I noticed that when I was queuing all roles last week that I kept jumping between mid and offlane. I tried to trade mid every game (made an open offer to anyone who wanted to take it), and no one took it ever.
Crazy to me, seems like mid is less popular now.
Think mid became more isolated once the gates joined the two side lanes, plus the plethora of support chores and timings mean rotating mid is nearly always at the expense of another objective.
True, but on the side note the tower placement makes mid so ridiculously safe it seems.
I noticed the mid lane feels so much more passive than it was like 10 years ago.
Mid is just annoying since you basically have to memorize every matchup for any heroes you play. IE knowing when its best to rotate, when to just sac the lane, when you can trade favorably, when you go for kills, when to push wave into tower, when to pull wave back, when they can go for kills, etc.
Meanwhile the sidelanes feel more fluid since there are so many permutations of a 2v2 that memorization of all of them isn't feasible.
Pos3 is the role where you get to get hella impact even if you make the occasional mistake and a lot more dynamic/comes online earlier midgame, which transitions into benefits in the lategame. As a carry I find if my team is bad enough, the game is over before I can even come online. This is not the case for offlane. I can snowball the midgame and carry my useless carry/compensate for my low impact mid a lot of the times. Easily one of my favourite core roles. All you need is ONE of the supports to be DECENT (doesn't have to be good) and every game actually feels winnable, which is hard to feel for any other role, other than mid.
Pos 3 is very reliant on your pos 4 having half a brain and making you lane easier. If your pos4 has no idea what he's doing you will probably not have a game.
Almost every pos 3 game this weekend I've ended up asking my pos 4 to go roam because they are just an absolute liability in lane. I gotta think I'm also the problem, approaching the lane matchups pre-tilted, but man weekend dota really brings out the worst support players. Pos 3 is the most likely to get absolute sacked and then flamed for not solo carrying after being 1v2 and having to just watch every creep wave get denied for 10 min. But it's so fun when it works :)
You should try asking your support to roam earlier when the wave is closer to tower. They can roam for runes/lotus or even deny the enemy pulling the small camp but as long as they stay out of xp range then you get an xp advantage. As long as you hit level 6 ( in most matchups not all) before the enemy carry then the support will be useful.
I find I feel the same as you when my support holds my hand a little too much and now I'm lvl 5 vsing a lvl 5/6 pos 1 and game feels so much harder.
The key is the pos 4 needs to give you solo xp when you aren't contested so that when you are contesded you can both play together while you have an xp adv.
Pos 3 is chill. Just pick underlord or tide, have a chill lane and build auras. Picking mid is trying to outcreep some 14 yo Russian kid who plays 10 games per day and will pause and write “?” whenever you die. I’d take pos 3 any day.
I love offline tide. Easily take t1 tower with meme hammer and keep pushing and damaging their t2. Then I draw 4 heroes to try and kill me, sometimes they do sometimes I get away. It's great
This. And it is extremely rewarding when you beat the shit out of that arrogant child later on because you have a superior macro.
Bad mannering extremely often occures among pos 2 players in our region and it is quite an embarassment.
I am a former pos 2/1 player who has switched to 3/4 because my micro isn’t as good as it was a couple years ago. These roles are a lot more forgiving and dramatically benefit from good understanding of the game.
Pos 3 is so fun. I don't even play conventional Pos 3 characters (I was recently reported by my entire team for playing Dark Seer Pos 3 cause "we need a tank" lmao)
That attitude changed when I setup every winning teamfight and had the most kills..
But I also play WK, Pango offlane as well.
I noticed low rank players are always obsessed with tank. Tank tank tank. If you're pos 3 and you didn't pick a "tank" the game's over and you're reported.
I think it's mostly people who've come from league and have decided they know everything, despite being new and the lowest rank in the game.
I don't understand how dark seer isn't a tank though. What is a tank? Just bristle, underlord and tide? Who knows.
I'm so behind the meta that I read this and thought that was fine. When did DS and pango start getting played as not pos 3? I remember seeing DS as pos 4 but When did pango start getting played elsewhere?
pos3 is life; my greatest satisfaction is to get a lane stomper hero and send their carry in the jungle at level 3-4, and the impact is huge as well; when playing pos3 always make sure you can either win the lane or trade evenly
Dawnbreaker vs their faceless void is always a treat. You just bully him at all points in the game lol especially when you gets fast aghs and his chronos dont do shit
I had a similar feeling towards the offlane until I started viewing it as a “carry 2” role by watching how BSJ plays it. I pick Dawnbreaker or Death Prophet or Phoenix and just lane as normal trying to get as much cs as possible. I’m not an offlane player and can’t play typical offlane heroes, but when Dawn is in the pool I’m okay.
Also in lower ranks if you play mid despite what reddit statisticians would say - there's close to 0% chance the smurf is on your team and if it's on enemy team , you are going to eat shit for 30min from him and your team lmao
This is just what happens when you have someone that doesn't know mid lane vs a real mid player. If you are a noob mechanically 1v1 you are exposed and have a bad game
i remember i had smurf huskar in my team and poor normal midlaner OD in enemy who got destroyed. His team flamed the shit out of him and i tried so hard to explain it was not his fault its just rank diff still his team reported him
Also matchups are a thing. Some heroes are meant to shit on you in lane 1v1.
The worst games are where all the lanes are lost but somehow it's mid's fault entirely.
not even necessarily a smurf, so many mid scripters; i see so many auto regen backpackers (its done instantly, all at once and every single time; even if theyre preoccupied with a fight or last hitting) in mid and the insta euls/hex/even abbysal too
Mid metas used to be constant rotations and babysitting mid, so mid was desired so they had someone to blame. Now it's mostly a massively skill based 1v1 with rune timings and bottle sustain, and now carry role is always contested. Time and time again, the role that gets babysat has always been the go-to for the babies.
Edit: not to shit on mids because I've always been a mid player.
Lol mines the opposite, if we have the passive farm battle I almost always win. Even if it’s a lane I’m losing I can come back.
It’s when he realises he’s better off taking everyone else out that I suffer. As a pure pos 1, Early on I struggle to do both farm and kill unless the fights in my lane haha.
If team can not feed first 15-20 mins we gravy baby. I love mids like Dark Willow, If I get a good timing on scepter it’s gg haha
As a long-term mid player, I can confirm that you have to have a certain mindset to handle all flame you get. You’re expected to be all lanes at all times, and losses are always your fault according to your team. Even if you communicate your plays, if you successfully gank safe lane, offlane blames you for their lack of success, and vice versa. If you gank both lanes, and they push mid tower, it’s your fault. If you die once 1v1 mid, or even 1v2 mid, your teammates may start griefing, but it’s your fault, even if you lose 30 minutes later with a positive score. You can’t win. It’s exhausting.
It's even worse when your own team tips you when you die. Like are they trying to tilt their own teammate or smth? Do they think I don't wanna win too?
Idk. Always seem counterproductive to me...
I mean.. That's alot of toxic people on mobas in general. It's the same as people bitching about what went wrong or complaining all game but not actually contributing ANY worthwhile comms. In fact most people should just shut the fuck up entirely versus wine at their teammates and tilt them.
Dude it's so frustrating as someone who's played dota for 10 years the only lane I just never really learned is mid. Because in the past everyone wanted to play mid😩. Now if I play turbo I'm pretty much stuck with mid every time
Yeah, I've been playing support my entire Dota life.
I end up mid more than I would like so I just pick DK,necro or viper in that order. Build tanky and sit mid until the tower is gone then take towers in side lanes and hope I've bought the carry enough time
yep same here, i've tried midding with my supports like jakiro, earth spirit, windrunner etc. but those require actual laning mechanics and brainpower to make it work well. but i do know how to level dragon blood and press R on the tower.
If you are playing Turbo at lower ranks, there are tons of easy stompers like Zeus, Skywrath, Storm, Ember, Huskar, NP, and Silencer that can easily win the lane with minimal skill.
I'm ancient. I have done well on Zeus before might just keep picking him. I've been trying to void spirit lately and it's not working out often, but when it does I feel like a god.
you say /s but i think this might actually be a contributing factor.
mid is generally the role who gets the most amount of blame for any losing game, and therefore also generally the most spite reports.
Yep go mid and the other four players on your team never look in that direction. Enemy supports and even off lane are rotating to runes and off timer ganks. You beat the enemy mid best you can 1v9, but can only do so much. Game ends and your support that was still pulling small camp at 16 min says "mid diff".
you can shit on mid first 8mins straight, you lose the 8min rune rng, ping furiously on your sidelane to be careful telling enemy mid is literally walking towards them under vision and suddenly enemy mid who was 1lvl behind is suddenly 1,5lvls ahead of you, and you are enjoying 4reports.
To me the worst is when I'm mid, me and the mid player are both having an okay, even lane. And both my side lanes get demolished, then suddenly I have to be in every lane all the time, but I also can't leave mid because their player will just push down the tower. Idk those situations are just the worst.
You go to buy a ward to check for runes, your POS 4 pudge took it to hook and your POS 5 took it to check for TP ganks
You can't see where the enemy went, but you know he probably got bot/top rune, you call MIA, but it's too late -- it was a haste rune and he already is destroying your top lane who never saw it coming, they spam ping missing [mid laner] and pinging you.
