Why ADCs ARE and AREN'T in a bad spot.

Out of 18 potential ADCs, only 3 are doing horrible. 4 are below average, but not by much, and generally do fine. And then there's the handful of disgustingly overtuned ADCs.

ADCs themselves are not weak.

"BUT WHAT'S THE PROBLEM THEN WHY DO PEOPLE SAY THEY'RE BAD"

Well, to answer your question, dear anonymous speaker, there's generally 2 reasons.

1, they're clueless. or 2, they're saying that because ADCs are almost entirely lategame focused to achieve their ridiculously disgusting power levels.

I'll go more into 2, because going into 1 would be pointless.

Right now, first tower gold, early game focus meta, dragon control (and the resulting 4 man ganks in botlane), and ADCs generally having a weaker early because they scale with items instead of levels are things that are extremely relevant.

Sure, an ADC's lategame is monstrous. Whether it should or shouldn't be at the level it is currently is a different story.

No one in their right mind would ever let said enemy ADC reach that potential. 4-man ganks make first tower gold in botlane + gold leads extremely easy, while being incredibly tough pressure on the botlanes. In addition, dragons being important objectives means multiple enemy team members would be near botlane anyways, making the resulting 4-man gank even easier as simply a follow-up.

Next, early game power is where all the focus is at. This is also part of the reason why the only ADCs even relevant right now are the ones that have either a decent or a strong earlygame. (Which they really shouldn't, as an ADC, but that's a different story)

There's multiple problems with the way the whole system is set up. Some possible ideas would be removing first tower gold rewards and swapping the location of Herald-Baron and Dragon. The first would decrease the incentive for that massive botlane pressure rush as well as some of the early game power focus to try and get the first tower blood gold faster. The second would make it so the grouping would happen top/mid side rather than mid/botside. Herald is also useless in early for the most part due to how durable it is as well as the solo-laner buff being wasted on the duo lane. This could entail reworking Herald buff altogether, but for now, this should be a good start.

I think that would help alleviate a lot of the stress and problems botlane has to go through while simultaneously opening up relevant discussions to their balance and power levels and whether they do or don't need further tuning.

Thanks for reading!