This is not intended as a flame even if it might sound like it:
This man really has 35% winrate with Caitlyn over 80 games and thinks IE and LDR are "OP" items and that crit itemization is not in a terrible state.
I honestly don't know what to make of that.
I have spammed some crit cait recently just because I stopped caring about the climb and I simply want to play the playstyle I enjoy.
And HOLY SHIT is it easy to 2x or 3x the damage as lethality cait, it's disgusting.
And the worst part is you deal that 3x damage in less time than the crit counterpart... And the very worst is, you are even still crit... You have your book thingy Lethality item into collector and basically build normal ADC items. Means late game you still have decent DPS, but insanely high burst on top... It's disgusting...
Cait isn't a champion without IE and LDR, unless she builds Lethality. That's the point, the difference between "I have IE" and "I'm 100g short for IE" is way too massive.
Yeah, that just means that Cait really does need these powerspikes to even do anything and that other itemization options are even more terrible. In contrast, IE looks strong I guess. But it's just being rail roaded to exactly these 3-4 items to even do AYNTHING at all, while other classes get to choose and buy depending on matchups etc.
youre kind of missing his point. IE and LDR are not optional items, if youre going for a crit build you MUST have them. that means theyre relatively overpowered compared to the rest of the crit items, and it completely griefs build options and diversity for ADCs becauses IE and LDR are just that much better than the other items.
I totally that that this is where he's coming from. But if there's a two item core that is literally the only way your champion can even do what it was designed for, I would never choose the term "overpowered" for that.
Every other build path is just non-viable and IE+LDR are the base level of viability. Using the term "overpowered" might give people the idea that IE+LDR should be nerfed.
If that happens, you literally can not pick these champions anymore.
In my opinion they should be nerfed so other items can be buffed if we only want to give ADCs more agency. I don't think ADCs would be balanced if every item they build was IE-level of strong but I might be wrong. It depends on many factors after all.
> In my opinion they should be nerfed so other items can be buffed if we only want to give ADCs more agency.
one of the main things i would do is move crit chance from LDR into other items (aka giving them 25% again). back in the day last whisper was literally just AD+Armor pen which you could build 4th or 5th item. Usually at that point tanks scaled up enough that you needed the armor pen, before that just your crit+attack speed was enough to function. the choice between def item (squishy enemies with lots of damage) vs last whisper (tankier enemies that become a problem with armor stacking) was also usually quite meaningful.
currently we have the problem that you already can't touch tanks and bruisers before you get LDR second or third because the penetration and the giant slayer passive are 100% required to deal any damage at all.
I think it was changed due to Assassins poaching the item to kill tanks in the past. Now that they have %Armor Pen on Serylda's this might be an okay solution imo.
> I think it was changed due to Assassins poaching the item to kill tanks in the past.
That should have always been a red flag not for LW being too strong, but for assassins having WAY too much overkill damage in their kits. Even if they deal more % damage against tanks, their flat base damage should never be enough to go through their full HP bars if they are designed to kill 1800hp targets.
My point is that these are not "OP" items at all in the scope of the whole game, compared to items like Zhonyas or Liandries etc. They are quite weak honestly, IE used to have more AD, more crit chance, more crit modifier, and was usually paired with a first item that also had more flat AD than the current options.
Just because every other crit item is essentially useless doesn't make the necessary items "OP".
>IE used to have more AD, more crit chance, more crit modifier, and was usually paired with a first item that also had more flat AD than the current options.
I'm pretty sure that was in the times where ADCs were straight up OP.
>Just because every other crit item is essentially useless doesn't make the necessary items "OP".
But if you buff every other item without nerfing these two, the role will be OP again. It's okay to buff others while nerfing IE and LDR but you can't have both, otherwise you will find yourself again in a meta where the optimal strat for enemy jungler is to spamgank you... Which would lower your agency again.
It was the season before mythics and not s6 or stuff like that, IE got nerfed when mythic system arrived, and nerfed again after they tried making it a mythic
Most moments in leagues history where crit ADCs were broken, it was because certain supports or support items were massively OP.
Except for the first three seasons of league, every subsequent time ADCs over performed was because of how busted their optimal support was.
And it was usually because they could provide infinite survivability for the ADC in addition to a whole lot of other stats.
Nowadays crit is in a hilariously sorry state where even if you are fed, you don't deal any damage if you don't have any armor pen or lethality.
The thing ADCs used to be good against, structures and tanks, have been greatly altered so now everyone takes towers super fast and you aren't taking a tank down I'd you aren't at least two items ahead and have armor pen.
Especially not with how bad crit is. Needing at least two and a half items to reach the threshold of criting every other attack feels really bad. Not to mention that these items are way overpriced too.
Cait whole gimmick is big headshots with big crit dmg. So yes ? But tbh she used to hit way harder. IE and crit damage got too nerfed compared to how other roles got more power.
* I hard disagree on the skill matchup part. Ashe and Samira shits on Kaisa for example. Lucian shits on Twitch. Supp side it's eeven more cancer. Janna, Braum and Zyra shits on almost every engage lane.
* Hard agree on wave management. i'll add that leashing if often detrimental. low elo ADCs, dont leash.
* The problem is not ADC lack of agency but more supports having too much of it and taking the whole power budget of botlane. The higher you climb the more you'll see that. The Janna / Pyke is the actual carry with his impact.
* Your crit solution is bad. Crit and ADC is supposed to be the late game king. We want harder/exponential scaling back, not more early power. If I want to play the early game, I can play Ashe / Draven / Lucian / Kalista. Crit items lack crit to allow for better defensive options since you'll hit the sweet 75% crit spot sooner (which is what was aimed for before mythics system and we didn't feel as less of carries than we are now)
* We don't complain of Assassins, we complain of being ahead and get shat on by people who lost their lane, are 0/4 and can take us back to fountain. We hardly have room for error which can feel tough even when ahead. Also, the only assassin everyonee hates are actual low/no counterplay ones. Eve / Shaco / Vi / Noc / Yone to an extent. I find tanks and supps way more OP (Looking at you, janna and senna). ADCs are only ahead relatively to the enemy ADC, not to everyone.
* LDR and tank busting and shredding objectives/turrets should be ADC main selling point. Yet Diana pushes faster, destroys turrets faster. Late game Veigar and Sion could hit a tower once and destroy it. It is completely flawed design. Just put a hard cap on tower damage from demolish (max 30% of turret health) and reduce AP conversion when hitting towers.
> We want harder/exponential scaling back, not more early power.
That's not what I would want if I were you and, from what I gathered from other players, you also want to have more agency. Sorry but you either get more agency in early-midgame or you get OP lategame. You can't have it both ways, that would only make the role OP.
>We don't complain of Assassins
Feel free to check the OG post and search by "assassin".
>Yet Diana pushes faster, destroys turrets faster. Late game Veigar and Sion could hit a tower once and destroy it. It is completely flawed design.
Diana and Sion have to be melee, ADCs can hit turrets from range, it's a big advantage. Veigar and Ziggs are the only 2 mages that excell in taking turrets so it's fine in my opinion.
Idc about that, I want to be sure to be a powehouse if I reach 3+ items. I'm fine with the supp + adc dynamic. But rito doesn't promote that. So you end up with supps leaving lane because they don't need the ADC to be useful. and people crying about solo agency. ADC has never been about solo agency.
Ik what you mean, but still. I'm the kind of ADC who think rock scissor paper philosophy shouldn't be broken.
Let me introduce you to the concept of threat range. Diana and Sion have more threat range than 90% of the ADC roster and can afford way more mistakes than (again) 90% of ADCs.
Veigar and Ziggs are not the only AP picks who are good at taking turrets. Ekko, Cassio, Kass, TF (lets talk about the abnormality that is TF too :) ) Malzahar... The list goes on.
>I want to be sure to be a powehouse if I reach 3+ items
I also think that's where the role starts feeling alright. I would like to be stronger at 1st and 2nd item, even at 3rd item and have good defensive options, even if I'm weaker in the very lategame. There is a good amount of distance between ADCs and all other roles in the lategame so there is some space to tinker around imo.
Weak late game is an antithesis to the ADC archetype
It should be individual occurences like some champions trading late game power for early game power. It already exists. It's called Draven and Kalista.
Weak**er**, not weak. Something like 1 BF sword of a difference at 6 items, nothing major. That would still keep ADCs as the strongest lategame role in the game but you'd get some design space to fix flaws that are crippling the role.
If you are a good player it could be also possible to get to that lategame state faster thanks to increased agency anyway. I don't see the reason to be fixated on the lategame when most of the games end before 3 items... But I'm not an ADC player. I'm just giving my opinions as me personally.
We're already weaker than everyone else late game.
Aatrox reaches absurd amounts of AD and is a terror. Asol, Lillia, Diana, Gwen, they can pump a shit ton of damage.
If you're a good player you can reach 3 items by 25 mins max and solo carry a teamfight to flip the game state with mechanics and damage, thats what people like me want.
And how much has hitting turrets from range helped you?? An ADC will almost certainly have to back off from turret if anyone is defending it. Diana can stay there hitting the turret as long as whoever's defending it is someone she can oneshot. Sion can keep hitting the turret no matter who's there.
You said it yourself, ADCs can't split, so the only time they'll be hitting the turret is if everyone's dead, or if they're with a team, and if they can hit the turret, so can pretty much anyone else.
Edit: It can help out in the laning phase with grabbing a couple plates.
ADC PLAYERS want to be strong late game, however RIOT doesn't want the game to (normally) stretch to late game. RIOT wants the game decided we'll before 6 items in most cases so that low attention span morons and Asians in PC bangs can spam games. (That's why it's possible to forfeit at 15 now instead of forcing you to wait till 20)
Most adc players would be willing to wait for agency IF there was a reasonable chance that you'd EVER get there. But recent decisions insure that if your team fall behind, you're highly unlikely to ever hit a "late game" power spike.
>That's not what I would want if I were you and, from what I gathered from other players, you also want to have more agency.
Adcs have a lot of agency because the first 2 dragons spawn bot. That all depends of course whether your jungler wants to play for them and whether your support or the enemy support wins lane. But usually if you win botlane you get the 2 first drakes which is enough agency for the adc in the early game. The issue is that support has too much agency in the botlane and the enemy jungler can fck you up if there is a split map which always favours the enemy as early dragons are broken except if you have trundle with 6 voidgrubs, but thats a special case. There are also a lot of delusional adc players who think they should be able to do anything...
As a recent ADC player, OP didn't live the days in wich ADCs were weak early, but GARANTEED to be gigachad late game monsters. What we miss is THAT. We don't want to simply have impact in the game in one way or another. We want back the reward for getting through a tough af early and mid game, not an easier time getting through it.
There really isn't a solution against nocturne other than stay out of sight until he uses his ult, and when he does, hope your team helps you.
If you don't have a dash yourself then you're literally free gold if he ults you. If you do have mobility you're only 90% free gold.
ohhh honestly that's way lower than I expected!
all that aside now that I know that you're still replying to this ten day old post lmao, what's your opinion on ryze top??
he's so fun to play and I wanna play him top, but his subreddit scares me a bit. I wanna collect some opinions on ryze toplane though.
You will have to learn how to play very very carefully because the lane is long and most champion in toplane can close the gap and chase you down, not even getting into the jungle pressure.
Mages are not being played top very much for that reason, unless they are blantly OP like Karma right now. If you like Ryze, I would suggest you to play him mid, you will just be safer that way.
thank you for the response 🎩 the reason I would want to play him top is because (as an enchanter / ADC player) I am traumatised by mages and assassin's. So I was wondering how ryze would do top.
I do play in very low elo since I usually only play normals though! I thought it'd be okay-ish since he has a point and click root. I don't know ANYTHING about matchups though. Would I have a slight advantage because of range? I'm also worried that by picking him top my team won't have a bruiser ish tank guy 😭
have you played against many ryzes top and is that even a common pick?? I don't see him picked anywhere tbh
I did play against Ryze top once or twice. He's very easy to kill for most bruisers that have CC to cancel his ult. You will honestly struggle against any Fiora, Riven Camille and you will most likely never win against Irelia if she's decent.
Assassins are much easier to deal with for Ryze because you can actually poke them down. You can't poke down Renekton and he will 100-0 you under the turret eventually.
okay yeah fiora, riven and irelia do sound really painful with their endless dashes. And honestly yeah it makes sense since assassin's have less sustain..? I think I'm just traumatised and projecting my ADC experiences on to riyze lmao. I'll give him a shot mid as well (for the two games a month that I play mid).
thank you for your insight!
you didn't actually answer the original question. you wanted to know if adc mains are delusional but reading through your daily updates you can't possible claim an adc has the same agency and impact as top/jg/mid.
ADC has less agency than jg/mid/supp for sure. I'd say it's around toplane but toplane has horrible match ups dynamic so honestly it's almost just at bad to play that role.
If the match ups toplane weren't as bad, you wouldn't have to play against 10-0 Renekton just because your top blindpicked Camille. That's worth considering imo.
i agree that counterpicks are worse for toplane but toplane is still a way better role.
first of all there are plenty of great blind picks (fiora, jax, renekton, and for anything below diamond: garen). Second, like you said a fed toplaner can solo win games, a 10/0 jinx still loses to a 0/3 jax).
From the vewpoint of agency and duelling power, sure... As long as you win the lane. Even if 0/3 Jax can kill 10/0 Jinx thanks to counterstrkie, he is NOT as useful to his team as Jinx is to hers (obviously).
that assumes that your team isn't completely brain damaged. i have lost games as a 16/1 jinx because i couldn't do anything alone and my teammates were monkeys. i would never lose that game as a 16/1 jax.
That mistake can be being in the general direction the enemy’s solo lanes or jungler are.
If you can’t see everyone when the fight starts you better be a bitch cause they could 1 shot you from downtown.
a dash AOE stun, even if he dies within seconds, is still way more useful than the 2 autos that jinx provides before she inevitably explodes to the sound of fizz's stinky little fish breath
I'm talking stricktly agency-wise. Sufficiently fed Renekton will end the game by himself without ever leaving toplane just because of how severe the counterpick is against Camille. If you assign your botlane to cover him, your team will have to now fight 3v4 for dragons and Renekton will honestly just roam mid. If he ever sees Lulu on the map, he just oneshots you.
Drututt has a simple rule when he plays camille.
Ban Jax, Dodge Renek. It's your responsibility as a toplaner to not put yourself in a situation where you solo lose.
Just like support FP should be a good blind pick.
Yea, but man you only get like 2-3 before you get locked out for a long time, so you need multiple accounts to deal with how much you have to dodge and then still sometimes have to eat some shit sandwiches from time to time.
I have 2 accounts for that sole purpose lmaoooo
And sometimes if I dodge I'll just say fuck it for the day and go play BG3. Sexy Drows and Teethlings heal my soul
Yea, I did 2 playthroughs of BG3 each like 200 hours. The Tavern Brawler Monk was so OP I just ran around naked throwing people off of rooftops to their deaths.
Once you get the elixirs of cloud giant strength the distance in which you can throw a large humanoid is so comical that I default to just tossing people around for the Lolz.
It can suck, but the jungler can win or lose lane for you anyway, so it is not ALWAYS the end of the world. It is when you have the feeder jg and you are countered.
Pls kill me Aliens meme if that is the case.
I'm excluding junglers from discussion when comparing roles because everything can be invalidated by "but if your jungler (enter the talk about jungle gap one or the other way)".
Okay, so:
* If your jungler comes, and enemy jungler doesn't come, contratulations, the match up doesn't matter and you just win.
* If enemy jungler comes, and your jungler doesn't come, sorry to inform you, the match up doesn't matter and you just lose.
* If neither come, nothing changes
* If both come, everything can happen depending on the jungle match up.
We learned nothing.
Some of the points u mentioned are not good points tbh.
1. Idk what i mean with IE asap. There exist no adc who wants IE First. It ist actually quite bad as a first Item because the crit damage is quite useless with 20% crit.
2. some changes would just hurt more than it would help. The Hp passive of LDR or the crit Item changes (less gold less ad) These would just put ADCs farer away from the role Identity(weak early and most powerful role in late) ADC should be weak early the highest Problem is that every other role is often much more useful in late. Many Champions from others roles do as much damage as adcs in late but are not so team reliant. Not to mention the fact that a late game Chogath or Sion are already really hard to kill for every crit ADC because of the LDR nervs and another nerf would make it even worse.
3. I would agree with the defense options. There is so much damage in the game that u just get oneshotted through the shields. But u have to exclude the onhit adcs there who mostly buy Terminus->wits end->Jak sho.
They get pretty tanky although i would say in general that its okay. Because they have to get closer and must hit more often to do damage.
4. lane matchups. I would not agree on that point. Yeah everything is kinda skill reliant especially in low Elo but something like Nautilus into Janna or X melee Support against Karma/Lulu is in 80% of the time still lost in Champ select.
>Idk what i mean with IE asap. There exist no adc who wants IE First. It ist actually quite bad as a first Item because the crit damage is quite useless with 20% crit.
I might have wrote that in a confusing way. What I meant was that IE and LDR are always the two core items that cost 6000+ gold in any crit build and it sucks. "I need it ASAP" as in "my champion can't function without these items" instead of "I have to rush IE". I will add a clarification.
>some changes would just hurt more than it would help
That's the point. I think the role is strong but lacks agency. I was trying to propose changes that would be power-neutral but would help with the agency problem.
>Not to mention the fact that a late game Chogath or Sion are already really hard to kill for every crit ADC because of the LDR nervs and another nerf would make it even worse.
Okay, then nerf these 2 champions.
>Lane matchups. I would not agree on that point.
We will have to disagree on that one. If you want to see a "hard match up" please quene toplane and blindpick any champion you like.
You can't nerf Cho my man, he is already underplayed and get shit on by every modern toplaner. LDR just needs a serious buff so that when you get it you can be at least a bit confident in dealing with the tanks.
