Pro Laning
Defensive Trilane
There are a few variations on this, but in general it's to optimize early game farming for a carry hero.3 in Lane
- Carry is farming
- 2nd Support is usually pulling & looking for kills
- Primary support is looking for initiations when 2nd support is there, otherwise doing zoning, or even helping the 2nd support farm the pull (to maximize the XPM of the carry)
Jungler + 2 in Lane (Greedy-ish / XP maximizing)
- Carry is getting more XP and still farming
- 2nd Support is jungling, getting some early core items, and ganking
- Primary support is pulling, zoning, and helping set-up kills
Aggressive Trilane
The goal of these are to deny the enemy carry farm and attempt to get kills. You'll build an Aggro Trilane out of supports that have a strong lvl 1 presence, and a carry that can get aggressive early or has some utility (e.g.
Juggernaut- has 
Blade Fury and 
Healing Ward). - You want the carry to do some farming, but ultimately, you want them to get first blood at level 1
- Supports are there to find pick-offs, harass, deny creeps, and help mid rune control
Miscellaneous
Sometimes you find lanes that basically bring out the strength of another hero.Recently,
Weaver + 
Abaddon has become somewhat popular. Weaver is a very squishy hero in nature, but has decent damage output and mobility. Abaddon allows Weaver to play fully aggressive because of the nature of his spells. It's a dual lane that can actually contest some trilanes. You can have similar things happen at mid, as a means of getting a hero farmed while shutting down the opposing mid hero's game impact. A while back,
Kunkka + 
Shadow Demon was one such combo because Disruption sets up an easy 
Torrent for Kunkka. Both are pretty cheap spells. In the safe lane, you'd see things like
Phantom Lancer + 
Keeper of the Light because Phantom Lancer can spam his lance without any reprocussions. Later on, he can split push and Keeper of the Light can recall him to a fight or out of danger if needed. Low Level Pubs
Pubs have a very different set-up. Basically 2-1-2 will optimize farm when players don't know how to properly trilane.Pub Hard Lane
Normally, you'd put a hero in the hard lane that can:- Survive (e.g.
Bounty Hunter w/ Invis) - Find farm from a distance (e.g.
Dark Seer w/ 
Ion Shell) - Find alternative forms of farm (e.g.
Beastmaster w/ Ancient Stacking & Farming -- a bit outdated though) - Pull the wave (e.g.
Lone Druid w/ 
Spirit Bear) - Sacrifice the lane and jungle (e.g.
Batrider w/ 
Firefly + 
Sticky Napalm)
Sometimes you can get aggressive, treat it like a kill lane. Normally, this is the best approach because the safe lane will tend to gain an advantage over time if you don't get kills.
This means that heroes that have utility (e.g. stuns) or high kill potential may work better there. Double Stun can easily destroy a lane, especially if you're up against a pub farming safe lane (e.g. the classic "Carry + Babysitter" - which really isn't a thing in pro games). Both these heroes are probably squishy, and the carry most likely can't do much to help the support.
You can also work with a setup + a kill hero. For instance,
Shadow Demon + 
Gyrocopter (gyro's rocket barrage does an absurd amount of damage). Pub Safe Lane
In a pub, I think it's hard to go for a real farming lane. It's going to be 2-1-2. A carry can usually handle a 1v1 scenario, but not a 1v2.If you pick a hero like
Anti-Mage, your early game kill potential goes down and so does your counter-push. You're forced into playing passive. So you need a support that doesn't really care to get aggressive early on (unlike 
Visage, or 
Undying - both benefit massively from early game aggression). You also can't really pick a support that relies on levels unless you have a lane farmer that can handle 1v2 situations while the support stacks & pulls for levels + farm.
Going for a kill lane can work just as well as it does in the hard lane.
The main thing here it to take advantage of the lane. In the safe lane, you get things like:
- The pull - a great source of lane control and farm for the support. The carry can basically auto-attack and push the lane, which makes it very easy for the support to do a creep pull without worrying about the enemy wave hitting your tower.
