The Bot Lane Meta Has Stagnated - Suggestions on How to Fix It
Recently there have been a lot of threads that have gotten my attention about bot lane. People talking about Ezreal, Karma, Sona, Lulu...So I decided to talk about why the meta has stagnated and what can be done about it. For anyone who hasn't already done so, I recommend you read the essay I wrote previously about what a perfectly balanced bot lane looks like, so that you can understand the standard set by players.
Now then, currently for the past two seasons or so, the meta has largely consisted of engage supports (Thresh, Nautilus, Leona, Blitzcrank, Annie) and disengage supports (Janna, Morgana, Alistar, and Thresh again). The marskman meta has largely cemented around strong auto-attackers and powerful auto-based duelists (Tristana, Jinx, Vayne, occasionally Graves).
The link above defines why that has happened, but I will briefly summarize it. With the introduction of scaling utility in Season 3, the base abilities of supports got nerfed, while they received increased scalings in order to provide an incentive to use their new gold items to increase the power of their abilities. This had the expected effect of making AP supports excellent solo laners, because their poke, sustain and self-peel worked just as well in a solo lane as it did in bot, while making tank supports much more effective because tank items are lower cost than AP items anyway, and their bases were largely left alone (Leona received a -5 nerf to her armor and MR at all ranks of Eclipse, but got a 20% scaling on both).
After that, because AP supports were becoming a problem in mid lane, they were nerfed. This includes Sona, Soraka, Lulu and Zyra. Karma was reworked...twice...and Soraka and Sona both received reworks at later dates. The intended purpose of these reworks and nerfs were to destroy their solo lane potential, though with Lulu it just made her vanish completely.
Then with the marskman changes, ratio-based marksmen became unfit for bot lane and this has gone on too long for a TL:DR. The thread above is really good, over 100 upvotes, it's a decent read so if you haven't read it just do it. Moving on.
WHY BUFFING SONA, LULU, AND KARMA WILL NOT SHAKE UP THE META
The problem with these champions, at the moment, is not their kits. It's the carries they are forced to lane with. Poke supports rely heavily on their carries to assist them in harassing, damaging, and other methods of controlling the lane. When you have a poke lane, you aren't necessarily concerned about getting ahead in CS as you are denying the enemy team CS, punishing them for taking it, and then freezing the wave near your tower while your support keeps both enemies away so you can get lots of extra XP and CS that way. And the enemy team is just too low to engage on you from all the poking.
This is the intended counter to all-in supports. Riot stated as such when they nerfed Leona's health regeneration. So what's the problem?
Well, supports have to poke out two people. It's a hard job, and it's one that they rely on their carries to assist them. So, which carries are good at poking? There's Ezreal, Lucian (debatable), Caitlyn, and Varus. Are any of them played right now? No.
Ezreal's mana costs are exorbitant and thus he has to build Tear or Sheen in lane which greatly diminishes his lane presence, though he is a mid-game carry and getting out of the lane without much presence (and usually behind in CS/kills) leads to him having a worse mid game than 'late game hyper carries' like Vayne and Jinx who just powerfarmed the whole lane.
Caitlyn will always be played at some point or another because she's easy. She's for players like me who don't really know how to play ADC but just got stuck with it as last pick so we suck it up and try not to lose too badly. The problem with Caitlyn's poke is that its damage is hurt when it goes through minions, making it not very effective for trading unless you are moving around the wave (which opens her up to get grabbed by a hook).
Lucian's poke scales off his AP.
Varus's poke is extremely effective, but Varus is an ineffective laner because he has no strong item to rush for sustain, which poke champions desperately need to widen the gap in health between them and auto-attackers. BT is not an efficient rush item anymore, and Vampiric Scepter is pretty terrible on its own when you have to hold it for 2700 gold.
WELL, WHY CAN'T PEOPLE JUST PLAY THESE LANERS AND POKE ANYWAY? IF ITS SO EFFECTIVE, THEN IT SHOULD BE THE COUNTER TO THIS TANK SUPPORT META
That's true. The problem is that, as I stated previously, when a poke lane is effective, the pokers get a lot less CS. Substantially less. And with the cost of Infinity Edge, Bloodthirster, and Phantom Dancer going up, and the gold effectiveness of Berserker's Greaves down from S3 (it used to give 25% attack speed), poke carries will inevitably reach their full item builds much later than a farming auto-carry. Not only is it easier for them to get kills early because of their all-in supports and jungler ganks, but they also rack up more CS more quickly and get a huge power spike when they build Infinity Edge, giving them more attack speed (thanks to the mastery that gives AS when you crit), more sustain (LS quints, Doran's Blade, and Feast) and more damage than a Vampiric Scepter and BT will give you alone.