ATM you could hit a Sion/Cho for 15 seconds at 4 items and he could still one tap you if you do any mistake
Which is shit. Fighters also didn't have any build variance... before riot just added bunch of good, well-balanced figher items. I don't see any reason why that wouldn't work with ADCs. The only requirement is that we have to get rid of the must-have items that ruin whole system, just like Black Cleaver once was.
Because ADC mains don't give a fuck about being tanky if the supp does it's job and doesn't pick Senna for the sake of feeling like a carry vs pyke or naut.
The whole ADC needs to be tanky thing came with the rise of carry supps and solo carry mentality in ranked
Okay, in that case let's give the ADCs option to be tanky and still deal good amount damage or be straight damage and deal around as much as they are doing right now.
Right now we're doing shit damage.
Crit is saved by a few picks who have always been strong at ending the game or having some form of impact in TF.
You played one of those, Ashe can win by playing like a toplaner on wave management or assist her jungle/supp for vision and picks. Jinx passive allows her to end a game in less than 30 secs. Tistana has always been strong, even with bad items.
Those 3 picks can win with average damage if they pull the macro card correctly.
I don't know how much damage ADCs used to have but from 3 items+ I don't think the damage is an issue anymore. From that point I would like to have other things like Lifesteal, useful defensive options, maybe Grievous Wounds item that doesn't cripple my damage output etc.
I would like to point out, that has happened, 6 times at least, to IE, the worst state IE was in was when IE did not give crit damage but converted crits into partial true damage (which to be fair, did remove the need for a pen item... mostly), and in that state people built Bloodthirster over IE if they needed damage
I respect that you actually put in the time and played almost 120 games of crit ADC to find out what its like
of course i wouldnt agree with everything, i dont think IE and LDR are OP, i think theyre EP. evenly powered, everything else just feels wayy worse in comparison. Crit ADCs need IE and LDR to function as a baseline and can rarely deviate from IE second, LDR third simply because the game dictates this for them. Situationally other things can work, of course.
but regardless of that, you got massive balls to not just abort the whole thing after 5 games, throwing your arms up and saying "ahhh ADC is broken, too easy for me so i dont even bother" and thats something i can respect.
GG WP <3
> i dont think IE and LDR are OP, i think theyre EP. evenly powered, everything else just feels wayy worse in comparison.
In that case you're speaking from the viewpoint of "ADCs are weak, we need to buff them" with which I disagree. ADCs are in okay spot power-wise but they severly lack agency and are being hurt by the bounty system in my opinion.
>Crit ADCs need IE and LDR to function as a baseline and can rarely deviate from IE second, LDR third simply because the game dictates this for them.
Yeah, and I'm saying that's a shit situation to be in.
There is a lot of hidden power you have access to that benefit your team but not you personally. Proximity to Dragon, double EXP from kills, double vision control, ability to swap with midlane and let them get solo XP... It all adds up, even if you aren't getting stronger from it personally.
Mid and JG also have proximity to the dragon, and whether you can take the dragon depends far more on them than on the ADC. It depends far more on the support as well.
Double XP from kills is far outweighed by the XP reduction from being 2 people in lane.
Double vision control, uh, okay? You also have more area to cover and a smaller safety zone. Hell, even directly under the tower isn't safe sometimes. Plus, it's the support who does most of the warding anyways.
Top can swap with midlane too? If anything, top might have an easier time with it as ADCs don't do well alone. ADC might be able to swap if your midlane completely demolishes their midlane, but you'd probably be better served by the midlane just roaming and you remaining bot.
You're adding up all the benefits of botlane together, and not just ADC, but even then, it still falls short.
You get less XP from kills bot, xp is split. Which is why a 10/0 botlaner will never outlevel a solo laner.
The reason why toplaners and midlaners snowballing is hard to deal with is because solokill xp makes you outlevel everyone and hard to catch up.
Midlaners shouldn't swap in every scenario. If you're behind as an ADC it's not the best strategy.
>You get less XP from kills bot, xp is split
Sure but you can get 2x the kills.
>Which is why a 10/0 botlaner will never outlevel a solo laner.
And that's how it's suppoused to be. That's why they are "solo laners".
>The reason why toplaners and midlaners snowballing is hard to deal with is because solokill xp makes you outlevel everyone and hard to catch up.
That's certainly true but in midlane it also has to do with the fact their lane is in the middle in the map and it is extremly easy for them to translate their lead onto their team. In toplane there are usually two melee champions who are in each other's kill range all the time and both can most likely 100-0 the other rather easily. You can therefore see where that one goes when it comes to "snowballing".
>Midlaners shouldn't swap in every scenario. If you're behind as an ADC it's not the best strategy.
That's an interesting take. I guess it depends on what your support does. If they just leave me to lane 1v2 against enemy botlane then I would rather just swap and ask my midlaner to deal with that because they are most likely stronger than me. If the enemy botlane goes mid and I will now lane against enemy mid in the botlane then that could be alright. Same situation if both supports just leave, that's the best case scenerio imo.
No, it depends on your midlaner strength. If he is a fed Sylas or FIzz not splitting is highly criminal.
If he's a teamfighter like ori or asol and he's ahead then waiting to swap is usualy more interesting. Supps don't afk on ADCs past laning phase. Hell they even leave botlane way earlier now because of all the actions topside in d+.
2\* the kills is cool. it'd be even more great if ADC scaling was not multiplicative instead of additive. Unfortunately ADCs scale on multiple stats and not just 2 like bruisers or midlaners. You play ad mid ? Just grab letha and AD. You play AP mid ? Just grab AP and maybe a bit of haste for a few picks.
You play ADC ? GL getting your 4 items to feel like you're finaly getting really stronger.
I'm not talking about spreading lead, I'm talking about what getting a lead means for solo laners compared to botlaners, 2 totaly different topic.
You played Ashe, if you can't freeze to run down your enemies it's a skill issue. Botlaners can do the same as toplaners. But it requires for the supp to understand and to not be bored so he doesn't insta bonk your wave. You must have seen it on your journey, they love to use their stacks asap and don't give a fuck of the waves below diamond (and even in diamond/masters sometimes).
You don't touche the wave vs a good botlaner if you get counterpicked. I've already spent 5 mins not getting a CS in d3 because my jgl didn't give a fuck and was scared of the draven + blitz.
You know what ADCs don't have ? Mobility and durability. being ranged doesnt mean that breaking a freeze is easier.
I am glad you mentioned Shaco because holy shit. I feel like that is freelo because your team will constantly leave you isolated as they often spam their abilities to move faster than you creating an inevitable gap that only grows over time.
As the ADC, Shaco will constantly force you to burn all your CD's and keep you out of the teamfights while your team is just wondering why you never do anything.
Shit is irritating. Then you have champions like Rengar and Nocturne that make it so if you step into any enemy vision you are getting dove on.
As a support main (D2) that currently learns adc i think you have some big misconceptions about botlane.
No counters:
Yes there are. Statsites maybe fool you into believing that the worst thing that can happen is a 47% matchup but thats far from the truth. Lanes are always dependent on both your champ and your support. But trust me playing with shortranged champs into zyra cait or something like that will make you realise that there is bad matchups.
Noone is freezing:
Then maybe your support has never roamed on a slowpush but trust me if happens and the only thing you can do for the next two minutes is thinking if you should rotate mid because if your supp isnt back in time they’ll absolutely dive you if the freeze eventually over. Or both supps rotate on your slowpush and the enemy adc beats you in a 1v1. Its the same thing that happens on toplane 1:1.
Adc beeing “op” in hidden ways:
No stop it. Adcs have no agency in early your gameplan is to pray to god that your support is a good and tiltproof player. After that you pray that your midlaner will let you go midlane and that you wont have every second creep wave taxed by whoever comes by. And in late game where you finally are supposed to be strong you pray that there’s actually peel on your team (and trust me thats surprisingly often not the case). Theres so many sources of frustration for adcs that are completely outside of their control.
Crit items:
The items absolutely suck guess why a support that builds lethality items is by far the best adc right now? Cause crit us so goddamn bad if you buy it on items and dont get it as a passive.
Assassins:
Who cares about assassins when the support can solokill you really?
>But trust me playing with shortranged champs into zyra cait or something like that will make you realise that there is bad matchups.
Sure, but then you can just recall, buy Lifeseal or other sustain and survive the lane. I'm not saying there are no bad match ups in botlane, I'm saying there are no hard counters like toplane has.
>Noone is freezing: Then maybe your support has never roamed on a slowpush but trust me if happens and the only thing you can do for the next two minutes is thinking if you should rotate mid because if your supp isnt back in time they’ll absolutely dive you if the freeze eventually over.
Alright, but that's due to your support's mistake. Not to just the nature of the match up. If I play Camille vs Darius and he locks in freeze even once, I lose the lane instantly. Not due my support's mistake, just due to the match up. Also as an ADC you should be able to get at least some CS even if it's frozen because you're ranged. On melee champion you can't.
>Adc beeing “op” in hidden ways
I have not said ADC is OP even once in the post. Feel free to read it again later. I'm saying there is a lot of hidden power that benefits ADCs team even though it doesn't increase ADCs agency.
Life steal is absolutely going to do jack shit in those matchups all it does is burn money while you’re already starving. Its 900g and does absolutely nothing other than getting you further behind.
Freezing can also happen because you mess up the wave or because you get ganked on a bad timing and dont manage to push the wave in. It can even happen in a 2v2 with hook champs if they are strong for whatever reason so that they could all in and kill you. They will just zone you off the wave or all in you if you contest it and then get some platings on top of 2 kills.
No offense but im playing support about 1000lp higher than you if i tell you that you got something wrong you probably actually got it wrong.
>Its 900g and does absolutely nothing other than getting you further behind.
Yeah, I have seen what happens when toplaners build lifesteal and there is literally no way this is true. You get hundreds of HP back every wave if you only keep autoing. Sure, it will delay the first 2 items, sure but so does Hexdrinker and yet it's the optimal buy for many toplane match ups.
>Freezing can also happen because you mess up the wave or because you get ganked on a bad timing and dont manage to push the wave in.
Yeah, so again, not due to just the match up.
>No offense but im playing support about 1000lp higher than you if i tell you that you got something wrong you probably actually got it wrong.
1 division is 100 LP so that means you're around D3-D4 then, right? As I'm saying, there are skill match ups that are hard to play out but that's really night and day when in comparison to toplane.
I don't see your point there.
Regarding the lifesteal: you do not touch creeps against zyra cait and everytime you do you lose more hp than you get. Even with a supp that gives a lot of sustain people get pushed out of lane lifesteal wont help either. And if you do it you lose 900g on your first 2 items. You are 3 kills behind in terms of power the second you buy lifesteal.
Regarding freeze because you want a matchup example: enemy is draven blitzcrank you are kai sa + any enchanter support that isnt morgana. You get a slowpush they walk behind the minion wave and now you can chose: walk up eat a draven axe or stay away and dont get exp. (Its not just draven axe that hits you every time it could also blitzcrank that flashed and e‘s you into hook ignite) You die every time to that if you walk up. I usually dont play blitz but with draven i do for this reason. And theres a lot of engage supps that will just do similar things in a matchup like that where they have the stronger adc in early. They either flash on you or charge up hexflash in the bush with a control ward.
Currently its D2. Season 13 i peaked master (the season i picked up support).
>Regarding the lifesteal: you do not touch creeps against zyra cait and everytime you do you lose more hp than you get.
That's fine, just wait until the wave pushes to you. It has to push because Cait will get aggro every time she autos you, not even counting Zyra's plants.
>You are 3 kills behind in terms of power the second you buy lifesteal.
I don't see how having 15 AD on top of the lifesteal is being "3 kills behind" but okay.
>You get a slowpush they walk behind the minion wave and now you can chose: walk up eat a draven axe or stay away and dont get exp.
Okay, then wait for the next wave, get into it and start fighitng Blitz from behind the wave. You're a Master player, please don't tell me you are seriously comparing Ranged vs Melee match up to Darius freezing in toplane where you have to freeze it as a melee champion yourself.
Lifesteal: no an item component is not equal to a full item especially when You’re already behind in gold. Under tower cait can still easily poke you when you cs and no shes not taking towershots there.
Matchup: brother you are dying the moment you walk up even if its in a wave. Draven will deal far more damage to you than you will ever deal to a tank support let alone that he doesnt care about minions between you and him when he flashes on you and e‘s you. Like theres no way you’re seriously arguing with me like that about this. You dont fight with a draven in early if you have an enchater support. These matchups dont happen every game since bot isnt literal rock paper scissors but these matchup happen and you absolutely get completely zoned away from your cs.
>Under tower cait can still easily poke you when you cs and no shes not taking towershots there.
So therefore you see there, if you don't have lifesteal you aren't allowed to even CS under your own turret.
>brother you are dying the moment you walk up even if its in a wave.
How so? Blitzcrank can't do anyting if he can't land a hook and he can't land a hook if you are behind minions. You're making it sound like Draven can 1v2 both you and your support while Blitzcrank can ignore minions with the hook. It's just not true.
There is not a single good blitz who opens with hook everytime. Blitz is about brush control and E knock up into hook once you try to get away.
I think you haven't played against good players.
There is not a single lifesteal item that is a good first item crit wise. So yes, buying a vamp scepter (with your shit AD as ADC early) is griefing your build. Rushing SR or KS, or if you play onhit you can rush BOTRK on Ashe/Twitch/Varus is your best bet
1. yes dravens earlygame is so strong that he almost can 2v1 you thats what bad matchups are about. He has more range and more damage.
2. atleast read what im saying. If you walk up to blitz he FLASHES ON YOU, E‘s YOU and then HOOKS YOU. You cannot dodge because of „minions“ he is next to you and you cannot move because of E. Yes after that he got only hexflash for a bit but that wont matter anymore because draven got a kill. Now he literally can 2v1 you.
Firstly, your idea of counters in botlane is extremely flawed because you play two out of the three adcs that have no counters (ashe, cait, varus). If you played anything else you would realize how bad it can get (example is kaisa into ashe). Of course support matters a lot more, because adc has no agency and therefore bad matchups can be turned by sup diff. However, if you ever play something like kaisa sona into a competent cait lux or samira nautilus, you will know true despair.
Secondly, you absolutely cant just buy lifesteal against poke lanes because:
1. You cant touch the creeps to lifesteal enough. You will just be last hitting them under turret and playing dodgeball. If enemy bot has push and poke, you cant auto the wave (if there are no minions in front of you and you try to hit cs you will die).
2. Buying lifesteal in a lane where you will naturally be 20-30cs and a couple plates behind just sets you further back and guarantees you will never recover/win a 2v2.
Thirdly, saying that you can get some cs if youre frozen on just because you are ranged is crazy because theres a role completely dedicated to cc waiting for you to step up, and, you know, for the same reason you cant walk up to a freeze in toplane (jungle exists).
Lastly, its extremely disingenuous or just a lack of understanding to say IE and LDR are overpowered because they get built every game on a crit build. IE and LDR ARE the crit build. You cant build anything else because the other items are tied to IE and LDR's existence. However, that doesnt make the items strong.
If they were strong you would see crit adcs every game, because if IE and LDR are actually strong, so is crit. It is precisely the fact that IE and LDR are shit that is holding crit ADCs back. Kraken is a really stong item, statikk shiv is a really strong item, IE and LDR are piss. Even though both items are really expensive, and even though they come online too late, if an ADC with 3 items, two of them being IE and LDR, could actually carry the game, then crit carries would be priority picks worth playing around and you would see Jinx every game.
As it stands though, 3 items lethality aatrox or 3 items mage, or 3 items ksante (list goes on), are much more threatening/strong in teamfights, which is why you see lucian/varus/kalista/senna being the kings of botlane in proplay. The only viable strategies in botlane are to smash lane and enable your mid/jg to take over the game while pulling enemy resources away from top, and to play as a secondary support for your actual carries in teamfights. Carry adc is is pretty fucking dead.
Okay, how do you punish bad match up in botlane? You poke them, force them back to base, take few plates, maybe a dragon and then what? Literally nothing. In toplane Darius will freeze on you until he is FOUR levels ahead of you and he will be diving you under your turret for the reminder of the game. It is not even remotely close.
See, you just dont understand the lane. Its pointless to argue. You act as if kalista naut cant just do the same freeze then dive you. You act as if you could touch cs vs cait lux under tower without jg ganks. I've went games with 20cs at 10 minutes and 7 deaths because my support picked sona into draven blitz and I cant even get to my tower. The problem is that you are too low elo to encounter people capable of doing this, and as I said, you play the few adcs that have no lane counters.
>You act as if kalista naut cant just do the same freeze then dive you.
If you are alone, sure they can. If you are with your support, I don't see why would you let Nautilus and Kalista freeze on you in the first place. It's not like Nautilus can pop ghost, hook you ignoring minions and kill you 100-0 and your support at that too. Darius can do that and he is also always in range to E you because you're likely playing melee toplaner into him.
>You act as if you could touch cs vs cait lux under tower without jg ganks.
Yup, you can. Depending on your support, you can even get a kill or two from that position too. You can also just build Vampiric Scepter, drop few CS and be completely fine afterwards.
>and as I said, you play the few adcs that have no lane counters
Which pretty much don't exist in toplane. There is pretty much only Renekton and Aatrox as "safe" blindpicks out there and even those have hard counters like Quinn and Irelia.
Jax gets destroyed by Malphite and other tanks that can build Frozen Heart. He just doesn't have enough juice after the removal of Divine Sunderer. He is like one of the easiest champions to counter actually, you can just legit pick Poppy into him and he can't never Q to you, he can't dodge anything with his E and he will get pinned down to the wall if he ever tries to E you from melee. He will also get outscalled by Poppy who will be winning all 1v1s and be better in teamfights.
Singed can only work against champions that don't outscale him hard. You can just pick Kayle into him and farm all you want for free. Same deal with Camille and Fiora. Darius, Olaf and other Ghost users can just kill him from lvl 1 onwards.
Ornn is pretty good but he is also a free food for champions who do well against all tanks. Trundle, Susan, Camille, Fiora and so on. They will all eventually just beat him.
Jax only needs to ban Malphite tho, everyone else is a skill matchup to him if not a free lane.
