Corki in Professional Play
Riot·5/29/2014, 10:14:20 PM·1 votes·6,317 views
At the World Championships, Corki was the new hotshot ADC, flying quickly to the top in a barrage of games. The why is pretty simple: Trinity Force and Corki had both just received buffs. Since then, however, he’s been almost entirely unplayed, with a 4-7 record and a 3.036 KDA in 11 games during the 2014 LCS Spring Split Season and playoffs. What has changed to take Corki out of favor?
To understand that, we have to understand what made Corki so strong, and there were a lot of factors at play.
When teams didn’t run AD mids, they very often ran AoE mids, like Orianna or Gragas. In combination with Gragas, Corki could add even more poke, while in combination with Orianna, Corki could line up his AoE damage on multiple targets.
Lane Dominance
Corki does well against two different types of champions.
He is extremely burst-oriented, allowing him to all-in squishy, extended-damage supports like Zyra (a popular support at the time).
He also has a lot of magic damage and armor shred, making him strong vs tanks.
What do both of those champion types have in common? They can’t poke back in lane. Zyra – a champion that normally has incredible ranged damage - can’t poke back because Corki’s initial burst will leave her too low to respond, while tanks have no reliable way to do ranged damage. As a result, Corki was able to abuse their shortcomings.
Corki was plunged into a whole new meta in Season 4, where his talents couldn’t shine.
AD Mids faded into obscurity over time, and poke-heavy mids like Ziggs and Nidalee dominated for most of the season, causing Corki’s poke to be outshined.
Supports slowly shifted over to AP mages, especially Karma and Morgana, both of whom could shield against his damage and mitigate his burst. This gave him less all-in potential, and significantly hampered his ability to poke.
Finally, he was made a mechanically more difficult champion. Corki has always been a relatively easy AD Carry to optimize mechanically, because his main poke ability in lane had very little dodge counterplay, and his missile barrage was spammable enough to forgive mechanical error. Corki’s rework changed Phosphorous Bombs to be a skillshot, which made him less of a comfort pick, less of a lane bully, and less of a consistent pick, despite the addition of an AD ratio to the ability.
As noted in The State of AD Carries, as long as games revolve around team fights and towers, teams will need an AD carry. As an AD carry, Corki threatens towers in two ways.
First, he offers the potential to poke a defending team off of a tower. Interestingly enough, the Corki picks in 2014 were all towards the end of the season, well after Gragas and Ziggs had started to lose popularity, leaving teams with less long-range AP damage.
Second, he offers good burst on towers with Trinity Force. Unfortunately for him, however, current popular pick Lucian offers even better damage with Trinity Force, due to his passive, Lightslinger. This makes Corki an inherently weaker pick than Lucian for tower-poking.
It’s not that Corki is a bad pick, but that in the areas the meta emphasizes, he is outclassed by other champions, and that his own strengths are relatively niche in the current meta.
However, if Twitch and Lucian start seeing more bans in the LCS, it may become time for Corki to come back into the limelight. Teams with a Trinity Force-building, sieging, AP-scaling AD carry hole to fill will want to take a look at other choices for the role. Ezreal comes to mind, as does, well, Corki. Until then, however, the Daring Bombardier sits on the sidelines.
Mattias "Gentleman Gustaf" Lehman is a League of Legends math-crafter turned esports journalist who spends his spare time staring at mountains of League of Legends data. Follow him @GentlemanGustaf on Twitter.
Rise of the Valkyries
So what had Corki flying onto the scene? AD mids and tops Coming into worlds, Zed was one of the most dominant mid lane champions, and two of the dominant top laners were Jax and Renekton. Both of those champions brought a decent amount of physical damage to their teams, which synergized with Corki in two ways. The armor shred from Corki’s Gatling Gun boosted the damage of those AD champions, especially over time. This synergizes extremely well with the extended damage of Jax and Renekton, as well as with the delayed damage of Zed. The magic damage from Corki’s Missile barrage and Phosphorous Bomb - not to mention the true damage from his passive, Hextech Shrapnel Shells - provides good magic damage to a team. AoE teamfights
When teams didn’t run AD mids, they very often ran AoE mids, like Orianna or Gragas. In combination with Gragas, Corki could add even more poke, while in combination with Orianna, Corki could line up his AoE damage on multiple targets.
Lane Dominance
Corki does well against two different types of champions.
He is extremely burst-oriented, allowing him to all-in squishy, extended-damage supports like Zyra (a popular support at the time).
He also has a lot of magic damage and armor shred, making him strong vs tanks.
What do both of those champion types have in common? They can’t poke back in lane. Zyra – a champion that normally has incredible ranged damage - can’t poke back because Corki’s initial burst will leave her too low to respond, while tanks have no reliable way to do ranged damage. As a result, Corki was able to abuse their shortcomings.
Crashing and Burning
Corki was plunged into a whole new meta in Season 4, where his talents couldn’t shine.
AD Mids faded into obscurity over time, and poke-heavy mids like Ziggs and Nidalee dominated for most of the season, causing Corki’s poke to be outshined.
Supports slowly shifted over to AP mages, especially Karma and Morgana, both of whom could shield against his damage and mitigate his burst. This gave him less all-in potential, and significantly hampered his ability to poke.
Finally, he was made a mechanically more difficult champion. Corki has always been a relatively easy AD Carry to optimize mechanically, because his main poke ability in lane had very little dodge counterplay, and his missile barrage was spammable enough to forgive mechanical error. Corki’s rework changed Phosphorous Bombs to be a skillshot, which made him less of a comfort pick, less of a lane bully, and less of a consistent pick, despite the addition of an AD ratio to the ability.
As noted in The State of AD Carries, as long as games revolve around team fights and towers, teams will need an AD carry. As an AD carry, Corki threatens towers in two ways.
First, he offers the potential to poke a defending team off of a tower. Interestingly enough, the Corki picks in 2014 were all towards the end of the season, well after Gragas and Ziggs had started to lose popularity, leaving teams with less long-range AP damage.
Second, he offers good burst on towers with Trinity Force. Unfortunately for him, however, current popular pick Lucian offers even better damage with Trinity Force, due to his passive, Lightslinger. This makes Corki an inherently weaker pick than Lucian for tower-poking.
It’s not that Corki is a bad pick, but that in the areas the meta emphasizes, he is outclassed by other champions, and that his own strengths are relatively niche in the current meta.
However, if Twitch and Lucian start seeing more bans in the LCS, it may become time for Corki to come back into the limelight. Teams with a Trinity Force-building, sieging, AP-scaling AD carry hole to fill will want to take a look at other choices for the role. Ezreal comes to mind, as does, well, Corki. Until then, however, the Daring Bombardier sits on the sidelines.
Mattias "Gentleman Gustaf" Lehman is a League of Legends math-crafter turned esports journalist who spends his spare time staring at mountains of League of Legends data. Follow him @GentlemanGustaf on Twitter.
does not rush Triforce but BT instead, in fact Corki is more of mage in the AD position now.
and 
. The siege meta has really gone for quite some time, the reason people still pick 
now is that he is the few adc carries which are relevant at all in the first 15-20 minutes of the game and still has a late game which is decent enough to kill tanks, whom the others like
so as our 
is the go-to boots for Corki, if his physical damage are so reliable.
