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Bot lane focus

Zyorhist·10/22/2014, 9:36:22 PM·1 votes·2,510 views

So earlier today I played a match where it was obvious that the support was doing more damage than the adc. I told my adc to focus the support and immediately I got an entire team raging at me about "ALWAYS FOCUS THE ADC YOU NOOB". I would like the community to make valid arguments on this subject because I honestly believe there are some actual things to consider here.

First off my argument is that, as a rule of thumb with many exceptions, you should focus the support pre-six. This is because unless the adc has gotten first blood and a couple kills at level 1, they have no items to start dealing damage off of, but the support naturally has utility that will turn the fight in their favor. Take out the utility and the enemy doesn't have damage to follow it up. Of course the exception is in cases where the support has no utility and is a poke type, in which case focus the damage source.

This brings me to my second argument, ok so that annie support got 2 kills at level 3, the adc got none. Annie now does more damage than their adc despite the fact that she is the "support". I honestly believe when this happens that focus should come off of the adc and onto the support. Again this is because of where the damage is coming from.

I main MF as an adc and you can see I hold a consistent 63% win rate with her, in bronze yes, but still 63% and that is because of the fact I follow this belief. But when I am somewhere else because of pick order or even due to me being kind and taking up another role, they seem to tunnel vision on the adc.

Ok I am ready for your arguments, and thoughts.

12 Comments

Ur little sister10/22/2014, 10:10:24 PM3 votes

I'm diamond, and even though I technically main mid, I think I've played bot lane more overall (due to sup and adc being my 2nd and 3rd best role). Here are my 2 cents:

This topic is actually a bit of a pet peeve of mine. When smurfing recently, or from what I remember from levelling up, people don't really know who to focus and when in bot lane in lower rankings. My opinion on what the general best thing to do is HAS shifted with meta shifts though.

If we would have had this discussion 1 year ago, I would have said "almost always focus the support" with full conviction. This is because of several reasons:

First off, Supports have altruistic kits, whilst ADC's tend to have selfish kits. If you're running any kind of burst comp, adc's can typically reposition better and faster than supports. Thresh + Ezreal? Ezreal can Arcane Shift AND grab a Thresh lantern to escape. Thresh can do neither. Every tool that Thresh has that could aid him can equally well be used to help Ezreal escape. It's NOT true the other way around. This argument works for the majority of matchups bot lane. (Think Blitz hook: good tool to peel for your adc. Terrible tool to peel for yourself.)
ADC's tend to outsustain supports. Well, they used to. Supports have the heals, but they can use them on both champions anyway. ADC's on the other hand tend to also gear up with lifesteal.
Regardless of whom you focus, if you get into a 2v1 situation the lane is yours (barring exceptional circumstances, like being 2 levels behind or having only a sliver of HP left).
Supports tend to position more aggressively in lane, ESPECIALLY in higher elo. This is because THEY are the playmakers. ADC's tend to just farm, and then follow up supports' engages. Supports are the ones who don't have to lasthit, so they're free to use all their tools to harass / trade.

Now, the sustain argument has changed A LOT with Riot nerfing lifesteal (and thank god they did!). Now focussing the ADC is a viable tactic imo. Basically, you're supposed to always focus whoever will give you the best trades. This is usually whoever positions the worst. The question is also when you focus whom. I'll just give some examples:

Blitz and Leona. You can continuously focus them in lane, because they have no trading tools. They can't trade damage without really going in. Thus, you can just keep hitting them if they're in your zone, and it's essentially free damage you get to deal! HOWEVER it's almost never a good idea to focus them when they engage. A successful engage on their part IS all they're going to do. Their sustained threat is next to none in lane, they're all about burst threat. So if they get a good engage off on you, you focus the enemy ADC in your retaliation / retreat.
Fiddlesticks and Twitch. These 2 are both RIDICULOUSLY squishy. If you have any burst whatsoever, consider focussing one of these guys more if you see them, as it's insane how fast they die.
Hard-engage supports when YOU are a heavy (preferably knockback) support. The common strategy here is to, when you see them go for your ADC, go for their ADC with your most annoying CC. I'm talking Headbutt here, Alistar is the prime example. After that, you turn and focus the enemy support (who just hardengaged your ADC) 2v1. Leona is the exception to this rule, as you should be using said CC to interrupt her Zenith Blade time and time again. But after she hits lvl 6, this tactic works on her too if she ult engages.
Thresh. I really like focussing Threshes. Because they give their ADC so much ridiculous escape potential, whilst having next to none themselves.
Any non-Janna support starting with an ancient coin is a target. Make them pay for picking such a crappy starting item. It gives 0 combat stats, so any time they get into your zone you can win a trade on them. Pushing them out of your zone entirely means you can 2v1 zone the enemy ADC.

