Why am I in this lane? An explanation of why meta roles are meta

So, I'm writing this post because I think there's a lot of misunderstanding about what makes different champions work in different positions (by which I mean Top, Jungle, Mid, ADC, Support; I won't be addressing lane swap scenarios). For example, why is Vel'Koz considered a viable pick at support but not Swain? (This question came up on LeagueCast and the Trinity Force podcast recently.) Usually, people talk about a champion's CC/utility when discussing supports, but Vel'Koz and Swain actually bring similar levels of CC, so that can't be the whole story...

The fundamental principle behind position assignment is one of resource allocation. (By resources, I primarily mean gold/items and experience/levels.) This principle comes into play in two ways: the quantity of resources needed by a champion, and the ability of a champion to effectively gather those resources from a certain position. So, let's look at some characteristics of the different lanes briefly:

Top: Solo lane gold and experience (best), long lane, 1v1 lane, most isolated lane early (since dragon, an important early-game objective, is bot) Jungle: Solo gold and experience (but generally worse than lanes), most punishing creeps but least champion dueling, least isolated position early Mid: Solo lane gold and experience, short lane, 1v1 lane, least isolated lane early ADC: Solo lane gold but shared experience, long lane, 2v2 lane Support: Minimal gold and shared experience, long lane, 2v2 lane

With these points in mind, let's look at the key features that define a champion's best position(s):

1. Top: Access to solo gold and experience makes this lane good for supporting champions that depend on either resource for their effectiveness. (For instance, Vladimir really wants levels, while Irelia really wants gold.) The long, isolated nature of the lane rewards good sustain (both health and mana); overall, there is a slight preference for tanks or AD bruisers who can build defense to stay in lane and perform well without relying too much on mana. Moreover, many strong champions (primarily AP mids) will avoid top lane due to their lack of health/mana sustain or their desire to avoid high-sustain matchups, making top the best haven for melee laners. Of course, the prevalence of melee laners creates a niche for champions who abuse good matchups with strong early trading (Renekton, Darius) or ranged harass (Quinn, Jayce).

2. Jungle: A jungler is defined first and foremost by their ability to survive the jungle and clear it quickly. Because junglers tend to have slightly less gold than Top, Mid, and ADC, but conversely have the greatest global impact early in the game, champions with strong early levels (Lee Sin, Rek'Sai), strong early power spikes (e.g. Fiddlesticks at level 6), or high effectiveness despite being a little behind (Sejuani) are favored over champions with strong max levels or full item builds (but weak early games). Beyond that, junglers may set themselves apart in a variety of ways: strong ganking (Gragas), strong counterjungling (Nunu), strong sustain (Warwick), etc. 1v1 trading potential is helpful (e.g., for counterjungling) but not as necessary as in a lane.

3. Mid: Like Top, Mid is a good position for champions who rely on solo gold or experience. The main difference is that because the walk to lane is much shorter, Mid can best support champions with low sustain (most notably champions with mana instability). Meanwhile, Mid rewards strong trading potential because its central position makes it easily accessible to the jungler and even other laners, and the shorter walk to lane lessens the blow of losing a trade and needing to recall/return to lane. For these reasons, most AP carries go mid. (However, Mid and Top are the two positions with the most overlap because both are solo lanes and thus provide a similar amount of resources.)

4. ADC (Bot): First and foremost, the ADC exists because it is beneficial to have a champion who can pump out high sustained damage through auto-attacks. This reliance on autos makes the ADC the most gold-dependent position (since stacking AD, armor penetration, crit chance, and attack speed are crucial to their damage) but also somewhat less dependent on experience than solo laners (since increasing the base damage of abilities is not as relevant). Thus, ADC is a better candidate than top or mid to take on the fifth member (the support) and work as a duo lane. The fundamental requirement for an ADC is simply the ability to put out high auto-attack damage in teamfights, so the champions that function here require ranged auto-attacks and good scaling with items that benefit auto-attacks (e.g., it is preferable to have abilities that scale with AD).

5. Support (Bot): The defining characteristic of the support is that this position will be the most starved for gold and experience throughout the game. So, the champion needs to bring something to the table without having these things. Usually, this means good utility/CC on their abilities, since the utility component of these abilities typically depends less on gold/levels than the damage component. (For example, Morgana's rank-1 Dark Binding provides a 2-second root as compared to 3 seconds for the rank-5 Binding; meanwhile, it deals 80 damage at rank 1 but 300 damage at rank 5. So, the utility part comes online much quicker.) These utility abilities also synergize with the ADC during early laning. However, supports can be effective in other ways. For instance, Vel'Koz offers only modest utility compared with most supports (a 1-2-second, 70% slow on Q, a 0.75-second suspend on E, and a 20% slow on R) but makes up for it by having high base damages on his abilities and a true damage-dealing passive, which increases his ability to deal damage without relying on items.

Incidentally, this last part provides a partial explanation of why Vel'Koz has decent potential as a support but not Swain; Swain has higher AP ratios as compared to his base damage and thus deals considerably less damage than Vel'Koz from Support.

I wanted to put this out there since for a long time, it was mysterious to me why certain champions went in certain positions but not others. I'd be interested to hear anyone's thoughts on how to refine my explanations. And if you've made it this far...thank you very much for reading :D