Trilanes - when to change up?

Trilanes are becoming ever more popular as more folk watch Pro Games and see just how effective they can be...the thing is that I've seen a lot of trilanes failing recently in pubs or lower tier organised games.

How does a trilane fail?

Well I consider it a failure if you end up with 3 under levelled heroes (one with plenty of gold) vs reasonably levelled opponents - basically if the lane is against a solo hero and doesn't get kills, the supports end up pretty useless.

I think the crux of this is that you don't need 2 support heroes just standing around soaking up XP (or getting no XP) just on the off-chance that their solo makes a stupid mistake and gets caught out. I'd say generally a 2v1 lane is quite sufficient to guarantee farm and do a reasonable job of zoning out their solo. I guess I just don't like the wasted gold/xp and having players standing round with no real purpose.

The thing is that trilanes work really well against dual hero lanes, so how do you know what the opposition is going to do? Well usually you can tell from their picks - however you might even want to start with a tri-lane in mind, and then have some flexibility to change if needed.

So what options does a spare tri-lane support have?

Well you'd think they could look at switching lane, roaming, or jungling...the problem quite often though is that they're underlevelled and/or lack the necessary skills to do some of these roles. Heroes who make good tri-lane supports aren't necessarily setup for other things. I'm still trying to figure out what the best thing to do in this situation is - going long lane while under levelled and probably against another tri-lane seems somewhat suicidal. Maybe you can gank mid?

I still haven't figured all this out...what do you guys think?

You should roam.A support with disables is really good even without many levels,think about Crystal Maiden.

Counter-ward and Pull like no tomorrow....

Yeah I guess it does depend on what kind of skills your support has - even a level 2 Crystal Maiden can setup kills well. When do you move on from the tri-lane though? Hope for a nearby 2 or 4 minute invisibility rune? You could maybe gank mid, but if they're running a tri-lane too it's probably not viable to try and hit that.

Pulling/stacking does rely on some prep, and even then you have to do a lot of stacking to get a big enough group of creeps that you can hit a few without wiping the whole stack out and having to start again. Also...a few jungle creeps between 2 heroes is really not much to level with.

I'm just mentally comparing how you get on with:

Team A runs a standard trilane, with solo mid and solo offlaner. Safe carry should get close to perfect farm, loses some levels. Trilane supports get minimal gold and levels without kills. Solo offlaner gets difficult access to farm/levels.

Team B runs a dual safe lane, solo mid, jungler and solo/ancient farming offlaner. Against the Team A setup they would seem to be getting a lot more farm/XP while still being able to reasonably zone out A's offlaner.

Just wonder if it's worth looking at some slightly more unusual "trilane supports" who are more multi-purpose - e.g. Enigma (new stun requires less levelling) going initially to lane, but able to go and jungle effectively at the first sign of some downtime. Or maybe Leshrac (good follow up stun anyway) and going for maximum push?

They can camp your pull camp.

Also, how to counter-ward and pull when you're going aggressive trilane?

This is a touchy issue that I'm currently discussing with one of my mates. In my opinion, the supports need to stay there until the carry can self farm (although even at this point, he shouldn't be left completely alone - see tps, wards etc)
Dependant on the carry, some can safely hold the lane around level 6 or earlier, while some take much longer. This is based on a defensive trilane. The supports don't need to get kills to stop the off laner. They need to harass them out of xp range. I play a lot of Dark Seer and Clockwerk off lane and guys trying to kill me doesn't bother me if the lane is pushed up near my tower. It's when they can zone me out by simply standing near the bridge while the carry sits near his tower farming that I have problems. Remember, off laners (in theory) don't NEED gold to be successful. I can run around causing havoc with as little as a soul ring on DS. Your carry will be "underleveled" compared to mid and your off laner (assuming they are both going well) but so will their carry. The whole point of a defensive trilane isn't to get 10 kills in 10 minutes. It's to let the carry sit there and score 100% cs while the offlaner gets minimal xp (ideally).

Now when we talk offensive trilane, the story changes a bit. The goal here is similar (let your carry get last hits) but you also need to disrupt the other teams farm either by getting safe kills, blocking their pull camp or harrassing them out of lane. Once again, the 2 offlaners should be getting more xp and most likely gold then your carry but this needs to be a team change to take advantage of it (ie.putting someone like gyro, lone druid etc on the safe lone solo) These guys lean more towards being your mid game carries while your tri lane carry becomes a farmer (see pub level AM). Even in an offensive trilane, you don't need 10 kills to be successful, you need to deny their carry farm and ideally, xp (much harder to do)

As far as when to roam, it's really a judgement call. I've had plenty of ganks as both mid heroes are racing for a rune, with our mid player calling for the 2 supports. Will this happen every game? probably not. Those supports usually jump back into the trilane or even better, the mid player comes too for a gank on the off laner. The key to this is that the mid laner can't hang around and needs to get back to his own lane ASAP so your not getting further under leveled.

