The middle lane in Dota 2, has been the most popular lane for many years, but now suddenly, its popularity and desire to play has been falling off to the safe lane. In this article, we will cover the most important things and explain the current state of the role.
A lot of the current players in Dota 2, remember the times when "Mid or Feed" was an actual thing, and there were multiple mid laners hoarding the role and fighting over it game by game. Right now, the mid lane has almost equal queue time in the Role Que as the offlane or position 4. Why the sudden change of popularity?
We are here to explain:
The Safelane Favored Patch
It's no secret that the current meta focuses on the safelaners.
Ever since the last big and 2-3 mini patches came out, the offlane received a lot of nerfs, and the old hero Bloodseeker is a more desirable pick since the difficulty of the lane has dropped off a lot.
Multiple things changed which made the midlane shift in terms of its heroes picked, and in the general role of the game.
The current patch is much slower, which enables some greedier heroes to be picked (Like Terrorblade, Anti mage, Midas Faceless Void, etc.), which directly influences the mid lane and its style of play.
The second reason why people swapped from mid to safe lane is because of the cheese last pick heroes like Broodmother/Meepo are picked more often now, and rarely anyone wants to play against them, especially if your hero pool is just standard Midlane heroes.
Adapting to the Current State of the Game
Since the heavy farming midlanders are somewhat gone, people tend to experiment and try out new (or old) midlanders to see if they can work with the current meta.
If you follow the Dota 2 highlights videos on YouTube, you will find so many niche heroes destroying pubs in the midlane, like Nightstalker, Earth Spirit, Natures Prophet, Clinkz, or Pangolier.
These heroes have one thing in common, their fast-paced early game which enables their Position 1 to excel in his farming game and open up the map for him because that is the role of the midlane right now.
Things to Keep in Mind
Hands down guys, mid is and always will be, the most skill dependant matchup that your team expects you to win, regardless of the difficulty of the game or hero you pick.
The first 12 minutes of the game are stressful, pubs are toxic, and you do not want to hear your teammates buzzing about the fact that you lost mid versus a guy that below your MMR.
There are too many factors that influence the outcome of the lane (after laning stage), and most of them are factors that are luck-based (runes, high ground miss enemy Position 4's controlling runes, etc).
These things tilt you (make you upset) and with time, makes your desire to play the lane decline, and your desire to solo carry the game as Chaos Knight much higher.
The moral of the story is just focus on your game, give less attention to the things that will influence your gameplay negatively, and just play the role that you played for so long, patches come and go, but your 1800 Invoker games stay (or Pudge).
Don't give up champ!
Pick Templar Assasin versus that dirty Brood spammer and show him how it's done.
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