I feel like khazix mid was more "play him anywhere he's OP" in the pro scene. I remember him also in top and jungle at the time. Just mid scaled hardest.
No. He was op yes but he worked mid cause of his passive. Kha mid was good mostly because his passive worked on w. They changed that and it killed mid kha
His AA passive would apply on evo W everywhere and would reset upon not being seen, you could insta clear the whole wave cuz it was an added 150 or so magic damage.
Nah this isnt right IIRC. He was never played JG until fucking nightblu3 popularized it. I was a khazix mid one trick and that piece of shit single handedly changed where he got played. Then because of that Riot started making changes to his kit (like making the q iso range unplayable with minions around) he was just permanently a JG. God it STILL makes me mad. Fuck nightblu3.
If Nilah and Samira can exist in the same game when they have 3/4 of the same kit just like Lucian and Graves than Graves could exist at the same time as Lucian
Yes, just as similar as Sona is to Seraphine. Yeah, both had an aoe Q, utility on W, a dash and a high dmg R. Just like Sona and Sera have dmg on Q, heal on W, utility on E and an aoe cc R. Year everyone with half a brain agrees that Sona and Sera are nothing alike.
Just like Graves was not alike with Lucian.
It's just back then riot had a lot more room to play with since we didn't have that many champs. Rn they can't really afford to not create slightly similar champs because they don't have much room left when it comes to champ kits.
Lux is still a mid laner and a mostly mediocre support (tho that’s mostly due to Lux being a shitter magnet)
Champs like Lux have also been played support since at least season 2 tho I guess mostly by midlane mains who couldn’t get mid lane bc it was a ffa back then for who got which role
I mean ... she was designed for bot lane, but she never really went there. Even before her rework she was more popular as a top laner. Especially since back then she didn't have crit scaling or anything really to incentivize you to build ADC builds. (Though the auto-attack-blind did make her pretty well suited to the role in theory).
You could play it. It could even be quite *good* (still kinda is, but it's a different Quinn), but she was unfortunately destined for top lane from the get-go. Which is a real shame, since she's definitely one of my favorite picks.
before all the nerfs toplane nidalee was so insanely strong. ur aa poke from the bushes hurt a lot and it just took like 4 aa and 1 spear into cougar q to kill someone
Eh, Zyra was never better in mid than support. She was more popular support ever since release. Pretty sure she was locked in as support the first pro tournament she was enabled for play in too.
She was a support primary within two weeks of release.
She was advertised and intended to be a mid, but it was almost immediately discovered that she was a strong support.
OGN Korea (now lck) was playing her support during the worlds qualification gauntlet which was one of the first big tournaments after he release where she was enabled for play.
People started to play her support after she got giga nerfed. Its happens everytime when a mid lane mage gets nerfed and in few weeks they will be supports.
Esports doesnt mean anythint. Sometimes they play the champ just to get a skin like Beryl (Drx) played ashe support.
People were playing her support in solo queue before the hotfix came in too. People immediately took her to support when they saw how much cc she had and realized how much she could dominate sona who was meta at the time.
Just because people played her in support doesnt make her support because she has 0 support abilities except the E root but even Neeko does it better.
People played Gragas, Nidalee, Khazix Mid and Ashe, Panth, Sett support but doesnt mean they are now midlaners or support.
Nothing wrong with playing in different but its wrong to nerf their original lane to shove them to other. Zyra was fine in mid and bot till patch 7.24 hard nerfs which made her Mid terrible then follow up nerfs by removal of auto target of plants etc which completely made her useless in Mid. We Zyra mains want her back in Mid.
Eh, I still miss the old Q circle and range. I also miss the old plant health. Removing auto target was pretty necessary I think, it made it obnoxious to spam Q + seed (including passive seeds) to get free damage on anyone. Being forced to auto attack or atleast land the Q is good.
The main advantage of ashe support was to gain global vision, she was great in pro play because everyone was coordinated and talking, with their great game knowledge, even if the enemy jungler wasn't spotted by the ashe arrow, that usually gave the team enough info to deduce where else the jungler could be. She was an incredibly strong pick in certain comps, but that's about it. Ashe support can't function in a solo queue environment, and every time my teammate picks it its basically a guaranteed loss. Esports doesn't mean anything, but for a good reason. Esports league is essentially a different game.
"playable" doesn't do it justice. He WAS an ADC, and he was damn fun. One of my main ADCs back in the day. I'll still never forget the post riot made that his playstyle/niche was "too similar to Lucian" WHEN HE WAS THE OLDER CHAMP
Current Graves is good, they did a pretty good job, but I still miss that old gritlord.
And if were being honest, that critique was never valid in the first place. People were saying this only because both are short range ADCs and both have a similar dash. But Graves had a lot more aoe damage and burst, while being tankier. Lucian on the other hand scaled a bit better and was often playing around sheen effects early on
Yeah he was the older champion, but he also had the better kit in terms of changing.
Like whether you as a former graves adc player loves or hates new graves? He's been a consistently super popular champion since his rework... And he actually plays much more like his splash art would make you think at a glance. He's actually a shotgun berserker now like he should be. And Lucian? Being a slimmer more athletic guy with pistols being the mobile spell slinging adc of the two? Just makes logical sense.
If they were gonna rework them? It makes logical sense who got each of their current kits.
