The five lanes and what each one is actually for

01The map is not symmetrical

Top lane is long and far from everyone, so what happens there is mostly between two people. Bot lane is close to the river and to the dragon, so it is the lane the rest of the map visits. Mid is short and touches both halves, which is why the midlaner decides where the jungler goes. Understanding the geometry explains most of the role differences without anyone having to memorise them.

02The jungler plays a different game

Everyone else has a lane and an opponent. The jungler has a route and a clock. Its currency is arriving somewhere with one more body than the enemy has, and the way it loses is by walking to a lane where nothing was going to happen. If you jungle, the question before every path is not «where can I gank» but «which lane can actually convert my arrival into something».

03Bot lane is two people with one job

The marksman needs gold and time; the support needs to buy both of those with its own body. That is the whole relationship. A support that trades its health for the marksman's farm is doing the job even when the scoreboard says otherwise, and a marksman that walks into a fight it did not need to take throws away everything the support paid for.

• Top: win or lose alone, then be the body nobody wants to fight.
• Jungle: arrive where arriving changes something.
• Mid: the fastest hands on the map decide where the map goes.
• Bot and support: one buys time, the other spends it.