What is the Midlaner in Dota 2?
Dota 2 is a heavily team orientated game, requiring players to adopt certain roles and choose certain heroes to increase their odds of winning. There are five positions within dota. Depending on your playstyle, there are Five distinct roles that you can choose from in the game- Hard Support, Soft Support, Offlaner, Mid-laner and Hard Carry.
This article will be focused on the Mid-laner.
The Mid-laner is Dota 2’s position 2 hero, sometimes called the semi-carry. The Mid-laner is more often than not, a tempo hero that dictates the pace of the entire game depending on what the team’s compositions are. Positioned in the lane that is in the middle of the map, the Mid-laner is unique in that their laning stage is a solo journey. It is purely a 1 vs 1 contest and is a good determiner of skill and technical ability. As such, the mid-laners are usually the highest level on the team for much of the match and are the most powerful in the early to mid game. The Mid-laner is usually the one responsible for setting up ganks and dictating the terms of engagements and making “space” for their position 1 carry to come online.
Special Mention: Storm Spirit
Storm Spirit embodies the element of lightning and furious speed in order to zip in and out of the battle, raking havoc amongst enemy heroes both scattered or together.
Storm Spirit is a special mention on this list due to recent patch 7.31d that essentially made this hero redundant. However, Storm Spirit has always been played exclusively in the mid-lane and is still a hero that has insane nuking potential as well as initiation. Perhaps with some minor changes in the future, Storm Spirit will once again climb the ladder back into Ranked Dota 2 Matches.
Storm Spirit’s skill set can be found in the link:
https://dota2.fandom.com/wiki/Storm_Spirit
Reasons why you should pick Storm Spirit as a Semi- Carry:
- Storm Spirit greatly benefits from being the highest level on the team. He utilizes this to his advantage to control the battlefield, set up ganks and use his incredible damage to burst down targets in a blaze of searing heat.
- Though the skill cap for Storm Spirit is relatively high, meaning that he should only be played by more seasoned players, Storm Spirit is a formidable semi-carry who is one of the hardest heroes to kill thanks to his ultimate ability that allows him to dash in and out of fights in the blink of an eye.
- He has flash farming abilities that make him able to build up a large deposit of farm and levels very early in the game. This gives him the advantage in the early game engagements
- He is extremely versatile and mobile meaning he can usually compliment most team lineups and build items to compliment what his team lacks.
- Use this hero carefully though as a slight miscalculation in his skills can spell the difference between life and death! Careful mana management is critical to playing this hero well.
15. Viper
To start the list off, we’ll begin with Viper, a nether drake. Born of poison and nethertoxin, this hero is renowned for being one of the most powerful laners in the game. This is mainly attributed to his toxic abilities that not only poisons his enemies, causing them to take consistent damage over time, but also reduces their movement speed, leaving them unable to escape in a cloud of suffocating death.
Viper’s skill set can be found through the following link: https://dota2.fandom.com/wiki/Viper
Reasons why you should pick Viper as a Mid Laner:
- Viper is a powerful laner that rarely loses 1 on 1 engagements. As such, he is well fitted for the midlane role as he is not only able to boost his dominance in the lane, but he is also able to make sure that the enemy’s mid-laner is never able to reach their full potential.
- Viper can imbue his auto attacks with a venomous touch that does Damage-Over-Time (DOT), reduces magic resistance and slows the enemy. That’s a lot of debuffs for just one auto attack!
- As a tip, try to get multiple stacks of poison onto the enemy as the poison damage stacks exponentially!
- Viper is a great pick against heroes that rely heavily on passive abilities. To name a few, Viper excels against Bristleback, Spectre, Wraith King, Huskar, Dragon Knight and Timbersaw.
- Viper not only does a lot of DOT, he is also fairly tanky against damage due to his toxic hide. Not only that, heroes that try to aim viper have to deal with getting poisoned at the same time making a coordinated attack on viper necessary.
- Viper’s ultimate is a drastic slow that pierces magic immunity, making him somewhat potent the majority of the game. That being said, his main power resides in the early to mid game. You typically want to finish the game as fast as you can on Viper as he drops off rather quickly and becomes overshadowed by more heavily farmed cores in the late game.