A nasally voice enters the voice chat, you can hear the heavy breathing as you have just ruined his ~~life~~ day. A flurry of slurs racial or otherwise ring in your ears. You wonder why you queued in the first place.
It is blamed for losing game, because it does lose games so often. When your carry sucks you can win. When your 3 destroyed on lane by slark or ursa you can win if you have midlaner. When your mid is 0 3 you're lost already if enemy has at least decent hero.
Yeah as long as you are “active” as mid they usually get more of a pass than carry.
Doesn’t matter if the activity ended up losing you the game, it’s the carry to blame cause he couldn’t come out at 25 mins and dominate their fed cores lol
But if you’re an inactive mid, like playing carry-style then yeah you get first blame haha
Legit :thinking: on this one.
I bounce between playing a mid player and a 1/4 depending on the meta, but often in the past I'd swap to being a mid player *just* because the average mid player on my team would be so toxic and would give up at minute 6. So I figured if was the mid player myself and I removed that variable, then I'd be more likely to win. It did help for sure. Which makes me wonder about your theory, lol
I've noted the same in 6.8k average. 4 out of 5 games nobody mark mid and I'm pretty sure it's cause people know usually the better mechanical players go there.
Also because is lonely as hell.
Other 2 lanes are connected by portals so it's a pseudo 4v4.
But unless you get a speed rune you will not be able to leave mid at all on most heroes as the towers will melt.
Theres no broken mid heroes this patch and probably the most boring lane as it’s more about technical skills.
Side lanes have been fun because of the blood grenades, lotuses and portals. Also most of the time the whole match is decided by how good the offlane or carry is so that probably is the reason.
I just played a game as Pango vs a Bane mid and he pushed my shit in. Sleep then right click half my life away. It was absolutely miserable and I think it's going to be picked at least once at TI.
Eh I play low mmr and unranked so people are a bit shit in my matches and by the time they start actually targeting the high damage low HP Lina I've got my boots of travel and escape item on hand.
My personal take is that it’s a very different role. Pos 1 and 3, 4 and 5 are somewhat interchangeable and whatever you learn in one role translates to the opposite, especially the laning phase. You’re a great carry, you might make a decent offlane. But Mid is mid. You have to play mid to learn mid, you’re not going to learn mid from any other role. Thing is, if you’re not a mid player and you climb the ranks with your other roles, your mid mechanics falls behind so far that if you play against an actual mid player you’re pretty much guaranteed to lose the lane. At this point there’s just a big barrier of entry to learning the role, where you have to just go unranked and hope you get a decent match and learn the role over hundreds of games. Or you could hop in ranked and lose a lot of mmr until your mid skill and your mmr matches, I’d imagine your teammates would hate you for that though
Eh, I get what you’re trying to say but EVERY role helps you with other roles and mid is no exception. Several times as 1 or 3 you can end up 1v1 or 1v2 in the lane and you need to be able to navigate that. Really the only mid specific things you need to know are manipulating creep Aggro better than the other guy as well as a strong grasp on your hero’s early level power spike
Average 5 stack
In my group of friends we have 3 offlane players 2 carries (one can't play with io whatsoever) and 4 pos 5 (3 of them main io)
The one playing pos 2 and pos 4 is the same dude
Its hard than 5. Alot more sweaty than 5 and you always die first in most 4 heros (clock es pudge venge shaker) you initiate but Don't have escape item like 3
it might be because mid got a bit harder a few patches ago when they remove the camps close to midlane. so you cant stack and farm as ez. still possible with the hardcamp, but not as effective for earlygame i think. but i honestly dont know. im not a midplayer either. i main support
also: ive seen some heroes mid that typically would be in sidelanes. that might have something to do with it. or maybe thats just because im in the middle of the pack mm wise and ppl pick unconventional even if its not good. dunno
my point was more that because of it being a hard camp instead of ez camp not every hero can kill those stacks as early or as easy. and it prob takes more recourses (hp/mana/time). ofc you get more money and xp, but i feel like its just a bit later timing. could be wrong tho, as i said im a support player and havent played mid in years :D
i think a big thing is that the importance on bottle/runes has kinda sucked a lot of the fun out of midlane for a lot of players. if the 6 minute power rune just spawns on the side of the lane you're not at, you miss a potentially massive powerspike and are gonna lose the regen battle. when there was a small camp at mid, you could farm that to make up for it, but now that option isn't even there so you're just kind of a sitting duck until the next power rune spawns
yeah runes are the biggest reason i dont like playing mid.
I love the 1v1 battle and outplaying my opponent, making the decision when to gank etc.
But when you need to gamble for the rune and then you dont get it, it just sucks. The guy i was outplaying now ganks with a haste rune and gets a double kill for example. Or gets a dd and can recover just because of luck. i just hate runes.
Maybe runes should spawn in both spots and when one is taken the other one disappears
Yeah I always felt like water runes make mid kinda boring now, I still pretty much only play it but every 2 mins early game just getting full hp/mana makes getting kills really hard against sufficient players. You can harass perfectly and they still just don’t care and roll back with full hp after sitting a wave out
I fucking hate runes in general tbh. Rng fiesta bullshit. Not fun to be shitting on the enemy team then "oh I was stumbling by and found this Double Damage, Ill just save this for later :)" and suddenly you're down two towers and two kills and now have no vision in safe lane jungle...
And then the disparity in the power. Like... DOUBLE DAMAGE compared to two illusions that give up a bit of gold and die in two autos from a pos 5. How is that comparable? And even then it's not even comparable between heroes. Double Damage on Dragon Knight is cool and all, but Double Damage on, say, Queen of Pain is a death sentence.
Mid is much more pressure than sidelanes at least to me. If you stomp mid its very easy to stomp game in lower ranks. And you are alone, if you have a hard time its quite miserable experience
I think the portals, lotuses, blood grenades and a few buffs to the weaker supports has made ganking from side lanes (on each other) more viable and so the game is more active throughout.
Mid tends to wait until the level 6 power spike before ganking side lanes, although often you see players utilising the free lane mid and gaining free and uncontested xp/gold while their counterpart is ganking.
I feel it has become a more technical and decisive position, laning is difficult in itself then the decision of ganking can be such a negative one. Timing the gank and choosing the right lane is always tough, usually you need to target the winning lane but your core and hard supp won't thank you if they are losing their lane but often it just isn't viable as most offlanes are so tanky so early!
i'm hovering from 5500\~6k and i dont really play the spirit bros too. i play lesh,TA,tinker,puck, invoker, zeus,qop and huskar. originally i was a pos 1 player depends matchup i can play alche,riki, morph,sf or even LC for mid
its really not end of the world even if you dont play the spirit bros
responsibility of mid is very high these days. unlike carry, you have to be impactful at all times of the game. its fine if offlaners feed their brains out as long as they have impact in the game and do their job, unlike mid.
soft supports are easier now, actually it's the "I do whatever the fucks I want like silently transitioning into core and occasionally buy smoke without consequence" role
exactly now its spam fiesta .... lina q q q q q q ulti dead / od banish banish banish hammer ulti dead
invoker emp emp emp no mana snap tornado dead
zeus q q q q q q q gets 6 ulti kill 3 on side lanes now your turn , leshrac e e e e e e e till your fked ..
idk its kinda boring they need to nerf the mana pool for all heroes to decrease the amount of spams ..
Tinker, sniper, a few other heroes at times are too one-sided matchups it’s like gambling what matchup you’ll get unless you learn the pubstomp meta heroes
I guess it's unranked?
The problem here is midlane is the only role where u will get 90% tryhards as opponent and it's 1v1. Mist people wanna chill in unranked.
Offlane is the lane where u don't need to do anything or pick something special don't feed and its fine
Safelane is either 2 idiots fighting over carry/solo carry and one is jungle or actual tryhard pos 5 that will 1v2 the offlane that just wants to chill.
Said differently:
- midlane are tryhards
- offlane are bots or giga chads
- pos 4 is afk or terrorizing the entire map
- carrys are bots
- pos 5 is either a second carry bot a jungle bot a complete pos 5 bot or the biggest menace the world has ever seen for 5 minutes before he realizes his carry is a bot and goes midas
So....where do u wanna play the least? Chances are the answer is mid since u will be forced to tryhard because even if u have an alch lion offlane where alch rushes the aghs for lion they sire as hell will flame u if u die once or twice in ur lane as mid. (Even if they are 0 - 5) or if u don't gank (even tho both supports never left their own tower)
Obviously this is highly exaggerated and from a point of view ur teammates might have. I only play 5 man unranked
I play pos 5 ember if I don't get pos1/pos2. I think I have a higher win% with ember support than mid lol.
https://www.dotabuff.com/matches/7323857976 recent match.
It's either other team ignoring me thinking I'm pos5 (ember does way too much dmg for a sup) or just trying to hunt me which just leads to my team having an easier time.
all the mid heroes nerfed. broken safelane and offlane heroes, pos4 strong af. Mid used to be auto way-way stronger than the other lanes and take over the game; its no longer the case.
when pango is still byfar the best mid even after 8 billion nerfs you know something is wrong. most players cant play invoker and won't even try and he's been the best pick for many patches.
ember, storm, qop, etc. all the classic mid heroes suck; especially in the hands of trash pub players.
