Notes

Guida sui match up della botline

Bot lane matchups are a very complex subject. On solo lanes or jungle matchups it's easy to say that one champion beats or counters another, or that a matchup is even and can be considered a skill matchup.

Bot lane is unique in being a 2v2 lane and to top it off the supports are often even more impactful than the ADCs, so you have to factor the support into the matchup just as much if not more than the ADC, and also the strengths and weaknesses of each support relative to the strength and weaknesses of their partner as well as their two opponents. There's such a ridiculous amount of possible combinations you can run into (minimum 560 counting only common picks) that it's simply impossible to explain the dynamics of how every single matchup should play out, nor can I rate the difficulty of each ADC or support matchup individually because depending on the supports, your pick can either win lane against every ADC/support or lose lane against every ADC/support.

So I'm going to dedicate this chapter to giving a small rundown of what you need to know about laning against each champion, both the ADCs and the supports, and a rating of what their general strength in lane is, which is not necessarily a rating of how difficult your lane will be if you're playing against them in solo queue as it varies depending on who their lane partner is and also who their opponents are, for example champions like Nami can be either big lane bullies against champions like Janna or just passive laners who are otherwise free kills for champions like Thresh; but both matchups also massively depend on their partner and the opponent's partner.

Deep understanding of each champion on an individual level coupled with first-hand experience in witnessing how many different duos perform with each other will lead to a greater understanding of how any given bot lane matchup is likely to go, and with the following brief analyses of each bot lane champion I hope to give you as much of a head start in this area as I reasonably can.

-- Ashe
Ashe has very easy to land long range AoE poke, but it's not particularly strong and on a very high cooldown, resulting in low waveclear, weak trades and weak all-ins.

However she's one of the highest auto-attack range ADCs and can easily poke with her auto-attacks, meaning if your bot lane duo is one that can't pressure her and scare her off of trading, she can end up bullying you pretty hard in said matchups despite being an overall weak laning champion.

-- Caitlyn
For a long time regarded as the queen of laning phase, Caitlyn's had a lot of power taken out of her laning phase and given to her mid-late game, and playerbase perception hasn't yet to catch up with the times. She's still a massive lane bully and will win almost any lane that comes down to trading and waveclear, but she's very weak in all-ins and will get crushed in fights by any bot lane that can engage on her.

Because of how extreme her strengths and weaknesses are her threat level really varies between high to low, so I chose medium as a compromise, but beware of how utterly dominant she can be in lane if you don't have a good matchup against her.

-- Draven
Draven is the absolute king of laning phase in today's League, far beyond what Caitlyn ever was at her peak. He is simultaneously the strongest ADC in short trades, long trades, and second best in all-ins. Never has a champion quote ever been more true than "Draven does it all". However, even Draven is not quite without weakness. He's short-ranged and has no escapes so he's very vulnerable to being engaged on. Unfortunately he's so strong in all-ins that if you engage on him there's a good chance he'll just turn it into a double kill, but as with all bot laners, a duo with strong enough all-ins while Draven has a support poorly suited to deal with them is all it takes to overcome the king of laning phase.

Additionally, because of his short range and poor waveclear he can be easily handled by champions who can pressure him from outside his range like Caitlyn on the ADCs' side or Zyra on the supports' side, on the condition that he's not paired with a support that has the ability to easily engage on and lock down these long range champions for Draven to reach and kill, such as what Thresh or Nautilus would bring to the table.

-- Ezreal
Ezreal is a champion that is primarily picked for safety, he is very hard to kill in lane and his long range low cooldown Mystic Shot allows him to easily keep up in CS from a range in situations where other ADCs wouldn't be able to farm.

In exchange for being so hard to snowball against, he's also made to lack the tools to snowball himself. He has weak waveclear, unnoteworthy all-in power, and would be decent at trading if not for the fact that he can't poke through minions. He will never create a winning matchup solely on his own merits.

However, bot lane being as complicated as it is, if his duo as a whole is one that is either stronger in all-ins or stronger at trading and he is able to pressure the lane rather than play defensively, Mystic Shot becomes an excellent poke tool and he can exert a lot of pressure with his range, similarly to Ashe but stronger.

