Unless you happen to be Mordekaiser who just got massively nerfed post worlds
Is this elephant in the room going to be addressed? When are non ranged ADs going to be able to go bot lane?
Why is the class that's required every game for 4+ years and running being buffed across the board?
YambrinZ21 votesUmmm? Take what you want botlane. Its not a reportable offense :)
YumaS2Astral17 votesUmmm? Take what you want botlane. Its not a reportable offense :)
It may be not a reportable offense, but with so many people that whine and threaten to troll when I do that, I rarely do that.
Szunray5 votesI know what you mean, but he's right. It's not Riot's fault that its community is terrified of change.
But really if you have an ADC in mid, top and Jungle, you don't need one bot...
RisenDarkKnight8 votesWell I'm not sure Riot will want to try again after how their first attempt backfired. Honestly though, they should have tried to make multiple champion viable in a duo lane not just one. They had to make him brokenly strong or people wouldn't have let teammates break the meta so much. Instead they should have made several melee/ap champions viable so that they wouldn't have to balance Morde around ALWAYS being against a ranged marksman. If Riot gives us other viable duo lane carry options, they could balance each other out as counterpicks so you can counter a melee champ that is strong against marksmen with another melee carry that is good against melee carries and plays well in a duo lane.
The Yetii Rider7 votesWell I'm not sure Riot will want to try again after how their first attempt backfired. Honestly though, they should have tried to make multiple champion viable in a duo lane not just one. They had to make him brokenly strong or people wouldn't have let teammates break the meta so much. Instead they should have made several melee/ap champions viable so that they wouldn't have to balance Morde around ALWAYS being against a ranged marksman. If Riot gives us other viable duo lane carry options, they could balance each other out as counterpicks so you can counter a melee champ that is strong against marksmen with another melee carry that is good against melee carries and plays well in a duo lane.
Riot said they intended Yasuo bot to be playable, and even though he has a high win rate in bot, no one played him down there.
Riot can design for creativity but they can't break the meta unless they force it.
Kuroi868 votesWhen are non ranged ADs going to be able to go bot lane?
They can, always have been able to. Complaining about the meta makes little sense.
Why is the class that's required every game being buffed across the board?
Not buffed so much as retooled. The changes open up new paths for marksmen to try different builds outside of IE, Shiv, Bork. Not to mention with AD and % pen getting nerfed you're going to see a lot of different options. Sure some are simply going to go for the 100% crit builds, but in many cases that simply won't be optional, thus you find people having to experiment to find new avenues to try and claim victory.
q O y O p8 votesYou can bring any combination of champs to bot lane. It all has to do with team composition.
People just feed into the 'meta' instead of trying new things. The meta is safe.
ForeverLaxx5 votesI don't know how long you've been playing, but I'm going to let you know that it took a few seasons before the current bot lane existed as it does. It's lasted this long because, objectively, it's the most efficient way to place your team for the distribution of gold and levels. Certain ranged carries can still go mid, because at the time they were designed, a ranged AD in mid was still a frequent choice due to the safety of a close tower and the guaranteed ability to farm. It shifted to what we have now once players figured out that mages really need levels AND items to maintain relevancy and most supports could function with few, if any items.
Don't speak about "the meta" as if everyone is just a brainless sheep. While certainly those exist, the reason the meta evolved to what it is has more to do with logical placement of roles. You could argue that this is a design flaw of League's map layout, since the sidelanes don't offer any kind of real protection for a melee pairing nor do they encourage putting only a single champion down there due to the existence of the dragon. In fact, the design of the game requiring that you always have a jungler, reducing lane dynamics and choice, is something that likely contributes to this as well but I won't get into here as it's off-topic and not relevant to my point.
My point is that people play these lanes because they're efficient and generally agreed upon by a majority of players. If you have a frequent premade group that shakes things up, then more power to you, but hopefully your group realizes the disadvantages of your choices and works to offset them as much as possible.
MidEvilKnight3k3 votesThe good players thought about what would be most efficient, but most people are just mindless sheep that follow it. If you ever try to do an off meta pick that you have thought abut and makes since given factors of gold, exp, and the lane matchup, people will still complain and blame their mistakes on you.
