LCK pros have the solution to League’s stale ADC support meta

We’re already deep in the support AD carry meta with picks like support Ashe, Jhin, and Caitlyn collecting wins under their belt since League of Legends season 13 started on Jan. 13. Although these long-range marksmen almost guarantee wins, not everyone is a fan of this meta and pro players desperately want Riot Games to remove AD carries from the support role.

As the main reason why AD carries appeared in the support role in the first place, almost all pros point to Hail of Blades and Serrated Dirk.

“Let me tell you how we can end this meta. Just nerf Serrated Dirk and Hail of Blades. That way we won’t see ADC supports anymore, poke meta will be gone, and we will see crit ADCs rise,” said T1 ADC Gumayushi on a recent stream, according to machine translation.

Another big takeaway LCK pros have shared is that the rise of Heimerdinger might have influenced AD carry supports, which are trying to contest Heimerdinger’s lane pressure. But for the debut Heimerdinger made as support at Worlds 2022, T1 support Keria blames unbalanced support items with Spellthief being way stronger than Relic Shield.

“Also I think support items are not balanced. Spellthief items have more value than Relic Shield items. With Spellthief you just get gold when hitting enemy champs; however, with Relic Shield you can’t even hit minions in lots of situations, thus not gaining value in unfavored matchups.” DRX support BeryL explained, according to machine translation.

For pro players to once again play Nautilus and Leona in the support role, it looks like Riot Games will have to rebalance support items and heavily nerf early-game damage from Hail of Blades and Serrated Dirk.