Riot Games Explains Goals for Diversifying League of Legends' Bot Lane

Riot Games recently established a goal to diversify League of Legends' bot lane to allow more champions to exist there alongside marksmen, a goal that consists of several key points Riot hopes to accomplish as well as the reasoning behind the change.

The first mentioning of the change came from a dev diary post that mentioned creating a new item that would allow teams to operate without a traditional marksman, a goal that was expanded on later by Riot Meddler who said that Riot hopes to "open up bot lane to a wider range of champions in the farming position." Following that statement and the resulting feedback from players who either loved or hated the idea, Riot Meddler returned with a more detailed post explaining the rationale behind opening up the bot lane as well as an explanation for why the change would be a positive one.

What we're trying to do:

• We want to make it so other classes can be played bot IF you want to.
• We don't want to push marksmen out of bot lane. They'll still be great choices there and, if you want to play nothing but marksmen in bot, that should be a fine choice. This is not about forcing people who want to play marksmen only to play other classes, but allowing people who want to play other things to do so. Can understand the concern about being pushed out of the only position some champions can play and that's not our goal.
• We want to open bot up to a range of classes, not just marksmen and one other one. That'll be a gradual process though. Most likely outcome is that mid-season opens the position up somewhat (mages most likely). Later work then opens it up more, based in part off learnings from mid-season.

Why we think we should do it:

• We think LoL is a more enjoyable and interesting game when you can play a wider range of team comps and get a range of different laning experiences. A lot of players gravitate towards trying new stuff, experimenting with what does and doesn't work.
• Bot is currently much more limited in terms of what works there than other positions. We'd like to open it up as a result to players who want to go bot but don't like Marksmen and players who like marksmen but would also like to play some other class(es). That's been a frequent request from many players for quite a long time.

The exact ways that these goals will be met such haven't been explained in greater detail yet, but changes to supports and new items have both been possibilities mentioned previously.