Similar to how assassins, mages, or mage-assassins are played mid, and how bruisers can be played top, but also tanks and some assassins, I feel like I'd be okay seeing someone who's not considered a "scaling marksman" be played bot lane.
And I'm not saying make adc's irrelevant, but I just want every single class in the game to be... replaceable? If that makes sense. When ziggs was being played bot lane, I actually enjoyed that.
Ariel the Cruel51 votesI type this too often. here's a paste.
[{quoted}](name=Ariel the Cruel,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=fM8agrOK,comment-id=000b,timestamp=2017-11-06T07:52:44.028+0000) My personal complaint about ADC's is the strangle hold they have on the game's power distribution. Especially this last season. Generically, they have. . .
- Strong sustain (Life steal and low mana usage).
- High consistency (Right-clicking from range)
- Highest Damage (Multiplicative scaling, woo!)
- The game's best objective taking ability (Structures only affected by AA's and Ziggs E)
- And RNGesus (Crit chance)
Their strengths need to be diluted. This isn't about them consistently killing others or not killing others. It's about them being the single strongest class in the game; to the point of being mandatory at all times.
Sir Rethor30 votesZiggs W btw e is the minefield
Jet Sett2 votesI never see the word "generically" so I legit tried to see it as "generally" because I KNEW it was spelled right, but it wasn't "right"
Ariel the Cruel4 votesum... Left?
Thefrostyviking3 votesWon't marksmen generally be useless if nerfed? I mean if you nerf all of them equally......
Twitch, Vayne, Draven could easily endure nerfs.
But the others are often just barely hanging on O-o
Their deal is kinda that either they work or they don't, this is a large part of why they are so hard to balance i think x)
Ariel the Cruel14 votesTo be clear, I don't claim that they necessarily need direct nerfs. Right now, ADC's are a mandatory component of reasonably competitive play (See: post lvl 15). The game is balanced around the assumption that both teams will always have one, and the game warps around them.
Example changes that could nerf ADC importance without directly nerfing them:
Ariel the Cruel4 votesTo be clear, I don't claim that they necessarily need direct nerfs. Right now, ADC's are a mandatory component of reasonably competitive play (See: post lvl 15). The game is balanced around the assumption that both teams will always have one, and the game warps around them.
Example changes that could nerf ADC importance without directly nerfing them:
redniwediS32 votesSome marksmen are able to go top, and a few can even jungle, so it's not like they are completely tied to bot lane. We just need someone to find something that can reliably replace them bot lane as a strong DPS dealer.
Ziggs works bot lane not because he is a good replacement, but because he as a high range burst champion fits into the bot lane counter meta. If the meta is what works best in a given position the counter meta is what works best against the meta, and is even more sensitive to meta shifts than the meta is. We need someone who is not a marksman to fit into the actual bot lane meta.
Dope Solo10 votesYou're missing the point. ADCs are too dependably strong.
redniwediS15 votesThat's not the point the OP was making...
Provengreil3 votesBut is he wrong? He's backing it up pretty well.
redniwediS12 votesI'm not really sure that matters. I can say the sky is blue on here and while I am correct it's not relevant at all.
We're not talking about the strength of ADCs, only the fact that they are the only position that is locked to a particular champion class.
Provengreil2 votesADCs show up everywhere, I've even seen support ashe recently and it was not a troll. They won that game. They aren't locked to the botlane, it's just that their squishiness, reliability, constant high damage, and range are the right kind of tools to be right next to two objectives and a buddy. They can can take these objectives and kill the enemies if they're even doing kind of OK. they ARE too dependably strong.
redniwediS6 votesIt's not that they can only play bot, I already said they are not in this thread, it's that only marksmen can play ADC.
ChuShoe6 votesHere's the thing, I'm fine with marksmen playing other positions.
Corki has always been a mid laner in my eyes, so I'm perfectly fine with him being there. Twitch can even go jungle, I think his kit could be nice in the jungle (just please help kindred out a little bit before you help the other marksmen do jungle.)
I'm even fine with vayne top as long as it can be dealt with and has a vulnerable laning phase that will surpress her late game.
It's just the fact that regardless of whatever, marksmen have a 100% presence. I don't want them to be nerfed to the point where they won't be relevant anymore, or have everyone buffed to the point where their damage is rivaled by even janna, death lord of the wind, but I want to have a game of league where we can choose a team comp that doesn't have a marksman and still be able to win, or win while it feels like me and my team are on an equal playing field.
OP Garen Support8 votesThat would require Riot to not glorify the ADC class in expense for everyone else's fun.
Fedoran7 votesYasuo, Ryze, and Azir are a few good candidates but sadly they have a tough time laning against the current bot meta. Late game though they fill the damage role of adcs.
Zero Skill Tank6 votesAzir - maybe.
Yasuo no. Yasuo has too much CC, if he was a viable botlaner it he would have a really bad laning dynamic in which he would get poked into oblvion and hope to one-shot stunlocked people with ult.
I could see Ryze, but with absurd levels of waveclear he has it is better to keep him in mid and top. If that got adjusted, than maybe.
