“What are your thoughts on the Ziggs bot lane trend?”

All things considered, it’s the sort of thing we’d like to see more of. My feeling is that the game feels the most solved (and therefore potentially boring) when the lanes are locked in as Top = tank, Mid = mage, Bottom = Marksman + Enchanter.

Now, we do have a Marksman design problem in that they can currently really only play Bottom (except for really extreme designs like Kindred and Graves). It’s great if we can get more mages into Bottom. It’s not great if the player with 1000 Marksman games now has no lane in which to play.

It’s also hard to steer the Marskman class into too many different spaces. By definition, they’re supposed to be ranged champions who so most of their damage from AD-based attacks. Yes, one direction is to make their QWER abilities more impactful, but at some point that shifts them into being Mages themselves.

We’re hearing a lot from Marks players right now that they feel overly pressured, low agency, low power, or all of the above. We’re looking into that. I don’t want my answer here to be interpreted as “Ziggs replacing ADCs in Bottom is the goal for 2017.” But long term, we think the game would benefit from more flexibility in what champs are played in what lanes.

1/3/2017