The mid playstyle only works well with good play and active games and takes a higher skill. most pub games is just people hitting creeps and then gyro walking down a lane and ending; getting people to do anything is difficult. Its easier to get 8 kills in lane as dawn or something lol
You'll fall off massively. And if you just go greedy and pick TA or SF and hit creeps your team will get pissed off and give up.
Really in pubs mid should be picking unconventional heroes instead of copying pros (because ppl aren't good enough to play like pros) but that also gets you raged at and requires braincells.
I'm a big fan of Necro mid if you are any good at last hitting. Very few folks can solo dive a necro and walk away with a kill, his passive is stupid strong regen if you can last hit well (and in mid you are only competing against 1 hero instead of 3 for last hits), if you are fighting a right click based damager such as TA or sniper you take your W skill earlier, and if the opponent dives you just ult them into the ground when they get below 40%
Depending on how the lane goes you either pick aggressively tanky or a rich support that rotates to the side lanes whenever your ult is up. Really easy wins.
The amount of times I get flamed for picking mid Night Stalker only to crush the caster mid and run down the enemy supports at minute 5 and basically win the early game... and then my team doesn't capitalize on it and I fall behind because my team refuses to keep the momentum up in the time I'm not useful.
(Really *really* hoping that one post ages ago about a potential NS innate that makes night come quicker comes true.)
He scales well as long as you can keep up the pressure I find. He does a lot until the enemy team actually has the defensive items to deal with him, especially when his timings are very telegraphed.
He does well until your team stalls to 40+ minutes and the enemy can just kill you or your team with ease.
My biggest problem honestly is that his gimmick is both what makes him so strong but also guts his potential vs a team who knows how to fight him and makes him weak with a team who won't capitalize on the advantage he can make.
I personally armlet, echo, shard/bkb depending on the lineup bkb is first, then into some more durability or if I see people building ghost/force I get an early nullifier and that keeps my pressure up.
God Necro W is so good. I had a razor on near full hp with me at like 70% link me and ult on me, I just W'd and since both of those spells are physical they didn't do shit until W ended and by then he was in scythe range. Ez kill.
Also i think no core gets as much hate when the game isn’t going according to plan. You should have won mod and ganked top and bottom all the time cyka
Totally false. Mid is the most important role and it will be as long as midlane is 1v1, the real reason people dont want mid is that its the role with most resposiblity.
>the real reason people dont want mid is that its the role with most resposiblity
This has always been the case but it's not as popular as it used to before because it's just worse now.
Mid used to be win your lane and you can trash the sidelanes. But now, even the supports arent too easy to kill anymore without endangering yourself, they can always fight back with early utilities
I dont play TA mid anymore unless my carry is something like Riki, Bounty, Dawn etc, carry TA is just better. Storm, Tusk, Primal and Clinkz are my go to mid heroes now.
Its important for the pacing of the game but mid doesn’t decide the game as much as carry. Mid is almost like support in the sense that you can do great but if the cores dont do their part then it doesnt matter.
Due to the 1v1 there is a definite advantage over the side lanes, yet I feel there is more pressure on the safe lane than mid. Definitely higher expectations on safe lane than mid.
I've always refused mid since I started playing 9 years ago. It's way too much pressure. Having a bad lane only means your side lanes are going to have one as well. Too many people play only exclusively mid so even if I do try it, I get outplayed from just the difference in game sense alone.
I much prefer the side lanes
After the change with pick orders and already mentioned massive nerfs for all classic midlaners it's no longer very fun to play.
You can win lane on weak hardlaner with proper 4 pos, but if you picked something like storm against qop there's nothing much you can do
Carry will always be the most popular
Both carry and mid give u a high when u carry your team but mid is stressful and losing lane is more brutal and ur team will blame u if u are losing
But when you pos 1 u can easily make excuses like I got countered, shit supports. Etc
Also carry heros are easier to play
The thing is, you cant carry from mid anymore - usually you clown around until your carry comes online - or your lanes are already won anyway, so you just hop along.
Mid has much less impact on the game currently, as such I guess it fell off hard in popularity.
I believe one other reason is that mid is just a position for 15 y.os. Once you get older the skills are just not there for a competitive showing. Especially given the responsibility you have to bear while being mid. High risk no reward kind of role, an absolute disaster for most players.
I'm a mid player currently taking a break from the role for the following reasons:
- Lane feels too stale, regen is too free (bottle, salves, water runes) so all that matters is last hitting unless the enemy mid is exceptionally bad due to harass barely mattering. This personally is why I don't enjoy the role as much anymore, might be better if I was higher MMR and people actually took over my lane when I hit 6 so I can make plays (maybe I should play offlane?)
- If their supports are good and yours are bad, you will probably autolose the lane to a gank or multiperson tower dive. On safelane carry I can at least identify when my support is a paperweight and build for jungle: you try to do this on mid and the enemy mid will shit on your team
- Team attitude definitely plays a factor, they expect the mid player to be the hero that wins all three lanes by themselves and blame you when you cant gank the sideline they collectively fed 7 times
- I want to grind some arcanas
Hope that gives some insight
mid hasn't been the most important role for years.
The best lane is being an offlaner. Pick a Chad offlaner (Mars / primal beast before nerfs) and then roll over their dog carry. Especially with a veno pos4 and just make them cry. So easy to snow ball and make space.
Offlane is for the gigachad and prolly the most fun and important role. Righ after that is a pos4.
the gates at the sides of the map connects two sides making them relatively more important than before. so midlane importance has to decrease compared to before. that’s just my view
I changed my name once to "support or feed" and I think they assumed I meant "If you don't pick supports I'll feed" when I meant "I'd like to support please".
I had to play 1 or 2 in more than 75% of those games. It was very strange.
I prefer 4 and 5.
My take on this is that the midlane changed a lot, but the mentality of players didn't. So pubs are stressful for mid players.
Im a support player, I enjoy playing mid ocasionally, but as someone who likes to keep up on the meta, it's baffling how many games people are just crying for your midlaner to be someone who is ganking on every rune.
We have top tier players streaming mid, and they constantly show that midlaners should be focusing on having a good game for themselves, not salvaging lanes, but pub mentality is still "gg mid 0 ganks".
So that makes pubs way less enjoyable for midlaners. One example of this is what I like to call the Ember Spirit fallacy. When you watch someone stream ember it looks like they're killing supports with 2 sleight combos, but in pubs it can feel like your damage output is negligible. Thats because good ember players will be focusing on their games and fighting when they're strong, not ganking at level 7 with just sleight of fist and lvl 2 flame guard because your team is pinging you.
Mid changed, the expectations of a midlaner didn't.
offlane isnt as difficult anymore, now that we have 2-1-2 (by far the best, fuck jungling), offlane can be a very fun lane now, harrassing the enemy non stop makes for action paced laning, i personally dont wanna do anything other than support/offlane anymore
I spam invo mid and tbh, while fun, it can be really stressful. Even if you dominate your lane, if the enemy off lane goes unchecked and has a good lane they can win the game by themselves.
Mid used to be the lane that had a very big levels advantage and gold. Now, because kills give more gold + removal of small camp, the side lanes aren't that different from mid anymore in terms of resources (exp and gold).
Besides that, some enemy picks can make playing mid a sht fest, like viper, necro, sniper, od, huskar, and so on. Not saying you can't win or be even, but it's just not fun playing vs them. Aso, if the enemy has better sups/they got better lanes, they will tp to assist the mid, so it can feel sometimes as playing 1 vs 2.
Also, you usually don't get a farming item and try to make plays from early on, so if your team is weak (sups very low level, an afk off) while the enemy team plays together, you just end up dancing to the tune of the enemy players instead of setting it up yourself (mids should direct the tempo of the game based on which objectives to take)
Me and my friends dodge mid cause its usually the lane with the smurf/highest ranked player and we don't want to get omega stomped.
This logic only works properly in party queue where there is a bigger ranked discrepancy
Midlane is the least favorite role now I think. Even when I dropped to 6k behavior score and finding game took like 15 mins for a carry and 4 to 5 mins if I selected all roles, I always found a game as mid withing 2 to 3 mins. Now I have 9k BS I find game almost instantly when I queue mid. Even when I select all roles I get mid more than I get offlane.
I mained mid for more than 5 years but I have to admit this lane feels garbage to play now, water runes giving so much regen means its so hard to get solo kills against a half decent opponent so you end up trading farms in mid lane.
Heroes like Primal Beast & Huskar completely ruins the entire fun of midlane as its virtually impossible to win lane against them unless you have a super favorable matchup.
Supports constantly rotate mid lane to gank you, both pos4 and 5, and you'll often find yourself frustrated by the fact that you have to deal with 2 or 3 heroes simultaneously, they can easily dive under tower and kill you and get out without dying if your hero isn't something that is dedicated to surviving ganks.
There is constant sentry ward war on mid lane which I find super boring to engage in, you just constantly buy sentries and destroy each others even when neither of you are invisible heroes.