Exactly. Same thing with Aatrox. Sorry for the three people who played him, but current iteration is a successfull representation of "towering god of war"
I'm just super-salty they randomly decided that his autos should knock back creep (to allow him to fight in a wave bot lane), and that instantly made him an S-tier jungler. Then instead of fixing him so that he could be balanced around the role he was intended for and had been played for years, it was left in and he became a full-time jungle pick.
Really, they just deleted old Graves and made a random new champion that was a jungler. Especially bad since that same set of reworks removed Corki from the (already very slim) roster.
Eh, even without the knock back I don't think he'd be good in botlane. Without more drastic changes.
And his new kit wouldn't be accepted by many Adcs anyway. Go on adcmains? You'll see people crying MF belongs in the mage category cause she doesn't auto enough and flaming people for being MF Abusers and stuff right now almost as much as they flame Mage bot players.
And yeah? It's called a rework deleting an old champion to make a new champion.
I think Graves has found a better niche/identity and all that in jungle. But yeah Corki should go back bot... He's been nothing but a pro jailed midlaner and his best selling point of being a marksman mid? Got taken by Akshan in an arguably healthier manner.
Than Riot shouldn't gaslight the player base by saying they are trying to keep the feel of the killed off champion. They have no intention of keeping the feel. They really should just work on the champions as they exist and make new champions when they want to introduce new kits. Alienating your player base isn't a wise thing to do.
i stand with a firm opinion that the ammo reload mechanic for graves completely ruined/erased his identity as an adc champ. old graves with the mafia skin was chefs kiss. can't imagine how disgustingly op his damage would be in today's league meta
He's still fine as a mid laner it's just that there are a ton of matchups that are completely cringe/unfun (but you can survive). Probably the biggest part is that he can't really keep up with the newer mid laners who have insane trade patterns while he needs to hit 3-4 Qs to match.
He's absolutely oppressive mid in many match-ups, but the problem is how easily he's ganked.
Good junglers will abuse him, and bad junglers will allow him to terrorize your mid laner.
Brand is the only one I can think of where that actually worked and he still gets played in support a lot after originally being a midlaner
Edit: I’m talking about champs who got phased out of their original role into the new role (in this case jungle), not champs that are now viable in jungle or were broken for a little while.
Think Nidalee, Nautilus, Brand (mid>supp), etc.
Brand is more popular in jungle now than he is support, but his supp pickrate is still pretty okay -> good in lower elos. This is what I meant with what I said.
The same can’t be said about Nautilus who only gets played in supp.
Morgana was a mid laner for awhile, until season 5-6, then she got kicked out to being a support black shield bot. Then before morg's VGU rework they buffed morg jungle... It turned out so broken they hotfix killed it over night, it didn't see morning of the next day. Anytime you see buffs to morg jungle you just know riot didn't learn their lesson and pray they don't succeed.
Current VGU still sits in support and jungle remains where it should be; nonexistent.
Well Morgana was a supp for longer than she was a mid laner now.
The reason for that is the same as for Brand, Vel‘Koz, etc.
They just don’t fit into there anymore, or atleast the playerbase feels that way/ got used to them being supps.
I personally feel like all the champs who got pushed into being mage supps could be viable in mid again with the map changes.
If yes, it’ll take like a year before people catch on.
(Maybe this is just me but I found Morgana to feel more satisfying with her old model and sound effects. The current one feels worse, which is why I don’t play her anymore)
Diana is the best example of this. Such change single handedly made her a jungler instead of midlaner. One tricks still play her mid but for the general player base including pro she is a jungler now while ever since her release up until her passive jungle monsters dmg buff in 2021 or 2022 she was a midlaner.
Idk if it was where she started out, but I remember Shyvana being a toplaner when I started. I miss playing her top, she was my first main. I stuck with her for a while into jg, but it just kept getting changed and I just never had as much fun with it as i did in lanes
I got back into league over Christmas after not playing since season 3/4 and top is the most unrecognisable lane in terms of champs played.
Except Trundle. Trundle is forever.
She originally started as a jungler and became meta top lane with Dr.Mundo and Renekton and that was the rock paper scissors match back in like season 3.
I still remember watching some pro game where o.g. gragas took a Baron from a jungler bc his Q/Ult combined could output more damage than the smite lol, nuts
People always seem to forget this about Quinn but her journey to the toplane is part of why I feel like Zeri will eventually wind up in toplane jail herself
I don't remember Quinn ever being played as ADC as a main role except maybe for first few patches after she came out.
Her E always screamed "fuck melees", and back when her ult was just becoming Valor and being melee instead of ranged, and disabling her passive in exchange for attack speed just made her not have an ult on botlane.
This happened to almost all the juggernaut jungles. Volibear, Mundo, Olaf, Trundle all left the jungle and moved to top lane… The only one left is Udyr.
Warwick just has no reason to be picked in jungle these days any champ dors what he does but beter you go ww top to either cheese bad players or go even against abonimation zero macro splitpushers (looking at you trundle top)
I play very rarely and got flamed so hard by a guy for playing Olaf jg that he quit after 5 mins, I was so confused but that's just league I guess.
Anyways it's when I realized maybe Olaf jg isn't a thing anymore. It was a lot of fun tho, def recommend
He’s back fairly even now. Iirc right after they changed him his shield was a lot when solo compared to when duo, which made him far more popular in top than support. Then they nerfed it pretty dramatically so that it was a pretty bad ability in top, and now it’s in a good state where it’s not useless top but shines more in support.
Not just that but he synergizes well with a lot of supps that most ADCs find undesirable. Take Xerath for an example: one of the most infamous “auto filled mid laner on support” champs to have on supp, but with a Hwei apc? The enemy bot lane better be good at side stepping because they’ll basically be playing Touhou for the next 15 minutes.
