Our previous player guide piece featured FakeGod ushering us along his path with An Essentials to Top Lane Guide. This time around Neo is going to help us along the same path, but with a Bot Laner’s perspective instead. We’ll talk about everything from the ‘Classes’ of the Marksmen and Mage roles down Bot, to the role’s viability in Solo-Queue, some of the easiest and best Champions you can pick up to learn the role, and much more.

Marksman or Mage - The Pros and Cons

Before we dive too deep into everything else, let’s first discuss the primary two classes that can operate as successful Bot Laners, Mages and Marksmen. Each Class brings its own sets of strengths and weaknesses to the game, and being able to pull out and adapt one or the other depending on what’s going on in Draft is going to make you a valuable asset for any team.

Marksmen are a class that is inclined towards consistent DPS, or Damage Per Second, as we’ll discuss a little further on. This class operates from a distance as a range-based class and focuses on dealing damage through auto-attacking their targets over damaging them with abilities or spells. Marksmen typically opt for builds that are centered around Attack Damage, which is why they’re often called AD Carries (ADC), which is a term used by the community before the establishment of the class system in League.

Mages are a diverse bunch in terms of damage output. Some picks like Viktor are solid DPS options, others are more burst oriented like Syndra, others focus on poke like Ziggs, but naturally, with more options comes different trade-offs. There are two primary reasons you would choose to take a Mage Bot instead of a Marksman:

You’ve already have plenty of AD damage sources within your Comp, so taking a Mage keeps your opponents honest in terms of item builds.
You want to abuse a stronger early game and transition into an oppressive Mid Game

Reason #1 is pretty simple to understand. If you’ve got Gnar, Lee Sin, and Zed on your team already, adding a Caitlyn on top of that comp is just screaming for the enemy to build Plated Steelcaps and Thornmail, which will nullify your comp entirely. Throwing a Mage into the Bot Lane over a Marksman is going to force the enemy team to factor you in once they start interacting with your lane for teamfights. It keeps their itemization ‘honest’ and doesn’t allow them to itemize against the top half of the map without suffering.

Reason #2 is a bit more nuanced. In the class paradigms of League, Mages and Assassins typically beat out Marksmen due to their ability to take down a Marksmen before they can receive damage themselves. Mages often come packaged with a form of crowd-control which low mobility ADCs are susceptible to, and once that’s landed, they usually can follow it up and take out the carry before they even have a chance to Flash. Slotting a Mage into Bot Lane versus a traditional Marksman-Support setup gives a Mage another way to set up this deadly CC onto the ADC that wasn’t present before thanks to the Mage now having a Support themselves.

However, while the Mage-Support versus Marksmen-Support Bot Lane can typically favor the Mage-Support side early, the Mage-Support has a far stricter list of Support synergies in comparison to Marksmen-Support. If you’re opting into a Mage Lane, playing with a duo or with an all-in focused support to abuse that early strength is key. Mage-Tank/Mage-Catcher lanes are solid, while Mage-Enchanter lanes are below average since Enchanters don’t provide that setup CC that Mages want for their all-in, and Mage-Mage combos have two Mages fighting over kill resources. Though the poke pressure is high, you want to be able to funnel gold onto a primary carry down Bot, be that Mage or Marksman.

Mage Bot team comps typically lack DPS and are focused around burst and pick styles. This means they set goals towards situations that quickly establish vision, catch people in rotation/approach, and pressure uneven fights so they can claim neutral objectives without contest or force their opponents to approach in situations they know they can win. Unfortunately, the lack of DPS from Mage Bot comps causes their neutral objective tempo to be far weaker. With an inability to burn down Dragon, Herald, or Baron as quickly as a Marksman could, Mages lose out on moment-to-moment tempo plays around these objectives.

