Why is "character diversity" bot a good thing?

Spencer·9/24/2018, 3:48:26 PM·13 votes·10,091 views

Historically, balance efforts have been around certain lanes or positions. For example, there were many champions that had unhealthy patterns coming out of the jungle eg those with strong early lane presence or global pressure. Similarly, there were balance efforts to remove some champions from top lane (though examples escape me right now).

So my question: why is it just a given that we should have a wide amount of character diversity in the bot lane?

Obviously, nothing is getting reverted, and I am not even complaining (I don't play bot lane). I'm mostly just curious about this from a design/balance perspective. It seems to run a little counter to how the game was balanced many years ago.

46 Comments

Oleandervine9/24/2018, 3:57:14 PM27 votes

Every other position has diversity. You can take pretty much anything top. Most champion classes can jungle. Mid is pretty flexible too. Support can even be incredibly flexible. However, for years now, Marksmen have been pretty much the only thing that can fill the hole in bot lane, and it's caused problems not only for the lane diversity, but for the class as a whole. Marksmen have become fixated as the late game carries, and because they've all been designed around being spoon fed gold by their supports, their budgets are through the roof, and their gold dependence has made it difficult for them to function in solo lanes/roles.

Critmaster Garen9/24/2018, 3:57:34 PM10 votes

for example it means marksmen dont neccessarily occupy a carry spot on the team.

there other types of carries than marsmen in this game.

and a teamcomp who can support one carry with 4 people is often more successful than a teamcomp that has to split their focus between two carries with 3 people.

lets say you have a marksman on bot lane and a darius on top lane. the team has to now split their focus between supporting darius and the marksman and has overall less utility than if they had a tank on top lane for example.

but if darius could replace that marksman on bot lane, you could build a teamcomp around him, just like you could build a teamcomp around kog maw, and there is a world where he wouldnt be shit, because he cant deal with the cc of a tank, mage and support on the enemy team without being overbuffed.

LilxPaprika9/24/2018, 4:29:38 PM6 votes

fun factor. and i think putting a lot of eggs in one basket where ADC is that much more important, particularly to support and protect, makes it volatile. in that it makes heroes in other lanes have a difficulty to win back a game if their bot lane loses. not fun for a game to count so much on whether bot lane is competent or not.
overall it's all preference end of the day. pro teams will always find /adapt to what's meta and see how best to play the game.

idea i to please everyone

main issues with ADCs before was that IE was just that much strong if they got slightly ahead, their snowball potential was big. the IE changes towards more mid late item was needed.

ShadWooo9/24/2018, 4:03:38 PM5 votes

Because not only one class was viable in botlane, but from that class 2 champions were viable at all (quinn, teemo) and from the rest especially in pro play there were always just 3-4 champions in top tier only.

Pendergast8919/24/2018, 8:41:01 PM3 votes

If a roll only is balanced with one type of champion in mind, as we have seen already, horrible balance issues can occur. If the devs are looking at a lane where only one type of champ goes, they try to internally balance that class, and tend to ignore if that whole class is unbalanced when compared to other classes/lanes. It took riot years to see/notice how marksmen were running out of control (with the commonplace team comps/playstyle is to have 4 people babysit/support the adc at all points in the game.) When they nerfed them, they overshot incredibly hard because the class as a whole hasn't been balanced with the entire game in mind in so long, and its finally getting close to what they intended with some outliers.

Slythrin Umbreon9/24/2018, 9:58:44 PM3 votes

part of the reason why they're doing it is because players just hate the forced role. Every time something new popped up and got nerfed, enough players hated it to get Riots attention even if the thing being nerfed was an actual problem.

To some extent if botlane is balanced around this diversity, eventually it would probably open up midlane to make more ADCs playable there. Although, Assassin nerfs would be required for that to ever happen.

haaaaaaalp9/24/2018, 10:39:50 PM2 votes

Diversity is a measure of champion balance. Traditionally, of all of the east to track stats, pick and ban rates correlate the best with champion strength.

Sexy Jack Rabbit9/24/2018, 11:33:00 PM2 votes

Don't bring up the word 'diversity' you'll trigger Busty

OtterlyLost9/24/2018, 5:21:02 PM2 votes

I dont particularly understand this drive for diversity bot lane either. The only people who want it are people who dont play the lane. ADC mains are fine with it the way it is, particularly since Riot refuses to rebalance the class that they are viable other places. If they made marksmen workable in a solo lane, they could actually focus on making bot lane diversity because there wouldn't be a risk of a class who only has one lane suddenly becoming obsolete all together. That was my issue with bot lane diversity; it came at the cost of my favorite champions not actually being playable because they cant compete against champions who were designed for solo lanes. And I wasnt going to change my entire roster just so i could continue to play the game. If I had, at any point, been interested in playing a mage, I would have played them mid or top or hell, in the jungle(morgana, zyra, taliyah have all historically been junglers and done exceptional). If I'd wanted to play a bruiser, I would have gone top or mid or again, jungle. But I didnt want to. I wanted to play Cait or Trist, or Ashe. And guess what? I can only play them bot.

If the people who actually play the lane dont really want to play other things, you should look to help them move out of their preferred lane first by providing their champs a variety of positions, of items, of builds and by actually giving them some agency. Maybe start by actually taking some agency away from mid and jungle.

Galiö9/24/2018, 4:56:56 PM2 votes

Because bit Carrys historically had no diversity at all while every other lane does. Even with champs that were pushed out of certain lanes. Also examples from op you prob were looking for was the days of Shyvana, Hecarim, Kassadin top :p

Spencer9/24/2018, 8:57:09 PM2 votes

Were they really "running out of control"? For the bulk of LoL, they seemed really balanced. It wasn't until the last few seasons that they seemed to spiral out of control. Plus, that's a separate issue. If they were busted before the class diversity initiative, they are busted after.

OurLestrade9/24/2018, 4:58:43 PM1 votes

People were whining about not enough diversity, bring it in, people whine about there being too much diversity, reduce, repeat.

ZT Xperimentor9/26/2018, 5:13:20 PM1 votes

Because it's been the most static position in the game for starters, and other positions often have multiple viable classes simultaneously. Top has had nearly every class being viable for a noticeable about of time with the exception of assassins, middle is the same but without tanks, jungle has seen every class for months at a time, and about anything can be support as long as they're competent and team can work with it. Another note is whenever something challenges marksmen's favorite position, marksmen mains wine they can't play elsewhere and riot either quickly guts it or buffs them to deal with it.

An example that you may have been thinking of is mordekaiser, a usually top lane juggernaught or middle lane mage; an immobile melee champion lacking any crowd control, and riot thought it'd be a good idea to shove him into a lane against ranged enemies who often have self-peel. They gave him a massive dragon pet but once they noticed it was way too strong they gutted most of his other stats, granted this was in the PBE at the time; but they didn't revert anything until several patches after it went live, and even then it was just stat changes keeping him subpar in places he used to be, making him reliant on having a dragon pet to be relevant.

Sharuken9/24/2018, 10:15:27 PM1 votes

So that a person that has interest in bot can play a wider variety of champs rather than just adc's. Now all Riot needs to do is balance adc's around midlane.