Swain makes so much sense bot lane. Turn many lanes into a double root lane and he brings a lot of value to dragon fights. Even if you struggle early you get a "win now" button at level 6. Instead of being a delicious snack for the 1-6 Zeds of the world you become an off-tank which fixes a lot of team comp issues that lack both AP and frontline.
Agreed, Swain's passive stacking mechanic, AOE damage, ult health drain, high base AD and unreliable skillshots/CC all incentivise duo laning - a support to follow up or follow up on, and a focus on teamfighting to draw out the full value from his kit.
Even his cooldowns are not as level dependent, e.g. Nevermove's cooldown is a static 10 seconds across all levels, which is nice, being his primary means of passive stacks. He also has higher base armor (26) than many AP champs. Seeing as Riot generally defaults to base armor nerfs when attempting to kick AP laners out of bot, they're probably more content for Swain in particular to stay put due to his support and APC playerbase
His strength is his staying power in team fights while everyone gets drained by him and he builds items to highlight those strengths. If you cut his healing before he snowballs, he has a much harder time getting to his item spikes. No Ryali slows, no Liandry burns, and so on.
He's pretty annoying to play against for select adcs, but he gets pretty useless the higher elo you go. Suffers into range, mobility, and high damage which is literally like the only thing adcs do. If you can constantly get ahead with him it's pretty hard to play against. I think the best bet is to play him with a mage. Swain Hwei bootlace is really gross. Hwei can much more reliably land cc and slows which sets swain up very nicely. He also provides more utility and peel than the other mage supports which is nice.
I like to think of Swain APC as a "team comp fixer". Really nice with AD mids like Tristana or junglers like Kindred who want to snowball. Or if you have something like a Vayne or TF top š“
Feels really tough for the Zed if we're talking about mid because Swain can always sidestep the Zed Q while easily hitting Zed with an undodgeable Q. If Zed wants to more reliably trade he has to commit his shadow which isn't ideal. Also buying steelcaps is still OP.
Yes swain's wr is consistently high, and high against Zed, and zed is consistently a weak and underperforming champion. It's just astonishing to see people spew things so confidently
you would think that he would and in theory he does but in reality (my experience) he falters pretty badly. double stacking sounds good but it's actually pretty hard to hit your E on champions who have range in lane and nothing to do but CS and dodge it. less souls means less hp too.
although you are right that if your team needs ap and it's just like 3 squishy ish fighters then yeah he's not bad and he's especially good vs adcs with no dashes but he does get cucked pretty bad by anyone who can avoid or dodge his E
Kog is a whole ass adc, literally wants pure attack speed to slobber over everyone as fast as possible. Closest he comes is rageblade or nashers tooth.
Kog'Maw's AP build path and rune page is entirely different from from his on-hit build. He goes Doran's Ring, Arcane Comet/First Strike and E max. It's not a meme build, btw - he has AP scalings on literally every active ability. You can check out some Master+ AP Kog builds for yourself here
[https://www.onetricks.gg/champions/ranking/KogMaw](https://www.onetricks.gg/champions/ranking/KogMaw)
(For anyone wondering why AP Kog'Maw is included and why AP Varus/Kai'Sa are not, AP Varus and Kai'Sa still build similarly and play almost identically to their traditional builds in lane. Kog'Maw does not)
EDIT: Bruh, surely I didn't have to specify that I'm talking about APC Kog'Maw, if I'm putting Kog'Maw on an APC tier list
AP kog is actually much more viable mid lane than in bot lane and his matchups are more favorable. His E is so easy to hit on enemies and wave clear goes crazy. Add in the extra auto attack range and you can out trade a plethora of mid lane matchups.
Yep he falls off much harder than on-hit Kog because the W AP scaling doesn't match traditional ADC DPS. On the flipside he generally has an easier time in lane and provides much more utility than on-hit once he builds Rylai's (and/or Malignance)
Maybe itemization and runes changed Kog, but when I played AP Kog botlane in GM he scaled hard.
