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A request from a bored support player...

Hemulen Magi··2 votes·1,176 views

As a primary support player, it gets to be very boring seeing the same champions constantly in bot lane. I would appreciate it if more bot laners would play magic damage carries instead of marksmen, especially if the top, mid, and jg are already bringing AD champions to the team composition.

Mages have pretty much died out in bot lane after the many marksmen buffs, but they make the game a lot more enjoyable and fresh whenever I do see mages played in bot. I hope this request can encourage more people to play mages in bot lane more often or at least give them a try if they haven't yet.

Here is a list of the champions that I personally would like the chance to support more often:

Tier 1: Karthus Karthus, Ziggs Ziggs, Heimerdinger Heimerdinger, (AP or Hybrid) Malzahar Malzahar, AP or Hybrid) Kennen Kennen, Twisted Fate TwistedFate

Tier 2: Xerath Xerath, Brand Brand, Vel'Koz Velkoz, Viktor Viktor, Vladimir Vladimir, Swain Swain

Tier 3: Veigar Veigar, Syndra Syndra, Lux Lux, Annie Annie, Cassiopeia Cassiopeia

Tier 4: Azir Azir, Orianna Orianna, Teemo Teemo, (Hybrid) Kog'maw KogMaw, Corki Corki, Anivia Anivia

I encourage you to play whatever you want as a bot lane carry as long it brings at least somewhat reliable ranged damage output.

3 Comments

Kuwabaramulberry1 votes

From the recent fiesta meta, I'm pretty sure Swain/pyke is still a pretty strong bot lane that can still somewhat serve the carry function. The rest of those just lack the sustained damage to be able to do much

Hemulen Magi1 votes

I would say that Karthus, Heimerdinger, and hybrid Malzahar and Kennen all have plenty of sustained damage. They have disadvantages compared to marksmen, but I don't think damage is the main downside for all of them. I wish they were more viably competitive with marksmen again, but I will gladly support an APC bot lane anyways just to make things more exciting whether or not they are strong enough to be "meta".

Karthus has an even weaker earlygame than marksmen and can actually easily go oom from trying to keep up with a marksman's waveclearing. Landing his Qs takes a lot more skill than autoattacking as a marksman, but he can deal insane sustained AOE damage and he can rack up assists globally with his ultimate. Lategame, he easily surpasses marksman total damage when considering his AOE output. I've played Karthus bot and I find he feels very good to carry as if you can just survive without losing too hard until you get some mana items, but his earlygame is rough.

Heimerdinger has the burden of his turrets, which makes him poor at maneuvering around the map but if he does manage to cause a fight inside his turret range, he can easily outdamage marksmen, except maybe in the really lategame. Heimerdinger bot was actually played by pros and it's still semi-viable. The strongest marksmen might be a tier above Heimerdinger, but he's still like tier 2 or 3 for bot lane as a whole including marksmen.

Malzahar has lots of sustained damage, but he relies on voidlings to dish it out, which means his damage has more counterplay than a marksman's which can make him feel comparatively unreliable. He can work well with a support to CC chain opponents to give his voidlings the opportunity to rip apart an opponent. He does lots of damage to objectives.

Kennen has always been decent with a hybrid on-hit build and I've seen him bot lane since even before Riot's half attempt to improve bot lane diversity. He might not be able to keep up with the damage output of a crit build, but he does do lots of damage and he has the flexibility to adjust his build to deal different ratios of damage types depending on which resistance type the enemies are building.

chipndip11 votes

Don't bother

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