Introduction
We are going to cover today How To Always Win Lane By Positioning As A Mage in LoL. Mages are Champions that possess the power to damage and overwhelm enemies from a distance with their spells. With magic damage, mages often invest in items that can allow them to cast spells more often and with a more significant impact.
The standard counter to most Mage Champions is that their abilities are often avoidable somehow. Thus, positioning as a Mage is perhaps the most critical skill to master.
When Mages can position effectively at each stage of the game, not only will they live longer, but they can dish out more damage and use abilities multiple times as a result. If you would like to know more about the mage class you can find more information here.
The Purpose of a Mage
Most mages tend to prioritize killing enemies with their powerful abilities. However, they often possess the power to control the flow of a fight with their abilities in unique ways. They can control enemy movement using abilities to zone or apply crowd-controlling effects when particular abilities hit enemies.
Although Mages are often congruent with multiple purposes, the ideal goal of each Mage in League of Legends can be determined by their subclass.
The Subclasses of Mages
Artillery Mages
Artillery Mages are the longest-range Mages that use their massive range advantage to poke down enemies over time. Their weakness is in close quarters, where enemies can close the gap because they often have little self-peel and mobility and will be highly squishy! The most referenced artillery Mages are Lux, Vel’Koz, Xerath, and Ziggs.
Vel’Koz
Battlemages
Battlemages are a subclass of Mages that are usually the shortest-range Mages but can deal massive amounts of damage in a fight over time! As a result of this playstyle, these Mages tend to have higher defensive stats than the other two subclasses and have methods of sustaining through long and grueling battles. The most common Battlemages are Anivia, Ryze, Swain, Cassiopeia, Malzahar, Viktor, and Vladimir.
Cassiopeia
Burst
The final subclass of Mage is the burst Mages. These Mages will ideally lock down and kill a valuable target in fractions of a second. While many of these Mages are considered Assassins, they have unique characteristics that don’t entirely fit that criterion. These Mages are most potent when all their abilities are available and executable in swift (and correct) succession.
If they cannot successfully burst down an enemy, they are incredibly vulnerable to a counterattack. The most common burst Mages are Ahri, Annie, Orianna, Brand, Syndra, LeBlanc, Veigar, and Zoe.
Brand
Now that we have established the different types of Mages and their unique playstyles, we can interpret effective positioning in each portion of a match with each subclass. First, and perhaps the most uniform, the early game.
Early-Game Positioning
Artillery
Artillery Mages have mana problems despite their range advantage in most matchups in the early game. Often, their primary damaging ability is also their wave clearing ability. Artillery mages could easily get caught out in the lane without sufficient mana allocation. Consider Xerath, for example.
Xerath can only use his Q ability (Arcanopulse) in lane until about level 4 before he needs to recall or use biscuits for more mana! With his mana regeneration being 1.6 mana per second, he needs to invest in a Doran’s Ring and Biscuits to survive longer than that in the lane.
Thankfully, Xerath has a solid passive that allows him to sustain throughout the early game much more manageable than other artillery mages. His passive provides him with a portion of his mana back when basic attacking an enemy periodically.
Nevertheless, regardless of the type of artillery Mage you play, it’s crucial to land the skill shots when attempting to poke enemies out of the lane. The laning phase of the artillery Mage is a delicate balancing act of the wave to minimize the matchup’s ability to influence the map while not being vulnerable to a gank and staying away from farming under the tower to avoid being dove.
When done correctly, an artillery Mage should end the laning phase with more CS than their matchup and have taken more tower plates. Ideally, the enemy would also have no kill participation because they have been under tower farming the entire laning phase.
Your aim as an artillery mage should be to keep your health above the enemies by occasionally poking them when they go to last hit minions. Not only will this provide a health and agency advantage in the lane, but it will also make hitting the skill shot easier when their movements to last hit minions are apparent. In turn, this will reduce the mana you need to spend for the same result and reduce their gold income as they begin to play more passively in the lane and can even become more susceptible to ganks!
Poke Enemies Attempting to CS
Battlemages
In the early game, battlemages often struggle with mana problems, but for different reasons than artillery mages! As a battlemage, you can provide a lot more help to your jungler than artillery mages because of your more sustained and reliable damage.
However, your priority is essential to winning your lane because of your crowd-controlling abilities and more focused damage. This means your goal in the lane will be to prioritize setting up for a gank, roam to other lanes, or respond to those jungle skirmishes. To do this, battlemages often struggle with resource allocation because they want to exert pressure on the enemy laner by taking good trades.
While this can certainly work, it requires extensive knowledge of how trades will play out before you begin them. This knowledge only comes with countless hours of learning each matchup for each Champion you want to play. Alternatively, you can learn to adapt to the state of the game. This means, instead of shoving relentlessly into your opponent to gain priority or to constantly trade to get priority, stick to the guarantees and work with your teammates.
Perhaps the biggest thing that players struggle with as battlemages is their thirst for blood! They are like Assassins, where they feel that if they are not making moves, they will be out-scaled when it’s not like that at all! Battlemages are very consistent and reliable because of their solid power curve as the game progresses.
