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Lane swaps have been a part of League since the early days, but they really started to ramp up in Season 5. Riot attempted to temper the dominance of this meta by nerfing bottom turrets in Season 6.
However, in Season 14, laning matchups and ADCs have been much more important than usual, so players must lane swap in order to avoid horrific matchups. Specifically, ADCs received significant buffs in the middle of the season, further complicating the issue since many began playing ADCs in non-traditional roles such as mid and jungle.
The most common lane swap happens in the case when a bot duo gets an unfavorable matchup in the bottom lane and just decides to lane swap to the top, where they can farm safely.
Meanwhile, the top laner takes a safe pick to survive the swap so that at some later time, the bot duo can finally get strong enough and start dominating.
While an occasional lane swap doesn't make much of a difference, constant 3v0s in professional play have just been getting on the nerves of players and viewers alike.
From Patch 14.18 onward, Riot is attempting to counterbalance this with major turret changes in hopes of preventing lane swaps. Permanent resistances gained after a turret plate is destroyed are increased from 40 to 50; temporary resist per champion for 20 seconds was reduced from 45 to 20.
These changes make aggressively taking down turrets harder than before-even in standard games. The damage-reducing turret fortification in early game has also been buffed from 75% to 85% for the first five minutes.
This, in turn, may affect the viability of the lane swap strategy to a high degree. It remains to be seen whether these changes finally kill the lane swap strategy.
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