Greetings, I am Stormyq - A 6k MMR replay analyst specializing in writing written reports and analysis for Dota 2. As I’ve analyzed numerous mid replays I started noticing a formula for why games are lost as a mid player, with the biggest factor generally being two things:
Winning mid but not doing anything with the advantage, missing out the power spikes you as a mid player were supposed to utilize.
Losing mid and having no idea how to comeback from the deficit / provide impact and usefulness to the team.
In the last guide, I’ve talked about what caused you to lose the lane and what should you do when that happens to bounce back, now today I am going to talk about what you should and should not be doing after winning the lane. Many of you might think “Alright I won the lane, I got this” and somehow end up with a lost game afterwards and wonder “How did I win the lane so hard and yet still lose the game? Noob team.” Nope, sometimes the loss is actually on you but you just didn’t realise it.
Last guide on what to do if you lose mid is right here: https://www.reddit.com/r/DotA2/comments/dki3wv/what_to_do_when_you_lose_mid_a_complete_guide_i/
Winning the mid lane is definitely great, but winning mid doesn’t mean you win the game. With the comeback mechanic in existence, you also need to take steps to ensure you don’t throw the advantage away in a few teamfights. See that Storm Spirit or Lina with 10 kills pre-20 minutes yet somehow dies twice and loses the game? See that QW Invoker with 3 solo kills on the enemy mid yet somehow struggles to do anything midgame? This is a guide on how NOT to be that guy.
This guide is obviously shorter than losing the lane, since winning the lane and securing the advantage is only falls into a few categories.
What counts exactly as “winning” the mid lane?
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Dominating the enemy in terms of CS and denies
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Solo killing the enemy
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Surviving a matchup when you probably shouldn’t
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Having the enemy spend more money on consumables than you to stay in the lane
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Forcing your enemy out of the lane, especially when they decide to take a long walk of shame back to the fountain.
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Forcing the enemy mid to jungle earlier than he or she should.
Now you won, what do you do? Do you farm? Do you take the tower? Do you stay on the lane? Do you roam? Do you invade the enemy jungle and hunt for their mid who is cosplaying Tarzan because he couldn’t beat you in the lane? There are a fuckton of things you can do, but the question is what should you be doing, in what situations?
Firstly, let’s group the heroes we are playing into a few categories.
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The roaming slayers, heroes who are extremely powerful and lethal in ganks such as Tiny, QoP, Kunkka, Ember Spirit, Lina and QW Invoker. These heroes are all powerful sidelane ganking heroes, but they couldn’t farm as well as other mid heroes with the exception of Lina and Kunkka who can do both, but as Kunkka you probably do not want to be farming if you won mid.
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The farming gankers, heroes who are powerful in ganking sidelanes (provided you have enough mana and levels) but are also great farmers who can dominate the midgame, such as Storm Spirit and Lina (yes her again, she can gank and she can farm)
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The tower pushers, heroes who aren’t the most mobile roamers but can take towers quickly. Heroes like Death Prophet, Dragon Knight, QE Invoker and to an extent Timbersaw fits the criteria well.
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The farm accelerators, heroes who can just flash farm when given a good start. See heroes like Arc Warden, QE Invoker, Outworld Devourer, Templar Assassin and Medusa. (Medusa is pretty bad in this version right now though.)
Do note some of these heroes in the examples overlap with other categories and can fill multiple roles. Lina is a great example who can farm, jungle, shove lanes, roam, invade jungle and even siege towers.
Now onto what you should do after winning the lane.
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If you are a roaming hero, you want to ideally force the enemy to go jungle and forsake their tower so you can shove the wave and then roam immediately afterwards. However, roaming has a set chance of success, and you do not want to roam unless you’re confident you can get a kill (or two). Factors such as a Haste rune, a quick Blink Dagger on you as Tiny, enemies diving your sidelane tower so you can TP in and swoop kills into your bag, Invisibility rune, Illusion rune (move an illusion with you real hero to trick the enemy, letting them think that both of these heroes are illusions. Move the other illusion back to the middle lane to trick the enemies’ minimaps and to prevent the enemy mid from calling missing.) the 5 minute mark where heroes might be contesting bounties, the 6 minute mark where the first mid observer ward generally falls etc can all raise your rates of success.
