Each year at the League of Legends World Championship, the AD carry position always comes to the forefront of the game’s meta. It feels like at each season’s World Championship, there’s at least one ADC who emerges into a standout role for their team. From JackeyLove in 2018 to Huanfeng in 2020 and so many countless others throughout League history, AD carries have always made the World Championship their stomping ground.
This season, another slew of ADCs march into Worlds—some of them have been here before, while others are making their respective debuts. Regardless, you should expect the game’s most electric position (and its most prominent talents) to take charge at the season’s most prestigious tournament.
Across the entire Summer Split, AD carries have been dominant on the Rift, with champions like Zeri, Kalista, and Lucian being the most popular picks at the position. While developments in the Worlds meta have yet to emerge, fans should expect the position to serve as the crux of teams’ relative success since ADCs can often make or break a team’s Worlds run.
Here are our rankings of the five best AD carries at this year’s World Championship.
FNC Upset – Honorable mention
After missing out on last year’s World Championship, Upset comes into this year’s tournament as the strongest mechanical player at his position from the West. While other Western talents like Comp, Danny, and Berserker may be worthy of a mention, Upset’s 2022 numbers are far too good to leave off the list. His 5.7 KDA is the third-highest among all players in the LEC and the highest among all ADCs. His year-wide 727 DPM also ranks first across the entire European circuit, according to League stats site Games of Legends.
T1 Gumayusi – Honorable mention
When T1 was at its strongest back in the spring, Gumayusi was the team’s focal point. In the first half of the year, Gumayusi expressed just how high his ceiling as a player could be, and his high level of play brought T1 just one game away from an international title at MSI. The biggest knock on Gumayusi has been his relatively shallow champion pool. Although he’s adapted to the Zeri meta over the summer, he hasn’t quite been the same since Aphelios and Jinx fell out of favor. At Worlds, though, playing to comfort isn’t out of the ordinary. Expect Gumayusi to revert to what he feels best at to find a win just as he did on occasion throughout the Summer Split.
5) RNG GALA
RNG have won two international championships in the last two seasons, and at the center of both of those MSI title runs was GALA. At last year’s World Championship, GALA was relegated to Miss Fortune duty for RNG in seven of the team’s 12 games. He’ll likely have more opportunities to express his mechanics at this year’s tournament—a plus for RNG. GALA has posted a KDA of 4.9 at international events dating back to 2021 and finished as the overall kill leaders at both MSI 2021 and MSI 2022, according to League stats site Oracle’s Elixir. If RNG go deep into Worlds this year, GALA will likely be the reason why.
4) TES JackeyLove
You can never count JackeyLove out at the World Championship. Although he’s taken a backseat to other Chinese AD carries this season, JackeyLove is still the pinpoint-accurate marksman he’s always been. The only question that’s on the table for JackeyLove is whether he’s going to lean toward the more subdued, supportive style of play that he did in 2020 or the fiery and relentless style he embraced during his first Worlds in 2018. Regardless, he’s good enough to compete for the Summoner’s Cup with either approach
3) JDG Hope
In his first full year as a starter for JD Gaming, Hope led the team to a Summer Split championship and the region’s first seed at Worlds. Hope is everything you’d want out of a “textbook” AD carry. With strong mechanics and a great grasp on the meta, he is the most consistent factor on a JDG team that comes into the tournament as its odds-on favorite. In a year where it feels like every region has a young AD carry heading to Worlds (Danny, Flakked, and Gumayusi, among others), Hope is easily the most intriguing to watch—mostly because he’s the only one among his Eastern contemporaries making their Worlds debut and has to prove whether his domestic prowess can translate to the international stage.
2) Gen.G Ruler
Ruler is having a career year, and as Worlds approaches, he’s hitting his stride just in time. This summer, Gen.G had a higher winning percentage in individual games than any other team in LCK history. Gen.G have won 28 of their last 31 individual games, with Ruler being a major reason as to why. In the LCK grand final against T1 alone, Ruler posted an eye-watering scoreline of 26/2/5. Ruler has played 12 different champions this summer and holds a positive winning percentage on all of them, with undefeated records on eight of them, according to Games of Legends.
1) EDG Viper
Viper has been among the best ADCs in the world since he broke out in 2019. And after winning a World Championship last season, he comes into this year’s tournament as the best player at his position once again. Viper thrived even last season when the meta focused mainly on mid-jungle combinations. If AD carries are even slightly more favorable at this year’s event, Viper will be an incomparable force. And that’s without mentioning how clutch Viper is. In game fives at Worlds last year, Viper posted a combined scoreline of 19/3/25 over three separate do-or-die knockout contests.