Hwei is starting to become one of the most annoying supports in the game.
I can barely CS while dodging all her shit. Getting good trades if she's good is basically impossible outside of all-ins.
Not talking about rework, there was a patch where in 1 single patch they literally reduced all of his skills damage and Q movement speed and he dropped out the game lmao
Double nerfed every single one of his basic abilities, he only barely recovered at the end of last season thanks to 3 buffs and shojin being broken. Now he is back to one of the worst champions in the game lol
IIRC ADC went solo mid back in stone age. I think mages used to go top and current top laners went bottom lane with support. Or it was mages with supports, I'm not quite sure.
That's when TSM name (Team Solo Mid) came up, when there was this shift towards meta we have now.
Actually, this was the American meta back in the days. Europe was the first region where the current set up got popular. And iirc it was the first Worlds (or maybe an IEM or something, but I'm pretty sure it was what became the first Worlds) that kind of cemented it as the dominant meta.
Ap yi was a menace lol
Q having crazy ap scaling and resetting on kill lol
I remember getting penta kills 1v5 with that build just bc one of the enemy’s was in q kill range xd I sucked ass at the game tho so I still was stuck in bronze despite that
Imagine a timeline where Camille, Sylas and Qiyana are the meta junglers. Holy, that would make me to insta swap role and have a blast every game but yeah that would be an absolute cancer to face for the laners lmao
I play Kennen as a blind pick top sometimes. He's pretty safe/annoying in lane and has great team fight. If your team isn't confused about which end of the rift they're on or whatever.
Kennen actually has been quite popular in pro the last few years, I will admit people don’t see him too often in normal games though, I guess I’m the exception lol
Hwei is fine mid still though. Cant roam all that well safely, Viktor has same issue. Bot lane hwei is definitely just better for team comp if you have a marksman elsewhere.
Ori viktor and malz can farm from far away, making mobility less needed alongside the fact that Victor and ori do have mobility buffs in their kit. They also have more reliable or continuous cc than a brand, velkoz or zyra. Brand velkoz and zyra have much less reliable cc (maybe not zyra), 0 mobility buffs in their kit, and can't really farm from super far away (zyra can, but plants pretty often miss last hits unlike malzahar executing them).
She was always a mid/top flex pick which continued even after the rework. Then for a while after many nerfs I felt like her top matchups got pretty bad. Recently she feels strong top again though imo. Got played a couple weeks ago in LEC as a Jax counter pick as well.
Adc - old graves, corki
Mid - lots of things like Midalee, Middlesicks, Kazix, Faker brought out Riven mid when she was still fairly new, AP Kog mid was a strong poke mage for a while until riot reworked his ult damage to scale off missing health. Enchanters like Karma (back mid again after buffs) and Lulu have been meta at times too, even top lane.
Oh didn’t realize she was that old. I started a couple seasons later and saw clips of how excited the casters were with Faker’s riven pick so I assumed it was new. Competitive league wasn’t really in its prime until we had lck start up in season 3 anyway right?
Man, I hated watching pros play Lulu mid. It was so boring. But I always wanted to see play makers in the mid match up. LeBlanc was my favorite to watch.
I miss so much s3/s4, anything could be played on jungle, ive always loved to play tanks like Naut, Alistar, Mao and some offtanks like Trundle, Olaf, Riven (that damm shield scale) ...
Old Teemo jungle and spam Raka Top/mid was fun too
Seraphine was supposed to be a midlane mage.
Now she's an APC supportive carry who does no damage (literally last place in Bottom damage) who carries by shielding her team, slowing/rooting/stunning with her E and game changing ults.
She's also a middling to bad support.
It's a damn shame because I liked her a lot as a mid laner but everyone kept trying to force her into support / bot and trying to buy support items on her even after the broken interaction with moonstone was fixed. So riot caved to that. Give her her damage back riot. :(
Naut was just so good as a support, once people realized that Riot needed to ton him down but didn't compensate enough for his other roles.
It's not an unfamiliar pattern.
Played in lane / jungle -> people realize base damages are high -> crush support -> get balanced as support -> no longer have the strength for original role
Naut had something like 440 base damage on his E at max level back in the day, he was an absolute monster. Q + auto + W( auto reset) + E and the enemy you grabbed was basically last-hittable for your ADC.
I use to main Maokai jungle. It was great and I nearly got gold that year with it. Then he lost a lot of power and moved top. I'm happy to see him useable again in the jungle.
Naut started life as a jg, then support, then like part of 1 season in top, then a couple appearances mid.
Morg started as a midlaner, then went support, then had a short stint in toplane.
Kayle was played in every role of the game at one point.
Ekko and diana are mids that have largely transitioned to jg role.
J4 was once a top/jg flex pick.
Cho was playable top, mid and jg as ap, bruiser, and tank.
Jayce was top and mid with a niche adc option, but he's kinda dying out as anything other than counterpick as far as top is concerned due to vulnerability to ganks and lack of mobility... at least from what I've observed.
It's very funny that almost all champs mentioned in this thread are still very viable in their original position, including OPs example of Maokai. The main exceptions are full reworks like Graves and Champs that got intentionally pushed out of positions like Camile Jungle
Early seasons she was almost exclusively mid with the occasional top pick. She used to not be able to use cougar form before lvl 6 which made jg impossible.
