Riot knows ADC players are ‘unsatisfied,’ but the problem is harder to solve than you think

ADC players in League of Legends aren’t having the best time with their lane, and it’s because of “fundamental problems” that Riot is still trying to fix to help everyone enjoy the game equally. 

League has five main roles, and each comes with unique upsides and downsides, but ADCs seem to be getting the short end of the stick right now. Following a survey by Riot to players about whether they’re enjoying their role playing the game, game designer David “Phreak” Turley confirmed that ADCs achieved a “neutral rating compared to other roles’ positive rating,” making it “one of the worst polling roles in terms of to fun-to-play” positions in the title.

While it’s simple to assume ADC is just a weak role at the moment, many gameplay analysts including Phreak believe that is definitely not the case, as there are “fundamental problems” with the role which are challenging to solve. One of the main problems he highlighted in his video is that playing ADC is always going to be a duo experience for players, so it comes with the challenge of communicating your plays with your support. 

Compared to other solo roles such as top, jungle, and mid lane, players often remain relatively under-leveled because their support also shares a part of the lane’s experience. While in Fearless Drafts, many teams use lane swapping to mitigate this problem, it isn’t always possible, as the enemy might just mirror your swap with their champions. 

To make a huge mid- to late-game impact, most ADCs need to scale up without dying too much. This could be a reason why the role is leaving a sour taste in people’s mouths—when they can’t scale properly, the position just feels a little hopeless. 

Another element Phreak emphasized is the lack of diverse picks, which help players break past the ADC role’s limitations. There are plenty of AD carry champions that are meta right now, but they all need good support to complement their weakness. But players can also choose “mages with high early-game agency and good self-peel” such as Ziggs, Seraphine, Swain, who have solid damage and disengage tools in their kit.

While there’s no clear solution to the problem, Phreak said that one way to deal with the dissatisfaction of ADC players could be to make supports considerably weaker than ADC champs, but that comes at the cost of taking away the support’s agency, which disturbs the bottom lane’s balance. Riot is looking to find a solution to the problem, but the timeline is still under wraps. 

If you’re still having a hard time playing ADC, at the very least Riot hears you, and is working towards a solution.