Do ADC champions feel relatively the same to play to anyone else?

coreym11··1 votes·1,009 views

My favorite adc and champion to play is Jinx. I like how her gameplay revolves around getting her passive stacks up and annihilating the enemy in a team fight with each memeber that dies. Even though Jinx has her own specialty, she is still very similar to other adcs. For example, I only play Jinx, but when she gets banned I usually go to Tristana which is very similar in the sense that her bomb and getting kills resets her jump getting around quickly and ramping up through a team fight. They both have similar range and both of thier kits provide a way to boost their attack speed. If I can't play Jinx or Tristana i'll just play Ashe who also as a global ultimate and boosts her attack speed after being in a fight.

The only adc's that feel really unique to play imo are Twitch, KogMaw, and Ezreal. No other adc goes invisible and flanks to melt a team Twitch. KogMaw I feel like a turret with legs that needs to be protected and the ultimate feels very unique. Ezreal is almost like an ad mage that pokes and revolves around casting spells.

I'm sure the adc update a while back was supposed to make adcs feel more unique but in reality they still feel extremely similar. When I play adc I almost feel like there is no commitment to learning a champion in this role at all. Once I learn one, I pretty much know how to play all of them besides a select unique few.

If you look at lanes like mid and top, each champion in these lanes just because you know how to play one doesn't mean you know how to play the other. Yasuo is very different from Zed, Zed is different from Talon, and Talon and Katarina have very different fighting styles even though they have a relation with each other. Gangplank and Illaoi are very different. Nasus and Renekton play very differently besides the fact they have the same ultimate, the list goes on.

This isn't a complaint or anything, I honestly don't know what to consider this. I love adc and its my main role but I feel almost like there is no commitment to learning a champion of this role. You learned one, you learned many more. I even build that same items on the the adc's I play item 3031 item 3072 item 3006 item 3026 item 3036.

5 Comments

PandaNator431 votes

Yes, marksmen are one of the more homogenous classes. I'd also say tanks...

The marksmen update had a goal of adding more diversity to the group, with mixed results.

What would you change?

coreym111 votes

I'm not an expert on balance, but I know that adc's are supposed to do more damage over time and it can be hard to add more interactive and unique game play with this requirement. What i'd probably want to see if it could be implemented correctly is to add more interactive abilities and passives.

For example Caitlyn is supposed to be a sniper but she plays like shes a wielding a long range machine gun. Maybe they could make her shots slower but her attacks do more damage and can penetrate enemies.

PandaNator431 votes

We don't need to be experts to ideate :) and its more of a design question, worry about balance later.

I like that Cait idea.

gameplay wise ADCs fall into the DPS role, which works well with some champion themes like Jynx and trist, and less with champions like varus or cait.

Lucian had his cast animation time scale down with AS, that was more quality of life, but certainly makes him feel different.

Jhin plays pretty differently than other marksmen, but they had to literally repurpose the his AS and Crit stats. I think they'd have to do something similarly drastic with each marskman to really differentiate all of them.

Maybe for Cait, she has a fixed AS (like Jhin), but bonus AS is turned into bonus AA range. Maybe the bonus range only applies on her headshot (passive). And/Or her headshot passive stacks faster with increased AS (it already does in a way i guess...)

Zyniya1 votes

Xayah is the only ADC that feels different to me.

TakaDama1 votes

Out of the ADC marksmen, a lot of them do play and even build similarly. However, it is the subtleties in their kits that make them distinct.

For example, when I play ADC, I tend to play as either Jinx or Sivir. Both have Attack Speed and Movement Speed steroids, both have a long-range skillshot poke, and both have excellent farming tools (Fishbones for Jinx, Ricochet for Sivir).

However, Fishbones counts as an on-hit effect while Ricochet doesn't, making Runaan's Hurrican better on Jinx than Sivir. In turn this also makes Jinx better with things like Bloodthirster and Blade of the Ruined King for Lifesteal items as lifesteal is also an on-hit effect.

This doesn't mean Sivir is strictly worse than Jinx though; it just means she builds differently. Although Ricochet doesn't apply on-hit effects, it still deals physical damage, making Death's Dance more appealing on her. And since Death's Dance heals from all damage dealt now, this means Statik Shiv is actually better with Sivir than Runaan's Hurricane.

And that's before looking at major distinctions like Sivir's spellshield, Jinx's CC, how Boomerang Blade differs from Zap! as far as skillshots go, etc.

More from Gameplay

More by coreym11