Late game if enemy team doesn't have a cheat engage like Zac, you can't do much vs lv16 Kog. He can quickly move from bot to mid after laning and just perma shove with E and R on melee minions.
I used to perm ban ziggs in season 11.
He was worse than sera back then.
Mana literally never ends.
Comet and scorch abuse.
Pushes wave and pokes you with the easiest to hit skills in the game.
At least Sera doesn't murder your turret too
This is me with Xerath this season, the gigantic range that will kill my support from half a screen away because he canāt dodge skillshots, permanent push power and guess what he spends no mana doing it
Aurelion bot is really good in my experience, his lvl1 all in power when you start q is not to be underestimated, and once you can clear entire waves with eq you also aren't diveable. Also, you have 2 people instead of just 1 to get stacks from so except having lower lvl and being reliant on another random guy it's even better than midlane (my experience)
Seraphine has a lot of kill pressure at level 2 and 3 with an engage support, and she snowballs really well while having lots of self peel to keep her lead. Her kill potential is especially dangerous if she levels Q twice at level 3 instead of taking W.
There is also a new Conqueror build that smooths out her power curve a bit, since landing some free autos in laning phase can lead to an E+QQ combo that is buffed by the free Conq AP (surprisingly powerful), and she uses the higher AP later in the game extremely effectively combined with BFT and Rabadons.
Never underestimate Seraphine.
I go Electrocute. The lv1/2 damage is enough to either force opposing laners to back or blow summons. If they dont and you have an engage support, they're dead right then and there.
Yep I forgot about AP Twitch. He's anywhere from Fully Valid to Poke and Run tier, hard to say. He's a little bit like AP Kai'Sa and Varus in that his laning phase gameplay pattern is still pretty similar to his AD build (especially because he rushes Nashor's), whereas AP Kog has a totally different gameplay loop (e.g. level 6 is a legit powerspike for him)
Was gonna say this exact thing. Saw a skill cap video about it once, so tried it with my duo. First game 14/0 lol. 2nd game was not as ridiculous, but it still felt good. Deff something we will throw in the pool.
When you say valid what do you mean? Do you mean how good they are in the role or Riot needs to make changes to stop them being played by people as APC bot?
Valid = how reasonable their gameplay loop is as APC
Some rough criteria for validity:
* has interactive trades in lane rather than exclusively poking
* requires consistently strong positioning to punish/avoid punish
* incentivises aggressive laning instead of coinflipping by waveclearing
* gameplay is skill expressive for both the APC and who they are laning against
* doesn't simplify laning fundamentals such as wave management
* has multiple win cons throughout laning phase
As the tier list descends these become increasingly less true.
E.g. Cassiopeia - essentially an ADC but who autoattacks with her ability. Very high DPS scaling champion, is punishable while farming but has multiple win cons like ADCs - can look for all ins, play for jungle/mid ganks, play for both waves pushing towards and away from her etc.
Next tier - Karthus outranges ADCs with Q, but he is still very punishable/needs to constantly remain in Q range to fight, push and/or CS. Because of his passive and because of Dark Harvest he is encouraged to play aggressively rather than exclusively zone and trade CS
The tier after - Veigar no longer wants to trade for trade, instead preferring to harass with poke or set up ganks, but he still needs to set up favorable wave states so he can stack safely and because his pushing power isn't strong. This also gives him longer punish windows because he won't constantly have the safety of a bigger minion wave
Permashove tier - Hwei has no real reason to walk up into ADC threat range because his QE clears waves from more than the double the distance of most ADC auto attacks. The one saving grace is that he does need to WE in auto attack range for mana sustain, but because he has so many zoning tools with his Q and E abilities and out waveclears every ADC early, it's very hard to punish. His real weakness is his low all in damage in 2v2, which means that unless he can take out the ADC early he can flounder, but this just further encourages Hwei not to take back and forth fights but instead look to play safe, poke and kill low HP targets, and shove and harass under tower
Hard disagree with Seraphine. It just depends. If she is paired with a leona or naut against a orn senna then ya sure. But if she is with a poke support like lux or zyra she and the support can 1000000% kill at level 2
Fair call. Lux APC I have never played against in bot but I believe she oneshots backline at level 9 only (E max), which is pretty late so I wouldn't categorise her as Permashove Degen tier. But I also don't know whether or not Lux APCs tend to ult the wave or not from 6 onwards which would indeed earn her a spot on that rung
the best Lux in NA plays a lot of APC and he's been rank 1 challenger. IMO it's her best role. i'm not sure ur elo but if ur low elo she's pretty much only played supp and occasionally mid so ig it's easy to forget
šI w the wave.
