What is the most important lane to carry (mid, bot AD, jungle, or top)?

Question

I have noticed that midlane is often the most important, but have no facts to back that up. From experience, what is the most carriable lane?

Answer 1

There are two questions built into this: Which lane is the most carry-able (that is, easiest to carry) and which lane is the most important to have carry.

First, let's just come out and say that, given a sufficiently fed or farmed character, any role can carry. Getting into that position is more or less difficult depending on more factors than we can reasonably cover. However, I won't address those long-tail style situations and focus on the core of the problem. I'll also be assuming that everyone is of equal skill and the champions are all equally balanced for their roles.

Second, strong play is always going to be the defining quality behind "carrying." It just usually starts with getting a significant lead in the laning phase. This isn't a requirement, just a general observation.

Third, a quick TL;DR:

1. 1v1 lanes are the easiest to carry because there are fewer factors that can result in lane dominance.
2. If your goal is to ace and then push, it's more important your AP role is carrying. If your goal is turret pushes or siege-based strategies, then you'll want your AD carrying to maximize turret damage.

In which lane is it easiest to carry?

1v1 and 2v1 lanes are definitely the answer here. The reason being that in a duo-lane you have someone else looking out for you. Either they're a support and they mitigate anything that happens to you (either by enabling kills of your own, mitigating damage, or healing) or they're another power-house which enables you to go back, heal, and buy items. However, in a 1v1 lane, if you can establish dominance, your opponent has few choices but to play cautiously and wait for you to make a mistake. Jungle ganks are the equalizer, here, but given equivalent quality and quantity of jungle ganks, the person in the lead is the one who will dominate that lane. It also means that you're getting more gold and CS than your opponents and allies. The faster you're getting your levels and items, the more you're going to carry.

This means that, traditionally, both top lane and mid lane are going to be the easiest to carry in, all else being equal.

In which role is it the most important to carry?

I swapped to "role" rather than lane just for clarity, no other reason.

This question hinges on how you intend to destroy the nexus. Do you siege turrets and inhibitors, disengaging whenever the enemies approach? Are you going to ace the opponents and take the opportunity to take a turret or two? Are you just going to bully through with multiple tanks and push turrets like dominoes?

All of these are perfectly valid strategies that fit within the current meta. The most common by far is acing the other team and then pushing, of course. There are too many variables to effectively cover the math in this situation, but in general you'll find that AD carries will do more damage to turrets than AP carries will. Why? It's all about damage per second to a turret.

Source

Damage to a turret is based on your base attack damage plus the higher of your bonus attack damage or 40% of your ability power.

Let's take a base case that you're playing Annie who does (49 + (2.625*18)) * 0.712 = 68.53 damage per second at level 18 (ignore runes, masteries, and that "AD Annie who really carried that one game"). Let's say you have 1000 AP, which we can all agree is exceptional (both in the degree of its quality and the fact it's an exception to the norm). That means you'll be doing 68.53 + (400 * 0.712) = 353.33 raw damage per second to that turret that has 50 armor (for the outer turret; I don't have data for others).

It doesn't take much to imagine an AD carry being able to dish out significantly more raw damage per second to that turret, even taking into account that critical strikes and armor penetration don't apply. Let's all just pause right here and also recognize that adding a Lich Bane to that AP build would tip the scales significantly. But that only covers some AP carries, and I'm trying to be general.

Clearly, if your goal is to push down turrets, either by using a bully-tank based approach or a siege, you want your AD bot to be carrying.

If you're looking to kill the enemy team, however, an argument can be made that having extreme burst damage that you traditionally get from an AP carry makes the most sense. This math is less straight-forward as the turret's static values aren't in place. Suffice to say that the burst from your AP role in the mid-game is designed to be more powerful than you AD, and is often area-of-effect, increasing the total damage done to ridiculous proportions.

In short: Late game and siege-based teams would do well to ensure their AD is well farmed and prepared to carry, whereas roaming gank squads and kill-based teams should focus on making sure your AP is ready for action as soon as possible.

Answer 2

The best solo lane in my opinion would definitely be middle laner. They can snowball out of control and have the easiest route to top and bottom lane. This means if you play extremely well, you can effectively "carry" by roaming to other lanes and pushing a lead there.

Answer 3

I believe that the AD carry is the best role to carry the game. They deal the most sustained damage. As long as you can keep your AD carry alive you will deal a ton of damage in team fights.

Answer 4

It depends on presonal preferance. I believe that Jungle is the most important, because it directly effects every lane in the game, but any lane can eassily carry their team to victory if they are fed. A fed AD or AP carry means a giant class cannon, and if they character isnt focused they can easily wipe out a whole enemy team, while a fedt top lane can become tanky/bruiser and be able to absorb everything and then pick off the enemy team.