VanillaSweetTea10/22/2014, 9:48:21 PM2 votes

I agree somewhat. You're wrong about adcs not having a dmg source early on. Some adcs like Draven are amazing and have high dmg even for early on in the game. If it were Annie/Draven, I'd probably focus Annie though because she has no escape and just a stun that's visible for the team to see. Some supports could easily "carry" bot like a Morg who can do tons of dmg so it might be best to focus what has the dmg and put down the snowball of the lane.

Venompaw10/22/2014, 10:11:04 PM2 votes

focus the one you can kill.

Strommsawyer10/22/2014, 9:47:50 PM1 votes

First off my argument is that, as a rule of thumb with many exceptions, you should focus the support pre-six.

This brings me to my second argument, annie support

I disagree with your first argument, as a rule of thumb, you focus the adc.

Coming around to your second argument though, Annie isn't a traditional support, and she's also very squishy. She is typically a decent source of burst damage, a stun, and an easy target. I would likely target her first in most engagements since she should die relatively easy.

In most fights killing / focusing the adc is the best option. Yes Annie does a good chunk of damage, but she's also stuck based on cooldowns and mana. ADCs even without mana can autoattack. I've seen multiple fights where 2 people (purple team) chase a support (blue team) and the adc (blue team) focuses the purple adc. This adc is then forced to retreat, or die which then should leave the lane looking like this: Blue team support 20-30% health, blue team ADC 100% health. Purple team support 100% health, purple team adc 20-30% health. Now if the teams were to go all in again, the blue team has the advantage.

Dr Clueless PhD10/22/2014, 9:54:32 PM1 votes

It depends on what you can accomplish with a fight here and what your goal is.

Can you only get one kill? Can you force a long fight and try to kill both? Is your jungler here? Are you looking to make a play on Dragon?

All of these things impact the decision in bot lane on who to hit and when. The general rule is, yeah, focus the ADC. There are lots of times where you should follow it. That's not to say there aren't times when it's wrong, but it's important to know when those are. Replacing one blanket rule with another does not help you much. You need to be able to judge when and why you need to do certain things. Blanket rules serve as fallbacks for when you can't judge the situation adequately.

Skia Asteri10/22/2014, 9:54:29 PM1 votes

The reason to attack the adc over the support is to put them behind by killing them or forcing them to back. Some supports scale very well with levels and need to be forced to back or killed or they will make the lane very hard (Blitzcrank). New Soraka is also one to focus, because she is much better at healing others early than she is at healing herself.

TehomCD10/22/2014, 9:53:31 PM1 votes

In 2v2 fights in lane, if one side starts the fight by focusing the enemy support and the other side focuses the adc, the side that focuses the ADC will usually win. It's in the nature of burst vs sustained damage - it's difficult to kill a support before they can use all their abilities, while an ADC will do continual damage until they're zoned out of the fight. It's very matchup dependent, but for example, in an Annie lane, it'd be difficult to kill Annie before she drops a stun and the rest of her damage, which would usually let their ADC win the fight.

Now, if you can 100-0 someone before they can do their combo, then it's a huge win and you should definitely do it. It's just usually not going to be the case in a 2v2 situation.

Zyorhist10/22/2014, 9:53:48 PM1 votes

The example I had this morning was lulu and jinx bot lane, and my team had leo (me) and Lucien. Lulu was out of position a lot trying to poke me, and despite the fact that I would engage and chunk out 1/4 her health alone, my Lucien would then run through the minion wave to go try to fight jinx. Lulu would polymorph me, keeping me out of the fight, then double teaming my adc. I told Lucien to focus who I engage because of my cc and my passive but he turned and started saying that I'm a noob for not jumping the adc, when the adc had good positioning and was out of range most of the time leaving me to get poked down by their lulu.