Bot Lane AP Carries...

Elindiir·May 23, 2016·4 votes·6,774 views

With the MYMU, there was a general buff to sustained AP champions... Is this the beginning of Bot Lane APCs?

20 Comments

SmitemuffinMay 23, 20162 votes

They won't become a thing. Marskmen have far too many insurmountable advantages in a duo lane.

Lifesteal is too necessary
Mages' dependence on mana is too crippling
They can never match a marksman's sustained DPS
Very few mages have dashes while about half of marksmen do

Critmaster GarenMay 23, 20161 votes

{quoted}

They won't become a thing. Marskmen have far too many insurmountable advantages in a duo lane.

Lifesteal is too necessary

Mages' dependence on mana is too crippling

They can never match a marksman's sustained DPS

Very few mages have dashes while about half of marksmen do

i think the only argument on that list that is true is the mana issue.

Cassiopeia for example has health sustain in her kit, aswell as sustained damage to match an adc. mages dont have a lot of dashes, but enough cc to kite or keep the enemy from moving. Ryze Azir

the actual reason bot lane apc arent a thing is because theyre ability dependent aswell as item dependent, which means they are crippled in their growth in duo lanes because they dont get as much experience as theyd need.

PennsMay 23, 20161 votes

Idk, I played Fizz bot in normals for a while and even tryharding plat 3 - dia 2 adcs couldnt handle it after level 2-3 lel.

SmitemuffinMay 23, 20161 votes

That's not an AO carry, that's an assassin. And of course you could, assassins are overpowered, Fizz especially.

The fact that AD/tank fizz is still popular despite a 100% AP-scaling kit is evidence enough of that fact

SmitemuffinMay 23, 20161 votes

Put one of them in a 2v2 lane against a support that can poke or all-in and against a marksman who can work independently of mana.

Once your mage runs out of mana (and even Cass can't REALLY sustain her mana) and you'll find out pretty quick how big a handicap that is. And it only gets worse as the marksman builds AD, which lets them farm even EASIER without mana and Lifesteal even MORE health while you're building AP so you can depend even more on wasting mana while failing to keep up in farm.

If somebody picks Sona, you would just lose. She has all that free harass and you can't Lifesteal between her dropdowns. That lane would be over in champ select

Critmaster GarenMay 23, 20162 votes

{quoted}

Put one of them in a 2v2 lane against a support that can poke or all-in and against a marksman who can work independently of mana.

Once your mage runs out of mana (and even Cass can't REALLY sustain her mana) and you'll find out pretty quick how big a handicap that is. And it only gets worse as the marksman builds AD, which lets them farm even EASIER without mana and Lifesteal even MORE health while you're building AP so you can depend even more on wasting mana while failing to keep up in farm.

If somebody picks Sona, you would just lose. She has all that free harass and you can't Lifesteal between her dropdowns. That lane would be over in champ select

i DID say mana is probably the only actual issue on your list.

if it werent for that, and the xp issue, i dont see why cassiopeia couldnt bot lane against an adc. she does have a health return on her spamable e, which is her form of lifesteal.

even better actually since it isnt diminished by mr.

ElindiirMay 23, 20161 votes

Once Cassi has Tear, her sustain is much more reliable. For her, it is all about using her W to keep Kalista (or Graves, or Ezrael, or Lucian) on the ground and using her Q to help her last-hit minions with her E. It IS true that she doesn't do a lot of tower damage, but her Q and W still help in that as they keep enemy minions back allowing minions to keep coming in. Cassi DOES have a means of getting health off of her E very similarly to lifesteal since her health return is AP scaling at a rather nice degree. Her E is free as long as it is a last hit so using Q to soften minions and E to clear them faster than any AA can possibly do makes for a rather good comparison. Cassi with item 3030 is even more sustain after item 3003 . To Cassi, item 1058 is almost directly comparable to item 1038 and item 3070 is comparable to getting parts to item 3086

EDIT: She DOES have a particular weakness to a particular support.... Soraka. HOWEVER, this weakness is abused by a mid-lane champion.... Cho-gath.

DrCyanideMay 23, 20162 votes

The question ultimately becomes "What do we want our APC Bot Lane to do?"

Take towers? Good luck doing that before you get a Lich Bane, and being that close to a tower an ADC would do it better.
Clear the wave? OK, but there are ADCs that can do that just as effectively while being better suited for the tower taking.
Poke? Again, there are ADCs that can do that.
Take dragons? You could do that from Mid, what advantage do you have being bot?

As much as I'd love to see an APC work bot lane, I can't figure out what the advantage would be to make it work.

ElindiirMay 23, 20161 votes

I upvoted because it makes a good point.

Adding on, the idea of a duo bot lane is to get a nice sustain champion that lacks protection to really up their sustain so that when teamfights come around, that sustain champion can go at it against the enemy team.

ElindiirMay 23, 20161 votes

Note: I voted unsure for the sake of seeing what the votes are...

ElindiirMay 23, 20161 votes

I really like all of this discussion...

Adding in something that none of you really added in...

ADCs are usually AD. If nobody else throws around a ton of physical damage, the ADC is there to do it. If all of the team damage dealers are AP, then your enemies can stack MR.... ON THE OTHER HAND.... if you have an all AD team, then having a magic damage bot lane is a GREAT idea because armor stacking doesn't do well with an AP carry.

