The River Lane: The New Support Frontier
The River Lane is a concept Riot has been subtly endorsing for a while now, and it seems they've broken into full on endorsement of the idea of a river laner. In today's Shen Rework Spotlight, Phreak calls out that Shen "can take up roles in solo lanes, The River, and jungle." But what exactly does this mean, and what has Riot done to slowly push this potentially meta-paradigm-shifting concept?
From what I can gather, the idea of a river laner is a different take on support where instead of being relegated only to bot lane, they roam around the map assisting lanes. They can be helpful in securing river monster objectives (dragon, herald, scuttle, etc), sustaining laners, securing kills, providing mapwide vision, and potentially assisting allied junglers with coutnerjungling. To be at all viable in The River, champions would require a few things:
- They must be able to get around lanes without being caught out while traversing river. This means they need to be mobile enough to escape any junglers (or other riverlaners) who might catch them out in the waterway, or tanky enough to sustain a couple hits and get away with it.
- They must not be too gold-dependent. These laners will likely need to take a support's typical gold item, be it Relic Shield, Spellthief's Edge, or Ancient Coin. They'll be in lane for a significant part of early and mid game, but will need to survive without taking much CS and without the benefit of farming from jungle camps.
- They'll need something that allows them to assist their team. It could be strong ganks or in-lane poke, crowd control, healing/shielding/other utility, or something more than just a numbers advantage in lane.
With those criteria in mind, there are a few champions that would seem to fit the role quite well, including but not limited to: Shen, Poppy, Alistair, Tahm Kench (The River King), Trundle, Skarner, and Bard. Many of the newer champions that have been released or reworked have that interesting combination of lane support, tankiness, and mobility and it seems that they've been looking to allow this kind of playstyle for some time.
In Season 6, the potential river laners got a few helpful tools to give their role validity. Increased focus on the river's monsters, including the addition of the Rift Herald give the river-focused playstyle a more clear purpose. While they can help their laners, they can also help them secure significant buffs for their team. The rework of vision provides increased focus on a role that would spend gold to purchase sightstones or vision wards. With the new mastery system the "Explorer" perk in the Resolve tree provides extra movememt to those running through brush, but also the river, giving a distinct advantage to players looking to roam between lanes frequently. Not to mention, in the new Dynamic Queue system, Support is listed separately from "Bot" in a way that could allow it to apply to a river support instead of just a botlane support.
So what would this look like in game? Well a river laner would help the jungler leash their first camp, potentially double jungling to level 2. They could then gank a lane alongside the jungler, or hop into a lane in need of assistance. They would serve as a fairly typical support while in lane, until they secured a kill, their ally needed to back, or other similar conditions in the lane changed. If their ally sustained damage and needs to back to recover (or just to buy that Needlessly Large Rod), the River Laner could stay to help freeze the lane, preventing turret damage (which in the current state is especially important early on, given the frailty of early towers). When the main laner returns, the river can move along to their next lane, warding along the way. If a kill is secured, the river laner can either help push, roam alone, or take their newly freed-up buddy to secure a river objective. Once the laning phase ends, the riverlaner is free to roam freely assisting allies in teamfights, split pushes, and continued objective and vision control.
Other thoughts on the River Lane: Teleport would be especially helpful to these supportive champs, especially when moving between top and bottom lanes. Coordination between River and Jungle would be key to incredibly potent ganks, forcing enemies into bad position. Additionally, the Riverer(?) and Jungler could work counter to one another, i.e. River in top lane, when jungle goes Bot to help apply widespread pressure. The River Laner wouldn't typically take smite, but could do so in order to help with objectives and the new Tracker's Knife Wards.
TL;DR: River Lane, a roaming replacement of the support role, has more potential than ever with Season Six. Riot has now officially acknowledged the concept and is providing more and more champions, objectives, and tools to make the job not just possible, but quite powerful.
So what do you think? Would you play the role, do you think Riot is doing enough to make the role viable, and is it a role you'd like to see used more frequently in the meta?
