Ever since the end of the Season 1 World Championship, bottom lane has always consisted of a marksman and a support. With a few weird picks here and there, the champion pool for the two roles has mostly stayed the same. Roles like jungle and top lane have always had very drastic meta shifts, one patch you could be stuck on playing nothing but tanks, the next month you could be stuck on assassins. For the most part, the bot lane champion pool has been relatively stagnant, but is slowly starting to change with the beginning of season 7.

Compared to before the preseason updates, Fervor of Battle now grants 1-8 attack damage per stack, as opposed to granting an on-hit damage buff of 1-14 physical damage per stack.

With the assassin updates in patch 6.22, Fervor of Battle suffered a very heavy nerf. After being tweaked a few times, Fervor now only grants bonus AD, instead of granting bonus damage on-hit. Not only did marksman such as Lucian, Caitlyn, and Ezreal get indirectly nerfed, this also hurt attack speed heavy champions such as Kayle and Shyvana. The bonus AD did help with abilities that had some scaling, but the amount of damage that carries were missing out was a very big hit to the overall performance of many marksman. The damage from Fervor was often stacked very quickly late game because of the amount of attack speed that carries had at that point, so even in short engages, Fervor was helping out a ton. As a result, Fervor no longer became the go-to mastery, and would be replaced in popularity with Warlord’s Bloodlust. With less damage and more sustain, bot lane players would feel more inclined to sit back and farm, as many lanes had much less kill potential.

Converting armor penetration into the lethality system would hurt the item build for many marksmen.

In addition to the Fervor nerf, armor penetration was toned down in fear that the new assassins would be too strong. Jhin, Draven, and Miss Fortune were all champions that would build early armor penetration so that they could bully enemy laners with ease. With lethality replacing the old armor pen system, these marksman would be doing even less damage than before. At level 18 the build would be as effective as it was before the changes, but it simply took too long to scale and was not as efficient to buy early on. With weaker early games, it became increasingly hard for these champions to punish other players and push their leads. With the old armor penetration build base around Youmuu's Ghostblade being much weaker, marksmen had to change up their builds.

Apart from Ezreal and Jhin who have their own special builds, the typical build was a B.F. Sword, followed by a completed Zeal item (such as Hurricane or Statikk Shiv), topped off with a finished Infinity Edge. This build, along with Berserker's Greaves, would total 7300 gold. By this point, most enemy mid laners can one-shot you with their build (usually Morellonomicon plus another big AP item), and the enemy tanks can shrug off all your damage (just a Sunfire Cape, Randuin's Omen, or Dead Man's Plate should suffice). The build was expensive, ramped up very slowly, and had very few viable alternatives, leaving marksmen in a poor spot mid-game.

The Fervor nerf, in conjunction with the lethality changes, brought back two champions that we hadn’t seen much for a while: Twitch and Vayne. Overall, marksman were significantly weaker than their season 6 self. With Fervor and Youmuu’s Ghostblade out of the picture, and masteries such as Wardlord’s, Feast, and Vampirism being great options, it was very easy to play passive bot lane. Even if you took some poke, you could sit back with a Doran’s blade and sustain up under tower. With the lack of lane bullies, Vayne and Twitch had time to become the late game monsters that they’re known for. These two champions didn’t need to rely on the damage from Fervor, simply because they could hit so hard with their abilities. They also managed to do well against the incredibly tanky Courage of the Colossus users that Caitlyn and Jhin had problems dealing with. The new support items, Redemption and Knight’s Vow, along with the reworked Locket of the Iron Solari, could effectively prevent your carries from dying to tanks before they could kill them. For a second, it seemed like Twitch and Vayne would be the two to dominate the bot lane for the next few patches to come.

Marksman, as a role, should be able to deal consistent ranged damage and push down towers. This fact hasn’t changed, it’s just that this season, marksman also have to be able to either punish Vayne and Twitch, or scale equally as hard. Otherwise, they would have to provide their team with something significant to make up for their weaker late game (i.e. Jhin’s catch potential or Ezreal’s safe poke and kite). While traditional marksman could also do well if they snowballed, something new was rapidly gaining popularity: Ziggs. While having the same play rate as Corki and Tristana, Ziggs has become an interesting addition to the roster of marksmen. By building normal AP items such as Morellonomicon, Lichbane, and Void Staff, Ziggs fulfils the role of a marksman: consistent ranged damage and tower pushing potential. His AoE abilities, waveclear, insane burst give him all the tools he needs to excel bot lane. As an added bonus, the nerfs to Fervor and the lethality changes (obviously) did not affect Ziggs’ damage, so he stands up very well to the current marksman roster. As long as you have some physical damage somewhere else on the team, having somebody that can poke, waveclear, teamfight, and siege can be extremely valuable.

New things will always pop up at the beginning of each season. For various reasons, other mages are fulfilling the role of marksman and support. With all these champions suddenly rising in popularity, bot lane might finally have a few new strange additions to their typical roster. Ziggs has proven to be very strong and hard to punish, all while fulfilling the marksman role properly and destroying turrets in 2-3 hits. As for now, only time will tell how Riot will react to the weird champion choices that people are picking to replace the old marksmen we’ve known for years.

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