The Mid Lane: Mid Lane Lux

VS

Monday night, March 3rd, in preparation for the upcoming tournament, my team, Kentucky Fried Yordle, decided to queue up for a 5v5 game of League of Legends. Top lane was Dan Lien on Garen, Kyle Fisk jungled as Shyvana, Drew and Shane were ADC and Support on Caitlyn and Leona, and all that was left was a mid laner.

That's where I come in. When I am around, I am the designated mid laner for KFY. The enemy team had chosen Akali, a bursty mid/top lane assassin blindly into our team. Our team composition had a good amount of hard engage in the form of Garen, Leona, and Shyvana, but we lacked burst and had minimal poke in Caitlyn's case. I wanted to choose a champion that could survive Akali's early aggression in lane as well as have a significant impact on team-fights later on in the game.

If you want to watch some pro players on Akali or Lux against the other, follow this link!
http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=lux%20vs%20akali%20mid&sm=3

If you'd rather hear how my game went, keep reading!

As I looked at it in champion select, I had two choices. One was significantly better than the other. Gragas is a champion with great health and mana sustain in the early game thanks to his W and his passive ability, making it easy for him to stay in lane against a champion like Akali. Shane was our last pick, and in draft, you can trade champions with members of your team. He and I share a similar champion pool, so I picked him Leona and we were going to try to counterpick their mid, who turned out to be Akali. I wanted to play the Fat Man.

Obvious counterpick. Great sustain. Great burst! Overall a good champion.
Of course, Shane doesn't own Gragas. SO, I went to my second choice, Lux.

Lux, as I have discussed, it a great poke champion that can also burst down a single target well. Lux is a great choice against Akali because of three of her four abilities, though it is still a skill matchup. Lux's Q is a snare, which will limit Akali's mobility significantly. Her W is a shield that hits her twice, giving her a good buffer and literal gray area to survive Akali's burst. Akali's W creates an area where she goes invisible, but can still take damage. Lux's E creates an area that slows an enemy that can be re-activated to explode, dealing damage to all targets in that area. Coincidentally, the areas that each champion puts down have the same(ish) radius, making it easy for Lux to hit Akali with some good damage EVEN IF SHE IS INVISIBLE in that area.

Interesting notes about this game.
1. I ended the game 6-0-6
2. The enemy team surrendered at 22 minutes
3. I was able to get first blood on Akali early on because she attacked me while a cannon wave was pushed to her tower.
This is significant because when there are minions in the area and you begin attacking your enemy, the minions will stop fighting one another and begin focusing on you. I was able to put good damage onto Akali with my snare plus the burst from my E, and the minions did the rest of the work for me.