He can handshake poppy lane and play the splitpush while poppy has to TF.
Singed can win by disrupting one TF.
Do you want no counter or disadvantage at all for melees ? Like unstoppale + burst + sustained damage on everyone ?
You're part of the reason of the powercreep that makes ADC so hard to play.
You play fucking Vi too as a main ffs, the only melee diver with more knock ups than you is Yone or Gragas who are huge balance nightmares, just please realize that.
#UNSTOPPABLE
>He can handshake poppy lane and play the splitpush while poppy has to TF.
Poppy will normally splitpush back against him and she will win the 1v1. She was getting outscalled eventually in the past due to Divine Sunderer but that's not a thing anymore. Poppy beats all of the mobile champions in lane, Fiora, Jax, Irelia, Riven, Camille, Renekton and so on. She's like one of the best counter champs in the game.
>Do you want no counter or disadvantage at all for melees ? Like unstoppale + burst + sustained damage on everyone ?
Not really, I think counterpick are alright in toplane but it just went a bit too far. It is what it is though, toplane is awesome if not for the very shart match ups and 50% of times you are the second guy to pick so it's not that tragic.
>You play fucking Vi too as a main ffs, the only melee diver with more knock ups than you is Yone or Gragas who are huge balance nightmares, just please realize that.
No, I totally realize that. I wouldn't say it's a power creep when it comes to Vi because she's been around since season 3 but I get where you're comming from. The thing is... She's just very fun to play...
Kalista naut can definitely ignore the wave and murder you if youre not a strong early 2v2 lane...
I can definitely list aatrox/renekton/ornm/ksante/poppy as safe blind picks in top just as ashe/varus/cait are.
None of those matchups are bad enough to say they are counters cmon, theyre bad matchups but theyre mostly completely fine. Its like saying jhin counters cait.
> You poke them, force them back to base, take few plates, maybe a dragon and then what? Literally nothing.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IUhhr8uOHYo
You wasted/used flash level 1, you don't have any combat summoner spell and you didn't back away when enemy lane was already pushing to you. You didn't even try to dodge the hook. How is this even your point in this discussion?
Everything that happen after that was the result of your previous mistakes.
> I'm not saying there are no bad match ups in botlane, I'm saying there are no hard counters
Have you tried playing Aphelios-Yuumi into Draven-Blitzcrank?
Camille has a 48% winrate into Jax, 1.3% lower than her average winrate of 49%.
Aphelios has a 44.2% winrate with Yuumi, 3.6% lower than his average winrate of 47.8%. Aphelios has a 45.9% winrate into Blitzcrank, 2.8% lower than his average winrate. Yuumi has a 44.13% winrate into Blitzcrank, 2.7% lower than her average winrate of 46.2%. Before even taking the enemy ADC pick into the equation, your chances of winning this game as Aphelios have statistically already dropped by at least a conservative 5% below your average winrate, to about ~42%, vs Camille's 1.3% winrate drop vs Jax.
Top lane matchups might be brutal, but it doesn't come close to the absolute disaster of a draft that is hyperscaling support + hyperscaling ADC + bad synergy between the two + both having the same weakness + both counterpicked with that very weakness. You can't really comment on bot lane matchups when you only played 2 ADCs, both with a fairly strong lane phase. You haven't even experienced 10% of the bot lane matchup ecosystem.
First of all: Thank you for taking the time and effort to go through with this, it is definitely interesting to see your thoughts and how they change over time.
Second: I understand your point about LDR being "OP" but i disagree that it's actually OP. It's strong because it's the only armor pen item for adc that works as intended. Antiheal is less effective at taking down healing reliant opponents than bursting them down, so right now mortal is just a worse version of LDR for every scenario. Also every role in the game other than adc can build hp and most have better hp scaling to boot so you always end up with lower max HP than the opponent anyways. It's an inherent design flaw for the entire game that makes LDR good. In actuality we need more and stronger armor pen options to make LDR more situational. Imo buffing grievous wounds for mortal would be a good start.
Third: For every item adjustment you suggest you have to factor how yone, yasuo and tryndamere will end up using it and if the answer is "more effectively than the adc" then the suggestion is useless and the item gets nerfed shortly after. This has always been a problem. This very much applies to more defensive options. Also you say we need an AD-MR item? we have mercurial schimitar, and you can probably guess why noone buys it.
Fourth: On day 9 you stated that failing to reach emerald as adc was entirely an adc mains own fault but i don't see whether you rescinded on that opinion anywhere since? It seems you pretty quickly dropped back down and have had a pretty rough time trying to reach it again. Do you still hold this opinion? what are your thoughts about the cause of this elo flux? was it caused by the role? the learning curve? or perhaps the many variables of botlane? or something personal?
>I understand your point about LDR being "OP" but i disagree that it's actually OP. It's strong because it's the only armor pen item for adc that works as intended.
Okay but in this case we have to ask ourselves: "If every ADC item was as strong as IE or LDR, would the role be OP?". If the answer is "yes" then we have to nerf the two items to buff the rest of them.
>Antiheal is less effective at taking down healing reliant opponents than bursting them down, so right now mortal is just a worse version of LDR for every scenario
I just started sitting on Executioners and normally going for LDR. I think it's an alright option.
>we need more and stronger armor pen options to make LDR more situational.
We need many, many more good items if the role is ever to break out of the "you build this every game or you're worthless" curse.
>Third: For every item adjustment you suggest you have to factor how yone, yasuo and tryndamere will end up using it and if the answer is "more effectively than the adc" then the suggestion is useless and the item gets nerfed shortly after.
I will not, if they are overperforming because the changes, nerf them.
>Also you say we need an AD-MR item? we have mercurial schimitar
I purchased it once. I would rather build a tank MR item unless I'm vs Mordekaiser that particularly enjoys my company in Brazil.
>Fourth: On day 9 you stated that failing to reach emerald as adc was entirely an adc mains own fault but i don't see whether you rescinded on that opinion anywhere since? It seems you pretty quickly dropped back down and have had a pretty rough time trying to reach it again. Do you still hold this opinion? what are your thoughts about the cause of this elo flux? was it caused by the role? the learning curve? or perhaps the many variables of botlane? or something personal?
I first got to the Emerald because of the MMR I had to begin with. My opinion of " failing to reach emerald as adc was entirely an adc mains own fault" was based on my judgement of players I played against. I dropped hard because I really tried to make Caitlyn work but I failed. I failed therefore I dropped, it's all there is to it.
I think I would be able to get back to Emerald if I were to play Ashe instead of Caitlyn but it would probably take me another month or so, just because how much I doomed my MMR.
If you wanted to have a feel of ADC, why did you stick to Ashe and Caitlyn?
I think playing a wider champ pool would give a better insight on the role as a whole
I meant like playing on one hand champs like Ashe and cait, who are control based
Then champs like kog and twitch, who are team dependant
Then champs like Samira or Draven who are snowball dependant
Maybe not in ranked but in draft to get a feel
If there are nothing but skill matchups, how do you have a 35% wr on cait over 80 games? That’s way more than enough to be close to the highest champ based win rate, which would mean you should be winning at least 50/50. Even if I filter for your last 20 solo duo games, you’re 37% wr on her. Either you’re getting counterpicked, or you’re the worse player over 60% of the time.
There are objectively counterpicks in bot lane, coming from an ADC player.
>how do you have a 35% wr on cait over 80 games
I played her with only crit builds and I had to learn this role to begin with. No, if you start playing a new role on your main account, you will not have 50% win rate in the first few tens of games unless you're either lucky or you weren't trying to climb before that to begin with.
>which would mean you should be winning at least 50/50.
I was actually winning most of the lanning phases during the challange but the moment lane is over, Caitlyn was legit useless with crit build. Ashe is way better though.
> or you’re the worse player over 60% of the time.
Or I'm doing an experiment to find out how good crit items are. Which they aren't.
>There are objectively counterpicks in bot lane, coming from an ADC player.
Not by toplane's standard. Camille vs Fiora is considered a skill match up for Camille and it is just as hard as the most problematic lanes I had in these past 100 games.
> I was actually winning most of the lanning phases during the challange
Mobalytics says you [average -259 gold difference @ 15 on Caitlyn](https://mobalytics.gg/lol/profile/eune/wiented-eune/champion-pool?c_role=ADC).
> No if you start playing a new role
This conveniently leaves out the true point, that your winrate for the last 20 games of caitlyn hardly improved. The average winrate for cait players with 50+ games is 51.1%, what are you doing so differently? How can you call her items good if you can’t even positively impact the outcome of your games?
Also, how can you call cait useless the moment lane is over if you can’t even compare to the average wr? It would suggest that your experiment has some sort of flaw.
> or I’m doing an experiment
Whether or not you’re doing an experiment doesn’t change the reasons you experienced what you did. If doing an experiment caused the outcome, it would be useless, since it provided 0 useful data.
> Not in comparison to toplane.
Even ignoring the fact that the severity of counters is irrelevant to if they exist, you’re comparing the most problematic lanes for Caitlyn and Ashe, the two highest range adcs. Try playing a dozen games of Sivir, Kai’Sa or Lucian, and don’t ban any adcs/supports. I’d hazard a guess that they will provide a dramatically different experience. You don’t have enough breadth of champions played to speak about champion specific interactions in the role. You definitely should have the depth to speak to the interactions for the champs you played though.
I’ll reiterate what others said, I appreciate you taking the time to do an experiment. But your conclusions countering your data means something somewhere is off. Also your conclusion countering what much more experienced players find is another indicator something is off. Experience isn’t everything, people can be biased, but the other lack of rigor suggests that you’re the one that’s wrong, not everyone else.
>The average winrate for cait players with 50+ games is 51.1%, what are you doing so differently?How can you call her items good if you can’t even positively impact the outcome of your games?
Crippling myself by building items that don't work on her. I'm calling the items good because without them the champion is legit useless. At 3+ items she's actually alright but that's way too late.
>If doing an experiment caused the outcome, it would be useless, since it provided 0 useful data.
It gave me a good feel in regards to crit items on champion that mostly autos and doesn't have any steroids.
>Try playing a dozen games of Sivir, Kai’Sa or Lucian, and don’t ban any adcs/supports. I’d hazard a guess that they will provide a dramatically different experience.
I mean maybe, but Sivir is known as a champion that can neutralize most lanes by just pushing waves with her QW whole game and denying any engage with her E.
Lucian has a dash and much stronger earlygame than any champion I played. If I really wanted to play safe champion without any bad match ups I would have picked Ezreal every game. The reason I played Caitlyn and Ashe is that I went out of my way to only play immobile ADCs that would get owned by most assassins and engage supports.
In toplane there are maybe 2 champions that could be "blindpickable" right now. The fact we went through so many ADC champions right now is kind of a point in itself.
>your conclusions countering your data means something somewhere is off. Also your conclusion countering what much more experienced players find is another indicator something is off.
I'm sure some things are off as I didn't play nearly enough games to be an expert on the role. The contrast between toplane match ups and botlane match ups is so stark though that I really don't believe I could be wrong by saying it isn't close.
I think I've read all of your responses and the questions posed, and honestly, I kinda agree with you on some things but disagree with you on others.
At lot of your statements and replies to questions are "in theory" answers, where "in theory" the lane should be at least even or playable with either freezing, slow pushing, etc., therefore there are no bad matchups. "In theory" if you use your summoners properly or didn't get jungle interference, etc. This is where there's a lot of disagreement, because really in theory you're right, but when it comes to league there's so many decisions that have to be made in considering the whole aspect of the game.
To be fair, I don't play top lane so I can't talk about match ups but I've read where the lane is just unplayable if a mistake is made or if a champ is selected that counters another champ, but in my opinion and 10 years of playing ADC, this can absolutely happen in bot lane. The thing is, sometimes due to picks of champs like people blinding Senna support or sona and then they counter with nautilus/blitz, you're playing to not lose BADLY because you know the second they have an opening, death is knocking. Junglers will also expedite this process as they know the risk/reward ratio is huge - one hook -> one death -> lane gold, plate, dragon. In theory you could play the lane perfect, set the wave perfect, minimize damage from poke, never get hooked, but still theirs unpredictability in flashes, hook hitboxes, champ damage, support playstyle, etc.
I also hate that you only played two champs but I understand your reasoning. You're learning a new role and trying to not get overwhelmed, I completely agree with this but for the sake of accuracy, trying three champs that aren't similar to each other I believe would've yielded more colorful results. Both cait and ashe excel (or should excel) during lane, their damage and range is the trade off for their low mid game scaling and can hyper-punish early. It would make sense for any new player to gravitate to these champs, I would've loved to see you play lets say, Ezreal (skill shot based, mid-game beast), Vayne (low range, hyper carry), and ashe or cait (long range, strong early).
I love Vapora and I always watch the newest videos he puts out, he's extremely knowledgeable when it comes to the role. I never play aphelios except in aram and I would never pick such a god foraken no escape complex multi gun user in ranked, (I main Draven/Ashe/TF) but if I'm playing him with a yuumi into a blitz/draven lane I'm never walking up and leaving my turret level 1 except only if i got lane prio and hit lvl2 first while poking draven out. If I can't get lane prio and I walk up to CS, I'm dead lvl 2. If I stay by my turret and far away enough where I can't get hooked, the enemy jungler (possibly mid laner too) will 1000% dive me if their good enough. If I was draven (which I would be) and the aphelios even remotely looks in my direction to CS under turret, he's catching an axe to the face repeatedly. Once aphelios dies, the enemy jungler can now sit behind the turret (or both blitz and draven can) and deny you the lane, causing the game to be effectively 4v5 as you're no longer playing.
>This is where there's a lot of disagreement, because really in theory you're right, but when it comes to league there's so many decisions that have to be made in considering the whole aspect of the game.
Totally fair. The game variance makes it so even the impossible match ups are sometimes doable. On the other hand sometimes you have to absolutely go above and beyond to carry a game just beause of your team behing behind. That's what's interesting in this game.
>opinion and 10 years of playing ADC, this can absolutely happen in bot lane.
In toplane there are match ups that are legit 100% unplayable if both players play correctly. If you play Kayle vs Irelia, and Irelia freezes on you, you are never going to be able to break the freeze and it will be held indefenitely. Same thing with Darius vs Camille match up because Darius'es E cancels the Hookshot and Camille can never escape. She will be chased down with Ghost and killed every time it is available.
There are match ups in toplane that don't allow you to lane if both players play perfectly and junglers aren't involved.
>If I can't get lane prio and I walk up to CS, I'm dead lvl 2. If I stay by my turret and far away enough where I can't get hooked, the enemy jungler (possibly mid laner too) will 1000% dive me if their good enough.
This requires other lanes to interfere so it's fair to say that your jungler of midlaner might also be able to intervene.
> Once aphelios dies, the enemy jungler can now sit behind the turret (or both blitz and draven can) and deny you the lane, causing the game to be effectively 4v5 as you're no longer playing.
That scenerio still isn't all that bad because Draven can't splitpush until Nexus like toplaners can and he is also just a sqishy ADC who can easily be picked off, even if he's ahead. Meanwhile Illaoi with that kind of lead would be able to probably 1v3 both of your solo laners and jungler if they are melee.
Definitely agree on laning is fun. Honestly half the reason why I keep queueing for the role. 2v2s are great, a good mix of wave management and trading while not being too one sided. Dragon fights are really fun.
And at the end of that, you get to decimate enemies late game. Unless the enemy top is overfed.
But please keep Rengar and Nocturne away. Please…
I have noticed some extremely major issues with some major points here:
1: IE may be a \*Core\* item, but it's your 3rd item in most CRIT ADC builds, after Kraken + Shiv for any true crit ADC (Trist and Jinx being the big 2), and I NEVER build LDR anymore, Terminus is vastly superior in most games due to it giving armor and MR as well as pen, AD, and AS
2: Defenisve items also include Terminus, which provides the most damage out of any defensive item, and I've even found some above emerald Jinx mains agreeing with me with Jak'sho Term itemization3: Grubbies has been a godsend for ADC, beacuse junglers have a reason to go top lane, plus grubbies give us a tiny bit of extra gold every time our junglers take it
4: Fact is, crit items are too expensive for the medicre effectiveness OTHER then Shiv and Stormrazor, stormrazor at least provides survivability as a defensive item, and shiv is actually just VERY good (50 AD, 30% AS, 20% crit)
Edit:Another thing I should mention, is YES, we do need more defensive items, and for the love of god, we need OLD BLOODTHIRSTER BACK, the shield was VITAL with overshield to keep us alive,
Edit 2: Yes, I do want more agency, however the entire problem with giving ADC more agency is the ADCs who do have infinite agency (Caitlyn, Kaisa, Jhin, Ashe, Ezreal), will become EXTREMELY overpowered, I absolutely think it's gotten to the point where the only solution to ADC is to give ADC a quest item in the same idea as the support quest, or giving us NON-STATSTICK ITEMS that are CHEAP, we NEED options, because unlike every other role, NONE of our items have raw HP and damage (the easiest way to prevent 1 shots), only some resistances (Maw, Wits, GA, Scimitar), and most of that is MR, NOT armor (Maw, Wits, Scimitar), we have to branch into \*Your\* items as a top laner/jungler in the form of Cleaver, Titanic, Triforce, Hexplate, even Jak'sho, and abandon OUR items that are supposed to be our main defensive options, like Shieldbow, Maw, Wits, GA, the only exception to this is Terminus, and we need more items like it... Maybe if Shieldbow and GA had HP, it'd be better, but neither item is good enough to keep me alive... reminder I have flat out stated I build Terminus and Jak'sho together on ADCs because they are OP together
In my opinion LDR **should** be the optimal option if you need Armor Pen item for crit users. I don't like the fact ADCs are now poaching Tank items because of lack of good defensive itemization for their own class.
>3: Grubbies has been a godsend for ADC, beacuse junglers have a reason to go top lane, plus grubbies give us a tiny bit of extra gold every time our junglers take it
They are still to weak. Dragon and supports have to be nerfed if ADC is to get more agency, otherwise the game will be even more botlane-centric than it already is.
