Since the end of Season 1, the makeup of the bottom lane has been largely static. You would see a marksman or AD carry paired with a support, who would generally have some sort of heal or shield. While exceptions existed with varying frequency (Zyra, Annie, and Elise, among others, all saw some play at support at various times) they were considered to be just that, exceptions. As the jungle role became less of a support role and more of a carry role and supports saw their luxury budget skyrocket due to ward limits and better gold generation, the bottom lane began to morph into a zone that is actively controlled by these two roles. With generally shorter games, extremely high jungle impact, and a slew of nerfs and item changes, the AD carry role became just weak enough to justify inserting Ziggs. To most people's surprise, it was quite effective. So what exactly caused all of this? Where might we end up down the road? I'll try to cover these questions by first looking at the bare-bones goals for each of the bottom lane roles and whether more traditional role-specific champions are still the best at accomplishing those goals.

The New Supports

To many players' delight, the support role is no longer one that buys one or two gold generation item, possibly one core item, and then proceeds to buy Oracle's Elixir and stacks on stacks of sight wards and vision wards for the rest of the game. We live in a world where a support can reasonably hit "full build" in some games, consisting of a gold generation/Sightstone hybrid item, boots, 3 core items, and an ever-full stack of control wards. This leads to a situation where more aggressive zone control mages can slot into the support role and "1v2 the lane", as some like to say, leaving their AD to farm relatively freely. Without any real threat of doing completely negligible damage in mid- or late-game, these champions with less defensive utility can be chosen to abuse their huge harass potential in lane and in ganking scenarios. While everybody knows about Brand and Zyra by now, I'm going to take a brief look at a couple of champions that I've played as or against in bottom lane that could make a splash.

Taliyah is one of the champions I think functions incredibly well in the new support environment. While she is relatively difficult to play and relies very heavily on Seismic Shove (one of the hardest skill shots to hit) to be effective, her high early burst and above average range make her very threatening in laning phase. Her passive, Rock Surfing, lets her move around the map faster and ward more efficiently. Even her ultimate, Weaver's Wall, allows her to get flashes or kills from mid or bottom lanes with very high success rate when in coordination with her jungler. The recent downsizing of Rylai's Crystal Scepter also contributes to earlier power spikes for Taliyah on less gold. She has one of the strongest level 1s as a support, as a single full Threaded Volley (Q) can take many supports or ADs to near half life with the help of Thunderlord's Decree.

Unlike Taliyah, which is a personal favorite, Malzahar as support seems to be a hot new trend at all skill levels. Malzahar brings a a powerful support kit, with a suppressing ultimate, a minion swarm that forces the opponent to choose between attacking minions or the voidlings, and one of the only silences that remains in the game. As with all of the zone control mages, the Rylai's changes give Malzahar a chance to shine on low economy. Even looking at his passive, the crowd control immunity prevents most enemy supports from threatening him without first stepping into his threat range.

Miss Fortune, while generally impractical as a support, is a great reminder that, just as in every other lane, matchups are very important. She was turned into a support to abuse her matchup against Zyra, a support who was proving to be particularly annoying. While she has other relevant characteristics for a support, such as a large area-of-effect slow and an ultimate that can apply Black Cleaver stacks rapidly, she's still a very frail champion with no hard crowd control. Given the booming state of the support economy, I think that a wide array of champions could be played and see fair success, given some forethought about the matchup they are thrown into.

For any of these champions, it is important to remember the ultimate goals of any support: ward effectively and be a nuisance.

Any champion can ward effectively, but the few listed above have characteristics that make them marginally safer than other supports. Taliyah can move more quickly than most champions by making use of movement speed bonuses from both Worked Ground and Rock Surfing. Malzahar's passive can nullify a single instance of crowd control, making normal worries such as a Thresh hook from the fog of war less of an issue.

Being a nuisance could've once been rewritten as "heal, shield, and crowd control priority targets" and no one would've blinked an eye, but now we've reached a destination with an origin that can be traced back to Zyra's first surge in popularity as a support. High pressure, damage oriented supports are legitimate picks in a ranked environment. Whether that transitions to professional play is to be seen, but between Malzahar, Zyra, Brand, and Taliyah (though I could either be ahead of the curve or just defiantly biased on the last one) we have a suite of champions that rely on their damage, a single crowd control ability, and Rylai's Crystal Scepter to dominate the bottom lane and remain relevant throughout the entire game. A combination of impressive base numbers and awkwardness in AD itemization allow them to push their strengths so aggressively.

The Ziggs Phenomenon

The main goal of the AD carry role right now is to be able to push minion waves and take towers. Ziggs checks off this requirement perhaps more boldly than any classical AD carry can right now. His passive-empowered autos affect enemy towers and his W, Satchel Charge, allows him to skip the last 25-35% (scales with ability rank) of any tower's HP and demolish it instantly. He also possesses explosive damage potential at a much earlier item threshold than most AD carries right now. A major downside of picking Ziggs is stacking magic damage, but there are enough decent physical damage junglers (Lee Sin, Kha'Zix) and top laners (Camille, Riven) that this is not as big of an issue as it may have once been. Even so, Ziggs can still suffer heavily from mana issues as he needs to push near constantly. This can be remedied to some extent by picking a support like Zyra or Karma who can help him push the wave, but a Ziggs that finds himself pushed into tower will have many of the same issues other AD carries do now. In the later game where AD carries traditionally shine (assuming games last that long), Ziggs puts out enough damage on low cooldown to act as a shoddy imitation of what an AD carry can become, which is often enough if his early game advantages are capitalized upon.

The follow-up question I've often seen asked in these last few weeks is "Can other AP pushing champions make the transition to the bottom lane carry role?" I think the answer is a pretty concrete No. A lot of traits can be useful in the chaos of bottom lane, but efficient tower taking is practically mandatory. If you're not taking towers and pushing the game state forward in your advantage, you're giving the other team time to recoup and push back. As AP champions very rarely want to buy attack speed, their tower taking will be very slow outside of specific abilities designed to do such a thing. After the removal of tower targeting from Azir's W, Arise!, no other champion really fits the niche framework that Ziggs does. Kayle is the only champion I could see having any chance of breaking into the bottom lane, but the limited uptime on her ranged auto attacks and limited range even when online likely preclude this outcome.

Vayne and Twitch seem to be the two big exceptions to the "push minions and take towers" tiering system. They are the two AD carries who can reach respectable power spikes relatively early in the game and feel individually powerful in the context of a early- to mid-game brawl. It is important to note that both rely heavily on their self-buffing ultimates to reach peak power. If you're looking to make an argument for AD carries not being too weak, this is where you'd look. They can remain relevant in the grander context of a game without needing to get extremely rich early.

The Future?

Previously powerful champions like Lucian and Jhin suffered to varying degrees during the transition from Armor Penetration to Lethality and, while Jhin remains largely playable, Lucian fell drastically in power. With Lucian and Kalista buffs arriving recently, the AD carry role will likely be shaken up even further. Mobile champions like Kalista and Lucian returning to even a semblance of the champions they once were could cause large issues for some of the supports I touched on earlier, whom all rely on skillshot crowd control abilities and are generally immobile themselves.

With all this being said, professional play seems to play a massive role in influencing the champion selections in lower levels of play. Once all of the major regions kickstart their leagues once more, we'll see which champions stand the test of time and rigorous high level experimentation and which are remembered the same way LeBlanc and Elise support are remembered now. That is to mean, as an inside joke we all like to pretend we were in on.

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