Lane Swapping and Shared Tower Gold - An ADC's PoV
#Preface (Note: Skip this entire section if you don't want the backstory to this thread's main point.)
A recurring problem in Season 3 and 5 was giving one player as much gold as the team could, most commonly the ADC, and letting them scale into the game where they would be come a huge terror. This, on top of Tristana's ridiculous rework, lead to Tristana becoming a threat in competitive play and solo queue for almost two years. Hypercarries dominated the meta through the entirety of Season 3 and 5, seeing Vayne, Twitch, Lucian, Jinx, Kalista, and (during Season 5, before juggernaut update) Kog'maw becoming the most common picks. People could argue Caitlyn was more picked than these hypercarries, but the truth behind that is Caitlyn was picked as a counter to the hypercarry meta. The most seen strategy to allow this meta to work was to lane swap; let the botlane go top so they can focus on csing with no threat, then have the jungler come three or four-man dive the lone toplaner, get a kill, then funnel the gold to the ADC by running out of the local gold range. Not only did it put pressure on the toplaner, forcing them to lose exp and cs, but it also fed free gold to the ADC.
In Season 4, Riot attempted to counter this by adding early damage reduction to towers. However, this didn't halt the strategy. It only made it more abusive. Players started sending four people toplane to siege the tower, forcing the enemy team to siege the opposite end of the map or end up losing out on gold/losing valuable time not taking an objective while the entire team was top. This lead to Riot making the gold from towers global instead of local; rise the meta of aggressive junglers like Lee Sin and Elise that could pick off a lone enemy. And the problem still failed to be solved. The focus merely shifted off of players sieging towers, and now on denying the toplaner cs and exp while putting the ADC ahead.
Seeing tower gold and tankiness wasn't going to solve the issue, Riot eventually decided to revert the changes and eventually make a more forward approach. They let lane swaps run rampant for some time in Season 5 until the damage creep began. "If laning phase doesn't last as long, and gold gained from towers is reduced, players won't have a reason to lane swap and we can bring back toplane duels." And that's exactly what happened. The juggernaut meta was launched, and adcs/supports just could not deal with the ridiculous damage output juggernauts put out early game. Gangplank could poke down the adc from a distance and still farm up. Darius could sustain all of the damage adcs put out. Fiora had the sustain and mobility to 1v2. Mordekaiser had a 98.6% pick/ban rate, with a 100% winrate in every game he was picked in worlds. Skarner had to be live hotfixed because his damage, tankiness, mobility, and crowd control were so high that he had over a 60% winrate and the highest pick/ban rate on live servers. ADCs who either had high mobility, could boost mobility, or could inhibit enemy mobility began to be picked to counter the ridiculous meta that toplane had become.
Players no longer lane swapping and juggernauts dominating the meta for over 5 patches, 5.22 came and turret gold was adjusted, but also a few more changes to prevent lane swapping from ever becoming prevalent again. Turret gold was back to being local, but turrets also became easier to kill. From then on, Riot made every effort they could to kill ADCs. The marksman update was released to counter the juggernauts without allowing a scaling gold-feeding meta to return. While the marksman update was a huge buff to many adcs, it was arguably a huge nerf to the identity ADCs had. They were no longer scaling late game hypercarries and only became upfront burst damage. Corki and Caitlyn dominated the meta for a while, and scaling carries didn't have a place because games ended in 20 minutes. The meta being based around picking people off and Towers steadily became weaker as more changes lined up that continued the damage creep. Enter the mid-season mage update of Season 6 and mages now deal even more damage, plus towers now have less hp and ap is converted to ad when damaging towers! ADCs can no longer 1v1 mages or they'll just get blown up. Syndra one-shots ADCs just by pressing R, Malzahar's minions poke an ADC from afar or he can just press R while minions go at the ADC. Vel'koz instagibs everyone. The list goes on.
Then the Assassins in Patch 6.22. Mages dominate the meta, so Assassins are put in to counter Mages, but now Assassins are too powerful and literally 100-0 every squishy and have the mobility to escape any situation. The sense of risk is no longer prevalent in assassins. There is no "high risk high reward", only high reward with no risk in diving the entire enemy team because they can get two kills and get out. So the tank update gets released in order to counter the Assassins. Tank identity is changed from building bulky tank items and tanking all the damage to being overloaded with cc while dealing damage with bruiser items. Now everyone is doing massive damage and the ADCs can no longer keep up, until the "ADC in 2017 lul" meme arises.
