The Degradation of the ADC Role
So, everyone saw QT say something along those lines on Stream, and let me expand a little bit. ADC used to be able to solo carry the game to make up for the possibility of one person throwing the game for your old team, provided they had the right amount of skill. However, this is not the case. Riot has been continually trying to make League this new team-dependent game where 1 god can't carry his whole team on his back like the world's strongest camel.
How do they achieve this? By nerfing the main carry role, ADC. Repetitively. Nerfing people to the point of where you can honestly target ban the ADC role out and unless the enemy ADC has some pocket picket like a kind of decent Graves or something, they're basically fucked. The top-tier ADC list usually only ever contains 1 or 2 champions, and if we are really lucky, maybe a 3rd one. Why is it that there is so few viable ADCs at any point in time?
The meta shifts, obviously. However, almost every meta shift is like, "Yeah, let's slowly make ADCs have less power overall now (randuins reducing crit)". And that's just one example, but that's basically the methodology behind it. Kalista was pretty good when she came out because she was able to actually solo carry if played well. But what happened? The community absolutely freaked out and was like "OH MY GOD SO OP". I don't know if you guys recall, but does anyone else recall the power of season 3 Twitch, Tristana, and Lucian? Kalista's initial power was ALMOST comparable to that of those 3 champions, but nobody freaked out about those 3 champs being meta (except for maybe twitch with his freelo escape pre nerf). What does this mean?
While other roles seem to have a power creep where they are continually getting more and more insane, I would argue ADCs are getting a reverse power creep. They are doing nothing but getting weaker over time, and the attack speed rework was a glimmer of hope for the ADC role, but it was quickly shot down by several rounds of nerfs to ADCs. This means that ADC honestly probably shouldn't / probably won't be the Attack Damage Carry very soon. If anything, they are become Attack Damage Off Carries. Just take a second to think of the last time an ADC actually carried their team solo. They were insanely fed, right? Being insanely fed shouldn't be prerequisite for being able to carry from a role that is meant to carry. This "get fed or lose" play style punishes match ups that are fairly evenly-skilled so much, because a lot of time if someone is about as good as you, you won't leave lane 8/0. This means that ADC often experience extreme cases of "feed or famine" it is not just feed or famine, it is super feed or a famine that would make Ethiopia look plentiful.
It used to be an ADC could carry with skill and maybe a small/decent gold lead via kills and pressure. Now solo carry is basically narrowed down to you have to be so fed you can mindlessly rightclick and kill their whole team. This means that being a good ADC doesn't even guarantee you will win anymore.
A good ADC prevents your team from losing. They no longer win the game for you. A bad ADC all but guarantees that you will lose. Scratch that, not even a bad ADC makes you win, a good ADC can make a few mistakes and that makes your team lose now. ADCs used to be a force to be reckoned with, now a tank Sion can just smile smugly as he slowly beats your ADC down because he has so much goddamned health and damage that it doesn't matter if your ADC is kind of fed.
I have played ADC through so many metas and seasons, and I have seen the degradation of the ADC role that has been going on for so long and it honestly hurts. Is Riot to blame? Maybe. Who else is to blame? Easily the community. It seems that the whole "my team is holding me back" excuse is basically a meme, but saying "omg I lost because x adc is super OP" will start huge riots in the streets until Riot nerfs said ADC. I honestly don't have any way that Riot could fix this, because it would require like 2 seasons of back pedaling or a rework of the ADC role as a whole. Just thought I would expand on what QT was saying.
TL;DR: ADC has become AD support, every paragraph has a unique point, can't really summari