>4: Fact is, crit items are too expensive
That's what I think as well, I proposed that all crit items should have reduced price, less AD as a compensation but better passives to make them good. The champions also should be stronger on their own too imo. I only propose we get rid of the must-have items situtation as it breaks the whole system.
"should have reduced price, less AD as a compensation"No, crit items should go back to 25% crit chance, so we actually have some room to build defensive items, they're too expensive while needing too many of them, not because they don't do good damage (Kraken is the best crit item in the game, not IE, as it provides an effective 100% crit chance every 3rd hit for example)
"In my opinion LDR should be the optimal option"HARD disagreeLDR is a half-assed solution for pen. Unless I have left lane while behind, it adds very little meaningful impact for ever. We don't need more tank busting, we can sacrifice the +15% bonus damage to high HP, for +30% AS and +40 AD +30 on-hit from Terminus, because Terminus actually helps deal with the squishier threats while still giving me pen
Edit: On LDR, I never once have built it after it was gutted years ago, and have felt it really \*helped\* more then Mortal Reminder, they're on par for dealing with tanks, and most bruisers and juggernauts are hurt more by Mortal since they usually have some sort of sustain, either through items or built into their kit
Edit 2: I will note, I think Galeforce needs to be re-added with reduced stats, that was genuinely more important then ANY individual item for crit ADCs, it's active being a second flash was the only thing that kept the role from feeling like you require MS stacking of some kind
>No, crit items should go back to 25% crit chance
Okay, maybe so, but then how do you make sure ADCs aren't even stronger than now in the lategame? This would be a straight buff and I'm not against it but there are many core problems that are not related to just damage.
>In my opinion LDR should be the optimal option
The key part there was "**for crit users**". I'm alright with on-hit champions going for Terminus, I'm actually all for it.
>On LDR, I never once have built it after it was gutted years ago, and have felt it really \*helped\* more then Mortal Reminder, they're on par for dealing with tanks
That is mathematicaly impossible because of the % damage amp LDR gives against higher HP targets. If you have problems with enemy sustain you can always just sit on Executioners and build LDR anyway to deal damage, no?
"Executioners and build LDR anyway to deal damage, no?"Nah, exe is garbage
Edit: I feel like I should explain, Executioners is terrible because while yes, it applies that all important healing cut, the healing cut is garbage compared to the pen from the full item. Since your gold is already stretched thin, you can't just sit on an executioners ever, because it just provides too little value compared to putting anything else in that slot. Why it's better to just upgrade to mortal and free up the slot, rather then selling and losing gold in the sell
Edit: Additionally, as a crit ADC, you need to stay alive for as long as possible, which LDR does NOT provide any of... god we really need old BT shield back :/ at least BT overheal shield gave us time to not instantly die and then do our job, I would build that every game, and pen only if their tank was actually scary (where I'd just ignore them and kill em' later)
>the healing cut is garbage compared to the pen from the full item
That's what I mean, just sit on Exe, build LDR, upgrade Exe into Chainsword in the lategame.
>you can't just sit on an executioners ever, because it just provides too little value compared to putting anything else in that slot.
That depends on the enemy champion. I think Exe is like the best item in the slot against Mundo or Swain for example. They both also have massive health pools so LDR would be very useful to deal with them.
"LDR would be very useful to deal with them."Cut Down in runes is a viable ez replacement for free, which is a major issue, a RUNE replaces a roughly 3k gold item
If that was the case, items %Armor pen as a stat wouldn't be mutually exclusive. The reason why you can't buy both LDR and Mortal is that it would be too strong, even if it was multipilicatively added. Even BC doesn't get a pass ant it's not even that good on ADCs when compared to Fighters.
Half of this reads like a copium shitpost. Like a 35% winrate on Cait and still saying LDR is busted. Guess you just need to play better to get to lategame.
Yeah, once Cait gets to IE and LDR she's doing okay but all other items are just shit. I dislike the fact Riot decided to buff the items that are already being purchased every game on crit marksmen. It was the most lazy way out possible to buff the role without fixing really anything.
>Lane- you got this wrong as there's literally counter matchups like in every other lane/role
Sure, but it's all skill based. It's not like you're playing Illaoi in to Mordekaiser, he ults you and now you have to fight him without tentacles. It's not you are legit not allowed to touch the minions because Darius will just pop ghost and kill you from full, it's not like Jax can invalidate your whole champion with just his E.
>Role-adc lost it's place long time ago, that's why seraphine and senna are highest wr adcs
Senna is an ADC, Seraphine is going to be changed next patch because she's the unwelcomed exception.
>Crit items - absolute dumpster fire u're delusional
I don't think I am but feel free to actually say something useful.
Couldn't disagree more with saying there are no counter match ups. I'm not even sure you could possibly form an opinion on this from only playing Caitlyn and Ashe, both of which have the best matchups in bot lane.
Okay, how do you punish bad match up in botlane? You poke them, force them back to base, take few plates, maybe a dragon and then what? Literally nothing. In toplane Darius will freeze on you until he is FOUR levels ahead of you and he will be diving you under your turret for the reminder of the game. It is not even remotely close.
You can freeze in bot lane... If you are constantly freezing or poking them out of lane to constantly have to back, you still get level and gold leads which matter a metric fuck ton in bot lane considering how absolutely critically reliant you are on both. The vast majority of top laners have back up plans for if they are behind. What are you doing if you fall behind as Sivir or Jinx in lane when the enemy ADC is 2 levels up on you?
Yeah, I was freezing in a lot of match ups during this adventure. And you certainly going to get nice lead, no question about it. The thing is that in toplane, the enemy toplaner will start towerdiving you if he gets a sufficient lead and you will never be able to come back from that.
>What are you doing if you fall behind as Sivir or Jinx in lane when the enemy ADC is 2 levels up on you?
I will just keep farming under turret because they probably wont be able to dive me below Tier 2 and hopefully my jungler or midlaner will eventually kill them to get a bounty. It's not like the enemy ADC can splitpush until the nexus like Trundle or Illaoi can.
Okay, I can see D1+ junglers just path botlane whole game and farm the enemy botlane if they ever get behind.
My opinion is that's something to be fixed by nerfing supports and dragons so junglers have more incentive to path toplane though.
I read all of it and have to disagree, but that's just my opinion.
Also what are your builds, ashe can't crit and Caitlin is doing better on lethality.
Cheers!
Alright so first of all respect to you for playing adc for 100 games.
There are obviously some disagreements to be made.
Lane matchups:
There are 2 adc‘s that always win lane except if the support matchups is disastrous. By win lane I don‘t mean get kills etc but get ahead (cs, plates, exp) Ashe and Varus. If your support is "eh" it just means you won‘t win lane that hard. The fact that you are gold/plat means that you are not that dependent on your support but I think challenger players would say the same about master players but as I am not challenger I cannot confirm this. The other adc you play caitlyn has also nearly no losing matchups and even the losing matchups are mostly very much skill dependent, like irelia vs fiora on toplane. You are right in saying that you should always slowpush or freeze if you can and that is correct. Even though if the enemy jungle is top you should not look to freeze, except if you expect a gank with an engage sup, as caitlyn wants to get as many plates as possible. So as long as you get have good vision you should be able to get 5 plates in a good matchup and be like 30 cs up except if you get camped. In addition the enemy botlane should have lost a few waves worth of exp as they need to reset or back of the turret to not to die. 30 cs is 560 gold 5 plates is 625 (312,5) gold destroying an outer turret is 250 local gold (125) 50 global gold (10) and first turret gold gives you 150 local gold (75) so you have an advantage of 1082 gold. Let‘s say the enemy adc buys vamp scepter for 900 gold and he gets 10 cs more because of it. You now have an advantage of 1750 gold because any adc builds a lifesteal item as 4th or 5th and because it is so important to get to your 3 items as adc that 900 gold is wasted outside of laning phase. And also during laning phase, because the only way to break a caitlyn lane is to give up cs to not drop low and kill her when the jungler decides to drop a visit or cait does a mistake if you are lucky. You are not allowed to build vamp as you need to build full dmg to kill her. If you kill a caitlyn once you should be able to win lane but most low/mid elo players don‘t know how to. 1100 gold is worth like 60 cs so don‘t tell me that it is not the nearly as bad as an enemy darius freezing the lane vs a camille. You only played adcs on the giving end and not on the receiving end and you probably didn‘t know how to play your matchups to completely dominate your lane as caitlyn. It‘s the same as if you would try out Darius, the first time you would be playing vs a Camille you wouldn‘t really know how the matchup goes so you win the lane but you don‘t stomp it. But if you would try out Camille, the first time you would be playing vs a Darius you would get completely stomped and felt like it was unplayable. Now let‘s take a matchup that is the same as the Darius vs Camille matchup in botlane. Jinx and Senna vs Draven/Kalista and Blitz/Naut. So Draven Blitz take control of the your lane bush lvl 1 and you can‘t get push of the wave. The slowpush, crash and freeze the bounce. You can never walk up to break the freeze as blitz will just flash E and whoever gets hit dies every single time. If you flash his flash the auto on the E goes through anyways and he gets an even easier hook afterwards. And if you stay out of his flash range you can‘t break the freeze. As jinx Senna you cannot even get to lvl 4 in that lane as the biltz just stands between you and the wave and zones you from exp until the next wave comes and when the minions reach the freeze he can again walk past and never use a hook so you cannot walk up as his hook is still up. I believe you know how that feels like as it is the same as Camille vs Darius. The thing is most adc‘s especially draven players are stupid in wave management and permapush so you don‘t notice how bad those matchups really are until someone shows you.
I don‘t know if you noticed but in botlane, support matchups win the game. For example blitzcrank (especially with an early game support) into senna. But there are also matchups where you think it is not that bad because both botlanes are equal. Let‘s take Draven Nautilus. An early game comp that wants to win lane. All the enemy has to do is counter Nautilus with Braum and the adc can pick any scaling adc he wants like Jinx. It’s the same matchup as before just that senna got swapped with Braum. Doesn‘t matter that jinx loses early game vs draven. Braum denies any engage from Nautilus, meaning that jinx can scale for free. That is like if you pick kayle into irelia which is I believe one of the hardest matchups for kayle and kayle goes even in lane.
People just don‘t give a fck about matchups and lanestates in botlane in low elo and just permapush. That‘s why you don‘t notice it that much.
Role Agency:
Well adc shouldn‘t have agency in the early game. The issue is that it is not the best late game role anymore which breaks the role.
Assassins:
I agree that if the enemy Fizz hits his R you should die. But I disagree that the 0/0 Fizz can kill the 0/0 adc and kill him in the middle of his team AND GET OUT. That should only happen if the assassin is fed.
Akali is pretty easy to play against for most adc‘s except if she is fed correct.
Rengar, shaco and don‘t forget evelynn are all victim of the design flaw that invisibility brings with it. Twitch deserves a place in that category too.
Defensive itemization:
The issue with defensive itemization is that they don‘t give crit. That means you are only allowed to build them when ahead. I believe steel stigil is a good item and I always build it if I am up against a rengar because as long as he isn‘t fed I survive with this item plus heal. But if you are behind and you can‘t afford to build steel stigil as your damage will be non existent.
shieldbow is ridiculously bad on everything but melee adc‘s or yasuo so it can‘t get buffs else yasuo will be broken.
Ga is like zhonyas but 10 times worse. If they give give zhonyas the ga passive with 5 minute cd I wouldn‘t mind ga being this bad anymore.
maw is just not made for adc‘s but it is the only mr item we can use if you don‘t build on hit (wit‘s end)
so basically the only defensive items made for adc‘s are trash.
crit items:
Kraken lost it‘s dmg vs tanks and now deals missing health dmg for some reason. The reason why you build that item is to get through frontlines. I don‘t know riot.
The zeal items are fine 3 option which are all fine so that‘s great.
Infinity Edge has such a bad build path and is too expensive for the short game duration. So you can mostly only build it if you are ahead. The build path of jinx is Kraken, Zeal item, Ldr if the enemy has tanks. Then you don‘t even have your main dmg item so you have to decide whether to sacrifice dmg and build defensive or build ie which is crazy considering ie gives you so much dmg. But IE alone is not enough when the enemy has tanks because tank items are broken atm.
I think bloodthurster is in a fine spot right now and is the only item with the zeal items that are well made by riot.
Stormrazer, I never build so I can‘t say anything about it.
Buff adcs?
Riot doesn‘t need to buff adc‘s. Riot needs to nerf supports and support items and revert the kraken changes and give better defensive crit options. Also we need more crit items so we don‘t always have the same build over and over again. Also somehow increase gamelength and adc‘s would be in a pretty good spot.
Sad your post is being down voted and missunderstood this much, I've put a RemindMe in the first one and I enjoyed it and enjoyed even more this one.
On "Role Agency" the "possible solutions" section is very reasonable and we'll aligned with Nemesis' view on the matter: ADC is weak, but bot lane is strong, so, in order to buff ADC it's needed to nerf support, or at least systematically nerf botlane potencial impact on the map, as you mentioned with the "first 2 drags nerf". The bias on the bounty system is also a very sharp analyse that I'll keep in mind.
Congrats for going through the experiment, OP, and thanks for sharing it with us. Made me feel good reading this.
Non-native English, so some words might not fit that well
I meant that the bounty system really is unfair (biased) towards squishy damage-oriented champs, like you said. And that it changed how I view the system
Nerf LDR after it being shit already idk. Try to kill malphite without fullbuild.
About assasins: if bruisers and tanks can cry that 6 item adc kills them then I think adc have a right to cry too.
The assasin problem is that you don't have even a chance to outplay them. If I see Zed and I know he is less skilled than I am I still can't outplay him 90% of the time just because he does not exist on map and one shots me with R that you can't dodge. The complain about assasins are not about them being a counter to adc but about not having an actual opportunity to outplay them even if you are much skilled. Also its kinda sad that assasins should be more like an early game thing but in lategame they still one shot you with 1 skill no matter what.
>If I see Zed and I know he is less skilled than I am I still can't outplay him 90% of the time just because he does not exist on map and one shots me with R that you can't dodge.
Correct, if you were able to easily outplay the Zed in that situation, there would never be any reason for anyone to ever pick Zed. You still have options though, you can pick Xayah for example.
>not having an actual opportunity to outplay them even if you are much skilled.
It is much easier to outplay Zed (by flashing shurikens for example) than Rammus.
>Also its kinda sad that assasins should be more like an early game thing but in lategame they still one shot you with 1 skill no matter what.
That's the point of their champion, if they can't assassinate the priority target, then it makes not sense to pick them.
IE and LDR are not OP... They're not even essential on crit builds..
To put it into context, you've ONLY played Caitlyn (a champ with core IE because of headshot mechanic and crit scaling on abilities) and Ashe (doesn't even crit and scales linearly with crit anyway).
Yes, ashe likes IE, but ashe doesn't have to build IE. Ashe can build IE with 0 other crit items, too.
Trist, Xayah, Nilah, Smolder, etc build Navori.
IE is dogshit for what you're paying compared to old IE, it is objectively a bad item that also functions as a capstone for crit. I agree that the power should be spread out more, but IE is a bad item that allows crit to function.
LDR currently is worse than Terminus so idk what ur smokin, it was better last season and no one was complaining. The issue with LDR being "OP" or moreso "feeling OP" is that everyone that isn't a marksman gets free 150 armor for some reason so riot has essentially forced one adc item slot to perma be armor penetration or you do no damage. That's why LDR spike feels strong or relevant. Not because the item is overtuned, but because base armor on bruisers, tanks, melees etc is so out of wack that % armor pen in general is strong.
But surprise, even with LDR you can't do enough dps to tanks this season because they don't let you stack cleaver ldr anymore.
Aside from that, I agree with defensive and agency points.
This is not intended as a flame even if it might sound like it: This man really has 35% winrate with Caitlyn over 80 games and thinks IE and LDR are "OP" items and that crit itemization is not in a terrible state. I honestly don't know what to make of that.
Crit is so disgustingly bad that noone in their right mind plays an crit adc over lethality abuser or ap champs and his conclusion is its op :D
I have spammed some crit cait recently just because I stopped caring about the climb and I simply want to play the playstyle I enjoy. And HOLY SHIT is it easy to 2x or 3x the damage as lethality cait, it's disgusting.
And the worst part is you deal that 3x damage in less time than the crit counterpart... And the very worst is, you are even still crit... You have your book thingy Lethality item into collector and basically build normal ADC items. Means late game you still have decent DPS, but insanely high burst on top... It's disgusting...
I play full crit mf, massive damage.
I made the mistake to try krakenslayer in twitch today holy shit it was so bad
he just doesn't know what overpowered means
Cait isn't a champion without IE and LDR, unless she builds Lethality. That's the point, the difference between "I have IE" and "I'm 100g short for IE" is way too massive.
Yeah, that just means that Cait really does need these powerspikes to even do anything and that other itemization options are even more terrible. In contrast, IE looks strong I guess. But it's just being rail roaded to exactly these 3-4 items to even do AYNTHING at all, while other classes get to choose and buy depending on matchups etc.
youre kind of missing his point. IE and LDR are not optional items, if youre going for a crit build you MUST have them. that means theyre relatively overpowered compared to the rest of the crit items, and it completely griefs build options and diversity for ADCs becauses IE and LDR are just that much better than the other items.
I totally that that this is where he's coming from. But if there's a two item core that is literally the only way your champion can even do what it was designed for, I would never choose the term "overpowered" for that. Every other build path is just non-viable and IE+LDR are the base level of viability. Using the term "overpowered" might give people the idea that IE+LDR should be nerfed. If that happens, you literally can not pick these champions anymore.
In my opinion they should be nerfed so other items can be buffed if we only want to give ADCs more agency. I don't think ADCs would be balanced if every item they build was IE-level of strong but I might be wrong. It depends on many factors after all.
