Opinion: Dota 2 mid is a miserable experience and needs adjustments

It’s been just over a month now since Facets were taken away from Dota 2, with Valve proving once again that they are not averse or afraid to remove entire mechanics from the game. This is one thing I really appreciate from them as developers, where they clearly don’t just try to stick to their guns even when it’s obvious that some things just aren’t healthy, well designed, or otherwise just unfun overall.

In line with this, I’d like to preface what I’m about to suggest by saying that it isn’t necessarily as big of a mechanic or concept as Facets. It’s limited to a single, miserable role in Dota 2, and at this point I think you can kind of tell where I’m going with this.

If the devs aren’t scared of reverting things wholesale, how about we start walking back some of the changes that have made playing solo mid a depressing experience over the years?

Weight of the world

The solo mid position is a classic in the MOBA genre. Even the greatest esports player of all time in Lee “Faker” Sang-hyeok is a mid player in League of Legends, and you can bet that his fame comes with all the swagger and style that one would expect from the position. Faker is disgustingly good at League, and he will show you just how good.

Dota is no exception, as many of the most mechanically skilled pro players in history can be found in the role. There’s Michał “Nisha” Jankowski, Danil “Dendi” Ishutin and Amer “Miracle-” Al-Barkawi (at least before he switched to carry) just to name a few over the years — and their aura as players combined with the impact of their position naturally makes fans gravitate towards them.

Of course, all of this glory comes with lofty demands as well. Because the lane is a one-on-one affair, mid players even outside of the pro scene are expected to handle themselves in the role. Pub players everywhere know the pressure of playing mid, as it always feels like the outcome of the game rests on the mid laner’s shoulders — but ironically, they’re also expected to mostly fend for themselves.

Mid heroes need their gold and experience, but also to win their lane and crush the opposing mid, but also to gank the side lanes, but also to create space on the map; longtime Dota players know the drill by now. And yet, despite everything that is asked of mid players, the role itself is not as impactful as it used to be.

The new gold standard

It’s no secret in this day and age that there are just more resources to gather on the Dota 2 map. Between the addition of several neutral creep camps with the enlarged map in Patch 7.33 in 2023, to the implementation of both talents and neutral items to put more things in supports’ hands, there’s so much more gold and free stuff to go around nowadays.

Retired pro player and former International champion Aydin “Insania” Sarkohi talked about this in the most recent episode of the All Chat podcast with Austin “Cap” Walsh and Quinn “Quinn” Callahan. The most effective overall strategy in Dota these days is to play slowly and maximize the available farm on such a huge map, rather than pressing one’s advantage to close things out or trying to make a play in order to even the odds in a lopsided situation.

The result? Mid laners can’t just choke entire teams out after winning the laning phase anymore. Whereas this was always the go for them in the past, it’s no longer reasonable to always expect mids to just get 10 kills and a bunch of assists before the 30 minute mark. It’s just way too hard to go for a successful gank as a midlaner with the map being as big as it is, with the opportunity cost of failed gank attempts compounding with each one. It’s even worse for mids trying to get back in the game this way, for pretty much all the same reasons.

Having more gold to farm (and neutral items being free) also means that teams are more equipped in general to deal with the power spikes of most mid heroes. Supports in particular used to be easy prey for mid heroes when they hit level 6 or so, but this is no longer true with the advent of things like Wisdom Shrines, free couriers, Observer Wards, and neutral item enchantments that increase passive gold gain.

Going in blind

There’s also the issue of how ranked All Pick works, and how it puts a lot of pressure on mid players to pick heroes outside of their comfort zones. Because AP is blind pick, there’s always a strong possibility that a mid player goes for one of their usual picks, only to be met with a completely unplayable matchup as soon as they lock in their hero.

I know I’ve groaned out loud more than a few times after seeing Huskar on the other side when I had already picked Ember Spirit, regardless of whether my teammates actually allowed me to get the last pick or not. Getting cheesed out without being able to do anything about it is just part and parcel of playing mid in modern Dota, and it’s all too easy to find oneself in a situation where things essentially become a 4v5 in the laning phase.

