LCS 2021: Ranking Every Single Starting ADC in the LCS

Let’s rank every ADC starting for an LCS team in 2021.

The biggest story of the offseason, arguably bigger than Bjergsen’s retirement, was TSM’s legendary ADC Doublelift following suit and retiring. With that one move, the LCS landscape has irrevocably changed forever…at least until Doublelift unretires. While it was up for debate whether Doublelift was still number one, we enter the 2021 LCS season truly wondering who is the cream of the crop.

Today, we rank all the starting ADCs in the LCS, basing a player’s ranking on the four key metrics that correlate to a team’s success, along with individual performance.

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• Adjusted KDA (aKDA) – calculated like regular KDA but weighing solo kills higher and assists lower
• Gold Per Minute (GPM)
• Estimated Damage Differential (EDD) – the difference between a player’s damage output on a given champion and that of the average player on the same champion
• Matchup Adjusted Gold Plus Experience Differential at 15 (MAGXD @ 15) – what it sounds like, the gold plus experience differential at 15 minutes, accounting for the lane matchups that a player has faced
• Champion Pool Strength – measuring a player’s champion pool by the number of unique picks they played last year and the number that they played above average.

10. Toàn “Neo” Trần (Dignitas)

The man formerly known as Asta, Neo has been toiling in the Academy league for a few years now. With Dignitas as one of the few LCS teams rebuilding with a youth movement, Neo was the man they chose to replace their young and promising ADC Johnsun. Maybe not the best strategy to kick start a rebuild.

On top of that, Neo was not one of the top performers in Academy last year. His gold per minute was just a shade over 400, which is terrible for an ADC. While he was a decent laner last year, with a 48.6 MAGXD @ 15, that mark is not great when you remember that he was facing far weaker competition than he will in the LCS this year.

Moreover, his damage output in Academy was absolutely putrid for someone in the Academy league. He put up a -45.4 estimated damage differential against that weaker competition and was the only ADC of the ten starters who did under 475 damage per minute.

That low damage meant that Neo had a very low number of kills per game (3.2) and a poor adjusted KDA (2.62). With his laning as the only thing Neo can hang his hat on, I fear he’s going to be in quite a bit of trouble as the LCS season opens.