Welcome to Season 11. We're experiencing one of the biggest gameplay transformations to date. It can be quite difficult to navigate through all the changes and determine the best ways to play. In this blog post, I will make things simple: I will identify emerging superpowers in the bottom lane and their new build paths/playstyle adjustments.

Notable Items: Immortal Shieldbow & Guinsoo's Rageblade It is no surprise Ashe is on this list. She has been a popular contender for marksmen picks and has been performing exceptionally. Immortal Shieldbow is a great defensive item for Ashe who is quite vulnerable. She also scales great off a Guinsoo's Rageblade. Ashe doesn't scale off critical strikes like traditional marksmen do and losing critical strikes instead sacrifices amplified slows which is a minor loss to the damage you can deal. While she's also had her fair share of bugfixes, once resolved she will still likely be a powerful marksman. She is also a prime candidate for nerfs so abuse her while you can.

Notable Items: Eclipse, The Collector, & Sanguine Blade Draven is notorious for abusing lethality items with his hail of blades set-up. While Manamune has been gutted, Draven has great item synergy with a new lethality mythic item. Eclipse gives many offensive properties to help Draven play aggressive. The shield is a plus and would be highly valued by any marksman. Draven can also take advantage of The Collector for mid-game cash-ins. The bread-and-butter is Eclipse providing armor penetration to help against his weakness into tanks. He can finish off his build with many powerful lethality items to close games. Draven still has weaknesses that make him a risky blind pick but his good match-ups just got even better in the preseason.

Notable Items: Liandry's Torment, Demonic Embrace, & Zhonya's Hourglass Swain doesn't quite fit the role of high damage output but is still quite exceptional in the bottom lane. He has innate strengths in a duo lane and his item path makes him a great drain tank and team fight presence. Liandry's Anguish is better optimized towards battle mages with many prolonged combat passives. The built-in ability haste enables aggressive play with defensive items. Swain can abuse many off-tank mage items such as Demonic Embrace and Cosmic Drive which gives him dual resistances and movement speed to safely maneuver team fights. Swain was always a sleeper pick and his strengths have heightened.

Notable Items: Nashor's Tooth & Riftmaker Twitch received ability power scalings in his kit and it's honestly surprising more players aren't testing hybrid build paths. I would like to emphasize that attack damage Twitch is still very good but Twitch has great burst lingering and DOT with an ability power set-up. The early game can be quite rough since Twitch is very reliant on two core items; Nashor's Tooth and Riftmaker. However, once his two-item power-spike is achieved Twitch can clear teams with his ultimate burst. Once Twitch can hit his maximum stacks on his venom and activate Riftmaker's true damage passive squishy champions are essentially marked for death.

Notable Items: Immortal Shieldbow & Navori Quickblades Xayah has been dead for most of last season and players are still auto-defaulting to her standard build path from previous seasons. Let me introduce you to Spear of Shojin's new reiteration, Navorit Quickblades with more offensive stats geared towards marksmen. Xayah can facilitate feather output with its non-ultimate cooldown refund and get more high-impact roots. Navori Quickblades makes her very dangerous to walk into. Unfortunately, it is not a great first-item rush since the refund procs on critical strikes. Fortunately, it isn't too hard to stall until your Navori Quickblades with Xayah's survivability.