There's an elephant in the room; Marksmen are still the only viable carry in the duo lane.

The marksmen rework gives them the variety, versatility, and early game power needed for them to be truly successful outside of duo lanes. They are way more fun to play, and it's great that the map has been opened up to them, but** bot lane has NOT been opened up to anything else. If anything they are even more optimal for duo lanes. **

This is largely because Marksmen need XP by far the least of any role. AD and AS barely budge with level, while mages and most bruisers derive most of their damage up until late game off of levels. Marksmen, even casters like Ezreal, derive most of their power from item scalings, not XP, so they can be shoved in the lane with reduced XP but more than full gold (as they don't need to spend money on wards) without loosing much. Melees can't really do this; for one they tend to be forced out of lane by ranged champs, especially when the ranged champ has a support to peel for them, but equally importantly the defensive bonuses (HP, AR, MR) for leveling are MUCH more important for them than marksmen, both because being melee makes them far more vulnerable, and because they tend to get higher stats per level.

Until this is changed, marksmen will only see play outside of duo lanes along WITH a marksmen in the duo lane, which means they'd be overpowered enough not only to make up for the assets of what they replaced (such as a zone control mage), but also able to brute force through itemization and compositions meant to counter marksmen.

I'm not saying nothing else CAN work bot lane, but they are by far the most reliable option. And reliability is ultimately what has cemented their position bot lane in the first place.

I absolutely want marksmen to be viable in every lane, but along with that I want things other than marksmen available bot lane!

We really need to talk about this.

This post spun off my very long thread, The State of Marksmen, currently in two parts; (Why they Need the Rework), and (Why this Rework isn't it, Yet) In these post I go into more in depth into the issues with marksmen, including this one, and what the rework does, doesn't, and should do to address.

For the record, Yasuo works quite well bot lane, although Morde (who forced his way bot though a gimmick on his w, now nerfed) suffers drastically with the changes.