State of the Meta: Who's really carrying?

TL;DR I wish ADC role was more interesting and felt more impactful. The tank meta and resurgence of assassins means you have to basically rely on rest of team instead of your own skill to keep yourself alive.

I used to be an ADC main. Played a mean , even got a penta every now and then. My mechanics weren't that great, so high skill cap champs like were out of my reach. Nevertheless, I enjoyed playing ADC and actually feeling like I was doing the most damage on my team. After all, that's what ADC is all about, right? Giving up defense and utility in exchange for some crazy damage and turret pushing power.

Enter . Little did I know this change to the meta would ruin much of what I loved about playing ADC. Instead of feeling like I was carrying my team by laying down tons of damage as long as my supp/tanks were even half doing they're job, I felt like I barely contributed to team fights anymore. While I have adjusted my play style accordingly and do enjoy a good ADC game every now and again, I don't feel like a carry. I have two stories about games that happened recently to illustrate both sides of this new-meta coin, as I see it.

1: I recently played a game with a five-man premade. I was last pick ADC and, shockingly, the opposing team chose hardcore engage dive champs: with . I picked since I didn't want to die instantly as soon as the enemy team engaged. Fast-forward to the mid-game, teamfights start happening. I am obviously doing some damage, but really my main contribution to teamfights is pressing R and staying close to my teammates ( ) who run down and slaughter the team. Yes, I know that Sivir is a more utility-focused marksman and should expect to be in a more supportive role. But I'm not sure she is meant to have more assists and fewer kills than the rest of her team (I was 4/6/23. My Brand "supp" was 5/3/14). Often this happens simply because at my elo (high silver atm) in unranked games people don't worry about giving kills to the proper ppl, but in this case it was really just that I wasn't doing enough damage in teamfights to earn the kills. Eventually I got and was able to do some serious damage to their front line and did feel like I was kinda sorta contributing to teamfights, but by that time the game was basically already won.

2: I love Zac. He's so good in this meta. AoE dps based on max health (referring to his W) is amazing in the new tank-meta, and he brings three forms of CC (two knockups! that is quite rare). I build Zac straight tank (except for on occasion), but feel like I'm carrying with him. Small anecdote: i slingshotted at a nami and her adc, hit them with my full combo and they melted. to be fair, there was some follow-up, but it still seemed like I single handedly killed two champs without building much damage. I don't even build , but instead opt for preposterous clear speed with .

These two stories illustrate what I see as a problem with what it means to carry nowadays. I feel like the ADC role has become comparable to a AA/CS bot who supports the rest of the team, and there's very little room to be good besides just not being dumb enough to get caught out. Carrying isn't really about damage anymore with so many tanks out there.

What's the point of all this? I guess I have two goals. First, I really hope to find people to talk about the meta with me, because the changes that have been made within the past year are FASCINATING ( and everything about the jungle). I'm looking forward to the new core AP items (something tells me with is about to become HUGE). Second, I would like to propose some sort of change to the ADC role. I'm not really sure what it would look like, and maybe it's just a matter of experimenting with new build paths, but I think something needs to be done. Certain ADCs are now thriving (Hi, !) but many simply have to hope that the enemy team isn't tanky enough to simply walk up to them and kill them with base damage.

Phew that was a lot . And I probably missed some points that would make this all more convincing and coherent. I did my best, tho .

Thanks for reading. I'm out