-- Jhin
Jhin's fourth shot hits like a truck, giving him very strong zoning potential and damage when trading with it, which combined with his decent waveclear makes him a strong lane bully in most matchups.

He's okay in all-ins when following up his support's engage to finish someone off, but his damage is not great in extended fights and he is himself highly vulnerable to being engaged on and burst down.

-- Jinx
Jinx comes online for teamfights very early into the game but has a miserable laning phase. She's weak at trading, weak in all-ins, has inefficient waveclear, suffers from Ezreal's problem of having decent poke that's impossible to actually use unless you're already winning lane, and is also highly vulnerable to being engaged on.

On the bright side, when the matchup actually does allow her to have pressure in lane Zap! allows for some very high range, very high damage poke, and she has very high auto-attack range to pressure with as well as decent CC and burst to follow up engages with, so should you find yourself on the losing end of a matchup against her don't expect her overall weak laning phase to make toughing through the matchup a breeze.

-- Kai'Sa
Kai'Sa has a lot of winning matchups while only having a few losing ones, but she doesn't excell at any particular area. She's decent in trades, has decent waveclear and decent all-ins which makes her a versatile champion fitting well into most matchups and supports, but she generally won't crush you in any individual aspect and can be beaten by duos that strongly outshine her any areas, and is especially vulnerable to ADCs that can best all-in her. Her mobility is decent enough though that she's not overly vulnerable to engages compared to the more immobile ADCs.

-- Kalista
A Challenger level Kalista wins almost all lanes, but the average Kalistas you'll encounter in your games won't be quite so impressive, generally winning against low threat ADCs, going even against medium threat ADCs and losing to high threat ADCs.

She's a lane bully that can pressure opponents quite well with her high mobility, low CD trading and strong poke to develop healthy CS leads, but she lacks upfront damage in fights, loses DPS when slowed and is generally quite easy to kill once locked down. However, when in a winning matchup she can be very oppressive due to her high mobility and ability to help her support engage.

-- Kog'Maw
Kog'Maw is best known for being a mid-late game hypercarry and respectively his laning phase is appropriately weak to compensate. He can't push very well early on, has very weak trading in lane, very weak poke until level 6 when it becomes okay, very poor followup to engages, and is himself highly vulnerable to them.

When actually in a winning matchup he won't have a hard time exerting pressure between his massive auto-attack range during Bio-Arcane Barrage and his long range poke with Living Artillery, but he doesn't bring much kill potential to the lane. When in a bad matchup he won't have a problem farming safely while avoiding trades but can be easily divable by a strong enough all-in duo.

-- Lucian
A traditional lane bully, Lucian sacrifices mid-lategame power in exchange for putting it all into his laning phase. Lucian has great waveclear, decent poke, great trades, is great in all-ins, has great followup to engages, and has great mobility to keep him safe from engages. He's a little worse than draven at most aspects besides waveclear but his extra mobility makes him safer and also better at abusing his leads when he has them.

Lucian will typically lose lane into matchups that outrange him when his lane can't easily force engages, or can lose to duos with stronger all-ins.

-- Miss Fortune
Miss Fortune is a champion who can be a massive lane bully into many matchups given the huge range and damage of her Double Up, but she suffers from being too easy to kill when engaged on. Against matchups that can't all-in her though, whether in a poke-focused lane or paired with an engage support she can pack a massive punch through Double Up poke and Bullet Time damage in fights.

-- Sivir
Sivir is probably the most underrated laning phase ADC there is. She has the best waveclear of any ADC at later levels and still really good waveclear earlier on, great poke, decent trades, is okay in all-ins, is relatively safe from being engaged upon by basically any support that isn't Alistar, and is really good at helping her support engage with On The Hunt. Her short range however means that she's easy to poke and is vulnerable to engages that don't rely on CC that she can spell shield.

-- Tristana
Tristana has bad early waveclear, really bad poke and really bad trades, but her strength in all-ins in matchups where she can fully stack her Explosive Charge is absolutely unmatched, and her massive dash range with Rocket Jump makes it easy for her to force all-ins at the drop of a dime. With all her power focused onto this one single strength, it makes for a highly explosive and action packed laning phase, where at any moment she can jump on you and one-shot you.