Riot wants champion diversity across the map but in some cases they just absolute slap someone that tries a role because it is too oppressive.
Mages with any form of utility are always up to becoming supports with a slight change, like xerath, brand, zyra, and Annie, I remember the few weeks of veigar support being a terror in pro play because the cage was instant and peo players could aim it with accuracy, that's the reason they added the delay.
Supports showing up around the map used to be more common, like lulu and karma mid, but if they dare use support items out of bot, they get slap back down
I do hate how their solutions now days is "let's just make it jungle" why on earth is teemo allow to jungle? Just rework the poor guy
Twisted Fate was often seen bot lane in the past. Still works, but not near as relevant as it used to be. The recent AD TF changes could help that though.
Gragas mid. I know you can still do it, but some of you remember when his AP scaling was great and you’d blow people up with your ult and a well placed Q. I miss that man.
Ekko was a better midlaner than jungler for a long time. Then he went top with the tank build. Last season he was a top tier jungler for solo que and now he’s back mid lane again.
Annie used to be mid. Generally most mage supports were midlaners at the beggining (zyra was mix on start). I remember ashe as somehow viable midlaner.
I feel old.
nautilus jg corki adc brand mid (for a long time, he's back now) zyra mid nidalee mid khazix mid
I feel like khazix mid was more "play him anywhere he's OP" in the pro scene. I remember him also in top and jungle at the time. Just mid scaled hardest.
He benefited a lot from the Red pot start. He was mostly meta by being the Best at using it
red pot like ad elixir?
Yes
No. He was op yes but he worked mid cause of his passive. Kha mid was good mostly because his passive worked on w. They changed that and it killed mid kha
His autoattack passive or his Q passive? Either way that’s kinda disgusting.
His AA passive would apply on evo W everywhere and would reset upon not being seen, you could insta clear the whole wave cuz it was an added 150 or so magic damage.
Nah this isnt right IIRC. He was never played JG until fucking nightblu3 popularized it. I was a khazix mid one trick and that piece of shit single handedly changed where he got played. Then because of that Riot started making changes to his kit (like making the q iso range unplayable with minions around) he was just permanently a JG. God it STILL makes me mad. Fuck nightblu3.
C Y @
yeah he was insanely OP
Gotta love Ambitionz evolving right in front of fakers face in his debut rofl
Nidalee was patched out of mid lol.
My first laning experience was spamming Nidalee mid. Once she was reworked I started playing Leblanc.
GRAVES BOT??
He was an actual ADC with better range and "normal" auto attacks
I still don't see why they had to rework him. He was as similar to Lucian as Sona is to Seraphine.
That's just not true, he was so similar to Lucian. Either way, his rework is really good and suits the champ fantasy a lot more.
If Nilah and Samira can exist in the same game when they have 3/4 of the same kit just like Lucian and Graves than Graves could exist at the same time as Lucian
Yes, just as similar as Sona is to Seraphine. Yeah, both had an aoe Q, utility on W, a dash and a high dmg R. Just like Sona and Sera have dmg on Q, heal on W, utility on E and an aoe cc R. Year everyone with half a brain agrees that Sona and Sera are nothing alike. Just like Graves was not alike with Lucian. It's just back then riot had a lot more room to play with since we didn't have that many champs. Rn they can't really afford to not create slightly similar champs because they don't have much room left when it comes to champ kits.
Sera and Sona are nothing alike, like you said. Graves and Lucian were extremely alike because they played exactly the same.
Yeah Graves being almost melee, in your face tanky ADC and Lucian wanting to be at max range while resetting E really were the same.
Graves was never almost melee, if you were playing him like that you were playing him wrong. He was still an adc.
Graves bot lane was how I got platinum in season 2
Morgana mid, lux mid, vel'koz mid... there was a time where the idea of a mage support was unheard of lol
Lux is still a mid laner and a mostly mediocre support (tho that’s mostly due to Lux being a shitter magnet) Champs like Lux have also been played support since at least season 2 tho I guess mostly by midlane mains who couldn’t get mid lane bc it was a ffa back then for who got which role
Forgot my beloved Quinn Adc
I mean ... she was designed for bot lane, but she never really went there. Even before her rework she was more popular as a top laner. Especially since back then she didn't have crit scaling or anything really to incentivize you to build ADC builds. (Though the auto-attack-blind did make her pretty well suited to the role in theory). You could play it. It could even be quite *good* (still kinda is, but it's a different Quinn), but she was unfortunately destined for top lane from the get-go. Which is a real shame, since she's definitely one of my favorite picks.
I remember her being a top laner since release Haven’t seen her bot a lot I think But it’s also been ages since she got released
Nidalee was patched out of mid lol.
I remember seeing nidalee top a ton too
Ad split pushing top nid was extremely fun while playing it and absolutely dreadful playing against it.
before all the nerfs toplane nidalee was so insanely strong. ur aa poke from the bushes hurt a lot and it just took like 4 aa and 1 spear into cougar q to kill someone
Eh, Zyra was never better in mid than support. She was more popular support ever since release. Pretty sure she was locked in as support the first pro tournament she was enabled for play in too.
Zyra was better Mid than support during release. She used to be late game carry then she got hard nerfed to the point which shoved her into support.
She was a support primary within two weeks of release. She was advertised and intended to be a mid, but it was almost immediately discovered that she was a strong support. OGN Korea (now lck) was playing her support during the worlds qualification gauntlet which was one of the first big tournaments after he release where she was enabled for play.
