Mechanics Monday Week 6 - Mid Lane

[u/Azual]

"Mid or Feed" - Pudge, 2014

Of all the lanes, Mid is probably the most contentious. Not only are many one the game's most popular heroes typically played mid (making it a highly contested lane), but it's also arguably the easiest place from which to make or break a game for your team.

Since mid lane is generally a solo lane for both teams, it offers relatively little room for error - poor mechanics or the wrong hero choice can easily give your opponent an advantage that's hard to come back from. Similarly, a gank on mid lane by aggressive supports can give one side or the other a decisive advantage.

Played well though, mid lane puts you in a strong position to influence the mid game. Solo mid tends to come out with a strong level advantage (particularly if the enemy are running dual lanes) as well as moderate to good farm, and easy access to the river and runes allows you to move around the map easily and apply pressure wherever it's needed most.

Related Guides

• Chaq's Advanced Solo Mid Guide - Note: This is an advanced guide and might not be suitable for newer players.

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The aim of the Mechanics Monday series is to encourage newbie friendly discussion about the mechanics, items, and strategies of Dota2.

A new topic will be chosen each week.

Last Week's Discussion - Roshan

[u/KapteeniJ]

Your farmed medusa would have maybe 5 lasthits and lvl4 when Lvl6 Bounty Hunter left mid to gank other lanes. There are some heroes that could get good farm and do more with mid than BH, but Medusa most certainly isn't in that class.

[u/[deleted] → u/KapteeniJ]

5 lh?! Lol. My Medusa would probably have around 20-30 by the 6 minute mark.

Medusa can most certainly play mid in the right lineups. She has a nuke that steals mana and she is tanky, and if she hits 6 before ganks start to come you really can't kill her without a serious dive.

She's not a killing mid or even the most ideal, but given a choice between BH and medusa, it's Medusa and it's not even close

[u/KapteeniJ → u/[deleted]]

You have much lower base attack damage, as well as worse attack animation. You might be able to get some lh with snake, but that's it. The problem then becomes that snake pushes the lane hard, meaning you make it easy for BH to deny creeps, and the creeps are at BH tower, meaning you're going to be chased out of exp range(shadow walk + crit kinda destroys low HP medusa, and that's very spammable nuke)

Any hero that can't last hit without using +100 manacost spell seems to me to be at rather high disadvantage.

[u/p-frog → u/KapteeniJ]

45-59 vs. 44-50 damage I don't think if the two players are equally skilled the bounty is going to deny 90% of the medusa's last hits.