14. Zeus
Zeus needs no introduction. Supreme ruler of the high heavens, Zeus is the god of thunder and master of all things damage. Zeus can be seen as a glass cannon that utilizes high magic burst damage to force his enemies to submit. Zeus’s high reliance on his spells make it so that placing him in the mid-lane is substantially advantageous. With enough levels and farm, zeus can decimate entire teams, laying waste to enemies that think they can go against a living god.
Zeus’ s skill set can be found in the link: https://dota2.fandom.com/wiki/Zeus
Reasons why you should pick zeus:
- Zeus has one of the best long range damage abilities in the game making him the perfect candidate for the Mid-lane.
- He is able to nuke entire enemy waves down with his extremely low cooldown lightning bolt whilst harassing the opponent’s mid-laner.
- Zeus is all about damage and leveling up fast. This makes it so that when he rotates into other lanes, he is able to nuke down enemy heroes exceedingly fast. The only downside is that Zeus has lackluster lockdown abilities, relying on his team mates to do most of the crowd controlling.
- Zeus’s ultimate is one of the most fearsome abilities in the game, blasting the entire enemy team and revealing their positions. This makes Zeus the perfect hero to compliment other heroes that just don’t have enough damage to completely finish the fight. His ultimate is global, allowing Zeus to stay far back in the safety of the backlines and continue to dish out ridiculous magical damage.
13. Sniper
Sniper is a situational Mid-lane semi-carry that does well amongst the lower ranks of Dota due to his ability to do consistent reliable damage from afar. This may be due to the fact that players in the lower leagues have lower tendencies to prioritize certain heroes in an engagement or fail to pursue a coordinated attack. Either way, Sniper can certainly dish out a lot of damage and can be almost unstoppable in the late game. However, keep in mind that you are the position 2 hero and should still find engagements where you can make space for your position 1 hard carry.
Sniper’s ability list can be found in the link: https://dota2.fandom.com/wiki/Sniper
Reasons why you should try Sniper as a Midlaner:
- Sniper has the longest ranged auto attack in the game. This makes him a damage dealing backliner that can do damage yet stay reasonably safe.
- Sniper is a strong pub stomper, especially amongst the lower leagues. He does well for the reason that he can usually stand at the back and obtain kills without needing to put himself much in harm's way. He is also an excellent laner in that he is able to hit his opponent from afar while they are unable to retaliate.
- However, take precaution as you enter the higher leagues as opponents will use the disadvantages of sniper against him.
- Sniper’s ultimate gives him the ability to assassinate enemies from extremely long distances, meaning he is almost always able to assist in a kill or snag one for himself.
- Like the aforementioned Zeus, Sniper is a perfect example of a glass cannon, making him one of the highest damage dealers in the game but also one of the squishiest. Careful positioning and map awareness are needed to play this hero successfully.
12. Leshrac
Leshrac the tormented soul is a being twisted by the oldest and deepest forces of nature. Delving into the mysteries of existence itself, Leshrac gained powers of nature that deal massive magical damage to a large area of effect. Leshrac is essentially one of those heroes that can nuke you down from full hp with the use of heavy sustained damage, ravaging the battlefield with his surplus of abilities and witting philosophy.
You can find his skill list as follows: https://dota2.fandom.com/wiki/Leshrac
Reasons why you should pick Leshrac as a Midlaner:
- Leshrac has one of the highest consistent magical damage in the game. He has a tricky to land stun ability, but when landed does immense damage and lockdown.
- Most of Leshrac’s abilities are low cooldown, making him a prime candidate to push towers and threaten enemy positions. This can be doubly used to harass the enemy mid laner as well as flash farm. This allows Leshrac to very often snowball early, leveling up at unprecedented rates and coming out miles ahead of his enemies.
- Leshrac’s power spike comes at level 6 which turns him into one of the scariest early game heroes in the game. Unlike Zeus, Leshrac is reasonably tanky and can run fearlessly into the fray.
