Mid lane is the shortest lane on the map and the closest to everything, and that's exactly why the pick nobody prepared for does so much damage there.
Every one of these ten gets typed at in champion select. All ten of them also beat the thing the enemy actually locked (usually a squishy mage standing in the open for twenty minutes).
Troll Mid Picks
10 Off-Meta Mids That Actually Work
Mid lane is the shortest lane on the map and the closest to everything, and that's exactly why the pick nobody prepared for does so much damage there.
Every one of these ten gets typed at in champion select. All ten of them also beat the thing the enemy actually locked (usually a squishy mage standing in the open for twenty minutes).
Counting down from the ones your teammates will merely question, to the one that gets the whole lobby arguing before minions spawn.
#10: Zilean, Who Gives Your Carry a Second Life
Zilean mid is barely a troll pick. Play into one and you'll see why. He shoves waves faster than most real mid laners, he's impossible to gank when he's holding his speed up, and the bomb makes short trades dangerous for anyone who steps to him.
The reason to actually take him is Chronoshift [R]. It turns your team's most fragile win condition into someone the enemy has to kill twice. That single button changes how the other team is allowed to open a fight, and it doesn't care what the meta is doing. He's frail, with no escape of his own. A jungler who arrives before his speed comes back will kill him, so the risk is all in the first ten minutes.
#9: Lulu, and the Lane That Refuses to Break
Lulu mid pokes from a longer range than most assassins can safely close, and when they do close, she turns them into something harmless for long enough to walk away. Mid lane assassins live on picking one clean all-in, and she takes that away by making the all-in cost them their cooldowns for nothing.
Afterwards she's still the best single-target peel in the game, so a team that drafted a hyper carry gets exactly what it needed from a lane nobody expected it from. She can't kill anyone quickly, so fights have to decide the game (she won't be solo killing her lane opponent).
#8: Pyke, Who Doesn't Need Farm to Take Over
Most troll mids are champions who need gold from somewhere else on the map. Pyke doesn't need gold at all, so mid lane's short walk to both side lanes is worth more in his hands than in almost anyone else's. He leaves lane at level six and comes back with two kills he didn't keep the gold from.
He also solves the classic roaming problem (a roam that fails puts you two waves behind). He heals back what he lost, so a failed roam costs him much less than it costs a normal assassin. The catch is that a Pyke who can't find a single pick contributes nothing, and pushed-in waves punish him harder than they punish anyone.
#7: Kayle, Safe in the One Lane Where Scaling Is Hard
Kayle's problem has always been surviving the part of the game before she's good. Mid lane is a shorter lane with a jungler on either side of it. That sounds worse and is actually better: she gets ranged at level six, and the tower is close enough that a bad trade doesn't turn into a death.
She also brings the invulnerability from Divine Judgment [R] to a team that would otherwise have none. In a game decided by whether the enemy can burst one person down, that's worth a lot. Play her badly and she's a free lane for twenty minutes. Play her patiently and she wins the game outright at a point the enemy can no longer do anything about.
#6: Ashe, the Marksman Who Starts Every Fight
Ashe mid works for the same reason she works anywhere (she slows on every attack), so a lane against her is a lane where you never get to leave once she's decided to fight. Melee mids have no answer. Most mages don't want the trade either.
What makes mid the right place for her rather than a joke is the range on her ultimate. From the middle of the map she can open a fight in either side lane (or in the river) without walking there. Pair that with the permanent vision she gets on demand and she plays like a mid laner who never has to guess where the enemy jungler is. Her weakness is the usual one: nothing to escape with, and a single gank ends her lane.
#5: Nautilus, Who Simply Takes Their Mid Laner Away
Nobody drafts against a tank mid. So nobody has an answer to one. Nautilus walks into a lane where the enemy has built damage that doesn't kill him and no way to escape a hook. The lane stops being a farming contest. It's a series of coin flips, and he wins them.
The wider payoff is what it does to the enemy jungler. A mid laner who can chain crowd control onto anyone who walks past makes the whole middle of the map unusable, and every gank into your side lanes has to path the long way around. He does almost no damage (your team needs it from somewhere else), and against a mage who can permanently shove the wave he'll spend the lane under his own tower.
#4: Trundle, and the Wall in the Shortest Lane
Mid lane is narrow and has two exits. For a champion who can put a pillar of ice wherever he likes, it's ideal. A lane opponent trying to walk home is cut off. A jungler arriving for a gank is cut in half from the rest of his team. It's the same trick that makes him miserable to fight in the jungle (in a smaller space).
He also eats tanks alive (that matters more in mid than people expect, once the enemy front line starts wandering through). The problem is range: any mage who commits to shoving him under tower can deny him most of the lane, so he wants a melee opponent or a jungler willing to help early.
#3: Illaoi, Who Wins the Fight Nobody Wanted
Illaoi mid is a counter-pick. It's a brutal one. Assassins have to come to her to do their job, and coming to Illaoi in a short lane where there's nowhere to run is how assassins die. She doesn't need to catch them; she needs them to want something from her.
She also solves a real drafting problem. A team with no front line and no way to punish a five-person engage gets both from a lane it was going to lose anyway. She's slow and easy to kite, and a mage who never walks forward makes her look ridiculous. This only works when the enemy mid has to be near you at some point.
#2: Urgot, the Bruiser Who Outranges the Mage
The reason Urgot mid keeps working is that he breaks the rule the whole lane is built on. Mages beat melee champions by standing further away. Urgot's attack range (plus the shield he gets for trading) means that plan doesn't hold. He wins the early levels of most mid matchups on raw numbers.
After lane he's the thing a team drafted around a squishy carry can't deal with, because his execute doesn't care how much health they bought. What he can't do is catch anyone with a dash, and a mid laner who plays purely for wave clear will farm safely away from him all game. Take him into something that has to fight.
#1: Garen, the Pick That Ends the Argument
Garen mid is the one that gets a lobby angry, and it's been quietly working for years. Mid lane is full of squishy champions with no escape who plan to win by pressing buttons from a distance, and Garen is a champion who spins onto them, silences the answer, and executes them below a health threshold nobody remembers until it kills them.
He's also close to unkillable in the early lane (he heals whenever he steps out of the fight, and mid lane has short walks to safety). A mage who wins the matchup on paper still has to farm knowing that one bad step is the whole lane. His limits are real. He can't do anything to a tank or reach anyone at range, and a mid laner who happily gives up the wave and roams instead will beat him on the rest of the map. Nobody types at the Garen after they've lost to him, though.
More troll picks by role
Conclusions
The thread running through all ten is that mid lane drafts for damage and forgets everything else. Almost nobody locks a mid laner expecting to be silenced, hooked, walled off, slowed permanently or brought back from the dead, so the champions who do those things get a lane where the enemy's plan simply doesn't apply.
The cost is consistent too. Most of this list gives up wave clear, escape or both. And mid lane is the easiest lane on the map to gank, since there's a jungler on each side of it. Ward early, respect the first two levels, and pick the one that beats the specific champion you're staring at (not the one that sounds funniest).
We've run the same idea through the other three roles: ten off-meta supports that actually work, ten off-meta junglers that actually work and ten off-meta top laners that actually work. The bot lane version is our list of 42 troll bot lane duos and which ones actually win.
Every ranking we've argued about is collected on the Top Ten Thursdays hub.
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