What makes a good mid-lane hero?

Question

Reading various guides and doing my first multiplayer bot games, I've seen that there are champions more suited to mid-laning(usually solo).
What characteristics should have a good mid-laner?
Is their role relevant?(carry, tank...)
Is it better to do the mid lane solo or is it just an option?

Answer 1

First of all we need to see the advantages of going mid-lane solo:

• Faster XP gain
• Easy to gank either top or bottom lane
• Easy to get the runes (+bottle efficiency)
• Better lane protection (this means the enemy doesn't really have so much space to chase you on lane as they would have top/bottom so it's harder to be killed.)

It is good to go solo mostly because of the faster XP gain which is a huge factor.

Considering the facts listed above, we can follow-up with the 2 following reasons to go mid-lane:

1. You are a carry hero. Being a carry hero requires fast leveling/farming and the mid lane offers this to any decent player. If you can't farm that well, still you will level faster anyway. Now, 80% of cases are in the first category. This means you need a carry oriented hero which preferably can also farm/deny. This means most will be ranged, but there are some good melee heroes too. In what follows I will give some examples of some good range/melee heroes for mid:

   • Riki is my personal choice, but if you are a beginner do not take him as he is a little hard to manage. Riki is one of the best carries in the game due to high damage and smoke screen which is just imba (imbalanced). You will have difficulties in farming especially if you are up against ranged heroes. Early smoke will help out a lot. Blink/smoke farm will get you easily to lvl 6. Then go gank or keep farming like a boss if your opponent is a noob and doesn't yet have wards.
   • Nevermore is a great carry, one of the easiest farmers there are in the game, has good ulti with blink dagger or lothar's and generally good at harassing. This will definitely be in the top choices for mid heroes.
   • Bloodseeker Passive for regen from creeps is just great. With axe for 32% damage vs creeps you will probably never need to go fountain for regen. When you hit 6 you can easily gank.

2. You have a good ganker hero. This means you have for instance Pudge or Mirana which after quickly achieving level 5-6 can go fast top/bottom for gank and get kill 100% sure if they get hook/arrow. Also take Tiny for example. Getting fast lvl 7-8 when all the other players are level 5 will get you easiest kill ever with avalanche/toss combo. Bane elemental falls easily in this category with level 6. Lion due to ultimate of course, but arguably better as support/roamer. Tinker has so much burst damage at level 7-8, leveling him fast is a good idea as he can easily get some early game kills.

3. You are a good harasser. This means you can really slow down the enemy's mid hero leveling/farming. Most of the time you won't see this happening but I've seen this in some games.

This doesn't cover all heroes but hopefully will give you a good idea to start with.

Answer 2

Mid is most suited for level dependent heroes(heroes with good nuke abilities),most of those heroes will be able defeat their mid opponent without problems once they reach level 6.

Suitable mid heroes: Pudge,Bloodseeker,Lion,Lina,Nevermore,Tinker,Lucifer,Puck,Raijin...

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Carry heroes are often seen on mid since they need extra gold.If there is no better mid hero they are reasonable choice but they are preferred to be in woods or babysitted by a support hero.

Tanks usually lack the damage to kill mid opponent,and since they are melee they often get underfed with opponent denies.Tanks are better off helping other heroes in group fights.

Support heroes are self explanatory,simply there is no one to be supported on mid.

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Mid is best soloed since you will mostly have someone level dependent there and with someone you will lose part of the experience.

However there are cases of hero picks,that you could send 3 heroes mid lane to get easy first blood and destroy the first mid tower quickly...it will allow 2 of your players to get solo experience and give them that quick tower gold...it could also ruin opponents mid hero role.