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ADC's are never "Weak."

Zerenza··8 votes·1,170 views

Let me explain.

What constitutes a champion or class being "Weak" in league of legends? Well, that's pretty simple, it's when you don't see that class or champion anymore. Remember when Fighter's and Diver's were OP in the top lane a couple months ago? Right before the Tank update? Guess who was weak, that's right Tanks were, the result of them being weak, they don't get played.

Now, when was the last time ADC's were just flat out not played? Like, i understand the "ADC's in 2k17" meme was a thing 8 months ago but then it VERY clearly isn't a meme anymore, and that's especially true now. ADC's are the only class in League of Legends that cannot be so weak they're never played, they are the ONLY class that does what their class does. Sure, Ziggs can go bot lane, he hasn't been nerfed for it yet but does he completely replace ADC's? No, he can't, ADC's cannot be replaced, they are never "Weak" as a whole because every game has 1 ADC in it.

Let me reiterate that last part "Every game has 1 ADC", unlike other roles, such as Mid or Top, an ADC is an ADC. They aren't a Mage, Support, Tank, Assassin, Diver or FIghter, all classes that can be found in mid and top. An ADC is a Marksmen, plain and simple, when i say ADC, the first thing you think of is a Marksmen, marksmen cannot be weak because they literally are a role that every game needs! This is why buffing them as a whole is NEVER a good idea.

Imagine if all of a sudden every Tank got buffed all at once, the meta would be in shambles, games would become stale and the game state would be broken. How do i know this? BECAUSE IT HAPPENED! Lol like litterally 3 months ago, tank meta, everyone remember's. Riot's response was to buff Marksmen, the natural counter to Tank's, well here's the issue, Marksmen aren't just a "Class" they are a "Role" they are the "ADC". It's not as bad with just 1 class getting buffs but if we buff litterally everything that makes a lane the game goes out of control and this meta right now is COMPLETE proof of that. I don't want to see this happen again.

17 Comments

HeresyHorus3 votes

U know what is funny ? ...

Even "weak" ADCs can still dumpster other champs in solo lanes or jungle even without abusing Crit items and from the very early game.

Faker had his Orianna dumpstered by a mid Lucian again in SKT vs EDG ... SKT won only cuz of Twitch.

Also Mordekaiser bot failed miserably at worlds.

Best princess EU1 votes

{quoted}

Also Mordekaiser bot failed miserably at worlds.

they played it terribly

Botlane Mordekaiser mains usually play with thresh/blitz and build targon+go full mr pen

this dude played with karma, built rylai that is garbage, and started with doran shield while he also tp'ed 1v3 botlane and died for a second time

HeresyHorus1 votes

Botlane Mordekaiser mains usually play with thresh/blitz

I know that and i said it before ...

No Blitzcrank Thresh = fail Mordekaiser anywhere.

U still dont see the problem with Mordekaiser ?

Blitzcrank Thresh make any melee work botlane thanks to their kits ...

Blitzcrank Thresh + Darius Diana Fiora Jax Tryndamere Pantheon for example is 100 times better than Blitzcrank Thresh + Mordekaiser .

Best princess EU1 votes

i don't see the problems

there are supports made for ranged champions like janna, and supports made for melees like thresh and blitz

Mordekaiser can work with more than blitz and thresh, leona is an example except leona is garbage so i didn't list her since they played at world

and archie still played bad on his own, he made bad decisions like teleporting 1v3

it's not mordekaiser's fault

Zerenza1 votes

I personally think that Morde bot is bad at the LCS level, it's more of a Solo Q thing if you ask me. Blitz and Thresh are both very good picks in LCS or Solo Q but at this point if you pick either of those into any other match up (Such as an Ardent Support) your expecting to dumpster them early because if you don't they'll kind of outscale you in sustain. Mordekaiser is another story all on it's own, most melee champions have HUGE trouble against ranged champions, morde could destroy a ranged champ if he gets to them but without Blitz or Thresh(Leona as well) that's really hard to do and not very effective either.

Paroe1 votes

... No marksmen shouldnt counter tanks. Sustained damage should.

But tanks arent a problem, bruisers are. Champions who buy 1-2 AD items and then deadmans plate/SV/boots and STILL be relevant are problems. Not the dedicated tanks like leona, braum, and orrn.

Ahris1 votes

Adc's were always needed.

Need to define what weak means. Does a role that is always viable ever be considered weak? HMM.

