The ADC shortage in low MMR team builder lately...

When I say low MMR, I mean the 900-1000 area where most of my games usually are except for a few where a team wins easily because they end up with some high silvers and golds somehow.

I got into the habit of playing support in team builder so I could find a team in less than 2 seconds usually. But in the past few months it seems like ADCs have become harder to find than supports and quite often a team doesn't yet have an ADC by the time I get there. Sometimes they'll be looking for "bottom/any role" and get another support before they get an ADC. So, since I need to become more familiar with all the different roles before I really get into ranked play anyway, I thought I'd start playing ADC since that's apparently what's in demand now.

I'm starting to see why people don't like to at this level.

1. The whole concept of peeling doesn't exist. It just doesn't.

2. People have trouble comprehending the idea of getting the ADC fed. They react with abject horror when an enemy ADC gets fed, but that they could proactively try to make the same thing happen on their own team doesn't seem to occur to them. The rest of the team tends to have the attitude that, since you have a support, it's inconceivable that they might also want to play any role in making it happen. Basically: "Your job is to get fed, so go get fed!" Maybe your support will have a clearer grasp of the whole idea of getting the ADC fed, but I've discovered that's a pretty big maybe.

3. Supports do not know how to play support and do nothing but whine. I say this from the perspective of someone who's played support in probably 90% of my games over the past 4-5 months. They don't ward. They wander way out in front of you and push the lane when there are no wards up. They seem really uncomfortable with the role and don't know how to use their abilities or support items effectively. If things are going badly, they start complaining about the jungler or your build or your summoner spells (even if they're playing support and took ignite...) and making whatever excuses they can for their own inability to do anything except die. Many a brave support has taken their sightstone into a long and lonely battle against their own team's complete lack of any regard for map control, and it's rough, but it's even worse when it's just you the ADC and your upgraded stealth totem because not even your support seems to have any idea why anyone would ever want to ward in the first place.

4. Very little if any map awareness + everyone having decided they're the ones who have to carry usually means the team is unable to group and engage effectively. This makes life very rough for hard engage supports at this level too, but for ADCs it means you're rarely going to have a good chance to engage the enemy with auto attacks or abilities that work with auto attacks - which is basically your job and the whole reason why you're supposed to get fed so you can buy the items that will help you do this job. Often the best you can do is use whatever pokes abilities you can safely and maybe get off two or three shots before getting quickly focused down or having to flee when your team suddenly finds itself at a huge disadvantage due to poor positioning or coordination.

5. Teammates tend to think you have the easiest job (all you need to do is farm and auto-attack enemy champions, right?) so they are very hard on you if you fail to perform. An ADC who is a skilled and deadly hunter is a godsend to the team, yes, but if the enemy team is determined to put a lid on you by ganking frequently or sometimes sending their whole team to the bot lane, your teammates often have the attitude that it's your problem not theirs (until they start suffering the effects of a fed enemy ADC, but then that's your fault once again...)

It'll be interesting to see how my experiences change as I keep moving gradually up in MMR (it's bad now, but it was even worse back in 2014 when most of my games were at 700-800). In terms of both ADC and support. I could go on quite a rant about playing support at this level too, but what struck me in particular was how quickly I think I found out why ADCs have become so rare.