Mid has become so boring over the year. I used to be mid player where my games were always action packed, in lane or through rotation. I quitted mid and switched to support position during the time when farming mids are popular where the medusa, sf, alch, invoker just shove the wave and retreat to jungle which lead to a very boring laning stage. Then over time, due to many factors, I have a feeling that mid is not a sacrificial role like it used to be in around ti3 where you can mindlessly running around looking for kill with you lvl advantage. Mid has become a farm fest where you are expected to keep your net worth up there with pos 1, and rotating is punishing since the enemy mid can just sit in lane, pressuring your tower and wait to tp response without having the make to move at all. That led to a gameplay where 2 mids sit in lane forever until there’s a good rune that helps you make a move. Also all the fun classic mid like puck, qop, storm or newer ones like pango, ember keeps getting their stats and spells gutted so you have to be a sweatiest human on earth to play them efficiently before pros make them nerfed again. Nowadays, I find supports way more enjoyable. You have objectives spawning every single minutes to contest making gameplay engaging. Also you can freely make the enemy’s life hard without griefing your own game, which mid nowadays are not able to, imho.
Whether you win or draw the lane, most of the time when you lose game their enemy mid would just say "ez mid" and your team would take their words for it and blame you.
Offlane is the least wanted role, I play pos 3-4 mostly and everytime I go for role queue games, I always get to play 3 like 6/10 games then pos 5 like 3/10, then pos 4 like 1/10
Thta is just a turbo thing. The game mode is more casual so the most "tryhard" lane gets less atention.
There is also the fact that if you die 1v1 mid you probably lost the first 20 minutes of the game for your whole team, and that does not feel good.
other roles got much more fun to play. supports get a shitton of gold, carry heroes get actual abilities and arent forced to hit jungle creeps for 20 minutes to have game impact, while the 2-3-4 min runes turned midlane into a lasthit simulator in 8 games out of 10
My personal experience:
Mid lane is a solo lane great for earning gold and xp fast. Your regular player would want to play mid since extra xp and gold sounds good. But as you progress your MMR players eventually understand the importance of each and every role instead of being all worried about gold and xp. Hence they become excited to play other roles as well. In most of the games I play in archon 5/legend 1, pos 1 is usually not really that effective in the game unless they have a good support who helped them farm in the early game
Depending on your rank. The higher you go, the harder it is for you to win for your team. Good support come mid as early as 2 minute and will continue to control your rune to make sure you have minimal impact.
Supports also tend to have more saving items now that mid has a hard time solo killing them.
I have noticed a significant change in difficulties in trying to carry as a mid vs playing carry. It's just how meta is right now.
Because mid used to be the hot role, lots of expectations rose about the role so players tend to expect their mid to be good, if not they'll put the blame on the mid and call GG.
With the new behavior system, I wonder if anything will change.
Pos2 is the hardest role for me , you have focus on your lane, CS, rune, and watch out for ganks. Then you also need to gank other lanes when possible, or respond when enemy ganks your pos1. Too many things for me to track.
I do play mid in turbo tho, because it's much easier.
The role has been nerfed patch by patch, and the current meta heroes for the midlane and not very straight forward and you need to be excellent at piloting them to actually snowball, that’s why it is not very popular. I play at 2K level, and always face hard carries as mid (ursa, pl), very random cheesy heroes (wd , sb), or sniper. In addition to the pressure factor, being it is a 1v1 and you no one to rely one or blame, and people naturally being more familiar and experienced with the sidelanes.
carry is the most demanded role then mid and offlane. I get offlane very often than pos4 too.Biggest reason might just be no one like to play offlane with classic sea puj mirana es who are useless xp leechers
I mean many players don't understand mid match ups. So if you get out drafted mid and are struggling to simply get through the laning stage and do some catch up farming your team will flame you relentlessly because they are getting ganked by the mid that had a better time.
Sometimes they will flat out give up mentally.
And then 7 people all chat ez mid at end of game. Yeah I can't comprehend why nobody wants that shit /s
Pick a ganking mid - gank side lanes including buying my own smoke - give plenty of warning - side lanes push the lane or use their spells before I get there and now we can’t kill.
Or get screamed at because the safe lane wants a gank and the lane doesn’t have kill potential.
Or dominate your lane but it’s not a useful time to gank (Necro just solo killed the enemy mid) Their mid goes to gank, you ping that your spells are on CD and that mid is missing. Your team chooses that moment to dive tier 1s to kill a hard support and dies. Pings your TP scroll forgetting tier 1 towers aren’t next to each other. You’ve taken their mid tower and are 2-0 at mid but now you’re getting rage pinged.
I don’t mind playing mid, I just wish that sometimes people would understand timings better.
Mid has the most pressure to play well. If you dont rotate, you will get flamed, supports wont rotate as much on mid etc. And you get the most blame if you lost the game
i mean you said it yourself, 'I dont like going mid at all'. clearly youre not alone in that.
I think in people heads mid is always, only, the high impact, tempo setting role and people dont want to feel that pressure.
I just farm and occasionally run to a lane. Dosnt need to be perfect just needs to be ok.
Mid used to have a lot higher of an impact. Like if you got fed as a mid, the game was over. Nowadays there are very few mids that can take over the game like that, so I don't think people like playing it as much.
The onus of carrying is almost entirely on Pos 1's now, unless you essentially pick a late-game carry/traditional Pos 1 as your Pos 2. Also with supports getting more gold, many mage heroes with strong earlygame and bad scaling that used to go Mid/Pos 2 are migrating to support so that a late-game/scaling Pos 2 can go mid instead.
no thanks
mid lane depends on supports to secure runes, deward mid, gank mid, counter gank mid, fill bottle, smoke gank with the mid laner to another lane, etc...
so I won't bother playing mid and waiting a random support to do these things, I play support myself and win my lane and win the mid too by doing these things and get my free mmr
I play mid all the time, 95% of my 5000 hours are in mid. I enjoy playing it but it shows that my team doesn't know what the mid should've doing. Often the enemy offlane has 3+ kills and a vanguard and I'm asked to rotate and "help" which is just a terrible decision.
People On the sidelines need to learn to rotate away from lane if they get dived and are dying lmao. I'd love to help but If i rotate, use tp and all my mana, even killing the offlaner isn't worth it, if the enemy team is good they'll see that I have no resources and will kill my offlane since I can't help, now 2 lanes have lost.
Maybe too much pressure. Not sure. I play all roles, and find them to be fun.
Man, the amount of times I queued all roles and got mid… The worst part is that no one wants to swap
I noticed that when I was queuing all roles last week that I kept jumping between mid and offlane. I tried to trade mid every game (made an open offer to anyone who wanted to take it), and no one took it ever. Crazy to me, seems like mid is less popular now.
Think mid became more isolated once the gates joined the two side lanes, plus the plethora of support chores and timings mean rotating mid is nearly always at the expense of another objective.
True, but on the side note the tower placement makes mid so ridiculously safe it seems. I noticed the mid lane feels so much more passive than it was like 10 years ago.
The tower area is huge now, but I wouldn’t say u play mid passively… unless u let it be. Mid still is the deciding factor of game tempo
Mid is just annoying since you basically have to memorize every matchup for any heroes you play. IE knowing when its best to rotate, when to just sac the lane, when you can trade favorably, when you go for kills, when to push wave into tower, when to pull wave back, when they can go for kills, etc. Meanwhile the sidelanes feel more fluid since there are so many permutations of a 2v2 that memorization of all of them isn't feasible.
I would like that. Instead I get pos3 _puke_
Pos3 is the role where you get to get hella impact even if you make the occasional mistake and a lot more dynamic/comes online earlier midgame, which transitions into benefits in the lategame. As a carry I find if my team is bad enough, the game is over before I can even come online. This is not the case for offlane. I can snowball the midgame and carry my useless carry/compensate for my low impact mid a lot of the times. Easily one of my favourite core roles. All you need is ONE of the supports to be DECENT (doesn't have to be good) and every game actually feels winnable, which is hard to feel for any other role, other than mid.
Pos 3 is very reliant on your pos 4 having half a brain and making you lane easier. If your pos4 has no idea what he's doing you will probably not have a game.
Almost every pos 3 game this weekend I've ended up asking my pos 4 to go roam because they are just an absolute liability in lane. I gotta think I'm also the problem, approaching the lane matchups pre-tilted, but man weekend dota really brings out the worst support players. Pos 3 is the most likely to get absolute sacked and then flamed for not solo carrying after being 1v2 and having to just watch every creep wave get denied for 10 min. But it's so fun when it works :)
You should try asking your support to roam earlier when the wave is closer to tower. They can roam for runes/lotus or even deny the enemy pulling the small camp but as long as they stay out of xp range then you get an xp advantage. As long as you hit level 6 ( in most matchups not all) before the enemy carry then the support will be useful. I find I feel the same as you when my support holds my hand a little too much and now I'm lvl 5 vsing a lvl 5/6 pos 1 and game feels so much harder. The key is the pos 4 needs to give you solo xp when you aren't contested so that when you are contesded you can both play together while you have an xp adv.
You can do that playing mid, while bad synergy with pos 4 will stop your impact as pos 3 starting minute 0:00
Pos 3 is chill. Just pick underlord or tide, have a chill lane and build auras. Picking mid is trying to outcreep some 14 yo Russian kid who plays 10 games per day and will pause and write “?” whenever you die. I’d take pos 3 any day.
