Meta, and being a conformist

Suffice to say, the meta game "standard" is tested and it works. The way it works now is that you have two solo lanes, a jungler and a carry/support duo lane. The way this is set up, it means that there's two solo lanes that aren't getting cut EXP rates as well as three champions getting all the creep score in a lane.

There are a lot more in depth reasons why the current meta is in this typical format, but I'll get to them as I get to their sub section.

Top Lane
This lane is my favorite. It's deemed the AFK Farm lane. The goal of this lane is to farm. Sounds pretty simple right? You're away from most action, so the typical summoner spell to take in this lane while operating in as a team is Teleport with whatever filler, typically Ignite or Exhaust or Heal if you want to bait enemies.

Top lane offers very little map control, and since most of the champions that go there are alone for the entire duration, you send bulky champions that have decent sustain in one form or another. This is also why solo top is often refered to as the Bruiser Lane, which I'll get more in depth in the bruiser sub section, suffice to say they're the new form of off-tanks, they can initiate but most importantly they can deal damage.

When in Top Lane, it's important to farm. You farm all day and night, and if you get an early advantage, then you steal jungle camps from your enemy's jungle. This is important because it denies the enemy team experience and gold, which gives you and your team even more of an advantage.

Top Lane often contests for lane control as the game progresses, and if you win an early advantage, you go steal Red Lizard buff or Golems, in that order of importance. If you're purple side, be sure to coordinate with your jungler and your mid to have the buff ready for you to get it when you get back or protect it from an enemy champion.

Top Lane's most redeeming quality is that it's a very threatening lane to play in, if you push too hard then you leave yourself very open to ganks from the enemy jungler, so it's a hard lane to play if you don't know how to either farm at tower or keep a lane frozen. The path from river to turrets is much longer than it is in middle lane, and you don't have a support to save you if things go wrong.

Top Lane is often won or lost early on, and if you accidentally feed the enemy top lane red lizard buff, then they'll generally win the lane. Red buff provides a slow (to help ensure kills) as well as a True Damage DoT that applies with every basic attack. In most cases, whoever wins early wins the lane and forces the enemy to farm in a dangerous spot without turret protection or completely abandon their lane until there's a large wave approaching their inner turret.

Pros:
* Dedicated farm lane, it's acceptable to ignore a team fight or an escape down middle lane until after you destroy your enemy's first turret. this doesn't mean don't be aware, if your jungler is in trouble go save them. That's a larger job in part for mid, but if the jungler dies by the time mid gets there they'll be at a disadvantage if mid followed them and it's not as likely for your laning opponent to follow you as a top.

* The characters that play this role typically build bulky as a secondary initatior, but most importantly they have a lot of damage output to force a Ranged AD carry out of the fight.

* This lane typically 'wins the game' as the MVP in late game, and doesn't start to become a massive threat until mid game unless they snowball, in which most champions build more offensively than defensively and become primary targets.

* Generally a solo lane, so your Experience isn't split.

Cons:
* Long distance from the middle of the lane to the turret, with poor play you'll often feed.

* If you die twice, you typically have to farm at tower or else continue to die.

* You wont get blamed often if your team gets counter jungled, but it's your job to protect it by keeping the minion wave frozen at mid or clearing it as fast as your opponent and following them.

* Needs to have superb map awareness for top side jungle and top side river alley. Beyond that, you need to learn when to go in for Dragon in early and mid game and know when to teleport into a ward to turn the tides of a team fight and not just feed.

* In more organized group play, you'll sometimes get the duo lane to come to your lane instead, which if you can't play passively and benefit, you'll lose your lane and feed.

* Often the target of enemy junglers because of the long escape path and the fact that if you lose your lane it's harder to farm in other places and are a vulnerable target..

Middle Lane
This is the lane in the middle, which you typically send your AP carries to. The reason being is that a typical Mage (or previously known as AP Carry) is squishier than a fat girl's tits. This lane is also given to AP carries because they have much higher burst potential and they're close to both blue buffs which are typically donated after 7 minutes.

Middle lane is the most important lane for many reasons;

* They're in the middle of the map, so it's their job to have the best map awareness. They need to go top or bottom to ensure kills or shouldn't be in mid. Period.

* They need to keep an eye on their jungler, if their jungler gets caught in their jungle they need to either go and help gank or help counter gank.

* They need to steal blue Wraith. This happens as soon as you put down your first ward on your bottom side wraith entrance, this denies a large amount of gold to your enemy jungler. Typically by level 9 you try to farm and protect your own wraiths.

* They need to be aware of enemy junglers and their general patterns, most junglers start wolves-> blue, a few others start wraiths->red and gank as soon as they hit level 2.

* They get Flash baited easily, which means if you flash and have no ward protection, then you can be potential feed.

* Middle lane champions tend to snowball the hardest, and they will win the game in mid game and hold their threat up into late game and wont fall off until late late game.

Bottom Lane
This is typically a duo lane for one large reason, Dragon control. If you have a duo lane on bottom, you can collapse four champions in on a dragon fight instead of three with a single lane on bottom. One of the largest reasons why this is a support/carry lane is because all the CS can go to the carry while the support will sacrifice themself to enhance or protect the carry.

Since the EXP is split in this lane, you tend to send an AD carry here because they tend to scale better with items instead of skill ranks. With a support here, they can often zone out enemy opposition and allow their carry to get a near perfect creep score.