The mindless sheep would have never taken trundle support, but a pro team did it and now they try it without knowing it's strengths and very significant weaknesses. Varus mid would also have been ridiculed by the mindless sheep, until some players who actually know something started playing it.
Szunray4 votesWhich I find completely silly.
Vayne and Quinn can go top and Kindred is a strong jungler at the moment. You can currently be on a team that already has two marksmen, and your team will still hassle you if you don't choose a third and go bot (against Mordekaiser of all champs) . I doubt those people really considered the nuances of the meta when they auto-pilot champ select like that.
Believe me, Quinn's rework will come out, and we'll have 
top, 
mid, and 
Jungle, and people will still complain if I do not choose a ranged carry bot, because it's off meta.
ForeverLaxx1 votesThe only reason people get upset over "off meta" picks is because you're going into solo-queue. When everyone on your team is a random person pulled from the aether to play this game together, they're going to be more inclined to want to stick to the standard layout so there's no confusion as to what's going on or who's doing what. League doesn't give you much time to work out any alternate strategies in champion select for some reason, so the most popular way to decide who goes where tends to prevail.
As to Varus mid, I must have been the only person left in the game who wasn't surprised by it. When Varus was released, a ranged AD in the mid-lane was still a common choice so his kit was designed to function there. This is a symptom of Riot building champion kits that are designed to fit the meta the champion is released in, which is another issue altogether that I won't get into here. My point is that Varus was taken into a lane he was designed to be in and was successful. That's not surprising at all, nor am I surprised that the playerbase is either too new to have known that or had forgotten this fact. As I've come to realize, the amount of time I've been playing this game seems to put me in the minority as more and more long-time players move on to different things.
What I'm ultimately saying is, there will always be those mindless players that just blindly follow what the pro scene does without understanding why those picks are made or how to leverage that strength, and you can see this reflected in said champion's solo-queue win rates. I was never arguing that there weren't sheep, what I was arguing was why there's an established, accepted meta and it has nothing to do with the sheep.
MidEvilKnight3k2 votesSure, The meta is the way it is for a reason, and in solo queue it's difficult to establish unique strategies with strangers in a couple minutes. However, I would suggest that most people do not even know what the meta is other than they saw a pro player play X champion in Y lane. Most people would consider a team with quinn top, varus mid, kindred jungle, plus an adc in the bot lane to be meta. At the same time replacing the adc in bot lane with something else would be considered off meta, even though in reality it would be closer to the pro meta. The meta is not just the lane a champ can go, the entire team comp matters.
So basically most people don't even know what the meta is, so their interpretation of following it is skewed.
Crett7 votesIn the case of mages, it's already possible in my opinion, but thanks to the game's balancing methods, you're going to have to have a marksman somewhere else to compete. If ADs show up in other lanes, who knows, we might start seeing 
bot again, the snare-lock pain field spamming monsters of season 4.
But you have to ask, what would have to happen to allow melees to go bot lane? Should they just outstat ranged champs to the point that they mow them down? (it'd be cathartic, but unbalanced)
YumaS2Astral2 votesIn the case of mages, it's already possible in my opinion, but thanks to the game's balancing methods, you're going to have to have a marksman somewhere else to compete. If ADs show up in other lanes, who knows, we might start seeing
But you have to ask, what would have to happen to allow melees to go bot lane? Should they just outstat ranged champs to the point that they mow them down? (it'd be cathartic, but unbalanced)
The problem with going with mages at bot lane is that they are more level dependent when compared to ADCs due to their abilities.
Partholonian5 votesCould 
solve that problem for them?
KatCraft3 votesMelee's can already go bot lane. A lot of melee's can win lane in botlane quite easily. But that has nothing to do with why people don't do this.
Seriously pick Pantheon, Yasuo, Jarvan, Xin, even Renekton and you can stomp adc's.
I Miss Cannon5 votesbut later on you have no ranged ad to take down towers. great
Sightless666 votesThat's why part of the season changes are trying to change the damage formula to lower ADC damage to towers and increase mage damage to towers. More ADC damage gets tied into crit, AP champions get a higher AP ratio against towers, and Lichbane gets straight buffed. The relative pushing strength of each class should be slightly more similar. I don't think they've quite solved the problem yet, but will help any no-ADC team a lot for pushing.
