Why I Feel Ranged Carries Are Healthiest As Late Game Carries

I have seen a lot on the boards people saying things like "Ranged ADCs need to lose their OP late game, instead they can have a good mid/early game!" Likely because they dislike their team being behind resulting in a melt fest. Of course they likely also ignore that that Jinx or Twitch cannot melt them if it wasn't for their support's peel/heals/shields, their tank's engage/peel, their fighter's damage soak and threat, their mages burst on key targets and AoE damage/utility, their assassin removing the enemy melter(or fed mage who could burst their melter). They like to focus on the person doing the damage or taking the kills, and completely ignore that it was Leona preventing them from touching that person.

But let's talk less about that, and more about why it is good for Ranged Carries to be late game champions, and why them being early/mid game champions is far-far more toxic.

As a ranged champion, you innately have an advantage in laning. You can farm more safely and poke often with impunity. Therefore Riot came up with this idea, either intentionally or by mistake, "Hey, what if ranged champions were just shit early game and therefore needed a support to protect them? This makes supports valid and prevents ranged champions from being toxic in laning!" Being strong early game as a ranged champion is very toxic, just ask any melee top laner about Quinn, Jayce or Gnar top, or any tank/fighter jungle player about Graves, Kindred before nerfs or Nid before she was nerfed. Or heck, ask any ADC player who isn't a Caitlyn main how they feel about early game ranged bullies, considering Cairlyn out ranges and bullies Sivir or early Kog just like Quinn does to top laners. This is why it is healthy that ADCs, such as Ashe, Jinx, Twitch, Sivir are weak early game. Low base stats, low base AD, completely reliant on getting their items to be strong, vulnerable to ganks without a support. They only need be strong early game comparative to their counterparts, other ADCs. And strong enough to survive ganks/support engages when played well. People asking for ADCs to trade late game scaling for early agency, are asking for more Quinn, Jayce and Graves style champions. And if that is really what you want, okey dokey have fun laning.

But if they are weak early game, when do they get to be strong? Mid to late game. Mid game ADCs are just nearing the power of other champions, combined with their range they become a semi-valuable asset to their team, and more able to protect themselves so the support doesn't have to babysit them as much. This is healthy in my eyes. The problem is mid game spiking ADCs, unlike late game ADCs they are always partially responsible for metas where games end earlier. ADCs who hit their peak in mid game basically have to make it their goal to invalidate the enemy ADC/Team while they are still strong and close out games before they themselves fall off. Ideally this would be okay, but in it's current design champions like Lucian, Ezreal or the current Lethality scaling ADCs end up extremely frustrating to fight, and therefore often are nerfed(or get items nerfed) out of viability. The reason? Simple, their entire design is closing out games before they lose relevance, like Lee Sin, Pantheon or old Shaco(I am not familiar with the new one) forcing early close outs is annoying to fight, and often leaves only stalling tactics for the late game team, meaning they may never get a chance to play when their champions are relevant. Early game champions are fine, but they should be about gaining an advantage early game so they can close out about even or slightly ahead in late game(personal opinion). The aim shouldn't be for them to win games by 20-25 minutes, the aim should be that they set themselves far enough ahead that by 35-40 minutes they still have enough of an advantage that they can close out(if they continue to play better than the enemies) before the enemies regain too much ground(again personal opinion).

Late game is when ADCs should thrive. Why? It prevents tanks from becoming overbearing but keeps them relevant as the people to engage on and peel for ADCs and other carries. Tanks are shit right now, but this is because of a mixture of bad laning/jungle clear and high pen builds that remove all their defenses. Standard DPS ADCs still take a few seconds late game to kill a fed or even tank.

https://vid.me/IOkl

It is pen builds that invalidate tanks entirely, such as full lethality, LW and BC builds(Or even removing 1-2 items from that build). As well as things like shred built into champions, your ADC doesn't even need high pen if somebody on your team shreds for them(But this might be okay as once again, it is team based).