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You can also solo invade the enemy jungle to chase after the enemy mid who decides to abandon the lane and go jungle (Happens quite often with heroes such as Kunkka, Viper, Alchemist, SF, QE Invoker etc) just make sure you steer clear of the enemy Shrines, and your ultimate (especially if you are playing Lina, Kunkka, QoP etc) is up so you can burst the enemy mid ASAP before backup arrives. This can only be achieved if you win the lane however because you will then be bursting a weaker opponent instead of trying to go head-to-head with a hero who can potentially manfight you and also at the same time call in tp backups. Some specific matchups such as TA against a SF / Invoker who you rekted in lane can also do this despite TA being a farming hero, because TA can also be a snowballing hero if you managed to get level 6 earlier than the enemy mid does. Imagine the rage of that enemy Invoker when he got rekted in lane, goes jungle, gets chased into his own jungle by you as TA carrying Dust, dies, teleports out to tier 2 and tries to go jungle again only to die once again to you camping there. You can literally win the game by just shutting down and tilting the enemy mid to oblivion.
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Outfarm your enemy even more! If you won the mid lane, chances are you are going to have more levels and items. With these advantages you can outfarm the enemy and widen the lane difference more by shoving the lane and then farming your own jungle, heck you can take that up a notch by shoving the lane, forcing the enemy mid to defend his or her tower while you farm his jungle camp, come back to the lane, shove the lane again, grab the free power rune, rinse and repeat. You’ll probably see yourself closing level 9 while the enemy mid is struggling to get level 7 with this tactic. Just make sure to watch for TP backups in case the enemy supports decide to react, especially if the enemy supports are heroes with high mobility like Earth Spirit and Bounty Hunter for example. Works well with heroes such as Kunkka, Broodmother, Templar Assassin, Lina, Storm Spirit, Tinker and OD who can flash farm with spells.
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Siege the tower. Works well with heroes such as Death Prophet, Broodmother, QE Invoker, Lina and Arc Warden. Now one might think “How does Arc Warden siege towers? It’s not like I am levelling Magnetic Field early.” You can slow siege towers with these heroes even if you don’t have spells, this is mainly because when you’re playing heroes like QE Invoker and AW, chances are the enemy would just die immediately upon getting into your range, hence they couldn’t do anything to get close to you when you are sieging the tower, and would generally just opt to give the tower up and go jungle instead. This will in turn give you a free tower.
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After taking the tower, you can then easily invade their safelane jungle with ease, stealing their resources and flash farming even more while leaving your own safelane jungle to your carry. This will give your team a net increase of accessible resources, which will in turn translate into a bigger networth gap between you and the enemy. Imagine getting this done to you when you’re playing Zeus as a TA. You can’t go into the lane, you can’t jungle, you don’t have enough levels to effectively roam. What can you do? You’re basically fucked up and can only wait for your teammates to setup an opening for you, and we all know relying on teammates are most likely not the best plan you want to have. This fares extremely well for heroes who solely rely on winning his or her lane to be relevant in the game, such as Skywrath and Timbersaw.
Slightly off-topic as this might not strictly be mid related, but as a player who won the middle lane you must choose carefully which tower do you plan on committing your early push rotation to. Every tower demolished opens a set area up for your team to invade and access, for example if you are Radiant against Dire:
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Dire middle tier 1 tower allows you to invade Dire safelane jungle, roam to dire safelane with a better and closer route as instead of walking along the river you can just go into their jungle. You also open access to Dire triangle camp area, as well as the ability to contest 4 bounty runes. Last but not least, it allows you better power rune control as your team has towers to teleport down to in case a teamfight breaks out there, but the enemy can only rely on the Shrine which is further away unless he or she has mobility spells. (See: QoP, Mirana etc)
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Dire safelane tier 1 tower allows you to not just invade, but potentially take over their enemy jungle. Put deep wards the moment the enemy tier 1 safelane tower falls, you can farm the outer side of their jungle while your ward should be able to spot the few camps closest to the enemy base. With this vision information you can do much more not just in the jungle, but also in other lanes as well as you can better spot where the heroes are. See the enemy Terrorblade jungling there while a support is holding his safelane tier 2? Your bottom heroes can play more aggressively and push towers. Even if the TB starts teleporting, your deep ward will spot him and your team can react accordingly by backing off while you push dire safelane tier 2 instead to apply maximum pressure. Your final aim is to not just create a momentum your team can ride on, but also force the enemy to constantly react to your movements.
