Position 1 from the midlane

It’s all relative. The hero who needs the most farm is your pos 1, no matter where you lane them. In your case, if your teammate picks LC safelane, almost any traditional mid could be your true pos 1.

You could also make the argument that pos 1 and 2 is determined more by playstyle than hero. If you’re playing Lich mid, but you build Radiance, Octarine, and Mjollnir (don’t), then spend your time farming in order to scale into the late game, congrats. You’re officially your team’s pos 1. It’s not good, and your hero isn’t suited to it, but that’s what role you’re playing.

In terms of traditional “pos 1” mids, it’ll normally be Dusa, Storm, Invoker, Alch, TA, or SF

If they are very farm dependent then they would be pos 1, so heroes like Alchemist and Medusa despite being mid would be pos 1 as they need to farm a lot to really come online, but heroes like OD and Sniper can accomplish stuff with less farm actually so they can be pos 2. Both OD and Sniper only need a couple items to really start putting in some real hurt, they ideally want to level fast, and are strong laners, hence mid is good for them. At least that's how I see it :)

Position 1 isn't really about carrying. It's about farming. In that sense, all midlane heroes are position 1 because midlane is ALL about farm. All good midlaners need to be able to CS safely, then transition to shoving out the wave and farming safe jungle camps.

However, you are correct that some midlaners tend towards position 1 and others take position 2 or even 3. Generally, this is dependent on how much farm they need to come online. Out of the META mids (stuff like luna and antimage doesn't count), you end up falling into 3 camps of position 2 mids, some of which are more like 1.5s (invoker is a very good example of this), and others which are more like 2.5s (like Necrophos).

1. Invoker, Storm, Meepo, Medusa, Arc Warden, Tiny, Phantom Lancer, Ember, Sniper
2. OD, Gyro, SF, Qop, TA, Clinkz, Puck, Mirana
3. Necro, DP, Lesh, Lina, Viper, Silencer, Windranger

The 1.5s tend to farm up to anywhere between 15 and 20 minutes. You should be aiming for your 3 core items by at minimum 20 minutes, and then you will be the strongest hero on the map and can kill pretty much anyone. If you can't make that timing, you're generally going to be splitpushing side lanes instead. This is your 22/0 invoker who got a lucky sunstrike onto the enemy CM and used it to get 2 kills in lane on the enemy Shadow Fiend, which he then turned into a 14 minute aghs through speedy farm thanks to the free damage from the ally Drow Ranger and basically one shot your Dragon Knight with meteor cold snap.

The true 2s tend to farm 10-15 minutes for their core items and then try to snowball off of kills from side lanes and eventually take over one portion of the map by themselves. This is your 11/0 QOP who gets 2 kills mid, 3 more kills top, then farms the enemy jungle (along with anyone in it) until your Spectre is too big to kill. If you can't make your item timings, you're going to be participating in teamfights and sniping off heroes until you're strong enough to hunt the enemy supports.

The 2.5s farm 1 core item at 10 minutes (either euls, blink, or mek) and then go for blood with their team. This is your 5/0 DP who roamed bot at 8 minutes with the haste rune to get a double kill with her ulti and then take the botlane tower uncontested.

All 3 patterns are viable in solo queue and follow more or less the same game plan of "get as big as possible as fast as possible and then try to conclusively win the game." Position 1s who are safelane carries, by contrast, don't really get huge spikes from their item purchases. A Luna who manages to get her Manta at 10 minutes, for example, isn't really much more of a threat than she was before she got the Manta (even though she's definitely on track to smash through your base like a hot knife through butter at 30 minutes). However, if you see a Qop with Orchid at 10 minutes, she can straight up delete anyone on your team from existence whenever she wants to.

By that metric you can see that Sniper and Medusa are the only true position 1 mids. Everyone else is just a position 2 who takes a little longer to come online.

Invoker. Really it depends on draft. Whoever has kill threat highest cannot be pos 1. That's a general idea I think. Other please correct me

It also depends on your own team, you wouldn't put am mid at all as he is a weak laner.

But if you have an OD all he really needs is a blink and Pike and can work towards a bkb and he will do enough damage, but if you have a safe lane gyro with you he should still get priority of farm

Alch, Medusa, Invoker, Lycan, Juggernaut, Lina (kinda), Sniper, PL are the only ones I can think of.

Its kind of a case by case basis but the position one either sits in the safe or mid lane depending on his laning capabilities. A weaker pos 1 in terms of laning i.e spectre would go safe lane, whereas someone who can lane very well on their own i.e lina would go mid.

You should also be asking would my pos 1 be better of midding or safe lane and not asking is my mid better of as position 1 or 2.

Dusa.

Meepo!

Yeah your understanding is correct. AM mid is troll though. Medusa, Storm, and SF are other pos 1 mids.

For the purposes of pubs though unless you are like 4k+ it probably doesn't matter too much what you pick. If your mid picks Dusa and your safelane picks Luna, it's honestly not the end of the world. I think the only time where it's genuinely worth adjusting your safelane pick to fit your midlane pick is if you have an Alch mid.

At most if my midlane pick is greedy, I'd just adjust my playstyle. AKA if I was playing Jugg I'd go Drums or Yasha first over Battlefury.

position is farm so sniper and od are pos 2. my fighting antimage build is pos 2. alchemist and bfury antimage in the midlane are position 1