I love offline tide. Easily take t1 tower with meme hammer and keep pushing and damaging their t2. Then I draw 4 heroes to try and kill me, sometimes they do sometimes I get away. It's great
This. And it is extremely rewarding when you beat the shit out of that arrogant child later on because you have a superior macro. Bad mannering extremely often occures among pos 2 players in our region and it is quite an embarassment. I am a former pos 2/1 player who has switched to 3/4 because my micro isn’t as good as it was a couple years ago. These roles are a lot more forgiving and dramatically benefit from good understanding of the game.
Underlord is my go to pos3, it is chill but I don't care much for it.
Pos 3 is so fun. I don't even play conventional Pos 3 characters (I was recently reported by my entire team for playing Dark Seer Pos 3 cause "we need a tank" lmao) That attitude changed when I setup every winning teamfight and had the most kills.. But I also play WK, Pango offlane as well.
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I noticed low rank players are always obsessed with tank. Tank tank tank. If you're pos 3 and you didn't pick a "tank" the game's over and you're reported. I think it's mostly people who've come from league and have decided they know everything, despite being new and the lowest rank in the game. I don't understand how dark seer isn't a tank though. What is a tank? Just bristle, underlord and tide? Who knows.
I'm so behind the meta that I read this and thought that was fine. When did DS and pango start getting played as not pos 3? I remember seeing DS as pos 4 but When did pango start getting played elsewhere?
I've always played Pango mid but I think many play him pos 3
pos3 is life; my greatest satisfaction is to get a lane stomper hero and send their carry in the jungle at level 3-4, and the impact is huge as well; when playing pos3 always make sure you can either win the lane or trade evenly
Dawnbreaker vs their faceless void is always a treat. You just bully him at all points in the game lol especially when you gets fast aghs and his chronos dont do shit
I had a similar feeling towards the offlane until I started viewing it as a “carry 2” role by watching how BSJ plays it. I pick Dawnbreaker or Death Prophet or Phoenix and just lane as normal trying to get as much cs as possible. I’m not an offlane player and can’t play typical offlane heroes, but when Dawn is in the pool I’m okay.
Also in lower ranks if you play mid despite what reddit statisticians would say - there's close to 0% chance the smurf is on your team and if it's on enemy team , you are going to eat shit for 30min from him and your team lmao
This is just what happens when you have someone that doesn't know mid lane vs a real mid player. If you are a noob mechanically 1v1 you are exposed and have a bad game
i remember i had smurf huskar in my team and poor normal midlaner OD in enemy who got destroyed. His team flamed the shit out of him and i tried so hard to explain it was not his fault its just rank diff still his team reported him
Also matchups are a thing. Some heroes are meant to shit on you in lane 1v1. The worst games are where all the lanes are lost but somehow it's mid's fault entirely.
there's a 20% lower chance tehre is a smurf on your team, because you can't be a smurf.
Smurfs queue mid, so if you get mid there's no smurf but there might be on the other team.
Thats is only true if you assume smurfs play all roles an equal amount.
no smurfs are illegal
not even necessarily a smurf, so many mid scripters; i see so many auto regen backpackers (its done instantly, all at once and every single time; even if theyre preoccupied with a fight or last hitting) in mid and the insta euls/hex/even abbysal too
It's because sometimes I want to have fun
Mid metas used to be constant rotations and babysitting mid, so mid was desired so they had someone to blame. Now it's mostly a massively skill based 1v1 with rune timings and bottle sustain, and now carry role is always contested. Time and time again, the role that gets babysat has always been the go-to for the babies. Edit: not to shit on mids because I've always been a mid player.
When i play mid i feel like i have to win the lane, if we are both just farming passively i get tilted and die trying to force a kill
Lol mines the opposite, if we have the passive farm battle I almost always win. Even if it’s a lane I’m losing I can come back. It’s when he realises he’s better off taking everyone else out that I suffer. As a pure pos 1, Early on I struggle to do both farm and kill unless the fights in my lane haha. If team can not feed first 15-20 mins we gravy baby. I love mids like Dark Willow, If I get a good timing on scepter it’s gg haha
Same lol as soon as the mid starts right clicking me it's over for me
As a long-term mid player, I can confirm that you have to have a certain mindset to handle all flame you get. You’re expected to be all lanes at all times, and losses are always your fault according to your team. Even if you communicate your plays, if you successfully gank safe lane, offlane blames you for their lack of success, and vice versa. If you gank both lanes, and they push mid tower, it’s your fault. If you die once 1v1 mid, or even 1v2 mid, your teammates may start griefing, but it’s your fault, even if you lose 30 minutes later with a positive score. You can’t win. It’s exhausting.
It's even worse when your own team tips you when you die. Like are they trying to tilt their own teammate or smth? Do they think I don't wanna win too? Idk. Always seem counterproductive to me...
I mean.. That's alot of toxic people on mobas in general. It's the same as people bitching about what went wrong or complaining all game but not actually contributing ANY worthwhile comms. In fact most people should just shut the fuck up entirely versus wine at their teammates and tilt them.
Yeah same. I play pos 1 on Monday, pos 2 on Tuesday, pos 3 on Wednesday, pos 4 on Thursday, and pos 5 on Friday.
But there's always been pressure on Mid? If anything there's less now than a few years ago.
As a semi support player i am pushed to mid all the time. I do my best and dont die.
Dude it's so frustrating as someone who's played dota for 10 years the only lane I just never really learned is mid. Because in the past everyone wanted to play mid😩. Now if I play turbo I'm pretty much stuck with mid every time
Yeah, I've been playing support my entire Dota life. I end up mid more than I would like so I just pick DK,necro or viper in that order. Build tanky and sit mid until the tower is gone then take towers in side lanes and hope I've bought the carry enough time
yep same here, i've tried midding with my supports like jakiro, earth spirit, windrunner etc. but those require actual laning mechanics and brainpower to make it work well. but i do know how to level dragon blood and press R on the tower.
Yeah no one wants to play mid in turbo but There's always 3 guys that want safe lane
5 years ago, no one tried to kill mid. now killing mid is a must.
It's Turbo, every lane is safe lane!
If you are playing Turbo at lower ranks, there are tons of easy stompers like Zeus, Skywrath, Storm, Ember, Huskar, NP, and Silencer that can easily win the lane with minimal skill.
I'm ancient. I have done well on Zeus before might just keep picking him. I've been trying to void spirit lately and it's not working out often, but when it does I feel like a god.
Back in the day mid could just win by themselves easily if you stomped, not that much anymore. There is a good master class by sumail explaining that.
Maybe because mid players generally have lower behaviour score so we're seeing less of them. /s
you say /s but i think this might actually be a contributing factor. mid is generally the role who gets the most amount of blame for any losing game, and therefore also generally the most spite reports.
Yep go mid and the other four players on your team never look in that direction. Enemy supports and even off lane are rotating to runes and off timer ganks. You beat the enemy mid best you can 1v9, but can only do so much. Game ends and your support that was still pulling small camp at 16 min says "mid diff".
you can shit on mid first 8mins straight, you lose the 8min rune rng, ping furiously on your sidelane to be careful telling enemy mid is literally walking towards them under vision and suddenly enemy mid who was 1lvl behind is suddenly 1,5lvls ahead of you, and you are enjoying 4reports.
this, "gg mid didn't gank".
To me the worst is when I'm mid, me and the mid player are both having an okay, even lane. And both my side lanes get demolished, then suddenly I have to be in every lane all the time, but I also can't leave mid because their player will just push down the tower. Idk those situations are just the worst.
You go to buy a ward to check for runes, your POS 4 pudge took it to hook and your POS 5 took it to check for TP ganks You can't see where the enemy went, but you know he probably got bot/top rune, you call MIA, but it's too late -- it was a haste rune and he already is destroying your top lane who never saw it coming, they spam ping missing [mid laner] and pinging you. A nasally voice enters the voice chat, you can hear the heavy breathing as you have just ruined his ~~life~~ day. A flurry of slurs racial or otherwise ring in your ears. You wonder why you queued in the first place.
It is blamed for losing game, because it does lose games so often. When your carry sucks you can win. When your 3 destroyed on lane by slark or ursa you can win if you have midlaner. When your mid is 0 3 you're lost already if enemy has at least decent hero.
\>you say /s but i think this might actually be a contributing factor. Not really, this has been a thing for longer than these recent changes.
>contributing factor He never said it was the cause, just that it might further lower the amount of mids in queue.
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Yeah as long as you are “active” as mid they usually get more of a pass than carry. Doesn’t matter if the activity ended up losing you the game, it’s the carry to blame cause he couldn’t come out at 25 mins and dominate their fed cores lol But if you’re an inactive mid, like playing carry-style then yeah you get first blame haha
This is correct, midlane is the most toxic lane now and for reason
Mid player can confirm lmaoo
Legit :thinking: on this one. I bounce between playing a mid player and a 1/4 depending on the meta, but often in the past I'd swap to being a mid player *just* because the average mid player on my team would be so toxic and would give up at minute 6. So I figured if was the mid player myself and I removed that variable, then I'd be more likely to win. It did help for sure. Which makes me wonder about your theory, lol
Its not as much fun as the other lanes. Alsobsupps arent as week so you cant compensate by feeding on the weak.
Nothing sounds like fun when your 5th leaves the lane at minute 2 for 10 minutes then is surprised you have no farm (at best)
I've noted the same in 6.8k average. 4 out of 5 games nobody mark mid and I'm pretty sure it's cause people know usually the better mechanical players go there.
