Why So Many ADC Players Have Anime Main Character Syndrome | League of Legends

It's commonly agreed upon that among the five roles, ADC/Bot tends to foster the biggest main character syndrome behavior by far. Today we'll be looking into why that's the case, and whether or not their behavior is justified.

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[loptr]

ADCs complain the most out of any role in the game, but IMO they also have the most reason to complain out of any role in the game.

[MajinCanon]

There is some sort of special pain that you feel when you are 2/10 and still the main focus of the enemy

[cmknight]

It can't be main character syndrome if assassins don't let them be characters

[HeavensBane]

Also something worth remembering about ADCs in early league: they were often needed for turret pushing. There was a time when AP didn't give you any damage to turrets and toplane was mostly tanks, so the only person on your team who could actually push was the ADC. It's a factor in how early league metas developed, which later got turned into the standard the game was designed around, that I never see get brought up. I think most people forget there was a time when only your attack damage did anything to turrets.

Of course, this is another thing that has long since been outsourced to other roles. Now pushing is more the domain of top laners and even mages can chunk through towers.

[userjerf]

Someone also mentioned this but in team fights, if you’re already struggling in game, it really feels like you can’t do anything. If you’re not doing enough damage to the frontline, you get blamed. If you try to damage the back line, you get one shot. If nobody helps you survive from the assassin or mage, you get one shot and blamed. It’s lose-lose unless you hard win lane, and even then in this season you can just get one shot by a mage who isn’t even fed and lose the whole fight/game. People expect ADCs to carry in situations where it’s impossible to do so, in pro play they get peel and proper support, in solo queue you get a Teemo sup and then they ping you like it’s your fault you don’t do any damage

[captaintenacity]

As a bot main that switched to top/support, the role can be summed up as “zero agency and zero sympathy; and damn sure no empathy”

[hroeverynyan]

Another thing to mention is that usually as ADC, you don't feel like you are able to play the game until 3 to 4 items at which point the game is already decided most of the time. When I play Camille top and hit the Triforce powerspike I feel delighted, because a single Q does a quarter of the enemies healthbar, but when I'm playing Ashe it feels like i tickle the enemies, so I don't actually have any fun at all until 25 minutes into the game. ADC gameplay feels like a never ending cycle of "Oh boy the game started I can't wait to farm for 20 minutes" > *game is over* > "Oh boy..."

[garen__life]

Vars's most NSFW video to date "if you are 0/3 as jinx you are useless, die, step on a lego, delete system/32 irl, end your legacy"
edit: thanks for 800 likes

[TekkatV]

There are 10 players on the rift.
8 are playing League of Legends.
2 are playing Dark Souls.

[Lkabss]

There was a moment during worlds this past year that really made me give up.

Jdg was playing zeri lulu - a notoriously amazing scaling lane that just needs to survive. So when they got a lead bot lane early, it was HUGE. Beyond what Jdg could expect.

5 minutes later Im watching one of the best botlane combos in the game get zoned from an entire teamfight from a *single* azir soldier.

[dravendraven]

What do you mean anime main character syndrome? I, Draven, donate gold to the enemy team whenever I get paired up with a horrible support just to make them win the game much more easier.

[zobby]

I think mid laners also have this problem but they blame it more on junglers like most of the lanes so it doesn't sound as whiny as "my support is terrible"

[Void_Serenity]

ADC is my secondary role so I've played it a lot, though mid lane is my main role. On Reddit, there always seems to be this sort of us vs. them battle between ADC mains, and everyone else on the League subreddit. You'll often hear ADCs complaining about how frustrating the role feels to play and they're really not wrong, and I'm saying this as an assassin main. When others' counterpoint tends to be "yeah but ADC meta", I believe they're entirely missing the point and especially have no clue how terrible the role feels in solo queue.

Bot lane mains also tend to clutch onto the culture of the lane quite closely, so you often hear about them complaining about APCs going bot as well. I can sympathise with that too because mages have way more tools and burst at their disposal, and hit their spikes way sooner than typical ADCs.