Paroe1 votes

{quoted}

Adc's were always needed.

Need to define what weak means. Does a role that is always viable ever be considered weak? HMM.

The short answer is no. Also, the meta isnt whats strongest; the meta is what deals with ADCs the best.

If you look at EVERY meta youl always find that to be a constant. Just like every meta contains powerful marksmen.

Linna Excel1 votes

Just a nitpick: if you see an AD top, jungle, and mid you might see an AP champ bot instead of a ADC.

Paroe1 votes

[{quoted}](name=Linna Excel,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=Ph84bkvT,comment-id=0002,timestamp=2017-10-08T04:56:08.834+0000)

Just a nitpick: if you see an AD top, jungle, and mid you might see an AP champ bot instead of a ADC.

Yeah. Ziggs. Because he was a counterpick to specific team comps and his entire premise is push hard and take the tower as early as possible - a playstyle riot likes apparently.

Talinis1 votes

You need sustain damage, in a healthy game, sustain ADC and sustain APC would be interchangable. If you have an APC (vlad, swain etc) on bot then you could have AD fighter in mid or possibly two APC such as you see in pro play with the two ADC system. The problems with current league manifest to 3 major points:

  1. ADC is a very archaic design. Most of them take literally zero (absolute zero) skill to pump out their damage, whereas most champions have to hit their skill shots. Even worse, this damage is done at range, which brings us to two more points.

  2. Range Vs melee match ups are god awful. Range has such a powerful advantage and it doesn't get much better in sieges and TFs late game for the melees. So they survive the awful lane to be worse on average in sieges and team fights unless they are a tank. God awful design and which is why fighters kits are so overloaded it isn't funny. There needs to be more items specifically in the game to make range match ups easier on melee. Yasuo's windwall and xin's new ult are the tip of the iceberg. There are many ways to deal with burst and melee but few ways to deal with sustained ranged.

  3. Range creep leads us to mobility creep. When these melee champions have to deal with low skill (in terms of dealing damage, right click heroes) champions like vayne and tristana who have gap openers as well as knock backs AND are range, almost every champion has to have some type of mobility to deal with them. What's even worse is the point and click hard CC from range. Vayne point and click knock back, fiddle's fear, tristana's knock back, malzahar's ult etc, no melee can do anything without mobility.

This also has the effect of making assassins very hard to balance since they need to instantly burst down their targets or lose since ADC will just instantly delete them after and heal to full. If adcs couldn't instantly click and delete their target by right clicking within 2 seconds would make the game much much much easier to balance.

Paroe2 votes

{quoted}

You need sustain damage, in a healthy game, sustain ADC and sustain APC would be interchangable. If you have an APC (vlad, swain etc) on bot then you could have AD fighter in mid or possibly two APC such as you see in pro play with the two ADC system. The problems with current league manifest to 3 major points:

  1. ADC is a very archaic design. Most of them take literally zero (absolute zero) skill to pump out their damage, whereas most champions have to hit their skill shots. Even worse, this damage is done at range, which brings us to two more points.

  2. Range Vs melee match ups are god awful. Range has such a powerful advantage and it doesn't get much better in sieges and TFs late game for the melees. So they survive the awful lane to be worse on average in sieges and team fights unless they are a tank. God awful design and which is why fighters kits are so overloaded it isn't funny. There needs to be more items specifically in the game to make range match ups easier on melee. Yasuo's windwall and xin's new ult are the tip of the iceberg. There are many ways to deal with burst and melee but few ways to deal with sustained ranged.

  3. Range creep leads us to mobility creep. When these melee champions have to deal with low skill (in terms of dealing damage, right click heroes) champions like vayne and tristana who have gap openers as well as knock backs AND are range, almost every champion has to have some type of mobility to deal with them.

This also has the effect of making assassins very hard to balance since they need to instantly burst down their targets or lose since ADC will just instantly delete them after and heal to full. If adcs couldn't instantly click and delete their target by right clicking within 2 seconds would make the game much much much easier to balance.

And we can sum up the crux of the issues you described in one word... Crit. Theres no place for double multipliers as a core stat in the game right now and it makes ADCs extremely powerful with very little counterplay due to how cheap their items are. Even if a top or mid laner were to snowball, a marksmen could still catch up with ease (unless theyre hunted relentlessly).