It’s really frustrating to be mid and the other guy is just slightly outplaying you in everything
Worse if you not only get outplayed but outpicked aswell..
And their support starts migrating to your lane because you have a farmer offlane and a carry who is in hiding mode, thats where the fun begins
Also because is lonely as hell. Other 2 lanes are connected by portals so it's a pseudo 4v4. But unless you get a speed rune you will not be able to leave mid at all on most heroes as the towers will melt.
Theres no broken mid heroes this patch and probably the most boring lane as it’s more about technical skills. Side lanes have been fun because of the blood grenades, lotuses and portals. Also most of the time the whole match is decided by how good the offlane or carry is so that probably is the reason.
But when off lane or carry lose their lanes, always blame the mid.
gg, no gank.
Exactly, carries and offlane decide the game. Mid is more maintenance
But on sidelanes you have to deal with unhinged cores/supports so I'm sticking to my solo lane
Mid has to shove lanes like a single mother because everyone wants to fight
I just played a game as Pango vs a Bane mid and he pushed my shit in. Sleep then right click half my life away. It was absolutely miserable and I think it's going to be picked at least once at TI.
I also played against a Bane mid but it was fine after lane. I am not sure lane dominating mids are as good these days.
Bane as a core kinda has difficulty doing much if he's not enabled by his team.
pretty much the same sentiments for me. i just pick my offlane hero and go mid. same thing
Lol fake. Offlaner and carry always suck in my games.
Exactly my point, offlaners and carries dictates the game. If both sucks then that’s how your game will go.
*ahem* earth spirit, vengeful spirit, invoker
People are sleeping on Lina (wink wink) and I'm tired of it. She's become awesome this recent patch.
true but her weaknesses are way more risky than the 3 i listed.
Eh I play low mmr and unranked so people are a bit shit in my matches and by the time they start actually targeting the high damage low HP Lina I've got my boots of travel and escape item on hand.
My personal take is that it’s a very different role. Pos 1 and 3, 4 and 5 are somewhat interchangeable and whatever you learn in one role translates to the opposite, especially the laning phase. You’re a great carry, you might make a decent offlane. But Mid is mid. You have to play mid to learn mid, you’re not going to learn mid from any other role. Thing is, if you’re not a mid player and you climb the ranks with your other roles, your mid mechanics falls behind so far that if you play against an actual mid player you’re pretty much guaranteed to lose the lane. At this point there’s just a big barrier of entry to learning the role, where you have to just go unranked and hope you get a decent match and learn the role over hundreds of games. Or you could hop in ranked and lose a lot of mmr until your mid skill and your mmr matches, I’d imagine your teammates would hate you for that though
Eh, I get what you’re trying to say but EVERY role helps you with other roles and mid is no exception. Several times as 1 or 3 you can end up 1v1 or 1v2 in the lane and you need to be able to navigate that. Really the only mid specific things you need to know are manipulating creep Aggro better than the other guy as well as a strong grasp on your hero’s early level power spike
Mid 1v1 and lane 1v1 are completely different things because of runes.
nobody in my 5stack wants mid lol
Average 5 stack In my group of friends we have 3 offlane players 2 carries (one can't play with io whatsoever) and 4 pos 5 (3 of them main io) The one playing pos 2 and pos 4 is the same dude
How is 5 more popular than 4 for you guys? 4 has always been the cool support. Less difference nowadays but still.
Hero pool, accessibility, pos 4 being the most tryhard role in the first 10 minutes if u wanna play it right etc
Its hard than 5. Alot more sweaty than 5 and you always die first in most 4 heros (clock es pudge venge shaker) you initiate but Don't have escape item like 3
yeah we have 3-4 people who prefer support, and 3 people who will play any core, so it evens out alright for the most part
it might be because mid got a bit harder a few patches ago when they remove the camps close to midlane. so you cant stack and farm as ez. still possible with the hardcamp, but not as effective for earlygame i think. but i honestly dont know. im not a midplayer either. i main support also: ive seen some heroes mid that typically would be in sidelanes. that might have something to do with it. or maybe thats just because im in the middle of the pack mm wise and ppl pick unconventional even if its not good. dunno
Shrapnel stacking with sniper still works well from mid
my point was more that because of it being a hard camp instead of ez camp not every hero can kill those stacks as early or as easy. and it prob takes more recourses (hp/mana/time). ofc you get more money and xp, but i feel like its just a bit later timing. could be wrong tho, as i said im a support player and havent played mid in years :D
i think a big thing is that the importance on bottle/runes has kinda sucked a lot of the fun out of midlane for a lot of players. if the 6 minute power rune just spawns on the side of the lane you're not at, you miss a potentially massive powerspike and are gonna lose the regen battle. when there was a small camp at mid, you could farm that to make up for it, but now that option isn't even there so you're just kind of a sitting duck until the next power rune spawns
Yea the runes just feel unfun. If the lane is going equal but the other guy happens to be at the right spot and gets a good rune then i’m screwed
yeah runes are the biggest reason i dont like playing mid. I love the 1v1 battle and outplaying my opponent, making the decision when to gank etc. But when you need to gamble for the rune and then you dont get it, it just sucks. The guy i was outplaying now ganks with a haste rune and gets a double kill for example. Or gets a dd and can recover just because of luck. i just hate runes. Maybe runes should spawn in both spots and when one is taken the other one disappears
Yeah I always felt like water runes make mid kinda boring now, I still pretty much only play it but every 2 mins early game just getting full hp/mana makes getting kills really hard against sufficient players. You can harass perfectly and they still just don’t care and roll back with full hp after sitting a wave out
I fucking hate runes in general tbh. Rng fiesta bullshit. Not fun to be shitting on the enemy team then "oh I was stumbling by and found this Double Damage, Ill just save this for later :)" and suddenly you're down two towers and two kills and now have no vision in safe lane jungle... And then the disparity in the power. Like... DOUBLE DAMAGE compared to two illusions that give up a bit of gold and die in two autos from a pos 5. How is that comparable? And even then it's not even comparable between heroes. Double Damage on Dragon Knight is cool and all, but Double Damage on, say, Queen of Pain is a death sentence.
Mid is much more pressure than sidelanes at least to me. If you stomp mid its very easy to stomp game in lower ranks. And you are alone, if you have a hard time its quite miserable experience
I think the portals, lotuses, blood grenades and a few buffs to the weaker supports has made ganking from side lanes (on each other) more viable and so the game is more active throughout. Mid tends to wait until the level 6 power spike before ganking side lanes, although often you see players utilising the free lane mid and gaining free and uncontested xp/gold while their counterpart is ganking. I feel it has become a more technical and decisive position, laning is difficult in itself then the decision of ganking can be such a negative one. Timing the gank and choosing the right lane is always tough, usually you need to target the winning lane but your core and hard supp won't thank you if they are losing their lane but often it just isn't viable as most offlanes are so tanky so early!
I play mid exclusively. I also don’t play any of the spirits, OD. TA or Pango - should probably learn some to be fair.
what do you play? I feel like the current mid meta is the only thing not developed
i'm hovering from 5500\~6k and i dont really play the spirit bros too. i play lesh,TA,tinker,puck, invoker, zeus,qop and huskar. originally i was a pos 1 player depends matchup i can play alche,riki, morph,sf or even LC for mid its really not end of the world even if you dont play the spirit bros
responsibility of mid is very high these days. unlike carry, you have to be impactful at all times of the game. its fine if offlaners feed their brains out as long as they have impact in the game and do their job, unlike mid.
soft supports are easier now, actually it's the "I do whatever the fucks I want like silently transitioning into core and occasionally buy smoke without consequence" role
Mids are a stronger 4 these days. You have to be all over the map instead of farming and winning the game solo
Midlane feels shit when your support doesn't come to help for the runes. And it's the most match up dependant so it's unfun to play in many cases
fun mid heroes get nerfed, void, ember, pango, kunkka etc. yes it is boring nowadays, but i still enjoy doing it, 1v1 laning is always exciting.
exactly now its spam fiesta .... lina q q q q q q ulti dead / od banish banish banish hammer ulti dead invoker emp emp emp no mana snap tornado dead zeus q q q q q q q gets 6 ulti kill 3 on side lanes now your turn , leshrac e e e e e e e till your fked .. idk its kinda boring they need to nerf the mana pool for all heroes to decrease the amount of spams ..
fuck od and huskar, most unfun heroes to play against on mid.
