Last weekend, Fnatic was crushed by G2 Esports in the 2024 LEC Summer Finals, with both mid laners only picking Lucian and Corki throughout the series. After the game, Humanoid criticized the mid lane meta, saying mages feel useless at the moment.
Anyone who follows competitive League of Legends or plays the game themselves knows AD carries are dominating the mid lane meta. Fnatic’s mid laner believes it’s due to a fundamental problem that should be fixed sooner than later.
Humanoid shared his thoughts in one of the interviews after losing the final to G2. “I am happy with it [the meta], but it shouldn’t be like this for a long time. They should mix it up a bit. The problem is that every single ADC has, for no reason, 450 movement speed. When you play a mage with 380 movement speed and try to hit spells on an enemy ADC who also does more damage than you, it just makes no sense to play mages,” Humanoid told Sheep Esports.
The Czech mid laner thinks League‘s mid lane situation is a “systemic issue.” And you can’t really blame him. Having ADCs dominate in a different position than the bottom lane is wrong, especially when they excel in both movement speed and often also damage, whereas mages and assassins can’t find their place in the meta.
You don’t have to look far to find proof of ADCs reign in the mid lane. In the 2024 LEC Summer Playoffs, Corki was the most played champion in the role with 22 games and a 78 percent pick and ban rate, according to Oracle’s Elixir. Lucian and Tristana follow suit with 16 and 13 games played, respectively. More impressively, the latter had a 100 percent pick and ban rate.
Only two mages, Azir and Taliyah, were picked frequently in the mid lane in the 2024 LEC Summer Playoffs. They both appeared in nine games each. Assassins, another group of champions usually assimilated with the position, are even more forbidden. In fact, only Yone was picked in the tournament, and it was merely four times.
On the other hand, this forced a few mages to rotate to the bottom lane. At the time of writing, Veigar, Seraphine, and Brand sit among the top five champions with the highest win rate in the ADC role in all ranks, according to U.GG.
Luckily for both professional and casual players, Riot Games is looking into the issue. In Patch 14.14, which released two weeks ago, champions like Corki, Tristana and Brand were slammed with the nerf hammer. Additionally, further changes are on their way for other ADCs and mages, including Twitch, Varus, Sylas, Ezreal, and Cassiopeia. They are expected with Patch 14.15, which launches this Wednesday, July 31.
