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Question for Riot About ADCs in 2017, Is Part of the Problem ADCs Inability to Kill Tanks?

TheMeta88·1/25/2017, 10:36:59 PM·3 votes·1,238 views

Stay with me here. Mages are supposed to be area of effect nukers that can deal damage to a whole team. But most aren't sustained damage and thus, can struggle to kill tanks. Those that do sustained damage often don't do enough to tanks.

Who's supposed to deal a lot of sustained damage? ADCs.

However, in patch 5.22 Last Whisper went from having 35% TOTAL armor penetration to 30% BONUS armor penetration. Still, it became a component and upgraded into items that had 45% BONUS armor penetration.

However, as of January 25th, 2017 it is not uncommon to see champions like Poppy played a lot in game. Let's take a look at how ADCs can respond to them now vs what they had then.

Poppy base armor at level 18 - 88.5

Common Poppy Builds - 225 bonus armor

Starting armor 88.5 225 7% pene from masteries (88.5 x .93)82.305 (225 x .93)209.25 OLD Last Whisper 35% pene (82.305 x .65)53.49 (209.25 x .65)136

Effective Armor 189.49

Starting armor 88.5 225 7% pene from masteries (88.5 x .93)82.305 (225 x .93)209.25 LDR/MR 45% Bonus pen ( 209.25 x .55)115

Effective Armor 197.3925

So the new items are weaker. Oh and I can't help but feel like I'm forgetting something.

OH RIGHT! Poppy's W PASSIVE gives her 15% bonus armor and magic res which doubles below 40% maximum health.

AND there's a mastery that gives 5% increase resistances that I didn't factor in.

AND there's a mastery that gives 10% + (2 per level) resistances at the start of a fight.

AND courage of the colossus.

No wonder being ADC makes people wonder what bleach tastes like. How are they supposed to deal with unkillable tanks and off tanks?

And even if LDR/MR were buffed to penetrate 55% bonus armor this hypothetical Poppy would still have 176 armor without taking her passive and masteries into account.

I don't think anything is wrong with it being bonus penetration only. It makes sense and the rational for it was and is solid. Although why that isn't applied to Void staff I'm not sure.

It just seems like the cards are heavily stacked against ADCs.

They can still obliterate squishies though.

11 Comments

Sugar Momma1/25/2017, 11:45:20 PM3 votes

I think the greater problem is that just every champion has so much damage, including many champions going bot lane currently Malzahar Zyra Ziggs , that you're just obliterated before you can do anything.

That's why ADCs with CC are popular right now. Ashe Caitlyn Jhin Varus

Ben Sharpio1/25/2017, 11:20:07 PM2 votes

using poppy, a.k.a the most broken garbage in this game as your example? No thanks lol

MadManApocalypse1/25/2017, 11:47:03 PM1 votes

I don't even consider poppy a tank anymore, I just consider her a mundo esque fighter.

Ralanr1/25/2017, 11:52:31 PM1 votes

Did you do calculations with LDR and the damage from the rest of your items towards what's left of the armor?

A Doorknob1/26/2017, 12:01:46 AM1 votes

The issue isn't whether tanks are too tanky. If a tank is tanky then a tank is doing what a tank does. The issue is while "tanks" are tanky, they also dish out a lot of dmg and those considered "off-tanks" like Olaf, they dish out even more dmg while keeping the tankyness. This leads to problems for champions that's purpose is to deal out damage: APC and ADC and of course the ASN because they would no longer be required to dish out damage and making them invalid pick. So, to compensate, Riot boosts the dmg threshold even higher of these champions and allows APCs, ADCs and Asn to deal even MORE dmg. This is basically how Riot has been balancing the game. So now Tanks/off-tanks can 2-4 shot ppl, ADC's can 1-5 shot ppl (depends on crit), APCs burst ppl down in 1-4 skills with 40% CDR and Asn can 1-4 shot people.

The game isn't stacked against ADC, it's stacked against everybody without any form of mobility. The only reason ADC may have felt it was hit harder is because the ''Mobile ADC (in bottom lane, that were picked in S6)'' we're mainly spellcasters (lucian, ezreal, corki,) and the spell casters became less viable in season 7 except for Corki due to the new Armor pen mechanics. What's left in mobile Adcs is Vayne, Trist and Kallista but Kallista is barely viable, Vayne can only be picked by 1 side and as for Trist well, she's boring, and can take a long time to scale. The rest of the ADC's that don't have mobility attacks do have some form of either CC or buff, but these tend to have a high cooldowns (except Draven IF he catches his axes) and is usually activated to run and stay alive which makes it boring gameplay for them as their main source of damage is auto attacking which requires to move in close in the danger unlike the APC that can cast safely from a distance.

As it stands, LoL has hit a huge Power creep in Dmg and I doubt they're going to fix it unless its in plans with the Diver update. Although I doubt it is.

My opinion.