Apart from them still being an option?
Mid
top
Jungle
support
ADC's been able to Solo lane for ages, especially after the Marksman rework. So don't try to find excuses for them being the exclusive Bot lane carry role.
DJMason8825 votesThen i don't want to see a post about ranged toplaners being oppressive.
TwitchInMyPants3 votesThen i don't want to see a post about ranged toplaners being oppressive.
Well its Malicious Metal so I assume he's fine fighting ranged champions sometimes. Janna x Rubick, Hashinshin, HateDaddy were the ones I remember making a lot of "Fuck ranged toplaners" threads.
DJMason883 votesWhich is ironic because Janna x Rubick is one of the people who are constantly pushing this idea.
Eedat22 votesI would agree if the community didn't lose their shit when marksmen are played in other roles. I don't understand why people get angry that marksmen are "mandatory" bot but go completely nuts when they're used outside the lane.
Also I feel "Marksmen" is a class that could maybe be broken up into a few subclasses at this point. For example Quinn and Trist have drastically different playstyles, but are still the same class
Big Lincoln9 votesbecause while marksmen can go into plenty of other lanes they please, especially if they're as a counter pick, the opposite isn't really true
Eedat4 votesI mean there are melee matchups that are 'counterpicks' too. It's not like ranged champs hard counter every single melee
Big Lincoln9 votesno but hard countering most meta melees is usually why ranged champions go top, for example
if ranged champs are going to have safety and hyperscaling then balancing them around actually interacting with melee champs (and not purely on bot lane range v range, or range v range mid like ryze) then their early game needs to take a nosedive
if they're welcomed as a lane bully then their late game should be hit hard so that they're at least as ineffective as top lane bruisers are by end game
PhDs Nuts8 votes[{quoted}](name=Big Lincoln,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=bw9mZJeY,comment-id=00070000,timestamp=2017-07-11T01:59:43.470+0000)
because while marksmen can go into plenty of other lanes they please, especially if they're as a counter pick, the opposite isn't really true
LOL??
Plenty of champs are taken in multiple roles, but they're most efficient in one role, just like ADCs.
Big Lincoln8 votesyou misread. none of those champs save mord can replace a marksman in bot lane
JackMcSnipeyz2 votesYasuo, sion, darius, panth, renekton, jayce. j4 - all can hold their own in botlane (those are the ones i tried). Of course you'll need to know the match ups and learn when to engage with a support, but i win lane most of the times when me and my buddy go sion+panth botlane and just constantly engage on the adc without them being able to retaliate because they are not strong yet.
Ahristocats5 votession panth jayce j4 cannot replace an adc
darius and yasuo can because they deal too much dps until 40 min in the game
JackMcSnipeyz4 votesi meant replace as in go botlane and win, as long as you have some sort of a ranged champ (AP or AD) who can siege turrets you can go duo melee botlane without hurting your team's chances of winning. Just like having no Ap damage hurts your team's chances of winning, or no frontline, or no CC..
I mean that's the entire point of this thread right? to show that adc can go other lanes while melee can go bot aswell, or is this just another adc hate circle jerk in disguise? hmmmmm....
Valor Bot4 votesAlso I feel "Marksmen" is a class that could maybe be broken up into a few subclasses at this point. For example Quinn and Trist have drastically different playstyles, but are still the same class
Quinn and Graves aren't even classified as Marksmen anymore actually.
http://na.leagueoflegends.com/en/news/game-updates/gameplay/taking-another-look-subclasses
Yaskamasandwich4 votesI would agree if the community didn't lose their shit when marksmen are played in other roles. I don't understand why people get angry that marksmen are "mandatory" bot but go completely nuts when they're used outside the lane.
Also I feel "Marksmen" is a class that could maybe be broken up into a few subclasses at this point. For example Quinn and Trist have drastically different playstyles, but are still the same class
The reason we lose our shit when Marksmen go to solo lanes, like top for example, is because it becomes a complete one sided fight the entire game. The best way to put it was back in season 4 was when pros introduced Lulu and Ryze top. If either one faced a melee champ then it was basically freelo. They would have a better early game, mid game, and late game. There was nothing any melee champ could do about it.
Reason it goes double for Marksmen is the fact that they always will have late game power, Quinn and Graves don't count since they're not Marksmen anymore. So Marksmen that can solo become really scary. The result is usually mentioned up above, just look at Lucian right now. Also they have been required since the beginning of the game. That and they have received a lot of buffs over the past few seasons and it has caught up right now.