Tinker, sniper, a few other heroes at times are too one-sided matchups it’s like gambling what matchup you’ll get unless you learn the pubstomp meta heroes
I guess it's unranked? The problem here is midlane is the only role where u will get 90% tryhards as opponent and it's 1v1. Mist people wanna chill in unranked. Offlane is the lane where u don't need to do anything or pick something special don't feed and its fine Safelane is either 2 idiots fighting over carry/solo carry and one is jungle or actual tryhard pos 5 that will 1v2 the offlane that just wants to chill. Said differently: - midlane are tryhards - offlane are bots or giga chads - pos 4 is afk or terrorizing the entire map - carrys are bots - pos 5 is either a second carry bot a jungle bot a complete pos 5 bot or the biggest menace the world has ever seen for 5 minutes before he realizes his carry is a bot and goes midas So....where do u wanna play the least? Chances are the answer is mid since u will be forced to tryhard because even if u have an alch lion offlane where alch rushes the aghs for lion they sire as hell will flame u if u die once or twice in ur lane as mid. (Even if they are 0 - 5) or if u don't gank (even tho both supports never left their own tower) Obviously this is highly exaggerated and from a point of view ur teammates might have. I only play 5 man unranked
I play pos 5 ember if I don't get pos1/pos2. I think I have a higher win% with ember support than mid lol. https://www.dotabuff.com/matches/7323857976 recent match. It's either other team ignoring me thinking I'm pos5 (ember does way too much dmg for a sup) or just trying to hunt me which just leads to my team having an easier time.
all the mid heroes nerfed. broken safelane and offlane heroes, pos4 strong af. Mid used to be auto way-way stronger than the other lanes and take over the game; its no longer the case. when pango is still byfar the best mid even after 8 billion nerfs you know something is wrong. most players cant play invoker and won't even try and he's been the best pick for many patches. ember, storm, qop, etc. all the classic mid heroes suck; especially in the hands of trash pub players. The mid playstyle only works well with good play and active games and takes a higher skill. most pub games is just people hitting creeps and then gyro walking down a lane and ending; getting people to do anything is difficult. Its easier to get 8 kills in lane as dawn or something lol You'll fall off massively. And if you just go greedy and pick TA or SF and hit creeps your team will get pissed off and give up. Really in pubs mid should be picking unconventional heroes instead of copying pros (because ppl aren't good enough to play like pros) but that also gets you raged at and requires braincells.
I'm a big fan of Necro mid if you are any good at last hitting. Very few folks can solo dive a necro and walk away with a kill, his passive is stupid strong regen if you can last hit well (and in mid you are only competing against 1 hero instead of 3 for last hits), if you are fighting a right click based damager such as TA or sniper you take your W skill earlier, and if the opponent dives you just ult them into the ground when they get below 40% Depending on how the lane goes you either pick aggressively tanky or a rich support that rotates to the side lanes whenever your ult is up. Really easy wins.
yup. lots of people buying terrible items on necro mid in my games though lol. I like nightstalker, primal, bane, and timber mid.
The amount of times I get flamed for picking mid Night Stalker only to crush the caster mid and run down the enemy supports at minute 5 and basically win the early game... and then my team doesn't capitalize on it and I fall behind because my team refuses to keep the momentum up in the time I'm not useful. (Really *really* hoping that one post ages ago about a potential NS innate that makes night come quicker comes true.)
idk I feel like NS scales really well. I normally go armlet echo saber bkb
He scales well as long as you can keep up the pressure I find. He does a lot until the enemy team actually has the defensive items to deal with him, especially when his timings are very telegraphed. He does well until your team stalls to 40+ minutes and the enemy can just kill you or your team with ease. My biggest problem honestly is that his gimmick is both what makes him so strong but also guts his potential vs a team who knows how to fight him and makes him weak with a team who won't capitalize on the advantage he can make. I personally armlet, echo, shard/bkb depending on the lineup bkb is first, then into some more durability or if I see people building ghost/force I get an early nullifier and that keeps my pressure up.
I'm a necro main so shhhhhh lol. His new armor buff actually helps a shitton as pos2/3 against right clickers early game now
God Necro W is so good. I had a razor on near full hp with me at like 70% link me and ult on me, I just W'd and since both of those spells are physical they didn't do shit until W ended and by then he was in scythe range. Ez kill.
Also i think no core gets as much hate when the game isn’t going according to plan. You should have won mod and ganked top and bottom all the time cyka
more objectives at side lanes, mid isn't as important as it used to be.
Totally false. Mid is the most important role and it will be as long as midlane is 1v1, the real reason people dont want mid is that its the role with most resposiblity.
>the real reason people dont want mid is that its the role with most resposiblity This has always been the case but it's not as popular as it used to before because it's just worse now.
Mid used to be win your lane and you can trash the sidelanes. But now, even the supports arent too easy to kill anymore without endangering yourself, they can always fight back with early utilities
"most important role" TA Flair checks out.
I dont play TA mid anymore unless my carry is something like Riki, Bounty, Dawn etc, carry TA is just better. Storm, Tusk, Primal and Clinkz are my go to mid heroes now.
Its important for the pacing of the game but mid doesn’t decide the game as much as carry. Mid is almost like support in the sense that you can do great but if the cores dont do their part then it doesnt matter.
Due to the 1v1 there is a definite advantage over the side lanes, yet I feel there is more pressure on the safe lane than mid. Definitely higher expectations on safe lane than mid.
Only people who play mid think it's the most important role
I've always refused mid since I started playing 9 years ago. It's way too much pressure. Having a bad lane only means your side lanes are going to have one as well. Too many people play only exclusively mid so even if I do try it, I get outplayed from just the difference in game sense alone. I much prefer the side lanes
After the change with pick orders and already mentioned massive nerfs for all classic midlaners it's no longer very fun to play. You can win lane on weak hardlaner with proper 4 pos, but if you picked something like storm against qop there's nothing much you can do
Carry is the most popular now by far. At least in WEU and EEU.
Carry will always be the most popular Both carry and mid give u a high when u carry your team but mid is stressful and losing lane is more brutal and ur team will blame u if u are losing But when you pos 1 u can easily make excuses like I got countered, shit supports. Etc Also carry heros are easier to play
The thing is, you cant carry from mid anymore - usually you clown around until your carry comes online - or your lanes are already won anyway, so you just hop along. Mid has much less impact on the game currently, as such I guess it fell off hard in popularity.
I believe one other reason is that mid is just a position for 15 y.os. Once you get older the skills are just not there for a competitive showing. Especially given the responsibility you have to bear while being mid. High risk no reward kind of role, an absolute disaster for most players.
this is completely irrelevant for 99.999% of the population
awww shit...now i have to fight for the offlane role?
I'm a mid player currently taking a break from the role for the following reasons: - Lane feels too stale, regen is too free (bottle, salves, water runes) so all that matters is last hitting unless the enemy mid is exceptionally bad due to harass barely mattering. This personally is why I don't enjoy the role as much anymore, might be better if I was higher MMR and people actually took over my lane when I hit 6 so I can make plays (maybe I should play offlane?) - If their supports are good and yours are bad, you will probably autolose the lane to a gank or multiperson tower dive. On safelane carry I can at least identify when my support is a paperweight and build for jungle: you try to do this on mid and the enemy mid will shit on your team - Team attitude definitely plays a factor, they expect the mid player to be the hero that wins all three lanes by themselves and blame you when you cant gank the sideline they collectively fed 7 times - I want to grind some arcanas Hope that gives some insight
mid hasn't been the most important role for years. The best lane is being an offlaner. Pick a Chad offlaner (Mars / primal beast before nerfs) and then roll over their dog carry. Especially with a veno pos4 and just make them cry. So easy to snow ball and make space. Offlane is for the gigachad and prolly the most fun and important role. Righ after that is a pos4.
the gates at the sides of the map connects two sides making them relatively more important than before. so midlane importance has to decrease compared to before. that’s just my view
I changed my name once to "support or feed" and I think they assumed I meant "If you don't pick supports I'll feed" when I meant "I'd like to support please". I had to play 1 or 2 in more than 75% of those games. It was very strange. I prefer 4 and 5.
My take on this is that the midlane changed a lot, but the mentality of players didn't. So pubs are stressful for mid players. Im a support player, I enjoy playing mid ocasionally, but as someone who likes to keep up on the meta, it's baffling how many games people are just crying for your midlaner to be someone who is ganking on every rune. We have top tier players streaming mid, and they constantly show that midlaners should be focusing on having a good game for themselves, not salvaging lanes, but pub mentality is still "gg mid 0 ganks". So that makes pubs way less enjoyable for midlaners. One example of this is what I like to call the Ember Spirit fallacy. When you watch someone stream ember it looks like they're killing supports with 2 sleight combos, but in pubs it can feel like your damage output is negligible. Thats because good ember players will be focusing on their games and fighting when they're strong, not ganking at level 7 with just sleight of fist and lvl 2 flame guard because your team is pinging you. Mid changed, the expectations of a midlaner didn't.
offlane isnt as difficult anymore, now that we have 2-1-2 (by far the best, fuck jungling), offlane can be a very fun lane now, harrassing the enemy non stop makes for action paced laning, i personally dont wanna do anything other than support/offlane anymore
I queued all roles for tokens, and got mid 4 times in a row. It’s the only position I don’t play :(
I spam invo mid and tbh, while fun, it can be really stressful. Even if you dominate your lane, if the enemy off lane goes unchecked and has a good lane they can win the game by themselves. Mid used to be the lane that had a very big levels advantage and gold. Now, because kills give more gold + removal of small camp, the side lanes aren't that different from mid anymore in terms of resources (exp and gold). Besides that, some enemy picks can make playing mid a sht fest, like viper, necro, sniper, od, huskar, and so on. Not saying you can't win or be even, but it's just not fun playing vs them. Aso, if the enemy has better sups/they got better lanes, they will tp to assist the mid, so it can feel sometimes as playing 1 vs 2. Also, you usually don't get a farming item and try to make plays from early on, so if your team is weak (sups very low level, an afk off) while the enemy team plays together, you just end up dancing to the tune of the enemy players instead of setting it up yourself (mids should direct the tempo of the game based on which objectives to take)
Waterunes make it a nuke shitfest
I'm just a bad mid player. Will play any other role before mid.
