u/Backslicer

Asol swain and Velkoz specifically have benefitted from the meta shift.
Asol was really bad as a bot APC because he lacked the waveclear and self sufficiency required to support a roaming Support. So he is actually performing better now post changes
Swain and Velkoz are also wildly benefitting from the presence of a duo partner since they have a substantial amount of kill pressure and werent originally waveclear afk farm champs

There are a few reasons for this like having a support with you for the first 5 levels and Alot of other mages that were good into Asol no longer being played but just posting this so people dont doom for the MR buffs

https://preview.redd.it/g2bp73x2orfh1.png?width=908&format=png&auto=webp&s=17c723e2d93c4504ac7cccd5a935bd5642177ced

Ignoring the fact that the APC lanes tend to be farm waveclear fiestas. At the end of the day now that they are past the incredibly low pickrate their numbers are "fine".

alot of them having lower winrates than traditional adcs (Zeri/Senna arent shown here but they are around 51.8%)
Of course the low pickrate mages like Karthus Veigar and Brand still sport a very high winrate. But this just goes to show that actually that this has been a playrate issue the entire time.

However in the end it should be said that the general power level of APCs does not reflect how fun, or more appropriately, not fun it is to play against it. But at the same time this is mostly a support issue with the average ADC being expected to solo hold the lane a majority of the game.

In a world where 2v2 botlane is the norm and not the exception, Mages would be more reasonable to play against

Historically ADCs have been very problematic for a very simple fact. Auto attacks are undodgeable.
This means that no matter what they must always be weaker than solo laners until 2-3 items otherwise they will bully and outperform said solo laners.

Now the reason ADCs have even been playable botlane has been because they have

1. Superior sieging power and the bot turret is relatively squishier
2. More objective damage
3. They have a support to defend them but get less XP as compensation

The first point is completely gone this season with Crystaline overgrowth existing.

The second point is also irrelevant since nowadays junglers can clear the dragon only marginally faster when given help. As such its not objective damage that is important but lane priority. Something that is almost entirely decided by the support and midlaner.

The Third point. Well is the most problematic. Currently Supports are probably the strongest they have ever been. And champions like Camille can comfortably duel junglers and midlaners until the later stages of the game. While giving their partner bot alot of solo XP. Which does not benefit ADCs as much as other classes

So this creates a very interesting situation botlane that rarely favours ADC champions.

1. Your support roams and enemy doesnt
2. enemy support roams and yours doesnt
3. both supports roam
   4 no support roams.

Out of all of these situations Mages can excel in all 4 of them. Bruisers and assassins can also work in most of them.
Meanwhile an ADC is almost always at a disadvantage the moment any of the 2 supports decides its time to leave lane.
They cant survive the lane 1v1. They cant punish mages being left alone in lane since they can waveclear 1v2. And if their support is the one who roams they have no waveclear and will get constantly dove.
The only situation an ADC can perform is if both supports choose to stay in lane, At which point they can go even in CS and comfortably outscale.

This is the result of years upon years of trying to decouple the ADC from the Support. And while they have succeeded and Supports can now be their own standalone champs for the entirety of the game, ADCs are completely dependant on them still.

And this is while completely ignoring stuff like "flex picks" Even in 2v2 lanes if a support is bad then the ADC still suffers many times more than a mage would ( tho this is still tied to support role being strong).

Toplane in high elo has been in one of the worst states it has ever been partly due to the game being very heavily dependant on ADC scaling, objective damage and dragons, and at the same time the lane being very very counterpick heavy with alot of the stronger high elo champions not being traditional fighters.

On the flip side Top lane sustain options were nerfed because midlaners were taking them and avoiding alot of interaction.

With that in mind in patch 15.21 Second wind lost 3 HP per 10 and Dshield lost 5 hp per 8 seconds. These are very small numbers but make quite a difference.

My suggestion is very simple. So sustain can regain some of its former strength and allow survival of harder matchups. Just make the regen part of the toplane quest. This also allows a balancing lever for the future that does not affect the other lanes (most notably midlane)

https://preview.redd.it/to5jhed23t7h1.png?width=596&format=png&auto=webp&s=ac33f2e62c6f581e4ba380e879b9dcd6fab5742a

For some reason there is this weird notion of the fact that, not being able to tell who you are laning against, is "ruining toplane". But that is only in the context of how unplayable most toplane matchups are.
From getting counterpicked by Vayne when playing a slow juggernaut or trying to play a low sustain champion into malphite. The problem is alot of these counterpicks can be both extremely easy to pilot and way way too effective. To the point a worse laner can win lane with very little effort.

The skill and effort required to even survive lane alot of the time is too much. And that is further amplified by the fact that toplane itself has almost no game impact unless your team specifically for some weird reason decides to play topside. This just results in you being a spectator for 20 minutes hoping your team is better while at the same time your matchup being so volatile you could potentially go 0/10 and sololose the game by being -1 player for your team.

On the other hand extremely problematicc is that the ways to fix toplane is to either A) Allow toplaners to impact the map and Roam. Which literally nobody wants because it clashes with the toplane fantasy or
B ) Making it so the matchups are more 50/50 skill based and not mostly decided by a coinflip in champion select. Which, while everyone would love, in the context of league of legends champions is almost impossible. (this still wouldnt fix toplane being a bad lane impact wise but would feel much muh better for the players)

This is an issue that started ever since the new split +30 lp gains redesign. Because they made it much harder for LP gains to be influenced both positively and negatively from that +30/-30 standard, Aegis of Valor went from a "fake LP" system that didnt actually matter in the grand scheme of things due to how it would lower your LP gains over time. To by far the most important part of climbing.

This is obvious by the current distribution of roles in GM/Chall.
ADC and mid have always saturated the high elo ladder more, simply because the roles are more popular.
On the flip side top has been way less popular and a considerably weaker role in high elo (unless you play RIven but even then Riven mains have now moved to mid)

There is supposed to be a bandaid "fix" for this where the less popular roles, that dont get filled, randomly get Aegis procs. However this is EXTREMELY rare. With the average jungle or Support player getting 5-10x less Aegis procs than a mid or ADC player.

This issue is most prominent in EU (where mid and ADC take up close to 60% of the high elo rankings) but can also be seen in NA to a lesser extent.
Jungle being the only other role that can compete simply because, Well its jungle and the matchmaking is still incredibly volatile favouring it heavily.

EUW Chall role distribution

Lastly this creates a very toxic incentive to climbing where if you play ADC/Mid you can seriously climb with a 50% winrate provided you play enough games. Other roles do not get affected the same way

Obligatory OPGG for credibility reasons: https://op.gg/lol/summoners/euw/Backslicer-KekW