The game is still very much AD Carry focused. But being good at Mages helps, especially if you have a good and aggressive partner to help set up. But, I think for those just learning, regular ADCs are best since they do things that no other Champions can.
- Neo

The Strength of Bot in Solo Queue

One of the best and worst things about the Bot Laner role is its limited diversity. The League Meta-Game since the days of Season 1 has been defined by the impact that a Bot Laner, and more specifically a Marksman, has on the game. Which makes this one of the most essential roles in constructed play like in the Pro Scene or in your Clash games. But, when you consider this role’s ability in the vacuum of Solo Queue the tune changes a bit. Despite it’s high impact potential, Bot Laners aren’t always the most successful at climbing the ladder in comparison to the other roles.

So, what drives this perception and strength? Well, for Marksmen, they provide the most consistent and unavoidable damage in the game. Not relying on abilities to dis it out, the Marksman class is balanced around auto-attacking and building AD to quickly shred through their opponents. The Marksman Class, as their name implies, is a ranged one. So, they can sit behind a frontline or next to a Support and be the team’s primary damage source while their team facilitates the Marksman’s ability either through peeling, setup, or helping them gun down a particular opponent. And again, the majority of the damage coming from the Marksmen is unavoidable since you can’t juke or dodge an auto-attack once you’ve been right-clicked and condemned to die.

What’s the trade off for all this damage you ask? It’s item dependency and fragility. Most Marksmen rely on three primary stats: Attack Damage, Attack Speed, and Crit. These stats boost the natural functions of the Marksmen by making their damage numbers hit harder, faster, and burst with higher frequency. But to live out the Marksmen fantasy, more often than not, requires a patient and steady approach through farming and securing what kills they can without sacrificing too much farm in exchange as Minion income is the surest and safest way to get gold in the game. When you have a class of Champions so dictated on reaching item thresholds, then you want to play with a style that facilitates that in the most consistent way, and that’s often through a tame or calculated lane of farming and playing around particular windows when looking to fight your opponent. Going hard and getting kills is an option, but often that boils down to your lane partner’s skills and how they facilitate your damage output throughout the laning phase and what they can do within their Support vs. Support matchup.

Fragility is the second weakness of the role, and this weakness is slapped onto those Mages that flex to the lane. Bot Laners really inhabit the space of the ‘glass cannon’ style approach. While Marksmen are more of an extremely glass machine gun, Mages are more of the traditional glass cannon. But regardless of whichever you opt for, glass is glass and breaks easily when under pressure. And due to the raw amount of damage they can pump out, their fragility is necessary to create a balanced gameplay experience for everyone who can’t dodge auto-attacks or block spells (which is like everyone but a handful of League’s 150+ Champs.)

So, knowing the strengths and weaknesses of the role, where does that stack Bot Laners in comparison to the other roles?

Sadly, AD Carries need good support from the team and in lane. Supports have a high impact in lane while the ADC is just farming and having to wait for setup. And, since AD Carry takes so long to come ‘online’, sometimes the game is just a loss by the time you can do anything. I do not recommend the role if you want to rank high, but it is very fun and challenging to play, which is why I enjoy it.
- Neo

There you have it. While the role has its own rewards in terms of skill demands and overcoming them, there’s a lack of impact on the game that discourages it from being one of the better roles to climb with despite its high damage potential.

The Essential Skills of a Bot Laner

Since you are so squishy, Bot Laners need to be good at a few things to help them. First is Farming; an AD Carry needs gold and items to be great. So, last-hitting and knowing when to push the wave hard. Second is positioning. Where you are standing is very important in a fight. If you step too close, you get into range of CC and can die quickly, but if you are too far back then you are not helping with damage. Third is aggression. Most people think just safe farming is best, but if you can kill your opponent, you get more gold. If you can bully them out of lane, then you get more gold. And if you can master an aggressive style, with a good Support, it is very hard to lose lane.
- Neo

A great start to our conversation about key skills. Let’s unpack each of those concepts a bit further and talk about how we can actually get better at them.

