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ADC 2k19 - Why does it feel bad to play an adc?

Venging Angel·8/8/2019, 9:32:41 PM·5 votes·1,920 views

Speaking as a support main here, I have noticed that most games have been decided by factors outside of the botlane itself - from the "bronze invades" to the crabster-fests to the inevitable "botlane fiesta" when a jungler or midlaner which has two levels up on the botlaners makes a visit. After having a bit of spare time and some number crunching using Riot's data from this patch, I found that it is being born out in the winrates of the adcs at about the 25 minute mark of the game. Why is this significant? This is because most games are ending before 30 minutes.

Here's the data I've been looking at pulled from op.gg, League of Graphs, Lolalytics and op.lol. The data is pulled from solo/duo queue for patch 9.15. The first percentage is the winrate by the 25 minute mark and the second percent in brackets is the overall winrate. The population given her is platinum and higher - however, I should note that curiously if one factors in the lower tiers, then the differences are negligible.

Winrates at the 25 minute mark for ADCs (Overall Winrate) Jinx: 54.76% (52.9%) Sivir: 53.7% (51.59%) Draven: 51.9% (50.45%) Ashe: 51.8% (50.9%) Xayah: 51.4% (51.1%) Jhin: 51.1% (51.4%) Miss Fortune: 51.1% (50.9%) Corki: 50.8% (50.9%) Caitlyn: 49.9% (49.7%) Kogmaw: 49.77% (51.6%) Tristana: 48.46% (50.0%) Lucian: 48.1% (48.1%) Twitch: 48.1% (51.9%) Varus: 47.7% (47.5%) Kai'sa 47.3% (49.3%) Ezreal: 46.8% (47.2%) Vayne: 46.8% (47.5%) Kallista: 42.2% (45.5%)

Reading into this, only two ADCs (Jinx and Sivir) are statistically in a position in solo/duo queue to be able to deal with the skirmishes that breaks out over scuttles, jungle invades and drake battles by the 20 minute mark. In the alternative, it also suggests that a lot of the game is being decided far away from botlane. (That's a lot of adcs which have winrates far from having a 'significant' impact - to use the statistical term.) Is there any wonder that adcs are not a happy lot?

(Incidentally, similar data bears out for the supports too - even the "roaming" supports. I'll post it if desired.)

19 Comments

Sirsir8/9/2019, 12:46:49 AM7 votes

ADC sucks because no matter how welly you do the 0/4 Zed wonders in 2 levels ahead and solo kills you.

The game is full of one-shots and the class is shoehorned into being squishy.

The thigh guy8/8/2019, 10:36:54 PM6 votes

Adc feels terrible to play because everything else does their job better.

Objective taking? Mages and bruisers do it better Team fights? Mages and bruisers do it better.

That’s all adcs used to be good at, and now they are mediocre at best at it.

Not to mention every other role has this hypermobility and some item to make them not die to a fart. Adcs don’t.

Mages have zhonya’s to stop some damage and have champions like ahri, akali, talon, zed and yasuo who are insanely mobile to deal with the damage.

Top has (insert blatantly overpowered bruiser item here) and champions like riven, renekton, Jax, aatrox who have no business being as mobile as they are.

What does adc have to stop burst? Phantom dancer? The strictly worse steraks?

What “insane mobility” does adc get? Ezreal and his 14 second cd blink?

OtterlyLost8/8/2019, 9:48:05 PM5 votes

Shhh... This is the boards. If ADCs are unhappy about their lot in the game, they're just whining.

That said, yes. ADC feels really bad to play, especially if you aren't playing one of the better ADCs like Jinx or Sivir. Playing someone like Tristana(who they've worked hard to push into a feast or famine play style and have succeeded) or Xayah or Varus feels really rough and frustrating.

Whisper878/8/2019, 10:02:38 PM4 votes

I like the data oriented approach here!

