Open Mid - the do's and don'ts.

Open mid has surged in popularity in NA. Some people use it as an excuse when they're doing poorly, some people have a never give up, never surrender attitude. And frankly, most, if not all open mids are clown fiestas since nobody knows how (or why) they work.

Explaining that is my job.

History - open mid started in Korea. Why? Because arguably the most common form of gaming is internet cafes. For about a dollar an hour, you can go play your games on pretty high end PCs with a bunch of friends in an area that serves food and drinks. That's the culture there. When you're losing a game by a deficit of X kills, Y towers, and Z dragons, you have a very small chance of making a comeback. Maybe your jungler is just garbage and you can't win because he's not useful. So instead of praying for a miracle, they open mid at 15 minutes and try go to another match instead of trying to inch your way out of a 45 minute game with a high chance of losing. If 7-8 of the players are at gaming cafes (we're accounting for the one guy with a good PC and a streamer like Cowsep who probably wouldn't want to go outside in that outfit), then it makes perfect sense because it saves money.

Translating that to NA - that's almost nonexistent. Yeah there are games you can't come back from, but the social culture isn't there. The cost isn't nearly as problematic (you don't spend nearly as much money on internet in your house as they do in their internet cafes). On top of that NA has insane amounts of diversity, which leads to very different mindsets. Over in Korea it's just get to the highest rank you can as quickly as possible so you can get all the free food, admiration, and bitches. So while they have the same variety of mindsets, as a percentage there are a lot more people just focused on the climb. There are a lot more toxic, over-competitive players because iirc toxicity is NOT punished over there.

So when should you open? Hardly ever. You need to properly gauge when a game is winnable (without a miracle happening) and when the win is so unlikely you're just pissing away time. A score of 0-5 doesn't make the game instantly over. Having 3 of those kills on a Kha'Zix jungle who also took first tower... okay maybe it is. Disconnects of ~7-8 minutes, having unbelievable amounts of gold on a snowball champion playing flawlessly, one of your crucial teammates showing a serious lack of game sense, and having a huge objective disparity before 15 minutes are okay times to open mid. Any other time? Probably not.

And lastly, try get your team to vote unanimously. Anything else and you're asking for an AFK report.

Okay I lied this is the last thing if you do get a successful, unanimous open mid for the love of all things good and holy just sit in the fountain and stop trying to pad your stats.