Boards›Gameplay

The Reason ADCs Are Required

Mandaari·3/15/2016, 2:57:06 AM·3 votes·994 views

Yeah, they're strong this season, but ADCs have always been a required component of an composition. Why? A few reasons:

Turrets: The only champions that can kill turrets quickly and safely are ADCs. Other champions might kill them faster in split pushes, but very few non-ADC champions can kill turrets in a siege-like scenario.
Ranged DPS: There are very few picks that deal consistent magic damage like ADCs can. Azir, Cassiopeia, Heimer, Karthus, Kayle, Orianna, Zyra - a lot of those are a stretch, others are badly gated by mana, and most need a lot of items.
A lot of supports are designed with ADCs in mind. Janna's E grants AD, Nami's E is on AA, Lulu's E is on AA, etc.

Put all of those problems together and I think that's why ADCs are so required.

Riot should release more ranged APCs with relatively reliable DPS and more supports that synergize with AP champions in lane.
The current damage formula for turrets is "base attack damage plus the higher of bonus attack damage or 50% of ability power." Late game damage per hit between a 600 AP APC and a 300 AD ADC will be close, but ADCs also benefit multiplicatively from AS. The above formula should compensate for AP champions' lack of attack speed.

30 Comments

Woook3r3/15/2016, 3:45:23 AM2 votes

Nashors tooth gives 20% cdr and 50% attack speed and 80 AP. Thats easy towers friend.

JRobin313/15/2016, 3:22:20 AM1 votes

ADCs aren't necessary as RIOT demonstrated last season when they morphed Mordekaiser into a Dragon enslaving, tower taking machine. Top lane split push has also been in the META for a long time and during sieges is the best time to split and take towers on the side. ADCs may be good at taking towers but that's really primarily because they build all damage.

Drakylon3/15/2016, 3:52:45 AM1 votes

Then there's this item. item 3060

A team of more than 2 AP champions is genuinely hopeless against just one of these, as the buffed minion will always kill at least a wave until the one AD champion on the team gets to it. If there's 2 or even 3 of these... Well, good luck.

JRobin313/15/2016, 4:13:13 AM1 votes

You know this is sort of like saying that supports are necessary to taking towers because if an adc goes up to the tower by himself the enemy team will eat him alive. So obviously, the only way to siege towers down is to have a support on your team. It's basically impossible to play the game otherwise. Thresh TahmKench Soraka Alistar <3

Ozag the Mighty3/15/2016, 4:31:10 AM1 votes

900 stack nasus can tank and kill the turret without help...

Irelia Bot3/15/2016, 4:39:18 AM1 votes

When they are good they are in 3 lanes.

When they are bad they are still mandatory.

I just wish Riot would make it so that supports became a roaming class instead of the baby sitter class making is so that the "weak early game" of marksmen which in reality is really not weak at all would be something you actually are able to exploit and punish.

They should be easy t oshut down early to mid game but the the shared exp boost makes it so that a support being there is no hinderance.

Perhaps another thing t odo is make some of the bonus AD be a precent of base AD, not all but some of it. BF Sword giving 25AD + 15% base AD as bonus damage. That would make levels matter more to marksmen.

It would require a rather drastic chance to some support items such as boostign exp by a fair ammount when near allies of a higher level.

But this is jsut theory of how to make marksmen care more for levels and make them more vulnerable early to mid game. Many agree somethign needs t obe done but none of us have the means to do so and many have lost hope so we leave for other things.

Riot had things fairly good in mid season 4 but for some reason that was not what they wanted so they started speeding things up. The game snowballs to hard now and people just don't seem to enjoy playing like they use to.

LordGeovanni3/15/2016, 4:44:18 AM1 votes

quickly and safely kill turrents adcs wont touch a turrent (as if they found out their boyfriend they were about to make love to for the first time had boils all over their back ) unless they have 2or more melee allies attacking the tower and no enemies can be around the tower either no matter that they got a front line soaking damage for them they running as soon as they see enemy tank support leona

ChargeItDownMid3/15/2016, 3:10:38 AM1 votes

[deleted]

Lushington3/15/2016, 7:25:45 AM1 votes

The REAL reason why ADC are required is because the season 1 pros made it that way.

The only meta back then(pre S1) was 2 AP, 2 AD, 1 tank.

There were no junglers. Then the pros saw all the wasted xp and gold in the jungle and had 1 person dedicated to getting it (very few champs could actually do this effectively).

They also realized how strong ADC were at towers and laneing. To further enhance the ADC power the support role was created to simply protect and give the ADC as much resources as possible.

Here we are 6 yrs later and not only has Riot not deviated from this in any way but they pretty much cemented the game around this style of play.