Lanning Set-Ups: Typology (2/3)

Part II:Lane Set-Ups

A. Cross Lanes

This is when Blue Side sends their duo to bot lane and Red Side sends theirs to Top Lane. This is basically the new standard of play, and most games will see this set-up.

In this start Blue side looks to send their AD + Support towards bot lane and their Bruiser towards top lane. This grants experience advantages that can be acquired through taking Wolves and Golems.A common way to start for both sides is to farm Wolves with mid and top, have jungler farm Wratihs solo, and have the AD+Sup farm Golems; after the 1:40 camps bot lane then helps  jungler take out the Red without smite. You will end up in lane around 2:10, and 1 cs short, but the opposing bot lane solo is usually too afraid to push freely.

Despite Riot's past attempts at negating blue side advantage, it still factors into the game heavily. Most teams will not choose Purple side given the choice. People may wonder why Blue side still holds an advantage when most games are played in the Cross Lane set-up, which negates Golem advantage. There are basically two scenarios that can happen in a Cross Lane; either Blue side takes bot tower before Purple takes Top, or vice versa. In the first scenario Blue can opt to keep the Bot duo in the bottom half of the map and try to take Dragon while 4-3 while the bot lane is pushed. In the second scenario Blue can simply give up the tower and send their top laner bottom for an easy dragon. You can see this happening in WE's games StarsWar, where they send their top lane to Dragon once the top tower is low. In this sense Blue is always "up a play". The only real counter for purple is to take the top tower very early before taking dragon is possible. 

Come late game, having Bot tower also becomes more important . You will rarely see a Blue team scrambling to defend bot lane, since the tower is there to stop the wave, but Purple side often has to devise ways of defending bot lane before it threatens a free baron.

The Duo Lane:

If a duo takes either Wraiths or Golems they can hit lvl 2 on an AD by killing a fourth creep(3-melee 1-ranged) rather than needing a second minion wave. This grants considerable advantages in securing early kills especially on skill based damage ADs such as Urgot, Graves and Ezreal. It is also note worthy that Golems can be given to the Support to grant much higher kill potential for Leona, Blitz and Taric. (See KTA vs. MVPBlue). If experience is shared between the AD and Suppot than you will hit level 2 on the sixth minion kill. 

AD + Support cross lanes should be looking to push towards tower. This places the enemy Bruiser in plain sight under tower and makes them vulnerable to 3 man dives. Junglers to look out for when pushing to tower are Jarvan, Elise, Amumu and Vi, as they can engage your duo through the wall.

The Solo Lane:

Blue side advantage effects Top lane as well Bot, because it allows Top to take wolves. Shy won both match-ups of Kha'Zix vs. Olaf and Olaf vs. Kha'Zix in IEM Katowice due to having a lvl advantage through wolves. He took two points in Taste Their Fear at lvl 4rather than the much more common Void Spike(which he still upgraded at lvl 6), and bursted down lvl 3 Olaf in a single spell rotation. As Olaf, getting early lvl 2 aggression with an Undertow and Reckless Swing meant sOAz could not trade any further and required Jarvan's help top. 

Junglers:

You should coordinate weather you want to end up on top lane or on bot lane on the ward information you have. Generally it is advisable to end up at your Solo Lane to support, if the enemy Jungle tries to 3v1 then you profit, if not, you can still get ahead in levels and preserve your tower hit points. If you have no wards in the enemy Jungle doing a straight back for boots often means you lose your Solo Lane tower(IWillDominate loses his tower 3 minutes into game: Team Normal Stars vs. Curse Academy Game 3).

Chinese teams have been using a 2-1-2 set-up to assist their solo lanes against 1v2 situations. Starts for both side would be Wraiths, Red(Smite), Wolves and then Blue; or Wolves, Blue(Smite Save) into Red, Wraiths and Wolves again, with the former being slightly faster to reach tower. The idea behind a Jungler route like this is if the enemy jungler comes to tower dive your solo lane than he is essentially wasting his or her time since you can defend easily, and you gain an advantage in your 2v1 lane by grinding their tower down faster; hence a more defensive set-up. With this in mind the Jungler shouldn't be shy in taking farm or pushing the lane out, the goal here is to delay the time your tower goes down. Though it seems counter intuitive, the top laner usually ends up with more farm when the jungle show himself in lane and takes farm with him, this is evident in WE's StarsWargames.

