AD carries aren’t in the best state in League of Legends right now. All champions, including supports, can one-shot you, and if you didn’t pick Vayne, Smolder, or Senna, you’re griefing. Still, most players insist on picking one champion that has a horrendous win rate.
According to U.gg, Kai’Sa is the second most-picked champion in League Patch 14.5 in Emerald+. She’s right behind Smolder, one of the strongest champions on Summoner’s Rift. Even though players are picking Kai’Sa, her win rate is only 48.51 percent.
Ever since the item update arrived with the preseason, Kai’Sa has been struggling. All her gameplay revolves around evolutions to her basic abilities. She has to get enough attack damage, attack speed, and ability power to evolve each one. Even though there are hybrid builds, Kai’Sa usually rewards either evolving Icathian Rain and Supercharge or Voidseeker. This leans her into becoming a hypercarry or a poke mage.
I have over 800,000 Mastery on Kai’Sa, and I’m not picking her because the builds feel clunky. You either have to rush Eclipse and Nashor’s Tooth to become an early-game one-shot monster, or opt for an on-hit build that scales into mid-to-late-game. While the first build path gives you a lot of early game power, it falls off later. The second build scales decently, but falls short when you compare it to the raw damage output by Senna, Smolder, and Vayne.
It’s hard to say why players are picking Kai’Sa so much, but I believe meta carries are either picked or banned, and AD carries don’t have many options left. Given that you’re easily one-shot in season 14, players might be choosing Kai’Sa because of her survivability. Not only can she poke from a distance, but her ultimate allows you to reposition and gives you a shield. On top of that, you can get items like Zhonya’s Hourglass or Banshee’s Veil.
League Patch 14.6 is in the works, and there are no plans (for now) to improve the state of AD carries. The biggest problems are critical strike items that can’t even begin to compare to a mage or Lethality items. The damage on crit items is too low, and AD carries don’t get enough time to auto attack in teamfights. Hopefully, Riot Games has plans to fix this in the future.
