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The New Bot Lane

Atmosphere·6/10/2018, 6:41:20 AM·15 votes·13,616 views

With the recent marksmen changes, the ADC role is in trouble for marksmen. They're no longer able to properly scale in the snowbally game LoL has developed into. They have a lot of issues, especially as brusiers and mages creep into bot lane in place of marksmen.

ADCs are too squishy early, mid, and late game to be able to deal with any amount of burst damage. That's why they're the only lane that requires a support to be with them. The new champs in the bot lane have such harsh powerspikes (Irelia, anyone?), do too well with new items (Renekton and ER), or have crazy high base damages (Brand, Zyra, other mages) to have a health coexistence with marksmen. The point of marksmen is to have heavy mid to late game damage dealers, but with assassins taking over mid and jungle, and bruisers and mages moving into bot lane, ADCs can't get to the point where they actually become useful. Positioning was already ridiculously important on them, but now any misstep will get you dove, CCd, bursted, and killed before you can even cast a summoner spell. Marksmen were completely static bot lane because of how easy it is to pressure them out of lane. That's why Zyra, Brand, Lux, etc are popular solo queue picks as supports. They can't have a peaceful coexistence unless their survivability is upped heavily. They can't do that, though, as that defeats the point of an ADC: A full damage glass cannon that dishes out heavy damage from the back line and relies on good positioning and peel for survival. Zed could already oneshot a mispositioned ADC before, but now if a mage or bruiser sets them behind, they're just a free bag of gold if they're not under tower or surrounded by 2 players bodyguarding them. ADCs are the only champions in the game that can't maximize their damage while also increasing survivability. A bruiser can build AD+health items. Mages can build Zhonyas, Protobelt, Liandrys, Morellonomicon, just to name a few. ADCs only have Maw, Guardian Angel, and Black Cleaver, all three of which don't optimize their builds. Maw only gives resistance against magic, so it's useless against bruisers, GA has the same cool down as Flash, and Black Cleaver isn't as good for armor shred as Last Whisper items. Only a few champs can reliably use those items (MF, Lucian, mainly). While I agree marksmen needed a change, it was to their late game damage and how impactful they were overall. Nerfing their damage and scaling, then allowing for champs that can overpower them early into bot lane is just going to kill the entire role once people get out of their basic instinct of locking in a marksman in bot lane.

If you're going to criticize me on any of this, have an actual argument. I'm not an amazing player, I admit, but that doesn't mean I don't understand how the game works and flows. Going on op.gg and posting my match history or rank doesn't disprove me, it shows you're unwilling to have a discussion so you try to invalidate points by saying "haha bronzie xd". We're all trying to improve the game, so let's not act like idiots.

28 Comments

BLIGHTBRINGER6/10/2018, 9:10:58 AM10 votes

Here's my thoughs from someone who used to be an ADC Main.

These changes were good because it resolved the issues that existed, and Riot succeded with their goal which was to make marksman scale a bit slower, instead of them buying (Infinity Edge and Statik Shiv) and running around dealing a lot of burst damage at early stages in the game.

However with these changes, I think they overnerfed Marksman too much, in terms of their resistances. It wasn't enough that Marksman already by default have the lowest resistances in the game.

Marksman are suppose to be able to deal constant DPS which they can, the only problem currently is that they can't achieve this goal if they get one shot at level 3 and then constantly die later into the game due to the defensive side of the game being nerfed to bits.

Here are some of my suggestions:

  • Give marksman, some bonus resistances. (I know they are suppose to be squishy but jesus christ, I was able to chunk vayne at level 2 for almost 50% of her HP as Taric).
  • Increase the attack range for majority of the marksman who aren't mobile (range isn't that meaningful anymore with the amount of mobility that exists in the game).
  • Maybe make their base Attack Speed faster than any other champion (but to compensate, lower their base AD if needed). But you'd think that a Marksman by default would have highest Attack Speed at early stages of the game than some guy with a heavy axe for example (Darius).
  • Give Marksman more utility tools instead of raw damage to provide for the team, such as debuffs and etc.

I would say that the ADC role is the most balanced right now, something I can't say for the other roles.

Teridax686/10/2018, 1:41:20 PM4 votes

{quoted}

With the recent marksmen changes, the ADC role is in trouble for marksmen. They're no longer able to properly scale in the snowbally game LoL has developed into. They have a lot of issues, especially as brusiers and mages creep into bot lane in place of marksmen.

