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Here's why ADCs are "mandatory"

MrBuffington·4/2/2016, 11:17:47 PM·89 votes·5,785 views

[EDIT] I apologize for not responding to each individual comment below. I'm highlighting and addressing general trends I see in edits at the end of the main post.

I see this "argument" thrown around a lot, and most of the time it reads as "Riot has a bias towards Marksmen" with the assumption that if Riot simply guts all Marksmen characters or removes them from the game, the problem would be solved. It won't.

League is an objective based game, built around optimizing the tools at your disposal. I won't go into the whole explanation about resource allocation among team members, but essentially it comes down to this: objectives (towers, inhibs, dragon/baron/herald) have a lot of HP compared to champions. Moreover, towers/inhibs are primarily damaged through auto attacks (there are some spells that deal damage to structures, but it's typically minimal compared to auto attacks). Therefore, the fastest way to take down a tower/inhib is with a champion that deals a ton of damage through auto attacks. To optimize this, you're going to want to allocate as many of your resources as possible to maximizing your auto attack damage. This means building a lot of damage items, and fewer defensive items (or none). Because you have fewer defensive items, you're going to be really squishy, meaning having another advantage like range helps you not get destroyed when you go up to attack a tower.

This is why Marksmen have been in every single meta. This is how the game is innately structured. Riot could literally delete every single designated ADC in the game, and guess what? People are going to start playing TF/Kennen/any-ranged-champion-whose-auto-attack-doesn't-suck in the ADC role. If Riot deletes every single ranged champion in the game, players will just move to Tryndamere or whatever's left over that auto attacks a lot and takes towers quickly, but the game will still stall out since you won't have an opportunity to get significant damage on towers unless you force your enemy to back/kill them. At the core, there's nothing that makes an ADC unique besides the fact that they're ranged and they can auto attack (yes, there are some particular champs who have unique scaling, but this is a result of Riot accepting this basic reality of the game structure and working with it). This is why Riot even went through the Marksman update to try to differentiate the class. The vast majority of ADCs damage comes from items, something that any champion can buy, which is why you can play things like Fiddlesticks ADC; he satisfies both requirements (1. is ranged, 2. can auto attack).

One last point: there's the classic MMO trinity of Tank-Healer-DPS. League doesn't quite follow this formula, but the fact still remains that so long as there are things with HP, you need damage to take that HP. There's this pervasive misconception that auto attacks don't have any cost. They do: it's time. ADCs trade time for consistent damage. (EDIT: Just to clarify, I mean time in the animation and cooldown between auto attacks; time in the sense that they deal damage over time, as oppose to burst damage, with some exceptions; and time in the sense that it takes in-game time for the ADC to scale, which, consequently, reduces the "time" aspect in the first two costs).

Bottom line is: unless Riot fundamentally changes their game structure, the concept of an ADC isn't going anywhere, regardless of what happens to the individual champions.

EDIT: I see ~2 common themes in the comments, both of which are very important to understanding why ADCs are an ever-present part of the game, and both of which I (intentionally) did not address above. The first is the issue of resource allocation among team members, which I mention above, but chose not to address because it doesn't go directly to why ADCs are in the game at all, but mostly to why ADCs are in the duo lane. I won't go into it here, because there are plenty of comments below that explain it well, but I do agree it has a contributory effect on why ADCs are a core member of a team (ie. if someone has to take a hit in experience gains, ADC is a good choice because they're mostly item reliant, less level reliant).

The second theme is a ranged ADC's advantage in teamfighting, especially over melee ADCs (ie. Tryndamere, Yi) and many other champions. Again, very important contributory effect as to why ADCs are on virtually every team, but not absolutely vital. I chose to focus on ADCs ability to take objectives because you can win a game without teamfighting (it's rare, but possible), but can't win a game without killing the nexus (unless the other team surrenders or something, but that's not exactly a reliable way to win a game).

EDIT2: I see a lot of people commenting something along the lines of "champion X could fulfill the same DPS role if Riot balanced the game differently." Which goes hand-in-hand with my point above that if Riot deleted all designated ADCs, people would just move to the next best champion that fulfills the role. Like I said, there's nothing really unique about the concept of an ADC besides that they're ranged and they deal auto attack damage. The designated ADCs just happen to be the champions that are currently best suited for the role. It doesn't change the fact that the role is a core part of the game.