She has a hard time into matchups where she can't win all-ins, usually either as a result of CC leaving her unable to stack her Explosive Charge in time, or +Exhaust nullifying her burst when she does. Since all-ins are her one strength, in matchups where she can't force them she ends up being really useless and falls pretty far behind. However, her amazing mobility also makes her really safe and hard to kill even against bot lanes with great engage.

-- Twitch
Twitch may be marked as a low threat, but that doesn't mean you can let your guard down against him. Twitch has bad waveclear, bad poke, is bad at short trades and is highly vulnerable to engage, making him an extremely weak champion in lane overall. However he's okay in extended trades where he has time to stack up Contaminate, and Ambush makes him the best ADC at forcing fights on his own terms when it favours him.

Despite being extremely weak in all-ins and trades and on average being down in CS into every single matchup as a result of it, he still averages being up on kills into every ADC except Tristana. It isn't enough to make his laning phase good given that on average he still falls behind in gold to every ADC except Vayne and Kog'Maw, but it goes to show that while his laning phase in a vacuum may be terrible, you still need to be very careful and aware to make sure that you don't end up giving him free kills in situations where he can sneakily engage on you when it favours him..

-- Varus
Varus has decent waveclear, poke and trading, and his ult is an amazing engage tool which coupled with his bursty kit makes him decent in all-ins too. However as a jack of all trades that makes him easy to beat in a matchup that's much better than him at any given aspect.

-- Vayne
Being a late-game hypercarry, Vayne has bad waveclear, bad poke, bad trades and poor all-ins. On the other hand she's relatively safe, and she's great at following up engages or engaging herself when she's in a winning matchup. But she pretty much loses any lane so long as the support difference isn't enough to compensate for it.

-- Xayah
Xayah has great waveclear, decent poke, good trades and great all-ins especially when paired with a CC support while also being safe from engages and having great followup to engages by bringing CC of her own. All around a very solid laner, but is quite short ranged and can be easily handled by matchups that can keep her at a distance or beat her in all-ins.

-- Alistar
Alistar is a rather weak laning support overall given his vulnerability to being poked, the ease with which his WQ combo can be interrupted by many supports with displacements, and the fact that any CC or mobility spell can prevent him from stunning his target with Trample.

However, after level 6 with Unbreakable Will active he's also the tankiest support in the game, and with all 3 of his non-ultimate spells being CCs and mostly displacements it makes him very hard to ignore in skirmishes.

It also makes him great at setting up plays, so if he is in a winning matchup it makes it very easy for him to dive 2v2 or with the jungler's help, given that he can tank up the tower for long periods of time while CCing the targets to allow his team mates to safely finish them off.

-- Bard
With Cosmic Binding and Traveler's Call, Bard has probably the strongest level 1 of any support which is something you always have to watch out for when playing against him, but in further levels he gains very lackluster abilities and falls off to rather middle of the pack in terms of laning strength, able to beat up the weaker laning supports but also getting beat up by the stronger ones.

He's very good at low-range trading and has a reasonable amount of healing to sustain his ADC and himself despite not quite falling into the healer category of supports, and can set up good engages with Tempered Fate to allow his team to catch up to the caught enemies and kill them, and also allow himself to get into position to stun them either against a wall or each other with Cosmic Binding.

He himself though is quite vulnerable to engages especially when not near a wall he can Magical Journey to for an escape, and since he only has one damage spell and auto-attacks/passive to trade with can also be quite vulnerable to poke from stronger trading supports.

-- Blitcrank
Blitzcrank is probably the most hit or miss champion in League of legends, both literally and figuratively. If he hits his Rocket Grab it will likely turn into a kill, but if it misses he proceeds to have absolutely no lane presence over the next ~18 seconds until it comes back off cooldown and his ADC may as well be laning 1v2.

So obviously it goes without saying that his all-ins have the potential to be great if he's the one forcing them by landing a good hook, but when missed or if used on a melee range target he's rather weak since he doesn't bring much to the table other than forcing a target to become horribly mispositioned and briefly CC'ing them in that spot.

He's generally weak into strong laning supports that can control the lane and make him scared to walk up to hook for fear of taking too much damage or getting caught himself, but can be quite successful into some of the weaker laning supports, especially into enchanters. Though the opponent's general strength in lane is still the overall biggest factor, Blitzcrank is more so happy to face enchanters than other supports, and likewise shines into immobile ADCs who have no easy way of dodging the hook and have to play defensively and far back to avoid putting themselves into a position where they can get hooked.