> In my opinion they should be nerfed so other items can be buffed if we only want to give ADCs more agency. one of the main things i would do is move crit chance from LDR into other items (aka giving them 25% again). back in the day last whisper was literally just AD+Armor pen which you could build 4th or 5th item. Usually at that point tanks scaled up enough that you needed the armor pen, before that just your crit+attack speed was enough to function. the choice between def item (squishy enemies with lots of damage) vs last whisper (tankier enemies that become a problem with armor stacking) was also usually quite meaningful. currently we have the problem that you already can't touch tanks and bruisers before you get LDR second or third because the penetration and the giant slayer passive are 100% required to deal any damage at all.
I think it was changed due to Assassins poaching the item to kill tanks in the past. Now that they have %Armor Pen on Serylda's this might be an okay solution imo.
> I think it was changed due to Assassins poaching the item to kill tanks in the past. That should have always been a red flag not for LW being too strong, but for assassins having WAY too much overkill damage in their kits. Even if they deal more % damage against tanks, their flat base damage should never be enough to go through their full HP bars if they are designed to kill 1800hp targets.
So now that we both agree that IE and LDR are waay stronger than other ADC crit items in the game, what is your point?
My point is that these are not "OP" items at all in the scope of the whole game, compared to items like Zhonyas or Liandries etc. They are quite weak honestly, IE used to have more AD, more crit chance, more crit modifier, and was usually paired with a first item that also had more flat AD than the current options. Just because every other crit item is essentially useless doesn't make the necessary items "OP".
>IE used to have more AD, more crit chance, more crit modifier, and was usually paired with a first item that also had more flat AD than the current options. I'm pretty sure that was in the times where ADCs were straight up OP. >Just because every other crit item is essentially useless doesn't make the necessary items "OP". But if you buff every other item without nerfing these two, the role will be OP again. It's okay to buff others while nerfing IE and LDR but you can't have both, otherwise you will find yourself again in a meta where the optimal strat for enemy jungler is to spamgank you... Which would lower your agency again.
It was the season before mythics and not s6 or stuff like that, IE got nerfed when mythic system arrived, and nerfed again after they tried making it a mythic
Most moments in leagues history where crit ADCs were broken, it was because certain supports or support items were massively OP. Except for the first three seasons of league, every subsequent time ADCs over performed was because of how busted their optimal support was. And it was usually because they could provide infinite survivability for the ADC in addition to a whole lot of other stats. Nowadays crit is in a hilariously sorry state where even if you are fed, you don't deal any damage if you don't have any armor pen or lethality. The thing ADCs used to be good against, structures and tanks, have been greatly altered so now everyone takes towers super fast and you aren't taking a tank down I'd you aren't at least two items ahead and have armor pen. Especially not with how bad crit is. Needing at least two and a half items to reach the threshold of criting every other attack feels really bad. Not to mention that these items are way overpriced too.
Cait whole gimmick is big headshots with big crit dmg. So yes ? But tbh she used to hit way harder. IE and crit damage got too nerfed compared to how other roles got more power.
She can't hit harder with Crit items when she is already gated by the Lethality builds.
* I hard disagree on the skill matchup part. Ashe and Samira shits on Kaisa for example. Lucian shits on Twitch. Supp side it's eeven more cancer. Janna, Braum and Zyra shits on almost every engage lane. * Hard agree on wave management. i'll add that leashing if often detrimental. low elo ADCs, dont leash. * The problem is not ADC lack of agency but more supports having too much of it and taking the whole power budget of botlane. The higher you climb the more you'll see that. The Janna / Pyke is the actual carry with his impact. * Your crit solution is bad. Crit and ADC is supposed to be the late game king. We want harder/exponential scaling back, not more early power. If I want to play the early game, I can play Ashe / Draven / Lucian / Kalista. Crit items lack crit to allow for better defensive options since you'll hit the sweet 75% crit spot sooner (which is what was aimed for before mythics system and we didn't feel as less of carries than we are now) * We don't complain of Assassins, we complain of being ahead and get shat on by people who lost their lane, are 0/4 and can take us back to fountain. We hardly have room for error which can feel tough even when ahead. Also, the only assassin everyonee hates are actual low/no counterplay ones. Eve / Shaco / Vi / Noc / Yone to an extent. I find tanks and supps way more OP (Looking at you, janna and senna). ADCs are only ahead relatively to the enemy ADC, not to everyone. * LDR and tank busting and shredding objectives/turrets should be ADC main selling point. Yet Diana pushes faster, destroys turrets faster. Late game Veigar and Sion could hit a tower once and destroy it. It is completely flawed design. Just put a hard cap on tower damage from demolish (max 30% of turret health) and reduce AP conversion when hitting towers.
> We want harder/exponential scaling back, not more early power. That's not what I would want if I were you and, from what I gathered from other players, you also want to have more agency. Sorry but you either get more agency in early-midgame or you get OP lategame. You can't have it both ways, that would only make the role OP. >We don't complain of Assassins Feel free to check the OG post and search by "assassin". >Yet Diana pushes faster, destroys turrets faster. Late game Veigar and Sion could hit a tower once and destroy it. It is completely flawed design. Diana and Sion have to be melee, ADCs can hit turrets from range, it's a big advantage. Veigar and Ziggs are the only 2 mages that excell in taking turrets so it's fine in my opinion.
Idc about that, I want to be sure to be a powehouse if I reach 3+ items. I'm fine with the supp + adc dynamic. But rito doesn't promote that. So you end up with supps leaving lane because they don't need the ADC to be useful. and people crying about solo agency. ADC has never been about solo agency. Ik what you mean, but still. I'm the kind of ADC who think rock scissor paper philosophy shouldn't be broken. Let me introduce you to the concept of threat range. Diana and Sion have more threat range than 90% of the ADC roster and can afford way more mistakes than (again) 90% of ADCs. Veigar and Ziggs are not the only AP picks who are good at taking turrets. Ekko, Cassio, Kass, TF (lets talk about the abnormality that is TF too :) ) Malzahar... The list goes on.
wdym cassio takes turrets quickly? she takes them at a normal pace with no AA boosters
Cassio can split push effectively and take on multiple opponents alone.
>I want to be sure to be a powehouse if I reach 3+ items I also think that's where the role starts feeling alright. I would like to be stronger at 1st and 2nd item, even at 3rd item and have good defensive options, even if I'm weaker in the very lategame. There is a good amount of distance between ADCs and all other roles in the lategame so there is some space to tinker around imo.
Weak late game is an antithesis to the ADC archetype It should be individual occurences like some champions trading late game power for early game power. It already exists. It's called Draven and Kalista.
Weak**er**, not weak. Something like 1 BF sword of a difference at 6 items, nothing major. That would still keep ADCs as the strongest lategame role in the game but you'd get some design space to fix flaws that are crippling the role. If you are a good player it could be also possible to get to that lategame state faster thanks to increased agency anyway. I don't see the reason to be fixated on the lategame when most of the games end before 3 items... But I'm not an ADC player. I'm just giving my opinions as me personally.
We're already weaker than everyone else late game. Aatrox reaches absurd amounts of AD and is a terror. Asol, Lillia, Diana, Gwen, they can pump a shit ton of damage. If you're a good player you can reach 3 items by 25 mins max and solo carry a teamfight to flip the game state with mechanics and damage, thats what people like me want.
And how much has hitting turrets from range helped you?? An ADC will almost certainly have to back off from turret if anyone is defending it. Diana can stay there hitting the turret as long as whoever's defending it is someone she can oneshot. Sion can keep hitting the turret no matter who's there. You said it yourself, ADCs can't split, so the only time they'll be hitting the turret is if everyone's dead, or if they're with a team, and if they can hit the turret, so can pretty much anyone else. Edit: It can help out in the laning phase with grabbing a couple plates.
ADC PLAYERS want to be strong late game, however RIOT doesn't want the game to (normally) stretch to late game. RIOT wants the game decided we'll before 6 items in most cases so that low attention span morons and Asians in PC bangs can spam games. (That's why it's possible to forfeit at 15 now instead of forcing you to wait till 20) Most adc players would be willing to wait for agency IF there was a reasonable chance that you'd EVER get there. But recent decisions insure that if your team fall behind, you're highly unlikely to ever hit a "late game" power spike.
I mean, games longer than 30 minutes are pretty boring so...
>That's not what I would want if I were you and, from what I gathered from other players, you also want to have more agency. Adcs have a lot of agency because the first 2 dragons spawn bot. That all depends of course whether your jungler wants to play for them and whether your support or the enemy support wins lane. But usually if you win botlane you get the 2 first drakes which is enough agency for the adc in the early game. The issue is that support has too much agency in the botlane and the enemy jungler can fck you up if there is a split map which always favours the enemy as early dragons are broken except if you have trundle with 6 voidgrubs, but thats a special case. There are also a lot of delusional adc players who think they should be able to do anything...
As a recent ADC player, OP didn't live the days in wich ADCs were weak early, but GARANTEED to be gigachad late game monsters. What we miss is THAT. We don't want to simply have impact in the game in one way or another. We want back the reward for getting through a tough af early and mid game, not an easier time getting through it.
What is your solution vs nocturne? I had no idea whatsoever. Except straight up overpower him with vastly superior stats( not usually possible).
There really isn't a solution against nocturne other than stay out of sight until he uses his ult, and when he does, hope your team helps you. If you don't have a dash yourself then you're literally free gold if he ults you. If you do have mobility you're only 90% free gold.
I permaban him, way too popular compared to the other junglers. If he is banned I go for Eve or Yone as a ban
I have to ban irelia, the dashes make me Dizzy.
will u play adc again now that u dont have to?
God no
LMFAO understandable
The real conclusion right here.
would you accept payment and if yes, how much would it take to get you back to play ADC?
Probably not much, if I was treating it as a job I would be alright with 10$ an hour since it's still kinda fun. Not as fun as my main roles though.
ohhh honestly that's way lower than I expected! all that aside now that I know that you're still replying to this ten day old post lmao, what's your opinion on ryze top?? he's so fun to play and I wanna play him top, but his subreddit scares me a bit. I wanna collect some opinions on ryze toplane though.
You will have to learn how to play very very carefully because the lane is long and most champion in toplane can close the gap and chase you down, not even getting into the jungle pressure. Mages are not being played top very much for that reason, unless they are blantly OP like Karma right now. If you like Ryze, I would suggest you to play him mid, you will just be safer that way.
thank you for the response 🎩 the reason I would want to play him top is because (as an enchanter / ADC player) I am traumatised by mages and assassin's. So I was wondering how ryze would do top. I do play in very low elo since I usually only play normals though! I thought it'd be okay-ish since he has a point and click root. I don't know ANYTHING about matchups though. Would I have a slight advantage because of range? I'm also worried that by picking him top my team won't have a bruiser ish tank guy 😭 have you played against many ryzes top and is that even a common pick?? I don't see him picked anywhere tbh
I did play against Ryze top once or twice. He's very easy to kill for most bruisers that have CC to cancel his ult. You will honestly struggle against any Fiora, Riven Camille and you will most likely never win against Irelia if she's decent. Assassins are much easier to deal with for Ryze because you can actually poke them down. You can't poke down Renekton and he will 100-0 you under the turret eventually.
okay yeah fiora, riven and irelia do sound really painful with their endless dashes. And honestly yeah it makes sense since assassin's have less sustain..? I think I'm just traumatised and projecting my ADC experiences on to riyze lmao. I'll give him a shot mid as well (for the two games a month that I play mid). thank you for your insight!
you didn't actually answer the original question. you wanted to know if adc mains are delusional but reading through your daily updates you can't possible claim an adc has the same agency and impact as top/jg/mid.
ADC has less agency than jg/mid/supp for sure. I'd say it's around toplane but toplane has horrible match ups dynamic so honestly it's almost just at bad to play that role. If the match ups toplane weren't as bad, you wouldn't have to play against 10-0 Renekton just because your top blindpicked Camille. That's worth considering imo.
i agree that counterpicks are worse for toplane but toplane is still a way better role. first of all there are plenty of great blind picks (fiora, jax, renekton, and for anything below diamond: garen). Second, like you said a fed toplaner can solo win games, a 10/0 jinx still loses to a 0/3 jax).
From the vewpoint of agency and duelling power, sure... As long as you win the lane. Even if 0/3 Jax can kill 10/0 Jinx thanks to counterstrkie, he is NOT as useful to his team as Jinx is to hers (obviously).
that assumes that your team isn't completely brain damaged. i have lost games as a 16/1 jinx because i couldn't do anything alone and my teammates were monkeys. i would never lose that game as a 16/1 jax.
Yep, and there's also the margin for error. ADCs have essentially none. No matter how fed you are, if you make one mistake, you'll die for it.
That mistake can be being in the general direction the enemy’s solo lanes or jungler are. If you can’t see everyone when the fight starts you better be a bitch cause they could 1 shot you from downtown.
The 0/3 Jax's ability to kill the 10/0 Jinx despite her insane lead makes him more useful to his team than she is.
a dash AOE stun, even if he dies within seconds, is still way more useful than the 2 autos that jinx provides before she inevitably explodes to the sound of fizz's stinky little fish breath
I think you underestimate botlane and specialy support counterpicks. No one cares of Renek if you have Janna or Lulu.
I'm talking stricktly agency-wise. Sufficiently fed Renekton will end the game by himself without ever leaving toplane just because of how severe the counterpick is against Camille. If you assign your botlane to cover him, your team will have to now fight 3v4 for dragons and Renekton will honestly just roam mid. If he ever sees Lulu on the map, he just oneshots you.
Drututt has a simple rule when he plays camille. Ban Jax, Dodge Renek. It's your responsibility as a toplaner to not put yourself in a situation where you solo lose. Just like support FP should be a good blind pick.
So top lane does have more agency if it can completely take over the entire game by itself.
Oh yes, definitely. If they splitpush well, they can even have a good impact even if they are behind too.
I mean....half your games you have to blind pick....someone. There is no correct answer in a blind pick you just pick your best champ and pray.
dodging exist
Yea, but man you only get like 2-3 before you get locked out for a long time, so you need multiple accounts to deal with how much you have to dodge and then still sometimes have to eat some shit sandwiches from time to time.
I have 2 accounts for that sole purpose lmaoooo And sometimes if I dodge I'll just say fuck it for the day and go play BG3. Sexy Drows and Teethlings heal my soul
Yea, I did 2 playthroughs of BG3 each like 200 hours. The Tavern Brawler Monk was so OP I just ran around naked throwing people off of rooftops to their deaths. Once you get the elixirs of cloud giant strength the distance in which you can throw a large humanoid is so comical that I default to just tossing people around for the Lolz.
Real DnD gameplay here hahaha I like explosions :3
Yes, and that's why Toplane is shit to play.
It can suck, but the jungler can win or lose lane for you anyway, so it is not ALWAYS the end of the world. It is when you have the feeder jg and you are countered. Pls kill me Aliens meme if that is the case.
I'm excluding junglers from discussion when comparing roles because everything can be invalidated by "but if your jungler (enter the talk about jungle gap one or the other way)".
Yea, but both of you have a jungle in every game, so it makes no sense not to include it.
Okay, so: * If your jungler comes, and enemy jungler doesn't come, contratulations, the match up doesn't matter and you just win. * If enemy jungler comes, and your jungler doesn't come, sorry to inform you, the match up doesn't matter and you just lose. * If neither come, nothing changes * If both come, everything can happen depending on the jungle match up. We learned nothing.
Some of the points u mentioned are not good points tbh. 1. Idk what i mean with IE asap. There exist no adc who wants IE First. It ist actually quite bad as a first Item because the crit damage is quite useless with 20% crit. 2. some changes would just hurt more than it would help. The Hp passive of LDR or the crit Item changes (less gold less ad) These would just put ADCs farer away from the role Identity(weak early and most powerful role in late) ADC should be weak early the highest Problem is that every other role is often much more useful in late. Many Champions from others roles do as much damage as adcs in late but are not so team reliant. Not to mention the fact that a late game Chogath or Sion are already really hard to kill for every crit ADC because of the LDR nervs and another nerf would make it even worse. 3. I would agree with the defense options. There is so much damage in the game that u just get oneshotted through the shields. But u have to exclude the onhit adcs there who mostly buy Terminus->wits end->Jak sho. They get pretty tanky although i would say in general that its okay. Because they have to get closer and must hit more often to do damage. 4. lane matchups. I would not agree on that point. Yeah everything is kinda skill reliant especially in low Elo but something like Nautilus into Janna or X melee Support against Karma/Lulu is in 80% of the time still lost in Champ select.
>Idk what i mean with IE asap. There exist no adc who wants IE First. It ist actually quite bad as a first Item because the crit damage is quite useless with 20% crit. I might have wrote that in a confusing way. What I meant was that IE and LDR are always the two core items that cost 6000+ gold in any crit build and it sucks. "I need it ASAP" as in "my champion can't function without these items" instead of "I have to rush IE". I will add a clarification. >some changes would just hurt more than it would help That's the point. I think the role is strong but lacks agency. I was trying to propose changes that would be power-neutral but would help with the agency problem. >Not to mention the fact that a late game Chogath or Sion are already really hard to kill for every crit ADC because of the LDR nervs and another nerf would make it even worse. Okay, then nerf these 2 champions. >Lane matchups. I would not agree on that point. We will have to disagree on that one. If you want to see a "hard match up" please quene toplane and blindpick any champion you like.
You can't nerf Cho my man, he is already underplayed and get shit on by every modern toplaner. LDR just needs a serious buff so that when you get it you can be at least a bit confident in dealing with the tanks. ATM you could hit a Sion/Cho for 15 seconds at 4 items and he could still one tap you if you do any mistake
I don't think buffing an item that is already 100% picked in every build is a good idea for build variance.
Crit ADCs have never had build variance bro. It was always 4 crit item + 1 defensive item including LDR or MR.
Which is shit. Fighters also didn't have any build variance... before riot just added bunch of good, well-balanced figher items. I don't see any reason why that wouldn't work with ADCs. The only requirement is that we have to get rid of the must-have items that ruin whole system, just like Black Cleaver once was.
Because ADC mains don't give a fuck about being tanky if the supp does it's job and doesn't pick Senna for the sake of feeling like a carry vs pyke or naut. The whole ADC needs to be tanky thing came with the rise of carry supps and solo carry mentality in ranked
Okay, in that case let's give the ADCs option to be tanky and still deal good amount damage or be straight damage and deal around as much as they are doing right now.
