5 Tips to Improving Your Solo Laning ft. Zaelia

Kenn “Zaelia” Rasmussen is the solo laner for Team Dignitas, a role that is often difficult to play correctly for many casual players. With Zaelia’s help, this article will focus on what it means to be the solo laner and give some tips on how to improve your solo lane performance. Zaelia has not always been the solo laner for his teams in the past, but the role has grown on him as he has embraced it during his time on Team Dignitas.

“Solo laning is so different from what I was used to,
it feels like I’m playing a whole other game”
Zaelia on the topic of changing role from Ranged Assassin to solo laner.

Being in the solo lane is kind of like living in a world where there’s only you and your lane opponent. You often don’t see the rest of your team unless your tank player or shot caller makes a call for a full on engage on the other side of the map. When we asked Zaelia about his transition from Ranged Assassin to solo laning, he explained that solo laning was so different from what he was used to, he felt like he was playing a whole other game, not that it’s a bad thing, just different.

Right, now that we know who Zaelia is, let’s get into how YOU can improve your solo laning performance. Here are 5 tips from Zaelia.

1. Know your matchup
You have to know after draft if you are going to have a winning or a losing matchup in your solo lane, and have a plan if you have a losing matchup. If you have a winning matchup, you pretty much just have to soak experience and look out for incoming gank attempts and push for structural damage if you know you are safe. If you have a losing matchup, and this doesn’t necessarily come down to skill as much as the specific hero matchup, then you have to make rotations to the other lanes to try and create the small windows where your team can have a 5v4 teamfight advantage.

2. Know your hero's strengths in the solo lane
There are around 10 heroes that fit the solo laner role in the game right now and they all have their own unique strengths. Illidan and Dehaka have their globals for quick engages with the rest of the team, Sonya has good trading in the 1v1 with her self-sustain, and Xul has amazing waveclear. Figure out what your hero is good at and utilize that instead of just having the same playstyle no matter what hero you play.

3. Play your lane efficiently
Your first priority in the solo lane is to clear the wave of minions to protect your own towers. This is most efficiently done by killing the ranged minions first, then killing the mage to pick up the globe, and then starting to poke the enemy solo laner if you finished clearing first. The melee minions will be killed by your own minion wave or cleaved down by your AoE passively.

This priority is even more important if you are playing as a non-global hero against a global hero. If the hero with the global can clear the wave first and leave the lane to join his team, then you are in a lose/lose situation as you have to stay and clear your lane, giving the enemy team the precious time needed to initiate a 5v4 engagement on your teammates.

4. Adapt your playstyle to the format you play
If you play in Hero League where you have limited communication options with your team, it will be better for you to think more about your solo lane. You want to try and outplay your opponent and win your lane and be more aware of gank attempts toward you instead of trying to setup the 5v4 scenario with the rest of your team because they may not be able to abuse the short period in which you have for a favorable teamfight.

5. Calculate the risk/reward when you want to leave the lane
You should constantly be calculating if it’s worth it to leave your solo lane. Every time you clear a wave of minions, you have a 5 second window where you have to ask yourself, "What will be my best move now? Should I try to trade damage with my lane opponent, rotate to my team, or push towers?" It all comes down to the factors mentioned above. If you play a hero who trades well like a Sonya, then poke your lane opponent. If you play a hero that pushes structures hard like an Illidan, then start to apply some pressure to the front wall. If you play a global hero like Dehaka, then try to look for the teamfight advantage elsewhere on the map.

The rule is that you have to clear your wave for experience before your lane opponent and then make a play while they hang around to clear their wave. You also have to take this into consideration when the map objective pops up. Is it early in the game where a weak map objective will not gain your team more experience than you will miss from the 3-4 waves of minions you won’t soak? And do you have a composition that does well in the teamfight at that given moment in the game so you can get more experience from kills rather than soaking? This constant calculation is the hardest thing to get down, but with practice is becomes easier and you will get a good feeling for which decision is right. Teamfight experience versus lane soaking experience is a difficult skill to learn and it can be frustrating in Hero League if everyone isn’t on the same page. Remember that in most cases, making the “wrong” call together is better than making the “right” call alone.

Top 3 solo lane heroes according to Zaelia:

1. Dehaka

Dehaka is by far the best solo laner in the game. He wins most of his matchups and if he loses one, it’s not by very much. Add the fact that he has the most versatile global in the game, and you have a hero that can do absolutely everything he wants to.

2. Illidan

Illidan doesn’t win a lot of his matchups, but at level 10 he gets his global, The Hunt, which strikes fear into every squishy target on the enemy team. Leave Illidan alone in a lane for 30 seconds and he will take a front wall, leave him alone for another 30 seconds and he may even take your fort.

3. Malthael

Malthael is a really special case in the solo lane. He basically wins every matchup but he does nearly no damage to structures and his waveclear is horrific. The only job the Malthael has in the solo lane is basically to keep trading with his lane opponent. He won’t exactly win the lane, but he can hold it and stall it forever. Malthael is ideal in the solo lane if you have a really strong 4-man rotation and you just need to not lose the solo lane matchup.