-- Brand
Brand's combination of strong long range poke, one hard CC and immense burst make him one of the strongest laning supports in the game, alongside most mage supports.

Given the range of his poke along with its strength it's very hard to beat Brand through trades and therefore makes strong all-in lanes with good engage the best chance at beating him in lane, but pre-6 he has the proper tools to keep his opponents too low to be able to risk engaging and after 6 with Pyroclasm he can potentially blow up two targets at once in fights, so all in all there's just no getting around the fact that Brand is just not a champion that ever expects to lose lane, except against other mage supports for whom you can also say the same thing.

-- Braum
Braum has great peeling and defensive properties for keeping his ADC safe in teamfights, but this translates very poorly into laning phase strength where he's just a low-CC melee support with no damage, no way to fight back against poke, and not particularly safe from getting engaged on, so rather abusable in pretty much any matchup.

Fortunately he's very tanky to make up for it so not particularly easy to kill, and Unbreakable can often save his ADC's life in fights too, but overall he's the weakest laning support in the game.

-- Janna
Janna can either max Zephyr to prioritise trading and controlling the lane, or Eye Of The Storm to prioritize keeping herself and her ADC safe while still offering some extra damage through the AD and having reasonable poke in her unmaxed Zephyr.

She's weak in all-ins but is also great at protecting herself and her ADC from all-ins in many matchups, making her an overall decent support while still being slightly on the weaker side, though vulnerable to supports with longer range poke and supports who can engage without being affected by her Howling Gale.

-- Karma
Mantra-empowered Inner Flame is probably the strongest poke spell you'll find on bot lane which does massive damage and is very easy to hit, but Mantra has a long cooldown and Inner Flame on its own is rather short ranged while still doing decent damage and making it easy to shove and control waves.

Being a sort of enchanter/mage hybrid she doesn't really shine at either aspect, but her magelike qualities make her a rather good laning champion despite not being quite on the same level as other pure mage supports, and her enchanter qualities make her decent at protecting and buffing her allies, despite not being quite as good at it as pure enchanters.

-- Leona
The greatest thing that Leona offers is easy engage onto vulnerable short range targets, since her Zenith Blade travels through minions which is a feature most engage champions lack on their engage tools.

However it's also quite short ranged which is a big disadvantage over them and her all-ins are not as strong as other engage champions, so while she has an easy time forcing fights to extend her lead in good matchups, she doesn't necessarily have a great deal of good matchups, so is best paired with a strong laning ADC and works best when picked against weak laners.

-- Lulu
Lulu has the ability to massively buff her ADC's damage mid-late game as well as offering great anti-burst protection and works best paired with hypercarries, so given her scaling it's not surprising that her laning phase isn't that great. She does pack a lot of damage however, so she can definitely act as a bit of a lane bully in winning matchups, but she needs to get in close range to use it and can easily get blown up in many matchups.

-- Lux
Whether maxing Lucent Singularity to focus on poke or Prismatic Barrier to shield massive amounts of damage for her ADC, Lux brings a lot of damage to the lane either way, and brings both pressure and kill potential, using her long range poke to wear enemies down coupled with her long range snare enabling her to burst down low enemy laners.

However to get the most damage out of her kit she has to get in auto-attack range to proc Illumination, without which she misses out on a lot of damage especially if she maxes Prismatic Barrier, which opens up room for enemy laners to try and punish her either by trading back or engaging on her.

-- Morgana
Black Shield makes Morgana a hard counter to most of the CC reliant supports, but the rest of her kit is also strong enough that she generally performs quite well into enchanters too. With Dark Binding and Tormented Shadow she can inflict a great deal of poke damage, and with Dark Binding scaling up to 3 seconds of CC she has very high pick potential, especially after level 6 when she can follow it up with Soul Shackles for a longer lock-down. In general Soul Shackles can make her a large threat in all-ins since she can Black Shield herself to make sure she can't be CC'd so she can complete the channel, and if she uses it before Dark Binding she can guarantee a very high lockdown period onto a target she stuns.

