League of Legends (Old)

[BROseidon]

Cait is bad for beginners because her high-range means that you have to understand how to abuse range in order to be effective at all with her.

Nobody below high gold/low plat understands how to abuse range.

[zoraster]

Of course most mids and adcs do their damage much differently. Mids do a lot more burst damage. Which is great if you're just targetting squishy targets in isolation, but grouped up with tanks, you're kind of in trouble if you can't bring the sustained damage of an ADC to the party.

Or have a, you know, sustained damage mage.

Or melee carry.

Or bruiser-carry.

Or AD assassin.

Or you can run a double-bruiser comp with a mage, which beats ADC+Mage+tank.

ADC's don't do bad damage, but they do 95% of the damage of midlaners (which, by the way, includes support-mages like Lulu and Ori whose main purpose isn't to deal damage) while having less utility and generally being weaker in most non-objective taking contexts. They are mandatory on every team (unlike every other class of champion) because of they fact that you have to kill turrets.

If ADCs were really just about Turret killing, you'd probably expect ADCs that excel at taking down turrets to do the best in terms of winning, no? Except Tristana, who is basically Queen of the Turret takedown, has a 48.54% win rate, which is good 15th out of 17, not including Urgot.

[KaleiÐoscøpe]

Well, just lost a teamgame because of a ddos. Was jungler, we were doing baron. And then I have attempting to reconnect. And when I get back everyone is dead

[BROseidon]

Of course most mids and adcs do their damage much differently. Mids do a lot more burst damage. Which is great if you're just targetting squishy targets in isolation, but grouped up with tanks, you're kind of in trouble if you can't bring the sustained damage of an ADC to the party.

Or have a, you know, sustained damage mage.

Or melee carry.

Or bruiser-carry.

Or AD assassin.

Or you can run a double-bruiser comp with a mage, which beats ADC+Mage+tank.

ADC's don't do bad damage, but they do 95% of the damage of midlaners (which, by the way, includes support-mages like Lulu and Ori whose main purpose isn't to deal damage) while having less utility and generally being weaker in most non-objective taking contexts. They are mandatory on every team (unlike every other class of champion) because of they fact that you have to kill turrets.

If ADCs were really just about Turret killing, you'd probably expect ADCs that excel at taking down turrets to do the best in terms of winning, no? Except Tristana, who is basically Queen of the Turret takedown, has a 48.54% win rate, which is good 15th out of 17, not including Urgot.

Being there because turrets have to get taken down does not equate to power being tied strictly to ability to take turrets.

[Banakai]

If you think adcs dont do enough damage, you are probbably either a bad adc or playing with one.

[Psyche]

when i first started playing league, i used sivir and it was terrible
it's not terrible anymore

[zoraster]

i find sivir's attack animation really clunky. it's a superficial thing, but it bothers me every time i play her.

that said the worst for me is Jinx in rocket form. I play a substantial amount of Jinx, and rockets are amazing. But I accidentally cancel more of her rocket AAs than I do any other in the game. I think it's something about the sound being too early in the process. Like I hear the sound and I click, which is apparently before the rocket actually leaves the rocket launcher.

[dramonic]

Nobody below high gold/low plat understands how to abuse range.

QFT.
The amount of lanes I win because people don't poke me when I go CS is hilarious.

[JasonWazza]

And if your honestly having problems in the early game, play a top/mid laner that struggles in the early game and find what exactly your problem is.

And what would those be, btw?

I think my problem is the mid-game. I think my early game is decent (it's not superawesomazing because I can still lose lane, but I'd say it's my best out of the 3.5), and my problem late is almost purely positioning. Which is part of the problem mid-game but I think it's more pronounced mid-game because I still get confused about what to do at that point, or at least how to get things down there.

(I wonder if I should just play support or top over ADC, anyways...)

Honestly my mid game isn't the best so don't go quoting me on this sort of thing, but a good way to learn (and this tends to be very champion specific) is to be extremely aggressive in the 10-20 minute zone when Mid game starts, learn the limits your champion has, and the damage they do, and this gives you a good base line of knowledge that will tell you what you can and can't do for a mid game.

As an example, Orianna is a good champion to try this with, you will find that you can't push towers for shit, but you can push waves, and do a lot of damage to enemy mid laners and roam fairly decently if you time it right.

Tristana being a decent other champion to talk about pushes towers really well at the same point in the game, but doesn't do the same sort of damages, unless the fight is sustained to the point of at least 4 autos.