If there’s something even more unlikely to be reverted than the map, though, it’s this one. With the implementation of role queue and the frankly toxic “wait and counterpick” drafting meta of old AP, I’m almost sure that blind pick will forever be the system in place until the Dota 2 servers shut down.

These quarters are too close

The lane itself is one last thing I wanted to touch upon. In what I believe was one or two major balance patches over the years, the mid tier 1 towers got moved closer to the end of each side of the lane. This contributes so much to how “safe” you have to play mid these days, as trying to dive the opposing midlaner after harassing them a few times is a very risky proposition. You will draw aggro from the tier 1 tower sooner than later if you dive, and Gabe Newell help you if one of the enemy supports teleports in to punish you.

There’s also the water runes, which have succeeded in making the lane more “stable”, but also quite boring. Harassment doesn’t really mean so much in the first four minutes of the game anymore when there’s plenty of regen to be had with the water runes. I will admit that they do make for interesting moments where supports rotate to contest water runes, but this is exceedingly rare in pubs below a certain MMR bracket.

Playing the lane overall has not nearly been as fun as it used to be. I am in no way advocating for power runes to start spawning at the four minute mark again, because that was always a coinflip that immediately decided the outcome of the lane. But as they are now, water runes have kind of killed the allure of playing mid in the first place, especially when combined with the closer tower proximity.

Dreadful and disheartening

When I mentioned earlier that mid players are still expected to get everything done by themselves, I meant that fully. It’s already hard enough to play the position given Dota 2’s modern design, but somehow the community still demands so much of the role even to this day. I remember the first time I queued for all roles in order to farm role queue tickets, only to get assigned solo mid — previously the most coveted role in public matchmaking.

I was shocked. As a resident of Southeast Asia, where everyone and their grandmother wants to be the next Topias “Topson” Taavitsainen, I never thought I’d see the day I’d get mid instead of my government-mandated support game every five matches. No one wants to play mid anymore, because it’s just such a joyless endeavor now.

There’s only so much that mid players can do given the state of the game. You can’t reasonably get super farmed while securing every rune and devoting time to helping the side lanes at the same time anymore. But despite knowing all of these things, the Dota community is still so quick to apportion blame and report mids that don’t get even just one of these done in any given game of Dota.

Is there any hope of fixing this?

I’ve just spent the last hour or so explaining why many of the concepts that make mid terrible in modern Dota will probably never be changed, but I honestly think there’s room to adjust a few things to make things so much better:

Move the towers back again

Diving each other in the 1v1 matchup has probably always been the most entertaining aspect of the role in the laning phase, and right now the risk of doing so is just disproportionately high. I personally don’t like how there’s just this seemingly impassable area after the ramp, that players can’t step into if they even so much as look at their opponent wrong.

Water runes spawn only once

Not once as in just one per rune spawn spot, but once as in there will only be one round of spawns at three minutes in rather than two pairs at two and four minutes each. I believe this will greatly improve how dynamic the lane matchup is in the 1v1, without making it as snowball-heavy as it was before water runes.

Power runes can stay at the usual timings, but water runes becoming more scarce will force mids to spend more on regen and make harassment matter again. All else fails, mid heroes can still bottle up bounty runes, though this does take time and is less rewarding than water runes.

Gold overhaul

Finally, there’s that gold overhaul that Insania mentioned. I want to make this clear: I do not want supports to become as poor as they were in the mid-2010s. But support welfare over the years has gone maybe one or two steps too far, thus reducing the overall impact of the solo mid position. If we could get economy adjustments that rein things in a little, I believe that it’d do wonders for mid without making support players want to quit the game.

I also do not want them to bring back the easy neutral creep camp that used to be right next to the lane. Allowing certain mids to just nuke down the wave and then do the same to the easy camp is not the solution, and would only serve to make this problem worse. I would be over the moon if they implemented the other changes I mentioned, but this is one thing that they should never do again.