Tuss3 votesWhy does it have to be ranged? Yi's and Trynd's can take down a tower just as fast after a teamfight.
Onerios3 votesThe argument for taking down towers was never about after fight objective removal, most bruisers were already decent at it, not to mention melee auto attack centric champions who would often outperform adcs. The issue has always been around sieging; melee champions can not walk up and towers when there are multiple other players around, they have to expose themselves too much and spend time getting to and from the tower, which means that the windows that exist that allow for ranged champions to put a couple of autos in just don't exist for melees. Not having a ranged champion capable of poking towers is a massive disadvantage, since to break the deadlock you either then have to have an objective outside of the tower to fight over (dragon/baron, time limited), a champion with sufficient dueling ability to be able to take a 1v1 under a tower and win while not ahead in gold (when that happens they generally get swiftly kicked), or a comp that can tower dive and come out ahead while even in gold (see previous point). It's just not worthwhile for the most part.
Hemulen Magi6 votesOr when can even non-AD marksmen, like Teemo, go bot lane? The bot lane carry role diversity is terrible. At least with support there are options of tank, burst-mage, or utility-mage.
Void Nargacuga5 votesBreaking the Meta is something you can't be reported for. So go ahead and go play 
Carry with 
support. Why? Because you can.
CISTERN1 votes[{quoted}](name=Bow hunter 16,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=8I6bn3cb,comment-id=0005,timestamp=2015-11-10T06:48:48.096+0000)
Breaking the Meta is something you can't be reported for. So go ahead and go play
Breaking the meta isnt reportable. U can go bot lane and duo farm, u can go mid with evelyn, the problem is IN THE META, NO OUT OF IT
Void Nargacuga6 votesBut that's how a new meta is made though, or you find an absurd answer to something. When all the heavy engage supports where running rampant someone decided to take , who originally considered a "troll pick" support, and just dominated the engegers. They carefully read her Black Shield: Morgana shields the target friendly champion or herself for up to 5 seconds, absorbing magic damage and rendering her target immune to all crowd control while the shield holds.
This made her THE anti-engage support. And suddenly she was no longer considered a troll pick support. She just makes engage supports cry over their wasted mana for those Hooks, Grabs, Zenith Blades, etc.
Elindis5 votesSion+Zilean lane is VERY strong and viable IF you put your adc somewhere else. Sion gets all the farm, Zilean gives him levels and gets more xp from that mastery. Sion can soak tons of poke, he's undivable and poke with this combo is just sick (zil puts bomb on a minion, Sion punts him)
Oh, and Syndra+Zil works too thanks to Zil's new passive
Spoofghoul15 votesMy favorite siege comp conists of 
Sion top or jungle, Malzahar mid, Zilean support. Once you all get a core item just go mid put space aids and a bomb on a minion then launch it into the enemies face with Sion. First off with the base damage of Sion e and Zilean e you can get up to 600 add Malzahar e and it goes up to 920, thats max rank base damage, you can apply this on 1 guy whilst doing 300-600 damage to other champs nearby. This iis pure base damage, and its low cooldown aswell. Add in some ap for Zil and Malz maybe liandries for Malz and relays for ZIlean your poke become more and more unbearable, the later the game goes ^^
Man if you hit the enemy wave clear with 1 space aids isis minion you chunk him so hard he will have to base, Come late you can possibly just outright kill an enemy mage if they dont have much hp or mr with 1 of these Aidsbomb minions.
TonyTonyMordecai2 votesYou just gave me an evil idea to actually try this... Curse you space aids.
Spoofghoul3 votesYea its really painfull, 920 damage on a lvl 9 poke :P
Make sure the Sion player is experienced as it all comes down to E accuracy thats the one caveat.
One very big upside is not just the retarded damage, but that the skills needed are the ones you would normally level first on all these champs anyway ^^
Good luck in you aidsbomb cannon comp endeavors!
Need Gold 4 Tent1 votesSion doesn't have much incentive to level E now since the nerfs though. Unless he's specifically levelling it for this strategy which would put him behind if unsuccessful due to a weak Q.