11. Kunkka
Admiral of the Claddish fleet, Kunkka is a sea captain whose former role was to protect the shorelines of his homeland. However, his fleets were felled upon by the Leviathan known as Tidehunter who sent them hurtling towards the crushing depths of the ocean floor. Kunkka goes into battle to exact vengeance upon his mortal enemy, using the ghosts of his Claddish past and the great power instilled upon his sword to bring the demons of the cataract down to their knees.
You can find Kunkka’s skill list as follows: https://dota2.fandom.com/wiki/Kunkka
Reasons why you should pick Kunkka in the Midlane:
- Kunkka is a deadly adversary in the Midlane due to his trusty sword. He is able to infuse his auto attacks with extra damage and a huge cleave radius that makes him a potent and dangerous hero in the Midlane.
- Kunkka’s skill set allows him to gank reliably, having multiple sources to catch, stun and destroy his enemies.
- Kunkka is a relatively strong hero due to his above average strength gain, making him a hard hero to kill and allowing him to frontline somewhat for his team.
- Kunkka can summon a ghost ship to crash upon his enemies to both damage and stun his enemies.
- Kunkka is notably a Mid hero as he can assert lane dominance then farm reliably in the jungle, allowing him to muster up a tankard full of items very early on. This makes him a reasonable force to deal with up until the enemy is able to build up magic immunity.
10. Batrider
Batrider is one of those unique heroes that you use to cheese your way up the ladder when the enemy has no answer for him. He is notably a great hero against heroes that are easily kitable and enemies that have no sort of escape. Good examples of these include Medusa, Templar Assassin and Meepo in the Midlane. He is a strong reliable initiator and has relatively low cooldown spells that do heavy damage over a sustained period of time. However, this hero is weak to purging abilities that render most of his spells useless.
You can find his skill list as follows: https://dota2.fandom.com/wiki/Batrider/Counters
Reasons why you should try Batrider:
- Fun and Aggressive hero, Batrider soars through the skies and burns them with his cocktail of fiery concoctions.
- The hero excels at chasing and finding slippery foes that like to sneak around trees and cliff sides. This is attributed to his ability to gain flying vision and fly over the battlefield on his trusty over-sized Bat
- Batrider has a strong lockdown ability that literally drags key targets to his allies, making it easier for them to burst and score a kill.
- Batrider is one of the more fun heroes to play due to his ability to be always ready to fight and having a strong map presence. You do not want to be inactive with this hero.
9. Windranger
Windranger is Dota 2’s sharp shooter. Being extremely elusive, fast and having consistent high damage solidifies this hero as one of the strongest Mid laners in Dota 2. More so, this hero is extremely versatile being able to be played in a multitude of roles meaning that even if she does get counter-picked, you can simply put her in a different lane where she will still have reasonable impact.
You can find his skill list in the link: https://dota2.fandom.com/wiki/Windranger
Reasons why you should pick Windranger:
- Windranger is a powerful hero at all stages of the game.
- Windranger is an incredible lane dominator. She has an incredible spammable nuke that she can use in lane to both secure creeps as well as harass the enemy opponent. Use this to push out the enemy creeps before going to either side of the river to secure yourself a rune.
- Windranger is fast and hard to kill. This makes her a hero with high map presence, being able to go from lane to lane picking off targets and making space for her carry
- Windranger has a very powerful skill shot stun that is not at all as hard to land as it may seem.
- Windranger’s ultimate gives her the ability to solo kill most heroes in the game, making her a particularly fearful opponent to play against when you do not know where she is on the map.
8. Razor
Razor is a powerful elemental being and like Storm Spirit, possesses the power of lightning. He is a top situational pick amongst higher tier players as an anti-carry due to his ability to drain damage from the enemy carries. Razor has a good mix between physical and magical damage and has innate kiting abilities that make him a well rounded hero for the midlane.
