the defining feature of a champions kit that are usually characterized by crowd control, combo setup, safety, or even just large amounts of damage. Key skills include abilities like Taliyah’s Seismic Shove, Syndra’s Scatter the Weak, Fizz’s Playful/Trickster, and Veigar’s Event Horizon. They also can include passives like Camille’s Adaptive Defenses. The importance of abilities like these cannot be understated; they undoubtedly make or break your laning phase if you use them poorly.

The most straightforward way to look at it is that if the ranged character uses their key skill unsuccessfully, it creates a vulnerable window where the melee character can go for an all-in without as much risk. If the melee character uses their key skill unsuccessfully, they are vulnerable to the pressure output by the ranged character because they cannot reach for a successful all-in. It becomes more complex once the key skills interact more directly in trades, but it is important to understand that the person with a key skill accessible has power in the match-up.

In a ranged versus melee trade, key skills have a very direct purpose. The melee character wants to use theirs to successfully close the gap or escape trades with the ranged character. The ranged character, however, is looking to use their key skill to deny all-ins from the melee character and punish them for walking up for last hits or attempted trades.

There is not unlimited time to look for the correct trades on either side of the match-up however. On the melee side, there is a time constraint because of the ranged character’s ability to consistently poke-trade without using their key spell. Abilities like Syndra’s Dark Sphere, Orianna’s Command: Attack, and Ahri’s Orb of Deception can pack a big punch without ever putting themselves in danger. On the ranged character’s side, they cannot simply relax and wait for the enemy to overstep. They also must stay within their mana constraints as well as respecting level and item spikes that might make the melee character suddenly stronger than them.

In this guide, I will now focus on the correct usage of the ranged character’s key spells to ensure success. As a ranged character, you will need to focus on efficiently punishing the enemy melee and then striking in the moments when they mistakenly use their key spell for either greed or safety while yours is still accessible. This entails paying attention to the moment that they want to cast a spell or go for a last hit. In the moment that they are stepping forward for either a spell or last hit, you can easily predict their movement and they will be slow to predict and avoid your spell. Make sure to not overstep when looking for these windows though, as they may look to bait you into a disadvantageous trade by assuming you will do this strategy. For this reason, you should be aware of their engage range and keep your key skills available.  

With each successful poke-trade that goes unanswered, you are creating a health advantage, making your opponent feel pressured and rushed to find a trade window. These are the moments when they will become desperate and a mistake could be made. Once they make their mistake, make sure that you are ready to punish them. Once their key skill is used you must step forward and deny last hits to the enemy while also opening up kill threat if they step into a position that allows you to use your key skill aggressively. As a champion with an extended trading pattern, this means that you can begin to run down the opponent. As a champion with a burst trading pattern, it means you can search for an opening to get a kill or force a recall. 

A good example is an Ahri holding her Charm while using Orb of Deception and Fox Fire to poke down a Fizz. The moment that the Fizz uses his Playful/Trickster out of position, Ahri goes for the play with her Charm; he is effectively helpless. However, if you use your Charm while Playful/Trickster is available, he has an opening to aggressively trade without risk of being punished.

A quick note about when you force a recall: Do not overstep to be greedy for a kill, as this can allow the melee character to finally get the all-in they had been searching for since their key skill is coming off of cooldown.

Minion Control and Interaction

You can truly win these lanes without ever getting a kill. The way that you can achieve this is through smart minion usage and control. Before you can approach this topic you must consider your waveclear potential and the opponent’s ability to farm at a range using abilities consistently. Advantageous waveclear simply means that it is in your control how the wave moves in the lane and when the opponent has access to farm. Pay attention to how you are auto-attacking the wave. Consistently auto-attacking should push the wave, while waiting for last hits should either slow push or freeze it depending on lane positioning. It is important to control the wave in a manner that allows you to press your spikes and respect the opponent. This means that you should take aggressive positioning when you are at a strong point and a defensive/denial-oriented stance during the opponent’s spikes.

Before I go deeper, I feel it is important to clarify that when you have more minions than your opponent, your trades become easier because the minions will assist you in trading and when the opponent has more minions than you, you are at a disadvantage in trades.

This is best done with forethought. If you are going to be strong after a level up from the next wave, then you should create a slow push by denying the opponent access to the wave and only minorly pushing it. Once you hit the level spike, they should still be a few minions away and you will be pushing minions into their tower, making them unable to contest your push due to your minions being stronger than theirs and your level lead. This can allow you to have a few options as you complete the push into tower. You can either put vision down around mid lane, bully your opponent under tower, roam, or recall.

If you can get an efficient recall that allows you to have an item spike, then that is a good way to ensure strength and reset mana against your opponent. If you don’t have vision around your lane and you plan to stay, you should prioritize strengthening vision around your lane. This can be done by warding key areas that an enemy jungler may gank from and control ward areas your jungler wants to gank from. If you have already created vision control around your lane, you can harass under tower to continue your ranged pressure. Finally, if you have strong vision and don’t need to recall, you should look for extended side lanes and/or the enemy jungler so that you can attempt a roam.

When you know that the enemy is nearing a spike that might make you vulnerable, you should complete your push and allow the wave to bounce, or stack in a way that forces it to push back onto your side of the lane. Once you bounce the wave, you can thin it to create a freeze between the two pillars on your side of the lane. While you were slow pushing and bouncing the wave, you should have created a health lead with poke trades; this makes the opponent vulnerable. By using a freeze, you can keep yourself close to your tower during opponent’s power spikes, keep yourself safe from jungler intervention, and keep the opponent in a position of vulnerability right when he is wanting aggression.

A Visual of Optimal Freezing position, This is referred to by many as between the two pillars.

By effectively using these two methods of wave control, you can make the opposing mid desperate for a successful all-in and force errors.

Example

To give you an idea of what a plan will look like in a game, I’ll give a quick outline of the Syndra versus Katarina matchup. Syndra and Katarina both have burst combos with Syndra’s relying on successful usage of Scatter the Weak and Katarina’s relying on her engaging on her daggers with Shunpo when the enemy steps too close. Syndra has strong spikes at level 2 and 6. At level 2, you should have your crowd control with Scatter the Weak and at level 6 you will have Unleashed Power. Katarina has strong spikes at level 3 and 6, but her level 3 spike is vulnerable to crowd control so she will look for an opening when Scatter the Weak.

This shows that Syndra should hold her Scatter the Weak until the Katarina uses her Shunpo. By keeping this in mind, Syndra can use consistent auto attacks to stack waves against the Katarina and use Dark Spheres and Force of Will to punish the Katarina reaching for last hits. This also means that any time Syndra uses her Scatter the Weak, she should play respectfully and ensure that she doesn’t accidentally step into Shunpo range. For the most part, Syndra should keep Katarina under tower since her waveclear is very effective and Katarina struggles to clear waves safely under tower. This could even create opportunities where Katarina disrespectfully uses Shunpo for farm.

Upon unlocking Unleashed Power, anytime Katarina uses Shunpo to trade or farm, Syndra should be able to look for a mistake that opens up kill threat. While this may seem like a simple plan layout, it can be highly effective in suffocating the Katarina without her ever having chance to take actual control over the lane. 

Plan ahead and you won’t miss a step! Good Luck on the Rift!

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