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Anyone else feel like Botlane is too vulnerable and is basically the lane that loses it all?

inplane·11/26/2016, 12:52:48 AM·113 votes·4,460 views

Almost every single game I play, a 4 or 5 man gank takes place at botlane (Usually against my team because fuck me) and my ADC and I have almost no chance of retaliation. I don't care if Top doesn't take to opportunity to push or if Mid doesn't follow their lane, but why does it have to be botlane to have the shitty turret? Why can't it be toplane that has the shitty turret? Or midlane?

Does Riot notice how detrimental it is for the two people in one lane to fall behind? It's bad enough that they have to share EXP, but to lose EXP? It becomes a 3v5 if botlane is camped hard enough. I believe this is one of the reasons why people don't want to Support. They get fucked over by 4 man ganks every 3 minutes and fall 3 levels behind. They can't ward if the rest of the team doesn't have map presence.

It doesn't help that the First Turret bullshit is in place, but botlane just screams "Come here to get a free head start!" It's not much of a problem when teams know how to react to it, but it's frustrating when they don't know how to. Once a team gets the extra 400 gold, it can be used to force advantageous fights that would otherwise be on equal grounds. It doesn't help that dragon is right beside botlane to snag.

The entire early game revolves around botlane's demise and that's plain boring. I've gotten use to 5 man ganks down at botlane at 10 minutes. I think the earliest one I've seen was a 8 minute 5 man gank at botlane. It was not fun in the slightest.

93 Comments

ValyrianBlade11/26/2016, 1:32:57 AM12 votes

Bot lane turret doesn't have the resistances to deny the option of lane swapping which was so predominant in pro play.

Also as a player who consistently won bot lane early and had tower pressure pre-7min, it was really frustrating to never actually get damage out of it...

Basically, the bot lane turret is weaker to ensure the duo lane actually goes bot to defend it.

Now, as for ganks: yes, bot lane is way too prioritized right now. Single reason why I gave up on ADC and switched from ADC/Top to Top/ADC to Top/Mid. It is indeed really hard to carry from bot. WAY easier to play mid and be the one who roams and gets your bot fed. This game is basically decided by which team's jungler/mid makes the better ganks now. Top can influence a little bit with TP plays. Otherwise bot only can really carry in 2 scenarios: they get a huge lead against feeders, or the game stays even and makes it to late game. Any other scenario where it looks like your ADC is carrying? It was really the mid/jungle that got them the lead. It amplifies as the worse ADC taking bad trades and falling way back in CS is often the one that's safer from ganks so the better ADC can put themselves in a disadvantage even with moderate vision.

I don't think it's the turret's fault though. It's dragon. Early game, all 4 dragons are SUPER powerful. Infernal and Mountain are self explanatory. Ocean offers sustain. Sustain is by far the most valuable in laning phase, so the earlier you get ocean the better. Cloud offers out of combat flat movement speed. Thus it's most valuable when you have the least MS (early game when you haven't built t2 boots or %ms yet) and also the most valuable when you're moving out of combat (returning to lane you miss fewer creeps, jungler can roam much faster, etc...).

Basically, the two weaker drakes are super powerful when taken early, and the two stronger drakes are obviously desirable to get before your opponents. Diving 4 or 5 bot and getting 2 kills, a tower, and any of the dragons is often MORE than worth the retaliation of both top and mid towers and that's the worst case scenario where we assume both top and mid are capable of quickly pushing in the wave and killing the tower (very unlikely, especially for mid since the 5 guys at dragon can rotate mid after).

Koala Calamity11/26/2016, 7:32:00 AM7 votes

The problem is no early game tools for vision. Until I can buy sightstone, I'm stuck with the trinket ward. If you're blue side the control ward is good for keeping vision in the tribush, but if you're red side there's no reliable place to put a control ward because the river bush is so easily controlled by blue side. Buffing ward duration back to 3 minutes would go a long way. Or at least put a mastery in the support tree that does this so that all lanes can't fuck over the jungle/roaming mid.

Xyntheyxz11/26/2016, 1:42:03 PM7 votes

I feel you. But let me tell a story... Teemo top against Teemo top. Our teemo says "don't wanna lane against Teemo" Like rly? and proceeds to run to bot So me and my adc BOTH go top instead and wreck enemy Teemo...who goes bot. Enemy bot comes top...and guess what OUR Teemo comes back top again. And so the cycle continues...for a good 10 minutes, in which both team's top and bot get INSANELY underfed. But we won. Moral is: Report Teemo.

Eedat11/26/2016, 1:10:26 AM5 votes

Technically Mid is te mst vulnerable because it has 8 ways into it.

The difference is the incentive for ganking bot is much greater. I'm a jungle main so let me explain how this works. I gank mid to either kill the enemy mid or at least send them back to base. Then I roam Bot with my midlaner for the infamous 4-man gangbang. Take bot turret and dragon for free. Tadaa

Astôlfo11/26/2016, 7:31:39 AM5 votes

Botlane is most targeted, but botlane is by far the most cancerous if they get even slightly average, let alone ahead, come lategame. So they sort of deserve it, but they also sort of should probably be getting help from the rest of their teammates instead of just being ignored.

grug11/26/2016, 7:17:21 AM4 votes

top lane snowballs out of control the fastest because it takes ages to walk to and in this meta the mobility has spiralled out of control making it nearly impossible to outrun ganks toplane unless ur some kind of mega tank like trundle poppy or malfite

Targon11/26/2016, 2:03:02 PM4 votes

The bot lane turret being super weak for the early game pretty much puts a big "gank this lane" sign on bot lane. And with how much weaker turrets are overall in the preseason, it makes it way too difficult to come back most of the time.

MatthewRT211/26/2016, 1:00:55 AM3 votes

botlane is also the lane that can win it all if the support gets the adc fed

Final Spark Lux11/26/2016, 1:11:58 AM3 votes

I like how you used the word advantageous :D

Sun Wu Ryuumoku11/26/2016, 1:19:11 PM3 votes

Anyone else feel like Botlane always crying, in all meta/patch... ?

Catastrop11/27/2016, 1:28:11 AM2 votes

{quoted}

Almost every single game I play, a 4 or 5 man gank takes place at botlane

This is because any sensible team knows how Bot lane can easily win it all. Ergo, they gank to get their's fed and the enemy's behind. Frankly, Riot should be blamed for this clown fiesta gameplay because they constantly go out of their way to cater to marksmen and making them such an integral part of the game.

reaperteaser11/26/2016, 1:11:08 AM1 votes

vision saves laves

edit: also pings/team communication

Rivuo11/26/2016, 3:33:02 PM1 votes

Yep 1300 games bot lane + and I still think bot lane has the least impact on the game in terms of control.

you cant stop a 4 man dive you can only retaliate against it and hopefully you end up making it worth for your team.

Borbland11/27/2016, 11:34:06 AM1 votes

Depends, picking a skillshot mage mid like Lux or Velkoz and winning your lane makes it alot easier to face even fed ADC's, since you outrange them so heavily you can still beat them without too much problems. The issue is, assassins are popular right now and the counter these mages.

Celestial Lion1211/27/2016, 6:11:07 PM1 votes

the reason botlane has the shitty turret was because riot got tired of lane swaps in LCS

Vekkna12/6/2016, 8:16:55 PM1 votes

I spent all season queuing mid/top UNTIL the changes to bot, at which point I went back to maining support. Then I climbed from silver to plat in like 6 weeks.

Same champ. Same player. The difference was bot lane influence, and that's pretty much it.

On the flipside, I had a game last night with a Jhin, and we dominated bot lane and still lost pretty hard because the rest of our team lost.