Hope this helps a bit. If you want more info, let me know.

I think the issue here is - do you need 2 supports just to keep an offlaner away? Sure, with the escapes many offlaners have, you maybe need 3 heroes who get a kill...but do you need 2 heroes standing around leeching/losing XP when there isn't a kill on? One reasonable ranged support with an alert carry shouldn't have too many problems keeping an underlevelled offlaner away.

Sure you can guarantee gold for your carry...but levels are important too. The carry loses some potency, and the two supports are pretty well gimped - usually at the time when levels are most important to them in terms of using their powers when they're potent.

What I'm suggesting is starting with a tri-lane, but having a fairly swift switch round if it becomes obvious the 2nd support is unnecessary. The question then is what can be done with them to make them useful/get xp - go and harass mid (soaks xp from there, gets farm, will struggle to kill without rune/mistakes), go jungle (can they?)...if the opposition are also running a tri-lane it seems going long lane wouldn't help.

If you play well two supports in the same lane will make your experience higher than a support on top and another on bot, but trialne supporting needs a lot more knowledge than just babysitting in a dual lane: talking about experience and levels, I always try to make the most out of every single creep pull getting all the exp and gold if the other support isn't very level dependent; getting a Smoke of Deceit also helps in ganks (which give gold and levels) and motivates the other support.

Also, being creative is very important in this case: try to jungle with supports that can do so in a decent way (CM's Frostbite, KotL's Illuminate, Tide's Anchor Smash...) or, against a clear lane, simply leave the lane to the supports and go jungle with carries like Lifestealer, Skeleton King, Troll Warlord or Huskar. There are infinite ways to improve the exp and gold income in your trilane, according to the situation.


Talking about aggressive (hard lane) trilanes, being underlevelled is pretty standard: as long as you prevent the enemy from farming, you should be okay; if you get kills, better. When I aggressive trilane against another trilane I always make sure to have a good carry soloing the safe lane ( Lone Druid, Anti-Mage, Gyrocopter, Outworld Devourer...), it pays off.

I'm assuming you're referring to pub-level games. Most trilanes that I see fail because they don't push hard for kills and end up underleveled - I'd stay away from defensive trilanes unless you know the carry player is good enough to pull it off.

Teams that setup with 2 safelane and constant ganks from a jungler tend to be more successful in pubs, especially if the jungler has a slow or stun (Lifestealer/Enchantress/Chen etc.).

This is true too an extent. Obviously a level 1 PL with 10k work of gear is still going to suck. However, a Pl thats 2 levels under the mid with and extra 6k work of gear should win that fight. Also, you need to compare being under leveled to the other carry. Basically, you only need to need to contend with them in the late game (based on a normal single hard carry line up). When it gets to late game, all things being equal (assuming the score isn't 35-1) it'll carry nw and level vs carry nw and level.



Yes - Off laners are picked for 3 things
1)ability to harass and deny farm
2)ability to escape
3)lack of gold requirement

So looking at dark seer who I believe is the best off laner in the game (feel free to prove me wrong) vs any melee carry with a single support and address the top points.
1)the carry will have to be in ion shell range to get any farm. This means he is taking damage and burning off his regen from level 1. All the while, the Dark seer can sit at the very edge of his XP range (which most good off lane players will do without trouble). Tick
2)If one support comes in for a stun, there are very few stuns in the early game that will keep DS down long enough for the gank. As soon as it breaks, 550 ms and I'm outta there to heal myself. Tick
3)Dark seers only "core item" is a soul ring, so he can spam even more ion shells. After this, it's a pair of boots (optional) and team items (mek/pipe etc). Even if I'm not getting last hits, and you're denying creeps, I'm still getting full xp being a melee hero (1/2 x 2 = 100% xp) meaning my ion shell is getting more and more dangerous.

Now, have 2 supports in theory, helps stop me from getting into xp range (assuming your carry controls the creep wave and you zone DS out). If I try to get too greedy for xp, you can double stun, or stun nuke or whatever to get that high DPS for the kill. ie.lion stun, ss shackles, wail on him till he dies. However, just lion or ss, hits for a 1 sec stun and then I'm getting the hell out of there.

Especially when you move away from low level pubs, off lane players are used to laning against 3 guys. When I come to lane and only see 2 there (with wards providing vision and blocking your pull camp) it's like xmas for me cause I know my laning phase will be easy. Even if you have a jungler, he still needs to be active on the lane, not necessarily for the ganks, but to keep me zoned out of xp range (also, I'm getting 3x the xp your carry is - even vs a 2 man lane, I'm getting double regardless of you denying)