I wouldn't mind if Marksmen could go to solo lanes while other champions go to bottom lane. However to do that requires a sacrifice to late game, and perhaps a buff to early and mid game. Just not too much to make a Pantheon, Quinn, and Teemo oppression levels. The more diverse power spikes and less class power spikes, the better.
Sp33d Zer04 votesSo you don't want ranged top laners, but you want adc's in other roles? Sorry I'm really confused by this thread
Yaskamasandwich4 votes[{quoted}](name=Sp33d Zer0,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=bw9mZJeY,comment-id=000700020000,timestamp=2017-07-11T05:00:59.985+0000)
So you don't want ranged top laners, but you want adc's in other roles? Sorry I'm really confused by this thread
I want Marksmen in other roles only when it is balanced and working. I was just explaining why they usually don't work and why we react with bad criticism to it.
hhaavviikk6 votesI would agree if the community didn't lose their shit when marksmen are played in other roles. I don't understand why people get angry that marksmen are "mandatory" bot but go completely nuts when they're used outside the lane.
Also I feel "Marksmen" is a class that could maybe be broken up into a few subclasses at this point. For example Quinn and Trist have drastically different playstyles, but are still the same class
probably because they are also still used bot, I remember back during the ADC rework it was a game of having 4/5 ADC's every match and adc mains were like ''lolz wut is da problem''
SenzaRespiro894 votesBecause once marksmen are able to solo lane they are broken by definition. A lategame hypercarry who can solo a lane and is mostly even a bully to melee champs and even ranged ones? Broken.
Spice POWAH19 votesHey don't forget the legendary Tank 
Support with Stoneborn Pact.
koshkyra19 votesBut where would ADCs go if they werent necessary bot anymore?!
To hell. Where they belong.
AFilthyCaitMain14 votes
top/mid???
????????????????????????
isnt that good in mid as shown when she first came out
????????
Teridax6841 votesI think the point being made in the OP is that marksmen as a class would still have a lot of presence in the game even if they weren't necessary bot lane, rather than unviable, so having some marksmen stay exclusive to bot lane would be more or less fine. If the point you're making is that some marksmen can't lane solo, then steps need to be taken to make those marksmen solo viable (without being oppressive, as is often the case, especially in top lane): technically, every class should benefit from the help of a support, not just marksmen, and designing a class to need a support to function early on basically means supports are, conversely, designed to play servant to that class in lane, which isn't fun for the support.
AFilthyCaitMain3 votesAs i said above, ADCs are supposed to be easy to kill, that is why they cant solo lane. some are more independant than others, but in like challenger, youll never see solo adcs viable.
Teridax6843 votesCaitlyn was originally a mid laner and quite competitive, and not too long ago mid lane Varus was popular as well, with Corki also becoming a powerful pick now. The idea of ADCs being easy to kill is also a myth, as they tend to have exceptional self-peeling capabilities in addition to range and easy access to life steal. Life steal might not be a big thing in lane, but range is, which is why the marksmen capable of solo laning often turn into lane bullies as a result. Marksmen like Kog'Maw and Jhin definitely are exceptionally vulnerable to dives and ganks, but then so are plenty of solo laners like Karthus, Orianna, Vel'Koz, etc.
Historically, the reason marksmen ended up sticking to duo lanes is because they're more dependent on items than levels, and supports are less dependent on both than other classes too, and not because marksmen were always super-vulnerable when alone. Again, if marksmen are simply too weak to solo lane, then I'd welcome buffing their early game in exchange for a softer power curve, which would also help diversity by allowing other non-marksmen carries to shine.
AFilthyCaitMain6 votes(Wish id have been around to see cait mid)
ADCs have no way to deal with burst mages and assassins who go mid, other than GA. Most mages have stuns, roots, etc and most assassins have escapes, like Zeds shadow. But ADCs dont have all too much to deal with being dived on or getting caught. Who would win, Cait or Syndra. I would say syndra as syndra can 100-0 the caitlyn easily.
Teridax6820 votesThe thing is, ADCs are much more likely to have a dash than mages, which makes them more resistant to ganks than mages. Marksmen also do often have crowd control: out of the game's 20 "pure" marksmen (there are some more, like Azir, Gnar, Kennen, etc. that I'm not counting here, but they don't affect the statement by much), 10 have hard CC of some kind, and among those that remain 5 have a gapcloser (there are also 5 marksmen with a gapcloser and hard CC). They're definitely weak to burst and lockdown, which is likely to happen against an assassin or mage, but their innate pushing power and range still give them plenty of ways to act against their opponents, which is also why marksmen like Ezreal, Kog'Maw and Varus can be played mid. Again, marksmen may not all be viable in solo lanes for balance reasons, but historically they have proven to have the tools to survive and even thrive in solo lanes.