117 Comments

Critmaster Garen4/2/2016, 11:24:41 PM39 votes

its also, because there always has to be at least 1 duo lane in the game, and the most efficient duo lane comp that beats every other combination so far is a farming ranged adc + 0cs support.

there have been other combinations over the years that have been successful. only problem is, that riot always nuked them into the ground. even when double bruiser bot lanes were merely viable and not crowding out adc + support lanes. within 2 weeks they dropped the nerf hammer.

over the years, they just have cemented adc into bot lane.

when they now changed them to be able to solo lane and jungle, they didnt open up bot lane to other champion classes than adc. they basically just caused a lot of 2 adc teamcomps, and marksmen are crowding out other picks.

the way it should be is, that you can pick a jungle adc instead of a bot lane adc and run something else with the support in your duo lane. but riot has done nothing to make that happen, and always their best to prevent that.

their only attempt really was rework morde. but they didnt experiment with itemization that would allow supports to share xp with mages or bruisers, like theyre able to share gold with relic shield.

aperson14/3/2016, 12:45:37 AM24 votes

The problem is that Riot has stuffed ADC kits with tons of additional damage, utility and safety for "feel" reasons - it "feels" good to dash away from the Kha or Xin or whoever's on your ass. So the typical ADC is not only the best objective-taking class, but also has self-sufficient teamfighting and safe solo pushing. What's worse, counter-classes like assassins and divers have been designed around the ability to "fairly" kill a marksman like Vayne, Kalista or Lucian who have repeatable dashes. Which screws over other ADCs like Varus or Draven who lack as many defensive tools.

If you look at competitive, almost every marksman picked has some form of mobility that allows them to cover 500 units in less than a second. The only exception is Jhin, who uses his ult, traps and W to contribute massive catch potential and damage from over 1k units away, while getting massive movespeed for his closer range critical strikes. And even then, if you look at the C9 vs TSM game, he's still getting gapclosed on by a Zed who instakills him without even using a skillshot, just ult E and auto (ie: pure range checks).

It's a vicious cycle: ADC has a slow dash and a knockback, so give the next diver high MS and a gapcloser, so give the next ADC a repeatable quick dash, stealth, and a knockback, so give the next assassin 2 gapclosers, ranged waveclear, and massive targeted burst, etc. Mobility creep at its finest.

In the end, you can't bolt a self-sufficient kit onto a team-dependent role without making someone's champion feel like shit. Currently non-ADC's feel like shit because those kits are strong. Eventually the pendulum will swing the other way and ADC's will feel like shit again, and Riot will release another hypermobile ADC.

Ackelope4/3/2016, 6:05:15 AM13 votes

I agree with this post in many ways, but I don't think people are actually super upset over ADCs being mandatory in general. I think the reason people get upset is that the ranged ADCs we've come to know as the staple of bot lane are currently being used with pretty great success in most other roles, while anything other than a classic ranged ADC + support botlane is not really something that happens or is considered to be terribly good.

Another reason people tend to be upset is that the reason ADCs are so rampant in other lanes is because they're doing the jobs of people who would normally lane there, having what people consider to be too much versatility for a class that's supposedly to be a squishy consistent damage class.

People are annoyed because they want to be able to take anyone just about anywhere and not be criticised for not sticking to the meta coupled with ADCs being buffed to function in other lanes. (although i'd guess that when the other champions are buffed/ADCs are nerfed, ADCs will be put back in botlane where they were before...)

That's what I've always understood of it, anyway.

Woook3r4/2/2016, 11:25:06 PM11 votes

Auto attacks also cost safety. You are stationary for the duration, which is longer than the cast time for an ability. And the range is lower than most abilities in the game.

flibitydoo4/3/2016, 6:08:32 AM8 votes

except the adc you send botlane has to be ranged not only just for tower sieges, but also for teamfighting

A big part of it comes down to safety of the ADC (the squishy primary DPS champ). Having ranged gives a large degree of safety, more so than any other defensive tool in the game. If you are never in range of your enemy, they can't hit you and therefore you can never die.

let's say, you have a tryndamere adc botlane in place of your typical caitlyn adc And let's say you are the one playing the tryndamere, and you somehow go no kills, no deaths in laning phase, and have equal CS to the enemy Jhin (aka you have roughly the same gold/ items)

A teamfight happens! (one that is organised because you aren't in bronze and neither is your team or your enemies, meaning that their is a tanky frontline, there is an offensive backline, there are wards, and everyone understands their role/contributions)

