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With the recent changes to ADCs and their items, the meta has changed and will change drastically. ADCs who had their strength in the early game were nerfed and were given some mid-late game power to compensate. Was this the right decision? Let's go over what really happened this patch and why Riot decided to go through with these changes.

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In season 2, ADCs were dominant. A fed ADC could 1v5 the entire enemy team given he had the skill to do so. Obviously this wasn't healthy for the game so they nerfed some things and all around put ADCs in a great spot for season 3. Although some would disagree, I think season 3 had the ADC role at its most balanced. When season 4 rolled around, Riot wanted to put the ADs in an even more balanced spot by buffing tanks indirectly. Riot buffed tank items, tank masteries, and just gave champions buffs if they needed them. This made the top lane meta boring and the AD role hard to play. One mistake and you were most likely zoned the entire fight or killed as an ADC. Riot then nerfed tank masteries and some items and put tanks in a good place, not nerfing them too hard but balancing them just right. Still, the AD role felt ridiculously hard to play. In patch 4.10, Riot introduced changes that would overall buff ADs to make them more balanced. Let's go over Riot's overall goal with these buffs.


Riot wanted to buff ADCs at 6 items by buffing their items slot efficiency. This would make a 6 item ADC really strong, a huge buff to their late game. One other goal was to open up the viable champion pool so the meta wouldn't consist of two champions. In order to do this they would overall have to increase the finished items stats. They buffed attack speed items, buffed IE, nerfed bt, and changed BotRK a lot. The question is, did Riot really buff the ADC role? My answer would be no. If anything, they reintroduced an unhealthy playstyle which would be to afk farm until you have enough gold to be relevant in the game. Before, ADs would duke it out in the bot lane until they had BT>Zerks>Zeal (Or at least somewhere around there). Afterwards, they would group up with the team to either gain objectives or make plays around the map. This playstyle prolongs the laning phase and promotes afk farming. This is already a problem in the game as some people feel that they need to sit in a lane by themselves for 20 minutes to farm for items. This directly goes against what Riot has been doing this entire patch, which is making LoL a more team-oriented game.



Where did Riot go wrong? Where Riot went wrong was the nerf to BT. BT could've easily been nerfed without giving it the new crappy passive. Riot took AD away from the item and increased its price. This makes BT a pretty crappy choice for those who need to buy it, and a lot of champions need to buy it. This change directly nerfs about half of the ADCs and makes them nonviable. This sucks because these champions were on the verge of seeing play, and in some places were already seeing play. Champions like Ezreal, Miss Fortune, Graves, Sivir, Corki, Varus, and Lucian were all hit pretty hard. Some of these champions have alternative builds that are strong, but overall these champions were nerfed.

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The last thing Riot did to compensate for the BT nerf was a tiny buff to IE, but giving the item 10 AD doesn't really help anything at all. In conclusion, Riot nerfed the crap out of AD carries. They made a lot of champions nonviable, they promoted an unhealthy playstyle, and they nerfed about half of the champions in that role. This patch was a giant failure, and I hope they will work on ADs a bit more.