That feeling when adc's are crowding out midlane...

Old Talon wasn't a free win. He was decent mid laner in I think early S6 and was nerfed for no reason.

Old ( the one that had a silence on his E ) was a free win against Mages in mid.

He was easily able to silence them, use auto + Q + W + auto before the silence wears off than use his R to finish them off, or land another free auto + Q from invisibility if he was behind in farm somehow and still win.

My arguments are about pickrates and winrates and practical thinking

Yet u provided none, not even a single practical scenario.

Just empty disagreements.

Sivir could work mid as a counterpick so a small set of champions

On the contrary, she counters most Mages mid and fail only against a very few ( AD Assassins ).

All Mages function through their skills, and within their skillsets there is always a "key" skill that, when negated, will take away most of their functionalty with it.

Block charm for example and shes left with only her W + R to do reliable damage and that will not be enough to kill u or even force u to recall back.

but the rest can be bursted or assassinated because they lack a support

Dude ... the whole point from picking ADCs in solo lanes is that they can abuse their top notch early game ( compared to Mages, Tanks and a lot of Fighters ... they only falter against other ADCs, AD Assassins and few Fighters ) to bully the shit out of u or even kill, starving u of both CS and XP and ultimately shutting u down for the rest of the game while they are still able to outscale u and ur other teammates cuz they are ADCs ( Crit + Attack speed ).

U will never get ahead of them as a Mage in a solo lane, and even if they started to have difficulty laning due to an early jungler babysitting that allowed u to get a little ahead or whatsoever, they can always rush the stupidly cheap and effective for a sure win.

And they can easily rush it before u can finish even when u are ahead on gold cuz it is so cheap, and they already have the sustain ( + Warlord ), tankyness ( The unique scaling HP/MR runes combo ) and Attack speed ( Attack sped quints ) to back it up.

Not to mention her q has a LOT of damage on it now

Ho wait, her Q is a dot, sad helmet take it also on count

Cass ult : 150 / 250 / 350 (+50%)

Ho sad 2-3 's E deal the same or even more dammage

Cass E : 52 - 120 (+10%) + 15 / 40 / 65 / 90 / 115 (+ 40%) (If poisoined target)

On top of all of this, an adc cannot itemize against it. Hexdrinker? that adc is fed as HELL if it can afford that. qss is a bit more affordable due to it building into something worthwile but still if you build qss before you have atleast 3 damage items you wont outdamage their adc, and that will probably lose you the game.

On top of all of this i haven't talked once about adc on the last post but about how APC mages struggles against Helm, that mean you didn't even understand what i'm saying and still trying to shitpost but, i'll try to talk a bit with you, cost 1.3K i think it's easily affordable in midgame and is depending on what's against you. And btw if an adc is "fed as HELL" (Ho look i used caps lock on hell so it must be true and amazing) I rather think that the adc will continue to buy his stuff made of multiplicative stats and rekt you even more because "he's fed" meaning he don't have to worry about a midlaner who's meant to be useful late when the ADC can just end the game before the mage begin to deal dammages.

The thing is that if you really need an hexdrinker it's probably because you're already behind then need to hold on for late, it's a concession that you wish it can be a ray of hope to stand your ground to be able later to carry

Cassiopeias damage is so absurdly high that she can build totg into rod of ages and still 1v1 people early on. That is rougly 3.2k gold in utility stats(between catalyst, totg, and the hp on a rylais). NO other champion in the game can spend that much on utility and do damage other than chogath.

Cassiopeias dammages are so absurdly high that cass is under 48% winrate in diamond+, with 5.1% playrate (https://www.leagueofgraphs.com/fr/champions/stats/cassiopeia/diamond) But maybe cass can build totg into rod of ages because she can't buy boots leaving one free slot and maybe cass mana cost are high meaning if she tries to rekt in 1v1 someone, she will be oom then in difficulties till she : get a blue (gated by a blue or mana cost) / back (wow, u just lost cs wp) / become faker for farming with cass without spells (can be worse if the enemy pushes everywave under tower 8D)

Enough ?