Of course you'll get an ADC with an overly inflated ego and act totally unnecessarily, but at the same time people really don't seem to actually understand how the complete lack of agency and incessant dogpiling feels freakin HORRIBLE. (I think I tend to see top laners bitching about ADCs the most, too. And their solo queue experience would be almost the exact opposite.)

[THEkullerpuller]

After maining adc for years I think the thing that got me to finally quit the role the most is that often after a loss you feel like there was nothing you could do even if you played perfectly. If I'm playing any other role I feel like I can have impact on the game no matter how my early game went and I can always go back and look at things I could have done differently to prevent the loss. As an ADC I often felt like the game is decided by things completely out of my control, no matter how well I play. Even If You get fed early and are ahead in items the baron fight that decides the game is still decided by things like do you have vision on the enemy assassin/bruiser? Does your team peel if they get on you (which most of the time you can't actually prevent due to the mobility they have)? Does your engage actually wait for you the get into position? The fact that you are way ahead and could do a lot of damage is at best third or forth most important factor in this equation. I think the problem is that other roles have more of an ability to actually create the circumstances they need to win/carry whereas on adc the circumstances are dictated to you and you need to hope that everything is right for you to do your job.

[kevingriffith]

The reason why they stopped calling the role ADC is because the top 4 ADCs were Swain, Seraphine, Ziggs and Veigar at one point. Mage ADCs bypass almost every single problem that marksmen have that you mentioned in this video. They have utility when they fall too far behind to do damage, they come online way earlier, and the team has plenty of damage already without needing a 6 item ADC to drive the game home.

[Thelacker]

Something I think you missed about the early role of ADCs is how they interact with Towers: namely, they’re REALLY good at hurting them, especially back in the day. Mid-late game, if you were fighting under the tower, you also had to worry about the enemy ADC chipping away at it from the edge of its range. You were essentially forced to engage on them, but unlike a melee DPS they were basically a single step from being out of your tower’s range, removing your advantage.

Nowadays, teamfights and towers are taken radically differently, so this niche strength of ADCs is also radically devalued, in addition to carrying being something *everyone* can do now.

[themonkeys]

I think there's also 2 other factors to consider: Uptime and Target selection critique.

ADCs are expected to have high uptime while ironically being one of the fastest roles to drop. Often for other carry roles, getting one key play off in a fight before dying is worth it. Simply hitting a shock wave, blitz hook, assassination, ornn engage, or renata ult counter engage and then dying still has a massive swing to the fight. Meanwhile, the majority of an ADCs value is deeply connected with how long they're alive. There output is spread throughout the fight instead of primarily being loaded onto a single ability or combo.

And this desire to stay alive for as long as possible leads to critique of playing safe. Often you're simply trying to attack the highest priority target you can while playing safe. This often leads to critique of "Why aren't you focusing X target?" while said target is behind a tank, a mage, guarded by a support, and trying to attack said target is overextend you to an assassin pick. But if you do overextend to listen to their incorrect call, you die and are blamed for dying. You're damned if you do...

[fcstnum]

As a support main, I hate when my adc does well in lane we lose because by the end of laning phase the enemy yone is already 6/0

[zidaryn]

Part of the problem with being an ADC is, like the vid says, damage is everywhere now. But with that damage being everywhere squishy ADCs end up one shot. There are less tanks, more assassins and you're expected to keep yourself alive and CS like a boss.

[dimitripollard]

I think this really summed it up. And I would add on that because so many new roles have carry potential you're no longer seen as worth playing around/protecting anymore. You don't win lane in ten minutes? Your support is now the teams support. Good luck. Team fights where you need peel? Peel for yourself the tank sion is deep diving to get kills and your support is following. You're not the wincon anymore but the game still balances you like you are. Not to mention that similar to some more stationary mages your range is beginning to matter less and less. High movement speed assassin's and bruisers and dashes galore. You can't maintain the distance that's meant to be your advantage