The only supports that can reliably beat her are lane dominant mage supports, but she isn't an awful pick into these either since her Black Shield at worst can act as a regular shield and can also be used to counter any CC these champions commonly have.

-- Nami
Nami brings a perfect balance of poke and healing as she improves both when ranking up her Ebb and Flow, and can frequently both poke and heal her or her ADC with one cast, making it easy to keep her and her ADC topped up and healthy while also applying pressure in the matchup.

Her all-ins however are generally not all that great, hinging massively on her ability to land her slow moving Aqua Prison. When she does hit it she's rewarded greatly with a decent CC duration which can turn around many fights. But when she doesn't her contribution to fights isn't great and even with her heal she's still quite squishy and vulnerable. She scales decently into mid-game though and is a wonderful asset for helping her ADC minimize their losses in lane while also doing a great job of bullying weaker matchups.

Additionally the fact that she does have options to force and win all-ins through her CC is something that gives her an edge in many matchups that other enchanters don't have.

-- Nautilus
Nautilus has gone through long periods of weakness in the support role, but currently at the time of writing this he is probably the strongest all-in support, bringing a heavy mix of high tankiness, decent damage and long range, very easy to land engage.

However he has no poke and can't engage through minions, so in matchups where he has no prio and can be punished for walking up to fish for hooks he won't be able to contribute much and is vulnerable to poke. When in winning matchups though his ease at engaging makes him very scary to face and can generate very large gold leads.

-- Pyke
Pyke is currently the strongest support in lane, bringing the same playmaking utility you'd get from other engage/hook supports while also being highly mobile, rather tanky overall in extended scenarios where he can make ample use of Gift of the Drowned Ones, and also bringing a lot of damage into the matchup given his position as the only AD assassin support in the game.

He doesn't quite have the damage to one-shot a carry unless extremely fed, but coupled with his ADC's damage it makes it rather easy to bring a target below the execution threshold for Death from Below, making him great at snowballing especially given the fact that any targets executed by Death from Below give full kill gold to both Pyke and the ADC, causing winning matchups to generate more gold for the duo as a whole than they would for any other duo.

His high mobility and sustain also make it extremely hard to punish him except if he can be CC locked and burst down, making it hard to generate leads from him when he fails at making a play, while not being as forgiving for the enemy bot lane when he succeeds.

-- Rakan
Being a scaling support, Rakan's laning phase is rather weak. His engage is hard to land, doesn't do much damage and he isn't particularly tanky to actually win the fights he engages. He has some poke but it doesn't do much damage, and some sustain but it's not on demand and isn't that strong. Sort of a jack of all trades that's weak enough in all aspects that he'll be outshined by most supports in lane.

At level 6 his engages become a little stronger as he can more consistently land Grand Entrance and also gets to charm one other target on top of that, but still isn't great engage compared to other engage supports. He does have special synergy with Xayah's Deadly Plumage in lane that makes his all-ins a lot stronger than they are with any other ADC, but still overall on the weaker side of engage supports.

-- Sona
Sona eventually ramps up to being one of the strongest lategame champions in the game even compared to non-supports, so naturally her laning phase suffers to compensate. First and foremost she's the second squishiest champion in the game besides Yuumi but doesn't get to go untargetable to make up for it, making her the most easily killable support to play in laning phase.

However she does bring decent poke and some healing and shielding for both herself and her ADC, causing her to have an easy time into enchanters and other weak laners who can't punish her in all-ins and allow her to scale and keep herself and her ADC topped up with sustain. However her aforementioned squishiness makes her very weak into stronger laners with either high damage or good engage who can punish her lack of defensive stats.

-- Soraka
Soraka is the queen of healing in League of Legends, providing unparalleled levels of healing through Astral Infusion alone while also having a large global AoE heal in Wish to boot. Unfortunately this healing comes at the cost of her own HP and her own self-sustain is quite low and dependant on harassing enemies with Starcall, leaving a lot of room to punish her.

When in winnable matchups she has the option of maxing or putting some early points into Starcall in order to have higher poke in lane, but it's still quite short ranged and doesn't do all that much damage, leaving her still quite an underwhelming laner.

-- T K
Da aggiornare

-- Taric
Taric is the only melee pure enchanter in the game, every one of his spells except Dazzle being defensive to protect his allies, which makes him great at protecting, but very bad at fighting enemy champions considering he lacks the range that other already weak laning enchanters would have to their advantage.

