Before anyone starts trolling me, I wanna go ahead and say I'm fairly new to LoL. Been playing for about a month at max, so don't troll me if this is a noob question.

I've always wondered why certain champions excel at certain lanes. For example, Jax is a very good top laner but he may not do so good in bottom lane. Anivia is a good mid laner but she won't do as good in top. Why? The way I see it they're all the same lane except they curve in different directions.

Basically my question is, what are the criteria that make a champion good at certain lanes. Like, what does a champion need to have in order to be a good Top/Mid/Bottom laner? Or do you just send champions to certain lanes to counter what is in that lane? I may be missing something obvious and making myself look stupid but it just dosen't make much sense to me that a champion can excel at one lane but not be so good at the others.

Well champions can actually excel in all lanes IMO, but some lanes are better suited due to the current meta. The current meta is:
Top - 1 champion that is tanky and can deal decent damage, otherwise known as bruisers
Mid - Usually an AP caster
Bottom - Consists of ADC(Attack Damage Carry) and a Support
Jungle - Well....a jungler...

As to why the current meta is like that, I believe it has to do with global aspects such as dragon and baron control.

To start, I'm going to say this is in general. You might have success putting a top lane hero mid lane if that top lane hero counters the hero in mid lane. But overall, this is why:

Bottom lane is closer to dragon, and is harder to gank than mid lane. Two well placed wards will keep you safe. Because of this, you put the AD Carry and support bottom lane. This gives you a safe lane for the AD carry to farm in, and gives you more control over dragon.

The AD carry is a ranged hero such as Kog'maw or Graves. They tend to scale more off items than levels, though obviously they get stronger as their skills level up. The support is a hero that generally has CC, a heal or shield, or some sort of steroid for the carry (or some mixture of those). Their job is to keep the carry alive and give him an easy lane to farm in.

Mid lane is a solo lane, and thus profits from having more experience than bottom lane. Mid lane is also in between bottom and top (duh!), and thus can gank both lanes fairly easily. You also get good farm in this lane. Thus, you put an AP hero who scales off levels strongly and needs farm to scale into late game.

Top lane is also a solo lane, but is generally more farm oriented because of how far away from the early game action it is (dragon + bottom/mid). You also need some sort of tank late game, and generally they need to farm. So you put a tanky damage dealer (a bruiser) top lane. They get solo exp and farm, and deal a good amount of damage (though not as much as the ADC) while being quite tanky.

And then you have the jungle. The jungle has possibly the most complex role in the game. In short, you're there to gank lanes, clear the jungle, and do whatever else the team needs you to. If your team is missing a hard engagement hero, you might pick Amumu, for example. Junglers range from very tanky to rather squishy, and it's all about what your team needs. But mostly, you jungle because it gives you the extra gold and exp from the jungle, gives top lane a solo lane, and allows you to gank and kill all three lanes from "the shadows", as it were.

Top lane is usually where the tanky champions go, mid is usually AP champion and bot is an adc and a support.

It's just how things are done, I'm not sure why.

There's a lot of reasons that go into all of this.

First off, mid is mid because it's a short lane, which means it's safe (and mids are squishy) and AP champions benefit mostly from levels. So, they get a solo lane, but they get the short sololane for safety purposes.

Now, your AD Carry goes with the support because the AD Carry is vulnerable early game and the support can protect them, the support let's them get cs because the support is their primarily for utility and doesn't need many items. These two typically go bottom lane because that's closer to dragon then top lane, and first few dragons typically go during laning phase.

The bruiser is in the solotop lane because it's a dangerously long lane and he's the best pick for surviving a gank in a long solo lane.

And your jungle is a jungler.



EDIT: There's not much difference if you flip top and bottom lane, other than less dragon control, but the lane geography is the same if we ignore dragon/baron.

Thanks a lot guys, this helped quite a bit. I knew some of the things you mentioned already but some of this helped a lot. Thanks.

Most champions do better in the lanes specified if played semi-aggressive but you can play any champ in any lane depending on your play style! Poking and dodging is the name of the game for solo lanes! Some champs do better at the poking and dodging because of how their attacks are designed! Then others are in your face champs that have to win the health war! Then you have the high damage and low health champs that are in and out quick! But you can play a high damage low health against a tanky top if you are careful! The bottom meta is to have a support and one of the high damage low health champs! But any of them can be played in any lane according to your skills!