How do decide between dual lane and trilane?

[Negatif]

Wondering if some good players could explain when it is best to go offensive or defensive trilane or dual lane?

I play support and I'm not sure how to decide what lane to go to.

Do you want to go to the lane with your strongest or most impactful core? Or do you want to go to the lane with the core who doesn't have an escape mechanism? Or do you want to go to the lane where there's the best chance to get enemy kills? Or does it depend somehow on the enemies in the lane? Or something else entirely lol. And how do you decide these things in a short amount of time? I know every hero and their abilities but I often can't tell where the best banking potential is.

Any advice is much appreciated!

[Delfino]

Depends what carries you have. If you have a hard carry like AM or Spectre, go tri-lane, but the solo oflaner has to be a proper oflaner with good escape or takiness like SK, Clock, Bristle, Tide, BH etc. If you have 2 carries like for example Sven and PA it is usually better to play dual lanes but that's not always the case. For example if you have 3 disables like for example Sven, Lion, Shaman I would go tri-lane to secure some kills early while for example PA can still solo a bit (lasthitting with a dagger). But be ready to rotate and help her especially if the tri-lane doesn't work as expected.

[lulborne]

BH offlane? wut

[Delfino]

He can do oflane pretty well leeching exp from lane and camps if they try to pull. Not much in terms of lasthitting though.

[lulborne]

one sentry and you can't do anything there.

[Negatif]

So it mostly depends on your own core choices rather than on what the enemy chooses?

[GriffyniX]

Its very hard to have a successful trilane in pubs if you are on solo queue.
But if you are playing with friends, that is viable given that there are good synergy between selected heroes.

[Negatif]

That makes sense. I have had successful trilanes in pubs where there's 3 stuns and we get a fair number of early kills but I feel what often happens is the offline gets sacked and somehow the safe lane carry we helped can't farm or buys dumb items and the safe lane carry on the other side just demolishes our carry anyway, even if ours had a ton more kills from the trilane.

[lulborne]

In a world where carry players are not idiots and also not the majority of the players and that people actually respect whoever marked first and do not pick another fricking carry to contest farm with his/her team's offlaner, trilanes are probably something you would always want.

the two supports working together can really have a huge impact in the lane phase. one could harass while the other pulls... whenever the opportunity arises, you can combo your spells to get kills... they won't leech xp and rotate as soon as they see an opening... let's be honest though. in low to mid skill games in pubs, this will not happen often, rarely in fact.

in any case, if your team actually get to pick two supports, you will want a trilane depending on your carry and their offlaner. some offlaners are hard to zone and it doesn't help that some carries are very weak in their early levels. in this case, get your supps there and have them try their best to at the very least zone the offlaner out of the xp zone.

otherwise, duo lane is ok. you can also go for an agressive duo. CM and Sven or Ursa can do ok on their own in the lane since their spells work together well per example. You can have the other support roaming or maybe doing a duo offlane to try to shut down their carry early. I don't know, it really depends.

[Sixe史吏]

Originally posted by wut a story mork:

In a world where carry players are not idiots and also not the majority of the players and that people actually respect whoever marked first and do not pick another fricking carry to contest farm with his/her team's offlaner, trilanes are probably something you would always want.

Killing trilane is good in 3v1 and against 3v2 where the 2 offlaners also use kill lane because the extra hero can interrupt spell combos. Most trilanes usually fail vs. 3v2 harass lanes like Undying+KotL, DS+Riki/Weaver, Axe/SK + Dazzle/Omni, Viper + Veno, etc. Kill trilane's kill attempts will rarely land a clean blow, and a save trilane to survive their harass usually leads to an underleveled carry. In that case, it's usually better to try 2v2 or 1v2 to allow the carry better levels while accepting he will lose farm.

Save/harrass Trilanes vs. a solo offlaner is not always the best. Many often lack the damage to zone the offlaner once he gets levels (like 3 melee vs. tide/omni, mostly physical damage vs. timber, for example) or lack the speed to stop the offlaner from pulling the creep behind T1 at minute 0:00. To get those levels, many solo offlaners are willing to sacrifice 1-2 deaths to ensure the offlaner's creeps are closer to his T1 tower so they can leech EXP.