Spoofghoul3 votesLeveling E still the best lane strategy.
E only scales with levels and your Q scales with 2x ad so its gets stronger anyway.
Once you master hitting every e, it has 1400 range and is a fast projectile. it will be more valueable than leveling Q first. Q only deals strong damage if you charge it enough. E is easier to land than a fully charged Q.
Only in jungle is it better to level Q first.
A Miss Fortune5 votesI've found things like Yasuo bot lane works very well. They can synergize extremely well with many supports like in Pantheon's case. Me and my friend play Pantheon-Leona bot lane and it feels like there is just no counterplay unless the enemy ADC has 4 Jannas supporting her, you get locked down and you die. As an ADC Pantheon can find it difficult to fight with mostly damage items but in all honesty I wouldn't be that hesitant to take it into Ranked simply because of how hard AD Pantheon can snowball.
1011001110005 votesWell, I mean a couple of melee champions like Yasuo can sometimes go bot lane as a niche counter, with their strong mobility making it easier to go even and win trades.
Someone should try out Darius bot lane if they pick against a melee support, and just bully the support instead.
Iunno, sometimes I feel like it may not just be that melee fighters can't go bot lane, but when they're able to, people simply choose not to.
Belligera4 votesI've had a Darius "support" me before. It was horrific for the other team. Would totally recommend.
A Liberal5 votesI think the thing is that non-ranged AD CAN go botlane, they just DON'T. With things like urgot, vayne, kindred, quinn, and now even more marksmen going out of bot lane, people like xin zhao and WW can go bot. One of my friends started playing Xin Zhao botlane about the time of the morde announcement, and he has been wrecking it.
Quort2 votesUgh... Xin Zhao. I once took Cassiopeia down bot lane with Orianna support and the enemy Vayne was subjected to a painful lane experience! It was great until the Xin Zhao support walked in an wrecked us! xD
Orianna was more for zone control and team fighting than disengage so if he charged us it was a slaughter fest. I had my Petrifying Gaze, but Xin became fairly adept at avoiding the stun. :'C
Long story short, I hate Xin Zhao in any position he is played in! ;P
BastionKross5 votesThink about it this way. If marksman can go to other lanes, they most likely will. Bot lane has traditionally been the marksman lane mainly because drag was there, and he's a major early game objective. But now we have the rift scuttler that's accessible from top lane, that just happens to go a lot smoother with two people attacking it. Two people like... marksman and support. Top lane marksman/support (or just solo marksman/jungler) could control that crab (and its delicious buff) quite easily.
Also, if a marksman can now solo lane without the need or help of a support, then your team won't need a support. That's right, one of the most unpopular roles in the game is now going to be optional with marksman going into solo lanes. Support mains can still support if they want to, but they might be supporting the top laner, or even the mid. Or 
could follow the jungler around, gathering chimes and providing healing shrines. Yes, that means less XP for anyone the support attaches to, but you get to have someone there to watch your back and help ward with you. Might not be a bad trade for some people, especially if you get counter picked in lane.
Of course, that scenario also means that there might not even be a support in the game at all. Bot lane could be a tank and a fighter, both grabbing a 
and sharing CS. There could be duo mids; one assassin for damage and one mage for utility, both bursting down the unlucky bastard on the other side. How about two junglers; one in your teams jungle, the other playing 
and counterjungling. Double 
OP for objectives.
[zombie-nunu-hearts]
Will any of this work out? Maybe. Will the meta be changed? Hopefully. Will the average player try these new things out or accept them? Not until they see a pro team do it. But the possibilities are there to finally shake up this stale meta that has been ingrained on SR for too long. Do I like that marksmen had to be buffed up so much they're going to running the game? No, but Riot probably isn't going to change their minds now. At least some good can come of this.
Oshlet5 votesI think the biggest reason its difficult to place classes other than ranged adcs botlane is that the're all far more level reliant than ranged adcs. Adcs power is primarily in auto-attacks which they can fire off from a distance. The primary way to buff them up is through itemization which is why they're put bot as a farming champ while a non-farming support sticks by to make it tougher for dive fighters and assassins to lane against them. They get less experience due to being in a duo lane, but still get as much gold as a solo laner since they're the only one csing.