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Dire offlane tier 1 tower offers Dire bounty rune control, wards in the enemy triangle camp can provide you with valuable information on enemy movements and if your carry is a hero like Sven, Troll or whatever with a Magnus, you can easily steal the enemy Ancient camps. While the overall advantage it provides aren’t as great as the other 2 towers, it is arguably also the easiest tower to take if your carry had a decent start, especially if your carry is a hero like Terrorblade, Phantom Lancer and the likes who can siege towers with decent speed.
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Dire middle tier 2 tower opens you to controlling both enemy jungles and 5 man highground potential upon a teamwipe. If your team consists of heroes like Death Prophet, Shadow Shaman or even Lycan and you have an advantage, you want to ideally take this tower down first so your team can have highground openings the moment some of the enemy key hero dies, or even better a teamwipe.
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Dire safelane and offlane tier 2 towers strengthen your control over the enemy jungle, allows you to suffocate them off their resources and just basically outfarm them. Go for these towers first if the enemy highground defense is strong and they are great stalling heroes. Remember, even if the enemy roster consists of the best highground defense in Dota 2 (Tinker, Zeus protecting a Spectre or whatever) it doesn’t matter if your team has 3 items while the enemy has 1 to none. This can easily be achieved by simply suffocating the enemy and trapping them in their base, and the two side tier 2 towers are what you want to take out if you plan on doing so. Last but not least, it opens your team to splitpushing strategies, which works really well if you’re not winning the game due to the enemy 5-manning up and manfighting your team. Some of them had to teleport back and defend the lane sooner or later, giving you an advantage of teamfights as you can teleport back and fight 5v4 or even 5v3.
In short, winning mid and extending advantage is basically a big question on where and how to start extending your map control. Playing a hero with high roaming and kill potential? Gank, kill and then take their tower. Playing a hero with flash farm capabilities? Farm faster than the enemy mid who lost his lane and then take his tower with your superior networth. Playing a push hero? Even simpler, just fucking mow his tower down. Do these for the tier 1 towers, steal their jungle, farm up more, kill more heroes, take tier 2s, suffocate them in their base, go highground. Dota is a towers game, and most players do not understand you are supposed to take towers instead of just running around the map and killing everyone.
As someone once said while casting an [A] game: “Kills mean nothing, throne means everything.”
My previous work:
What to do when you lose mid: https://www.reddit.com/r/DotA2/comments/dki3wv/what_to_do_when_you_lose_mid_a_complete_guide_i/
Terrorblade guide: https://www.reddit.com/r/DotA2/comments/9324jy/in_depth_guide_to_one_of_the_most_versatile_carry/
5k players and below mistakes: https://www.reddit.com/r/DotA2/comments/9uck22/things_5k_and_below_players_do_wrong_from_a_6k/
My replay analysis work examples:
Clinkz: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1PPwImqnOF-S-U5R5MD6oDz25Z7OIQOyH/view?usp=sharing
Drow Ranger: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1fjpjabDoiJzISSfao_BycH6rlr_Li4bIVKNIvBt6PoY/edit?usp=sharing
My Dotabuff: https://www.dotabuff.com/players/187110004
For replay analysis orders, please drop me a PM or email me at stormyqwer@gmail.com to know more.
While you’re at it, my friends at Josudo are setting up a peer-to-peer coaching platform for people to either search for a coach or become one. While the more detailed functions are still a work in progress, the core concept works and I’ve had great experiences with it. https://josudo.com/dota-2/coaches/stormyq For those who are interested in finding coaches or becoming one, checking out www.josudo.com might yield you benefits.
I aim to create written content (mainly guides and tips) in a consistent basis, please bear with my English as I am a terrible proofreader + English isn't my native language. Let me know if you have any questions or arguments and I'll be happy to respond!
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