The Means to Carry - Part One: General Rules and Mid

There are two constantly repeated ideas when discussing ranked solo queue. The first is the concept of losing. Essentially, if you lost the game, you didn't “carry” hard enough. The second is forcing yourself to play only one champion to climb the ladders. While these are the common answers when someone rages about being stuck in “ELO hell”, they don't go into why these concepts matter, and how they are strongly connected.

Without starting off in ranked as a primarily support player, I had no idea how a support was supposed to carry a game. Likewise, I would constantly play Ziggs mid (whenever I got the role) and yet saw no general improvement of my ELO. I was stumped as to why these concepts did nothing to improve my game, but the start of the League system made it finally click.

The reason I, and so many like me, could not carry games despite picking one champion was due to the fact that I was not picking the right champion. It sounds silly, but it instantly shifted the way I played ranked games. The reason you should play a champion needs to be based solely what you want to accomplish in game (and how), and not based on non-factors such being “OP” or countered.

I love you Ziggs. You just don't love me back.

For instance, I enjoyed playing Ziggs (and still do), but his skill set wasn't meshing well with the way I expected myself to carry games. While I could farm decently and win trades in certain mash ups, I was unable to truly effect the outcome of the game besides what happened in my lane. I've also seen many people play FOTM and “OP” champions (Malphite, Amumu, Blitzcrank, etc.) and do completely terrible with them because they did not match the play style of the person playing them.

Picking to counter is also an issue, as most people do it without ever playing the counter or match-up before. They go in with the knowledge of being a counter without the experience of knowing what makes their champion a counter. I've beaten Ryze on Ahri, Katarina on Fizz, and seen countless others because a player picked to counter instead of picking for comfort.

With the realization of my personal failures and a new concept of the game, I was able to come up with a system of self improving questions and rules to improve my game in solo queue. I will note beforehand that this is already showing signs of success; since the League system started, I've gone from 9W/16L in Bronze III to 50/38 in Silver V (and climbing)

To find a champion that could meet my personal goals, I came up with some general rules:

1. The champion must be able to farm safely and efficiently
2. The champion must be able to lane effectively against most opponents.
3. The champion must not rely on jungle support to win/survive the lane
4. The champion must be fairly straight forward
5. You must consistently play the champion well

Basically, I wanted to find champions that didn't rely on my teammates for me to play effectively. The biggest part of that was that if I could not win my lane or kill my opponent without aid from another lane, then that champion must not be played in ranked. The last two rules are very important; if Champion A can have as much presence as Champion B but has less room for player-made errors, then Champion A should always be played before Champion B.

In addition, I made some general rules that work for any position:

1. Push a lane if the enemy laner is either killed or forced to back
2. Push the lane if another tower is being taken (either yours or theirs)
3. Pressure the lane if another lane is ganked by the jungle
4. WARD YOUR LANE
5. Minimize lane phase deaths to below two
6. Only put yourself in a position to die if something will come out of it (IE two kills for your team or a tower)
7. WARD AFTER THE LANE PHASE

Most of these rules are to compensate for whatever sort of potentially horrible team you may get in solo queue. I find that if I make an effort to give us more map presence by taking towers and warding common spots (wraiths, dragon/baron, blue/red, that curvy bush by blue/river), my team's ability to make mistakes dissipates. Risky tower dives and face checking the unknown can throw games, and any attempt to remove that possibility is incredibly helpful.

From there, I analyzed what I specifically wanted from each lane, and found a main champion and two or three others to meet those goals. This first post will describe finding a champion for mid lane, with later posts looking at the other roles and lanes.

Middle Lane

There are numerous things to consider about what the various champions offer in mid lane. Although the champions themselves are diverse, there are general themes and skills that can be found in most of the AP/AD casters. From this list, we will decide what we want from our mid lane champion:

Melee or Ranged
Caster or Assassin
Mobility and Escapes
Resource (Mana, Energy, or None)
Poke
Crowd Control
Build Focus (Damage versus Penetration)
Damage Focus (Single, AOE, DoT)
Damage Type (AP, AD, Hybrid)
Damage Output (Burst versus Sustain)
Wave Clear/Farming
Team Fight Presence

From these concepts, I began to make myself rules for how I wanted to play mid lane:

1. The champion must have easy to land poke that can go through/over minions
2. The champion must have the ability to enter and/or exit fights quickly
3. The champion should be mostly AOE/burst based
4. The champion should easily shake off jungle ganks
5. The champion should be able to gank lanes effectively

I based these off of my love of playing Ziggs. The ability to easily poke at enemies without worrying about the current minion wave removes some of the mental prep of playing some champions, and allows you to focus on continual poke and farming. Multi-target damage was also a key factor in my choice, because I wanted to deal as much damage for my team as I possibly could. Finally, mobility was the most important aspect of my choice. Shrugging off enemy ganks is important in keeping up with your lane opponent. Also, I wanted champions that can effectively gank themselves by getting where they needed to be as quickly as possible. This was most important in full team fights, where getting in position to do as much damage as possible is most important.

This lead to me benching some of my previous mid lane champions (Ziggs, Anivia, Ryze) and began focusing on those that met these criteria. The first was Akali, who's lack of mana and stealth added a utility that some of the other options didn't. The ultimate reset on kills was also a nice addition. Unfortunately, the ability to dash only to enemies removed some of the inherently safe mobility I was looking for, and her kit wasn't as AOE focused as I hoped. She remains as a third pick option.

I refined my search based on my games with Akali and picked up Katarina next. She has massive AOE potential, relatively safe farm, an almost guaranteed lane kill at level 6, and an expanded reset system that makes quick work out of teams. Like Akali, though, her Shunpo wasn't as free-form of an escape as I wanted. She also has trouble with multiple CC teams, to the point where she relies too much on her team to bait out all the CC. She still is awesome against most lane opponents and CC-light teams, and remains as a viable second pick.

After picking apart my likes/dislikes of Akali and Katarina, I focused on finding a champion that removed the main issue of mobility. The two options were Kassadin and Ahri, and I settled on Ahri. She met the AOE/burst potential that I was looking for, her ultimate is essentially three free damage-dealing flashes in a row, and she was a champion already in my roster who I felt comfortable with. Unlike Kassadin, she is a safer pick against most mids due to her ranged spells and auto attacks, keeping her free of some of the early harass Kassadin has to deal with. While her ult doesn't have as low of a cool down, it does have a smaller initial cool down (you get three dashes in the time Kassadin does one), which allow for quick positioning and strong burst.

Ahri is the culmination of what I want from a mid lane champion. 

While I'm not the strongest mid lane player, by finding champions that work they way I expect them to, I've already improved leaps and bounds over where I was before. I'm sitting at 50% win rate on Ahri and Katarina (granted, with low sample sizes, as I don't tend to fight for mid lane), and I already feel like I'm making a stronger presence in ganks and team fights. In Part 2, I will discuss finding champions for bottom lane, which are definitely my strongest roles.