A mage, fighter or assassin bot lane would require the exp more: mages need levels to buff up their abilities' base damages which is where their big powerspikes come from, fighters need to buff up all their stats to survive in a melee, stats which are gained through level ups. Assassins are a mix, needing both stats and ability damage to kill carries fast. Tanks are similar to assassins to, but a further disadvantage is they lack the kill potential of the previous three classes so can't try to just repeatedly kill their laner instead to set them super far back.
The reason morde is successful (or was) is specifically because of the ridiculous exp bonus passive. Zilean might be able to broaden the bot lane meta, but probably only to fighters and assassins, 2 mages is easier to counter thanks to ad+mr items and tanks can probably be bullied easier. Even then, you still need a marksman on the team to provide solid tower siege unless you had an azir or maybe some weird comp built around initiating on a tower with sion and an ohmwrecker before trying to tear it to pieces as fast as possible.
TLDR: Marksmen need less exp than other classes so can duo lane better
Lucky Moniker4 votesThe main problem with a melee AD bot, is that you don't have a ranged AD to safely push turrets late game, or the raw dps they can put out safely from the back of a fight. So a melee bot AD works just fine if you have a real adc in a different lane, so we have some options for that now, but that's the kind of thing you will have issues getting ransoms to get on board with, premises could pull it off.
winnerunlikeme4 votes
Shahamut4 votesTo everyone complaining/talking about Morde 
The only things that made Morde bot lane viable are his XP advantage (why Rito?) and his ghost dragon. You want him bot lane because you can get dragon and have that major siege power.
Morde plus Zilean is stupid :P
ZT Xperimentor2 votesI wouldn't mind playing him bottom if they make a competent rework instead of this pathetic attempt. Would've been better off playing the old mord bottom.
Shahamut1 votesThe ghost dragon really does disagree with you. Old morde not as good bot.
ZT Xperimentor3 votesThe ghost dragon was a tacked on gimmick that put too much power on his ult. I was for an ult buff, but not a gimmick.
MetalGearTeemu4 votesThis is a side effect of the fact that they've systematically nerfed CC and buffed safety and mobility.
There was a time once when you could send a Sion and Garen bot, and have almost 5 seconds of lockdown if you let gaze hit you with Garen close enough.
Those were the days.[slayer-pantheon-popcorn]
Verxint3 votesIt's never going to work as long as melees need multiple skills to engage on ranged in lane, and as long as ranged AAs do 8% or more of someone health bar early game from a range where they won't take minion aggro.
It's the disgustingly lopsided level 1 that makes melee ADC bot not work. If you can make it to level 3 with a yas or Xin bot, you're usually alright. But typically you get poked out of range to cs the melee creeps from someone standing behind their ranged creeps, who is also snowballing the wave so you can't fight but they can because they never have to take minion aggro and if you mess up anything at all in the fight you get taken down to 20% HP
Honestly, melees don't get enough compensation for being melee in early levels.
SoMNia2 votesBut I heard they changed minion aggro to make ranged champs less able to abuse melee ones in lane. That should make a difference.
Verxint2 votesI don't know if this is the case or if it was on PBE. I didn't end up in enough ranged vs melee matchups playing so far on PBE to know if theres a huge difference. The closest was Jax vs Graves top lane and Graves isn't really a ranged champ anymore.
SoMNia3 votesI can't find the diagram I saw earlier, but this is referenced here: https://twitter.com/ReinaSweet/status/659975773659332608
You don't have to be near the minions in question. If an enemy is near your minions and attacks you, those minions will attack them. So if your lane opponent gets super aggressive with poke to stop you from CSing, they'll probably draw minion aggro. I'm not completely clear on how close they have to be.
Verxint2 votesI like this.
Obviously I don't know how it plays out, but the intended mechance hurts ranged much more than melee.
Thank you for linking that
Shield Villain3 votes
Was designed to be taken bot Lane, he has the tools for it. But everyone complains about him, and instead takes him Mid or Top. I don't think the community wants a melee adc. Every time one presents himself, all the boards do is complain about how strong he is.