AFilthyCaitMain4 votesYes thats true. But there are many reasons why they should not go in solo lanes, as it just puts them at a heavy disadvantage from a lot of things when they can just go bot lane with a support. there are reasons why we have the meta the way it is.
Teridax6819 votesAs I just explained, the current meta originated from marksmen being item-dependent rather than level-dependent, and thereby joining forces around Dragon with another level-independent class in a lane with a slightly slower minion flow than mid; it is only afterwards that it was consolidated by reinforcing the class's carry power curve. Just because there is a "reason" the meta is the way it is does not mean that is the way it ought to be, and what I am arguing is for marksmen to receive the balance changes they need so that they can be viable solo, while also sacrificing some of their late game in exchange.
To put this into perspective, every MOBA in the industry has at least a handful of ranged, autoattack-based characters, but League of Legends is the only game where the carry needs to be a marksman, and the marksman needs to go bot lane with a support. It is not an intrinsic quality of marksmen to be mandatory carries, nor are they intrinsically bad alone, yet both of those characteristics have been held as immutable and even necessary to the game, while being aggressively preserved to the detriment of diversity overall. A world in which marksmen, like any other class, can go into multiple lanes, including solo positions, and contribute to the game without warping it around them, is one that is not only perfectly feasible, but also one that would be significantly beneficial to a League that has suffered from one of the most stagnant positional metas out there for most of its running time.
NodirjonSattarov5 votesThe idea of ADCs being easy to kill is also a myth
if you can't kill a CC less, mobility-less, helpless Kog'Maw then you're really, really bad.
koshkyra15 votesIf you can't kill a hyper-carrying, 1200+ DPS, long ranged Kog'Maw then you're really, really okay.
FTFY
Need Gold 4 Tent7 votesM7 Kog here, I happen to agree with the general although I do happen to main tanks. The problem is he does a SHITLOAD of dps with little to no burst. Over 1 or 2 seconds, he gets outdamaged by most other damage dealers even other ADC if they do crit build. He is especially susceptible to assassination compared to most other marksmen who can actually nuke the assassin back or have self-peel tools.
However, we do have to keep in mind that a Kog is probably going to have an entire team dedicated to him for most part, which makes him even harder to kill than self-reliant ADC without that level of protection.
Put it this way - if you have an ADC Ez, doing a protect comp is wasteful and a lot less effective considering his damage output is far from Kog's level. Your team's overall damage suffers. However, he is self-reliant and doesn't need much protection in the first place so your team is allowed to invest in more damage heavy selfish champs to make up for it.
A Kog can do 2 or 3 champions worth of damage, but is totally immobile, cc-less and squishy as mentioned above. Thus, the team would have enough damage with him alone, so they can have more damage-less utility champs to ensure Kog achieves his full damage quota. If you fill a Kog team with selfish damage dealers, you will likely find that Kog feeding hard because he doesn't have the tools to stay alive on his own unlike other self-reliant ADC.
PePsiLemoNN2 votesMarksmen like Kog'Maw and Jhin definitely are exceptionally vulnerable to dives and ganks,
NodirjonSattarov3 votes[Jihn] Q + snare gains MS, walk away, press R
Or if you're lucky you get your 4th shot and get MS from that.
[Kog'Maw] press E and pray that they're incapable of playing league
Spice POWAH3 votesor put all of your traps in one spot to bait someone into getting snared on it
NodirjonSattarov4 votespeople talk about jhin being vulnerable forget he has hard CC, trap slows, and a long range ult that slows for a total of 3 seconds when chained
Sire Hippington4 votesevery class should benefit from the help of a support, not just marksmen
For that, supports need to change a bit aswell too. I recently had an karma game where i tried to support a wukong in teamfights, it's not possible. Supports just have way to little range on their spells to support melees in teamfights(especially mobile ones that dive the backline). In order to shield him,. i would need to walk straight into their frontline, and even then i would probably to late as i lack mobillity. And thats not a karma only issue, non of the ranged supports can reliably get in position to support a diver in teamfights, and even fro the melee ones it's a hard task as they usually lack the mobillity to keep up with their buddy.
Teridax685 votesWhile I disagree that supports have too little range to support front liners (support abilities with 600-800 range are fairly common), I do agree that currently supports have been pushed way too far towards protecting the marksman, instead of assisting their entire team. Items like Ardent Censer, Mikael's Crucible and Zeke's Harbinger are essentially tailor-made for marksmen, while working far less well on any other class, and even effects on support champions, like the bonus AD on Janna's Shield, are specifically designed to give the marksman more power.