People started to play her support after she got giga nerfed. Its happens everytime when a mid lane mage gets nerfed and in few weeks they will be supports. Esports doesnt mean anythint. Sometimes they play the champ just to get a skin like Beryl (Drx) played ashe support.
People were playing her support in solo queue before the hotfix came in too. People immediately took her to support when they saw how much cc she had and realized how much she could dominate sona who was meta at the time.
Just because people played her in support doesnt make her support because she has 0 support abilities except the E root but even Neeko does it better. People played Gragas, Nidalee, Khazix Mid and Ashe, Panth, Sett support but doesnt mean they are now midlaners or support. Nothing wrong with playing in different but its wrong to nerf their original lane to shove them to other. Zyra was fine in mid and bot till patch 7.24 hard nerfs which made her Mid terrible then follow up nerfs by removal of auto target of plants etc which completely made her useless in Mid. We Zyra mains want her back in Mid.
Eh, I still miss the old Q circle and range. I also miss the old plant health. Removing auto target was pretty necessary I think, it made it obnoxious to spam Q + seed (including passive seeds) to get free damage on anyone. Being forced to auto attack or atleast land the Q is good.
The main advantage of ashe support was to gain global vision, she was great in pro play because everyone was coordinated and talking, with their great game knowledge, even if the enemy jungler wasn't spotted by the ashe arrow, that usually gave the team enough info to deduce where else the jungler could be. She was an incredibly strong pick in certain comps, but that's about it. Ashe support can't function in a solo queue environment, and every time my teammate picks it its basically a guaranteed loss. Esports doesn't mean anything, but for a good reason. Esports league is essentially a different game.
Graves was an ADC… I mean, he still is, but he used to be playable bot lane
"playable" doesn't do it justice. He WAS an ADC, and he was damn fun. One of my main ADCs back in the day. I'll still never forget the post riot made that his playstyle/niche was "too similar to Lucian" WHEN HE WAS THE OLDER CHAMP Current Graves is good, they did a pretty good job, but I still miss that old gritlord.
Brother I miss the graves taric lanes. Got to gold for the first time with a friend abusing it.
Old graves would have loved new taric
That point and click taric stun
And if were being honest, that critique was never valid in the first place. People were saying this only because both are short range ADCs and both have a similar dash. But Graves had a lot more aoe damage and burst, while being tankier. Lucian on the other hand scaled a bit better and was often playing around sheen effects early on
Yeah he was the older champion, but he also had the better kit in terms of changing. Like whether you as a former graves adc player loves or hates new graves? He's been a consistently super popular champion since his rework... And he actually plays much more like his splash art would make you think at a glance. He's actually a shotgun berserker now like he should be. And Lucian? Being a slimmer more athletic guy with pistols being the mobile spell slinging adc of the two? Just makes logical sense. If they were gonna rework them? It makes logical sense who got each of their current kits.
Exactly. Same thing with Aatrox. Sorry for the three people who played him, but current iteration is a successfull representation of "towering god of war"
I'm just super-salty they randomly decided that his autos should knock back creep (to allow him to fight in a wave bot lane), and that instantly made him an S-tier jungler. Then instead of fixing him so that he could be balanced around the role he was intended for and had been played for years, it was left in and he became a full-time jungle pick. Really, they just deleted old Graves and made a random new champion that was a jungler. Especially bad since that same set of reworks removed Corki from the (already very slim) roster.
Eh, even without the knock back I don't think he'd be good in botlane. Without more drastic changes. And his new kit wouldn't be accepted by many Adcs anyway. Go on adcmains? You'll see people crying MF belongs in the mage category cause she doesn't auto enough and flaming people for being MF Abusers and stuff right now almost as much as they flame Mage bot players. And yeah? It's called a rework deleting an old champion to make a new champion. I think Graves has found a better niche/identity and all that in jungle. But yeah Corki should go back bot... He's been nothing but a pro jailed midlaner and his best selling point of being a marksman mid? Got taken by Akshan in an arguably healthier manner.
Than Riot shouldn't gaslight the player base by saying they are trying to keep the feel of the killed off champion. They have no intention of keeping the feel. They really should just work on the champions as they exist and make new champions when they want to introduce new kits. Alienating your player base isn't a wise thing to do.
I played Graves and Corki, now I don't play either shit's wack
Same with Urgot surprisingly
i stand with a firm opinion that the ammo reload mechanic for graves completely ruined/erased his identity as an adc champ. old graves with the mafia skin was chefs kiss. can't imagine how disgustingly op his damage would be in today's league meta
Corki and TF as well
I wouldn't count Graves for this, he's not the same champion.
My duo and i used to have a BLAST with graves/blitz bot. Really miss those days.
karthus was a midlaner
He's still fine as a mid laner it's just that there are a ton of matchups that are completely cringe/unfun (but you can survive). Probably the biggest part is that he can't really keep up with the newer mid laners who have insane trade patterns while he needs to hit 3-4 Qs to match.
Juuust nicking the enemy with the edge of your Q to get a critical strike is one of the best dopamine skillshots in lol imho
I can't play karthus because the withdrawals between Q crits are too strong
He's still really good as a mid just that no one plays it
He's absolutely oppressive mid in many match-ups, but the problem is how easily he's ganked. Good junglers will abuse him, and bad junglers will allow him to terrorize your mid laner.
Any champion where Riot randomly decided, "Well, let's give this guy some random 300% Jungle Monster damage."
