The current state of marksmen is arguably one of the weakest in the history of League of Legends. It is very rare to see ADCs have the overall lowest win rate. It is even rarer to find ability power champions taking over the bottom lane. Despite being arguably the weakest link on the team, climbing is still achievable (yet much more difficult) through smart play. If you are a dedicated ADC player like myself, fear not, the role is not completely dead, at least for climbing. As a Diamond 1 player last season, I found myself climbing back to high diamond relatively quickly, despite playing an "underpowered" role. The biggest adaptation players need to make is to play around your team instead of yourself. The traditional farm to late strategy will not work anymore, as tanks and assassins are just too strong.

It is recommended to play with one of two styles:

1) Sacrifice some of their own strength for the benefit of the team by grouping earlier on for objectives.

2) Snowball extremely hard through solo kills, roaming, and dueling.

The following champions are my recommended ADCs to pick up, as they offer statistically proven success and general praise from the community:

Caitlyn

Caitlyn remains as one of the safest and most played marksman in the game because of her extremely long range and objective securing abilities.

Having the second highest ADC win rate of 52.53% with a play rate of 30.07%, there is no doubt that Caitlyn is statistically a very strong champion. Her learning curve is also generally very low. On average, players will have above a 53% win rate on Caitlyn after having only 20 games of experience. Therefore, picking up Caitlyn shouldn't prove to be difficult.

Pros:

Extremely potent laning phase
Likely to get first tower
Strong objective taking abilities
Respectable late game damage output

Cons:

Prone to enemy team snowballing
Significant decrease to DPS if core items are delayed

Varus

Varus is a dark horse in the new season. Very few people tend to play him despite the success he has displayed. He provides strong poke damage and pick potential in the mid-game, and can easily snowball games into victories.

He possesses the third highest ADC win rate of 51.85% with a play rate of only 5.08%. Despite his impressive win rate as a marksman, he is played very little. Similar to Caitlyn, Varus' learning curve is also very low (in fact, lower than Caitlyn's). After having only 3 games of experience on Varus, players tend to find themselves possessing an above average win rate. Varus is also a very good champion to pick up because of his low ban rate (0.13%), so Varus players will tend to always get their champion.

Pros:

Deadly gank setup at level 6
Potent pick potential at all points of game
Strong poke damage
Good at snowballing leads

Cons:

Low mobility
Difficult to kill tanks

Vayne:

Vayne is exact definition of a hit or miss champion. She either performs extremely well through her tank killing abilities and dueling potential or she provides zero damage output and constantly finds herself dead. Despite her inconsistent tendencies, the reason why I recommend picking her up is strictly due to the fact that you can carry games on your own unlike the team oriented picks mentioned above. With enough practice, Vayne can take off on games by herself.

Vayne's win rate is not as impressive in comparison with the other ADCs above. However, it can be noted that her ban rate is extremely high. In fact it is the highest of all marksman, sitting at 38.98%. This is due to the fact that players are simply afraid of playing against experienced Vayne players. Vayne also takes a much longer time to learn. Her learning curve is much different from the other ones above. New players struggle very often and find themselves having very low win rates. However, players with more than 50 games on their belt, find themselves an insanely high win rate. Unlike the other two graphs above, Vayne finds a very large increase in win rate slope after around 50 games.

Pros:

Strong dueling potential
Fast at taking neutral objectives
Able to kills tanks at ease
Can peel for herself
Powerful lane game DPS

Cons:

Very weak laning phase
Extremely low range
Useless when behind

Twitch

Twitch is a very similar champion to Vayne. His goal in the game is to support his team through snowballing lanes and ganking them with invisibility. He provides a very strong team fight presence with his ultimate. After reaching core items on Twitch, his team fight DPS is unmatched.

The highest win rate of all ADCs goes to Twitch with a towering 53.05% and play rate of 13.15%. His learning curve is also not too bad. It should only take an average of 15 games to surpass the average Twitch player. Generally, Twitch is also not that consistent as he is responsible for providing damage rather than CC. Picking up Twitch is generally worth it as it gives you another pocket pick for hard carrying games.

Pros:

Extremely high team fight DPS
Can solo kill and gank lanes with invisibility
Decent kill pressure in lane
Powerful late game damage

Cons:

Easy to jump on
Low range without ultimate
Not very strong without core items

Closing Thoughts:

My best advice is to pick a champion that can impact the entire map. Traditional late game, farm-reliant carries will not find as much success due to the early prowess of tanks and assassins. Note that the four champions I listed are just ADCs I have found success with. Other marksmen can impact the map just as well if they are played correctly.

If you have any more questions, feel free to add me on League. I play on the NA server under the name: TheInoOne. Thanks for reading!

Note: All graphs and stats can be found on champion.gg.

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