As for learning positioning, the main thing to do is when you die, try to work out why you died, and how you could have done the situation better, and how you could have positioned differently, some of the more informative streamers actually do this automatically while they stream (explain what they did wrong and how they could have done it better) try to learn to do this as it will help somewhat with your positioning, of course you still have to put in the effort to do these things.

EDIT: Totally unrelated but a good jungle guide video for what to do about invades.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q6YKHaetNiQ

[BROseidon]

So Tahm Kench is really fucking good.

Don't even have to use his R and he's powerful. His W is fucking insane.

[hitogoroshi]

Of course most mids and adcs do their damage much differently. Mids do a lot more burst damage. Which is great if you're just targetting squishy targets in isolation, but grouped up with tanks, you're kind of in trouble if you can't bring the sustained damage of an ADC to the party.

Or have a, you know, sustained damage mage.

Or melee carry.

Or bruiser-carry.

Or AD assassin.

Or you can run a double-bruiser comp with a mage, which beats ADC+Mage+tank.

ADC's don't do bad damage, but they do 95% of the damage of midlaners (which, by the way, includes support-mages like Lulu and Ori whose main purpose isn't to deal damage) while having less utility and generally being weaker in most non-objective taking contexts. They are mandatory on every team (unlike every other class of champion) because of they fact that you have to kill turrets.

'

there are plenty of non adcs that have great siege, and plenty of adcs who can't siege well at all. in no way is siege the definitional trait of an ad carry.

the point of an ad carry is that the attack damage/attack speed/crit system has a higher peak than ap/cdr or whatever, and doing that damage at range is very powerful. but it scales UP slower. But an ad carry can actually kill someone who stacks up a ton of resists which is really hard to do late game for assassins, ap carries, brusiers, etc. who aren't super fed.

now a team needs a certain amount of siege or it's vulnerable to turtling, and ad carries are often pretty good at siege. this is because the primary way to make it efficient to build into the attack damage/attack speed/crit system is to have good aspd scaling AND an aspd steriod, and aspd is a great stat when it comes to siege. And of the ad carries who don't have aspd steriods, they often build trinity force (corki) which is fantastic against turtling, or have other incentives to get a ton of attack speed from items (kalista). sure, no ones contesting that! But it's bizarre to think ad carries are REQUIRED for siege, because in a siege scenario, e.g ziggs is going to do a lot more than urgot. It's just a happy fact that the same factors that make you good at being an ad carry will generally make you good at siege.

I actually don't think ad carries are

quite

mandatory. It's partly meta calcification, which league has always been bad at, although it's slowly getting better. I think Ziggs could fill Corkis role, for example, on teams with two ad in top/mid/jungle. I think it's because MOST COMPS want to have the late game threat of a character who's strong on 6 items, which ad carries are overwhelmingly the king of. And then when your comp wants something else (willing to trade lategame for Corki's midgame), I think that the midgamey ad carries are probably just played because that's what the ad carry players are comfortable with in terms of positioning, playstyle, and what have you. When you have a Trist, Vayne, etc. you're providing something that ad carries do easily the best. But I bet Corkis and Urgots could be replaced by non-ad carries in some comps and are used chiefly due to historical accident + being familiar to the kind of player who has to always be good with Trist, Vayne, etc...

[Psyche]

what they did to teemo changes everything

[zoraster]

for good or ill?

[Psyche]

i don't know zor
i don't know

[Oversoul]

The bouncing shrooms mechanic is dumb with the increased arm time.

[Oversoul]

You can't chain bounce either which would have been cool

[Psyche]

okay i think i'm going to start adcing much more often

[Espeonage]

I used to play Ryze in bot with a Soraka support before both of their reworks. I've never stacked tears faster.

[Oversoul]

You can't chain bounce either which would have been cool

Just imagine setting up a bunch of shrooms to create one Ashe ult shroom that goes from top lane to midlane for an epic gank.

[BROseidon]

Of course most mids and adcs do their damage much differently. Mids do a lot more burst damage. Which is great if you're just targetting squishy targets in isolation, but grouped up with tanks, you're kind of in trouble if you can't bring the sustained damage of an ADC to the party.

Or have a, you know, sustained damage mage.

Or melee carry.

Or bruiser-carry.

Or AD assassin.

Or you can run a double-bruiser comp with a mage, which beats ADC+Mage+tank.