When an entire role is "in trouble" because it's no longer being monopolized by a certain class, that I think demonstrates just how wrong the initial situation was. As a community, we have repeatedly called for diversity, especially in bot lane, yet every time that diversity has happened, e.g. with mages becoming more popular bot in the support position, and now with non-marksmen going bot as carries, there have always been some complainers as well. Moreover, complaints like "ADCs are too squishy against burst" only come from a place where marksmen, a class meant to be extremely squishy, could once survive burst pretty decently. They still can, as GA is a hard counter to burst, and contrary to what the OP says, marksmen do have the tools to build damage and survivability, and are in fact notorious for having an item pool that frequently attaches defenses to raw offensive stats, e.g. PD, GA, any item with life steal, Merc Scimitar, etc. The only reason all of this feels bad is because the situation was just far, far too good for marksmen previously, relative to all other classes. Ultimately, because all of these complaints are coming only a short time after the update, and largely talk about how marksmen feel comparatively weak (which was the intended goal of the changes), I feel they mostly fail to acknowledge the fact that marksmen have been far too strong for far too long a period of time. Asking for buffs when marksmen are still largely mandatory to most teams stems from literally no other justification than the basic desire to return to a time when marksmen were stronger. We need to accept that marksmen are coming down from a years-long high, and while that's bound to feel like crap, it's still necessary to improve the game as a whole, and we need to hold back on this kind of knee-jerk reaction before seeing how the class fares in the longer term.

If there is one criticism I agree with, it's that marksmen as a class are still all too focused on scaling to the late game. This I think has been a core problem with marksmen, because I don't think any class at all should be a carry by default. Marksmen deserve to have a variety of power curves, and having prominent early or mid game marksmen, in addition to carries, with all on the same level as other classes with similar curves, would help avoid the current problem where the near-totality of marksmen feel weak for most of a match. It is valid for a late-game champion to feel weaker than others during the early and mid game, particularly if said champion was previously used to entering late-game mode with just 2 items, but it is understandable that it would feel bad if every champion with a similar playstyle also felt the same kind of weakness. Because of this, I think the next step for marksmen should be to diversify their power curves, but also their viability in other positions: personally, I'm totally fine with the bot lane carry position no longer being exclusive to marksmen, but at the same time I think marksmen, just like any other class, deserve to be viable in a variety of positions. We have some marksman junglers and mid laners already, and I think it would be worth developing on that to allow marksmen to have better presence in places other than bot lane, so that even if they do get pushed out of there completely (which is highly doubtful), they'd still have other places to go.

The Yetii Rider6/10/2018, 2:06:22 PM3 votes

While I agree marksmen needed a change, it was to their late game damage and how impactful they were overall. Nerfing their damage and scaling, then >allowing for champs that can overpower them early into bot lane is just going to kill the entire role once people get out of their basic instinct of locking in a >marksman in bot lane.

Absolutely not. Remember Riot's goal for these changes. It is to increase the ability of mid and top laners to carry the game. In order to do that, you need to preserve the marksman role (a late game DPS tank shredder) while making certain that other laners can end the game before a marksman becomes relevant. In other words, the best way to make sure that marksmen were no longer mandatory was to cripple their mid game and buff their late game to compensate, which is exactly what Riot has done.

The sustain in bot lane was too much, and it was creeping into top lane as well with ranged carries bullying out bruisers. Now that sustain has been heavily nerfed, melee characters actually have a chance to go bot and do some real damage.

The marksman has been mandatory since Season 1. Now, finally, the marksman is not mandatory. Games no longer revolve around feeding and protecting the ADC. After four years, mid and top laners can feel like their roles matter again.

Nhifu6/10/2018, 9:48:28 AM2 votes

Build less squishy? Like I've been seeing alot of Triforce / BC stuff rolling people lol it's so hard to survive as the ADC with all of these arcane comet supports running around nuking people.

łnśane6/10/2018, 2:12:58 PM1 votes

I just want Miss Fortune to have a dash or blink, please and thanks.

Nyarlathοtep6/10/2018, 4:24:50 PM1 votes

ADCs are the only champions in the game that can't maximize their damage while also increasing survivability

Wait if im not wrong, you are implying that adc have no defensive options?! Dude adc's can opt for death dancers if they need to lower burst. That alone is stronger than most defensive items that mages have ( which btw is only zhonyas, hp items dont count since they dont lower the damage).

To be entirely fair, adcs shouldnt have access to these kind of items. They are supposed to be glass cannons.

OrphanOrgans6/15/2018, 10:31:54 PM1 votes

You feel pretty stupid when youre playing sivir against a xin feeling like you are completley useless.