Switching Lanes: What's good, What Isn't?

The lane swap

Although it is almost never used in solo queue, it is not an unheard ofoccurrence in tournament matches. Some scoff at the idea of swapping lanes at the start of the game, commonly believing that the typical lane setup is infallible, and that there can be no advantage gained from changing it up.

This may be true in some cases, but in so many instances it turns out that a quick lane swap is all that a team composition needs to grab themselves an early lead and solidify victory. However, knowing when it is a bad decision to swap is just as important as knowing how to actually handle the 2v1 lane. This strategy has started to happen more often in recent tournaments, as it turns out while many top laners are extraordinarily powerful in a 1v1 lane, they do not fare nearly as well as many others do in a lane against an AD carry and a support.

Swapping lanes is a very potent strategy, but at the same time, it can backfire horribly with just the slightest slip-up or dangerous matchup. The goal of a solo laner going into the laning phase with a numbers disadvantage first and foremost should be to make sure to survive without losing quickly to early aggression. This is no different from a regular lane, however this option is much, much more important this time around.

If a solo laner gives up an early death, the snowball effect is amplified simply due to the fact that he has two opponents; one person might be able to handle a lane opponent who is up a kill and ten CS, but he will be far less likely to be able to handle that same champion if they have a support backing them up.

Because of this, it is extremely important to remain alive for as long as possible; remember, you aren't trying to outfarm your lane opponents, you're trying to outfarm the other “top” laner. The goal of this whole process is to give your team an advantage, and you have to make sure you're able to be more effective at farming against two people than the other lane swap.

Because of what needs to be done, it is imperative that you have a champion in the solo lane role that is able to keep up with two people while being alone. There are several characteristics that are important to champions who want to lane against two people at once while alone; the most important ones being:

1. Sustainability
Being able to keep yourself alive for prolonged periods of time keeps you from having to return to base as often, and since if you leave your tower you don’t have a lane partner to protect it for you, it is very likely that the two people you are up against will be able to shove your lane to tower, and perhaps even take an early tower. Being able to keep yourself in lane for long periods of time will prevent this from happening.

2. Durability
Being a tanky, beefy champion will allow you to ensure that you won’t just roll over and get shoved out of lane by a few auto attacks out of the opposing teams AD carry, as well as help to ensure that any ganks that may come your way go a little bit better for you by helping to ensure your survival.

3. Mobility
This is often underrated; champions who are mobile can quickly become extremely adept at surviving in a 2v1 scenario. If you are able to maneuver around quickly, it becomes much safer to farm against a pair of people, and keeps you from being killed immediately should someone come roaming into your lane.

4. The ability to farm safely
This is perhaps the most important aspect of a champion. If you, as a champion are not able to farm safely, then there is no reason for you to even try to enter a lane alone against two people. All that will end up happening is you will find yourself zoned off of getting any gold, and sometimes even experience. This often translates into needing to be able to clear lanes relatively quickly, as it is quite possible to get zoned out of your minions even if you are directly under your tower.

If you’re able to play a champion that fits these criteria reasonably well, it may be worth it to try to find out whether or not you can go up against two people more effectively than your opponent. Why not delve into some examples of this happening?

In this match between M5 and CLG.eu, M5 decided to run a lane swap strategy that put Gangplank in the bottom lane against an Ezreal/Alistar pairing. This combination is extremely aggressive, and very capable of putting out a great deal of damage extremely early; a lane composition like this is capable of going all out as early as level 2, and if a solo laner is not careful it would be very easy for them to produce a kill early in the game.

This is a worst case scenario, and is also exactly what happens. Darien shows how volatile a 2v1 lane can be by using his Teleport on a minion that was too far up in the lane, and immediately ate an Alistar pulverize headbutt combo, followed up by Ezreals early game burst and ignite was too much for him to handle at level two.

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This death was after he was donated blue buff at level one, so not only did he lose both of his summoner spells, he also gave the opposing Ezreal blue, as well as first blood, putting him firmly in the back seat for almost the entire laning phase. This allowed Ezreal to gain a slew of kills very early in the game, which caused him to snowball much harder than the Nunu/Kog'Maw lane that went to the top.

Even though free farming is very good for Kog, an Ezreal who has amassed three kills and an assist in a matter of nine minutes is going to be much scarier than Kog'Maw that has slightly more farm. This lane swap ended up not being successful overall for Moscow 5, as they ended up losing to CLG.eu despite the fact that Gangplank was able stay well ahead of Rumble in gold throughout the game, he still gave Ezreal too much of a lead for them to successfully come back from.

Although it did not appear to work out for Moscow 5, Gangplank still has the potential to be one of the most effective solo laners in a 2v1 scenario. In order to have a high likelihood of survival, someone who wants to deal with a lane such as that ought to have some sort of sustain, the ability to farm safely at range and under tower, and the ability to disengage and escape ganks easily. Gangplank has all of these, but what went wrong?

The issue that Darien encountered largely dealt with the fact that although Gangplank has the capacity to remove crowd control effects, none of Alistars crowd control effects can be removed by eating oranges. While he would be able to easily escape a Taric stun for example, displacement effects and knockups are unaffected by delicious citrusy goodness. This meant that the primary escape mechanism that he was supposed to have was neutered by the fact that Alistar is just too good at locking people up. Alistar is one of several champions that will make any lane difficult in a 2v1 scenario.

Alistar, along with Blitzcrank and Leona make it extremely scary to farm and it is very easy to find yourself zoned not just off of farm, but off of experience in many cases unless you are adept at dodging every skillshot that is thrown at you or staying out of range of Alistar's headbutt.