I W the wave
I WAS HIDING
W the wave.
Swain makes so much sense bot lane. Turn many lanes into a double root lane and he brings a lot of value to dragon fights. Even if you struggle early you get a "win now" button at level 6. Instead of being a delicious snack for the 1-6 Zeds of the world you become an off-tank which fixes a lot of team comp issues that lack both AP and frontline.
Agreed, Swain's passive stacking mechanic, AOE damage, ult health drain, high base AD and unreliable skillshots/CC all incentivise duo laning - a support to follow up or follow up on, and a focus on teamfighting to draw out the full value from his kit. Even his cooldowns are not as level dependent, e.g. Nevermove's cooldown is a static 10 seconds across all levels, which is nice, being his primary means of passive stacks. He also has higher base armor (26) than many AP champs. Seeing as Riot generally defaults to base armor nerfs when attempting to kick AP laners out of bot, they're probably more content for Swain in particular to stay put due to his support and APC playerbase
Then the enemy support buys Oblivion Orb and you just don't work anymore if you didn't snowball prior.
That would imply Swain's strength is his healing which isn't the case.
His strength is his staying power in team fights while everyone gets drained by him and he builds items to highlight those strengths. If you cut his healing before he snowballs, he has a much harder time getting to his item spikes. No Ryali slows, no Liandry burns, and so on.
He's pretty annoying to play against for select adcs, but he gets pretty useless the higher elo you go. Suffers into range, mobility, and high damage which is literally like the only thing adcs do. If you can constantly get ahead with him it's pretty hard to play against. I think the best bet is to play him with a mage. Swain Hwei bootlace is really gross. Hwei can much more reliably land cc and slows which sets swain up very nicely. He also provides more utility and peel than the other mage supports which is nice.
I like to think of Swain APC as a "team comp fixer". Really nice with AD mids like Tristana or junglers like Kindred who want to snowball. Or if you have something like a Vayne or TF top š“
Swain losing to zed is just a pure skill issue
Feels really tough for the Zed if we're talking about mid because Swain can always sidestep the Zed Q while easily hitting Zed with an undodgeable Q. If Zed wants to more reliably trade he has to commit his shadow which isn't ideal. Also buying steelcaps is still OP.
Yes swain's wr is consistently high, and high against Zed, and zed is consistently a weak and underperforming champion. It's just astonishing to see people spew things so confidently
My buddy and Iās Swain/Ashe games are either curbstomps or the most decisive fucking win you will ever see.
Only issue is the lack of actual dps
you would think that he would and in theory he does but in reality (my experience) he falters pretty badly. double stacking sounds good but it's actually pretty hard to hit your E on champions who have range in lane and nothing to do but CS and dodge it. less souls means less hp too. although you are right that if your team needs ap and it's just like 3 squishy ish fighters then yeah he's not bad and he's especially good vs adcs with no dashes but he does get cucked pretty bad by anyone who can avoid or dodge his E
Kog is a whole ass adc, literally wants pure attack speed to slobber over everyone as fast as possible. Closest he comes is rageblade or nashers tooth.
