Does lacking dmg on an adc mean you played a bad game?

Flamedronex··3 votes·3,276 views

For all you adcs out there, we've all been there right? Where your team flames at you for doing no damage. But is that really your fault? Let me make this clear, I've been maining adc for a while now and I usually get mvp or 2nd as stated by the op.gg website. But there are some games (can't always be perfect) where you just don't play the best game and you end up doing the worst. But is that really your fault? I think it's safe to say that isn't always the case. Well first off, the adc is the least versatile role in the game. The only variation in your pick is between whether you want a strong early game, a strong late game, or a safe pick (aka Ezreal). But at the end of the day, even if you pick a strong early like Lucian, how the rest of your game goes is strongly dependent on how your support plays. Hence, the support is the one that carries the adc. But what happens if you have a bad support (someone who doesn't acknowledge the matchup, an autofill who doesn't realize how much game sense the support needs to have to be effective). We've all had that support who doesn't respect the lv 2 advantage and dies at lv 1. At that point you pretty much just lose the lane, since if your support is bad enough to die that early then I wouldn't get your hopes up about them being good for the rest of the laning phase. A bad laning phase is then met possibly by ganks from the enemy jungle or midlaner and soon enough you're 50 cs down with your tower gone before the 20 min mark. So what happens now? you got one completed item where your enemy adc has 2. This is where we see the ADC dilemma come into play. Obviously you want to farm, get that gold boys! But in low elo, your team will constantly want to fight cause they are so hungry for kills. So while you're farming they are fighting. And what does fighting lead to? more kills and experience for those involved. At this point, all you have is gold and exp from minions whereas your team and the ENEMY TEAM has gold and exp from minions and kills. Not only that but your team is raging at you for not joining in the teamfight. But you being an adc main know that your participation in these fights will do nothing because you are too far behind from having a bad laning phase and it is highly likely that you death count will increase. But lets say instead of staying bot and farming you did group with your team, what happens then? Most likely you'll be hovering back and forth in mid lane waiting for action to start and competing with your midlaner for cs. But your mid laner is going to be a higher level naturally and possibly more items, so they will kill the wave a lot faster than you can with your one item. So now instead of having a constant income from minions, you get at best 1 minion per wave, but hey at least you're there for a fight they may or may not happen right? It's even worse if your jungler thinks you're worthless so they also take your farm. So what does this all lead to? Well in low elo, you're useless as an adc until you get your items, but in essence your team becomes your worst ENEMY!!! Because all they will do is take all the farm and the kills, leaving you to gain gold passively, further extending your deficit. Then they will have the gull at the end of the game to say, "our ADC IS SO TRASH, HE LITERALLY DID NO DMG". Well guess what man, I did no damage because you all denied me any reliable income source, which meant it took forever for me to get the items i need and i'm under leveled because you guys keep insisting on fighting without me, giving over kills to the enemy adc (which in turn allows him to scale much much faster). Look all I'm saying is, don't expect the adc to carry you if you don't allow your adc to get to the point of being a carry. And if you as the jungler, mid, or top laner are the one with kills, you're the carry and i'll be glad to let you carry me until I get to that point where I can start carrying. But that's hard if you're running into a 1v5 because you saw a full health enemy adc and you really want to feel that euphoric rush of one-shooting him so you have some material later to get off on....

ADCS DON'T DO DAMAGE IF YOU DON'T GIVE THEM THE FARM AND THE KILLS!!!!! (at least one lane to farm plz)

If you are behind as an ADC, as long as you don't feed and allow the people who are doing good to carry and be patient for the time you reach your carry peak, then you played a good game. Even if you lose or you did the least damage on the team, if you play "with" your team and they do the same, then you definitely did not play a bad game. I'm also a support main, so I know that Supports are 80% of the time the reason for an adc to have a bad laning phase. Thanks for listening to my rant

7 Comments

ll3lackbeard2 votes

I moved to ADC for season 9. In general I find that if I don’t have a great early game and grab a few early kills I am never doing great damage. Games are too short for you to reach damage spikes without early snowballing.
I moved to ADC because I was sick of my bot lanes feeding. If they get behind it’s just free gold in garbage tier elo. You are squishy and normally a level or two behind. I like to think what I do is “manage” the role and not feed my face off in hope that my team will somehow win the coin flip later. Would you rather have a bot lane that goes even or one that gives up 10 kills at the 10min mark?

Flamedronex1 votes

{quoted}

I moved to ADC for season 9. In general I find that if I don’t have a great early game and grab a few early kills I am never doing great damage. Games are too short for you to reach damage spikes without early snowballing.
I moved to ADC because I was sick of my bot lanes feeding. If they get behind it’s just free gold in garbage tier elo. You are squishy and normally a level or two behind. I like to think what I do is “manage” the role and not feed my face off in hope that my team will somehow win the coin flip later. Would you rather have a bot lane that goes even or one that gives up 10 kills at the 10min mark?

Ya just had a game as ashe with a veigar support, his skill was decent but his mentality was bad. Since I didn't have a standard support, I went ghost blade first. We were against a singed jungle, yasuo adc, and quin top. Our team was overall stronger and we easily win 5v5, but veig kept split pushing. We won the game anyway off our hec jungle, but the important fact i want to note is I got the MVP on op.gg. I had the least damage on the team, but I had the most kill participation because of how versatile ashe arrow is. I set up the plays, even though I'm not the one doing the damage. And ghost blade plus swifties prevented me from feeding the singed who ran straight at me. Sure I was delaying key dmg items, but I think its more important not to feed when you're behind. Basically I consider that a good game, because I allowed the hecarim to carry and not making things harder by feeding kills when I have a full AP veigar support (who by the way ks'd 5 kills from me, which woulda got me my items faster, but hey Veigar has an execute in his R so its not his fault is it?).

My point is, I like how you put it Il3lackbeard, that as an ADC playing from behind, it's all about "managing" the role!!! and acknowledging that this game you are not the carry (at least not until you get your late game power spikes) and you shouldn't run it down a side lane split pushing, resulting in you just getting caught out without vision and feeding, just like my veigar support did...

Armando Santos1 votes

Tbf opgg "MVP" is very misleading.

Lux Tizer1 votes

It definitely doesn't mean you've had a bad game, especially if you have to firstpick ADC! Even if you run something like Lucian (Ranged ult, mobile, attack speed steroid) And they lock something like Malph/Wuk/Annie you're pretty much incapable of teamfighting imo. There have been plenty of matches I've won just by being the squishy target and eating all of those ults for your team.

I'd say there's some validity to the feed-to-win strat

[slayer-pantheon-popcorn]

LetMeAfkPlss1 votes

it means you played sivir

Salty Mc Feed1 votes

If your damage to champions is low it means you either didn't attack champions a lot or your items where not good enough to deal damage if you attacked. So it depends on the situation. The stats don't tell you why you didn't attack or why your items where not good enough.

Sillae1 votes

An ADC should either have high damage on champs (assuming they're the duelist kind) or high damage on objectives (assuming they're the siege kind), cause otherwise, what was the point in building full damage?

Yeah sometimes you get screwed unfairly (nidalee support going 1/15/3), but it happens.

If it happens often, maybe it's not so unfair.

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