- Tree Cover - you can use this to your advantage a lot more. Heroes like Keeper of the Light can stay hidden and blast the enemy from the trees. A hero like
Rubick can wait until they see a pick-off and then spring out with 
Telekinesis.
Having a faceless offlane is pretty terrible, and is just a bad laning choice
You really want someone with a stun, like
Chaos Knight, 
Alchemist, or 
Sven in your hard lane duo, with the hope that you can get a kill to make up for the gold missed from pulling. In that situation, I would probably just accept that he won't get the farm he needs to carry without help, and go gank mid as soon as I was level 2. If you can give your mid player a big advantage from the start, there is a much better chance that 5 minutes later he will gank your lane and turn a mediocre lane into a win. But lets assume the lane is pretty much even. You have the potential to get kills, but so do they
Neither side is double melee, and neither side has a really huge hassament advantage like silencer or huskar. As soon as you see the heroes, you should know "I'm going to be offlane support" grab your items, and go ward the enemy pull camp. In 99% of your low MM games, the enemy won't show up to lane until well after the wards are down. If you get lucky and your lane buddy will come with you, you can get super ballsy with your placement, giving yourself vision behind the treeline and even behind their tower. Against a good team, this is just asking to get killed, but if you pull it off you have basically won your lane already by negating some of the biggest advantages of the safe lane. Get the other ward down watching the rune and for ganks from mid, and just focus on lane control, denying and harassing for the next 7-8 minutes
Do your best to never push the wave under their tower, or their support will have a chance to deward safely. If the lane is pushed enough, you can threaten to kill their carry whenever the support leaves. If they do pull, both of you should go and contest it. If their support doesn't pay enough attention, he can easily die, and worst case you should take all of the creeps+the neutral camp. Because their support is always in lane, you shouldn't worry about sharing XP with your farmer. You might not be getting an advantage, but you aren't losing one either. If you feel comfortable leaving the lane a bit, you can check the rune for your mid, and potentially gank. You probably don't want to roam all that much on your own unless your farmer would be a passable solo offlaner by nature.
Safe lane duo support all comes down to finding short windows when the enemy can't stop you from creating an advantage
The first step is to make sure that the enemy doesn't get to ward your pull camp for free. If they really want to, they can get the ward down, but you should make them burn a tango to do it, and should see where they put the ward. Honestly though, it is pretty rare to get blocked. You should still be ready to contest the first rune, and potentially get yourself a big advantage in the lane.
But lets assume you didn't get blocked, and didn't get a rune. The wards are on the offlane support, so you have no vision. What now? Two words: Lane Control. FAR too many supports will spend their time in lane just denying and harassing the enemy farmer when he comes to last hit, without realizing that every time they attack the enemy hero they are pulling aggro from the creep wave. Then they don't understand why the wave is pushed up under the enemy tower. When you are harassing the enemy, you should be OUTSIDE creep aggro range, and walk into it for the attack. The aggro is decided when you issue the attack command, not when the attack happens, and is reset every 2 seconds
By standing outside creep aggro range when you attack, you basically get off 2 attacks for free, while the enemy needs to mess up the creep equilibrium to do the same to you. By harassing and denying, your goal should be to have your carry in a COMPLETELY safe situation at the X:52 mark, so you can stack the pull camp. In a perfect world, the creep wave will be under your tower (and your carry will actually get the last hits). The wave will push after taking tower damage, and you will have a newly stacked camp to pull it back. I like to deny my creeps as much as possible when I pull, so that the enemy has less time to react and contest my pull. In a perfect world, the carry is on board with all this, and will push the wave as much as possible right before you pull. Even if you only get off 2 pulls during the laning phase, as long as you kept the lane equilibrium in check, harassed, and didn't let them get kills, you won your lane.
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