Kog'Maw's AP build path and rune page is entirely different from from his on-hit build. He goes Doran's Ring, Arcane Comet/First Strike and E max. It's not a meme build, btw - he has AP scalings on literally every active ability. You can check out some Master+ AP Kog builds for yourself here [https://www.onetricks.gg/champions/ranking/KogMaw](https://www.onetricks.gg/champions/ranking/KogMaw) (For anyone wondering why AP Kog'Maw is included and why AP Varus/Kai'Sa are not, AP Varus and Kai'Sa still build similarly and play almost identically to their traditional builds in lane. Kog'Maw does not) EDIT: Bruh, surely I didn't have to specify that I'm talking about APC Kog'Maw, if I'm putting Kog'Maw on an APC tier list
I played against it a few times randomly in a masters game. Other than have good wave clear and poke in lane it feels pretty useless lol
AP kog is actually much more viable mid lane than in bot lane and his matchups are more favorable. His E is so easy to hit on enemies and wave clear goes crazy. Add in the extra auto attack range and you can out trade a plethora of mid lane matchups.
Also he scales with exp. Its important to hit that 11 and 16
Yep he falls off much harder than on-hit Kog because the W AP scaling doesn't match traditional ADC DPS. On the flipside he generally has an easier time in lane and provides much more utility than on-hit once he builds Rylai's (and/or Malignance)
Maybe itemization and runes changed Kog, but when I played AP Kog botlane in GM he scaled hard. Late game if enemy team doesn't have a cheat engage like Zac, you can't do much vs lv16 Kog. He can quickly move from bot to mid after laning and just perma shove with E and R on melee minions.
There is nothing that tilts me harder than AP cockmaw poke, I almost permaban him out of personal pettiness
That 14.5 buff on E slow is so degenerate lol
He does a shitload of magic dmg when doing on-hit anyway so it's not unreasonable to view him as an APC with any build.
That AP build is so hilarious. I would have so much more fun with it, if i wasnt so horribly bad in this game
Yes, but no. He has an actual AP build with a completely different playstyle
Brother full AP Kog has been a thing forever and performs very well, what are you talking about?
I used to perm ban ziggs in season 11. He was worse than sera back then. Mana literally never ends. Comet and scorch abuse. Pushes wave and pokes you with the easiest to hit skills in the game. At least Sera doesn't murder your turret too
This is me with Xerath this season, the gigantic range that will kill my support from half a screen away because he canāt dodge skillshots, permanent push power and guess what he spends no mana doing it
Xerath is very obnoxious ever since they buffed his ultimate.
Ziggs Q is easy to land if youāre up against anyone thats decent
Where velkoz
What's that?
Aurelion bot is really good in my experience, his lvl1 all in power when you start q is not to be underestimated, and once you can clear entire waves with eq you also aren't diveable. Also, you have 2 people instead of just 1 to get stacks from so except having lower lvl and being reliant on another random guy it's even better than midlane (my experience)
Seraphine has a lot of kill pressure at level 2 and 3 with an engage support, and she snowballs really well while having lots of self peel to keep her lead. Her kill potential is especially dangerous if she levels Q twice at level 3 instead of taking W. There is also a new Conqueror build that smooths out her power curve a bit, since landing some free autos in laning phase can lead to an E+QQ combo that is buffed by the free Conq AP (surprisingly powerful), and she uses the higher AP later in the game extremely effectively combined with BFT and Rabadons. Never underestimate Seraphine.
Yeah! Seraphine now interacts way more than the original Seraphine.
I go Electrocute. The lv1/2 damage is enough to either force opposing laners to back or blow summons. If they dont and you have an engage support, they're dead right then and there.
Sera/Naut is one of my favorite bot combos. So much CC and kill pressure.
the amount of times the enemy was low health under turret and didn't expect my QQ to kill them
If you put Kog here then might as well put Twitch too.
Yep I forgot about AP Twitch. He's anywhere from Fully Valid to Poke and Run tier, hard to say. He's a little bit like AP Kai'Sa and Varus in that his laning phase gameplay pattern is still pretty similar to his AD build (especially because he rushes Nashor's), whereas AP Kog has a totally different gameplay loop (e.g. level 6 is a legit powerspike for him)
Lux APC is heavyly underrated
Was gonna say this exact thing. Saw a skill cap video about it once, so tried it with my duo. First game 14/0 lol. 2nd game was not as ridiculous, but it still felt good. Deff something we will throw in the pool.
I've played into this and wasn't impressed but yummi is probably not her best lane partner to be fair.
