I wonder how Riot feels about what lanes some champs are going

Von Kaiser·4/16/2016, 9:15:45 PM·2 votes·538 views

When Rito came out with Kindred I felt like they were just trying to make another unique champion since an ADC jungle hadn't really been viable at the time. However after kindred came out they had to make some changes to devourer to better suit kindred, then they gave the jungle creeps a patience meter for better and clearer kitting and then the marksman update came out, now graves is considered a jungle pick instead of a bot lane pick and we see a lot more ADCs going top since then. Riot hasn't quite succeeded in their quest of making bot lane not only for ADCs (maybe the mage update will start a change reaction to change that) but they have gotten at least some of the ADCs out of botlane which almost seemed like kind of an accident, so I wonder if they are happy with that.

6 Comments

Deep Terror Nami4/16/2016, 9:17:46 PM1 votes

Long story short, they don't care. They may build a champion towards a specific lane, but they expect players will discover new ways to use them and are ok with it. If they have to balance around that later, so be it.

F0zzyBear4/16/2016, 9:18:33 PM1 votes

I've seen them continue to say they're looking for non-marksman to fill the botlane role as well, it's strange that they're doing nothing to promote that. I'm guessing the mage update may possibly make some changes to influence that.

Go to Heck4/16/2016, 10:11:29 PM1 votes

It seems like they want to embrace creativity in the community and let people build what they want in any lane they want but if something gets out of hand it is smacked with a nerf bat. The best example I can think of is when devourer was changed and Kayle and Vayne ran wild in the jungle. This led to devourer being changed for ranged junglers. TLDR- they do care but only if something gets out of hand.

Athenes Lulu4/16/2016, 10:12:00 PM1 votes

I mean, who cares about Lulu support anyways?

She's a top/midlaner after all!

Old Man Teeto4/16/2016, 10:54:29 PM1 votes

Your post is unfocused.

You start with Kindred, who aside from a short time, was only ever played jungle.

The ADC rework wasn't ever designed to let other champions be picked bot lane.

Graves was intentionally made to be able to jungle and top lane reliably.

The goal of the rework was to give each champion unique feels and playstyles. For the most part, it was a total success. However, some are just naturally stronger play styles, such as Graves, Kindred, and Corki and will take a while to get numbers fair.

The goal of the mage rework is similar, and will come with just as big of a shift from items as well.

Changing the dynamic of the duo-lane is insanely hard to do outside of creating/reworking MANY champions to be incentivized and capable to go into a 2v2 lane as the farming member.

Mordekaiser is one of the most hated reworks of all time with one of the largest launch impacts in the past 4 seasons. The problem was he was forcibly shoved into a lane that didn't make sense, and insanely over incentivized to go there while being made fairly weak in solo-lanes. Champions such as Corki are examples of models that can be strong outside of a duo lane, while still good in a duo lane. They need more champions with kits workable like this but outside of the ADC role.

I feel Azir is one of the few champions that has a kit that could be tweaked without too much backlash to work as a Bot laner while retaining the ability to be a solo. Aurelion Sol has similar potential, but is such a weak and vulnerable champion currently, that it won't be without a significant retuning.