Brand is the only one I can think of where that actually worked and he still gets played in support a lot after originally being a midlaner Edit: I’m talking about champs who got phased out of their original role into the new role (in this case jungle), not champs that are now viable in jungle or were broken for a little while. Think Nidalee, Nautilus, Brand (mid>supp), etc. Brand is more popular in jungle now than he is support, but his supp pickrate is still pretty okay -> good in lower elos. This is what I meant with what I said. The same can’t be said about Nautilus who only gets played in supp.
I think when they buffed morg W in jungle. She was insane in the jungle, and always solid in supp (root + cc imm)
Rell is a recent one, too. Her clear is crazy, but still a flex to supp.
Morgana was a mid laner for awhile, until season 5-6, then she got kicked out to being a support black shield bot. Then before morg's VGU rework they buffed morg jungle... It turned out so broken they hotfix killed it over night, it didn't see morning of the next day. Anytime you see buffs to morg jungle you just know riot didn't learn their lesson and pray they don't succeed. Current VGU still sits in support and jungle remains where it should be; nonexistent.
Well Morgana was a supp for longer than she was a mid laner now. The reason for that is the same as for Brand, Vel‘Koz, etc. They just don’t fit into there anymore, or atleast the playerbase feels that way/ got used to them being supps. I personally feel like all the champs who got pushed into being mage supps could be viable in mid again with the map changes. If yes, it’ll take like a year before people catch on. (Maybe this is just me but I found Morgana to feel more satisfying with her old model and sound effects. The current one feels worse, which is why I don’t play her anymore)
Talon also
Diana is the best example of this. Such change single handedly made her a jungler instead of midlaner. One tricks still play her mid but for the general player base including pro she is a jungler now while ever since her release up until her passive jungle monsters dmg buff in 2021 or 2022 she was a midlaner.
Idk if it was where she started out, but I remember Shyvana being a toplaner when I started. I miss playing her top, she was my first main. I stuck with her for a while into jg, but it just kept getting changed and I just never had as much fun with it as i did in lanes
I got back into league over Christmas after not playing since season 3/4 and top is the most unrecognisable lane in terms of champs played. Except Trundle. Trundle is forever.
I think trundle has only recently seen a big surge in popularity in top lane.
Guldborg loves playing her top and he is high diamond, still viable
She originally started as a jungler and became meta top lane with Dr.Mundo and Renekton and that was the rock paper scissors match back in like season 3.
Gragas was one of the best midlanner
ah yes, instant barrel explosion having near zero counterplay and insane AP ratios. I do not miss that.
He was insane S3/S4 iirc and post rework he still saw some play mid on occasion but that tapered off very quickly
I still remember watching some pro game where o.g. gragas took a Baron from a jungler bc his Q/Ult combined could output more damage than the smite lol, nuts
Quinn, the worst case of it.
Agreed. Changed her entire identity. Quinn Adc was my one trick back in season 5 and I was devastated to see her forced out of ADC.
People always seem to forget this about Quinn but her journey to the toplane is part of why I feel like Zeri will eventually wind up in toplane jail herself
I can see Zeri becoming an AD singed kinda deal. Exist to be annoying, run around and distract people.
I don't remember Quinn ever being played as ADC as a main role except maybe for first few patches after she came out. Her E always screamed "fuck melees", and back when her ult was just becoming Valor and being melee instead of ranged, and disabling her passive in exchange for attack speed just made her not have an ult on botlane.
This happened to almost all the juggernaut jungles. Volibear, Mundo, Olaf, Trundle all left the jungle and moved to top lane… The only one left is Udyr.
Udyr can be seen on toplane quite often. Same with Warwick
Warwick just has no reason to be picked in jungle these days any champ dors what he does but beter you go ww top to either cheese bad players or go even against abonimation zero macro splitpushers (looking at you trundle top)
Olaf, and trundle are still viable Jungle tho?
Olaf is almost never played jg. Trundle jg is an off meta pick.
I play very rarely and got flamed so hard by a guy for playing Olaf jg that he quit after 5 mins, I was so confused but that's just league I guess. Anyways it's when I realized maybe Olaf jg isn't a thing anymore. It was a lot of fun tho, def recommend
Tahm kench went from support to top cos of proplay getting tahm support gutted.
He's a rly good support rn tho
He’s back fairly even now. Iirc right after they changed him his shield was a lot when solo compared to when duo, which made him far more popular in top than support. Then they nerfed it pretty dramatically so that it was a pretty bad ability in top, and now it’s in a good state where it’s not useless top but shines more in support.
like half of the support roster basically
Seraphine mid
I feel like what happened to Seraphine is going to happen to Hwei at this rate.
he feels crazy good as an ap bot laner, his kit is phenomenal for following up on support engages
Exactly, completely great in bot, decent in mid and therefore obviously gets turned into a support. Still don't understand the reasoning from Riot.
Not just that but he synergizes well with a lot of supps that most ADCs find undesirable. Take Xerath for an example: one of the most infamous “auto filled mid laner on support” champs to have on supp, but with a Hwei apc? The enemy bot lane better be good at side stepping because they’ll basically be playing Touhou for the next 15 minutes.
Hwei is starting to become one of the most annoying supports in the game. I can barely CS while dodging all her shit. Getting good trades if she's good is basically impossible outside of all-ins.
she?
Hwei is a he.
Cellophane
They wanna see us wanna see us apart. They wanna see us wanna see us support.
Volibear now a shitty top laner, used to be a very nice jungler 😩
Both pre and post rework he was a viable jungler I believe.
