So I was wondering: What would happen if people tried some different set up? Would there be any that would work like double mid, double top, double jung, etc.? I know in AI we can joke about it and I am certain it would not work well in pvp, but would there be any that would work or throw the enemy off?
SmokingPuffin2 votesDouble top is played very frequently at the pro level.
Double mid is used sporadically, typically as a play to shut down a team with a dominant mid lane player.
Nobody takes double smite, but having the top laner spend the first few levels with the jungler is a common response to the double top gameplan.
In almost all cases, the duo is an ADC and a support. Occasionally you will see the support lane with the top laner for a while in lane swap scenarios.
In terms of average elo games, I think breaking the classic lane assignments is likely to work, so long as your team is on the same page. Probably the best of these is the double mid with a roamy mid lane support, someone like Blitzcrank or Alistar. It presents a new set of problems to the other team and you'd expect them to screw it up fairly often.
Yulen Xoshxius1 votesOh! So it works but likely to not work with randoms?
SmokingPuffin1 votes[{quoted}](name=Yulen Xoshxius,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=JyVwTLnn,comment-id=00000000,timestamp=2014-12-25T08:54:52.644+0000)
Oh! So it works but likely to not work with randoms?
Solo queue uses lowest common denominator strategies. We play duo bot every game because it's the easiest thing for people to understand.
If you get a group of friends together, you can play any alignment that takes at least one smite and puts a player in each lane. Double jungle can really crush teams in the new jungle. You can run your jungler as mostly a laner, stepping into the jungle only to put smite on cooldown. You can put your ADC in a solo lane and run some interesting duo against their adc/support. You can 4v0 push the top lane and win the swap game.
The objective disadvantage of using "inferior" strategies is often more than offset by the confusion you create in your opponents. Here are some concrete fun things I've tried in the past with success in normals: -Twisted Fate / Pantheon duo mid, Ezreal bot -- Pantheon is playing support, Ezreal is good at farming from a long way away. The duo teleport pressure is intense. -Ahri / Zyra bot -- Zyra is supporting. We'd crush game after game playing this because the opposing duo tried to treat it like Ahri was a normal ADC. Her power spikes at 3 and 6 were basically autokills against anyone who hadn't seen her played bot before. -Olaf / Lee double jungle - I'd play the Olaf and rule the enemy jungle while Lee put heavy pressure on the lanes.
Be advised, this sort of stuff generally won't work unless your team has some clue how to play with it on their team. Would recommend you grab a full team of friends and explain the game plan before the horn. Still, there are way more ways to play than are commonly seen, and some of them are only a little weaker than the meta strategies.
Yulen Xoshxius1 votesOh! That makes sense, that is a good reason for a consistant plan in randoms. I probably won't try out other combinations and stuff until I learn how to play pvp better though, thanks!
Cale0172 votesSo, here's the thing about the meta. While it's fallen into a pretty stable routine for the past few years, early on it was pretty different. In fact, ADCs used to have the solo mid lane before everything became very set in stone and Riot started responding to the growing meta focus by gearing champions more towards working within certain bounded design specifications.
Right now, the important thing to remember is that trying to switch things up can give you superior numbers at the cost of weakening another lane and making the duo lane grow more slowly. For instance if you take a support top to help a Wukong get some early kills, Wukong is also getting less xp from minions due to Thresh being nearby, and is probably pushing up his lane as well so he's more susceptible to ganks. Meanwhile poor Varus down in bottom lane has the enemy Vayne and Leona breathing down his neck, and he's pushed back to his own turret and is losing farm to the minions being eaten by turret shots.
Also remember that Riot brought in a wave of changes to the ways that turrets have armor and damage resistance through the early game in response to a wave of people who would take a very strong solo laner bottom who can hold his own against two people while pushing the enemy solo top laner out of lane entirely and taking an early turret for an advantage within the first five or six minutes of a match. Not to say that Riot isn't against strategies like this, but they've made the potential to get easy reward much less easy to make a choice between when faced with an increased struggle to do so while your own weakened lane could be struggling for no reason at all if it doesn't pay off.
Duo jungle CAN work, but it's reliant on a lot of factors. You'd want a very aggressive jungler as one of the two, to roam around the enemy jungle making their life hell while the more passive jungler farms up safely. The aggressor could possibly keep constant pressure on lanes, taking one or two camps between ganks, while letting the passive one have the rest. Tax the laners a bit more to keep up in gold and xp from minions, and possibly get a bunch of early kills or assists, and push waves up to weaken turrets through the early game while the passive jungler is starting to really rev his engine. However, I wouldn't suggest it. The jungle is already hard enough to get through as it is, and running two junglers limits the amount of gold and xp that's really available compared to a solo jungler, and they need every scrap they can get right now. I suppose you could try something more along the lines of two tanks buddying up to go through their own jungle pretty quickly, splitting gold and xp, and then working together to invade the enemy and overwhelm them with numbers. I can see a Volibear/Rammus combo working pretty well for something like this.
