Improving your Laning - Mini Guide

Hey guys I translated a nice writedown from my friend BlackSteal so enjoy and learn :P

Original post by: BlackSteal
Translated by: Candy Panda

The Laning phase is one of the most important aspects in LoL and its early game.
Laning usually includes the static remaining on a lane, with a few exeptions. Also laning can have a heavy impact on the later game due to snowballing.
While laning you can run into different scenarios which I will explain one for one. The typical lanes in LoL consists of 1 Toplaner, 1 Midlaner and 2 Botlaners and 1 Jungler. I will use this as standart for the following examples.

If your enemy team decides to play without jungler try to use your jungle advantage and play aggresively since a jungler allows you to turn a 2v2 or 1v1 fight to a 2v3 or 1v2 fight. Also he can hold the lane for you if you have to go back so no experience is wasted.

General thoughts before the game:
The game starts.
Pre Laning Phase

Against which champion I have to lane and am I able to do so?
You always have the choice to swap the lane with your teammates but always remember to keep the 1-1-2 sheme.
If you know beforehand that you wont be able to lane against the champion you will probably face then try to swap your lane or use certain tricks to hold yourself as good as you can
Which of the enemy champions can have influence on my lane and which of my allies have?
You should basically always rely on the fact that the enemy will react properly while your team doesnt, that way you wont encounter situations where you rely too much on your teammates and get dissapointed.
Ezreal, Gankplank, Karthus, Pantheon, Shen, Soraka, Twisted Fate all of those can have direct influence to your lane as soon as they hit level 6 so always keep an eye on the level of these champions and take that into consideration when you want to engage. Also champions who have the summoner spell "teleport" or have abilities that move them quickly around the map(Kassadin, Rammus) can do that.
Which jungler my enemy has and in what way he will be able to gank me?
If I take all these information and box them in 1 packet, then send it to santa claus I will hopefully get enough information back to make myself a plan of how I want to lane the first 10 minutes of the game. I think beforehand if I can stand a Level 1 fight and at which level I will be able to start harrass. An important point here aswell is the item choice. If I know I will lane against a Miss Fortune I will grab the Dorans Shield or the Clotharmor and not the Null-Magic Mantle right? ;)
Im honest, when I play all these things run through my head. I dont write this because I think it COULD be like this, no it should be the standard. Generally I think about those things and I try to look what I can do/cant do in my lane.
If you know what your lane will be like we can go to the next step:

Early Laningphase
First: Is it really the enemy I expected and if not can I even control the lane against the current one?
Often your teammates agree with swapping lanes since they want to win aswell right?
However, you should check following criteria aswell: Enemys starting item, Summonerspells and changes on his base stats. You can try to hit the enemy once and look how fast he regenerates. But for the most part experience will come in handy now. There are 1 million ways a lane could be like and I you cant describe them all.
Anyway I will try to describe the most common ones now:
-A person dominates in every aspect the other one: Lets hope youre the dominating person. If thats the case, use your advantage. Dont push your lane too much, the creeps should be on your side of the lane but not in your tower since then they will get pushed themselves. Try to keep the enemy out of experience and gold range while you get the most gold possible. Your enemy will try to be passive and you dont have to change that. Dont get aggresive even if he backs up to his tower. In most cases that will just backfire on you since you cant get lasthits anymore and youre waaaaaay to far away from any help so the jungler can easily kill you. If you dominate try to keep him out of xp and gold range, nothing more. If you try to kill him you will waste your advantage most likely.
However, if youre the person who gets dominated you should come to following conclusion: First, why did it even come to that? Sure, some laners are better then others but theres no champion who is completly helpless against another. On the other hand you want to keep your loss as small as possible. Most likely your enemy will try to last hit your creeps which will push his creeps sooner or later to your tower. But you should still keep them away from your tower range. This way your lane wont get pushed and you cant be ganked so easily. if you dont get in xp range for 1 or 2 creep waves, then it is like this and theres nothing you can do about it. Better back of first instead of getting killed. if you have no change in a direct fight against him then dont fight.
Harrass vs Fighter: First of all heres my definition of those classes: A harrass champion can poke from long range while having some form of health regeneration, this way he can slowly dominate the lane. Often he likes to trade some hits since he will get his life back easily anyway while you dont. Anyway, the fighter on the other hand has alot of burst potential and is usually stronger in a direct 1v1 fight. However hes fairly weak in terms of regeneration and harrassment.
If your champion is a harrasser you should try to fight a bit. You try to get the enemy so low that even if he wants a direct fight he will loose. This way you get the lane control. The advantage of the harrasser is that if he has the advantage he can usually keep it. if youre the fighter you want to search the direct fight. Lets imagine the follwing. An Ezreal gets harrassed constantly by a Vladimir lvl 5. His creeps are pushing since he has to use Q on the creeps to heal your Mystic shot. You can use ghost and search the direct fight since you know that he is really weak at level 5 due to long cooldowns. Anyway dont chase too long since he can turn it around when his cooldowns are up again.
Generally you can give every champion the tag fighter or harrasser. There are special cases but you cant describe them all.
Try to think of every possibility the enemy has. Generally I recomment to stay passive and farm. Especially against good enemys you get a nice position advantage this way, since he has to walk through your creeps to harass you. Look for his mistakes and use them to your advantage.