Fedoran5 votesYasuo has windwall to block poke and tornado to return. Most of all he fills the damage need of an adc. The problem is that he gets smashed by strong cc supports like leona
ProfDrDeath22 votesYasuo and Azir are two of the most XP-dependent champions in the whole game. Yasuo due to the fact that he is melee and that his durability further depends on the level scaling of his passive, and Azir due to the damage scaling of soldier's auto-attacks, W's AS boost and all his abilities having scaling cooldowns.
Ryze has a lot of roaming power with his ult, making him better in a position with more map access.
A non-ADC bot laner would not necessarily need to fill the exact role of an ADC. Rather, he needs to not be hampered by sharing XP in a duo lane - and melees and most mages are too dependent on XP for that.
Kaìju1 votesWouldn't that mean the only possible option is an ADC? What types of champions do damage not tied to XP?
ProfDrDeath4 votesWith the way champions are currently balanced/designed? Pretty much yes.
However, I think Veigar could work as a bot lane mage - he is not too terribly XP-dependent beyond level 9 (Q CD and high AP ratios), he stacks AP from killing minions and hitting champions (more targets in bot), his direct enemies are usually rather squishy and he could benefit from a support to cover his weakish early laning. Another option could be Karthus, but he'd need just a little bit of a shift from base damages to AP ratios.
Zero Skill Tank7 votesWhile I agree it would be cool, I wanted to point out that no existing non-marksmen champion is a good fit for duo lane, and it's hard to even think of a design that would work.
Marksmen in laning phase typically have little to no cc and burst damage, which is important in duo lane to minimize stun-locks and one shots (i.e. there are two possible sources of damage and CC in bottom lane).
Additionally, non-marksmen botlaner would NEED to be similarly objective-oriented champion - from Riot's perspective, the fact that each team is pretty much guaranteed to have objective and teamfight oriented champion is a good thing, because it makes LoL more of a teamgame.
A Bandito7 votesI feel like I'd be okay not seeing a support EVERY game.
Similar to how assassins, mages, or mage-assassins are played mid, and how bruisers can be played top, but also tanks and some assassins, I feel like I'd be okay seeing someone who's not considered a "support" be played bot lane.
And I'm not saying make supports irrelevant, but I just want ever single class in the game to be... replaceable? If that makes sense.
ChuShoe7 votesSupports have different categories which is cool. You can have your sustain mages vs cc based catchers and engagers. I'm fine with having a supp every game as long as they aren't mutually exclusive with adc's, and support the entire team instead of just constantly protecting one person
WDG Devour1 votesI really don't understand these people in the boards who always ask for the support to support the entire team? Redemption and Locket affect the whole team, not just the adc... The supports job is to protect the fragile glass cannon (marksmen). Why would a support protect a mid laner or a tanky bruiser when their not made of glass?
ChuShoe1 votesBecause it's your team and you want to keep them from dying/help them do good?
WDG Devour1 votesYes your right, every good support protects their whole team, I don't have a problem with that. But their priority is their glass cannon ADC. I don't know any support player who never does anything AT ALL to support other members of the team. How is it even possible to not help other members of your team naturally when in a team fight when Redemption is a massive circle?
ChuShoe1 votesI mean supporting outside of redemption and locket. Thresh can roam, a support can make plays everywhere as long as you or your bot laner is not behind.
In teamfights you should be peeling and shielding but it shouldn't always be towards your adc, that's my only problem with supports, the fact that they have to revolve around the adc instead of revolving around their entire team equal.
WDG Devour2 votesYes your right, if the bot lane is returning to base the support should probably roam mid and try to make a play. That doesn't change the fact that the supports priority is defending the glass cannon that is ADC.
If one house is on fire and the other is not a firefighter will obviously prioritise the house on fire over the one that is not. That doesn't mean the firefighter can't check the house that is not on fire, it's just priorities.
At the end of the day ADCs are a glass cannon that not only get hard focused and bursted to 0 instantly but is also the best siege class and thus very important to keep alive in comparison to a mid or top laner. The best supports always make sure their ADC is kept alive.
Sahn Uzal13 votesSupport is a role, multiple classes are played within that role. (Enchanters, Wardens, 'catchers', sometimes even artillery mages or burst mages. you get the idea.) ADC (or Bot, by Riot's naming of it.) is a role, where only Marksmen are played.
T4underbolt6 votesWould be nice not to see twitch+lulu, twitch+janna, twitch+soraka, twitch+sona lane every game. Sometimes replace twitch with vayne.
Ultra Rapid Fyre5 votesbeen seeing janna + yasuo combos bottom that actually do decent
Mordepool19 votesFace the Wind for 1.99$ a minute
Ayame Isaki19 votes$2.95
She's not that cheap a date!
[sg-janna]
Mordepool2 votesDon't hate me just cause I get a discount
ChuShoe2 votesJanna: Yes, it's true, for only $2.95 a minute, I will leave y- Yasuo: HASAKEY FACE THE WIND more unintelligable yelling REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE
Ayame Isaki2 votesAnd you thought it was just a harmless breeze...