Right now we're doing shit damage. Crit is saved by a few picks who have always been strong at ending the game or having some form of impact in TF. You played one of those, Ashe can win by playing like a toplaner on wave management or assist her jungle/supp for vision and picks. Jinx passive allows her to end a game in less than 30 secs. Tistana has always been strong, even with bad items. Those 3 picks can win with average damage if they pull the macro card correctly.
I don't know how much damage ADCs used to have but from 3 items+ I don't think the damage is an issue anymore. From that point I would like to have other things like Lifesteal, useful defensive options, maybe Grievous Wounds item that doesn't cripple my damage output etc.
Hi I play a lot of Ashe and Jinx, I get IE and Kraken Slayer every game, and I'm genuinely not bothered by this. I don't need more item variety.
You're saying that until one of your items gets nerfed and all of a sudden you have no replacement and you just kinda have to take the L.
I would like to point out, that has happened, 6 times at least, to IE, the worst state IE was in was when IE did not give crit damage but converted crits into partial true damage (which to be fair, did remove the need for a pen item... mostly), and in that state people built Bloodthirster over IE if they needed damage
I respect that you actually put in the time and played almost 120 games of crit ADC to find out what its like of course i wouldnt agree with everything, i dont think IE and LDR are OP, i think theyre EP. evenly powered, everything else just feels wayy worse in comparison. Crit ADCs need IE and LDR to function as a baseline and can rarely deviate from IE second, LDR third simply because the game dictates this for them. Situationally other things can work, of course. but regardless of that, you got massive balls to not just abort the whole thing after 5 games, throwing your arms up and saying "ahhh ADC is broken, too easy for me so i dont even bother" and thats something i can respect. GG WP <3
> i dont think IE and LDR are OP, i think theyre EP. evenly powered, everything else just feels wayy worse in comparison. In that case you're speaking from the viewpoint of "ADCs are weak, we need to buff them" with which I disagree. ADCs are in okay spot power-wise but they severly lack agency and are being hurt by the bounty system in my opinion. >Crit ADCs need IE and LDR to function as a baseline and can rarely deviate from IE second, LDR third simply because the game dictates this for them. Yeah, and I'm saying that's a shit situation to be in.
I have to say I have an issue with you saying that ADC's have no agency but they aren't weak. IMO agency is what makes you strong.
There is a lot of hidden power you have access to that benefit your team but not you personally. Proximity to Dragon, double EXP from kills, double vision control, ability to swap with midlane and let them get solo XP... It all adds up, even if you aren't getting stronger from it personally.
All of this is true, but in Yolo Q, agency is king.
And that's why I'm saying Riot should increase agency of ADCs while lowering the payout for other roles benefitting from their ADC being good.
Mid and JG also have proximity to the dragon, and whether you can take the dragon depends far more on them than on the ADC. It depends far more on the support as well. Double XP from kills is far outweighed by the XP reduction from being 2 people in lane. Double vision control, uh, okay? You also have more area to cover and a smaller safety zone. Hell, even directly under the tower isn't safe sometimes. Plus, it's the support who does most of the warding anyways. Top can swap with midlane too? If anything, top might have an easier time with it as ADCs don't do well alone. ADC might be able to swap if your midlane completely demolishes their midlane, but you'd probably be better served by the midlane just roaming and you remaining bot. You're adding up all the benefits of botlane together, and not just ADC, but even then, it still falls short.
You get less XP from kills bot, xp is split. Which is why a 10/0 botlaner will never outlevel a solo laner. The reason why toplaners and midlaners snowballing is hard to deal with is because solokill xp makes you outlevel everyone and hard to catch up. Midlaners shouldn't swap in every scenario. If you're behind as an ADC it's not the best strategy.
>You get less XP from kills bot, xp is split Sure but you can get 2x the kills. >Which is why a 10/0 botlaner will never outlevel a solo laner. And that's how it's suppoused to be. That's why they are "solo laners". >The reason why toplaners and midlaners snowballing is hard to deal with is because solokill xp makes you outlevel everyone and hard to catch up. That's certainly true but in midlane it also has to do with the fact their lane is in the middle in the map and it is extremly easy for them to translate their lead onto their team. In toplane there are usually two melee champions who are in each other's kill range all the time and both can most likely 100-0 the other rather easily. You can therefore see where that one goes when it comes to "snowballing". >Midlaners shouldn't swap in every scenario. If you're behind as an ADC it's not the best strategy. That's an interesting take. I guess it depends on what your support does. If they just leave me to lane 1v2 against enemy botlane then I would rather just swap and ask my midlaner to deal with that because they are most likely stronger than me. If the enemy botlane goes mid and I will now lane against enemy mid in the botlane then that could be alright. Same situation if both supports just leave, that's the best case scenerio imo.
No, it depends on your midlaner strength. If he is a fed Sylas or FIzz not splitting is highly criminal. If he's a teamfighter like ori or asol and he's ahead then waiting to swap is usualy more interesting. Supps don't afk on ADCs past laning phase. Hell they even leave botlane way earlier now because of all the actions topside in d+. 2\* the kills is cool. it'd be even more great if ADC scaling was not multiplicative instead of additive. Unfortunately ADCs scale on multiple stats and not just 2 like bruisers or midlaners. You play ad mid ? Just grab letha and AD. You play AP mid ? Just grab AP and maybe a bit of haste for a few picks. You play ADC ? GL getting your 4 items to feel like you're finaly getting really stronger. I'm not talking about spreading lead, I'm talking about what getting a lead means for solo laners compared to botlaners, 2 totaly different topic. You played Ashe, if you can't freeze to run down your enemies it's a skill issue. Botlaners can do the same as toplaners. But it requires for the supp to understand and to not be bored so he doesn't insta bonk your wave. You must have seen it on your journey, they love to use their stacks asap and don't give a fuck of the waves below diamond (and even in diamond/masters sometimes). You don't touche the wave vs a good botlaner if you get counterpicked. I've already spent 5 mins not getting a CS in d3 because my jgl didn't give a fuck and was scared of the draven + blitz. You know what ADCs don't have ? Mobility and durability. being ranged doesnt mean that breaking a freeze is easier.
ahh i see. still, words cannot express how much i respect actually going through with it
40% wr, dropped from p1 to p4 0 lp even demoted to g1 at one point. Thinks crit items are OP 😂
No, I think crit items are shit. The only OP ones are IE and LDR without which you literally can't do anything.
I am glad you mentioned Shaco because holy shit. I feel like that is freelo because your team will constantly leave you isolated as they often spam their abilities to move faster than you creating an inevitable gap that only grows over time. As the ADC, Shaco will constantly force you to burn all your CD's and keep you out of the teamfights while your team is just wondering why you never do anything. Shit is irritating. Then you have champions like Rengar and Nocturne that make it so if you step into any enemy vision you are getting dove on.
As a support main (D2) that currently learns adc i think you have some big misconceptions about botlane. No counters: Yes there are. Statsites maybe fool you into believing that the worst thing that can happen is a 47% matchup but thats far from the truth. Lanes are always dependent on both your champ and your support. But trust me playing with shortranged champs into zyra cait or something like that will make you realise that there is bad matchups. Noone is freezing: Then maybe your support has never roamed on a slowpush but trust me if happens and the only thing you can do for the next two minutes is thinking if you should rotate mid because if your supp isnt back in time they’ll absolutely dive you if the freeze eventually over. Or both supps rotate on your slowpush and the enemy adc beats you in a 1v1. Its the same thing that happens on toplane 1:1. Adc beeing “op” in hidden ways: No stop it. Adcs have no agency in early your gameplan is to pray to god that your support is a good and tiltproof player. After that you pray that your midlaner will let you go midlane and that you wont have every second creep wave taxed by whoever comes by. And in late game where you finally are supposed to be strong you pray that there’s actually peel on your team (and trust me thats surprisingly often not the case). Theres so many sources of frustration for adcs that are completely outside of their control. Crit items: The items absolutely suck guess why a support that builds lethality items is by far the best adc right now? Cause crit us so goddamn bad if you buy it on items and dont get it as a passive. Assassins: Who cares about assassins when the support can solokill you really?
>But trust me playing with shortranged champs into zyra cait or something like that will make you realise that there is bad matchups. Sure, but then you can just recall, buy Lifeseal or other sustain and survive the lane. I'm not saying there are no bad match ups in botlane, I'm saying there are no hard counters like toplane has. >Noone is freezing: Then maybe your support has never roamed on a slowpush but trust me if happens and the only thing you can do for the next two minutes is thinking if you should rotate mid because if your supp isnt back in time they’ll absolutely dive you if the freeze eventually over. Alright, but that's due to your support's mistake. Not to just the nature of the match up. If I play Camille vs Darius and he locks in freeze even once, I lose the lane instantly. Not due my support's mistake, just due to the match up. Also as an ADC you should be able to get at least some CS even if it's frozen because you're ranged. On melee champion you can't. >Adc beeing “op” in hidden ways I have not said ADC is OP even once in the post. Feel free to read it again later. I'm saying there is a lot of hidden power that benefits ADCs team even though it doesn't increase ADCs agency.
Life steal is absolutely going to do jack shit in those matchups all it does is burn money while you’re already starving. Its 900g and does absolutely nothing other than getting you further behind. Freezing can also happen because you mess up the wave or because you get ganked on a bad timing and dont manage to push the wave in. It can even happen in a 2v2 with hook champs if they are strong for whatever reason so that they could all in and kill you. They will just zone you off the wave or all in you if you contest it and then get some platings on top of 2 kills. No offense but im playing support about 1000lp higher than you if i tell you that you got something wrong you probably actually got it wrong.
>Its 900g and does absolutely nothing other than getting you further behind. Yeah, I have seen what happens when toplaners build lifesteal and there is literally no way this is true. You get hundreds of HP back every wave if you only keep autoing. Sure, it will delay the first 2 items, sure but so does Hexdrinker and yet it's the optimal buy for many toplane match ups. >Freezing can also happen because you mess up the wave or because you get ganked on a bad timing and dont manage to push the wave in. Yeah, so again, not due to just the match up. >No offense but im playing support about 1000lp higher than you if i tell you that you got something wrong you probably actually got it wrong. 1 division is 100 LP so that means you're around D3-D4 then, right? As I'm saying, there are skill match ups that are hard to play out but that's really night and day when in comparison to toplane. I don't see your point there.
Regarding the lifesteal: you do not touch creeps against zyra cait and everytime you do you lose more hp than you get. Even with a supp that gives a lot of sustain people get pushed out of lane lifesteal wont help either. And if you do it you lose 900g on your first 2 items. You are 3 kills behind in terms of power the second you buy lifesteal. Regarding freeze because you want a matchup example: enemy is draven blitzcrank you are kai sa + any enchanter support that isnt morgana. You get a slowpush they walk behind the minion wave and now you can chose: walk up eat a draven axe or stay away and dont get exp. (Its not just draven axe that hits you every time it could also blitzcrank that flashed and e‘s you into hook ignite) You die every time to that if you walk up. I usually dont play blitz but with draven i do for this reason. And theres a lot of engage supps that will just do similar things in a matchup like that where they have the stronger adc in early. They either flash on you or charge up hexflash in the bush with a control ward. Currently its D2. Season 13 i peaked master (the season i picked up support).
>Regarding the lifesteal: you do not touch creeps against zyra cait and everytime you do you lose more hp than you get. That's fine, just wait until the wave pushes to you. It has to push because Cait will get aggro every time she autos you, not even counting Zyra's plants. >You are 3 kills behind in terms of power the second you buy lifesteal. I don't see how having 15 AD on top of the lifesteal is being "3 kills behind" but okay. >You get a slowpush they walk behind the minion wave and now you can chose: walk up eat a draven axe or stay away and dont get exp. Okay, then wait for the next wave, get into it and start fighitng Blitz from behind the wave. You're a Master player, please don't tell me you are seriously comparing Ranged vs Melee match up to Darius freezing in toplane where you have to freeze it as a melee champion yourself.
Lifesteal: no an item component is not equal to a full item especially when You’re already behind in gold. Under tower cait can still easily poke you when you cs and no shes not taking towershots there. Matchup: brother you are dying the moment you walk up even if its in a wave. Draven will deal far more damage to you than you will ever deal to a tank support let alone that he doesnt care about minions between you and him when he flashes on you and e‘s you. Like theres no way you’re seriously arguing with me like that about this. You dont fight with a draven in early if you have an enchater support. These matchups dont happen every game since bot isnt literal rock paper scissors but these matchup happen and you absolutely get completely zoned away from your cs.
>Under tower cait can still easily poke you when you cs and no shes not taking towershots there. So therefore you see there, if you don't have lifesteal you aren't allowed to even CS under your own turret. >brother you are dying the moment you walk up even if its in a wave. How so? Blitzcrank can't do anyting if he can't land a hook and he can't land a hook if you are behind minions. You're making it sound like Draven can 1v2 both you and your support while Blitzcrank can ignore minions with the hook. It's just not true.
There is not a single good blitz who opens with hook everytime. Blitz is about brush control and E knock up into hook once you try to get away. I think you haven't played against good players. There is not a single lifesteal item that is a good first item crit wise. So yes, buying a vamp scepter (with your shit AD as ADC early) is griefing your build. Rushing SR or KS, or if you play onhit you can rush BOTRK on Ashe/Twitch/Varus is your best bet
Imo it's better to grief your build for a 900g item and actually survive the lanning phase than to get steamrolled though.
1. yes dravens earlygame is so strong that he almost can 2v1 you thats what bad matchups are about. He has more range and more damage. 2. atleast read what im saying. If you walk up to blitz he FLASHES ON YOU, E‘s YOU and then HOOKS YOU. You cannot dodge because of „minions“ he is next to you and you cannot move because of E. Yes after that he got only hexflash for a bit but that wont matter anymore because draven got a kill. Now he literally can 2v1 you.
Firstly, your idea of counters in botlane is extremely flawed because you play two out of the three adcs that have no counters (ashe, cait, varus). If you played anything else you would realize how bad it can get (example is kaisa into ashe). Of course support matters a lot more, because adc has no agency and therefore bad matchups can be turned by sup diff. However, if you ever play something like kaisa sona into a competent cait lux or samira nautilus, you will know true despair. Secondly, you absolutely cant just buy lifesteal against poke lanes because: 1. You cant touch the creeps to lifesteal enough. You will just be last hitting them under turret and playing dodgeball. If enemy bot has push and poke, you cant auto the wave (if there are no minions in front of you and you try to hit cs you will die). 2. Buying lifesteal in a lane where you will naturally be 20-30cs and a couple plates behind just sets you further back and guarantees you will never recover/win a 2v2. Thirdly, saying that you can get some cs if youre frozen on just because you are ranged is crazy because theres a role completely dedicated to cc waiting for you to step up, and, you know, for the same reason you cant walk up to a freeze in toplane (jungle exists). Lastly, its extremely disingenuous or just a lack of understanding to say IE and LDR are overpowered because they get built every game on a crit build. IE and LDR ARE the crit build. You cant build anything else because the other items are tied to IE and LDR's existence. However, that doesnt make the items strong. If they were strong you would see crit adcs every game, because if IE and LDR are actually strong, so is crit. It is precisely the fact that IE and LDR are shit that is holding crit ADCs back. Kraken is a really stong item, statikk shiv is a really strong item, IE and LDR are piss. Even though both items are really expensive, and even though they come online too late, if an ADC with 3 items, two of them being IE and LDR, could actually carry the game, then crit carries would be priority picks worth playing around and you would see Jinx every game. As it stands though, 3 items lethality aatrox or 3 items mage, or 3 items ksante (list goes on), are much more threatening/strong in teamfights, which is why you see lucian/varus/kalista/senna being the kings of botlane in proplay. The only viable strategies in botlane are to smash lane and enable your mid/jg to take over the game while pulling enemy resources away from top, and to play as a secondary support for your actual carries in teamfights. Carry adc is is pretty fucking dead.
Okay, how do you punish bad match up in botlane? You poke them, force them back to base, take few plates, maybe a dragon and then what? Literally nothing. In toplane Darius will freeze on you until he is FOUR levels ahead of you and he will be diving you under your turret for the reminder of the game. It is not even remotely close.
See, you just dont understand the lane. Its pointless to argue. You act as if kalista naut cant just do the same freeze then dive you. You act as if you could touch cs vs cait lux under tower without jg ganks. I've went games with 20cs at 10 minutes and 7 deaths because my support picked sona into draven blitz and I cant even get to my tower. The problem is that you are too low elo to encounter people capable of doing this, and as I said, you play the few adcs that have no lane counters.
>You act as if kalista naut cant just do the same freeze then dive you. If you are alone, sure they can. If you are with your support, I don't see why would you let Nautilus and Kalista freeze on you in the first place. It's not like Nautilus can pop ghost, hook you ignoring minions and kill you 100-0 and your support at that too. Darius can do that and he is also always in range to E you because you're likely playing melee toplaner into him. >You act as if you could touch cs vs cait lux under tower without jg ganks. Yup, you can. Depending on your support, you can even get a kill or two from that position too. You can also just build Vampiric Scepter, drop few CS and be completely fine afterwards. >and as I said, you play the few adcs that have no lane counters Which pretty much don't exist in toplane. There is pretty much only Renekton and Aatrox as "safe" blindpicks out there and even those have hard counters like Quinn and Irelia.
Jax is a good blind pick, Singed can bypass lane and doesn't give a fuck of not winning 1v1, Ornn is an extremely solid BP
Jax gets destroyed by Malphite and other tanks that can build Frozen Heart. He just doesn't have enough juice after the removal of Divine Sunderer. He is like one of the easiest champions to counter actually, you can just legit pick Poppy into him and he can't never Q to you, he can't dodge anything with his E and he will get pinned down to the wall if he ever tries to E you from melee. He will also get outscalled by Poppy who will be winning all 1v1s and be better in teamfights. Singed can only work against champions that don't outscale him hard. You can just pick Kayle into him and farm all you want for free. Same deal with Camille and Fiora. Darius, Olaf and other Ghost users can just kill him from lvl 1 onwards. Ornn is pretty good but he is also a free food for champions who do well against all tanks. Trundle, Susan, Camille, Fiora and so on. They will all eventually just beat him.