This lane is typically only ganked if one side pushes too far. The gank potential in gold is high, especially since it opens the team to take dragon, which is worth 750 global gold. As the game progresses, the supports tend to sacrifice themselves more if they can't flat out escape with their carry in tact, so they become worth less and less.

This lane doesn't need superb map awareness, and they don't typically win their lane early. This leaves less room for stealing jungle to preserve the middle river lane freeze. This is more or less the beginner lane, this is the best lane to start as a beginner because you can either learn about zone control or the importance of last hitting.

Most of the time at about level 9, the Support will begin to Roam to other lanes which will either initiate a premature team fight phase or help get some kills and force the enemy support out of their lane. This leaves the carry to take care of the lane and that's when the pushing stops and the shoving begins.

For the most part, Support characters are either the first or second in and the first to die. They never get kills. In the case of Sona, she flashes in and ults the enemies bunched up which provides an opening for the tank to make a stronger initiate and the fight to begin. In the case of Janna, she'll stay back and reset a team fight with her ult if need be.

The ranged AD carry is strong in mid game but typically don't shine until late game when their kit is complete and they can snipe out targets in a matter of seconds. In the case of late late game and the metagame of super tankiness, they can fall off in late late game but they still tend to push structures the fastest.

The alternative to the support/carry lane is the kill lane. This is a lane that, for the most part originated with Leona and Jarvan IV, they have massive amounts of CC as well as spike damage output.

Kill lanes typically have a pseudo support that will zone enemies but offers little to no lane sustain for their partner, their strength and gold income relies on dominating their lane early and getting a large amount of kills, kill lanes specialize in 20 minute surrenders, through and through.

Jungling , this is generally a very threatening or tanky character with a good amount of CC or just flat damage output that instead of going to lanes, clears jungle camps to give themselves experience and gold. There are three primary factors behind choosing a jungler;

* Clear Speed, this is how fast that they clear jungle camps. Most start slow then can clear their jungle much quicker.

* Sustain, this is what determines how long they can stay in the jungle before they have to go back to base. A few champions have very powerful sustain in early game, but most champions can stay in the jungle as long as they want as soon as they get Wriggles or Hextech Revolver, depending on the type of Jungler.

* Crowd Control, this is primarily a deciding factor on ganks. They hop into lane with red buff and some form of CC, ranging from a taunt, a stun or even just a slow, and then all allied laners will jump on them while they try to escape.

For a few examples;
- Warwick has slow clear speed, high sustain and a powerful CC every minute. His primary nuke deals high damage with a decent range, he can improve his speed if an enemy champion is below 50% health and increase allied attack speed. He's a very powerful jungler, but gets down if he gets counter jungled and can't get a few successful ganks.

- Shyvana has a fast clear speed (see: very fast), low sustain until wriggles then high sustain with her Q and no CC aside from a push-back. She has one of the fastest clear speeds in the game (comparable to Skarner and Udyr) and, while she doesn't have any CC besides activation of her ultimate, she deals a very high amount of damage and can counter jungle and starve the enemy jungler.

- Udyr, has a medium to fast clear speed based on tiger or phoenix, has great sustain with turtle stance and has a stun every 6~ seconds with a speed boost whenever he comes into lane. Tiger has a slower clear speed until after Wriggles, and Phoenix has a very fast clear speed starting at level 1. His ganks are very threatening and he puts a lot of pressure on the enemy team as soon as the 2 minute mark.

- Karthus is a specialty jungler, he has slow to fast clear speed but is completely dependant on keeping blue buff and has a hard time counter jungling. He has very little to no sustain. He does have, as his most redeeming quality, a massive slowing wall as well as a high damage ultimate that hits every enemy champion on the map. This allows him to stay in jungle and assist with ganks or just catch enemies after they go beyond a tower. He can also continue to cast after he dies, which gives him a good bit of pressence.

Just about any champion can jungle these days, but some are much faster than others. When choosing a Jungler, try not to pick your favorite champion, but one that is currently a powerful selection. After that point, just try to focus on either clearing your jungle and ganking, or clearing your jungle and stealing the big mobs in enemy jungle camps. It's profitable to starve your enemies of Exp and Gold by taking just the big monster in a camp, since it's worth much more gold, but when your enemies stop taking their own jungle to spite you, then start fully clearing until you've pushed into their inner and inhibitor turrets, where that precious experience becomes much more valuable.

Pros:
- Freedom, you get to go wherever you please.

- You get to break the monotony of walking back and forth in a lane and keeping a lane frozen in the middle of the river and auto attack to your heart's content.

- You'll make the most plays out of anybody on your team because you'll be the deciding factor in most lane fights during early and mid game.

- You help mold the late game by how well you play, you will be the biggest factor in deciding a 20 minute surrender or a 30 minute pub stomp.

Cons:
- It's always your fault if you lose. Even if your allies pushed too far and didn't allow for ganks, or your allies didn't place wards, or your allies wasted buffs, it's always your fault.

- Requires the most map awareness. If somebody overextends, punish them.

- You'll be the second most active warder on your team.

- Very low gold income, so you buy budget items such as Aegis of the Legion, if you can't counter jungle efficiently you'll also need to pick up gp10 items.

- Because you don't need early lane dominance, your quints will almost always be movement speed, which cost 2k a piece. Painful!