If you are tryndamere, for you to deal damage (aka your job), you would need get in melee range by walking up to the first enemy (the frontline), and autoattack. This will put you in a position where the enemy frontline and backline can hit you. And they will hit you of course! You are the teams dps! You built only damage items, so therefore you are squishy and die fast and killing you removes one of the few damage threats on your team. "Focus the ADC" (whenever possible) has always been a strategy (if not a law) that teams follow. Now you could, theoretically, as Trynd, ignore the frontline, and try to dive past their frontline, but chances are very high that the enemy frontline and their backline supports will be peeling (most typically with slows, which are the most common cc effect in the game) and their carries will be kiting so, and at that point you're just one guy with a simple gapcloser working to beat an entire team of cc/peel to compete for positioning. Which just isn't going to happen. So there's the dilemma of hit their frontline, die immediately, or don't hit anyone at all (and splitpush, which is what most smart Melee ADC players will do), or simply get incredibly lucky and somehow flank/finagle your way into their backline (which, assuming all 10 players know what they are doing, is not going to happen).

On the other side, if you were the Jhin, you would have simply walked up to the closest enemy (which would be their frontline) and attack them at maximum attack range (creating a backline for your team, behind your team's frontline who probably and hopefully initiated the fight). There is no pressure to move forward as that would simply put you in a vulnerable position. The enemy team isn't going to hit you, they would need to get past the frontline first. Just simply stand safe and slowly kill their tanks while the enemy team slowly kills yours. Eventually you kill their frontline (hopefully before their team destroys your teams frontline), and then you advance onto the rest of their team (or run away and try to waveclear the enemy's push if you lost the teamfight).

Interestingly enough, a lot of the champion design is supposed to make melee based ADCs work. They've introduced champions like Thresh and Braum who work far better with melee champions than they do with ranged ones (hey look, a champion that can lantern me into melee range of an enemy! Wow a champion that can stop the enemy backline from attacking me using a wall to absorb shots directed at me!). And a lot of the melee adcs have some sort of defensive tool, some wall of wind to block projectiles, or some resetting untargetability/heal combined with %dmg reduction, or the ability to riposte everything, or the ability to spin your weapon above your head to ignore attacks and then aoe stun everything, or simply the ability to just not die. And interestingly enough, despite all of that, they still aren't worth replacing ranged adcs because even with those safety tools, they are still too easy to kill compared to someone who can simply never stand in harms way.

In Dota 2, carries are also a necessity, but because the itemization/abilities are much more impactful (blink dagger, BKB, and Manta Style to name a few impactful items), it allows melee based ADCs to function and legitimately pose teamfight threats just as much as ranged ones do. The existence of turn rate also helps in chases between melee and ranged, but the much greater impact of items and ability effects is what allows viability of both ranged and melee adcs. (and for those who don't play Dota 2, Blink dagger is an item that grants no stats, but let's the player "flash" around every 10 seconds if they haven't taken damage, and can be used to disjoint projectiles (including most targeted effects), effectively dodging them; BKB is black king bar which grants magic immunity making the target immune to most spell damage and crowd control effects, with certain exceptions; and Manta Style is a cool item that summons two illusions of yourself that do a portion of your autoattack damage and can absorb a portion of your health's worth of damage)

LankPants4/3/2016, 5:19:54 AM7 votes

It's been very rare for the meta not to centralise in some way around ADCs. Whenever a class like Assassins or Tanks becomes strong they're only doing so because of their advantage over ADCs. These classes don't really derive their strength from their own role, they gain it from the way they interact with ADCs.

There are also other options than ADC bot. There's no reason why you couldn't run something like a carry bot Lulu. It brings pretty good tower damage and Lulu+ a support lane favourably against meta lanes. You combine it with something like a Fiora top and a tanky jungler and it's theoretically completely viable. The thing is that there's never been a point where ADCs have been significantly weak enough as to where you'd want to replace them. They've always been a strong role.

Riot buffing ADCs so heavily at the start of the season was a mistake. Whether or not you want to call it bias I'll leave up to you but it was a mistake. ADCs have over the lifespan of League been the most powerful class. They are a constant, which means that they are not weak. They may not be the absolute top class at all times (although the fact that there's a legitimate argument for this says something) but they've never went through a period of being so weak that you really just shouldn't pick them like all the other classes have.