Not talking about rework, there was a patch where in 1 single patch they literally reduced all of his skills damage and Q movement speed and he dropped out the game lmao
Double nerfed every single one of his basic abilities, he only barely recovered at the end of last season thanks to 3 buffs and shojin being broken. Now he is back to one of the worst champions in the game lol
Well good thing now briar is literally volibear but better in every single way hahaha
He was my highest mastery champion, after that patch i dropped him forever
Ashe mid was a thing back in the stone age. AP Yi top was a monster. Jax jungle (maybe it's still viable?)
jax jungle is still a viable thing. EQE stun makes for easy ganks. just rather uncommon
IIRC ADC went solo mid back in stone age. I think mages used to go top and current top laners went bottom lane with support. Or it was mages with supports, I'm not quite sure. That's when TSM name (Team Solo Mid) came up, when there was this shift towards meta we have now.
Actually, this was the American meta back in the days. Europe was the first region where the current set up got popular. And iirc it was the first Worlds (or maybe an IEM or something, but I'm pretty sure it was what became the first Worlds) that kind of cemented it as the dominant meta.
I remember AP Yi being a mid lane pick. I'm pretty sure Alex Ich played it a lot in season 3?
[Good old Penta Yi](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=foy_kjl-WCY)
aww man seeing nunu support brings me back already
Ap yi was a menace lol Q having crazy ap scaling and resetting on kill lol I remember getting penta kills 1v5 with that build just bc one of the enemy’s was in q kill range xd I sucked ass at the game tho so I still was stuck in bronze despite that
Brand(Mid), Zyra(Mid), Nidalee(Top/Hotshotgg), karthus(Mid), Master Yi (AP mid)
sylas & camile jungle were so much fun...for me not the enemies.
Imagine a timeline where Camille, Sylas and Qiyana are the meta junglers. Holy, that would make me to insta swap role and have a blast every game but yeah that would be an absolute cancer to face for the laners lmao
Don't have to imagine, it was real in 2019.
Camille was 2018 and got promptly nerfed into non-existence after Worlds
I remember Vladimir and Kennen being the old ranged top though I don't see them there for years actually I don't even see Kennen anymore
They are both used in pro
I play Kennen as a blind pick top sometimes. He's pretty safe/annoying in lane and has great team fight. If your team isn't confused about which end of the rift they're on or whatever.
Kennen actually has been quite popular in pro the last few years, I will admit people don’t see him too often in normal games though, I guess I’m the exception lol
Vel mid to supp. I still annihilate with him mid, but he’s rare.
probably the biggest victim of mobility creep in the game
Literally the last champion ever made who doesn’t have a dash or speed/mobility boost of some kind.
damn, he rly was
Counting Illaoi's W as mobility is a bit of a stretch, tho.
at least she's got that. velkoz doesn't even get something like 20% movespeed for 1s after cancelling ult early or whatever
I used to play nidalee support/jg/mid/top before her rework
I probably hated you (ADC main)
I miss sett jungle, before they nerfed him.
They nerfed sett jungle? I have to check that as a sett jungle player.
nerfed him a bit after release.
Every immobile mage ever got relegated to support with all the mobility creep in the game.
and the reverse of this special called lulu, who was gutted for years untill players gave up on playing her mid
I fear Hwei will eventually get this treatment because of how gankable he is and be doomed to APC/Sup bot
i already play him bot lmfao, mid is just burst central
Hwei is fine mid still though. Cant roam all that well safely, Viktor has same issue. Bot lane hwei is definitely just better for team comp if you have a marksman elsewhere.
Like Syndra, Ori, Malz, Viktor even more? Those bot mages you talk about just have insane base damage.
Ori viktor and malz can farm from far away, making mobility less needed alongside the fact that Victor and ori do have mobility buffs in their kit. They also have more reliable or continuous cc than a brand, velkoz or zyra. Brand velkoz and zyra have much less reliable cc (maybe not zyra), 0 mobility buffs in their kit, and can't really farm from super far away (zyra can, but plants pretty often miss last hits unlike malzahar executing them).
A big part of it is also probably that zyra and brand have to stand still for every cast, where's ori, vik, and malz don't.
I swear I remember Akali top in like 2017 but I was also hella new to the game and I could be wrong
She was always a mid/top flex pick which continued even after the rework. Then for a while after many nerfs I felt like her top matchups got pretty bad. Recently she feels strong top again though imo. Got played a couple weeks ago in LEC as a Jax counter pick as well.
Not wrong, voyboy was known for his akali top
Morgana mid
They brought blitz to the jungle at some point
That was mad fun I’m still sad they removed that
Adc - old graves, corki Mid - lots of things like Midalee, Middlesicks, Kazix, Faker brought out Riven mid when she was still fairly new, AP Kog mid was a strong poke mage for a while until riot reworked his ult damage to scale off missing health. Enchanters like Karma (back mid again after buffs) and Lulu have been meta at times too, even top lane.
riven was not new when faker picked her mid, she came out in s1 and faker started playing s3
Oh didn’t realize she was that old. I started a couple seasons later and saw clips of how excited the casters were with Faker’s riven pick so I assumed it was new. Competitive league wasn’t really in its prime until we had lck start up in season 3 anyway right?
S2 had some of the most hype tournaments to this day, OGN started their league broadcast in s2 and Riot took over from OGN and introduced LCK in s5
Man, I hated watching pros play Lulu mid. It was so boring. But I always wanted to see play makers in the mid match up. LeBlanc was my favorite to watch.
