The New Mid Lane

The New Mid-Lane

Welcome to mid lane! That delightfully volatile lane, where a single mistake can easily allow for your opponent to grab a kill and then cause everything ever to go badly. This lane has been seeing quite an impressive shift recently, and a whole slew of champions that had fallen off the map are suddenly becoming popular, along with a couple of recent new additions. Although there are many champions that never stopped being popular, there are others that appear to have exploded in popularity in as little as a few weeks. This has led to a shift towards a whole new game in mid lane; one that allows for a whole new slew of opportunities.

European regionals was the first tournament that got a chance to really display just how much the mid lane has changed in the recent months. While it was formerly champions such as Ryze and Cassiopeia which appeared to be the norm because of their ability to create consistent, long term damage over the course of a fight, it has become apparent that sustained damage is no longer all that is needed to win a fight. Why have a champion do sustained damage from a short, dangerous range such as Cassiopeia, when you can have someone such as Orianna, who has comparable initiation capabilities, as well as the utility of an enormous shield, and a built in Shurelya's active on a much shorter cooldown.

While her sustained damage may not be as high as Cassiopeia's, the damage that she does do is at a much safer range, and has a great deal more versatility than the pure damage and minor CC capabilities that Ryze has. It is becoming more and more important for AP mids to be “safe” and be able to do a great many things than it is for them to simply do a huge amount of sustained damage.

 

Gragas is the first example of this recent transition; he received a slew of minor buffs that really gave him exactly what he needed to reach the top tier of AP mid laners:

Stats:
Base health increased to 523 from 493.
Armor per level increased to 3.6 from 2.7.
Body Slam:
Charge speed increased to 1050 at all ranks from 650/750/850/950/1050.
Mana cost reduced to 50 at all ranks from 50/55/60/65/70.

These buffs made maxing Body Slam after maxing Barrel Roll far less painful on the mana pool, and also made it so that his escape mechanism was far more reliable than it was before. Gragas no longers needs to rely as heavily on his Drunken Rage to sustain, since his second damage dealing spell is that much cheaper. This in conjunction with his increased armor per level and base health make it so that he's just that little bit more capable of taking the ranged auto-attack harass from his laning opponent for the first levels while it is still relevant. All of these discoveries paired with the fact that Gragas was far stronger than people were giving him credit for, Gragas has become a force to be reckoned with. The buffs to his Body Slam and base stats aren't the only things that make him so great, though.

The existence of Body Slam allows for Gragas to be one of the fastest, if not the fastest roamers in the game. It is an incredibly inexpensive spell, making it easy to spam with as little as two Dorans Rings for mana regen. This allows for Gragas to have an incredible amount of lane presence through the whole map; this is even amplified due to how quickly he can clear waves in the middle lane. There are several factors that allows him to really mess with any kind of composition whose goal is to protect the carry: sustain, clear speed and mobility,  incredible teamfight presence with the ability to debuff the opposing carry heavily (if he does not outright kill them), as well as a huge displacement in his ultimate. Any kind of protect the Kog'Maw or protect the Vayne strategy has a serious wrench thrown into it when trying to deal with Gragas.

SK Ocelote managed to bring Orianna a great deal of attention at the recent European Regional tournament. However, she hadn't really seen any play at a competitive level for quite some time. Numerous nerfs to ranges, mana costs and damage left her just about high and dry when it came to her capacity to compete in mid lane, or so many thought. Even more recent changes have been brought about, however, and she is now far more responsive and has received a redistribution of her damage.

As it turns out, Orianna still can compensate with her relatively low damage by the absurd amount of utility that she can provide. She can farm and harass from a great distance and her ability to zone using the ball hasn't gone anywhere.

Not only this but the ability to throw the ball on an allied bruiser and fire off an ultimate while they are in the middle of the opposing team gives her an incredible initiation follow-up. One of these combo examples from a recent tournament were Shyvana and Orianna: Shyvana dives into the middle of the opposing team, Orianna shields her and fires off an ultimate that screws with a lot of people.  Orianna is slightly different than Gragas in the sense that her ability to initiate is her greater focus. She is not as likely to come out of nowhere and instantly kill a carry, but she will cause a great ruckus in team fights and still be able to protect her carry at the same time, while ensuring that her team can disengage by speeding up a whole group of them to allow for a quick escape.

While Orianna and Gragas have become popular recently due to tournament successes, Zyra has shown a spike in popularity in solo queue and while she doesn't have nearly the utility, she still has the frontloaded damage that is so important in a burst mage these days. Not only this but the damage is dealt at an incredibly high range and even has the capacity to sustain throughout a fight due to the activation of her plants. Plants will do a very strong amount of damage during the mid-game and will scale reasonably well into late game while still providing a consistent slow that will last throughout the fight. The main problem with this slow however is that it cannot be controlled, so there is no way of being sure that it is their carry that is going to be locked down as opposed to one of their bruisers, or other tanky initiators.

Despite all of this she has a similar zoning capacity to Gragas or Orianna, although her plants are not as efficient to threaten people with, as an opponent stepping on them will remove them completely. This characteristic makes it so that it is more effective for Zyra to use her plants offensively as opposed to using them as a zoning tool. However, using them as a part of her combo will allow for some incredible lane damage and still serve as an extra tool to zone your foe off of creeps while the plants are still active.  They also allow for an absurd teamfight presence, she really is just a souped up Heimerdinger that is capable of killing entire teams through a combination of her plant and AoE damage.

Mid lane has been developing a whole new slew of champions within the last few months and it has been making for an even more diverse metagame than before. With the new propensity for teams to push down objectives as quickly as possible, long distance poke and the capacity to start a fight at a tower if need be have become some of the most important traits in AP carries. Although this does not mean that a lot of old AP mids are now irrelevant, it just means that they may no longer be the most optimal pick, so might as well hand off the baton to one of these three and see how it goes.