Zone of EndlessMay 23, 20161 votes

{quoted}

I really like all of this discussion...

Adding in something that none of you really added in...

ADCs are usually AD. If nobody else throws around a ton of physical damage, the ADC is there to do it. If all of the team damage dealers are AP, then your enemies can stack MR.... ON THE OTHER HAND.... if you have an all AD team, then having a magic damage bot lane is a GREAT idea because armor stacking doesn't do well with an AP carry.

ADC are always AD and they will always be played no matter what.

Anyway you will never see AP bot lane for various reasons.

Mages are more level dependent and having them in a duo lane will cripple their ability to do damage. They're also farm dependent for items so unless they can function well enough for the team with less gold they will never go bot. That is why there is a support class in the game.

ADC are more dependent on gold/items than ability so they are very weak early game and need someone to babysit them so they can farm and reach their power through items. That's how support class came to be and many supports you see in game can do what they do effectively with less gold. It's also a reason why many support items are cheaper and are always items with utility actives on them instead of damage.

So now unless an AP mage can do what the team need to do with little gold(whether the team need damage or more utility) they will never be played in a bot lane.

Truly PridefulMay 23, 20161 votes

The only one I could see in high level play is Azir. The problem with mages in the duo is that they want a level advantage that they won't get down there. That's why they have generally gone mid for so long, it offers the fastest level 6.

Who knows though, Riot could make another AP champion that is good at pushing turrets like Azir that would be attractive bot because they scale really well with items rather than levels.

ElindiirMay 23, 20161 votes

Old Cassi used to be that champion that scales well with items rather than levels and her old stacks system actually functioned better in a duo lane. However, she never went bot lane because she was AP and she sucked in mid because she lacked in protections.

New Cassi still scales well with items, but not like old Cassi... HOWEVER she now last-hits minions better and has better mana management.

TMITMay 23, 20161 votes

Unsure. People like their static meta, but there's no reason it couldn't work in principle especially if your mid/top are AD (something like Zed and Garen). You'll be a little worse at taking towers, but you can still take them just fine after winning team fights, and you can force fights at objectives like dragon/baron rather than sieging.

Basically if bottom can win lane and you have balanced damage output I don't anticipate it having much detriment. Your team does have to recognize that it'll win the game by forcing engages on objectives + counter-pushing though. Maybe your support can buy a banner of command or something, but really so long as you win team fight trades +2 kills or better you're still going to be able to get turrets even with a burst mage bottom.

DeathBurstMay 23, 20161 votes

I don't know if it will become a thing, but I sure hope it will! Now that a lot of ADC can be played outside of botlane, it's possible to create balanced team-comps with an AP botlane and an ADC somewhere else, so that your team is not crippled by the lack of ADC late game to take objectives. I'd really like to see more diversity in team comps.

ElindiirMay 24, 20161 votes

OH and to add on.... Ziggs is reaaaalllly good at pushing and taking turrets along with his sustain....

Milodic MellodiMay 24, 20161 votes

AP Trist Hypercarry has been a thing for awhile now. Found out it's even better if you build Rylai's with it because the application and explosion of her E both apply Rylai's slow. Also Nashor's Tooth, nuff said :D

Athenes LuluMay 24, 20161 votes

Probably not. Few reasons:

LEVELS. Botlane consists of ADC and support because those 2 types of champs don't need levels just to be relevant. Mages, bruisers, and assassins do. Maybe tanks, but definitely bruiser tanks.
ADCs thrive better in a duo lane because of their lack of self-defense, or just that their self-defense is not enough in any given 1v1 situation. Ooooooo talk about immobile ones.
Dragon control. Unless your jungler is something like Udyr/Kindred/etc, you know how sluggish it is when trying to take down dragons without ADCs.
Botlane is one of those lanes where you can't just leave because you need to go grab something. Leave at the wrong time, you can either put your support in danger, or say goodbye to towers because the enemy botlane has an ADC who can probably take down towers faster than you do. Since mages sometimes need to "recharge" and "reload" their gear/mana once in a while, putting them botlane gives them much less of that advantage. ADCs can "survive" a longer because they rely on autoattacking to do even anything. In fact, it is not uncommon for botlane to ever leave lane and recall for 10+ minutes at a time!

Of course, I'm all in for supporting the ADC mid/top and mage + support botlane (hell, I had a blast supporting mages :)), but that takes very effective communication in terms of team comp, general strategy, and the like. In a scenario with unknown kinds of premades? Nah, not really gonna work unless people do hard carry mode so hard that ADCs aren't necessary (nah). Though if the jungler is an ADC like Kindred or even Twitch, then that's when it's not as bad when it comes to taking non-ADCs botlane.

DoFrMay 24, 20161 votes

that would be a really nice refresh.

and as much as i hope so, chances are it's not gonna be popular, think of it as morde bot, it's either way too strong, or simply not good enough.

that aside, regular ADC have infintie amount of AAs, while you, as an AP are very limited to your cooldowns and mana.

also, you need to consider an AP botlane is never going to take towers as fast as a Regular ADC, basically there's alot of things to factor, i really want to see it, but i know it's simply not gonna happen.