ADCs in soloq
I made this thread with the purpose of starting a discussion, since I can't see anyone talking about it for some reason, and it's been on my mind for a while now. Marksmen, with a few exceptions, have so little agency in soloq nowadays that you're safe skipping them, at least sometimes, and I feel like the only reason why people don't, is because there's so much history behind it, of people being used to play marksmen, people just loving the class so much that it either blinds them from seeing there's better, or they simply don't care about it. First reason why ADCs feel so bad to play now, compared to probably any other point in time before 8.11, is that they have much less damage. What made them strong was crit being so good before 8.11 that you could almost assassinate squishies after IE and 2x zeal items, so if like an enemy kha zix or leblanc made an error and didn't burst you in one second, you would definitely burst them back, now they have more room for error, and can kill you faster. The second reason, and probably the most important, is that tanks had much more presence compared to post 8.11, and ad carries shine in tank metas. If you combine both these things, you can easily tell that the class is just a shadow of her former self. A third reason, that can easily be overlooked, is that shield supports used to be stronger and way more picked than they are now, yes, even before the ardent buffs. I think ad carry mains competely forgot what their role used to be, again, before the bonkers ad carry enchanters meta. Think about this in a different way, let's take a highly picked marksman, kai'sa. How much does it take until you feel like you do any damage? Two items? Barely... more like 3 items when you have mamamune, rageblade and nashors, okay? Now tell me how you feel about that damage, compared to before, do you feel like that fearful DPS matchine you used to be? No, instead of going from being competely irrelevant to hypercarry status, you go from completely irrelevant to " hey guys, I'm kind of a champion now, I'm helping ". You don't even outscale a lot of solo laners, Jax with spear of sojin outscales you, Vladimir outscales you, Kennen outscales you, Ryze outscales you, and the list continues. We're far,far from a state of the game where the ad carry that scales better will often win lategame, when they should have the highest impact, since there are so, so many solo laners that match that scaling, or surpass it. I feel like my role has been heavily hit over the past year, with no real changes or plan going foward, Every time someone mentions it, he is crucified for it, and is told his role used to be completely broken and now it's balanced. I do agree that the role, or rather the lane itself, used to be bonkers during the ardent meta, and that's not what I aim for, far from it. I even agree that botlane is stronger now than it should be , but it's not because of marksmen's overall strength. I just want the role how it used to be before that. I want something to play for when I play a crit ad carry, I want a weak early game and low agency for a really strong lategame, not to be so hard team dependent, support dependent, so that even if I make it fine to 3-4 items, I'm still gonna get oneshot by that enemy Katarina with Gunblade/Deathcap or whatever, and continue to have low agency even in lategame because my support didn't happen to play Janna / Tahm Kench, or can't play it well. Point is that even if you get to the point of the game where you should be insanely strong, you're almost completely dependent on the support pick and team comp because there's so much damage in the game compared to before.
Anyway, I went on for too long, curious to see other people's opinions and thoughts on it.
