Why are mid laners assassins/mages. Why are marksmen and supports bot lane? And why are tanks top?
Can someone explain? There must be a reason why tanks/fighters played in top instead of bot.
8 Comments
All sorts of things are played top. Ranged champs like Quinn, teemo, Jayce and kennen live top. Certain AP champs live top like rumble swain lissandra. sometimes adcs do top (again Quinn) Vayne, Lucian. And of course, fighters and tanks. Fighters and tanks are naturally usually decent at getting close to their opponents (and winning duels once they are there) which is why top is a fighter Lane. And that also limits the ranged champs on top lane with good self peel (which is what all of the aforementioned top lane has) Mid lane is taken up by champs who can roam and control/kill things. Which is why it’s generally assassins and aoe/utility champions. Bottom lane has two champions because that’s dragonland and having two people down there instead of one helps better contest and secure dragons. Also, lots of tanks are played bot. In fact, most tanks (nautilus, Leona, brawm, alistar) live in the bottom lane. Tanks benefit the team through cc, durability, and peel, and given that that’s ingrained in their abilities rather than items, they can do it with a lower income. So, they live in bottom. Sometimes I play maokai support bottomlane too. He’s fun. Good tankiness, good peel, good bush vision.
Mages often doesnt have mobility so they are in shortest lane (mid). ADC has dps which is important for taking dragon faster. And support is with ADC for same reason, plus same as mages ADC don’t have much mobility so supp is there to keep them safe from gank.
The general premise is this.
Most champions rely on abilities to do damage. The exception to this are supports and ADCs.
ADCs rely on auto attacks for damage and that damage comes straight from items. They don't get much scaling from levels but they do when they buy items that makes them auto more or do more damage.
Supports are their for their utility. They might get more damage on a level 5 vs level 4 ability, but that's not why you use that ability. Nami doesn't use her bubble for damage but for the stun. Soraka's Silence does damage but it it's an AOE "you can't use abilities" button. Even a Blitz hook at any point of the game is a death sentence assuming someone is there to follow up on it. The damage isn't important but the utility is, so them being level 8 vs level 11 doesn't matter much.
Now, obviously you have supports like Brand and Zyra who are there for damage. However, they can do their damage through base numbers and magic pen which are cheap items. Brand does % health damage in his passive, so even at level 1 his abilities are going to hurt a high health target. If properly spaced out, he can do something like 25% health damage just from his passive burn and explosions (need to check this, but it's something absurd like that). No items vs a target dummy in practice tool, Brand can get to about 2000 damage by properly spacing out his EQW combo. By not spacing though, you can still do about 1400 damage. This is because of the dummy's 10,000 hp, but it shows how Brand's base stats make him very powerful with little to no items or levels. Not to mention this is all AOE damage, so it's likely that he's hitting multiple people with this percent damage. Zyra as well can snare an entire team with her E. There is no max number of things snared, so she can literally CC and entire creep wave and enemy team in 1 ability. Combine that with her ult which is a lane wide knock up, and she offers insane peel for the amount of damage she does. And again, she can use cheap magic pen items while doing this, so she isn't hindered being behind in gold/levels.
For these combined reasons, it makes sense to put ADC and supports in a lane together. The ADC needs the gold but not the levels, so giving the CS to the ADC fits perfectly, meanwhile the support leaches Exp so they have access to their utility / base damage. Not to mention ideally the ADC would build glass cannon, so the support is there to keep them alive through that utility.
That said, the reason they go bot lane is because of the proximity to Dragon. Before Season 6 (I believe) there was no objectives top lane until Baron spawned, so it made more sense to put more members bot side to fight over the objective that spawned there. If you got a double bot lane, you could easily turn that into a Dragon or tower, whereas if you got a double top lane, the best you could get is the tower if you had the damage.
So, now we are down to mages/assassins and bruiser/tanks and mid and top lane. These classes rely on abilities to do damage, they want as much Experience as possible, so putting them in a solo lane means they get to higher levels faster.
Most mages are immobile. There are some exceptions but lets ignore those for now. So it makes sense to put them in a short lane so they can easily hide under their tower if a gank happens.
Assassins are mobile, so the short lane doesn't really benefit them. What it does do is put them in the middle of the map, so if they have a moment to roam, they can roam wherever. It would only take assassins maybe 10 seconds to get to another lane, which doesn't give your mid much time to warn other lanes. The only people you really worry about roaming from top lane are Pantheon, Kled, Sion, Quinn. Basically people with ults that move them faster around the map. Yeah, Maokai may roam bot to gank, but it's unlikely since it's going to take him a long time to get there or require him to TP. But for assassins who don't take TP, putting them mid means they can look for plays in other lanes but easily return if nothing shows up.
What we are left with are bruisers and tanks. This class tends to build some damage, but some tankiness as well. So despite being in a long lane solo, they have the health advantage to possibly survive ganks. And for people who don't like Teemo or Quinn for example, they have slows (shrooms), speed ups, knock backs, and blinds to help them get distance and avoid damage.
its good to have multiple team members near an objective for ezpz rotations, so adc goes bot, and of course support follows to help scale the adc, and assasins/mages go mid for efficient roams. tanks/fighters go top just cause its the only one left CX
Support goes with ADC for the obvious reasons. so they will always be a duo lane by default. so the duo lane goes in the lane closest to the early "big" objective, the Dragon, to help protect it. AND to keep the ADC as far away from all the other combat as possible. Mages and assassins go mid, so they can have easy roams to top/bot as needed. and since tanks and fights can easily 1v1-1v2 by themselves, and can deal decent damage to objectives, they go top lane, and can help take rift herald around the 10 min mark..
it also has to do with the power spikes of champs in game. adcs spike later with more items and need the gold funnel to help them get their items. hence the adc + support lane. where as most mid laners have power spikes as soon as lvl 6 in a lot of cases with mobility or ability to shove lanes/wave clear so they are solo lanes to get that power spike sooner and ability to roam to other lanes. also mid lane is the quickest lane to get back to after backing/dying from base. back in the olden days of jungle a jungler was a glorified support with gold income items and tank builds. it was ruled by tanks with cc and who can operate on lower income levels. top lane was more of a wild west set up where you wanted a strong durable 1 vs 1 champ cuz focus of the game was to snowball bot lane and or mid with jungle help.
before this meta was set it was common to see solo adc mid, bruiser/fighter bot with support , anything top. and glorified tank support jungle.
i have for a while argued that changing the meta would be good with adc/support mid solo lanes top and bot and a jungler. reason being is the support came roam and have better objective/vision control from mid lane and can roam better with jungler to other lanes. mid lane would be more pressured for who ever gets 1st turret mid controls more of map. and if you had duo mid you could do 4 man roams to top or bot to snowball those lanes as well. just an idea. most people dont like it and downvoted me in the pass for it.