Farming and Item Spikes - Farming is the act of last-hitting Minions and Monsters to gain the gold and experience from them. For Bot Laners, you’ll interact less with Monsters and more with Minions and Champs, so you’ll rely on them to get your needed income. Since Minions are an ever flowing resource, they’re the surest and safest way to gain income. You can ignore your opponent all day and focus on farming, and often you’ll passively build up a lead if you maintain a CS-advantage over your opponent. This can be seen on the scoreboard (Tab) and can help give you an idea as to who is going to Recall and come back with an item advantage and who is just picking up the pieces.

As we mentioned above, item thresholds are super important for Marksmen since they are dictated around their autos versus the damage of their abilities. For Mages this is less of a focus since their Keystones and Abilities often come packaged with extra-oomph early, but they too have certain components they like to reach to make their lane phase stronger. Regardless of Class though, 1300 Gold is the typical benchmark for most Marksmen and Mages.

For Marksmen that build Galeforce, Immortal Shieldbow, and Kraken Slayer, backing with 1300g in your pocket allows you to buy Noonquiver, a core piece to each of the Mythic items, giving you extra AD, Attack Speed, and helping you damage minions and monsters with a little extra oomph from its passive effect. This is a great first back because you’re getting the stats you care about most, on top of getting extra damage to Monsters which will help your team secure Dragon should the window present itself. Additionally, opting for Noonquiver over any other component allows you to stay flexible to build out what Mythic you think is best for your game. Though Marksmen have Mythics they synergize most with, the good thing about having items balanced around auto-attacking is that they’re always going to be ‘okay’ on you even if they’re not the most synergistic with your Champion. So, if you’re playing someone like Caitlyn who has naturally synergy with Galeforce, but the enemy team has three burst damage sources that have been pressuring you heavily, opting for the Noonquiver over a Pickaxe (the other component to Galeforce) let’s you flex to Immortal Shieldbow without the income/tempo loss while allowing you to adapt to the enemy’s team comp. Seven times out of ten, Noonquiver is your go-to pick. If you have a good eye for what you need to build versus a particular enemy setup, or if your Mythic is a ‘must’ on your Champion (Shieldbow for Samira for example) then grabbing another piece that synergizes with you a bit better is quite alright, but Noonquiver is just a good buy flatout with 1300g.

For Mages, backing with 1300g gets you a Lost Chapter. Since Mages don’t rely on auto-attacks to farm, poke, and manage their waves, their lane phase can get pretty mana-hungry. Lost Chapter provides Ability Power (a Mage’s equivalent to Attack Damage), Ability Haste (reducing the time their abilities are on cooldown), Mana, and a passive effect that triggers when you level up restoring a chunk of your mana over a short 3-second period. Like Noonquiver, Lost Chapter is a core component to the typical Mage Mythics of Liandry’s Anguish, Luden’s Tempest, and Everfrost. Mage Mythics, like Marksmen Mythics, are flexible in that they are designed to best certain lane opponents and team matchups. Liandry’s is great against comps with multiple tanks. Luden’s Tempest shines against teams with squishier opponents. Everfrost is just a great utility piece if you’re more of a setup style mage. Again, some Mages work better with some Mythics, but keep your eyes on the enemy’s draft to decide what is best to adapt into your particular game if you can be flexible.

Positioning - Positioning is the act of putting yourself in the right place, at the right angle, and far enough out of harm's way while also still being effective within the trade, skirmish, or teamfight. Marksmen and Mages typically have different positionings in a fight in a traditional comp scheme, but when flexing a Mage into the Bot Laner Role, this can adjust a comps teamfight layout.

Let’s use this setup for example:

Team Comp #1 aka the Marksman Comp - Amumu (Jungle), Aatrox (Top), Cassio (Mid), Braum (Support), and Aphelios (Bot)

Team Comp #2 aka the Mage Bot Comp - Lee (Jungle), Gnar (Top), Leona (Support) , Zed (Mid), and Syndra (Bot)

In our image above, the front-liners of Gnar-Lee and Aatrox-Amumu are our sources of engagement. Should either side step too far, or at the wrong angle, the fight starts off the back of an engage and initiate a fight. But the factors we want to focus on here are Aphelios, Cassiopeia, and Syndra.

