Season 2026 ADC Item Guide: Best Builds After Patch 26.1 Crit Changes
January 14, 2026
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Many AD carry players blindly follow the recommended item builds shown on statistics websites. However, if you want to actually improve, you need to understand why certain items are chosen, not just copy them. This becomes even more important in Patch 26.1, where critical strike damage has been rolled back to 200 percent, making item choices directly tied to winning or losing. This article breaks down how to categorize builds based on champion mechanics and how to choose the core items that matter this season.
It may look complicated to less experienced players, but when you consider the champion’s own mechanics, in other words, where their main damage actually comes from, build choices become clear.
This group includes champions whose passives or abilities add extra effects to their basic attacks, causing them to scale especially well with attack speed. While critical strike items can still be effective on them, attack speed is often more important because it directly amplifies their core mechanics. As a result, these champions commonly prioritize Blade of the Ruined King or Kraken Slayer as their first core item.
This group chooses standard critical strike build items. They usually buy Yun Tal Wildarrows, Stormrazor, or The Collector as their first core item, and depending on the situation, they sometimes mix in attack speed based items. In addition, Yunara, Zeri, and Twitch, whose ultimate abilities have high value, make use of Demon Hunter’s Arrows, which is one of the key items this season.
The reverted Essence Reaver is the core item for this category this season, and the focus is on strengthening ability damage rather than basic attacks. As a result, on hit effects or armor penetration options are preferred.
You can match the reworked items this season to your champion’s concept as follows.
When you need attack speed focused basic attack enhancement: Kraken Slayer, Blade of the Ruined King, Statikk Shiv.
When playing a critical strike based AD carry: Yun Tal Wildarrows, Stormrazor, The Collector.
When aiming for Spellblade and synergy: Essence Reaver, Trinity Force, Dusk and Dawn.
When aiming for ultimate ability synergy: Demon Hunter’s Arrows, Experimental Hexplate.
Since the start of the 2026 season, critical strike AD carries have been extremely popular, to the point where it is often called “the AD carry season.” As critical strike damage has been restored to 200 percent, the choice of critical strike items has become more important than ever.
This season, Riot Games rolled back Stormrazor in order to prevent critical strike builds from stagnating and to add more diversity. The two items show clear differences in their secondary effects.
However, at the moment, Stormrazor offers strong utility but slightly weaker stat efficiency. Given Riot’s patch philosophy of prioritizing build diversity, there is a high possibility of future stat buffs based on performance data. Even with its current stats, it is showing reasonable results on certain groups of champions and is therefore expected to be a key variable this season.
On hit, it increases attack speed. It performs best in situations where your team has a strong frontline or when the enemy’s poke is not heavy, allowing you to keep attacking continuously.
When fully charged, hitting a target increases movement speed by 45 percent. It is suitable for situations where the enemy has strong poke or long range, and where precise kiting and survival are prioritized.
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