Supports are literally the only class out there that have power on their kits that is made to synergize with another, very specific class, rather than themselves or allies in general, and marksmen are the only class to have other champions cater specifically to them. In this respect, Rakan and Xayah's bonuses towards each other are not all that new, because previous supports have been designed with marksman-specific power for years now. Supports need to be decoupled from marksmen, and marksmen need to be made more independent (and balanced around that independence, too), for the sake of both classes.
Sire Hippington3 votes600 range is enough to support someone those brawling with the opposing frontline, but not enough to support anyone that dives into the opposing backline, not on a squishy, not without mobillity. I can get into position as lulu, but i have to use W on my self for the ms to do so, already loosing one utillity tool, and i most likely have to shiled my self so i don't die if i get that close to the opposing team, so another utillity tool gone just so i can somewhat savely get into a position to support my melee. It's just so much easier to sit savely in the backline and have all the utillity tools just for boosting a ranged carry or peeling.
Exercise852 votesSupports need to be decoupled from marksmen, and ~~marksmen ~~ need to be made more independent (and balanced around that independence, too), for the sake of both classes.
Fixed that for you. No but for real though, everyone talks about marksman's ability or inability to solo lane, and i think you are the only person who touched on the fact that we also have another core group of champions who are designed around a duo lane role. And sadly even you didn't expand on the idea of re-balancing them to a more self sustaining position as well as marksmen. I personally love the support role for how absolutely broken the team play potential is (if you don't think so, just look up the win rates for aram where any given team might not get a support to help them, and see how many supports are at the top of that list (5 of the top 10 are supports or can be played "support", with sona at a 70% win rate)). Why is it that with the exception of a few champs like lulu or "supports" that originated as solo laners elsewhere, i have to play a babysitter in the early and mid game just to survive long enough to be the (unappreciated) force behind every winning team fight. And even those champs get balanced around the idea of "cant let the support be to strong solo" any time they show a marginally positive win rate in a lane other than bot. I think that allowing more true supports have the strength to be solo laners would open up a lot of diversity, as i think most people don't enjoy playing to support role, but would enjoy the support champions the same way many people enjoy solo lane tanks.
Teridax681 votesI agree to some extent, supports themselves have often been made too dependent on others to function, to the detriment of both diversity and the enjoyment of playing support. While I do think supports will always be more team reliant than other champions, I'd very much like to see many more of them viable in solo positions, which is almost (but not quite) the case for several of them, such as Braum, Leona, Tahm Kench, Taric, etc.
Ideally, the dream would be to have a League where every class were valuable to the game and fun without being mandatory, had the option of going in any lane, in any positional distribution, and where those comps would all be both viable and healthy. It is almost certain that not all comps and positional layouts will ever be viable, but there's still huge progress to be made by freeing up supports, who are currently mostly restricted to duo bot lane, and by shaking up the 1-1-1-2 meta that has been the only truly viable meta in the game for years now. I completely agree that supports are not supposed to feel like babysitters, and should be treated as important and respected members of their teams at all times, rather than the servants they all too often end up becoming. If making them more enjoyable and playable across more positions means sacrificing some of their team synergy (which is currently mostly marksman synergy), I still think that would be a valid tradeoff.
Exercise851 votesI am fine with them staying more team oriented, but I think they should be less team reliant, at least in the early game. That way they can build up to that big team-play potential in a solo lane if they want/need to, and then act as play makers in the late game. As i said earlier, much the same way many tank top lanes play to survive, and after the early/mid game, become big team players, i wish that more protection or enhancement type supports could also get away with that.
Teridax681 votesI'm completely with you here, both tanks and supports are proof that some champions need to have different options during and after the laning phase. Riot has acknowledged this to a large degree with tanks, which is why many of them have been given ratios that allow them to build some damage early on, and then progress towards a proper tank build, or simply strong base damage with poor scaling. My issue with this so far, though, is that putting more damage on tank abilities tends to often make them too bursty, and even minor scalings tend to give them damage at a point where they really shouldn't be having much of it. This is less the case now, as top lane tanks aren't doing so hot, but back when tanks were really strong, champions like Poppy and even Nautilus were out-dueling damage champions at certain stages.