TLDR; Any lane can carry, but i believe that jungler has the most impact on the rest of the lanes, and therefore the game.

Answer 5

for that u need to know your roles, Top bruiser/top tank defend your team and bruise their AD carry AP mid nuke their ap mid and/or ad carry jungler put your lanes in a lead and set enemy back in exp lvls and gold support basicaly protect your ad carry in your laning phase and have items for vision and team support in general AD carry do a lot of damage in fights without dying

basically your jungle/top and ad carry should take turrets in general aspects but the one that deals more damage is ad carry so he carries the team to the victory they are all important but jungler sets you team appart if u gank successfully so he is one of the most important, he has to be in sync with every oen for buffs drag and baron timer, one drag could set a team up by a lot ^^

Answer 6

Well they're all important in a sense. Mainly mid is meant to do the most magic damage, so it's most important there. Adc is meant to do most physical damage. Support heals and protects champs. Jungle is meant to help lanes in need, and top is meant to be able to tank and absorb lots of damage. So there generally all important.

Answer 7

Jungle and mid are the most influential lanes as they can tank easily and help other lanes.

Also a good counter jungle like Nunu can shut down their jungle.

Answer 8

Judging from the recent tournaments stats, ganking or killing mid or top has the biggest impact on the game. This is probably because you are one vs one meaning even a small disadvantage will cripple you.

Infer from this what you'd like. I'd maintain that late game the AD carry will have the largest impact. Early on though the AP mid will be the most powerful.

Answer 9

It's not actually about the lane, I agree that depends on the champions and strategy. Still mid lane will be the most important one since teamfights will pop around the mid lane and the river, specially on and after mid-game.

Still there should be a balance between lanes because, while your mid lane is rocking out there, if the bot and/or top lane fails badly, you're probably going to lose that game unless you are not fed enough. Because, mid champ gets all the XP and minions on the lane but in the other lanes you're sharing it (Even though support champ is trying not to last hit) so mid-champ has to carry and ADC/top has to farm to close the gap.

Yet, as the most of the physical damage is coming from ADC, bot lane is nearly important as mid lane. But they lack of health so if the teamplay is good (at least nearly balanced) and ADC is alive, most of it will be dealt by ADC.

Answer 10

Best Roles for carrying ?

First: Any feeded champion would be ops whatever his role is

1.Jungle as he able to Control and manipulate every lane individual and he chooses which Lanes is more effective to gank , Example I got nasus on top and Lux mid and ashe adc if I am the jungle I will but 50% focus on nasus lane I will camp his ass he stacks easily y won the game

2. ADC with high kiting Mechanics as vayne draven kalista etc

3. MID and Top lane lanes are most effective lanes and depending meanly on the champions playing in the lane Example if I got top tanky shen and mid yasuo this mean yasuo lane effects more than top as y will need that yasuo to put dmg in fights

4. Supports they got ability to protect important targets but if they didnt found responses from team they lose high advantage

5. ADC with low kiting mechanics as KogMow Corki Twitch etc

Answer 11

Very dependant on what champions you roll with. Champions that snowball very hard are naturally important as they can easily carry the team with either their burst, sustain or tankyness. The lane is not important as there are these kind of champions on all lanes including jungle. Many will say bot lane is the most important as the AD carries are not dependant on anything but attack speed , crit rate and damage. their damage is massive and are the ones that will chomp the enemies tank but top and mid lanes are allso important because the champions that go in these lanes can snowball more ridiculously than AD because they can get naturally tanky and damaging at the same time making them a not so easy target to kill as AD carries and a more viable pick to carry a game since mid game can get very one sided if one of them gets fed.

Some good examples of this are : Mordekaiser, tryndamere , Talon , gragas , kassadin , cassiopia , leblanc , karthus.

Fyi imho mordekaiser has got to be the best snowballer in the game. I mean just look at him! he dominates solo top just because he has his shield. the 1st item he gets ( sorcerers boots) helps him get MORE shield and MORE damage. Just having this item and maybe a amp tome is enough to win top lane. you have tons of spammable harass for a small ammount of hp which is barely significant , you make the enemy unable to advance in his lane to cs and you just shut down top lane. he snowballs naturally Very well. YOU CAN GO AS FAR AS SOLOING THE WHOLE ENEMY TEAM FACE TO FACE WITHOUT DIEING( i have done this it felt great ), it does not matter if you get shut down your utility is still over the top because you have your control remote personal pet.