No role in League of Legends is easy to play. It takes a lot of time, dedication, and effort to master every aspect of a preferred position. The ADC role, though, is a bit different. It can either be the easiest or the hardest – depending on what you pick.
The Bot Lane, unlike the other roles, consists of two players. This means that you and your ally directly depend on each other, and your picks will determine how difficult your Lane will be in terms of sheer gameplay.
There are, of course, other factors that go into the calculation, but the Champions are definitely half of it. I’ve covered the 5 Hardest Supports in another list, which you should read and compare with this one to find the hardest Bot Lane Duo.
Before you go to that one, though, you should read this one thoroughly. If you haven’t read the other one already, that is.
Without boring you to death with the intro, let us begin with the 5 Hardest ADCs in League of Legends. (This list is in no particular order, no Champion is inherently better than the other, we’re only looking at difficulty.)
5. Kai’Sa
Kai’sa is a peculiar one to find on a list of hardest Champions. Many of you will be screaming at the screen that I’m a madman and ask: Does he even know how broken she is?! Yes, yes, I do. That doesn’t mean she’s easy to play, and let me tell you why.
Kai’sa is a Champion that takes a while to get strong. Her Laning Phase, though not bad, is not exactly the best either. To be strong in the early game, you’ll have to land a lot of your W’s from a distance and proc that passive often.
That’s easier said than done, as your W has a cooldown of over 20 seconds. Before getting it upgraded (which won’t be before the late game, if you’re not focusing on AP), it won’t matter if you hit or miss. It will still have that long of a cooldown.
Positioning is key with Kai’sa once you start getting a bit stronger. She’s unique among the ADCs because she goes face-to-face with people rather than keeping a distance. Her Q is shortly ranged, and her Ultimate blinks her to the enemy, meaning that you’ll be in the danger zone for a lot longer than the usual ADC.
Keep this in mind whenever you play Kai’sa. Distance is not your friend, and you will have to go full 150 APM to avoid all those close ranges, and AOE spells the enemy can lob at you without aiming too much.
Despite the difficulty, she’s insanely broken, overloaded, and overpowered, so learning her pays off eventually.
4. Lucian
Lucian is a Champion that can either be a beast or super useless, depending on who’s behind the keyboard. Lucian’s difficulty lies in the easiness of misusing his spells and abilities. Many Champions give you enough opportunity to miss, while Lucian is a very precise character.
If you want to poke the enemy safely, you’ll have to Q the minions and line it up perfectly without getting too close. Right off the bat, you get a spell that’s super hard to hit if you’re not in the late game and/or getting up into the enemy’s face altogether.
His passive will give you two extra shots after each ability cast, which alleviates missing a bit.
The W is a skill shot that does AOE damage (kind of) and is not too strong as it scales off of AP, and you’re an ADC. The E is a dash whose cooldown is reduced by the aforementioned passive, and his Ultimate rains bullets similarly to Miss Fortune.
All of these spells are insanely hard to use correctly. Miss Fortune shoots in a wide cone, while Lucian shoots directly in front of him and cannot change the direction. He can only use his movement to go around and shoot a moving target, but the same direction is locked.
This can make it brutally punishing if you get baited into Ulting and then miss it completely. His E, if you don’t master Lucian’s mechanics, is also easy to not utilize. A proper Lucian player will be throwing his E around, resetting the cooldown like a madman. I found his E hard to learn, so I stopped trying and chose to play Kai’sa instead.
All in all, he’s a Champion that has a seemingly easy-to-use kit but can be heavily unutilized without the proper knowledge. Learning Lucian is a beneficial and fun experience, so you should give him a try and see if you like him.
Also read: Best Power Spike Champions
3. Ezreal
If there ever was a Champion built to be a walking skill shot, it’s Ezreal. Everything about this Champion is skill shots, and if it wasn’t – let’s just say he’d be the most overpowered Champion ever to grace the fields of the Summoner’s Rift.