2017 hits and ADC is practically unplayable. Everything 100-0s the ADC. The ADC can't 1v1 anyone. The ADC has to be protected, but even if you protect the ADC the ADC does no damage. Eventually, people just started playing mages botlane. Ziggs became the primary candidate for this. This lasted all through 2017 and 2018, while new ADCs were implemented but old ADCs remained untouched except Kog'maw. Kog'maw received a slight rework that was quickly reverted, on top of a reworked Guinsoo's Rageblade which brought Varus and Kog'maw into the meta as the only ADCs that were able to keep up with the damage and shred through these new tanks. The only safe picks in 2017 were Tristana, who could escape from the ridiculously high damage and hope to scale, Xayah, who had an immunity to all of the damage output, Sivir, who could provide utility to the team's engage with a spellshield to (hopefully) block damage, and Varus/Kog'maw, who were the only ADCs with the damage to keep up but relied on scaling to at least 3 items. And the same problem lasted in 2018, but Lucian and Miss Fortune became more frequent as Lethality got buffed in 7.14, and people discovered lethality works really well on Miss Fortune, as well as Black Cleaver on both of them.
(Sidenote: Twitch also became more popular, though lost his identity and was forced to go through many build changes from 6.22 until his major buffs in 7.22 and again in 8.11. He went from being a lategame hypercarry to a bursty ranged assassin, from BotRK builds to Youmuus builds eventually to IE/Shiv. It wasn't until 8.11 and the BotRK buff that he returned to his original state.)
ADCs slowly started to shift back into playability after many nerfs to champions and other class's items, and buffs to ADC items as well as new discovered builds, though the lane swap meta remained dead after Season 5, until now.
#Everything That Pushed Lane Swapping out of Viability Is Back
It wasn't until Meteos made a recent, vague tweet that I began to think about this thoroughly, and he is entirely correct: https://twitter.com/MeteosLoL/status/1064978131503656960
With the new tower changes and ADCs debatably the strongest class in the game right now (ignoring Dark Harvest, which will soon 100% be nerfed), lanes last longer, gold can be funneled to them, and towers are still fairly easy to kill.
Twitch, Lucian, Jhin, and Vayne are the strongest ADCs right now, barring unconventional picks like Heimerdinger, Karthus, Mordekaiser, and Ziggs that will be out of the lane as soon as Dark Harvest nerfs hit. The meta for ADCs is currently ADCs that deal high damage early game while being able to endlessly scale throughout the game, the reason for this being it's impossible to tell whether a game will be snowballed after laning phase or if it'll last 30+ minutes at the moment. These picks are safe because even if they're put behind early, they'll still scale into the late game, and if they get ahead early, they'll be terrors in the mid game. With comebacks and snowballs both being equally possible, these are the strongest and safest picks that don't focus on one specific part of the game (i.e. Caitlyn being a lane bully that falls off, Tristana being a late game hypercarry that needs to reach her power spike, Kog'maw as well needing three items, etc.)
Looking at Twitch, Lucian, Jhin, and Vayne, they all have their highest winrates right as laning phase ends, the exception being Twitch, and begin to drop in winrate as the game goes on. (Sidenote: This is one of the many things that makes Twitch the strongest ADC right now; the ability to scale and be useful in every point of the game). Lane swapping is a surefire way to guarantee a snowball. Putting your ADC ahead also allows the support to roam midlane and potentially give your midlaner plate gold.
If the threat of falling behind can be eliminated, and they can get as much gold as possible during the 14 minute laning phase, ADCs can safely be the strongest in the game as soon as the laning phase ends. Protecting the carry will ensure the game becomes a snowball as they will have high damage output and be able to siege towers the fastest. Lane swapping will also entirely eliminate Mordekaiser, Heimerdinger, and Ziggs from being played botlane, as their goal is to push in the ADC and prevent them from farming through poke and pressure. Ban Karthus, lane swap, move away from tower so ADCs can get plate gold, and the ADC will be able to carry the game.
#Suggestions Moving Forward
LET YOUR ADC LANE SWAP, AND GIVE YOUR CARRIES THE FULL PLATE GOLD!