Razor’s skills and abilities can be found via the link below:
https://dota2.fandom.com/wiki/Razor
Reasons to choose Razor:
- Razor signature skill, “Static Link” steals enemy damage to add to his own. This makes him the perfect candidate against rick click damage dealers that have no way to escape his electrical charge. As such Razor is a prime pick against enemy carries such as Wraith King, Bristleback, Phantom Assassin, Ursa and Sven. Usually higher ranked players would level this ability to its second or third point then max out his other abilities.
- Razor has efficient farming mechanisms that allow him to clear multiple jungle camps at once. Due to the large range of his nuking ability, try to farm multiple neutral creeps at once by aggroing the neutral creeps and getting them to chase you before using the ability.
- Razor can summon an electrical storm above him that allows him to move and do damage at the same time.
7. Necrophos
Necrophos is a unique hero in that he is an intelligence hero that essentially plays as a tank. He has a large resource of necromancy spells that tilts the balance between life and death itself. Typically named the Grim-Reaper of Dota 2, Necrophos is a potent hero to choose when there are ample amounts of physical damage coming from the enemy team or if the enemy team heavily relies on the use of their auto-attack based hard carry. As much as Necrophos can be played in the Offlaning position, Necrophos is also a very strong mid laner due to his strong harassing and sustaining mechanics. Whereas other Midlaners like fast paced action and exert their tempo upon the game, Necrophos is happy to farm and only comes for ganks once he has his ultimate ability ready.
Necrophos’ skill set can be found in the link: https://dota2.fandom.com/wiki/Necrophos
Reasons to choose Necrophos:
- Necrophos is deceptively tanky. He has a large amount of burst heal abilities which double up as damage abilities.
- Necrophos has one of the best sustaining abilities in the game. For every life he takes, whether it be a small critter or a hulking hero, Necrophos gains passive health and mana regeneration. This makes his spells spammable and essentially free to use. As such, Necrophos is one of the best blow-for-blow traders in the game, able to cripple his opponents bit by bit. Necrophos can technically gain infinite health and mana regeneration if he is able to garner enough kills using his ultimate. This can make him a godly hero who is extremely hard to take down.
- Necrophos has decent farming mechanisms, allowing him to build more items that can either provide utility to his team or beef himself up into an unstoppable tanky machine.
- Necrophos can cover himself into a ghostly shroud that prevents him from taking any physical damage and amplifies healing effects. This makes him the perfect weapon to deal with right click based heroes such as Phantom Assassin, Slardar, Legion Commander and Weaver.
- Necrophos’ ultimate is a point target ability that essentially gives him a reaper’s scythe to cut down enemies that are reasonably damaged. The damage is based on how much health the opponent is missing. This means Necrophos is highly effective against critical targets such as position one hard carries as well as high health pool targets that are hard to bring down.
6. Death Prophet
Cursed to live amongst the living, Krobelus the Death Prophet utilizes life-draining abilities and the forces of the undead to rake havoc upon her enemies. Formerly a fortune teller, Krobelus sought after her own fate which proved to have dire consequences. She now resides in the eternal struggle between the battle of the ancients as a weapon of the undead with an army of exhorted spirits at her command.
Death Prophet’s skills and abilities can be found via the link below:
https://dota2.fandom.com/wiki/Death_Prophet
Reasons to choose Death Prophet:
- Death Prophet has a low-cooldown nuking ability that is useful for clearing enemy waves, pushing towers and farming. This is especially useful in the Mid-lane to push out the lane to the enemy before certain timings to secure rune spawns and to refill her bottle.
- She is able to take down single-target heroes as well as multiple enemies at once
- As part of her ultimate, she is able to summon a large number of ghosts to swarm enemies and heal herself. This makes her a fearsome adversary that deals a lot of damage and requires a coordinated approach to take down.
- She is one of the strongest heroes in the mid game and can easily take down towers and push objectives throughout the game.
- Death Prophet loves to push objectives and use her ultimate whenever it is ready during the early game to assert map dominance. This can be used to great benefits, widening the map for your team to farm and secure their macro lead. Good communication and planning is preferable when playing as Death Prophet as she does lack stun and lock down abilities compared to most other Mid-laners.