He doesn't fair as badly into melee matchups since, he gets a lot of damage from his passive which he can't easily apply to ranged champions but can easily use on melees. However while this makes many melee matchups more bearable than ranged matchups, he still tends to not do very well into most of them.

-- Thresh
Thresh combines the engage and pick potential of a melee champion with the trading pressure of a ranged champion. With Flay's passive combined with its active, Thresh packs a lot of damage in just one spell rank, and will often put a few early points into it to maximize his early damage. In winning matchups he can easily walk up to Flay an enemy towards him even through minions knowing he can win the trade. Flay is also great defensively and can block many champions' engage tools.

Additionally, the aptly named Death Sentence often spells disaster for targets caught by it as it stuns and pulls the victim closer to Thresh and his ally over 1.5 seconds, and allows Thresh to dash in and chain it with the rest of his CC. Its range makes it hard to cope with Thresh in losing matchups and exerts a lot of pressure over the opponents in lane knowing they can't get too close to farm while Death Sentence is up. But while he shares many characteristics with melee supports and is a great deal tankier than enchanters and mages, he's still notably squishier than the average melee support and has a harder time surviving all-ins and being caught by CC in even or bad matchups.

-- Yuumi
Yuumi is extremely squishy and as such has to spend the vast majority of her time attached to her ADC in order to not get constantly caught out. She provides a lot of healing and poke while attached but while it gives her an amazing late-game, for laning phase it doesn't quite make up for the lane being a 1v2 most of the time as she lacks lane presence, both literally and figuratively.

She fares worst against engage supports who can both force her to detach less for fear of getting CC'd and blown up in an instant and also abuse the fact that her lane partner is sort of 1v2 and easy to engage on most of the time, but tends to perform quite well into other enchanters or weak laning supports who can't abuse her lack of lane presence, and also can't abuse her as hard when she's detached which allows her to detach more often and have more lane presence than she would in tougher matchups.

-- Zilean
Zilean is similar to Karma in that he acts as a sort of mix between an enchanter and a mage, though I would personally say he leans far more onto the enchanter side, and it shows in his laning strength, or lack thereof. Like Karma he has rather high damage poke in the form of Time Bomb which also provides an AoE stun as well as doubling its damage if he resets its cooldown with Rewind and lands it twice. The issue is that it's very hard to lane compared to Inner Flame or other poke supports' abilities, and to obtain its full benefits he needs to manage to land it not just once but twice within a 3 second period. When successful he's very highly rewarded, but otherwise he's rather underwhelming.

He can make it much easier for himself to land a double Time Bomb by casting Time Warp on his intended target, but this has a rather short range which leaves him open to retaliation. This means that when facing weak lanes he's more likely to be able to walk up to cast Time Warp for easy double Time Bombs, but in harder matchups where he can't walk up to cast Time Warp without being punished he won't have anywhere near the same level of poke and overall lane presence, leaving a rather large gap between his highs and his lows in laning phase.

-- Zyra
Following and finishing the mildly amusing trend of most mage supports being located towards the very end of the alphabet, Zyra is just as lane dominant as the other mage supports, providing very high lane presence with her poke and burst, though compared to other mage supports she sacrifices a little bit of poke to make up for her high CC in her AoE knockup on Stranglethorns, and her high DPS in Rampant Growth and Garden of Thorns .

Her poke is also significantly on the shorter range which leaves her slightly more vulnerable to low range engage supports, while in winning matchups not being as much of a problem against long range hook-based engage champions who need to path around minions to find her and leave themselves open to eating up one of her combos, but limiting her ability to poke in losing matchups where she has to stay far away from the minion wave and can't poke without also being at risk of getting engaged on.

However she's very strong in all-ins where she can get her full combo out thanks to the DPS she gets out of her plants, especially when buffed by Stranglethorns, and also her combined 2-3 seconds of CC that prevents the targets from escaping the DPS coming from her plants, making engaging on her a scary prospect if her enemies can't burst her down before she has time to get her full spell rotation out, as while they may very well be able to kill her there's also a good chance that with the help of her ADC she'll take 1 or 2 of them down with her.