Dota 2 - Can Lina be a Decent Mid Laner in 2020?

Introduction

Lina is one of the heroes that used to be considered as the best mid laners back in DotA. This trend continued during the first couple of years after Dota 2 was released but in the last couple of years, the hero slowly transitioned into permanent support. This has its logical explanation because Lina is capable of doing a decent amount of damage. As a result, many teams see a mid-laner Lina as a "waste of slot" because the hero will be able to damage, regardless of she's occupying the mid role. 

While this is the up to a point, that's not always the case. The main advantage of having a mid Lina is that she can get levels quickly and then use this to her advantage while demolishing the side lanes. What's more, the hero can scale decently both on magical and right-click damage. Despite that, we are just not seeing teams picking her. So, why's that?

She is just too squishy

Even though Lina has a stun, she just dies way too easy, especially in the laning stage. Pretty much every single gank will result in a kill unless she magically hits all heroes with her stun, which can happen but as we know, most players don't want to rely on RNG.

Even when the laning stage is over, Lina still remains relatively weak when she's jumped on. As a result, players have to get defensive items, such as a Black King Bar, for example, which are not typical for her item choices and reflect on the overall damage that she does.

There are better options

This is the second and also the strongest argument while we probably won't see Lina getting picked as a mid laner in 2020. Even though she does a lot of damage and can easily burst down enemy heroes, there are just other mid heroes that do her job better. The list here is pretty big, but we can include heroes like Ember Spirit, Void Spirit,  and so on. All of them deal tons of magical/physical damage, they are way more mobile and are a lot harder to kill.