MID

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This is strictly a discussion about mid, the point of playing mid, and what makes a successful mid. This is mostly limited to average to high priority matches and low skilled bracket to be left out.

My response to Flayro's guide on wanting Medusa to go mid: May give some insight.

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My reasoning on play styles of mid, feel free to discredit any of these and I'd be willing to debate a little with you on each of these.

Rune Control: Having rune control enables you to assure yourself you'll have a 1-up on the opposing mid, if you have a bottle then you'll be rewarded even further. By having control of the runes you of course get the rune bonuses, but also are just denying the enemy hero of this, especially if the enemy team has a designated roamer, this can greatly hurt their game. Runes are a prime initiator for ganks as well, and simply having rune control can mean in a lot of situations you deny an enemy of their ganking potential.

Good heroes for this are mobile and have above average MS or an ability that allows escape.

Ganking: Being able to gank means you can pressure another lane. If done correctly can harm the lanes to the point where either the enemy mid ignores it and you damage their carries potential exponentially, or you get the enemy mid involved and they waste time trying to defend the other lane while you enable free farm for you're own carry. This can go vice versa and has a good connection with rune control as it rewards you for leaving the lane and being active and securing kills can add to exp and gold as well as hurt the ganked players.

Good heroes for this are mobile and have a disable or the ability to destroy the enemy before they can react.

Taking Tower: This objective gives enables you to push your lane, it gives a good gold pay off in-lane as well as taking the tower rewards the whole team in funds, this also enables you to be a roamer afterward or force other lanes to become involved in defending. As a roamer you can have rune control / free jungle farm / and ganking potential, but this leaves you lacking early game as you need to dedicate to the lane and can't do any of this until about early-mid game.

Good heroes for this have sustain, pushing power, and are more gold dependent, and also have the ability to contribute when the tower falls.

Levels: This is like taking tower, where you dedicate to the lane, but you try to prolong it to have any extra experience you can. This allows you to have an ability advantage on the enemy team as many mid heroes are level dependent, but a lot of times this leaves your other lanes to be unrewarded by lack of contribution with the exception of global abilities.

Good heroes for this are usually global casters or heroes that can carry relatively well mid-early late game.

Shadow Fiend has 305 MS, and can gank because he has rune control and is a bottle carrier.

Blood Seeker can gank because of his passive and his above average MS to lock down runes, he also has an ult that punishes heroes from running and he can sustain in lane. What makes him a weak pick is that he is countered by 135 gold.

Invoker is unique because of his kit, he is strictly level dependent and can contribute without having to leave his lane, as well as secure runes because of his vast kit to acquire them with little resistance.

Necrolyte has a single ability to use in lane, it is highly costly and is hard to sustain in the early levels, he has a slow attack animation as well as a slow projectile, which leaves you to be out denied / last hitted due to most mids have great projectile speed / animations or having high base damage. He has zero rune control and cannot gank because his MS is much below average and if caught at a rune can be easily picked off because he has no escape.

The reason rune control is important is to not let the enemy mid have the chance to use it to ruin your other lanes and to punish them for leaving the lane to grab the rune.

Obviously levels. Unless you have 300 ping you can most of the times secure mid game with being lvl 12 and your enemy mid lvl 10 and side lanes 9.

Care to explain why you think this way is better then the others?

Imho,more stats and levels mean that your skills are more potent than the others.Like immagine Pudge without a level advantage,hook would not be that good(less damage,range),rot less damage,perhaps he won't have any flesh heap.

Point of mid is going there to have the level advantage over the others.In the moment of ganking,you basically gamble:if the gank succeeds,you might just be on par with your mid parter,if you fail the gank,he would get in front of you.

Hmm, are we talking pubs or comp? I rarely go mid in pubs nowadays but whenever I do my goal would always be:
1. harass enemy mid.
2. gank side lanes and mid endlessly to control enemy farm and levels.

now some small points:
- Harassing mid is important for me so I can have the space to gank sidelanes the enemy mid wouldn't have.
- ganking sidelanes involves going to the river so i'll be checking runes along the way so there's the rune control part.
- If I gank I'd try to do it fast for every second wasted mid gets more levels/farm.
- it's easier ganking radiant bot/mid and dire top/mid because the forest is in between. enemy would be forced to back or counter-gank you which would let your allies farm. just make sure they don't actually counter-gank you. just bait or disrupt the jungler's farm.
- I agree 100% with your ganking part. personally I like it more to keep them at bay so it'd be easier for my carry to finish them. no need for 3-6 core items.
- putting intervals in your kills so when you push they're mostly not complete. they mostly won't def and it'll be easier to kill them 1 by 1.

that's all I can think for now.
for comps, putting intervals on kills would be important because the enemy will mostly act as a team.
e.g. tide wouldn't initiate if fv is dead right?

Just because you didn't score a kill doesn't automatically mean the gank was a fail, maybe you take a tower or get the entire enemy lane to have to retreat to base and allow your carry to get exponential farm in the mean time, and then maybe get a rune on the way there or back. The thing about DoTA is that its not kill-centric; the genre MOBA is misleading it isn't an arena you have a clear objective and can win the game with zero kills. This is an ARTS game that requires what is in its name "strategy". There's different fundamental levels depending on skill-base, and I believe at a higher end of playing that levels aren't the main focus.

Lets say.............................................. Shadow Fiend and your other lanes are doing fine trading kills blah blah blah and their carry is farming, with your max souls and razes, you'll be able to kill their carry aka antifun with some stuns and a point of -armour aura (unless you have no stuns which is unlikely unless youre bad)you're taking free towers every time y kill the am farming. eh call it a stack mid strat not a pub mid because unlikely to happen because pubs will be pubs (noneofthis****makessensebtwproofreadingrightnow)

I also follow this playstyle of mid, I feel the need to be involved in the other lanes.

Personally, I kinda don't like that I'm restricted to pick only one choice in the survey... In my experience, playing the mid has a sort of domino effect. If you're a good mid and control the runes, you'll be able to dominate the opponent and increase your levels. These early levels allow you to move out of lane and gank the opponent or take the tower and give the team a healthy chunk of gold.

I'm probably not saying anything you guys don't already know... I just don't get why we are forced to choose the most critical aspect of the operation. It's sorta like asking what's your favorite piece of your car (The wheels, engine, etc.)? You may be able to pick your favorite part, but without putting them all together, it doesn't work effectively.