Hey guys, as an ADC player I find that when my team is losing I get a LOT of harsh and critical teammates flame me for nearly every decision I make. "This adc" "adc suks gg". This will usually happen whether my cs is good or bad, and no matter how many kills, assists, or towers I've helped take, even whether I won my lane or not. It makes me feel like a lot of people don't know this stuff, because they don't play ADC often or whatever, so I want to share what it's like from an ADC's perspective.
Imagine a scenario when your team is playing from behind. When I am ADC and my top or mid laner get behind, especially if the enemy are on really tanky champions, it can make life very rough for an ADC who will sometimes come out of lane phase 3 or 4 whole levels behind the enemy top/mid laners because of sharing experience. Even a fed ADC will have a really hard or even impossible time trying to survive and deal damage in a fight against enemies who are that much stronger than him.
This brings me to the first most common thing I get flamed for, which is leaving the team to go to a side lane. There are a few difference reasons I might do this, and no I don't ALWAYS do it, just when I think it will be more beneficial for us in the long run. In those situations where the enemies are that much stronger, the ADC will sometimes opt to go to another lane and get solo experience and gold, away from the fight where he knows he could get blown up instantly without the proper peel (Yes, even with good positioning). That allows the ADC to be guaranteed he is relevant as the game gets later, and eventually close that level gap which will allow the ADC to carry in the late game.
The ADC shoving a side lane (with proper vision and awareness) is also a good way to get the enemy team to stop shoving mid, because if they keep a siege going mid they will lose side lane turrets very fast so usually they send at least a couple people from mid to stop you, at which time the ADC can just recall and be gone before they get there and the ADC actually stopped a mid push without even being there. Another reason I might briefly step out to sidelane is when a large minion wave amasses and is going to reach our turret. It would not only be a shame to let all that farm and experience go to waste, but it could be a fatal mistake if you lose all of it to the turret, the lane shoves back toward the enemy, and now you are not only starved but your enemy can happily farm. Sometimes I also do it because we have an inhib down and I don't want super minions to end up building up at our nexus turrets.
Of course the counterargument to every one of these point I've made is "Well if you had been with the team we could have done X". To that, I have a couple more counterpoints: Why did you start a fight when you knew you were down in numbers? Why are you looking for a fight in the jungle while their lanes are shoving into our base? Is there even any objective you are fighting over or are you just recklessly chasing for kills? Would it even have made a shred of difference if I had joined said fight, if I am already behind in levels, gold, and items, or would I just have died with you and missed a chance to gain something somewhere else on the map? There are a lot of factors involved here and it's not always as simple as saying "gg adc sucks" because YOU went and started a fight that you didn't need to start to begin with, and then died now are looking for someone to blame. A lot of these problems rise from teammates not understanding concepts like map rotation and "ebb+flow" of the game, as well as knowing WHEN to engage and when not to. Remember, I'm talking about when we are playing from behind. Very different from playing while ahead.
Anyways, next thing I want to talk about a bit before I end my rant is when I'm actually IN a teamfight. Sometimes when I ADC I'll join teamfights that I know are unfavorable and I probably won't be able to help much in, but I do it anyway because if I don't at least try to help mitigate the damage my teams will just run in and feed. Also I don't want them to be able to complain about how I "wasn't there". In those situations, usually it goes just as I expected, my teammates run in and die while I am zoned off the fight and can only safely attack a fed tank. Then my teams go "OMG ADC NO DAMAGE" or "DON'T FOCUS THE TANK NOOB". So damned if you do, damned if you don't. I shouldn't even have to mention that an ADC sometimes can't help but focus the tank when the ADC is zoned off the rest of the fight but some people don't realize I guess. If a fight goes down like that, then it means that I shouldn't have joined the fight to begin with and should have tried to make headway elsewhere on the map while my team died. In this case, grouping with my team is a MISTAKE and would only set me and my team more behind.
So, needless to say an ADC has a lot of tough rotational decisions to make throughout the game and I'm not saying that I always make the right ones, I'm just saying that people really should try to understand the situation and why a person is doing a certain thing before they immediately jump to flaming and blaming. Similarly when I am mid and my enemy mid laner roams bot, I usually will try to follow because if I don't then my team will rage and say I need to follow my laner. But then if I follow and my bot laner dies anyway, then the'll be like "wtf are you doing you should have been shoving mid".
In the end it often comes down to this... A decision is only a bad decision if it doesn't go the way you planned. Cool off on the flaming your teammates, if you see obvious mistakes try to tell them what you think they could be doing better in a non-patronizing way instead of making them feel like shit for trying to contribute. An ADC's ultimate goal is to carry his team, work with him not against him and sometimes that means waiting an extra 20 seconds before engaging a teamfight to give your adc time to clear a wave and catch up to you.
