Why People Hate ADCs (Wall of Text Incoming)

So I was reading a thread the other day about buffing Thornmail and someone said "ADCs are so weak right now, don't buff Thornmail/nerf lifesteal. Why does everyone hate ADCs so much?" And that got me thinking. And the reason people hate ADCs...well, it's complicated. So I decided to spell it out entirely.

ADCs Have Reliable, Inconsistent Damage We have seen a lot of balance changes recently. Champions like losing their point and click abilities, and Riot stated when they changed Veigar "We want him to keep his ability to burst people down, so instead of nerfing his damage, we're nerfing the reliability of his ability".

And that's a code word that Riot uses, very rarely, but it's closely linked with everyone else's favorite code word: Counterplay. Riot puts so much emphasis on mechanical skill over strategic effort, wanting matchups to be fair even if someone counterpicked the other player, reducing the efficacy of snowballing and making new kits that are completely inconsistent in their damage ( ). There are entire champions who have to use skill to make their damage work ( ), but not ADCs.

ADCs get to point, and they get to click. Reliable damage, and that is their core thematic. You cannot counterplay ADCs, you can only counter build them. You can only counterpick them by choosing champions that can reach and CC them. If you went top lane and first picked Malphite, well, congratulations! You can mess up that Vayne once every ultimate, but otherwise you stay away or you get kited and there's nothing you can do to avoid her damage.

The other problem is that ADCs have inconsistent damage. Their damage is entirely based on pseudo RNG. This leads to some potential frustrations for both the team, and the ADC himself. The ADC has an Infinity Edge and a Zeal, and watches the enemy Rengar walking away after killing the support with half health left. The ADC can stay under tower where it's safe or take a risk and get a kill. Rengar has high burst, so the ADC can only get off three autos before he kills her, but if any one of those three autos is a crit, Rengar will die first. And with 30% crit chance, a 1 in 3 crit seems likely. So the ADC chases after Rengar, autos once twice, three times as Rengar turns and obliterates, and dies. And everyone else thinks the ADC was an idiot for going in, while only the ADC knows that they missed every crit because the rest of the team wasn't watching for crit animations.

The ADC role is Designed to Promote Toxicity You are playing a champion who can only build damage, who is naturally squishy, who has low movement speed in a world of three gap closers per champion, but who needs to get kills in order to get effective. So you pair up with a support. You play aggressive in lane, because ADC items are so expensive that farming is rarely going to get you enough power before the mid game. You rely on your support to both secure you kills, provide vision for you, and peel for you if someone turns on you. And all of that is because you feel that you cannot rush a Banshee's Veil.

I've always found this odd. ADCs are supposed to have terrible mid games and excellent late games, so you would think the ADC would be content to rush a defensive item in the early game to make sure they don't feed in the mid game while they wait for their late game power spike. So why don't they? Well, it comes down to risk vs reward. Kills give a lot more gold than farming does, and if a big team fight breaks out in the mid game, the Varus with the Banshee's Veil won't feed, but the Draven with the Bloodthirster may pick up three kills (or he may die instantly). The risk is really high, but the reward is just so damn high as well that everyone takes that risk. Everyone rushes Infinity Edge even though it doesn't give them any defensive stats like BT and its damage is inconsistent AND it's the most expensive item they could have built, solely because there is a possibility that doing so will speed up their build and let them get their next item maybe a full two minutes faster than if they just sat back and farmed.

And then, when that risk doesn't pan out, when you don't get enough peel or someone else takes the kill or you get picked out before a fight, you rage. Because you took this risk and you expect your team to back it up, and you feel like there is an understanding that you bring all this power to team fights but it is everyone else's job to make sure you can deliver that damage.

That is why ADC players rage at everything. No vision, no ganks, no peel, report my support, it's because the role is designed to be team-reliant in a game where individual skill is so highly valued.

The ADC Has all the Tools to Outplay You, But Your Tools to Outplay Them are Champion-Specific Man do I hate this. The mechanic of range and of kiting exist in every ADC kit, no matter who they are. That is the nature of range itself. You can auto, you can turn and move, you can auto some more. You can bait, you can get peeled, you can crit and lifesteal and poke and keep yourself up at all times, and based on your skill, you can easily win the fight.

Melee champions do not have this mechanic. They have enough innate armor and health to survive some poke and some kiting, but their ability to close that gap relies entirely on their itemization or their champion abilities.

Back in S3, Randuin's Omen was the king of anti-kiting, because it automatically reduced the movement speed of anyone attacking you. But that was removed, and that's not even the problem. The problem is that range is all a champion needs to kite you, but in order to resist that kite, you need to get into range somehow. With a champion specific gap closer like Jax's Leap Strike or Malphite's Unstoppable Force, or with an item like Righteous Glory or Dead Man's Plate.

But the ADC is supposed to be the item reliant role. The ADC is supposed to be the one with the terrible mid game and the fantastic late game. Why do the melee champions have to spend gold and an item slot to be able to beat kiting, when ADCs can kite from level 1 with no items?

The solution here is to change the mechanics of melee attacks themselves. Give all melee champions a small gap closer/range on enemy champions with their autos, similar to Udyr's Bear Form auto. It doesn't have to be much, but it will definitely give melee champions a way to stick to ranged targets more easily, because getting into that range should be the hard part, not sticking to the enemy once you've gotten there.

ADCs Buy Blue Trinkets Wow, wow, fuck the pros. Okay, blue trinkets only work if the rest of your team has fully upgraded trinkets, sweepers, and a Sightstone. In other words, it only works if you are in a 5 man team with clear communication. ADCs complain about vision like its not their job and then buy blue trinkets because they need to be able to see into a brush on demand because they don't have any skill shots and need to keep autoing. No, it doesn't work like that. If we're in solo queue, you are supposed to provide vision like everyone else. Get a yellow trinket, upgrade it at level 9, and place your own wards instead of bitching about no one else warding after you get caught out for the seventh time.