I posted an idea awhile ago about removing crit and simply adding AD and attack speed to make up for it. The way marksmen are now they dont need it, they just need slightly more AD and attack speed. basically everything got 5-10% more attack speed and had their combine costs changed to relfect similar items (or in the case of essence reaver, it got a 100g price increase).

@thread Crit doesnt need to be removed entirely, just as a core mechanic. Tryndamere, shaco, jhin, rengar, everyone with non-external crit is balanced >WITHOUT crit on items.

Because of power creep, marksmen dont need crit at all. We could give them 25AD on every zeal item, make essence reaver actual mana leech with 20% CDR, and make infinity edge a 20% bonus AD increase. Likely with this kind of a change attack speed on zeal items would increase by 5~10% but otherwise they would be as they are sans crit.

1400g item 3086 25AD, 12% attack speed= item 1037 item 1042 (1175)+225g (1400g)

2900g item 3085 25AD, 50% attack speed, 7% movespeed = item 3086 (1400g) item 1042 item 1042 (600g) + 800g

2900g item 3087 25AD, 45% attack speed, 5% movespeed = item 3086 (1400g)item 2015 (800g) +700g

2900g item 3046 25AD, 55% attack speed, 5% movespeed = item 3086 (1400g) item 1042 item 1042 (600g) + 800g

2900g item 3094 25AD, 40% attack speed, 5% movespeed = item 3086 (1400g)item 2015 (800g) +700g

3300g item 3031 100AD. Unique passive: Increases bonus AD by 20% = item 1037 (875) item 1038 (1300) +1125g

3500g item 3508 85AD, 20% cooldown reduction, 10% mana leech = item 1038 (1300) item 3133 (1100) item 1053 (900)+200g

ajerkandsquirt1 votes

If the marksman role is so broken and overpowered how come you are bronze and not up in diamond or challenger? Why don't you just play marksman if the role is so overpowered. I'm also not sure how you are going to try and say "adc is the natural counter to tanks" when it's in fact the opposite. Tanks have items that can completely fuck over marksmen. Frozen heart, frozen mallet, thornmail, randuins omen, and I'm sure there are some others I'm missing here. How can marksmen be the complete counter to tanks when almost every single tank can solo kill marksmen in most cases. Tanks have about 5 or 6 items that counter adc champions. Marksmen have pretty much only have 2 or 3 items to counter tanks and not every adc builds guinsoos or bork or black cleaver. For most adc champions the only thing they can do to counter tanks is a last whisper while tanks have a whole arsenal of items to just completely buttfuck an adc.

ajerkandsquirt1 votes

{quoted}

If the marksman role is so broken and overpowered how come you are bronze and not up in diamond or challenger? Why don't you just play marksman if the role is so overpowered. I'm also not sure how you are going to try and say "adc is the natural counter to tanks" when it's in fact the opposite. Tanks have items that can completely fuck over marksmen. Frozen heart, frozen mallet, thornmail, randuins omen, and I'm sure there are some others I'm missing here. How can marksmen be the complete counter to tanks when almost every single tank can solo kill marksmen in most cases. Tanks have about 5 or 6 items that counter adc champions. Marksmen have pretty much only have 2 or 3 items to counter tanks and not every adc builds guinsoos or bork or black cleaver. For most adc champions the only thing they can do to counter tanks is a last whisper while tanks have a whole arsenal of items to just completely buttfuck an adc.

And if we REALLY wanna go even further into it let's talk about mages against marksmen. Lots of mages have long range cc and high burst and in some cases even true damage. Now I'm not here to complain about mages because personally I think they are in a fine spot as it is but if you want to talk about marksmen being super strong and never "weak" then you are being completely wrong here. Adc champions were in a pretty abysmal spot a while back before Syndra got hit with a hard nerf. Syndra has a long range aoe stun an aoe true damage ability and an aoe chunk ability and then there was her ultimate which would just completely nuke you if you got near her. Now that her w and ultimate got nerfed a bit she's in more of a balanced spot. However that was a HUGE point in marksmen being weak. There's also champions like cho gath or garen who have true damage ults. There's ahri who has a true damage q. There's almost pretty much any assassin in the game. There's lethality Jayce there's lethality in general. There's duskblade talon and duskblade kha zix and duskblade zed. Not to mention you can't qss zed ultimate anymore so that makes an adc even weaker than before. Another major impact that marksmen have is the fact that they generally have decent lifesteal to stay in the fight longer. However there is literally an item that just cuts all healing in half and it only costs 800 gold. Morellonomicon exists and that cuts your healing in half for 8 seconds every time you get hit by one of their spells. 8 seconds of grevious wounds is pretty huge for only 1 spell. Then there's also thornmail that applies grevious wounds AND an attack speed slow every time you auto attack them. Not to mention it can also be pretty hard to stay in the very back behind all your tanks because righteous glory exists. Have you ever tried to escape a ghost singed who has his new passive plus rightous glory and just runs RIGHT through the front line and flips you all the way back while doing damage with poison? Have you ever known the fear of a rightous glory cho gath with 8k hp because of gargoyle stoneplate just running at you through the front line doing 1.3k true damage with no way for you to escape it? Or how about Jarvans flag and drag through the entire team just to ult you and lock you down to where you can't kite or run away or anything. But please by all means tell me how the adc role is strong and "never weak".