Poke carries are more effective in the mid-game because they do not have multiplicative scaling (their scaling is CDR and AD, that's it) while tanks and other defenders have multiplicative defense scaling (Health and armor). It used to be that if you were Varus and you got a BT and a LW you were golden and you ruled the mid game, but not anymore. So in the mid-game, you are already less efficient because you can't CS as well and your item lost 20 AD and got more expensive. Then in the late game you just get outclassed entirely. So, that's why the meta is as extreme as it is right now. It's not because Varus, Caitlyn, and Ezreal mains just swapped over to someone else, it's because they desperately played their favorite champions and just found them to be outclassed at every stage of the game.
WHAT DOES THIS HAVE TO DO WITH SUPPORTS?
Everything. Try playing a poke support with an auto carry against another auto carry and an engage support. You become a liability. You can't stack AP nearly as fast as the enemy support can stack health (Sighstone is good, and FotM is way too slot-efficient compared to FQC) and without your carry helping you poke, all you're doing is racking up slightly more gold than the enemy support for a much more expensive build path, and hoping you don't get grabbed or Zenithed on for an easy kill.
I KNOW ALL OF THIS SERAPHI. THANKS FOR WASTING TEN MINUTES OF MY LIFE NOW TELL ME WHAT CAN BE DONE
Hopefully that bolded text will serve to point people to this TL:DR. Anyway, in order to shake up the botlane meta, several things must be done. This is a vast and complex problem and if it were simple to fix it Riot would have done so already. So let's start from the top and work our way up.
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Chilling Smite is too efficient. It makes incredibly mobile gankers even harder to escape for ranged supports, who generally have incredibly low MS anyway and use their MS buffs on their carry when they get ganked. The solution to this problem is to remove the slow entirely, it does not need to be there. The jungler's kit should be enough to get kills when he works with his allies, being able to Smite enemies just to deal that last bit of true damage will function as a mini Ignite to secure a kill you deserve. The MS buff and point and click slow make out-maneuvering a ganker impossible, so you basically have to either play passively (which, as a poker, means you already lost your lane) or you have to just tank out the damage (which is why tank supports are so viable right now. They can actually live through a Chilling Smite slow).
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Exhaust needs a stronger AS debuff. The damage debuff was weakened so that assassins wouldn't feel so helpess when they roamed bot, but that just made it so that AS champions, who can land more blows during the debuff than ratio champions with a cast time on their abilities, are affected less.
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Targon's Brace and Face of the Mountain need the heal proc significantly nerfed or removed entirely. Adding sustain (the counter to poke) to an item intended to be built on all-in champions (who are countered by poke) is unbelievably dumb. These champions are supposed to be poked out of lane, you nerf their HP regen so that they can be better poked out of lane, but every 30 seconds they get a nice heal in addition to their free gold, and they even share that heal with the carry? No. No no no no no. This item is significantly stronger than the bonus damage on Frostfang, especially since that can only apply to one target at a time.
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Frost Queen's Claim needs to just be a better item. I'm sure there are worries that this will lead to the item being built by mages (no surprise there, shouldn't have added AP scalings to supports in the first place) but you made your bed Riot and now you have to lie in it. Talisman gives 100% Health and Mana Regen, 10% CDR and 20 MS, as well as the best active in the game. Face of the Mountain gives you a shield that scales off your max health, deals damage based on the target's AD and AP, and also gives 500 health (MORE THAN NERFED RANDUINS), 10% CDR and 100% Health Regeneration, as well as the ability to heal your carry (or anyone else) for 1% of your total health on farm. FQC gives 50 AP (less than Liandry's, which was bumped up to 80 with the AP item rework), 50% mana regeneration and 10% CDR, and an active that CAN MISS, decays over time and deals damage that doesn't scale with AP. It's a joke item that no one builds, definitely not worth the item slot and definitely not worth the 1335 gold needed to upgrade it from Frostfang.
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Poke marksmen need a mid-game fantasy. Wow did Riot screw this up last year. Essence Reaver is a late-game item for mid-game champions. You shouldn't be trying to make poke carries have a better late game. They're completely useless without multiplicative scaling, and the two items they need most (Essence Reaver and BT) don't give them any multiplicative scaling! Just AD and LS, no attack speed, no crit chance, no damage amp. Make Essence Reaver a cheaper, strong mid game item. Make BT a cheaper, stronger mid game item. Then leave BoRK as the late game lifesteal item for auto carries. Differentiate the builds. Make BT inefficient for champions who need multiplicative scaling. Give it spell vamp instead of lifesteal. I don't care, just fix this problem.
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Improve the bases of poke abilities in lane. Give them non-linear scaling. You have stated that is possible, and it should be used for poke supports in particular. Give them strong level 1/2/3 abilities and then they scale up much less with rank 4 and 5, making them strong early, decent mid, and terrible late. Give them lower AP scalings so they aren't a problem in solo lanes, and poke supports want to win the game earlier and don't scale well into late game anyway because AP support items aren't slot-efficient for late game and true AP items are too expensive.
