Position three is currently one of the least popular roles in the game. Between powerful carry heroes and supports with high sustainability, offlaners struggle to pressure their lanes or even farm safely. When you add the occasional bad pick from your position four teammate, you end up with a role that carries a lot of responsibility but very little actual power.
Historically, this is not a new situation. In the past, the “hard lane” was called that for a reason. However, expectations for offlaners were much lower back then. Nowadays, we have superstar players like Collapse, ATF, and 33 who make the role look incredibly strong. However, out of these three, I believe only Collapse’s style can be consistently copied in public matches. Even then, success is not guaranteed.
Understanding Different Playstyles
The current top-tier offlaners each have a very distinct way of playing the game. ATF plays like a carry from the offlane position. This sounds great on paper, but it is unlikely to work in public matches for several reasons. The most important one is that random teammates will not automatically support you in this effort. Your position one player likely won’t play a sacrificial tempo-setter, and your position four teammate might not play aggressively to trade hits in the lane. The result is often a poor laning stage, lost map control, and very little space for the team to farm.
It is also worth noting that ATF is an incredibly strong laner, even by professional standards. Because of this, he can make the “carry from the offlane” concept work even in situations where it shouldn’t. Unless you are confident that you are significantly better than everyone else in the match, replicating his success will not be easy.
33 is quite different. He plays almost any hero in a way that cuts the enemy team off from a part of the map. Again, this is very hard to replicate in public matches. A player needs extreme map awareness to play like 33. On top of that, the player must understand exactly which item provides the highest survivability while also applying pressure in the lane. Moreover, your team actually has to capitalize on this to make it work. This is unlikely to happen in public matches, where rotations are slower and heroes frequently show on the map unnecessarily. You can create space by taking away a huge chunk of the map, but your other cores will still occasionally overextend, nullifying all your efforts.
That leaves us with Collapse. We feel like his default brawling and initiator playstyle fits public matches the most. It is the most historically accurate playstyle for the role. Going in first, initiating the fight, and soaking up spells is not always glamorous, but it is often necessary for the team. To make it work, especially when lane victory is not guaranteed, there are several things you can do.
Surviving the Lane
For most conventional offlane heroes, getting the Blink Dagger is a major power spike. However, the Blink Dagger does not provide any extra stats or survivability. Depending on when you get it, it can be a bit of a trap. That is why many offlane players experiment with alternative item progressions. There is, of course, the regular Blade Mail build on heroes like Axe and Legion Commander, but we are also seeing a lot of sustain items being prioritized.
The most interesting recent item is Phylactery. Built from HP and Mana regeneration components, it can do wonders for heroes who want to win their lane while also having farming and ganking options available. Having early HP regeneration from a Ring of Health also makes a huge difference. We strongly recommend trying it out on appropriate offlane heroes. It is a relatively cheap item that provides great stats, builds from good laning components, and can even scale well into the late game depending on the matchups. Moreover, the slow on the item can be considered a gap-closer in its own right, so it does not take away from playmaking potential early on.
Weaving In and Out of Fights
Learning to survive engagements is another big part of the offlaner’s job. Fights are how you get gold and experience, and your net worth is usually high enough to matter for the enemy that scores a kill. Not overcommitting to kills and making sure you get to participate in the second round of the fight is paramount to a successful offlane progression. Blink in to initiate, unload your nukes if you have any, and then usually try to disengage until your Blink comes off cooldown.
Way too often, offlaners want to keep fighting with their right-clicks. This is admirable but generally ineffective unless you are very far ahead in terms of gold and levels. Naturally, that does not apply to high-commitment heroes like Mars or Tidehunter. But even with them, surviving for an extra Spear or Gush can be a huge difference maker. Your job as a conventional offlaner is to start a fight, not to end it.
Good Heroes in the Current Meta
Finally, we would like to talk about what heroes are good right now. With changes to some items and the overall meta, we feel like the best offlane heroes are the ones who can start farming in the jungle early on. We genuinely feel like a lot of carry heroes are lane-overtuned. Between free Desolate and Dispersion on Spectre, Phylactery on Phantom Lancer and Clinkz, or Drow Ranger in general, it is very hard to win your lane, even with good supports.
So, make the usual Plan B your Plan A. Heroes like Axe, Tidehunter, and Centaur Warrunner will never be completely out of the game, as they can always find at least some farm. Even heroes like Pudge can be decent, specifically because they can always get their core items or team auras. There is also an alternative in Visage, who is one of the few offlane heroes who can out-nuke the enemies in lane and actually win it.
All in all, though, we feel like the viable offlane pool is currently quite small, and it gets increasingly smaller as the level of play increases. What do you think of the current carry versus offlane balance? Do you feel like position one heroes are a bit overtuned in general?