Ezreal is more of a Mage than a traditional ADC, and he will rely a lot more on his spells than his basic attacks. This is mostly since his Q procs on-hit effects. Combined with a low cooldown and almost non-existent Mana cost and you’ve got a glorified basic attack.
Due to the Mage nature of his gameplay, he has a lot of one-shot potentials, and it lies greatly within his W. The problem is – it’s also a skill shot. The only good part about this is that it passes through minions and will stick to Champions and structures only. Later in the game, after Ezreal picks up multiple items and some Ability Haste, this spell will have a low cooldown, making misses not hurt as much.
His E is the only straightforward spell in his entire kit – it’s a glorified Flash. And the Ultimate is a global spell that’s also, go figure, a skill shot. It is nigh identical to the Jinx rocket, Ashe arrow, etc. The difference is that it doesn’t stop after hitting an enemy, meaning that it can pass through multiple enemies in a row, dealing massive damage.
Ezreal is a Champion that scales off of AD and AP alike, making him also one of the most versatile Champions in the game. Learning how to play him will certainly take time, but when you become really good at him, you will be driving off the enemy players from the Lane and out of the game entirely.
Also read: Best Sites Like OP.GG
2. Draven
Draven is similar to Ezreal with his Ultimate but vastly different in most other aspects. He’s a Unique Champion in the game, and very much so.
If you thought that movement was important with Kai’sa and others on this list, Draven takes the cake as the most difficult Champion to maneuver in the history of League. That might be an exaggeration, but have you played him with two axes at once? Yeah, that’s what I thought.
Draven’s Q amplifies his basic attack damage. That sounds simple, but the problem is that these amplified attacks (i.e., his Axes) have to be caught since they bounce off of the target you hit. Draven will spend most of his gameplay running around catching Axes that sometimes like to bounce unpredictably. A relatively low cooldown does make up for the missing, but the high Mana cost (especially early on) can be a nuisance.
Draven can spin up to two axes at once, meaning that you’ll have double the trouble catching them and maintaining a double spin at all times. Learning how to do this effectively will make you a beast and help you understand the movement mechanic in the game generally. (waltmassey.com)
His W gives him movement speed when cast and the cooldown resets whenever he catches an Axe, allowing him to get to the point where the Axe is falling quickly. Keep in mind that Draven isn’t exactly a Champion with a lot of Mana, as indicated above, and spamming these spells too often will have you drained for most of your gameplay.
His E is a skill shot that’s easy to hit. And his Ultimate, similar to Ezreal’s, is a global skill shot that doesn’t stop when it hits an enemy. In fact, it comes back and hits everyone on its way in the process. This gives Draven some fun opportunities to fake his first use of the spell and reactivate it to kill unsuspecting enemies on its way back.
He’s also one of the best ranged Top Laners that I’ve ever tried to play. Though I haven’t included him on a list of the same name, that doesn’t mean he isn’t up for the task, and whatever you do play with him, you’ll have a lot of fun in the process.
1. Aphelios
If I wanted to explain everything about Aphelios’ kit like I did with the previous Champions, it would take me perhaps as long as all of them combined – if not longer. Aphelios is the most overloaded Champion League of Legends has ever had and, likely, will ever have.
He is quite literally the Invoker of League of Legends. Those of you familiar with DOTA 2 will know what I’m saying, but those who don’t, well, let’s just say that he’s overloaded as well. This nature of the Champion inherently makes him the most difficult Champion to learn and master in the entire game.
No other Champion comes even close to the levels of dedication Aphelios requires only to be learned, let alone mastered. I won’t talk about him too much in this list, as I believe he speaks for himself substantially. I rarely see him in-game, and he’s usually either banned or people simply avoid picking him due to how insane he is.
When closing off an entry on the list, I usually recommend the Champion I’m entering and shortly explain their fun factor. Aphelios is the only one that I don’t, and while he can be extremely fun, it takes way too long and too much effort to reach those levels that I don’t see it paying off in the long term.
Conclusion
ADCs are powerful, mighty, and difficult. Some of them are especially hard to play, and we can see that the ADC role is certainly full of Champions that take a lot of strong will to learn and master.
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