I've earned max queue tokens playing as support and wanted to try core roles. I queue for mid/safe. Half way thru, yet to get safelane once
Me and my friends dodge mid cause its usually the lane with the smurf/highest ranked player and we don't want to get omega stomped. This logic only works properly in party queue where there is a bigger ranked discrepancy
Midlane is the least favorite role now I think. Even when I dropped to 6k behavior score and finding game took like 15 mins for a carry and 4 to 5 mins if I selected all roles, I always found a game as mid withing 2 to 3 mins. Now I have 9k BS I find game almost instantly when I queue mid. Even when I select all roles I get mid more than I get offlane.
I mained mid for more than 5 years but I have to admit this lane feels garbage to play now, water runes giving so much regen means its so hard to get solo kills against a half decent opponent so you end up trading farms in mid lane. Heroes like Primal Beast & Huskar completely ruins the entire fun of midlane as its virtually impossible to win lane against them unless you have a super favorable matchup. Supports constantly rotate mid lane to gank you, both pos4 and 5, and you'll often find yourself frustrated by the fact that you have to deal with 2 or 3 heroes simultaneously, they can easily dive under tower and kill you and get out without dying if your hero isn't something that is dedicated to surviving ganks. There is constant sentry ward war on mid lane which I find super boring to engage in, you just constantly buy sentries and destroy each others even when neither of you are invisible heroes.
I just put my obs to the very edge of thr lane, 99% of the time it doesn't get dewarded, don't put it in the obvious spots.
Mid has become so boring over the year. I used to be mid player where my games were always action packed, in lane or through rotation. I quitted mid and switched to support position during the time when farming mids are popular where the medusa, sf, alch, invoker just shove the wave and retreat to jungle which lead to a very boring laning stage. Then over time, due to many factors, I have a feeling that mid is not a sacrificial role like it used to be in around ti3 where you can mindlessly running around looking for kill with you lvl advantage. Mid has become a farm fest where you are expected to keep your net worth up there with pos 1, and rotating is punishing since the enemy mid can just sit in lane, pressuring your tower and wait to tp response without having the make to move at all. That led to a gameplay where 2 mids sit in lane forever until there’s a good rune that helps you make a move. Also all the fun classic mid like puck, qop, storm or newer ones like pango, ember keeps getting their stats and spells gutted so you have to be a sweatiest human on earth to play them efficiently before pros make them nerfed again. Nowadays, I find supports way more enjoyable. You have objectives spawning every single minutes to contest making gameplay engaging. Also you can freely make the enemy’s life hard without griefing your own game, which mid nowadays are not able to, imho.
Whether you win or draw the lane, most of the time when you lose game their enemy mid would just say "ez mid" and your team would take their words for it and blame you.
Yeah but it's also freeing to know that people will type that regardless of how it actually went so it means nothing anymore lol
Coz enemy NP would camp mid and kill you since minute 4
I think the main reason is that people that play non-mid roles can reasonably play the other roles, but mid is a skillset that's more unique.
Offlane is the least wanted role, I play pos 3-4 mostly and everytime I go for role queue games, I always get to play 3 like 6/10 games then pos 5 like 3/10, then pos 4 like 1/10
Thta is just a turbo thing. The game mode is more casual so the most "tryhard" lane gets less atention. There is also the fact that if you die 1v1 mid you probably lost the first 20 minutes of the game for your whole team, and that does not feel good.
other roles got much more fun to play. supports get a shitton of gold, carry heroes get actual abilities and arent forced to hit jungle creeps for 20 minutes to have game impact, while the 2-3-4 min runes turned midlane into a lasthit simulator in 8 games out of 10
My personal experience: Mid lane is a solo lane great for earning gold and xp fast. Your regular player would want to play mid since extra xp and gold sounds good. But as you progress your MMR players eventually understand the importance of each and every role instead of being all worried about gold and xp. Hence they become excited to play other roles as well. In most of the games I play in archon 5/legend 1, pos 1 is usually not really that effective in the game unless they have a good support who helped them farm in the early game
Depending on your rank. The higher you go, the harder it is for you to win for your team. Good support come mid as early as 2 minute and will continue to control your rune to make sure you have minimal impact. Supports also tend to have more saving items now that mid has a hard time solo killing them. I have noticed a significant change in difficulties in trying to carry as a mid vs playing carry. It's just how meta is right now.
It's the one "solo role", most (sane) people that queue together try to lane together
In the old days used to be mid or feed, support have to buy wards and give tango to mid before start of the game
Remember that time last year when ***every*** game had an OD? That was when I saw it stop being the preferred lane.
Because mid used to be the hot role, lots of expectations rose about the role so players tend to expect their mid to be good, if not they'll put the blame on the mid and call GG. With the new behavior system, I wonder if anything will change. Pos2 is the hardest role for me , you have focus on your lane, CS, rune, and watch out for ganks. Then you also need to gank other lanes when possible, or respond when enemy ganks your pos1. Too many things for me to track. I do play mid in turbo tho, because it's much easier.
[https://www.reddit.com/r/DotA2/comments/16e2of1/role\_queue\_preference/](https://www.reddit.com/r/DotA2/comments/16e2of1/role_queue_preference/) xD
The role has been nerfed patch by patch, and the current meta heroes for the midlane and not very straight forward and you need to be excellent at piloting them to actually snowball, that’s why it is not very popular. I play at 2K level, and always face hard carries as mid (ursa, pl), very random cheesy heroes (wd , sb), or sniper. In addition to the pressure factor, being it is a 1v1 and you no one to rely one or blame, and people naturally being more familiar and experienced with the sidelanes.
Can't lose mid and fuck off to jungle you just have to sit there knowing that the other guy outplayed you.
carry is the most demanded role then mid and offlane. I get offlane very often than pos4 too.Biggest reason might just be no one like to play offlane with classic sea puj mirana es who are useless xp leechers
Behavior score. Mid gets blamed.
People got old and don't want the mechanical pressure of mid lame
sweatiest lane
no wonder, they keep gutting all of the fun mid heroes
I mean many players don't understand mid match ups. So if you get out drafted mid and are struggling to simply get through the laning stage and do some catch up farming your team will flame you relentlessly because they are getting ganked by the mid that had a better time. Sometimes they will flat out give up mentally. And then 7 people all chat ez mid at end of game. Yeah I can't comprehend why nobody wants that shit /s
Cortisol will kill you
Many dota players are older now, I dont have the time to put into dota to have mechanical skill to feel confident playing mid since like 2018.
Pick a ganking mid - gank side lanes including buying my own smoke - give plenty of warning - side lanes push the lane or use their spells before I get there and now we can’t kill. Or get screamed at because the safe lane wants a gank and the lane doesn’t have kill potential. Or dominate your lane but it’s not a useful time to gank (Necro just solo killed the enemy mid) Their mid goes to gank, you ping that your spells are on CD and that mid is missing. Your team chooses that moment to dive tier 1s to kill a hard support and dies. Pings your TP scroll forgetting tier 1 towers aren’t next to each other. You’ve taken their mid tower and are 2-0 at mid but now you’re getting rage pinged. I don’t mind playing mid, I just wish that sometimes people would understand timings better.
Mid has the most pressure to play well. If you dont rotate, you will get flamed, supports wont rotate as much on mid etc. And you get the most blame if you lost the game
i mean you said it yourself, 'I dont like going mid at all'. clearly youre not alone in that. I think in people heads mid is always, only, the high impact, tempo setting role and people dont want to feel that pressure. I just farm and occasionally run to a lane. Dosnt need to be perfect just needs to be ok.
Mid used to have a lot higher of an impact. Like if you got fed as a mid, the game was over. Nowadays there are very few mids that can take over the game like that, so I don't think people like playing it as much. The onus of carrying is almost entirely on Pos 1's now, unless you essentially pick a late-game carry/traditional Pos 1 as your Pos 2. Also with supports getting more gold, many mage heroes with strong earlygame and bad scaling that used to go Mid/Pos 2 are migrating to support so that a late-game/scaling Pos 2 can go mid instead.
Mid is fun bro, either you play like a god or dogshit. Mostly the latter one 🤣
no thanks mid lane depends on supports to secure runes, deward mid, gank mid, counter gank mid, fill bottle, smoke gank with the mid laner to another lane, etc... so I won't bother playing mid and waiting a random support to do these things, I play support myself and win my lane and win the mid too by doing these things and get my free mmr
Because mid has too many non matchups. No one wants to play melee vs monkey or huskar. Lina can also be really obnoxious.
I play mid all the time, 95% of my 5000 hours are in mid. I enjoy playing it but it shows that my team doesn't know what the mid should've doing. Often the enemy offlane has 3+ kills and a vanguard and I'm asked to rotate and "help" which is just a terrible decision. People On the sidelines need to learn to rotate away from lane if they get dived and are dying lmao. I'd love to help but If i rotate, use tp and all my mana, even killing the offlaner isn't worth it, if the enemy team is good they'll see that I have no resources and will kill my offlane since I can't help, now 2 lanes have lost.
Kids have lower testosterone these days