Phreak: "Typical ADCs are not required; remember when Jhin was the best champion at a time?"

During his patch 8.9 rundown, in regards to the upcoming ones as well, Phreak mentioned at some stage that it seems like ADCs will indeed not be needed. In fact, he mentioned that there have been compositions where an ADC wasn't picked and teams were successful. He referred to the meta were Jhin was the most competitive ADC and one of the most successful, and described him as more of a mage-caster than an ADC, so this point was that a traditional ADC, like Cait or Trist are not required to find success.

To which point, I'm calling bullshit. Jhin is very close to an ADC. Not the super high attack speed ones, but he is an ADC. His early game consists of him getting his strong AAs off, especially the 4th one. His mid-game can represent something of a mage, to be fair, as he relies more on his abilities (W cc, ulti etc), but late game, he becomes an ADC again. Insanely strong AAs with an OK attack speed to be consistent. He has very high consistent DPS, an insane AD steroid as well. Therefore, no, there was never a time in modern League of Legends, where team comps without an ADC were successful. People tried it with Ziggs, it was played during some stage early in season 7, but people quickly realized that it was trash and only worked inside soloQ.

Like it or not, an ADC will always be required , even with the changes in 8.10 and 8.11. Their late game damage output cannot be matched by any other class in the game, which works as sort of insurance. If one team has one ADC and the other does not, then the best way to secure a victory is just drag the game to late and win by default.

I'm not saying that non-ADC comps can't win, I'm just saying that over time, they won't be successful. Cheese comps can always happen, but they rely so much on execution. If, for example, the Ziggs bot didn't execute the strategy well (hard shove, take towers), then it was becoming less and less important, compared to an ADC. Slowly, but surely, people will adapt to it, they will learn ways to counterplay that strat, and it will then just fade away.

Unless there's a huge overhaul in terms of mages' damage late game to even be close to that of ADCs, then ADCs will always be useful. It's no wonder why Azir is one of the best mid laners for years now, and that's because of his safety early game and his ADC-esque damage late game.