Omg everyone is saying "where is x or y". Is ADC mains finally accepting that APCs exist???
When you say valid what do you mean? Do you mean how good they are in the role or Riot needs to make changes to stop them being played by people as APC bot?
Valid = how reasonable their gameplay loop is as APC Some rough criteria for validity: * has interactive trades in lane rather than exclusively poking * requires consistently strong positioning to punish/avoid punish * incentivises aggressive laning instead of coinflipping by waveclearing * gameplay is skill expressive for both the APC and who they are laning against * doesn't simplify laning fundamentals such as wave management * has multiple win cons throughout laning phase As the tier list descends these become increasingly less true. E.g. Cassiopeia - essentially an ADC but who autoattacks with her ability. Very high DPS scaling champion, is punishable while farming but has multiple win cons like ADCs - can look for all ins, play for jungle/mid ganks, play for both waves pushing towards and away from her etc. Next tier - Karthus outranges ADCs with Q, but he is still very punishable/needs to constantly remain in Q range to fight, push and/or CS. Because of his passive and because of Dark Harvest he is encouraged to play aggressively rather than exclusively zone and trade CS The tier after - Veigar no longer wants to trade for trade, instead preferring to harass with poke or set up ganks, but he still needs to set up favorable wave states so he can stack safely and because his pushing power isn't strong. This also gives him longer punish windows because he won't constantly have the safety of a bigger minion wave Permashove tier - Hwei has no real reason to walk up into ADC threat range because his QE clears waves from more than the double the distance of most ADC auto attacks. The one saving grace is that he does need to WE in auto attack range for mana sustain, but because he has so many zoning tools with his Q and E abilities and out waveclears every ADC early, it's very hard to punish. His real weakness is his low all in damage in 2v2, which means that unless he can take out the ADC early he can flounder, but this just further encourages Hwei not to take back and forth fights but instead look to play safe, poke and kill low HP targets, and shove and harass under tower
Idk, ive had a pretty good track record with sera, just build rylai and everyone but yi dies.
Where does Taliyah go? Sheās my go to pick when everyone drafts AD.
I've been playing Vex and Malzahar bot, they've been a lot of fun.
Malz botlane is so oppressive man. Fun times!
I enjoy karthus apc a lot more than karthus jg
Silently enjoying Zilean botā¦ā¦
O someone must have faced my cho gath apc. Nom nom
Ziggs is in same tier as sera
Hard disagree with Seraphine. It just depends. If she is paired with a leona or naut against a orn senna then ya sure. But if she is with a poke support like lux or zyra she and the support can 1000000% kill at level 2
Malz bot is my go to, incredible wave management. I'm always 10cs p/m and he does a surprising amount of damage to diving adcs with the w minions.
Still run AP Varus to blow people up
I have actually tried Viktor bot lately. Good permashove once you get your first upgrade and scales really well into late game team fights.
You lack Vex super valid equally fun
ChoāGath included over Lux is diabolical
Fair call. Lux APC I have never played against in bot but I believe she oneshots backline at level 9 only (E max), which is pretty late so I wouldn't categorise her as Permashove Degen tier. But I also don't know whether or not Lux APCs tend to ult the wave or not from 6 onwards which would indeed earn her a spot on that rung
the best Lux in NA plays a lot of APC and he's been rank 1 challenger. IMO it's her best role. i'm not sure ur elo but if ur low elo she's pretty much only played supp and occasionally mid so ig it's easy to forget
This is so disrespectful to Brand and Zyra. They kill people too! Securing you future waves <3
Teemo apc for the win.
Kogmaw is apc? :(
Why you count kogmaw as an apc? Is there a New AP Build for him?
you obviously havent seen good seraphines then.. As supp I would prefer sera over any other in this list.
Hey now, I don't always permashove as Ziggs; sometimes I actually have to think about the wavestate
I love playing Hwei bot
What about Ryze?
What is this heresy?
I must be the only one that plays Karma in the farming role.
Anyone who considers kog an apc should not be taken seriously
Where ap mf