Teams like Azubu Frost generally start in their Duo side, and end up in their solo lanes to support. Of course, what happened in Katowice should serve as a reminder that even a 2v3 is not safe if there are teleports on the map. You also need to consider how much CC the opposing jungler and support bring to the dive, with teams like TSM using Leona and Taric to man handle a 3v2 situation under tower.

A common gank path that is open is through the enemy jungle from wraiths to gank their Duo lane. At 4:30 the early game wards have already expired, but mid and duo lanes haven't gone to buy yet. Remember this is a 2v2 gank so be careful with it.

What to do after taking a tower:

In the NA and EU LCS qualifiers, the team to take down a tower first won the game by close to 3-1 margin. Blue side has much more options in snowballing the game with early towers, where as Purple is usually looking to get their two members out of the top half of the map as soon as possible. For Blue side if Top tower is still healthy when you've taken down Purple's bottom tower than you can transition top. If you are likely to lose Top tower than middle tower or Dragon make for good calls, depending on how far the bot lane is pushed in. 

Teams like TPA actually play around being down a tower quite often, where they leave the solo laner to farm freezed lane, instead of rotating their bot duo. This is very effective on a laner like Shen, since you don't lose map presence when freezing the wave.

B. Standard EU Lanes:

This is when both teams send their AD and Support duo bot lane. By doing so Purple side is giving up an immediate advantage in early exp. Reasons for Purple opting a Standard set-up is to give Blue a hard time due to superior match-ups. The pattern seems to be that you need a even harder kill lane to counter-act exp advantage. Some interesting picks for Purple side in bot lane would be Taric + Sivir since they can all in you starting from level one(TPA vs. SF5). In general picking Taric on Purple side is very interesting since he has a lot of mind game potential, as he has high dive potential in Cross Lanes as well. iG has tried duo Bruisers bot lane(iG vs. WE), and Blitz Lulu(iG vs. LGD). Caitlyn + Nunu basically works everywhere. Sona is typically much more of a Blue side pick than a Purple one, if she runs into Standard Lanes where she is countered, she still has Golem exp to fall back on; also since Purple is more pressured to take tower early in Cross Lanes you need more of a CC heavy support for diving.

A good sign of a Purple team sending their AD + Support bottom is a late clear-out. This is done commonly if Purple side feels they have a stronger lvl 1 and opts for deep warding. There is more than enough time however for the bot lane to transition top and take Golems if they exit your jungle by the 1:10 mark, so early clear-outs can be confusing.

C. Reverse Lanes:

This is when blue side sends their AD and Support duo top lane, while Purple side sends theirs bot lane. This is a much rarer set-up, and is least expected by Purple. Both teams need to be willing to give up Golem advantage for this scenario to even happen. Blue side can look to punish a Blue start Jungle by overloading the Red buff with a 3v2. Another reason for sending AD top is to avoid kill lanes where the character is less likely to survive.

D. Mirrored Lanes

There is of course a fourth kind of start, where both sides send duo's top lane. This is probably the rarest type of start in the game and a fairly large disadvantage to Blue side. Reasons for this type of start may be that Blue picked a top laner that is not suitable for 2v1, such as a Nidalee(TPA). As blue side if you are sending your duo to avoid theirs then you run the chance of being eviscerated as TSM has been by CLG in game 1 NA LCS, where lanning set-ups made for a 300xp swing before they even got to lane. WE sends their AD+Sup duo to mid lane if they feel like the opposing duo lane is too strong.

It is also possible that a Blue side bot feels confident enough to win the lane even without Golems, or just with Wolves. This is what CJ Frost did during the recent IEM with Urgot lane.