Ranged autoers still oppressive to lane against. Featuring kalista being ridiculous.

Everyone already knows this and I'm expecting a lot of adc mains and people abusing ranged top laners to tell me "Durr it's a team game and that justifies having no 1v1 counterplay. Just passively farm for 15 minutes or 2v1 them." But this is still the longest lived and most ridiculous balance problem with this game aside from mobility creep and it flies in the face of every claim riot makes that they care about adding counterplay to their game. It deserves to be talked about and fixed instead of just accepted.

I linked a korean 1v1 tournament between pro players that's currently going on. There's some mid champions which got picked a lot like azir (who got nerfed for his laning phase and lategame being equal to these AD carries) but the thing that should really stick out is what an ADC fest it is. And not just some small set of lane oriented ADCs, either. Lategame hyperscaler vayne was picked, all the generic adcs like lucian and ez were picked, varus was picked.

A fact that should tell you most of what you need to know about kalista: This 2v2 focussed lategame hyperscaler with an ult that you need a partner to use, a passive damage proc a partner needs to activate, and a utility scouting skill that does nothing 1v1 was still one of the most picked champions despite the vast majority of opponents being ranged.

And for any of those people that always crawl out of the woodwork claiming range isn't actually an advantage and that rarely used fighters like wukong totally counter them in lane: guess how many times the best players in the world used wukong to beat the constant stream of adcs. (A note: there were some matches like lee sin vs lee sin duels and support duels but those were agreed to ahead of time. No korean pro actually thought they could beat caitlyn with a taric.)

Ranged harass is still ridiculous to play against with doran's shield not remotely compensating for the disadvantage, and ranged lifesteal is still blatantly broken. As a fighter player ranged mages are a huge pain to play against but they can be outplayed. Their harass is gated by mana and damage sticks to them if you do manage to gapclose. But adcs are just stupid. Their undodgeable harass is gated by nothing. The meta ones are at least as mobile as you so if you ever gapclose to them they instantly open the distance. Any damage you put on them is healed by their risk free autoing while your dash is on cooldown. Why exactly is the mandatory class of specialized lategame dpsers that teamfights are centered on also the best at 1v1 laning? I dunno, ask ghostcrawler.

There are a lot of possible solutions. Ungut doran's shield so it actually does something to slow down autoattack harass, which was its original purpose. Modify d-shield or the defensive masteries to reduce more damage from ranged autos which are much, much easier to get off in lane. If you want a more aggressive solution add itemization that helps melees play aggressive against squishy lane bullies and make late game ranged carries actually squishy early so they can't just dash away from any all in attempt and heal up off of ranged lifesteal while their opponent is zoned afterwards. Nerf creep damage on melee champions so they aren't punished for being required to go all in to respond to the free damage they take every time they cs. Riot, I don't care what you try first. Just try something instead of constantly paying lip service to counterplay and diversity and mentally adding "for every class except ADCs".