The Possibilities - Advanced Lanes for Dummies

When playing in pub games, you won't find advanced laning such as Tri-Lanes or Solo Hardlanes. You will find the default dual top, and dual bottom lane, with a solo mid. But one day you might want to try it with a group of friends in a 5 stack party, or even in a pub where someone requests it. So here is a general rundown of these advanced laning techniques :

The Tri-Lane

It became popular a while ago, and is still considered a fairly common strategy in the pro scene. This lane setup's main purpose is to give your carry the safest farm possible. To do this, you send two supports with a carry into the safelane (the long lane, bottom for Radiant, Top for Dire). The jobs of the two supports are to harass the enemy (be it one, two or three heroes), pull creeps from neutral camps to keep the lane from pushing to the enemy tower and the most important task, protecting the carry. This lane is usually sustained for the first 10 minutes or so of the game. After that the supports will usually start roaming to go gank other lanes. Remember that a support in this kind of setup would usually get little to no farm, and any cash that you might acquire is spent on support items such as wards.

The Solo Offlane aka Suicide Lane

The Offlane is used when you have a Tri-Lane on the opposite lane. Mostly its used on the Hardlane(the short lane, Top for Radiant, Bottom of Dire).
Its aptly called the suicide lane, because you are usually set against two or three enemy heroes (the enemy's dual or tri-lane), and have a high chance to die. Because of this, there is a set choice of heroes that work the best. Usually those that can farm from far away or safely ( Nature's Prophet's Treants or Dark Seer's Ion Shell), or that has an escape( Mirana with Leap, or Bounty Hunter's Shadow Walk. The main purpose of this lane is to hold the line. Try to farm, gain levels, and keep the enemy from pushing the tower. And doing all this without dying. It's a pretty hard job, but with the right hero its usually not too bad.

Other honorable mentions;
- The dual-mid lane, used when you have a ganking team that needs good mobility and works well together such as Io and Chaos Knight. This lane makes it hard for the solo mid to get last hits, thus reducing their farm. This does leave your Hard Carry with only one support, but when you choose a good babysitter hero with a stun, its usually enough to have him safely farm.
- The aggressive Tri-lane, which has your Tri-lane stationed against the enemy Tri-lane by going to the hardlane. This is generally meant for a hero trio that synergizes well enough together for early kills and pushing.
- I've once seen a four-pusher strategy on the hard-lane, with the carry farming bot and nobody on mid for the initial laning phase. It worked surprisingly well, and ended with them stomping us by winning the game just past the 20 minute mark. Not used in Meta as far as I know.

If you have any other interesting lane-strategies, questions or comments, don't hesitate to post them below.

Thanks for reading. ;)