Melee Carry Mondays: Picking the Right Position/Role.

Part of being successful when playing a Melee Carry or Glass Cannon DPS champion is knowing the advantages as, well as the disadvantages, to playing specific roles. To break down each role we must understand how effective it is at providing the play style/champion you want to choose. The 3 major factors in picking a role are your impact on the game, your ability to farm freely, and your kill potential. Generally speaking, this is rather simple to lay out, however, I will give you tips on ways to increase your chances of success in each role. First, let’s go over what these factors truly mean.

Impact on the game – Truth is, you can have 300 farm by 28 minutes and not have done anything productive for your team. Impact doesn’t always mean showing up for fights or even killing enemy champions. You can influence your teams chance of winning by drawing enemies to waste cooldowns on you, as long as you get away, or just simply waste their time. That being said, you don’t want to rely on your team so the best way to have impact as a Melee Carry is by solo killing as many champions as you can. Make sure you keep up in farm and experience, as you always want to stay ahead of the enemy. Even if you show up to every fight, if you are sitting at 40 cs by 20 minutes your chance of winning is heavily diminished.

Ability to Farm Freely – Farming freely as a Melee Carry is not the usual sitting by tower waiting for the enemy to push. It is also not just focusing on last hitting. If you and your enemy have the same amount of creep score then you aren’t technically farming for free, as they are scaling as well. Even though a glass cannon build out scales all others duel wise, there is that gap in the mid game where a defensive build is superior. You don’t want to take that risk and be punished for it. Free farming is when your enemy cannot approach the creep wave or harass you without being punished for it. You can sit there and farm all game, but if you do not convert your gold into objective advantages, or even kills, you aren’t exactly winning the game.

Kill Potential – Having a high kill potential means you are very likely to be able to put an enemy champion in danger. Of course, this varies based on who you are playing and the role. Generally, high impact roles will have a higher kill potential but that is not always the case. You, based on your play style, can easily increase your kill potential by just focusing on lone champions. Kill potential is important not just because kills grant you gold and experience, but they deny the enemy time to farm and gain exp. Solid map awareness also increases your kill potential because you are more likely to spot lone champions.

How do I find the balance?

Every player and every champion is different. Some may need to show up to fights more, others just need to get to their next item before they decide they are ready. The simple way of knowing you are doing something right is checking if you’re always doing something. If you wander the map and show up to places where neither kills nor farm is granted, you must rethink your methods of going about the game. You have to mostly decide for yourself though, honestly, the best way to do things is to farm farm farm until you think something is going to go down, then you shove your wave/clear your jungle and get to where you think the fight will be.

ROLES/POSITIONS

The ratings on the 3 Factors will be out of 5 and for each role.  After this section I will explain why I gave the ratings I did for each role.

This chart shows you the basic idea of what role you want to play. The score of each role will be added up next to its name in the section below.

Roles In Depth

Top Lane: 27/40

Top lane is definitively not a bad place to be for anyone looking to gain farm into the mid and late game, however, it is home to some very nasty strong early game champions. The lane is basically a 1v1 slug fest early, in which you attempt to get last hits and harass back as much as possible. When you go top, you will be forced to fight your way to the creep wave in order to secure farm. This makes top the second hardest place to farm. Not because of the accessibility to the farm, but the inability for most melee carries to deal with some of the heavy hitting contenders that have found top lane their home. However, if you get a lead in lane you can often times reach free farm early. When going top I recommend lifesteal quints, as they add to your sustain. Pick up an early Vamp Scepter. Try to avoid buying anything besides Boots before the Vamp Scepter. From there, you basically just pick this role to farm into the late game and kill whoever you like. Watch for ganks as this is a long lane, making you are more susceptible to ganks. Early ganks increase the risk for farming here, but a ward takes care of that. The low impact in the mid game is due to the fact that, most often times, leaving your lane will result in losing a tower or missing out on needed farm. You also aren’t as responsible for dragon as bot lane is. 

Mid Lane: 35/40

The mid lane comes in as the second highest rated role. It allows you to have an impact all throughout the game, as well as easily accessible farm. If you want to gank, all you have to do is shove the wave and move. You also are in close reach of the enemy tower, waiting to be taken down anytime your opponent decides they have more important things to do than defend it. Another good reason to play mid lane is it takes the place of the usual glass cannon type mage/caster they stick there. So there’s no worry about the lack of tank or not having a bruiser.  You also have the wraiths to farm whenever a jungler, yours or theirs, isn’t around to take them. If you play mid you will always have something to do throughout the whole game. You are open to ganks, but wards can take care of this. The farm is always easily within reach when you play mid, even if you begin to lose the lane, unlike top, where being zoned out of CS is more common. 

Jungle: 33.5/40

Jungle is my main role. Now, before you think about how little gold junglers get, I want you to think about the importance of being able to farm safely. A bad matchup can seriously harm your ability to even get to the late game. That being said, you have massive kill potential if you execute jungling. You will always be someone people would rather not see. You are responsible for ganking, which is the number one cause of kills in even lane match ups. Even though gold is technically reduced, you will always have access to your jungle unless you are being counter jungled. The ability to farm late is so low because when towers fall, you lose control of your jungle and your allies begin to enter it and clear camps without your permission. It is important to let your team know you are a carry too, and that they should not clear your camps too much. The control of the buffs and dragon/baron greatly increases your impact on the game. You should never donate your buffs, especially red buff, as it slows for much more on a melee champion anyway. It is also how you primarily stick to enemies. Jungling is by no means easy. I suggest you build Wriggles, even if you do not think it is good as clearing fast and you think securing some type of farm is the only way to keep up. When a lot of players play jungle, they end up not having a solid amount of farm. This is often blamed on them attempting to gank, but honestly, there is no excuse for playing a carry jungler and not having a good amount of farm. Video below. It’s kinda old, but people seem to like it. 

Bot Lane: 26.5/40

You may be shocked at why this is rated rather high. But, in all honesty, good pick synergy between your melee carry and the support can make this lane a lot easier than it might seem. The impact early is higher than on top lane, mostly due to dragon being a key objective. Other than that, as a melee carry, you do often have a high chance of killing the enemy early if you aren’t harassed down first. This also correlates to the low early farm potential.  Toward the mid game, if you do not have a lead, at which the point you can dive down the enemy, you won’t really be able to kill them and they can farm free near their tower. However you are still a force to be reckoned with and can easily farm through the mid and late. Late game, you are the carry, and you are who most fights will revolve around. You should be the main source of damage and you will easily be able to duel anyone on the map, so splitting is always an option. You don’t always have to team fight; keep that in mind even though you are the carry. Here is a video of me just playing a melee carry bot lane. 

Support: 13/40

I shouldn’t have to explain this much. However, if you decide to play support, you want to make a big impact in the game early, as the rest of the game is just going to be you hanging around and doing stuff based on other’s calls. Late game you can technically find loop holes to farm, but if you farm early someone is bound to disconnect, so be careful. I actually got a Pentakill playing support Master Yi. 

That wraps up this week’s melee carry Monday. It was a long one. Next week is going to be runes and masteries and then, finally, the long awaited champion picks. By the way, I had to do runes and masteries first because some people do not yet understand them and their importance. See you guys next Monday.