The sad thing to remember about all of this is that while experimentation is fine, after a certain point you have to accept that the meta is pretty firmly rooted in what it currently is, and probably won't be changing much moving forwards. It isn't the worst thing in the world to have set routines in a game. Consider how frequently RPGs tend to rely on one physical damage dealer, one magical damage dealer, one tanky guy, and one healer for instance. Ever so often you'll see some variation, but that set up is the most tried and true because it's straightforwards and it works. You'll see pros pulling some really interesting stuff, but it's preplanned, not off the cuff. They aren't suddenly deciding to do this in champ select out of the blue, they've learned when and where to call in a strategy like a lane swap, or a duo jungle, and when you see them streaming these things they're experimenting, usually doing well because they know the game WAY better than us poor plebians.
I hope I shed some light on things for you.
Yulen Xoshxius2 votesI see, I read it all and that sounds interesting, and it really doesn't hurt to bad in normals then? Also I aconfused on if Riot DOES or does NOT really support switching up the lanes? You said they sort of made a meta focus, so am curious on it. I do get about the exp problem with the jungle though. XD
Cale0171 votes[{quoted}](name=Yulen Xoshxius,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=JyVwTLnn,comment-id=00010000,timestamp=2014-12-25T09:02:15.831+0000)
I see, I read it all and that sounds interesting, and it really doesn't hurt to bad in normals then? Also I aconfused on if Riot DOES or does NOT really support switching up the lanes? You said they sort of made a meta focus, so am curious on it. I do get about the exp problem with the jungle though. XD
They made adjustments in response to people using a tactic that made it nearly impossible to counter. If you left the lane to try and swap out so that you could get your duo bot swapped top so the bottom lane became a solo lane, you were giving an ADC free farm and letting them push to top turret. It's not that they don't encourage experimentation, it's that it has to be done in a controlled environment where it can't spiral beyond the point that can be competed with.
Yulen Xoshxius1 votesI see, that's understandable.
TehNACHO1 votesIf you want to be as optimal as possible, it really just depends on where you want the support player.
See, gold optimization works best when you put one person to dominate a given resource. In other words, 3 lanes and a Jungle should lead to at least 3 laners and a Jungler. If you want to play with this in mind, you can basically chuck the support player wherever you want.
Double mid has the most offensive potential and sacrifices the most defensive potential. Mid lane is extremely short compared to the side lanes, and thus so much automatically safer. This means the lane presence of having an extra person there is largely wasted. It does however mean that the support player in question has the option to roam to bot or top whenever they want without forcing the actual mid laner to leave lane if they don't necessarily want to.
Similarly, double Jungle can abuse a similar concept. Instead of the support setting up shop at mid lane, they can completely and totally devote themselves to running around in the Jungle and being a roaming support. As an off note, they can also devote themselves to be a dedicated counter jungler, making the enemy jungler's life hell and freeing that jungle pressure off of your laners and allowing your own Jungler to do whatever the hell they want without worrying about an opposing jungler's retaliation.
Double side lanes is generally just standard "ADC and Support". The reality is that a side lane, being physically longer and hardest to defend in, is normally a really bad place to put very hyper-carry like champions in since they lack the built in defense to survive in this geographically demanding lane. By pairing a support with a side laner, this opens up the hyper-carry option to the side laner in question. Now normally, this means ranged ADC. If you're going out of your way to make games more interesting though, try support top lane with a top lane hyper carry like Poppy. Just so long as your bot lane is a super safe pick (say Ezreal for example), you essentially have many of the same elements of a standard "Carry+Support" lane, where you defend your hyper carry (in this case Poppy) because the side lane is harder to defend from alone up until their scaling kicks in.
tl;dr: Where do you want the support player? All possible placements "work", you just need to understand how.
Yulen Xoshxius1 votesThat sounds fun for me! Support seems to be the best role I can do in pvp, granted that was back before Soraka rework XD
whocares1231 votesThe 1 top, 1 jungle, 1 mid, 2 bot meta is just something that people picked up on from well known players. Honestly, if you have people on your team willing to work together, you can do pretty much any combination that makes sense. My friends and I have done double jungle several times, and with the right coordination and character choices it works wonders. We had 1 person cover both mid and top (karth was the char of choice for wave clear capabilities) and the junglers kept constantly harassing the enemy jungle, and fairly splitting the camps up. If mid or top needed to be covered for a few seconds while karth was busy, the jungles could do that, along with gank when karth was there. Karth ended up with an absolutely ridiculous amount of farm, and we all fared decently in farm and score.
Yulen Xoshxius1 votesThat sounds like a fun adventure! Although would this work in ranked?
whocares1231 votesThis particular strat required three people cooperating, and getting the proper roles. So regular ranked would probably not work out well. But, if you made a ranked team and found people willing to do it (and practiced doing it with teambuilder or something), then it could work wonders. But the point overall is that you can be creative and create your own strats for how to position people across the map. The meta on this is just what's familiar to most people, realistically you can do whatever you want to do.