ADC's don't do bad damage, but they do 95% of the damage of midlaners (which, by the way, includes support-mages like Lulu and Ori whose main purpose isn't to deal damage) while having less utility and generally being weaker in most non-objective taking contexts. They are mandatory on every team (unlike every other class of champion) because of they fact that you have to kill turrets.

'

there are plenty of non adcs that have great siege, and plenty of adcs who can't siege well at all. in no way is siege the definitional trait of an ad carry.

the point of an ad carry is that the attack damage/attack speed/crit system has a higher peak than ap/cdr or whatever, and doing that damage at range is very powerful. but it scales UP slower. But an ad carry can actually kill someone who stacks up a ton of resists which is really hard to do late game for assassins, ap carries, brusiers, etc. who aren't super fed.

now a team needs a certain amount of siege or it's vulnerable to turtling, and ad carries are often pretty good at siege. this is because the primary way to make it efficient to build into the attack damage/attack speed/crit system is to have good aspd scaling AND an aspd steriod, and aspd is a great stat when it comes to siege. And of the ad carries who don't have aspd steriods, they often build trinity force (corki) which is fantastic against turtling, or have other incentives to get a ton of attack speed from items (kalista). sure, no ones contesting that! But it's bizarre to think ad carries are REQUIRED for siege, because in a siege scenario, e.g ziggs is going to do a lot more than urgot. It's just a happy fact that the same factors that make you good at being an ad carry will generally make you good at siege.

I actually don't think ad carries are

quite

mandatory. It's partly meta calcification, which league has always been bad at, although it's slowly getting better. I think Ziggs could fill Corkis role, for example, on teams with two ad in top/mid/jungle. I think it's because MOST COMPS want to have the late game threat of a character who's strong on 6 items, which ad carries are overwhelmingly the king of. And then when your comp wants something else (willing to trade lategame for Corki's midgame), I think that the midgamey ad carries are probably just played because that's what the ad carry players are comfortable with in terms of positioning, playstyle, and what have you. When you have a Trist, Vayne, etc. you're providing something that ad carries do easily the best. But I bet Corkis and Urgots could be replaced by non-ad carries in some comps and are used chiefly due to historical accident + being familiar to the kind of player who has to always be good with Trist, Vayne, etc...

This point would be valid if team comps with ADCs were better than comps without ADCs (but still well-constructed) in team fights. Most ADCs aren't that scary on 6 items, even with the support of their team, relative to a ton of other champs (not just sustained damage mages like Cass/Karthus, but melee carries, carry-bruisers, etc). ADCs are

needed

as a class because they are the best at sieging turrets (Nashor's mages being better than, like, Vayne notwithstanding).

[quadz08]

I think you and hito are kind of agreeing there - he's not saying that a no-ADC comp is going to be better all or most of the time - only some of the time, such as when you need siege effectiveness but don't need more AD.

For example, my bronze self could see a conceivable Yasuo-Zed solo lane comp playing with a Ziggs in the duo lane?

[SXTLHGaiden]

You can't chain bounce either which would have been cool

Just imagine setting up a bunch of shrooms to create one Ashe ult shroom that goes from top lane to midlane for an epic gank.

this really needed to happen.

[BROseidon]

I think you and hito are kind of agreeing there - he's not saying that a no-ADC comp is going to be better all or most of the time - only some of the time, such as when you need siege effectiveness but don't need more AD.

For example, my bronze self could see a conceivable Yasuo-Zed solo lane comp playing with a Ziggs in the duo lane?

Thing is, stuff like that could work at all levels if ADCs weren't basically required because of their sieging abilities (or at least perceived as required b/c nobody wants to run comps that can't siege effectively). Urgot kind of bucks the trend, and hopefully the new Morde does the same.

Solo lane Cass or Karthus could totally work in theory with like Jax/Irelia/Trundle/Shyv top and like any mage mid, but the comp would only be able to take turrets via split-push which nobody wants to actually do.

[Psyche]

teemo's changes make his shrooms more viable in an offensive context
now you can throw them right into a teamfight, whereas before this would be impossible without actually being in the middle of the teamfight...
of course, its higher reload time means you still need a bit of anticipation for that particular tactic to work...

[Iecerint]

For example, my bronze self could see a conceivable Yasuo-Zed solo lane comp playing with a Ziggs in the duo lane?

I think the issue here is that mages lose more from the level gap than ADCs do (unless Riot lets them cheat ala pbeMorde).