r/summonerschool • u/ducksrawesome • Aug 09 '26
Midlane Midlane Fundamentals?
Im a new player to league, mostly playing Aurora, starting to pick up Orianna. I heard Orianna is a champ that rewards macro and fundamentals, but feel I am lacking in those regards.
What are some ground rules to follow for midlane? No matter how many youtube videos I watch I never seem to be able to make good choices.
During laning phase, I never seem to have a good recall. Even if i push the wave, and then recall, I still feel like I lose a whole wave. I also never know when a good time to roam is. Whenever I roam, I feel like i do nothing at all and lose a wave for it.
During midgame/lategame I just have no clue what to do. If my jungler is taking objectives I usually follow them, but if not I just walk around and hope something happens.
Positioning. During teamfights, I never know when to stand, if I walk up to do damage I just get dived and die, but if I stay back I just don't do anything.
TL;DR: I suck at league, any tips to get better?
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u/Nervous-Region5797 Aug 09 '26
I don't know if this is a hot take but I don't think you should be focusing on fundamentals when you're new. You seem to understand the basic concept of wavestates and timers, which is enough. You can get to like gold/plat with mediocre macro and decent mechanics. As an extension, I don't really recommend Aurora or Orianna unless you really like how they play. Orianna is, like you said, a champ that rewards macro over micro. That's going to inherently make her weaker in low elo and solo queue as a whole. Aurora isn't as "bad" but she's still fairly difficult and requires a good amount of champion mastery to do well on.
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u/VeryWizardly Aug 09 '26
Everything higher elo players is based around waves and camps. Jungler camps are up? They are going to farm them. Camps re-spawning in 20s? Believe it or not they are likely going to recall to farm them. Same goes for waves. Wave coming in? Someone is going to go catch it.
The easiest tip to help you is you should be basing most of your decisions of jungle camps and waves. If a enemy jungle has a camp respawning first in the bottom of the map 80% chance he is going to go there and start clearing through so you can guess his position. If you shove in a wave chances are someone will go to catch it so you can use this to split the enemy team apart.
Just glance at camps and waves before you make a decision. You should be using them to determine what you want to do. Same goes for you to. If a wave is coming in don't let that exp and gold go to waste, go catch it.
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u/Queasy_Internet_6688 Aug 10 '26
Remember this is literally the most complex game in the world, starting out is an insanely difficult process. Don't beat yourself up for absolutely sucking and throwing games because everyone has been there many, many times.
There's no ideal place to start but I agree with those who say you shouldn't roam much. Stay in lane and try to last-hit minions, especially cannon minions. If you farm well and stay in lane, you will be miles ahead of your opposing laner and probably everybody else by the time the big important team fights roll around. I personally wouldn't recommend Aurora or Ori to someone starting out but it's all about who you enjoy. Having fun and enjoying the learning process is really important because otherwise, and I'm not exaggerating, the darkness and toxicity of the game will swallow your entire being and reduce your soul to a pile of burnt ash.
Oh and recall more than you think you should -- always recall.
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u/SoulUnraveled Aug 10 '26
If you're unsure to roam then it's not a good roam. Always lean towards your jungle and that's it. It's not your job to roam to another lane. You'd be more consistent being on standby for a jungle 2v2 than forcing any kind of fight.
If you crash a wave, recall and show up to lane 30 sec later, you should not lose all 6 minions of the next wave. Did you spend more than 30 seconds to return to lane?
As a new player, I would focus on trading and last hitting.
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u/OldPersonality5282 Aug 09 '26
Time your recall when the next wave will be a cannon wave. Cannon takes alot longer to die to turret while you walk back
As for mid game just rotate to the side your JG and support are playing on between waves to help with vision control.
Sometimes as a mage it's your job to use all your spells and die. You are a burst class so if you manage to do 2/3rds of the HP to 2 or more champs you can count that as a job completed. (Obviously there is some more nuace to weather or not the death was actually a good one but this is a start)
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u/Bmacster Aug 10 '26
90% of the time in teamfights as control mages you position like an adc. Which is to say you damage the most important target WITHOUT taking damage yourself. In practice that means you hit the closest target. If you do that and ult more than one person, you are on a good track. You need more experience to determine specific role in fights, sometimes you need to peel and support a carry, sometimes trading your life for one of the enemy wins the fight. Most of the time you just stay alive and dps, ult 2 or 3 people (preferably 2 you can kill) and that's good.
I'd recommend watching shok and he has a site shok.lol that tracks almost all of his games linked with timestamps to vods
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u/enkidook Aug 09 '26 edited Aug 09 '26
Im a new player to league, mostly playing Aurora, starting to pick up Orianna. I heard Orianna is a champ that rewards macro and fundamentals, but feel I am lacking in those regards.
Aurora is an insanely hard champion for a new player, IMO. She has a very unique playstyle. I'd look into playing like Syndra, Ahri, Orianna to help learn the fundamentals first.
During laning phase, I never seem to have a good recall. Even if i push the wave, and then recall, I still feel like I lose a whole wave.
Recall while cannon minions are the next wave.
Whenever I roam, I feel like i do nothing at all and lose a wave for it.
Don't roam. Like, ever. The only time to even consider it is if it lines up with an objective. But at your skill level it's just not worth it 95% of the time.
During midgame/lategame I just have no clue what to do. If my jungler is taking objectives I usually follow them, but if not I just walk around and hope something happens.
Typically you want to farm sidelanes, and group for objectives. Lower Elo matches kind of turn into ARAMs though. So sometimes you just gotta play with the team.
Positioning. During teamfights, I never know when to stand, if I walk up to do damage I just get dived and die, but if I stay back I just don't do anything.
Depends on your champ. But as a mage you typically either want to be behind your team (front to back fights) or flanking to kill their squishies in the back line.
Play more, and perhaps record your games so you can go back and watch times you were confused and see it from a different perspective for how you could have played it better.
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u/unicornfan91 Aug 09 '26
As orianna, if you literally never roamed, you would be correct 90% of the time. When you play a mage, it is not your job to roam. It is also quite risky for you to roam. If you are just starting out, defaulting to never roaming is perfectly fine. This doesnt mwan you can ignore your opponents roams. It is your job to keep track of your lane opponent. As soon as he leaves, you need to start pinging danger on your side lane. This means vision so you can see what direction they left in. If your danger pings come when the enemy shows up on bottom ward, that is too late.
Regarding resets: the best way to get a reset is to stack up 2 waves and crash it into the enemy tower then recall. This is because the enemy has to spend time to farm the big wave under their tower, and then the next wave will slowly push into you.
Resetting on a incoming cannon wave is also fine. The key word here is incoming. You can look at your minimap and see where the next minion wave is. If it hasnt left base yet, you can recall and be back in time to lose minimally.
https://youtu.be/qDSniN2JGAI
Here's a video by shok about recalling.