This game shows Team Solomid running a swap that put Dyrus as Jarvan against an Ashe/Sona lane at bottom, while mTw's top laner BalIs was faced up against a Corki/Janna lane. Corki and Janna is a combination that is quite capable of shoving people out of lane, as well as negating the damage that Rumble puts out on his own via Janna's shield. Using this advantage, Corki and Janna were able to pressure Rumble hard enough that he was effectively shut out of farming, and that in conjunction with the fact that mTw's jungler fell so far behind.

Rumble got no assistance out of the jungle, which allowed Corki and Janna to free farm, while jungle pressure on the bottom lane allowed for Jarvan to pick up a handful of kills and assists on Ashe and Sona. This gave him the opportunity to zone them both and create a significant lead on Rumble, also while keeping Ashe subdued and behind on CS and levels compared to Corki.

Rumble consistently will do poorly against a pair; kind of a shame, ain't it?

However, as the game carried on, eventually lanes switched again and all went back to normal. As it turns out, whether or not he gets a huge amount of farm, someone such as rumble is still capable of outputting enough damage on someone such as Corki or Janna, and TSM moving Corki and Janna back to the bottom lane allowed them to have a higher concentration of well farmed champions controlling dragon.

Not only this, but by the time the lanes switched back, Corki and Janna were both far ahead of Ashe and Sona, allowing for them to bully the lane around and gather CS however they wanted, eventually snowballing the lane even further. 22 minutes into the game, Corki already has his Trinity Force, a couple of Doran's Blades and his Vampiric Scepter, while Ashe had a Pickaxe to Corki’s Tri-Force; that's quite a huge gold differential.

This game went almost entirely the opposite of the previous game we looked at; in this game the solo bottom laner played very passive for the first few levels, accepting that he would easily be zoned out by Ashe and Sona's poke, and simply farmed at the tower. Forcing his opponents to sit at the tower to farm, Nunu was able to come in and make some kills happen due to the incredibly high early-game damage from Jarvan and Nunu, as well as Ashe's lack of escapes. Being able to gain this level advantage allowed for Jarvan to act in a much more aggressive manner later in the game, especially against Rumble.

Jarvan works out pretty well when it comes to standing alone

A successful lane swap will often end up in lanes returning to normal, but they don't always. It is not uncommon to see a 2v1 lane have a tower pushed down by the duo very quickly, allowing them to roam throughout the map very early on and try to collect kills or project their presence onto other lanes. However, in games in which towers do not fall quickly, returning to regular lanes allow for a great number of advantages.

Towards the mid game, when bruisers (the type who typically are found in top lane) have managed to build some tanky items, they are able to weather a great deal of the poke that an AD Carry/Support lane would be able to output, and sometimes even be able to poke back relatively hard if they are able to maintain a level equality with their opponents. Swapping lanes back allows for the AD Carry to have a target that is likely to be a fair bit more squishy, and easier to push around, while having two bruisers duking it out top lane is less likely to result in a kill in one direction or the other in most cases.

Lane swapping is a very high risk, high reward venture. Some champions are much better at doing it than others; as mentioned before, the ability to sustain, be durable and escape are very important, but a champion doesn't need sustain to 2v1, and just because they have sustain does not necessarily mean they can handle two people, either.

Lee Sin has terrific sustain, but the fact that his farming is entirely in melee range makes it very difficult for him to gather a reasonable amount of farm. He is very difficult to gank and hard to kill, but he lacks a way to CS safely, and is awkward to farm under his tower with. However, someone such as Cho'gath would be extremely effective, as he is durable, can farm well at a distance and has incredible sustain. Not only this, but similar to Jarvan he has the capacity to follow up very well on ganks and is perfectly capable of starting a fight, walking out and then healing himself back up over the course of a minion wave or two.

Cho'Gath is a hungry man, who cares not for your puny harass.

It is just as important in this scenario to be aware of what an AD Carry and support ought to be able to do to a solo laner, as well. Being able to put pressure on someone who is in a 1v2 lane is extremely important, as your goal as the AD carry in this scenario is to make sure that your lane opponent cannot farm at all.

It is perfectly acceptable to lose a couple of early minion kills simply to make sure that your lane opponent is as subdued as possible. Someone such as Corki or Graves, who have a very high burst and range potential areable to keep melee champions well away from the creep wave. This gives the AD carry and support complete freedom to do as they wish in the lane until the opposing jungler comes and tries to make something happen.

It is very important to not get too cocky about the success of your lane if you are the side with the advantage; just because you can keep your opponent from farming does not mean that you are immune to getting beat up by their jungler. Because it is likely that you will end up pushing your lane if you are denying your opponent CS, it is extremely important to make sure that you keep the paths into your lane warded very well, as you could very well end up vulnerable to ganks.

 

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Lastly, it is also extremely important to see how the other lane is interacting with each other in this case.  It is quite possible that the laner that you switched with will be pushed on, and have their tower taken early.  In this case it is not really a viable decision to sit in your lane and farm passively; it is important to mirror the aggression of the other lanes so that you do not fall too far behind.

How one of the side lanes acts will largely dictate how both lanes act throughout the game; as it is too much of a disadvantage to not be able to fight back the push of two people, the solo laner may not have the option of freezing the lane at second tower, and instead they may just find themselves being pushed into their second tower as well.

With any luck, lane swapping will become a more popular and common occurrence in the future. Those who are frustrated with the stagnancy of the current meta-game would do well to look into times when a lane swap might benefit your team. When done well it can snowball a lane out of control very quickly, and lead to an extremely strong AD carry and an opposing team with an unprepared and underfarmed solo laner.

With no beefy bruiser to jump the AD carry, this will make team fights much, much easier for your team going into the mid-game. So why not swap up your lanes and beat up a poor outnumbered solo laner with your friend's help?

TL;DR: Lane swap, it's fun and you win every game ever but I won't tell you how in the tl;dr.