League is an objective based game, built around optimizing the tools at your disposal. I won't go into the whole explanation about resource allocation among team members, but essentially it comes down to this: objectives (towers, inhibs, dragon/baron/herald) have a lot of HP compared to champions. Moreover, towers/inhibs are primarily damaged through auto attacks (there are some spells that deal damage to structures, but it's typically minimal compared to auto attacks). Therefore, the fastest way to take down a tower/inhib is with a champion that deals a ton of damage through auto attacks. To optimize this, you're going to want to allocate as many as your resources as possible to maximizing your auto attack damage. This means building a lot of damage items, and fewer defensive items (or none). Because you have fewer defensive items, you're going to be really squishy, meaning having another advantage like range helps you not get destroyed when you go up to attack a tower.

There are plenty of champs who can and have filled the role of 'dedicated objective destroyer'. In times where people have called ADCs weak these champs have never rose to take their role. Ziggs and TF will destroy towers quicker than ADCs, Lichbane in and of itself could theoretically replace ADCs in terms of tower pushing. Cassiopeia and Karthus will melt objectives quicker than most ADCs. Azir does both. With the possible exception of Azir all of these champs have existed in times where ADCs were "weak".

If ADCs were weak why did no-one ever run something like Kartus bot and Ziggs mid? In theory it fills all the roles of an ADC. You get good sustained teamfight damage and can push for objectives with these champs so if they were more powerful than ADCs why did no-one ever do it? Why did only one pro team in the last two years play a game with no ADC and no Mord? Surely they must have at least tried things like this in scrims because it's their job to find what's powerful. So if ADCs were weak and holding their team back but mandatory because of their role why did no-one ever pick another champion that fills their role?

SSJ5 BlondeBunny4/2/2016, 11:23:27 PM5 votes

I mean Adc is literally Attack Damage Carry ....ramged isnt integral So yeah I agree

WoonStruck4/3/2016, 6:46:59 AM5 votes

Here's the issue. Melee ADCs are not viable relative to Marksmen. There are not relevant trade-offs for the advantage of range.

And currently, they do not have the trade-off of being as squishy as they should be. They are now self-reliant. They do not need their team, their team needs them. That's the opposite of how hard carries should work. They should be an extremely easy target that's the risk they're supposed to be taking.

Also, there is absolutely no reason melee ADCs should not be made to function in the environment of bot lane as well.

Best case, any champion is viable to get babied bot lane by a support to later fulfill their strategic purpose, while ADCs can function anywhere, with purposes as either duelists, early game bullies, or late game teamfighting carries (who need to be babied bot lane) who can all take objectives when the opportunity arises. But later when they hit their stride, they should have to rely on their team for safety so they can't solo push a lane to take a tower any time someone isn't there for 10 seconds. They should be extremely squishy unless built to the contrary.

Ranged ADCs don't all have to be gods of taking towers, teamfighting, and whatever else Riot wants them to be the best at. Currently, ranged ADCs could stand to lose a LOT of power and still be the best at taking towers, thus mandatory. They are better than most champions at many things atm, not just their main purpose which is taking objectives.

Sire Hippington4/3/2016, 9:13:32 AM5 votes

The problem is that marksmen on top of the objective controll are also the strongest doulaners, as their constant ranged aa harras will wear down any opponent and their only weakness are all ins and ganks in lane, which is where the support comes in, covering up their weaknesses. And as if a dominant lane and superior dps vs objectives wasn't enough, their dps vs champs is also unmatched later in ther game, thx to crit their upfront burst potenital can nearly rival mages. If seen corki or Lucian 100-0 a squishy in ~1sec often enough, or a lategame tris takeing 80% of a squishy with two AAs(wich needs less when a sec) from 700+range. On top of that they have insane sustain from lifesteal that is only matched by dedicated sustain champs like WW and Vlad.

If it were for raw tower takeing, many mages are quite good at that by now aswell, and there are some mages and most melee carries that match the objective dps. But why go with the risk of an melee carrie if a adc does the same from save range? Why run a mage that is good at takeing objective but neither has the strong early nor the sustain of adc? Why run a siege mage that can wear down towers if he doesn't have the damage vs other objectives or champs that an adc brings? Adc simply give up nothing at all for their objective controll, and that is why they are mandatory. The main problem imo is crit, they just scale so far beyond reasoning with all the multiplyers from items that come to 4+ items, they are the superior damage dealers in nearly every single way. it also creats that powercurve where they are strong in lane due to focus on ranged AAs, when rather horrible midgame if they fall behind the enemie frontline, and then become demigods of the rift at lategame.

And as a sidepoint, AAs cost very little time in league due to the fast animation and no turnrates.

Ignika D4/3/2016, 4:50:18 PM4 votes

undodgeable high point and click damage