It's true, that the ADC position has once again become highly problematic in the scope of the LOL landscape. In the past, ADC's were essentially your primary source of damage in team fights. In skirmishes, which are much quicker, typically your fighters, assassins, and AP characters are going to have the most impact. The current meta is largely focused on gaining advantages during the lane phase, as well as picks/skirmishes. It's been a very damage heavy meta for a while, which is not necessarily a friendly environment for ADC's. Following the line of logic from these two points, you essentially are being bucketed in to having to play something which is meant to spike in the early-mid game (Ezreal or Lucian), or you need to play something that scales well, but has ways of providing strong utility or applying pressure from a long distance (Jinx, Sivir, Ashe, Kai). Everything else becomes highly situational or pocket picks.

This all stems from a "have your cake and eat it too" approach from Riot. They felt pressure from the community that they game focused too much on team fighting and macro (the ideal situation for an ADC), so they decided to do a number of things to make mechanics and micro more important, increasing the ability to turn lane advantage into win conditions, increasing snowball, encouraging fighting earlier, speeding up the game pace, etc. There are too many changes here to note them all, but a few examples are nerfs to tanks, nerfs to adc's, nerfs to enchanters, nerfs to vision, buffs to assassins, buffs to early drakes, scuttle changes, etc. But when all of these changes combined to put the game in a state where ADC are only played like 50% of the time...ADC mains complain, the game becomes hard to balance, so Riot dials back some of the changes.

So let's tie in this approach with the problematic logic. All ADC but a handful are designed to really hit their stride in group fights, and/or around the 3 item point. The vast majority of that class of champion is designed to do one thing, win team fights. But conversely, the rest of the game is changing to make team fighting a less impactful, or at least less prolific part of the game. The game is being pushed to a point where games are often decided before team fighting really begins, and it's becoming easier to avoid team fights all together. While siege comps are not nearly as prolific as they used to be, the split n pick play book has become about as strong as it's ever been I'd say. And there's the problem at it's core: There is a decent chance team fighting won't even come into play, but if it does and you don't have an ADC, ur screwed.

So there are two options from where I'm sitting to fix this issue:

Adjust the champion landscape so that it's similar to DOTA, wherein marksmen are absolutely a viable option for scaling carry, but certainly not anywhere near a requirement.
Instead of putting the game in a position where it's easy to develop an insurmountable lead before "team fight phase" or easy to circumnavigate team fighting all together...instead you put the game in a position where you know there is almost certainly going to be a few team fights, and your goal as a pick/poke/early-mid game comp is to develop such a strong lead that when team fighting does break out the compositional weaknesses don't matter.

Baby Ghoul8/15/2019, 3:21:47 AM3 votes

The one-shot meta.
Mobility creep.
The rise of mage supports as the only means to effectively defend against assassins.
Vertical jungling making camping a viable strategy that rewards junglers, even when they fail (this is a problem for top lane too).
Tower plating gold.
The fact that must-bans like Pyke exist and you can no longer ban counters.
Early game champions no longer fall off like they once did.

Then there's the age old problem of autofilled supports who don't assist ADCs at all or worse, end up getting too cocky and start to int. Bot lane in general just feels horrible.

The motto "better top wins" isn't usually too far off this season either. There's just too many overloaded champions up top that outclass most marksmen besides Ezreal and Kaisa. Being a melee champion isn't a disadvantage anymore for some champions.

Still, I don't think bot lane has anything on how horrible it is to be a tank right now. I've been one shot plenty as an enchanter main, and yeah it's stupid, but usually I'm not building tank items. I see so many tanks get absolutely shredded in no time they may as well be one shot. Imagine buying tank items and having that be completely useless.

Yets42408/8/2019, 10:00:28 PM2 votes

From your stats alone you have 8 ADCs with beyond 50% winrates at 25 minutes, yet claim only 2 have the tools necessary? How do you manage to truncate off literally three quarters of the relevant champions who also meet that same criteria when you have the data literally in front of you?

Also, do recall, ADCs are supposed to be late game hypercarries, not dominating mid game, and then also being late game hypercarries. If anything, the data here suggests Jinx in especial, but likely also Sivir, Draven and Ashe need nerfs, and Kalista could use some buffs for non-coordinated play.