Jinx vs Caitlyn

Note: Yes - ADCs are weak. That's not the point of the post though. The post is aimed at a discussion where traditional ADCs are pretty viable or EG Season 7.

Whenever Caitlyn is meta, Jinx is obsolete.

With Caitlyn being turned into a late-game hyper-carry with safer range, it's a competition of game identity between the two. Granted Jinx has more range late-game but is easily bullied by Caitlyn early on. In addition, her late-game was nerfed with her passive change so despite a better mid-game - her late is worse.

This is considering the two are both equally viable without both being in the game at the same time.

Now, Caitlyn as a champion is problematic when she's meta because when she is she is the #1 ADC. She can force enemies out of lane while keeping incredible safety, objective control, and teamfight advantage due to how hard it is to get to her. Losing 80% of your health as a squishy from a mile away late game isn't fun.

See, the reason why Jinx and Caitlyn have an identity issue is because Riot made Caitlyn a hypercarry. Despite Caitlyn's disadvantage of AoE damage, she is actually safer and much more mobile than Jinx. She also attacks faster despite her lower range. Her traps, unlike Jinx, are also much faster to activate and more oppressive. Caitlyn's greatest advantage against Jinx is also that she can farm safer while not requiring as much of a snowball to control the game pace.

Jinx actually lost a lot of her identity to Caitlyn in terms of gameplay when Riot nerfed her late-game with her passive and buffed Caitlyn's late-game while nerfing her early. It meant a much more survivable laning phase but still didn't mean you'd win it either.

The buff to Caitlyn swapped a lot of Jinx's job to her.

So why this post?

When you talk about loved champions like Jinx (She has a pretty popular playerbase) and balancing a once popular role like ADC, it's important to look at these small things. Just because one issue exists doesn't mean you should ignore past or future ones like this. This has been an issue since Season 7.

Caitlyn's very existence is pretty binary. She's either viable or she is not. If she cannot kick you out of lane or snowball through sieging, she's pretty unviable because those are her strong suits. Her only other option is to destroy squishies from a long distance in fights which takes a while to scale to while Jinx does it better with two-items in team-fights.

I believe Caitlyn should go back to being an early-game lane bully with a great mid-game and weak late-game like before.

If not, I think Jinx needs some changes on her W/E. The main identity of her kit is her passive(preferrably old), Q, and R.

In this way, you distinguish their nichés.