Please, make sure you move away from the tower so your ADC and Midlaner can have all of the plate gold. It's okay to help them siege, but make sure you are out of the local gold range before the plate is destroyed. Only the ADC and Midlaner should be given plates if possible, the ADC given the most plates by lane swapping, taking all of the plates, then going back bot and taking more plates. The team that has the most plate gold on their ADC will, without a doubt, win. This isn't even taking into account the free cs the ADC will be receiving by not getting poked or pressured by the enemy botlane.
#TL;DR
Everything from Season 6 and on that was implemented to prevent lane swapping has borderline been reverted. Gold should be funneled to the ADC wherever possible, and the toplaner and botlane should lane swap where possible. By allowing the botlane to lane swap, the ADC gets free cs as well as plate gold. By having the support (and jungler if nearby) move away from plates before they fall off, the ADC gets full plate gold, and the ADC with the most cs and plate gold by the time plates fall off will more than likely snowball the game and win from there.
#Sources
Patches: https://na.leagueoflegends.com/en/news/game-updates/patch/patch-522-notes#patch-sr https://na.leagueoflegends.com/en/news/game-updates/patch/patch-622-notes#patch-items https://na.leagueoflegends.com/en/news/game-updates/patch/patch-722-notes#patch-upcoming-skins-and-chromas
Professional Play Champion Statistics: https://lol.gamepedia.com/Special:RunQuery/TournamentChampionStatsByRole?TCSBR%5Brole%5D=AD%20Carry&TCSBR%5Bswitch%5D=Single%20Tournament&TCSBR%5Btournament%5D=Concept:World%20Championship%20Season%203&pfRunQueryFormName=TournamentChampionStatsByRole https://lol.gamepedia.com/Special:RunQuery/TournamentChampionStatsByRole?TCSBR%5Brole%5D=AD%20Carry&TCSBR%5Bswitch%5D=Single%20Tournament&TCSBR%5Btournament%5D=Concept:World%20Championship%202014&pfRunQueryFormName=TournamentChampionStatsByRole https://lol.gamepedia.com/g00/3_c-3rur.mgskvkjog.ius_/c-3SUXKVNKAY76x24nzzvyx3ax2fx2frur.mgskvkjog.iusx2fYvkiogrx3aXatWakx78ex2fZuax78tgsktzIngsvoutYzgzyHeXurkx3fZIYHXx251Hx78urkx251Jx3dGJx2586Igx78x78ex26ZIYHXx251Hycozinx251Jx3dYotmrkx2586Zuax78tgsktzx26ZIYHXx251Hzuax78tgsktzx251Jx3dIutikvzx3aCux78rjx2586Ingsvoutynovx25868671x26vlXatWakx78eLux78sTgskx3dZuax78tgsktzIngsvoutYzgzyHeXurk_$/$/$?i10c.ua=1&i10c.dv=21 https://lol.gamepedia.com/Special:RunQuery/TournamentChampionStatsByRole?TCSBR%5Brole%5D=AD%20Carry&TCSBR%5Bswitch%5D=Single%20Tournament&TCSBR%5Btournament%5D=Concept:World%20Championship%202016&pfRunQueryFormName=TournamentChampionStatsByRole https://lol.gamepedia.com/index.php?title=Special:RunQuery/TournamentChampionStatsByRole&pfRunQueryFormName=TournamentChampionStatsByRole&TCSBR%5Bswitch%5D=Single+Tournament&TCSBR%5Btournament%5D=Concept%3AWorlds+2017+Play-In&TCSBR%5Bmap_field%5D%5Btournament%5D=true&TCSBR%5Bmap_field%5D%5Btournamentc%5D=true&TCSBR%5Brole%5D=AD+Carry&wpRunQuery=Run+query&pf_free_text= (Query 2017-2018)
Turret Changes: http://leagueoflegends.wikia.com/wiki/Turret
History of Lane Swaps: https://euw.leagueoflegends.com/en/news/esports/esports-editorial/flipping-script-history-lane-swaps
Champion Statistics: https://champion.gg/statistics/#?sortBy=general.winPercent&order=descend&roleSort=ADC
Twitch Changes: http://leagueoflegends.wikia.com/wiki/Twitch