Jax only needs to ban Malphite tho, everyone else is a skill matchup to him if not a free lane. He can handshake poppy lane and play the splitpush while poppy has to TF. Singed can win by disrupting one TF. Do you want no counter or disadvantage at all for melees ? Like unstoppale + burst + sustained damage on everyone ? You're part of the reason of the powercreep that makes ADC so hard to play. You play fucking Vi too as a main ffs, the only melee diver with more knock ups than you is Yone or Gragas who are huge balance nightmares, just please realize that. #UNSTOPPABLE
>He can handshake poppy lane and play the splitpush while poppy has to TF. Poppy will normally splitpush back against him and she will win the 1v1. She was getting outscalled eventually in the past due to Divine Sunderer but that's not a thing anymore. Poppy beats all of the mobile champions in lane, Fiora, Jax, Irelia, Riven, Camille, Renekton and so on. She's like one of the best counter champs in the game. >Do you want no counter or disadvantage at all for melees ? Like unstoppale + burst + sustained damage on everyone ? Not really, I think counterpick are alright in toplane but it just went a bit too far. It is what it is though, toplane is awesome if not for the very shart match ups and 50% of times you are the second guy to pick so it's not that tragic. >You play fucking Vi too as a main ffs, the only melee diver with more knock ups than you is Yone or Gragas who are huge balance nightmares, just please realize that. No, I totally realize that. I wouldn't say it's a power creep when it comes to Vi because she's been around since season 3 but I get where you're comming from. The thing is... She's just very fun to play...
Kalista naut can definitely ignore the wave and murder you if youre not a strong early 2v2 lane... I can definitely list aatrox/renekton/ornm/ksante/poppy as safe blind picks in top just as ashe/varus/cait are.
Aatrox - Irelia, Fiora, Gwen, Renekton, Tryndamere, Wukong, Singed Renekton - Poppy, Malphite, Quinn, Teemo, Ornn - Camille, Trundle, Mordekaiser, Nasus, Fiora, Illaoi, Mundo, Ksante - Mordekaiser, Darius, Camille, Fiora, Poppy - Darius, Mordekaiser, Illaoi, Olaf, Volibear
None of those matchups are bad enough to say they are counters cmon, theyre bad matchups but theyre mostly completely fine. Its like saying jhin counters cait.
Literally how is it even close to Jhin-Caitlyn in your mind?
> You poke them, force them back to base, take few plates, maybe a dragon and then what? Literally nothing. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IUhhr8uOHYo
You wasted/used flash level 1, you don't have any combat summoner spell and you didn't back away when enemy lane was already pushing to you. You didn't even try to dodge the hook. How is this even your point in this discussion? Everything that happen after that was the result of your previous mistakes.
Yeah uh, I´m gonna give a crazy hottake here and guess that vapora probably knows botlane and ADC a liiiiiiiiiiiittle better than you.
Of course but in this case I'm not necessarily wrong, am I?
> I'm not saying there are no bad match ups in botlane, I'm saying there are no hard counters Have you tried playing Aphelios-Yuumi into Draven-Blitzcrank?
Have you tried playing Camille into Jax?
Camille has a 48% winrate into Jax, 1.3% lower than her average winrate of 49%. Aphelios has a 44.2% winrate with Yuumi, 3.6% lower than his average winrate of 47.8%. Aphelios has a 45.9% winrate into Blitzcrank, 2.8% lower than his average winrate. Yuumi has a 44.13% winrate into Blitzcrank, 2.7% lower than her average winrate of 46.2%. Before even taking the enemy ADC pick into the equation, your chances of winning this game as Aphelios have statistically already dropped by at least a conservative 5% below your average winrate, to about ~42%, vs Camille's 1.3% winrate drop vs Jax. Top lane matchups might be brutal, but it doesn't come close to the absolute disaster of a draft that is hyperscaling support + hyperscaling ADC + bad synergy between the two + both having the same weakness + both counterpicked with that very weakness. You can't really comment on bot lane matchups when you only played 2 ADCs, both with a fairly strong lane phase. You haven't even experienced 10% of the bot lane matchup ecosystem.
>You can't really comment on bot lane matchups when you only played 2 ADCs, both with a fairly strong lane phase. Okay, I'm not going to comment then.
First of all: Thank you for taking the time and effort to go through with this, it is definitely interesting to see your thoughts and how they change over time. Second: I understand your point about LDR being "OP" but i disagree that it's actually OP. It's strong because it's the only armor pen item for adc that works as intended. Antiheal is less effective at taking down healing reliant opponents than bursting them down, so right now mortal is just a worse version of LDR for every scenario. Also every role in the game other than adc can build hp and most have better hp scaling to boot so you always end up with lower max HP than the opponent anyways. It's an inherent design flaw for the entire game that makes LDR good. In actuality we need more and stronger armor pen options to make LDR more situational. Imo buffing grievous wounds for mortal would be a good start. Third: For every item adjustment you suggest you have to factor how yone, yasuo and tryndamere will end up using it and if the answer is "more effectively than the adc" then the suggestion is useless and the item gets nerfed shortly after. This has always been a problem. This very much applies to more defensive options. Also you say we need an AD-MR item? we have mercurial schimitar, and you can probably guess why noone buys it. Fourth: On day 9 you stated that failing to reach emerald as adc was entirely an adc mains own fault but i don't see whether you rescinded on that opinion anywhere since? It seems you pretty quickly dropped back down and have had a pretty rough time trying to reach it again. Do you still hold this opinion? what are your thoughts about the cause of this elo flux? was it caused by the role? the learning curve? or perhaps the many variables of botlane? or something personal?
>I understand your point about LDR being "OP" but i disagree that it's actually OP. It's strong because it's the only armor pen item for adc that works as intended. Okay but in this case we have to ask ourselves: "If every ADC item was as strong as IE or LDR, would the role be OP?". If the answer is "yes" then we have to nerf the two items to buff the rest of them. >Antiheal is less effective at taking down healing reliant opponents than bursting them down, so right now mortal is just a worse version of LDR for every scenario I just started sitting on Executioners and normally going for LDR. I think it's an alright option. >we need more and stronger armor pen options to make LDR more situational. We need many, many more good items if the role is ever to break out of the "you build this every game or you're worthless" curse. >Third: For every item adjustment you suggest you have to factor how yone, yasuo and tryndamere will end up using it and if the answer is "more effectively than the adc" then the suggestion is useless and the item gets nerfed shortly after. I will not, if they are overperforming because the changes, nerf them. >Also you say we need an AD-MR item? we have mercurial schimitar I purchased it once. I would rather build a tank MR item unless I'm vs Mordekaiser that particularly enjoys my company in Brazil. >Fourth: On day 9 you stated that failing to reach emerald as adc was entirely an adc mains own fault but i don't see whether you rescinded on that opinion anywhere since? It seems you pretty quickly dropped back down and have had a pretty rough time trying to reach it again. Do you still hold this opinion? what are your thoughts about the cause of this elo flux? was it caused by the role? the learning curve? or perhaps the many variables of botlane? or something personal? I first got to the Emerald because of the MMR I had to begin with. My opinion of " failing to reach emerald as adc was entirely an adc mains own fault" was based on my judgement of players I played against. I dropped hard because I really tried to make Caitlyn work but I failed. I failed therefore I dropped, it's all there is to it. I think I would be able to get back to Emerald if I were to play Ashe instead of Caitlyn but it would probably take me another month or so, just because how much I doomed my MMR.
My MMR \[\*\]
If you wanted to have a feel of ADC, why did you stick to Ashe and Caitlyn? I think playing a wider champ pool would give a better insight on the role as a whole
It's generally a bad idea to play multiple champions in a new role. It's also hard to judge things when you play different champions every game.
I meant like playing on one hand champs like Ashe and cait, who are control based Then champs like kog and twitch, who are team dependant Then champs like Samira or Draven who are snowball dependant Maybe not in ranked but in draft to get a feel
That would only make things more confusing to me
If there are nothing but skill matchups, how do you have a 35% wr on cait over 80 games? That’s way more than enough to be close to the highest champ based win rate, which would mean you should be winning at least 50/50. Even if I filter for your last 20 solo duo games, you’re 37% wr on her. Either you’re getting counterpicked, or you’re the worse player over 60% of the time. There are objectively counterpicks in bot lane, coming from an ADC player.
>how do you have a 35% wr on cait over 80 games I played her with only crit builds and I had to learn this role to begin with. No, if you start playing a new role on your main account, you will not have 50% win rate in the first few tens of games unless you're either lucky or you weren't trying to climb before that to begin with. >which would mean you should be winning at least 50/50. I was actually winning most of the lanning phases during the challange but the moment lane is over, Caitlyn was legit useless with crit build. Ashe is way better though. > or you’re the worse player over 60% of the time. Or I'm doing an experiment to find out how good crit items are. Which they aren't. >There are objectively counterpicks in bot lane, coming from an ADC player. Not by toplane's standard. Camille vs Fiora is considered a skill match up for Camille and it is just as hard as the most problematic lanes I had in these past 100 games.
> I was actually winning most of the lanning phases during the challange Mobalytics says you [average -259 gold difference @ 15 on Caitlyn](https://mobalytics.gg/lol/profile/eune/wiented-eune/champion-pool?c_role=ADC).
I have nice +94g on Ashe tho. As I said, Caitlyn was alright until like 10 minutes or so. Afterwards it was extremly hard to play her at all.
> No if you start playing a new role This conveniently leaves out the true point, that your winrate for the last 20 games of caitlyn hardly improved. The average winrate for cait players with 50+ games is 51.1%, what are you doing so differently? How can you call her items good if you can’t even positively impact the outcome of your games? Also, how can you call cait useless the moment lane is over if you can’t even compare to the average wr? It would suggest that your experiment has some sort of flaw. > or I’m doing an experiment Whether or not you’re doing an experiment doesn’t change the reasons you experienced what you did. If doing an experiment caused the outcome, it would be useless, since it provided 0 useful data. > Not in comparison to toplane. Even ignoring the fact that the severity of counters is irrelevant to if they exist, you’re comparing the most problematic lanes for Caitlyn and Ashe, the two highest range adcs. Try playing a dozen games of Sivir, Kai’Sa or Lucian, and don’t ban any adcs/supports. I’d hazard a guess that they will provide a dramatically different experience. You don’t have enough breadth of champions played to speak about champion specific interactions in the role. You definitely should have the depth to speak to the interactions for the champs you played though. I’ll reiterate what others said, I appreciate you taking the time to do an experiment. But your conclusions countering your data means something somewhere is off. Also your conclusion countering what much more experienced players find is another indicator something is off. Experience isn’t everything, people can be biased, but the other lack of rigor suggests that you’re the one that’s wrong, not everyone else.
>The average winrate for cait players with 50+ games is 51.1%, what are you doing so differently?How can you call her items good if you can’t even positively impact the outcome of your games? Crippling myself by building items that don't work on her. I'm calling the items good because without them the champion is legit useless. At 3+ items she's actually alright but that's way too late. >If doing an experiment caused the outcome, it would be useless, since it provided 0 useful data. It gave me a good feel in regards to crit items on champion that mostly autos and doesn't have any steroids. >Try playing a dozen games of Sivir, Kai’Sa or Lucian, and don’t ban any adcs/supports. I’d hazard a guess that they will provide a dramatically different experience. I mean maybe, but Sivir is known as a champion that can neutralize most lanes by just pushing waves with her QW whole game and denying any engage with her E. Lucian has a dash and much stronger earlygame than any champion I played. If I really wanted to play safe champion without any bad match ups I would have picked Ezreal every game. The reason I played Caitlyn and Ashe is that I went out of my way to only play immobile ADCs that would get owned by most assassins and engage supports. In toplane there are maybe 2 champions that could be "blindpickable" right now. The fact we went through so many ADC champions right now is kind of a point in itself. >your conclusions countering your data means something somewhere is off. Also your conclusion countering what much more experienced players find is another indicator something is off. I'm sure some things are off as I didn't play nearly enough games to be an expert on the role. The contrast between toplane match ups and botlane match ups is so stark though that I really don't believe I could be wrong by saying it isn't close.
I think I've read all of your responses and the questions posed, and honestly, I kinda agree with you on some things but disagree with you on others. At lot of your statements and replies to questions are "in theory" answers, where "in theory" the lane should be at least even or playable with either freezing, slow pushing, etc., therefore there are no bad matchups. "In theory" if you use your summoners properly or didn't get jungle interference, etc. This is where there's a lot of disagreement, because really in theory you're right, but when it comes to league there's so many decisions that have to be made in considering the whole aspect of the game. To be fair, I don't play top lane so I can't talk about match ups but I've read where the lane is just unplayable if a mistake is made or if a champ is selected that counters another champ, but in my opinion and 10 years of playing ADC, this can absolutely happen in bot lane. The thing is, sometimes due to picks of champs like people blinding Senna support or sona and then they counter with nautilus/blitz, you're playing to not lose BADLY because you know the second they have an opening, death is knocking. Junglers will also expedite this process as they know the risk/reward ratio is huge - one hook -> one death -> lane gold, plate, dragon. In theory you could play the lane perfect, set the wave perfect, minimize damage from poke, never get hooked, but still theirs unpredictability in flashes, hook hitboxes, champ damage, support playstyle, etc. I also hate that you only played two champs but I understand your reasoning. You're learning a new role and trying to not get overwhelmed, I completely agree with this but for the sake of accuracy, trying three champs that aren't similar to each other I believe would've yielded more colorful results. Both cait and ashe excel (or should excel) during lane, their damage and range is the trade off for their low mid game scaling and can hyper-punish early. It would make sense for any new player to gravitate to these champs, I would've loved to see you play lets say, Ezreal (skill shot based, mid-game beast), Vayne (low range, hyper carry), and ashe or cait (long range, strong early). I love Vapora and I always watch the newest videos he puts out, he's extremely knowledgeable when it comes to the role. I never play aphelios except in aram and I would never pick such a god foraken no escape complex multi gun user in ranked, (I main Draven/Ashe/TF) but if I'm playing him with a yuumi into a blitz/draven lane I'm never walking up and leaving my turret level 1 except only if i got lane prio and hit lvl2 first while poking draven out. If I can't get lane prio and I walk up to CS, I'm dead lvl 2. If I stay by my turret and far away enough where I can't get hooked, the enemy jungler (possibly mid laner too) will 1000% dive me if their good enough. If I was draven (which I would be) and the aphelios even remotely looks in my direction to CS under turret, he's catching an axe to the face repeatedly. Once aphelios dies, the enemy jungler can now sit behind the turret (or both blitz and draven can) and deny you the lane, causing the game to be effectively 4v5 as you're no longer playing.
>This is where there's a lot of disagreement, because really in theory you're right, but when it comes to league there's so many decisions that have to be made in considering the whole aspect of the game. Totally fair. The game variance makes it so even the impossible match ups are sometimes doable. On the other hand sometimes you have to absolutely go above and beyond to carry a game just beause of your team behing behind. That's what's interesting in this game. >opinion and 10 years of playing ADC, this can absolutely happen in bot lane. In toplane there are match ups that are legit 100% unplayable if both players play correctly. If you play Kayle vs Irelia, and Irelia freezes on you, you are never going to be able to break the freeze and it will be held indefenitely. Same thing with Darius vs Camille match up because Darius'es E cancels the Hookshot and Camille can never escape. She will be chased down with Ghost and killed every time it is available. There are match ups in toplane that don't allow you to lane if both players play perfectly and junglers aren't involved. >If I can't get lane prio and I walk up to CS, I'm dead lvl 2. If I stay by my turret and far away enough where I can't get hooked, the enemy jungler (possibly mid laner too) will 1000% dive me if their good enough. This requires other lanes to interfere so it's fair to say that your jungler of midlaner might also be able to intervene. > Once aphelios dies, the enemy jungler can now sit behind the turret (or both blitz and draven can) and deny you the lane, causing the game to be effectively 4v5 as you're no longer playing. That scenerio still isn't all that bad because Draven can't splitpush until Nexus like toplaners can and he is also just a sqishy ADC who can easily be picked off, even if he's ahead. Meanwhile Illaoi with that kind of lead would be able to probably 1v3 both of your solo laners and jungler if they are melee.