But normal healthy ADC tank shredding, where it takes 6-9 seconds to solo-kill a fed tank(in a patchwork DPS fight), is good. It prevents tanks from becoming overbearing late game. A melee carry would have a harder time countering this as they have to be within the tanks CC and Damage aura range and closer to the tanks team to do so. So while tank busters like Shyvana, Darius, Trundle and Fiora do this, they don't do it reliably enough to be the primary threat to tanks, they instead get to be secondary tank busters, off tanks and tanky melee DPS.

It also works well in a team game, ADCs being weak early game prevents them from being overbearing in laning and removing one of your team mates from the game entirely like Jayce or Quinn do in top lane. But in return they get to be strong late game, their late game tradeoff is ADCs are extremely team based. They are fully a product of their team. While an ADC can improve their own play(practicing CSing, mechanics like orbwalking, etc), their victory or defeat will still be largely based on how they position and coordinate within their team. They are a team player. This is why low ELO ADC mains are known for getting pissy at their team, what they don't realize is it is just as much their fault as their teams, they did not coordinate and position well within the scenario presented to them. Not blaming all low ELO ADC mains here, I know sometimes supports really DO feed the enemy laner, I know sometimes Nautilus does ult the enemy Zac who is leaping away instead of the Zed jumping on your face. But your positioning and coordination is the skill cap you reach for, so don't blame them if you get killed in the unwarded enemy jungle.

(Incoming personal philosophy) Talking to Raiku(A fellow Shyvana main) I heard what I consider to be a clever philosophy on how champions can be additive or multiplicative. I liked this and would like the expand on it. Being late game carries and low utility ranged damage dealers means ADCs are a multiplier for your team. Some champions are additive, they add to your team. Some champions are multipliers, they multiply what your team already has. Traditional DPS ADCs are multipliers, they multiply the strengths and successes of your team. This is why they are such an essential pick whether they are shitty or godly, because as we know... anything that multiplies your existing power is always strong and when combined with their range poke in laning is why they haven't been replaced in bot lane even if in general they do badly in a particular meta or balance state(even if say Yasuo or Morde had a better late game carry potential, laning vs a support and ADC who have poke is hardly possible while still farming). But being multipliers means they bring little to the team baseline, they do bring some strengths, but not as much as an additive champion brings baseline. So if your team's baseline is bad, ADCs only offer a little, but if your team's baseline is huge, your ADC will multiply that 10x over. (End of personal philosophy)

Overall I think ADCs being a late game class is the healthiest model. It means they need their team to provide them with protection, buffs, shred, debuffs on enemies and of course they need their team to remove the threats on the other team, such as the enemy ADC or fed Syndra. It means they can be bad early game and thus not overbearing in lane and bad enough at solo laning that taking them into a solo lane requires skill and risk. Mid game they can become relevant due to their objective DPS, siege and what utilities their kite does provide and late game they can rely on their team to carry them to victory while they multiply their successes and act as a team cannon.

That said, I do like champions like Quinn, Graves and Jayce, even if I don't play them and hate facing them right now. So if we still want some ranged champions who are good early game and are self sufficient or don't act as primary hypercarries, then we need to rethink their entire design from scratch and how champions interact in laning.

This is all personal opinion. And is based on LoL design, some other games fix range vs melee in laning(or at least claim to). But those games are also drastically different than LoL. Smite is generally just extremely unbalanced and wacky, Dota has entirely different mechanics to how champions function and items/scaling works, HotS is a brawler with minimal value on laning other than some siege/anti-siege and EXP soak. So comparing LoL to them is meaningless. Perhaps with a new engine in 2050 or whenever Riot makes LoL 2 these issues won't even be an issue due to drastically different gameplay. But for the time being, I personally feel ADCs being late game carries who rely on their team is the healthiest spot for them.

How do you feel? What solutions can you offer?

Thank you for reading, with the best intentions - Mira Arya Enthe