5. Lina
Daughter of the flame and elder sister to Crystal Maiden, Lina controls the element of fire to do her bidding. She burns through legions of enemies with her dragon slave and creates fire so hot that it turns into lightning. If your playstyle involves bursting opponents before they even have a chance to react, then this is the right hero for you! Lina is a fast paced hero that runs rounds upon her opponents, rushing into battle with fiery conviction.
Lina’s skills and abilities can be found here: https://dota2.fandom.com/wiki/Lina
Reasons to choose Lina:
- Two Low cooldown nuking abilities that can clear waves almost instantly. This can be once again used to push out the lane to secure rune timings and farm the easy camp next to the mid lane.
- Extremely long-ranged attack that allows you to bully the opponent mid-player out of the lane. It is particularly hard to deal with Lina’s harassment tools in the early game, giving you an early head start when it comes to farming.
- A passive ability that increases your attack speed and movement speed the more spells you cast. This makes you more powerful with every spell that you cast! As a result, you are able to also transition into playing as both a spellcaster as well as an auto attacking semi-carry.
- Burn through your enemies with your finishing blow, a lightning bolt that has a fairly respectable cooldown and extremely high damage. You are able to upgrade this lightning bolt with an aghanim’s scepter item to do even more damage and pierce through magic immunity provisions such as the Black King Bar.
- Lina is the perfect as a mid-laner in ranked as she tends to do well against most other Mid-laners due to her exceptional ranged abilities. Not only that, even if she does manage to get countered by heroes like Templar Assassin or Sniper, she is able to push out the lane then rotate to the jungle to continue her farming.
4. Huskar
Huskar is an incredibly strong ranged strength hero that is currently one of the most powerful mid laners in the game. He is an inconceivably unique hero in that he obtains more power the closer to death he is. With experimentation, this hero is exceptionally powerful amongst beginners and professionals alike as he requires a huge amount of enemy focus in order to take down. He does mind numbing amounts of damage in the early and mid game and is able to even take down the titan Roshan by himself early on into the game.
Huskar’s skills and abilities can be found via the link below:
https://dota2.fandom.com/wiki/Huskar
Reasons to pick Huskar in the Mid lane:
- The hero is dominant at all stages of the game and is renowned for being increasingly harder to kill the closer to death he is. Finding the fine line between life and death and beating back the opponent when they think they have you against the rope makes this hero satisfying and interesting to play.
- Huskar’s skill set allows him to jump straight into a fight and deal incredible damage over time. This makes him especially useful for ganks and turning fights around. Huskar loves to fight early and his high tempo plays make him a fearsome Mid-lane adversary.
- Huskar’s infused fire spears allow him to not draw aggression from enemy creeps (the enemy foot soldiers). This allows him to harass his opponents without taking any damage and makes him an incredible lane dominator. Huskar players rarely lose their lane and opponents usually find it hard to stop him farming up crucial items such as Armlet of Mordiggian and Black King Bar.
- Huskar’s spells are all low-cooldown abilities, meaning that he can fight again and again with little notice
- The hero is able to sustain heavy amounts of magic damage due to his passive ability that strengthens proportionally to how low his health pool is. As his health gets lower, his health regeneration increases making huge amounts of burst damage necessary to take down this hero.
3. Queen of Pain
Akasha is demon-like humanoid that was bound to the servitude of a king to fulfil his somewhat sexual and masochistic desires. With the death of the king, she was released into the realm, able to spill havoc and pain to whomever she deigned fit. Her skill set consists largely of damage abilities that make her live up to her name as the Queen of Pain.
Queen of Pain’s skills and abilities can be found via the link below:
https://dota2.fandom.com/wiki/Queen_of_Pain
Reasons to choose Queen of Pain as your Mid-hero:
- Queen of Pain is currently one of the strongest Mid-laners in the game due to her high damage output, her high mobility, her ability to farm reasonably well and her assertive lane pressure.
- Queen of Pain has a very strong harassment tool that she can use to make unfavorable trades with the opponent’s mid-laner
- She has one of the best mobility tools in the game, a blink ability that enables her to teleport short distances at will to initiate upon enemies as well as escape
- Her aghanim’s shard ability is one of the best shard abilities in the game, adding a respectable amount of damage as well as a silence debuff to enemies hit by her blink radius.