We’ll look at Cassio first. In Comp 1, Aphelios is the traditional Marksman for Bot Lane while Cassiopeia (a viable option for Bot herself) operates as a traditional Mid Lane pick here. While still being a DPS pick herself, her role in the fight is different based on the circumstances of her lane choice. Why? Well, that's due to the fact that she’s enjoyed Solo Lane income and experience. Pairing this fact with her kit’s disruption, she’s a big factor in the initial front-end of this fight and thanks to her solo time she’s likely going to have a bit more in the way of base stats making her that extra layer of peel for Aphelios should Lee or Zed feel like they have an angle in. In traditional setups Mages typically play this line. They’re in the center of the team comp able to both peel for the backline if needed while also being able to follow up off the frontline’s engage and set the Marksman’s safe entry into the fight.

Looking at Aphelios now, as a Marksman against a comp that features multiple dive focused Champions, he has to play things slower. He needs to hover back out of vision or away from the team and allow the fight to break out while following Braum and Cassio in to focus whatever target that he can get in reach of. Marksmen, unlike Mages or Assassins, don’t have a target they want to just shell down every fight. Instead, their focus is on burning down whatever is in front of them. Depending on how our above image breaks out, it could be Gnar, or it could be Lee or Zed that have taken an angle in on him. Whatever it may be, he has to rely on Braum and Cassio setting the edge for him and being aware of his position to keep him alive and make sure their DPS piece remains untouched.

Meanwhile, on the opposite side, Syndra is operating a bit further back than Cassio. Why? Well, for the same reasons Aphelios is. While she doesn’t provide the same level of DPS that Aphelios does as a Marksman, she’s the AP source of damage on her team. So, like Aphelios, she wants this fight to break out first and wants her team to be in attention before she hovers into the fight to land her rotation and help. Her different damage source puts in a unique position to come in and burst down targets that have likely itemized for the top half of her map. With Gnar and Leona, she’s got a good setup for her abilities, and with Zed and Lee a lot of the CC focus will be there so she should be relatively untouched assuming she’s not hit by a stray Bandage Toss from Amumu on approach. Slowly working her way from front to back is ideal here since if she were to just position in the middle or close to the front of her comp, Amumu and Aatorx are just going to shrug their shoulders and dive in. Immediately locking down one of their primary targets.

Though this exact situation is wonky, and your experience is likely going to differ in Solo-Queue since things are a bit more chaotic, it’s good to know how to approach as both as a Mage and Marksman and really break down what your biggest priorities are in a fight since that really dictates how you approach and position.

Aggression - Is a common trait that many ADCs avoid. They get so wrapped into the concept of farming safely and reaching their item spikes that they almost forget that getting kills can gain advantages. But as we said, farming is the safest way to get to those for sure power spikes so it’s good to have that skill down pat first. But, after you get your farming tempo down, focus on recognizing when you can be aggressive.

There are a few sure-fire windows to go aggressive so I’ll lay them out quickly:

When you’ve got an item advantage
When the enemy Bot Laner is missing their utility (Ults/CC/Mobility/Summoner Spells)
When the enemy Support is down important cooldowns (Ults/Braum Shield/Morg Shield/Lulu Polymorph/etc.)
When one of the two opposing laners is alone
You can easily engage and disengage at will

These may be small, but training yourself to play aggressively around these moments will ultimately help you when you need to start taking a derailing game over for yourself. Learning to play to your incremental advantages is a big aspect of playing Bot Lane correctly, and if you can coordinate your aggression with a partner, then you’re more than likely to establish yourself as a dominant force in the game. Remember, you may not kill the opponent every time you go aggro, but putting them under pressure and forcing them to miss CS is just going to help you generate advantages that lead into late-game.

Suggested Champions and Lane Combos

So, we’ve got our big concepts down. We know the strengths and weaknesses between Mages and Marksman. We know the core concepts of what we need to focus on to improve as a Bot Laner: Farming, Positioning/Teamfighting, and Aggression. Now, we just need to know what picks to start on to get this all rolling.