Zerenza1 votes

First, i don't play ADC. I don't like to, it's boring, i could just as easily play Support Janna and get to atleast gold. But i play this game to have "Fun" say it with me now "Fuuuuun" it's what games are made for.

ADC's are the only champions in the game with Sustained High Damage, Burst Mage's, Assassins, Diver's, Juggernauts they can't fight a tank, they'll lose because they can't out duel someone that they deal no damage to.

The issue though is that, ADC's do a shit ton of damage, they don't even need life steal anymore to keep up because their auto attacks chunk tank's, even the ones that are building full armor with Thornmail, they still get chunked. It's just not how it used to be, and in all actuality most tanks don't build that many Armor items anymore, most of them are pretty damned bad nowadays with most tanks settling for Thornmail, Gargoyle's and Sunfire as their only 3 if they even need to get that many. The issue now though is that the ADC will shred through 42% of their armor, crit for almost 900 damage a second and heal for a pretty large chunk of that even with thornmail. Basically, a Tank has no way of dealing enough damage to an ADC to stop them if their full build, the ADC will simply drain tank them, which is why you CC them and why Assassins are better at taking out adc's. This is also why ADC's are more effective as "Tank Shredder's" you don't see "OP OP TANK SHREDDER SYNDRA WHOOAAAAA" because it doesn't exist, ADC's are the best at tank shredding, simple.

Paroe2 votes

{quoted}

First, i don't play ADC. I don't like to, it's boring, i could just as easily play Support Janna and get to atleast gold. But i play this game to have "Fun" say it with me now "Fuuuuun" it's what games are made for.

ADC's are the only champions in the game with Sustained High Damage, Burst Mage's, Assassins, Diver's, Juggernauts they can't fight a tank, they'll lose because they can't out duel someone that they deal no damage to.

The issue though is that, ADC's do a shit ton of damage, they don't even need life steal anymore to keep up because their auto attacks chunk tank's, even the ones that are building full armor with Thornmail, they still get chunked. It's just not how it used to be, and in all actuality most tanks don't build that many Armor items anymore, most of them are pretty damned bad nowadays with most tanks settling for Thornmail, Gargoyle's and Sunfire as their only 3 if they even need to get that many. The issue now though is that the ADC will shred through 42% of their armor, crit for almost 900 damage a second and heal for a pretty large chunk of that even with thornmail. Basically, a Tank has no way of dealing enough damage to an ADC to stop them if their full build, the ADC will simply drain tank them, which is why you CC them and why Assassins are better at taking out adc's. This is also why ADC's are more effective as "Tank Shredder's" you don't see "OP OP TANK SHREDDER SYNDRA WHOOAAAAA" because it doesn't exist, ADC's are the best at tank shredding, simple.

Its not exactly shredding.... Mages are cannons. They have high burst and cooldowns. ADCs are GATTLING cannons. They have slightly lower burst and no cooldowns.

Theres a difference between finesse and brute forcing something; ADCs are brute forcing things with their ridiculously high point and click damage.

IRyzeForNidalee1 votes

ADCs were only considered "weak" because of the gank-bot-and-take-tower-and-dragon meta. Bot lane would literally get 5 man dove 3+ times before 10 minutes was up which snowballed botlane to hell. Instead of doing something about tower first gold or about dragon, Riot made ADCs so strong they can be tower dove and shut down for the entire laning phase and still go on to 1 vs 5 the enemy team 5 minutes later, because balance!

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