They aren’t the strongest early, but they certainly aren’t the weakest either, and it stays that way throughout the game. As such, it’s more important to pick your battles wisely (hence the name). The best advice battlemage players can take is to play around their jungler. Always pay attention to where your jungler is, what they are doing, how you can help them, and where the enemy jungler is. If you have an opportunity to help your jungler, you should. I
f you don’t have a chance to help them and the enemy jungler seems to be pathing for a gank mid, don’t become an easy target! Battlemages are a consistently reliable win condition in all types of games. Try your best not to fall behind and do the little things to help your teammates get ahead.
Position Towards Your Jungler In Lane To Get There First
Burst
Finally, the early game on burst Mages is quite technical. Of course, it varies with the degree of skill required to play the Champion, but burst Mages should aim to farm as evenly as possible with their opponent’s and take as short of trades as possible with their matchup. The inherent nature of their abilities allows them to get large sums of damage if one ability lands. Without overcommitting, chunk them down, and ask for a gank.
The worst-case scenario is that your jungler ignores your lane, and your enemy stays in the lane while low on health. In this case, you still have lane priority, so it’s still all fine and dandy! In the best-case scenario, you have resource priority that you can leverage to take control of the wave, slowly push the wave to their turret, dive with your jungler, and deny multiple waves of gold and experience. It sounds easy, and it really is! All you need to do is not overextend!
Position For Short Favorable Trades As A Burst Mage
Mid-Game Positioning
Artillery
The mid-game of the artillery Mage is quite simple but quite effective simultaneously! The artillery Mages should always aim to play around with their teammates to ensure they can maneuver around the map safely. When appropriate, artillery Mages should attempt to prioritize their lane to move to an objective before it spawns. By moving first, you should set up vision with your team so that the enemy team must face-check you if they want to contest the objective.
This is optimal for an artillery Mage because it allows you to open fire on them as they pass through warded choke points. The longer they commit to contesting, the more damage you can dish out, and the more guaranteed the objective and potential fight will become! Make sure you are doing this safely where your teammates are close to you and can protect you from aggression!
Battlemages
The battlemage’s job in the mid-game is to set up picks, control key areas of contention, and dish out as much damage in a fight as possible. The mid-game of the battlemage is quite tricky because you are likely the most reliable source of area-of-effect damage and crowd control. Ideally, you can either use your focused ability damage to set up a pick and kill a target rotating between lanes or before an objective.
You may be better looking for a flank or a position to wait for the enemy to use cooldowns before moving in. The battlemages best position is always wherever they can deal as much damage as possible throughout the fight or where they can threaten and zone out the most significant damage threats of the enemy team! Champions like Swain, Ryze, Vladimir, and Rumble make for excellent flanking battlemages that can easily show themselves to the enemy backline carries and force them to retreat to a safer position. Ultimately, this can buy enough time to win the fight outright or take control of the objective without even using an ability!
Position To Flank Enemies As Battlemage
Burst
The mid-game of a burst Mage is like a battlemage in many ways! The most significant difference is that it’s easier to do everything the battlemage can do, but the slightest mistake can cause you to be caught out and killed instantly!
While burst Mages can dive into a team to kill a carry from a good angle and get out after, they will likely die in the process if they fail to execute the kill! As such, the burst Mage should prioritize denying enemy vision to a higher degree than the other Mages. They should also ensure they keep track of the enemies’ abilities to lock them down or deny a kill from them!
Late-Game Positioning
Artillery
The late game of the artillery Mage is the most fun by far! The most challenging part of the late game is making sure you don’t die. This means only roaming around the map with teammates and playing around vision. If you can do this as an artillery Mage, the only other thing to do is make sure you are patient with your abilities and use them efficiently to not run out of mana! Other than that, enjoy dealing half of a carry’s health from a screen away when you land just one ability!
Xerath Outranges Vision
Battlemages
The late game of a battlemage is the most likely position where you can hardly carry your team if you have a lead. As the battlemage subclass is the most diverse, you aren’t necessarily going to need to stay around your team, but often it will be more worth it to follow up or flank on a fight than to be farming or split pushing in a side lane!
Burst
The late-game plan of a burst mage should be to continue setting up picks like the mid-game; however, you will almost always be able to kill the carry enemies even if you miss an ability or two! The most important thing to keep track of at this stage of the game is what resources the specific carry Champion must negate your damage like Flash, Heal, Exhaust, Quick Silver Sash, Xayah
Ultimate, etc. If you can keep track of those critical abilities, the rest of the plan for burst Mages in the late game is to play out of enemy vision. If a burst Mage is not in vision, it’s as good as being everywhere at the same time (applying loads of pressure for free)!
Conclusion
The main goal for mages, regardless of their subtype, is to deal damage and zone enemies. Of course, depending on your subclass of Mage, this can be done in different ways. Artillery Mages will poke enemies from afar and zone enemies from choke points. Battlemages will do this by playing around the vision to get a flank, zone enemies, and use their massive damage-over-time and area-of-effect abilities to destroy them.
Finally, burst Mages will use their ability to deal thousands of damage in fractions of a second to zone enemies from areas without vision and quickly capitalize on small mistakes from the enemy carries when it matters most! Whatever your playstyle is, and however you prefer to position in each stage of the game, there’s a Mage in League of Legends for you!
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