- As an advanced tip, the damage of her blink shard ability can be doubled by blinking right next to the target as the damage comes from both the starting and ending location of the spell. This is essentially an extra 250 damage nuke. Just make sure to use it wisely as your blink is also your form of escape.
2. Shadowfiend
Shadow Fiend is one of the most Iconic Mid heroes in the game, utilizing the power of both magic and physical damage to raze souls unfortunate enough to cross paths with him. Harvesting souls for his unknown master, Nevermore the demon collector grows in strength with every kill. He is a deadly hero who sends even the bravest warriors scurrying away in fear. Even being in the presence of the dark lord reduces an opponent’s morale and eats away at their soul.
Shadow Fiend’s skill set can be found here: https://dota2.fandom.com/wiki/Shadow_Fiend
Why is Shadow Fiend a great mid-hero choice:
- Shadow Fiend is a very dominant laner and can deal with targets both near and far. Due to his relatively low cooldowns and mana cost, Shadow Fiend’s signature ability “Shadow Raze” allows him to harvest souls very quickly whilst harassing the opposing mid laner.
- Shadow Fiend does require some practice in order to master the effectiveness of his Shadow Raze as they are all skill based and can sometimes be hard to hit. Beginners should test Nevermore in the hero load out to understand the basic range of his signature ability.
- Shadow Fiend has great flexibility with the sort of damage he wants to unleash onto the battlefield. If the enemy lacks magical defense, he can purchase items that support his magical nuking ability. Likewise if the enemy is weak against physical damage, or if his team utilizes a lot of physical damage, Shadow Fiend may opt for more right-click damage items. Either way, he is able to attune his item choices to suit the situation as needed.
- Shadow Fiend’s ultimate is one of the most devastating nukes in the game if positioned correctly. This gives Shadow Fiend the capability to delete one hero right off the bat in team fights. Consider opting for items such as Blink Dagger, Eul’s Scepter or a Shadow Blade in order to effectively land his ultimate.
1. Puck
This brings us to the top of the list. One of Dota 2’s strongest Mid-laners is also one of Dota’s cutest heroes. Puck the young Faerie dragon is as mischievous as it is hard to kill. Puck is one of Dota’s most reactionary heroes due to its mobile skill set and proficiency at avoiding damage. Puck has strong laning presence and dominates most mid-lane matchups due to its harassment abilities that doubles up as a repositioning tool. This makes Puck extremely hard to secure runes against as well as out harass.
Considerable effort on the enemy’s team needs to be taken to take this adorable dragon down. There is technically no limit to Puck’s effectiveness in every game as she asserts a strong map dominance due to its high mobility repositioning tool kit, a prime example of what mid-laners should do.
Puck is a rather skill based hero and requires expertise in both game knowledge and technical ability to properly manage. As such, she is recommended not as a beginner hero. However, if you do want to play it, try it in a few practice loadouts and look at a couple of guides before you bring it into your ranked matches.
Puck’s skills and abilities can be found via the link: https://dota2.fandom.com/wiki/Puck
Reasons to choose Puck:
- It has cute voice lines that makes it pleasant to play with
- It has two strong nukes that have low cooldowns and allow it to reposition itself. These two nukes are essential to pushing out waves in order to secure runes and to make its way out to its next objective.
- Puck can phase in and out of this dimension, avoiding many projectile based spells as well as auto attacks. This low cool down spell makes it so it can be exceptionally hard to lock down with surprise attacks or a coordinated approach.
- Puck can tether opponents to a spot, making it extremely unwise for them to break the tether else receive a lot of damage and become stunned. Its ultimate has a relatively low cooldown making Puck an extremely potent ganker for its team,
- Puck is able to do heavy amounts of magic damage that scale even in long games. Even if enemy opponents pick up a Black King Bar that is able to mitigate most of its damage, Puck can simply re-engage at a later time due to her low-cooldown mobility spells.