Personally, I think the idea of giving tanks and supports stronger damage early on, and less damage later, is a good one, as it would allow them to hold up at a time when CC and utility aren't at their strongest, without overloading their kits once they get to the teamfighting stage. However, I think the medium to achieve that should be basic attacks: since both tanks and supports tend to use basic attacks pretty often in lane, but very little afterwards, giving them solid basic attacks, and little to no damage on their abilities, would allow them to trade and last hit properly in lane, and naturally scale towards a state where their major contribution becomes their CC, utility, durability, etc. It could also make them healthier in lane overall, as limiting their damage threat to autoattacks could prevent some supports from using their more reliable CC/utility to harass enemies at too little cost (e.g. AP mid lane Janna way back when, Lulu before all of her nerfs, pre-rework mid lane Soraka, etc.).
Exercise852 votesThe basic attack idea could be a really good solution, but would require more than just a basic attack increase across the board for supports and some tanks. Janna for instance could use a basic attack upgrade as well as more base damage on her Q and W with less scaling damage to be good in solo lane early, slight adjustments only to keep her from being broken as a support. however more poke type supports like lulu or sona might require different adjustments (lichbane already being a good early item for them if they get ahead in a solo lane), you could drop some damage off abilities early, but this would hurt them as supports, as normally only one auto is used in a E-Q-Auto-Thunderlords rotation to poke in lane as lulu. I know its good to auto harass often as a poke support, but if its a close lane and you only get one chance to drop damage every so often, taking it away from abilities and putting it on basic attacks would hurt overall.
That said i think your idea, tailored on a case by base basis, is the best idea to fix this so far.... and riot isnt going to do it anyway, so its a nice dream.
i cant move wtf2 votesI think the underlying problem is that marksmen, since League's beginning, have been balanced against the game's length (weak early but strong late), instead of having inherent strengths and weaknesses in their kit at all stages in the game.
Teridax681 votesThis is true, though at the same time marksmen have always been necessary in teams even when games were hyper-focused on the early game, which might point at a larger balancing issue. I also feel marksmen do genuinely have some inherent weaknesses (most of them have innately weak burst and are squishy), but have had those progressively erased over time as their damage and access to life steal was increased. I agree that they do need stronger weaknesses (I personally think marksmen should have some of the most unreliable/interactive abilities in the game, to compensate for the reliability of their basic attacks), and possibly even fewer strengths, though part of that will have to be solved by addressing their itemization, and not just their kits.
I also agree that balancing a champion, let alone a class of champions, along a stilted power curve is generally not a good idea, because past a certain degree those champions tend to lack agency at their lowest point, and lack counterplay at their highest. This used to be the case for hypercarry marksmen a few years ago, but after steps were taken to give them more things to do in lane (e.g. buffs to Kog'Maw and Vayne's early game), many marksmen have ended up having no especially weak point in the game, while still having a carry power curve. While I do think being able to carry a game is something players should be able to do if they choose, carrying should be a function of specific champions and builds, not an entire class, and at no point should a carry power curve slope so hard that the champion in question feels powerless at one end, and impossible to deal with reasonably at the other.
i cant move wtf2 votescarrying should be a function of specific champions and builds, not an entire class, and at no point should a carry power curve slope so hard that the champion in question feels powerless at one end, and impossible to deal with reasonably at the other.
Totally agree. That's why I think marksmen in general could have better design decisions moving forward than balancing them according to "weak early and strong late." A ranged, high damage backline is already a great asset to a team. Something as simple as making them bad at low range (maybe changing them from attacking with a gun to hitting them with the butt of the gun with a slow animation at close range) or expanding on the crit mechanic to add some form of an accuracy stat to their auto attacks so their dps remains the best in extended fights but unreliable for short bursts.
DeathBurst7 votesI actually asked this question on Ghostcrawler's Tumblr, and he made a good point: sure, some Marksfolks can be played elsewhere, but a lot of Marksfolks cannot. What about Cait, Ashe, Jhin, Sivir, Tristana, etc.?
Sahn Uzal2 votesThey'd still be played bot, among with other non-Marksman champions.
DeathBurst3 votesWhich means the new alternatives to be played in bot lane need to be very finely tuned to be able to compete on equal grounds with Marksman without pushing them out of meta completely. Given that ADC are naturally dominating in late game, and are just bullying any melee in lane just with their range, this is a very precise point that need to be reached.
Sire Hippington6 voteseasy solution: tune down the default lategame of marksmen. If marksmen don't hyperscale by default, their indviduall powercurves could see much more varity and they could be balanced around a strong lane by sacrificeing some latewgame for that. But aslong as marksmen by default are gods lategame that only get outscaled by other marksmen and **maybe **a few mages, i don't see a way to balance that mess.
