Can we actually make ADCs have a BAD early game?

I mean, not compared to other adcs.

But them as a class. They are the ONLY class that has a safe early game because of range and ease of farming, on top of the ability to actually duel a lot of other classes 1v1 because of their steroids and mobility tools.

If they are going to keep being able to absolutely dominate late game in the form of DPS, objective control, and tower destruction, they MUST have a proportionally weak early game. Good example is GP.

He's AD and scales with items just as hard or harder than ADCs. He has a weaker early game than just about 90% of the roster. He has poke, but he's melee, so he can either poke with Q or farm with Q. He has the TOOLS to play safe, but unless the enemy is making a lot of mistakes he's not going to straight up bully most matchups that aren't Nasus.

After his first expensive item (Triforce), he's a threat but he still has to play properly to be close to able to 1v1 anyone. ADCs? They have an entire class dedicated to protecting their ass while they shred your entire team because that ONE item they have is 1.5x a power spike as most other champions because of natural steroids.

Look, my point is that NO adc should be able to go top lane without losing the 1v1 early game. NO adc should be able to go mid lane without losing the early game because they ALL scale so hard. MAYBE you had an argument for champions like Cait, but since her buffs and minor rework she's just as good late game as she is early, and Varus has buffs on the pbe too.

If ADCs are going to continue to be good early game, nerf their late game so they can't just drain tank any bruiser's damage and melt towers with no effort. We've had six seasons where the game has LITERALLY revolved around ADCs and bot lane. It's time that changed.

EDIT BECAUSE PEOPLE AREN'T READING MY RESPONSES TO THE SAME Q'S

"ADC'S DO HAVE A WEAK EARLY GAME"

Okay, so ADC's are weak by comparison because they aren't able to kill mages or other squishies in 1-2 autos and tanks in 7. But I specifically mentioned in solo lanes. And NO, I haven't had my ass handed to me by an adc in a solo lane. I haven't played against it in months.

The reason I don't think ADCs should be able to 1v1 if they outscale massively is because they don't follow the paradigm you need them to in order for them to be balanced in this situation.

Power early game <-------- Mid Game Power ---------> Power Late Game

Champions with early power, like Renekton and Pantheon, fall off hard. They are almost unstoppable 1v1 with few exceptions (such as Jax into Renekton, but that just makes it a skill matchup instead) and are useless late game and mid game if they don't snowball.

Mid game champions either tilt towards late or early game based off item spikes. Champions like Irelia are in this category IMO because she spikes really hard with Triforce but unless she's able to dive carries late game she's useless.

Late game champions, or classes in my particular case, should be weak early game. It's okay to have safety tools to help with this (Nasus lifesteal, ranged forms of farming based on abilities) but ADCs have safety tools and steroids out the ass as an entire class.

Ryze was specifically reworked twice because he bullied top laners hard while outscaling them, often times to the point that he was strong at ALL points in the game (Fun fact but unrelated, Ryze is broke af now.) Most ADCs (most notably Vayne, Caitlyn, etc) can go into one or more solo lanes and bully the laner while being able to outscale them as well.

GRANTED in a lot of matchups, the mid game becomes a different story, and ADCs without good disengage tools will find themselves engaged on and beaten to death by bruisers who are mobile. But Immobile ones like Darius, Illaoi, etc have little to no possible recourse.

"Then why pair them with a support?"

{quoted}

It's because there's an extra player available, and the ADC is the most important role AND they scale extremely hard with gold.

So naturally, you pair the off player up with them on a champion that can do a lot with very little gold income to help ensure that they get farm. It's not that ADCs can't solo lane and win vs solo lane champions, because of their range and strong auto attack they are often extremely oppressive, so they basically require jungle attention. So if bot adc's didn't have a support they'd be getting ganks all day and it'd be 2v2 constantly because both junglers would never leave except to farm.

The entire game, the meta, the very MAP has been warped around the ADC role. How many times has individual jungle camps been nerfed because bot lane could take gromp and give their adc level 2 while the other adc was lvl 1? That had to be nerfed for all non jungle champions because the ADCs would snowball and take over the game because they're ADCs.

"What do you propose then?"

Okay, so if we don't want to completely gut early game for ADCs (which would, ironically, enforce the meta more by ensuring support never leaves bot), then we need to change the game's dependency on ADCs in order to take turrets or neutral objectives.

I think giving mages additional ways to damage the turrets via auto attacks is a good start. They do 40% of their AP already which is a good thing but it's still nowhere as safe as ADCs, but this could break hybrid champions. Instead, I'd rather see Baron have reduced magic resistance so you're less reliant on having an ADC in order to do baron in a timely manner.

This gives less requirements to having an adc at all. If you really want to reform the meta, let's give double relic shield a buff so that if you have two champions that proc relic shields you receive increased healing. This lets you have a melee support and a carry bot laner that's melee to be viable. Tired of yasuo? Make them live in bot lane instead of mid :D.