Soloing in the context of laning in Heroes of Newerth (HoN) refers to a hero being the only hero on his team in a lane. The fact that there are three lanes in HoN and only five players per team mean that there will always be a solo hero, meaning knowing how to solo is incredibly important if you ever have to be the solo player. By far the most common lane for a hero to solo is the middle lane, because it's safer on both the Hellbourne and Legion side. The reason for this is because you won't have to stray too far from your tower and it has good access to the runes on both sides. It is also possible to have solo heroes in the side lanes, but we will go into more detail about this later.
As the solo hero you have a lot of responsibility, and certain heroes are better than others at filling the role. Your team will rely on you to gank their lanes if they are having trouble, and stop the enemy solo player from ganking your side lanes. You can do this by controlling the runes and denying them to your enemy, forcing him to spend money on regeneration items, fall back to their fountain or be killed.
Rune Control
They all belong to me!
One of the most important aspects of being a solo mid hero is controlling the runes. Runes spawn every two minutes starting at the zero minute mark and continuing until the game ends. As well as giving you a powerful buff (haste, illusion, regeneration, invisibility, or double damage), it also allows you to refill your bottle, if you have one. Knowing where the rune spawns is very useful so it is a good idea to have a ward covering either the top or bottom rune.
Refill Your Bottle
To refill your bottle with a rune, deplete all its charges first then use the empty bottle and click on the rune. The next time you use the bottle you will consume the buff and the bottle will be filled.
Different runes are good for different things, for example with a haste or invisibility rune you could secretly go gank a side lane without the enemy seeing you or having a chance to fall back. With an illusion or double damage rune you could harass your opposing solo hero to make him fall behind in farming, and with the regeneration rune you can play more aggressive knowing that you can regenerate all your health and mana back to full very fast.
Ganking
War isn't fair. Deal with it!
As a solo hero you will be gaining levels faster than the side lanes which means you will have an easy time ganking them. If you see one of your side lanes being pushed back towards your tower, chose a good opportunity to leave your lane (preferably when the enemy doesn't see you), and head behind the enemy so they are trapped between you and your two side heroes. If you have a few disables between you it should be two simple kills. Be wary as if the enemy has a ward covering the rune spot they may see you and you could get counter ganked.
Solo heroes
Just doin' my thang bro!
There are many viable heroes to solo but some are better than others. Good characteristics for solo heroes are ganking skills (Pharaoh's ultimate, Valkyrie's Javelin, Wretched Hag's blink), ways to heal yourself (Blood Hunter's Feast, Zephyr's Cyclones), or simply a hero who is incredibly strong at higher levels like Soulstealer.
Excellent Solo Heroes
Good Solo Heroes
Advanced Tactics
Didn't expect that, did ya!
The solo player doesn't always have to be in the middle lane. If you want to deliberately shut down the enemy mid hero to stop him becoming too powerful, you can put two heroes middle and have your solo go top or bottom, preferably your safe lane, top for Hellbourne and bottom for Legion. However, this leaves you more vulnerable to the enemy's double lane, and you won't have the runes to help you. However, you can rely on ganks from your double mid lane and hopefully the enemy solo won't be as strong. This is a very advanced tactic and you are unlikely to see this in a public game.
The other times you may have solo heroes which aren't in mid is when you have a hero jungling (Tempest, Legionnaire, Ophelia, etc), and therefore not in a lane, or when you have a roaming hero who doesn't permanently stay in a lane, rather hops from one to another trying to gank enemy heroes.