MCNT0527 votes[{quoted}](name=Ultra Rapid Fyre,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=NAVE0pGI,comment-id=0007,timestamp=2017-11-24T00:33:29.308+0000)
been seeing janna + yasuo combos bottom that actually do decent
Actually, saw morg and yasuo, the morg would just shield him when he went in, so they couldnt cc him while ha hacked away at them
Tormentula5 votesThey tried 
The problem simply put is where the lane is. You can do anything top or mid and it'll work out since top has nothing to particularly worry about most of the game until everyone groups, and mid is mostly either a win lane or roam and win other lanes playstyle, but for bot lane if you don't have something that can break down dragon reliably or something with a forced gimmick to make dragon appealing (like morde getting drake ghost then destroying bot) or siege potential, its simply inefficient.
The only potential alternative would be mages bot lane but even those are short lived but they still have mana issues and even then mages really fucked over bot lane last season in the support role 
so having them replace ADC paired with another mage supp or hard engage wouldn't be healthy at all.
LordGeovanni3 votesthe thing about that is that would be fine if adcs werent buffed to murder champions when theyre role is to provide siege and such a role cant even be given up even if everything else is bad on the class. nerf their damage say this is how they are now to those adc mains who got used to such an easy no kite 7 crit in a row life and in half a year it will be generally accepted though it will feel bad compared to the current adcs the current adcs as they are now should have never gotten to be like this.
Liveey4 votesI get this, every lane has some sort of variety. Mages can go support, tanks can too.
However you always need an adc, in some games I've seen people try things like Voli/Singed bot lane (Which was really hard with a leona and a kog).
However it is not really accepted universally.
if you are in bot lane you are SUPPOSED to be an adc, if you are not an adc you are trolling.
So I get this point, I'd love to have more variety that is accepted. Perhaps the new runes will change that? Maybe an item update or even a new type of champion classifcation could do this. We will just have to wait and see, but I would love it if an adc was not a fixated role.
Feathermane4 votesYasuo bot always works. Maybe people are just unwilling to cheese that hard.
Frightning2 votesYasuo bot always works. Maybe people are just unwilling to cheese that hard.
It has some hard counters (I once faced a Vayne+Poppy lane, who soon figured out that if Vayne stands near a wall, Yasuo can never engage the Vayne or he will be hard CC'd for almost 4 seconds for trying to; it didn't go well for me on Yasuo). But outside of those counters, it's at least playable in my experience. Biggest weakness is actually level 1&2 because of the range advantage, and if you get poked down too much then you can't really trade productively because of the risk of getting re-engaged and all-in'd (range advantage strikes again).
Teridax683 votesAnd I'm not saying make adc's irrelevant, but I just want every single class in the game to be... replaceable?
This, I think, is a critical component to this discussion that many overlook. Literally every single time someone brings up their desire for marksmen to not be mandatory, there is at least one player who comes in and misinterprets this as the player asking for marksmen to not be viable. These are not the same thing. At this point I'm pretty sure this misinterpretation is largely deliberate, particularly as I've seen many of the same people make that same mistake across multiple threads, in spite of corrections from other players. Nonetheless, it still appears to carry weight as if it were not completely bogus. Asking for greater diversity in League, while still expecting marksmen to be present on both teams in every match, is inconsistent at best, and hypocritical at worst.
Adding to this, League is also not the only MOBA out there, and literally every single competitor has a much larger compositional variety, where their roster does include many marksman-type characters, but where those characters aren't mandatory to winning games. In fact, oftentimes it's not even mandatory for a team to have a DPS character if they have bursty damage-dealers, and carry-level scaling is therefore not limited to only a small subset of champions with near-identical features in common. Therefore, anyone arguing that marksmen need to be mandatory in League "because that's just how the genre works" would do well to take a look at literally any other game within that genre.
It's also worth noting that not even Riot believes marksmen need be all that mandatory: during this year's Worlds, when the Ardent Censer debate was still ongoing, a Rioter chipped in on the status of marksmen in the game's meta. Their response underlined the fact that not only is Riot aware that marksmen are mandatory and stronger than other DPS classes, but that this choice is deliberate, and that they could indeed switch at any time to giving another class, such as battle mages, the spotlight marksmen currently enjoy (with some adjustments). There is this deeply ingrained notion among much of the playerbase that marksmen need to be in every game on both sides, but that notion comes from years of status quo, rather than any sort of valid design reasoning. League could very well not be marksman-centric, and I think it would in fact be tremendously beneficial to everyone if it weren't.
Cowseed2 votesThen why don't you play bot and not play an adc then? What exactly is stopping you from being the change you want to see?
ChargeItDownMid12 votes[deleted]
Cowseed3 votesBullshit... it's laziness. Ziggs wasn't played bot because of 'balance'. it's because someone tried something new. Something that 70% of league players don't seem to know how to do.
ChargeItDownMid11 votes[deleted]
Blackstone015 votesIIRC the specific reason he was brought bot was due to a combination of turrets being entire horse shit and turret FB allowing for uncontrollable snowball in higher ELOs. It wasn't at all that Ziggs was particularly strong, it was that he could abuse ADCs main weakness early game (poor lane pushing), take a turret faster than anybody else could, and just close out the game before the ADC recovered.