Marksmen Mid - New Meta, or failed experiment?

By Helmight

The last couple weeks of the LCS have seen a large number of teams experimenting with taking champions that are traditionally played as bottom-lane ADCs  and running them in the midlane instead. It's not a new strategy - Voyboy's mid Tristana never lost a game last season, to my knowledge - but this time around the strategy has failed to pan out.

The idea behind running a marksman champion mid is to give teams insane objective pressure thanks to the presence of two AD, damage-per-second champions. In theory, the tank line can provide enough crowd control to keep the marksmen safe while they provide tons of damage from the back of a fight.

In practice though, the strategy rarely pans out the way it's intended to. Marksmen were played mid a total of 9 times over the last two weeks of LCS matches and only managed a 44% win rate - not terrible, but definitely not good. In the games they did win, the mid marksman was rarely the reason for victory. As a whole, mid marksmen averaged only 2.5 kills per game and 2.8 deaths per game, with the majority of them ending the game with a negative KDA. Statistically speaking, the strategy doesn't work.

The reasons for this are many. Running a marksman mid means that teams are forgoing an Ability Power carry, which means their opponents only have to worry about stacking armor. It also severely reduces the amount of crowd control that their team is able to put out. Ezreal and Corki both lack hard CC, and Kog'Maw has only a single AoE slow to make use of. Meanwhile, traditional mages like Xerath and Ahri have ways of setting up ganks or getting picks thanks to their long-range, skillshot stuns.

But despite all of this, some players have found success after taking a marksman champion to the midlane. Link put up an insane 10/1/4 record during CLG's game against Gravity last week, and PowerOfEvil's Kog'Maw managed a respectable 4/2/5 score while playing against Meet Your Makers. The strategy CAN work, that much is certain - but it's definitely not as strong as running a conventional midlaner.

Though the experiments were ultimately a failure - no team in the NA LCS ran a markman mid this week - it does show us that the professional teams are trying out new and unconventional strategies. In a league that is far more competitive than before, innovation will be the key to a team rising in the standings or getting relegated. Though the marksman mid strat failed, others may rise up to take their place - and I for one am very excited at the prospect.

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