What's up with the Offlane?

Position three is one of the least popular roles right now. Between very strong carry heroes and high-sustain position five supports, it is hard for Offlaners to pressure their lane or sometimes even farm. Add to it an occasional position four grief pick and you get a role with a lot of responsibility and very little actual power.

Historically, it is not something new. Back in the day the “hard lane” was called that for a reason. However, we also used to expect a lot less from our offlaners.

Nowadays, there are superstar position three offlaners like Collapse, ATF and 33 who make the role look downright oppressive, but out of three of them, I believe only Collapse’s success can be consistently replicated in pubs. And even then, it is far from guaranteed.

Figuring out a playstyle

Three current top tier Offlaners each have a very distinct playstyle.

ATF is a carry from the offlane. Sounds great on paper, unlikely to work in pubs for a multitude of reasons. The most important and the most obvious one is that no one on your team of randoms is going to be defaulting to supporting you in the endeavour.

Your carry won’t be a sacrificial tempo-setter and your position four won’t necessarily be playing an aggressive lane trader. The end result is most likely going to be a poor laning stage, lost map control and very little space to farm for the team as a whole.

It is also worth noting that ATF is an abnormally strong laner even by professional standards. Because of it he can make this “carry from the offlane” concept work even in the situations where it shouldn’t. Unless you are confident that you are that much better than everyone else in the lobby, replicating his success is not going to be trivial.

33 is quite different. He plays almost any hero in a way that cuts off the enemy team from a part of the map. Again, this is going to be very hard to replicate in pubs.

A player needs an extreme level of map awareness to play like 33 does. On top of it, a player needs to understand exactly what item will provide the highest survivability boost, while also applying pressure in lane.

Moreover, your team actually has to capitalise on this to make it work. Again, unlikely to happen in pubs, where rotations are slower and heroes frequently show on the map unnecessarily. You can create all the space in the world by taking away a huge chunk of the map, but your other cores will still occasionally and unnecessarily overextend, nullifying all your efforts.

That leaves us with Collapse and we feel like his default brawling, initiator playstyle is what fits the pubs the most.

It is the most historically accurate playstyle for the role as well. Going in first, initiating the fight and soaking up spells is not always glamorous, but it is what is often necessary for the team.

To make it work, especially when the 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 the big power spike. However, Blink Dagger doesn’t provide you with any extra stats or survivability and depending on when you get it can be a bit of a trap.

That is why a lot of Offlane players experiment with alternative progressions. There is, of course, a regular Blade Mail build on heroes like Axe and Legion Commander, but we are also seeing a lot of sustain items being prioritised.

The most interesting, recent one is Phylactery. Built from HP and Mana regen components, it can do wonders on heroes who want to win their lane, while also having farming and ganking options available. Having early HP regen from 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 doesn’t take away from playmaking potential early on.

Weaving in and out

Learning to survive the engagements is another big part of the Offlaners job. Fights are how you get gold and XP and your net worth is usually going to be high enough to matter for the enemy that scores a kill.

Not overcommitting to kills and making sure you get to participate in round two 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 do Offlaners want to keep on fighting with their right-clicks. Admirable, but generally ineffective, unless you are very far ahead in terms of gold and levels.

Naturally that doesn’t 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 the changes to some items and the overall meta, we feel like the best Offlane heroes are the ones who can start farming jungle early on.

We genuinely feel like a lot of carry heroes are lane-overtuned. Between free Desolate + Dispersion Spectre, Phylactery 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. And there is 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 vs Offlane balance? Do you feel like Position one heroes are a bit overtuned in general? Share your thoughts in the comment section below.