Okay so whenever I tune in to watch LCS, I always see teams doing the "Lane Swap" strat where the bottom lane goes top and the top lane goes bottom. From the moment I first saw this I always wondered, what is the point of this strat? I never really understood it? I thought the top laners would just go top and the bottom laners would just go bot? (I am aware that I sound very ignorant xD)
Most melee top laners have zero chance against a 2 ranged duo lane or a duo lane with high damage ADC+hard CC support. They will be zoned from minions completely and lose their tower. Meanwhile, the lane swapping team would have foreknowledge, thus would pick a top laner that can survive or even win against a 2v1 lane (Jayce, Ryze, Irelia) or that doesn't need that much farm and just needs to soak EXP safely (Maokai, Alistar, Rumble).
Already a bunch of solid answers in the comments, but wanted to link to this article the Esports crew crafted up last year. Some of the circumstances are different but many of the foundational reasons are the same.
This is done if the match-up can allow it. There are some solo laners that will get absolutely wrecked by an adc/supp pair. Done correctly the switch will be a surprise and the opposing team's solo laner will be killed or pushed out of lane. If this happens it is usually followed with a tower kill abd a lane being pushed.
At a pro level that is then followed by the lane-swapping team conglomerating around dragon for an uncontested dragon stack. (Because the team who got wrecked has to send someone top to push the lane back.)
Anytime you watch the LCS, see if you can tell what actions the respective teams took to push for objective control and a lot of strategies may make more sense.
Here we go:
The short answer is, you lane swap in order to give your team the greatest possible advantage heading into the mid/late game (after laning phase).
For a longer answer:
Teams might lane swap if there is a large skill differential between the top laners, or between the duo laners. They also might do it to switch out of a bad matchup, say if either their duo lane or top lane got counterpicked hard.
Another reason to swap is to try to create a situation where your ADC gets to solo farm, jumping them into their mid/late game powerspikes earlier. Teams like Cloud 9 do this a lot to allow Sneaky to start hard carrying even sooner.
One last reason that teams might lane swap is simply to make the other team react to it. When lanes are swapped, a lot of successive, correct decisions need to be made (by both teams, but primarily by the team who was swapped against). If the swapped-against team makes the correct decisions, both teams will likely come out even, but if the swapped-against team makes the wrong decisions, they can easily come out way behind (I think C9's top laner, Balls, came out of laning phase in Week 1's games an average of 40 CS ahead of his opponent). Because of this, experienced and strategic teams (think C9, TSM) often like to lane swap against new teams, simply because the new teams haven't learned all the ins and outs of responding to it.
Teams have to consider the drawbacks, however, which include the other team "calling" the lane swap (sending their own duo lane up top to meet with the original duo), the other team gaining early dragon control (if you send your duo lane top, the enemy team outnumbers you near the dragon pit, which can easily translate into free/uncontested dragons), and finally the fact that your top laner will most likely have to himself face a 2 v. 1 lane, which will probably set them back in farm (which is why another commenter mentioned the fact that you only want to do it if your top laner is one who can handle lane swaps, or doesn't need too much farm*).
The upshot is that teams will (or should) only consider a lane swap if all of the factors combine to set them ahead, rather than behind.
*This is why you see teams adopting strategies designed to get their own top laner rolling into the laning phase, including things like double jungling (clearing the first few camps with the jungler) to pick up experience and make it harder for the top laner to get bullied out of lane by the 2 v. 1.
TL;DR: Lane swaps create situations that, for a number of reasons, put your team ahead. They do come with drawbacks, however, and so need to be done correctly.
Well, from a strategy stand point i guess it can put which ever team intiated at an advantage if everything goes their way. Who knows what certain people do anyway? For all i know, they swap lanes so they have better vision of lane.
Okay so whenever I tune in to watch LCS, I always see teams doing the "Lane Swap" strat where the bottom lane goes top and the top lane goes bottom. From the moment I first saw this I always wondered, what is the point of this strat? I never really understood it? I thought the top laners would just go top and the bottom laners would just go bot? (I am aware that I sound very ignorant xD)
First off, lane swaps ensure that your adc gets farm. Lets say that your bot lane has an unfavorable match-up: if they stay in lane, they will most likely lose the lane without any help from their jungler and this forces your allies to spend resources gankiing bottom. The enemy jungler realizes that he doesnt need to come bot lane much and he can spend most of his time getting the other lanes ahead. By lane swapping, your adc is guaranteed to have the items he needs to deal dmg in mid game. For top laners, this means that they will get denied alot of cs HOWEVER, generally with the top lane picks, the players choose champions that scale well with levels so in that case, the top laner's main focus is to get exp so he can keep up in levels. There are other, more specific reasons for lane swaps but this is one of the main ones.
I think it is to let the adc farm better and/or get a fast tower, and the other team wont swap because they would lose too much time doing so. Thats only what I think though.
Because top lane is mostly sustain based, and they're mostly melee until Riot started to introduce ranged sustain bs into the game, but even then mostly top lane is still all about melee fights for the most part (until recently though).
And due to Riot's glorious balancing, melee has no chance winning against ranged in every category.
So the purpose of lane swap is to pressure the melee guy 1v2 and make sure one of the lane is completely won from the get go, while hoping the other 1v2 lane can somehow hold it and don't feed.
It may very well be completely wrong but it's my understanding of it, I barely watch pro scene mostly because I hate its guts so I can be totally biased in this case.