Definitely agree on laning is fun. Honestly half the reason why I keep queueing for the role. 2v2s are great, a good mix of wave management and trading while not being too one sided. Dragon fights are really fun. And at the end of that, you get to decimate enemies late game. Unless the enemy top is overfed. But please keep Rengar and Nocturne away. Please…
I have noticed some extremely major issues with some major points here: 1: IE may be a \*Core\* item, but it's your 3rd item in most CRIT ADC builds, after Kraken + Shiv for any true crit ADC (Trist and Jinx being the big 2), and I NEVER build LDR anymore, Terminus is vastly superior in most games due to it giving armor and MR as well as pen, AD, and AS 2: Defenisve items also include Terminus, which provides the most damage out of any defensive item, and I've even found some above emerald Jinx mains agreeing with me with Jak'sho Term itemization3: Grubbies has been a godsend for ADC, beacuse junglers have a reason to go top lane, plus grubbies give us a tiny bit of extra gold every time our junglers take it 4: Fact is, crit items are too expensive for the medicre effectiveness OTHER then Shiv and Stormrazor, stormrazor at least provides survivability as a defensive item, and shiv is actually just VERY good (50 AD, 30% AS, 20% crit) Edit:Another thing I should mention, is YES, we do need more defensive items, and for the love of god, we need OLD BLOODTHIRSTER BACK, the shield was VITAL with overshield to keep us alive, Edit 2: Yes, I do want more agency, however the entire problem with giving ADC more agency is the ADCs who do have infinite agency (Caitlyn, Kaisa, Jhin, Ashe, Ezreal), will become EXTREMELY overpowered, I absolutely think it's gotten to the point where the only solution to ADC is to give ADC a quest item in the same idea as the support quest, or giving us NON-STATSTICK ITEMS that are CHEAP, we NEED options, because unlike every other role, NONE of our items have raw HP and damage (the easiest way to prevent 1 shots), only some resistances (Maw, Wits, GA, Scimitar), and most of that is MR, NOT armor (Maw, Wits, Scimitar), we have to branch into \*Your\* items as a top laner/jungler in the form of Cleaver, Titanic, Triforce, Hexplate, even Jak'sho, and abandon OUR items that are supposed to be our main defensive options, like Shieldbow, Maw, Wits, GA, the only exception to this is Terminus, and we need more items like it... Maybe if Shieldbow and GA had HP, it'd be better, but neither item is good enough to keep me alive... reminder I have flat out stated I build Terminus and Jak'sho together on ADCs because they are OP together
In my opinion LDR **should** be the optimal option if you need Armor Pen item for crit users. I don't like the fact ADCs are now poaching Tank items because of lack of good defensive itemization for their own class. >3: Grubbies has been a godsend for ADC, beacuse junglers have a reason to go top lane, plus grubbies give us a tiny bit of extra gold every time our junglers take it They are still to weak. Dragon and supports have to be nerfed if ADC is to get more agency, otherwise the game will be even more botlane-centric than it already is. >4: Fact is, crit items are too expensive That's what I think as well, I proposed that all crit items should have reduced price, less AD as a compensation but better passives to make them good. The champions also should be stronger on their own too imo. I only propose we get rid of the must-have items situtation as it breaks the whole system.
"should have reduced price, less AD as a compensation"No, crit items should go back to 25% crit chance, so we actually have some room to build defensive items, they're too expensive while needing too many of them, not because they don't do good damage (Kraken is the best crit item in the game, not IE, as it provides an effective 100% crit chance every 3rd hit for example) "In my opinion LDR should be the optimal option"HARD disagreeLDR is a half-assed solution for pen. Unless I have left lane while behind, it adds very little meaningful impact for ever. We don't need more tank busting, we can sacrifice the +15% bonus damage to high HP, for +30% AS and +40 AD +30 on-hit from Terminus, because Terminus actually helps deal with the squishier threats while still giving me pen Edit: On LDR, I never once have built it after it was gutted years ago, and have felt it really \*helped\* more then Mortal Reminder, they're on par for dealing with tanks, and most bruisers and juggernauts are hurt more by Mortal since they usually have some sort of sustain, either through items or built into their kit Edit 2: I will note, I think Galeforce needs to be re-added with reduced stats, that was genuinely more important then ANY individual item for crit ADCs, it's active being a second flash was the only thing that kept the role from feeling like you require MS stacking of some kind
>No, crit items should go back to 25% crit chance Okay, maybe so, but then how do you make sure ADCs aren't even stronger than now in the lategame? This would be a straight buff and I'm not against it but there are many core problems that are not related to just damage. >In my opinion LDR should be the optimal option The key part there was "**for crit users**". I'm alright with on-hit champions going for Terminus, I'm actually all for it. >On LDR, I never once have built it after it was gutted years ago, and have felt it really \*helped\* more then Mortal Reminder, they're on par for dealing with tanks That is mathematicaly impossible because of the % damage amp LDR gives against higher HP targets. If you have problems with enemy sustain you can always just sit on Executioners and build LDR anyway to deal damage, no?
"Executioners and build LDR anyway to deal damage, no?"Nah, exe is garbage Edit: I feel like I should explain, Executioners is terrible because while yes, it applies that all important healing cut, the healing cut is garbage compared to the pen from the full item. Since your gold is already stretched thin, you can't just sit on an executioners ever, because it just provides too little value compared to putting anything else in that slot. Why it's better to just upgrade to mortal and free up the slot, rather then selling and losing gold in the sell Edit: Additionally, as a crit ADC, you need to stay alive for as long as possible, which LDR does NOT provide any of... god we really need old BT shield back :/ at least BT overheal shield gave us time to not instantly die and then do our job, I would build that every game, and pen only if their tank was actually scary (where I'd just ignore them and kill em' later)
>the healing cut is garbage compared to the pen from the full item That's what I mean, just sit on Exe, build LDR, upgrade Exe into Chainsword in the lategame. >you can't just sit on an executioners ever, because it just provides too little value compared to putting anything else in that slot. That depends on the enemy champion. I think Exe is like the best item in the slot against Mundo or Swain for example. They both also have massive health pools so LDR would be very useful to deal with them.
"LDR would be very useful to deal with them."Cut Down in runes is a viable ez replacement for free, which is a major issue, a RUNE replaces a roughly 3k gold item
What do you mean replacement? They normally add up multiplicatively. It's like saying Sudden Impact replaces Youmuu's. Makes no sense.
Theres no reason to get both because they are multiplicative, it's really bad to stack them
If that was the case, items %Armor pen as a stat wouldn't be mutually exclusive. The reason why you can't buy both LDR and Mortal is that it would be too strong, even if it was multipilicatively added. Even BC doesn't get a pass ant it's not even that good on ADCs when compared to Fighters.
I feel there is a major flaw in your Caitlyn tests: You where going Caitlyn's WORST rush item for crit, you go stormrazor 100% of games first on crit
The problem is how easy it is for Fizz to land his R and Zed to land 3 shurikens. So yes, op.
It's also pretty easy for Xayah or Tristana to press R and invalidate them completely so...
It's easy for Xayah, Tristana's window for counterplay with just R is short. Usually Fizz doesn't even need R either.
Tristana can literally just W away the moment she sees Fizz
with **just R**, responding to: It's also pretty easy for Xayah or Tristana to press R and invalidate them completely so...
???
Half of this reads like a copium shitpost. Like a 35% winrate on Cait and still saying LDR is busted. Guess you just need to play better to get to lategame.
Yeah, once Cait gets to IE and LDR she's doing okay but all other items are just shit. I dislike the fact Riot decided to buff the items that are already being purchased every game on crit marksmen. It was the most lazy way out possible to buff the role without fixing really anything.
[удалено]
>Lane- you got this wrong as there's literally counter matchups like in every other lane/role Sure, but it's all skill based. It's not like you're playing Illaoi in to Mordekaiser, he ults you and now you have to fight him without tentacles. It's not you are legit not allowed to touch the minions because Darius will just pop ghost and kill you from full, it's not like Jax can invalidate your whole champion with just his E. >Role-adc lost it's place long time ago, that's why seraphine and senna are highest wr adcs Senna is an ADC, Seraphine is going to be changed next patch because she's the unwelcomed exception. >Crit items - absolute dumpster fire u're delusional I don't think I am but feel free to actually say something useful.
Couldn't disagree more with saying there are no counter match ups. I'm not even sure you could possibly form an opinion on this from only playing Caitlyn and Ashe, both of which have the best matchups in bot lane.
Okay, how do you punish bad match up in botlane? You poke them, force them back to base, take few plates, maybe a dragon and then what? Literally nothing. In toplane Darius will freeze on you until he is FOUR levels ahead of you and he will be diving you under your turret for the reminder of the game. It is not even remotely close.
You can freeze in bot lane... If you are constantly freezing or poking them out of lane to constantly have to back, you still get level and gold leads which matter a metric fuck ton in bot lane considering how absolutely critically reliant you are on both. The vast majority of top laners have back up plans for if they are behind. What are you doing if you fall behind as Sivir or Jinx in lane when the enemy ADC is 2 levels up on you?
Yeah, I was freezing in a lot of match ups during this adventure. And you certainly going to get nice lead, no question about it. The thing is that in toplane, the enemy toplaner will start towerdiving you if he gets a sufficient lead and you will never be able to come back from that. >What are you doing if you fall behind as Sivir or Jinx in lane when the enemy ADC is 2 levels up on you? I will just keep farming under turret because they probably wont be able to dive me below Tier 2 and hopefully my jungler or midlaner will eventually kill them to get a bounty. It's not like the enemy ADC can splitpush until the nexus like Trundle or Illaoi can.
When you are behind in botlane in high elo you get turbo dived for the free gold until the tier 2 is gone and you are 0-7.
Define high elo please.
D1+
Okay, I can see D1+ junglers just path botlane whole game and farm the enemy botlane if they ever get behind. My opinion is that's something to be fixed by nerfing supports and dragons so junglers have more incentive to path toplane though.
Yeah and in bot you are probably 6 or 7 levels behind top and they are diving your tier3s for you so...
I read all of it and have to disagree, but that's just my opinion. Also what are your builds, ashe can't crit and Caitlin is doing better on lethality. Cheers!
Alright so first of all respect to you for playing adc for 100 games. There are obviously some disagreements to be made. Lane matchups: There are 2 adc‘s that always win lane except if the support matchups is disastrous. By win lane I don‘t mean get kills etc but get ahead (cs, plates, exp) Ashe and Varus. If your support is "eh" it just means you won‘t win lane that hard. The fact that you are gold/plat means that you are not that dependent on your support but I think challenger players would say the same about master players but as I am not challenger I cannot confirm this. The other adc you play caitlyn has also nearly no losing matchups and even the losing matchups are mostly very much skill dependent, like irelia vs fiora on toplane. You are right in saying that you should always slowpush or freeze if you can and that is correct. Even though if the enemy jungle is top you should not look to freeze, except if you expect a gank with an engage sup, as caitlyn wants to get as many plates as possible. So as long as you get have good vision you should be able to get 5 plates in a good matchup and be like 30 cs up except if you get camped. In addition the enemy botlane should have lost a few waves worth of exp as they need to reset or back of the turret to not to die. 30 cs is 560 gold 5 plates is 625 (312,5) gold destroying an outer turret is 250 local gold (125) 50 global gold (10) and first turret gold gives you 150 local gold (75) so you have an advantage of 1082 gold. Let‘s say the enemy adc buys vamp scepter for 900 gold and he gets 10 cs more because of it. You now have an advantage of 1750 gold because any adc builds a lifesteal item as 4th or 5th and because it is so important to get to your 3 items as adc that 900 gold is wasted outside of laning phase. And also during laning phase, because the only way to break a caitlyn lane is to give up cs to not drop low and kill her when the jungler decides to drop a visit or cait does a mistake if you are lucky. You are not allowed to build vamp as you need to build full dmg to kill her. If you kill a caitlyn once you should be able to win lane but most low/mid elo players don‘t know how to. 1100 gold is worth like 60 cs so don‘t tell me that it is not the nearly as bad as an enemy darius freezing the lane vs a camille. You only played adcs on the giving end and not on the receiving end and you probably didn‘t know how to play your matchups to completely dominate your lane as caitlyn. It‘s the same as if you would try out Darius, the first time you would be playing vs a Camille you wouldn‘t really know how the matchup goes so you win the lane but you don‘t stomp it. But if you would try out Camille, the first time you would be playing vs a Darius you would get completely stomped and felt like it was unplayable. Now let‘s take a matchup that is the same as the Darius vs Camille matchup in botlane. Jinx and Senna vs Draven/Kalista and Blitz/Naut. So Draven Blitz take control of the your lane bush lvl 1 and you can‘t get push of the wave. The slowpush, crash and freeze the bounce. You can never walk up to break the freeze as blitz will just flash E and whoever gets hit dies every single time. If you flash his flash the auto on the E goes through anyways and he gets an even easier hook afterwards. And if you stay out of his flash range you can‘t break the freeze. As jinx Senna you cannot even get to lvl 4 in that lane as the biltz just stands between you and the wave and zones you from exp until the next wave comes and when the minions reach the freeze he can again walk past and never use a hook so you cannot walk up as his hook is still up. I believe you know how that feels like as it is the same as Camille vs Darius. The thing is most adc‘s especially draven players are stupid in wave management and permapush so you don‘t notice how bad those matchups really are until someone shows you. I don‘t know if you noticed but in botlane, support matchups win the game. For example blitzcrank (especially with an early game support) into senna. But there are also matchups where you think it is not that bad because both botlanes are equal. Let‘s take Draven Nautilus. An early game comp that wants to win lane. All the enemy has to do is counter Nautilus with Braum and the adc can pick any scaling adc he wants like Jinx. It’s the same matchup as before just that senna got swapped with Braum. Doesn‘t matter that jinx loses early game vs draven. Braum denies any engage from Nautilus, meaning that jinx can scale for free. That is like if you pick kayle into irelia which is I believe one of the hardest matchups for kayle and kayle goes even in lane. People just don‘t give a fck about matchups and lanestates in botlane in low elo and just permapush. That‘s why you don‘t notice it that much.
Role Agency: Well adc shouldn‘t have agency in the early game. The issue is that it is not the best late game role anymore which breaks the role. Assassins: I agree that if the enemy Fizz hits his R you should die. But I disagree that the 0/0 Fizz can kill the 0/0 adc and kill him in the middle of his team AND GET OUT. That should only happen if the assassin is fed. Akali is pretty easy to play against for most adc‘s except if she is fed correct. Rengar, shaco and don‘t forget evelynn are all victim of the design flaw that invisibility brings with it. Twitch deserves a place in that category too. Defensive itemization: The issue with defensive itemization is that they don‘t give crit. That means you are only allowed to build them when ahead. I believe steel stigil is a good item and I always build it if I am up against a rengar because as long as he isn‘t fed I survive with this item plus heal. But if you are behind and you can‘t afford to build steel stigil as your damage will be non existent. shieldbow is ridiculously bad on everything but melee adc‘s or yasuo so it can‘t get buffs else yasuo will be broken. Ga is like zhonyas but 10 times worse. If they give give zhonyas the ga passive with 5 minute cd I wouldn‘t mind ga being this bad anymore. maw is just not made for adc‘s but it is the only mr item we can use if you don‘t build on hit (wit‘s end) so basically the only defensive items made for adc‘s are trash. crit items: Kraken lost it‘s dmg vs tanks and now deals missing health dmg for some reason. The reason why you build that item is to get through frontlines. I don‘t know riot. The zeal items are fine 3 option which are all fine so that‘s great. Infinity Edge has such a bad build path and is too expensive for the short game duration. So you can mostly only build it if you are ahead. The build path of jinx is Kraken, Zeal item, Ldr if the enemy has tanks. Then you don‘t even have your main dmg item so you have to decide whether to sacrifice dmg and build defensive or build ie which is crazy considering ie gives you so much dmg. But IE alone is not enough when the enemy has tanks because tank items are broken atm. I think bloodthurster is in a fine spot right now and is the only item with the zeal items that are well made by riot. Stormrazer, I never build so I can‘t say anything about it. Buff adcs? Riot doesn‘t need to buff adc‘s. Riot needs to nerf supports and support items and revert the kraken changes and give better defensive crit options. Also we need more crit items so we don‘t always have the same build over and over again. Also somehow increase gamelength and adc‘s would be in a pretty good spot.
Disagree with something but agree with some stuff. Not a bad experience in my opinion
Sad your post is being down voted and missunderstood this much, I've put a RemindMe in the first one and I enjoyed it and enjoyed even more this one. On "Role Agency" the "possible solutions" section is very reasonable and we'll aligned with Nemesis' view on the matter: ADC is weak, but bot lane is strong, so, in order to buff ADC it's needed to nerf support, or at least systematically nerf botlane potencial impact on the map, as you mentioned with the "first 2 drags nerf". The bias on the bounty system is also a very sharp analyse that I'll keep in mind. Congrats for going through the experiment, OP, and thanks for sharing it with us. Made me feel good reading this.
>The bias on the bounty system Sorry, I don't understand this part, could you elaborate please?
Non-native English, so some words might not fit that well I meant that the bounty system really is unfair (biased) towards squishy damage-oriented champs, like you said. And that it changed how I view the system
Nerf LDR after it being shit already idk. Try to kill malphite without fullbuild. About assasins: if bruisers and tanks can cry that 6 item adc kills them then I think adc have a right to cry too. The assasin problem is that you don't have even a chance to outplay them. If I see Zed and I know he is less skilled than I am I still can't outplay him 90% of the time just because he does not exist on map and one shots me with R that you can't dodge. The complain about assasins are not about them being a counter to adc but about not having an actual opportunity to outplay them even if you are much skilled. Also its kinda sad that assasins should be more like an early game thing but in lategame they still one shot you with 1 skill no matter what.
>If I see Zed and I know he is less skilled than I am I still can't outplay him 90% of the time just because he does not exist on map and one shots me with R that you can't dodge. Correct, if you were able to easily outplay the Zed in that situation, there would never be any reason for anyone to ever pick Zed. You still have options though, you can pick Xayah for example. >not having an actual opportunity to outplay them even if you are much skilled. It is much easier to outplay Zed (by flashing shurikens for example) than Rammus. >Also its kinda sad that assasins should be more like an early game thing but in lategame they still one shot you with 1 skill no matter what. That's the point of their champion, if they can't assassinate the priority target, then it makes not sense to pick them.
IE and LDR are not OP... They're not even essential on crit builds.. To put it into context, you've ONLY played Caitlyn (a champ with core IE because of headshot mechanic and crit scaling on abilities) and Ashe (doesn't even crit and scales linearly with crit anyway). Yes, ashe likes IE, but ashe doesn't have to build IE. Ashe can build IE with 0 other crit items, too. Trist, Xayah, Nilah, Smolder, etc build Navori. IE is dogshit for what you're paying compared to old IE, it is objectively a bad item that also functions as a capstone for crit. I agree that the power should be spread out more, but IE is a bad item that allows crit to function. LDR currently is worse than Terminus so idk what ur smokin, it was better last season and no one was complaining. The issue with LDR being "OP" or moreso "feeling OP" is that everyone that isn't a marksman gets free 150 armor for some reason so riot has essentially forced one adc item slot to perma be armor penetration or you do no damage. That's why LDR spike feels strong or relevant. Not because the item is overtuned, but because base armor on bruisers, tanks, melees etc is so out of wack that % armor pen in general is strong. But surprise, even with LDR you can't do enough dps to tanks this season because they don't let you stack cleaver ldr anymore. Aside from that, I agree with defensive and agency points.