Beginners trying ADC should focus on easy to play picks that help learn the game slowly. So, Ashe is really good with long range, easy abilities, and she can be played passive and aggressive. Sivir is also good since she just shoves and is safe with Spell Shield. Ezreal is also very good since he has an extra dash to help avoid ganks. But, if you are going to play Ezreal, you need to know how to hit skill shots. He’s very ‘high-skill’ like that.
- Neo

There you have it! And I couldn’t agree more. Additionally, I’ll throw in Miss Fortune and Caitlyn into the mix for a little authorial recommendation. Miss Fortune is the quintessential teamfight Marksman that’s all about having the proper positioning and rewards those that have that concept mastered, and Caitlyn is a great in-lane aggressive Marksman that can dominate with the range advantage that she has over other laners due to her extremely high base AD and range. Cait also rewards dedication with the tricky moves you can pull off with her traps, but she’s very easily played as an aggressive poke presence in lane.

Support Combos for the Beginner Picks

When it comes to Support picks to pair with our starter Champions, really anything goes. As said, Marksman all just worry about auto-attacking, so they can work with almost anything when it comes to lane partners. However, there are some quintessential picks that are famous (sometimes infamous) pairings with our starter choicers.

Ashe-Zyra - A lane that focuses on the setup power of both Champions, especially at level 6. Ashe-Zyra is a lane that’s been famous since Zyra’s release since it packs so much CC and damage into one duo. Zyra can set up Ashe with her Grasping Roots, Ashe can set up the Grasping Roots with her autos, and regardless of whoever is setting up, the other can follow through with plenty of damage or an ultimate to lockdown and delete a single target before they can say, “What?”

Sivir-Yuumi - What’s more annoying than having to play around Sivir’s Spell Shield? Perfectly playing around it only to have Yuumi top her back off to full health and help her walk away safely with her ult. Sivir-Yuumi is all about perma-shoving and scaling up to be utility monsters come Mid/Late Game, and this dastardly duo does just that with what feels like little counter play.

Ezreal-Braum- Safety first is a focus in this lane, but unlike Sivir-Yuumi which doesn’t want to interact with their opponents at all, Ezreal-Braum is deceptively powerful at punishing over-aggression at a fraction of a second. Ezreal with his dash is able to provide Braum the extra jump out if things get hairy, additionally, Ezreal can also use his dash to all-in and setup Braum’s defensive boosts plus passive to help them dominate a situation where they need to go hard. Though this is typically predicated around Ez and Braum hitting their skillshots, this deadly duo is too solid right now not to be mentioned.

Miss Fortune-Leona- The only thing better than a big wide teamfight winning ultimate, is a big wide teamfight setup, and that’s what you get with both of these Champions. Miss Fortune brings the pain and Leona brings all the gain when it comes to this lane. MF can easily setup Leo with her Make it Rain, and then right after Leo is setting up MF’s Bullet Time to shred through unfortunate foes. This lane lacks a little in the way of mobility, so be wary. But the early to mid game strength of this lane can’t be denied.

Caitlyn-Morgana- Like Sivir-Yuumi, the only thing that’s worse than an already safe laner, is one that can be even safer. And that’s exactly what Morgana brings to her pairing with Caitlyn thanks to her Black Shield. But, unlike Sivir-Yuumi, Cait-Morg thrives off of opponents misstepping to get caught in a Morg binding or Yordle Snap-Trap.If either of these abilities catch an enemy, the other partner can follow to Perma-CC-to-Death someone leading to plenty of tears hitting the Rift as the duo proceeds to shove down your lane and turret with their overwhelming wave pressure.

Closing Out

So, there you have it. The key things you need to know about the Bot Lane’s most present Classes, the skills you need to focus on to be the best Bot you can be, and the Champions that are the easiest to get your learning experience off the ground with. Thanks to Neo for taking the time to write this guide with me. If you want to see more of our all-star, feel free to check him out at the social links below! Thanks for reading guys and good luck in Solo-Queue!

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