Games will typically fall into three phases: early, middle and late. Transitions are one-way (i.e. a game that has changed from early game to mid game cannot transition back to early-game), and transitions are ordered. You start in early, move to mid and end with end game (although some games may not reach end game - particularly games with lots of pushing heroes).
EARLY GAME (Laning Phase)
Starts: At the start of the match
Ends: Once people start leaving their lanes and roaming a lot
This is the levelling up phase. Lanes are fairly static and most of the focus is on the lane vs lane battles. There may be ganks, in particular mid lane ganking either of the side lanes, or either of the side lanes ganking mid lane. Very rarely you will have one side lane ganking another side lane (without ganking mid first), because the time spent moving between lanes is a huge loss in EXP and gold (and even the 135g cost of a teleport scroll can be quite expensive at this stage).
As people tend to be more focused on their lane battles, this is the phase where it's important to let your team know when people are missing from your lane."ss" and "miss" are common ways of saying your lane is gone, as you don't want to spend too much time typing at this important phase of the game.
Warding runes (here is the link to the warding guide again) will help whoever is in the middle lane, as well as give an early indication of incoming ganks.
Good wards are:
Top lane Radiant - 1
Mid lane Radiant - 3, 9
Bot lane Radiant - 13
Top lane Dire - 1
Mid lane Dire - 4, 6
Bottom lane Dire - 13
(Although there are better wards, I think these few are the best to try and memorise for now, and once you are comfortable with these, look at the rest of the rune wards section.)
It is also helpful to ward the pull camp (I'll explain more about that in another post). So use 28 if you are Radiant (though 30 is better, it is harder to get right), and 36 for Dire. If you aren't sure exactly where to put the ward, just put it inside the pull camp.
Should I get boots first?
This is commonly seen as a "noob mistake", and Olek and I quite often sigh when we see one of our teammates get boots as one of their starting items.
During the laning phase, you generally want items that accomplish one of these two things:
- help you stay in the lane longer (i.e. regen items): which means more EXP
- help you last hit/deny: which means more gold for you/ less gold for your opponent
Boots may help you by allowing you to move closer/further from the creeps to last hit/deny, and also escape being harassed just that little bit faster, but I believe that 500g can be better spent elsewhere. Especially if you consider the fact that nobody else will have boots at the start of the game, so you'll all be fairly close in movement speed.
That being said, there are some heroes (e.g. Juggernaut) who can get an easy first blood (e.g. with an ally stun/hold/slow hero and his spin, if he has boots (as the opposing hero won't be fast enough to run out of his spin)). So if your intention is to get an early first blood, then the 500g you spend at the start won't be a big deal, and you can stock up on items that accomplish those two things afterwards. Or, if you plan to just roam around ganking, it may be helpful to get boots and two mana potions.
So simply ask yourself whether the movement speed boost from boots is worth losing out on those two other things. And at least you will be walking to and from the fountain faster!
Which lane do I go to?
Because there are 3 lanes and only 5 heroes, the typical lane division is 2-1-2 (2 top, 1 mid, 2 bottom). I'm not entirely sure why they moved to the mid is always solo model. Quick Google (from a LoL forum, ew) lists a few reasons:
- mid will level the fastest, which means when they gank the side lanes, they will be a higher level and the gank will be more effective
- it's the shortest distance back to the fountain
- it's the safest lane, so you only really need 1 hero there
- it also has the shortest distance between towers (yours and your opponents)
So you'd normally have a ranged carry, or ganker in mid. Pudge, Tiny and Bloodseeker are exceptions. Pudge because he can take advantage of the hill to hook the hero, and because both he and Tiny can make good use of the runes and gank the side lanes really well. Bloodseeker because he's a good ganker, and his kill = HP skill means it doesn't matter when he gets harassed by a ranged hero.
As for the side lanes, you have a long lane and a short lane - so called because of how far away from the fountain the creeps end up meeting. For Radiant, the long lane is bot, and the short lane is top. For Dire, the long lane is top, and the short lane is bottom.
You want to put your hard carry in the long lane, especially if he/she is melee. This is because the long lane is considered much safer as you will tend to fight a lot closer to your tower. You also have the benefit of being able to creep pull to bring the creep wave closer to your tower if you push too far. This means one hero can farm the pulled neutrals while the other farms the creep wave - meaning you both gain more EXP overall. You also tend to want a babysitter in the long lane to protect the carry (a support hero who allows the carry to get all the last hits while they harass the opposing heroes). Having the carry close to the jungle also means they can duck in and quickly farm a few camps if their lane is pushed too far and they're afraid to push.
The short lane usually ends up with whoever is leftover after the other two lanes have been filled, but it can be good to get ganking heroes here to stop the opposing carry from farming. They will need to keep an eye on the jungle in case the other team has creep pulled, and also if the other team has a jungler. The soft carry may also be in the short lane, to allow the hard carry to get better farm.
If your team has a jungler, then the lane line-up becomes 1-1-2-jungle, with the long lane solo, mid solo, and two in the short lane. A lot of the time, the carry will still want the long lane, but they have to keep in mind that most of the time they will be solo against two heroes. If the jungler can help them gank, then it's not so bad, but they may find it's hard to farm against two. In this case, you may want a more defensive hero, or a hero with a lot of staying power to solo the long lane (e.g. heroes with heals, or heroes with escapes (blink/invis)).
One of the strat that comes up in pro-level games is the trilane. That is when a carry and two gankers/support (with stuns or slows) go to the long lane, leaving the other two lanes to solo. I'll go into detail in a later post, but one of the advantages of the trilane is being able to be really aggressive and hopefully get a lot of kills on the opposing heroes in that lane. However, if they don't manage to do that, they tend to fall behind in EXP and gold because there are three heroes in the lane instead of one or two.
I wouldn't recommend trilaning until you have a better understanding of the overall game, but it's something to watch out for, as if you end up against a trilane, you will need to play safe (unless they are really bad).
When should I leave my lane?
- when you are on low HP, and you don't think your regen items/spells will heal you in time before your opponents can unleash a combo to kill you
- when your teammates need you to help defend a tower
- once you've pushed the tower in your lane, you should help push other towers/gank, and come back to your lane every now and again to farm the creep wave when it is closer to your tower (as it is generally dangerous to push too far down a lane, as you are further away from the safety of your towers)
- when you need to put up new wards
- if one particular lane is struggling, it may be worth swapping lanes
- when you see a good opportunity to gank another lane (this is usually when the opponents have pushed too close to your tower, as this means they are far away from their own tower)
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