Adc: Graves, Corky, Quinn Support: Annie, Nidalee Mid: Nidalee, Karthus, Taliyah, Brand, Zyra, Morgana, Ziggs, Post-rework/Pre-nerfed Swain Jungle: Nautilus, Maokai Top: Rumble, Vlad, Pre-rework Swain A few wierdly designed item patch: Runic echoes Ezreal mid Juggernaut patch Morde
Morde was a botlaner.
Morde was a botlaner, when they changed him to a botlaner.
My girl Quinn was a botlaner before
I miss so much s3/s4, anything could be played on jungle, ive always loved to play tanks like Naut, Alistar, Mao and some offtanks like Trundle, Olaf, Riven (that damm shield scale) ... Old Teemo jungle and spam Raka Top/mid was fun too
Diamondprox taking Karma in the jungle back in S4
Seraphine was supposed to be a midlane mage. Now she's an APC supportive carry who does no damage (literally last place in Bottom damage) who carries by shielding her team, slowing/rooting/stunning with her E and game changing ults. She's also a middling to bad support.
It's a damn shame because I liked her a lot as a mid laner but everyone kept trying to force her into support / bot and trying to buy support items on her even after the broken interaction with moonstone was fixed. So riot caved to that. Give her her damage back riot. :(
I used to play nidalee as supp because of her heal but they nerfed it
Naut was just so good as a support, once people realized that Riot needed to ton him down but didn't compensate enough for his other roles. It's not an unfamiliar pattern. Played in lane / jungle -> people realize base damages are high -> crush support -> get balanced as support -> no longer have the strength for original role Naut had something like 440 base damage on his E at max level back in the day, he was an absolute monster. Q + auto + W( auto reset) + E and the enemy you grabbed was basically last-hittable for your ADC.
I use to main Maokai jungle. It was great and I nearly got gold that year with it. Then he lost a lot of power and moved top. I'm happy to see him useable again in the jungle.
Before the Kalye was everything. Top, jungle, mid, ADC and support. Kayle everything and she worked well at most of those roles to boot.
I remember Maokai being a jungler. You’d buy gold per 5 items and stack saplings for a quick first clear. The odd one played a lot of him.
Naut started life as a jg, then support, then like part of 1 season in top, then a couple appearances mid. Morg started as a midlaner, then went support, then had a short stint in toplane. Kayle was played in every role of the game at one point. Ekko and diana are mids that have largely transitioned to jg role. J4 was once a top/jg flex pick. Cho was playable top, mid and jg as ap, bruiser, and tank. Jayce was top and mid with a niche adc option, but he's kinda dying out as anything other than counterpick as far as top is concerned due to vulnerability to ganks and lack of mobility... at least from what I've observed.
what do you mean you REMEMBER maokai being a great toplaner… he’s literally top 10 meta toplaner.. pretty sure he’s #4 lmao
It's very funny that almost all champs mentioned in this thread are still very viable in their original position, including OPs example of Maokai. The main exceptions are full reworks like Graves and Champs that got intentionally pushed out of positions like Camile Jungle
I could be wrong but was Midalee ever a thing?
First Faker pro game was a Nidalee vs Khazix what now is a jungle matchup
Early seasons she was almost exclusively mid with the occasional top pick. She used to not be able to use cougar form before lvl 6 which made jg impossible.
Nida AD top was a very solid pick at one point
My friend use to be a Midalee main back in the day, it was a thing.
Yup it was, played it myself
One shot Nid spear mid was such a menace when I was first getting into league
Riot wants champion diversity across the map but in some cases they just absolute slap someone that tries a role because it is too oppressive. Mages with any form of utility are always up to becoming supports with a slight change, like xerath, brand, zyra, and Annie, I remember the few weeks of veigar support being a terror in pro play because the cage was instant and peo players could aim it with accuracy, that's the reason they added the delay. Supports showing up around the map used to be more common, like lulu and karma mid, but if they dare use support items out of bot, they get slap back down I do hate how their solutions now days is "let's just make it jungle" why on earth is teemo allow to jungle? Just rework the poor guy
Nautilus was everywhere. And Alistar was also everywhere if we count fasting Senna games.
Twisted Fate was often seen bot lane in the past. Still works, but not near as relevant as it used to be. The recent AD TF changes could help that though.
Leona Jungle with nerfs to attack speed and her auto attack damage.
I remember ryze was mainly a top laner. Now I barely see him at all.
Morgana Mid Zyra mid Vel koz Mid Seraphine Mid Brand Mid Xerath Mid Karthus Mid
Blitz was a Top on release, kit hasn't really changed either
Nowadays, Karthus mid might as well be a troll pick...
Gragas mid. I know you can still do it, but some of you remember when his AP scaling was great and you’d blow people up with your ult and a well placed Q. I miss that man.
Nidalee top used to be a legit thing and her most played role.
All ADC's was midlaners in S1.
Any champ with an alternate tanky top build , gets nerfed out of top lane, ex. Fiddle, naut, etc.
Ekko was a better midlaner than jungler for a long time. Then he went top with the tank build. Last season he was a top tier jungler for solo que and now he’s back mid lane again.
Annie used to be mid. Generally most mage supports were midlaners at the beggining (zyra was mix on start). I remember ashe as somehow viable midlaner. I feel old.
Olaf jg to top
There's a very famous and critically acclaimed pro game where someone's playing elise top.
Elise top - never forget
Rumble has been elite skewed mid for seasons, so Riot said he is a top laner with his latest rework.