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Current Thoughts on Marksmen

RiotMeddler·1/5/2017, 9:44:58 PM·1 votes·140,839 views

Hi folks,

We’ve just got back from the holiday break and I wanted to talk about how we see the game at present. In the next couple of weeks we’ll be putting out a longer ‘State of the Game’ post. Right now though we figured it’d be good to share some thoughts on bot lane marksmen.

We’ve seen quite a bit of feedback that marksmen feel weak in bot lane, lacking power and agency. Thoughts on that below, along with some things we need to look into further.

Things we’re pretty confident in:

  • We believe that the biggest priority right now is addressing jungler dominance, with junglers able to gank more often, and more successfully, than appropriate. Bot lane’s particularly targeted by those ganks and we think that’s a significant part of current frustration with marksman agency/power.

-> We’ll need to reduce jungler power beyond just the XP tweaking in 7.1. Not sure how exactly yet (working on that this week and next).

  • Courage of the Colossus is still too strong. That contributes to some characters feeling unkillable for marksmen. Some of those champs are also too strong in general as well (hi Poppy).

-> We’ll be nerfing Courage of the Colossus. Investigating right now whether that’ll be nerfs to the best case scenarios primarily or more general nerfs.

  • At least a couple of individual marksmen need buffs. Lucian’s the biggest example by a large margin, having been hit really hard by the pre-season changes.

-> We’ve got Lucian and Draven buffs in 7.1 and are assessing other candidates for 7.2 or 7.3 (e.g. potentially Ashe).

  • We’d like to support non Marksmen as options bot lane if the gameplay created is healthy. We’ve long felt it would be good for the game for a variety of lane setups to be viable and the farming position bot lane’s been a particularly static one. Right now Ziggs is the only non marksman getting played there a meaningful amount (around the same play rate as Corki and Tristana). So far his impact on the lane seems reasonable, with a range of ways to respond to it and an appropriate power level.

-> We’ll be keeping a really close eye on Ziggs bot lane. Assuming it stays healthy and interesting it’s something we’d want to support if it looks like a viable thing.

  • We want marksmen to be excellent choices bot lane. We’d like to see other classes there at least a bit, but don’t want to see them push marksman out or overshadow them at their core strengths. If they’re not really effective picks bot lane that’s something we’ll address quickly.

Some other things we’re looking at:

  • General power level and agency of all positions in the game, bot in particular (both marksman and support).
  • Whether marksmen power curves are appropriately tuned (e.g. Should we offer more mid game power rather than late game power for some champs/builds?)
  • Whether we’re offering the appropriate tools to kill really tanky champs as a marksmen, something that should generally be a strength relative to other classes.
  • What sort of changes we might need to make to the item system to reduce tanky champions from getting too much damage or some damaging champions from getting too tanky to deal with for their damage.

Hope that offers some useful insight. More details, on this topic and a range of others, to follow soon (gotta catch up on that communication quiet period from over the break).

Meddler

456 Comments

Rivuo1/5/2017, 9:51:02 PM31 votes

I definitly agree jungler dominance is a huge problem to me as an adc main

it seems like the jungler can come bot 100 times with no punishment in levels or gold.

Theres just too much influence from other lanes

Pud851/6/2017, 8:54:36 AM23 votes

In my opinion, currently one of the main arguments for today's jungler's's to consistently hit bot, or for a mid or top to TP\hit bot, is the fact that its worth 2 kills, plus that side of the map has a drake. Now I don't know too much about balance changing or what not but I feel currently a jungler's decision on which side of the map he/she should hit should not come so easy. There should be a real incentive to spend resources top to have your team gain a REAL global net worth. Right now top side has rift herald, this objective even when it was considered remotely good always paled in comparison to certain drakes, and it only ever applied to one team member. That's why I feel that objective should be changed in someway, i don't really care or mind if you would like to change its appearance, name, or whatever but what the said monster gives has to give a TEAM a net worth. So I personally propose that in exchange for one team stacking drakes down bot on one side of the map, the other should have a decision to go top for something like well oh idk how bout some gold? An old concept from a few seasons ago that worked beautifully. Killing said new top monster would give a certain amount of global gold for the team while a smart jungler bot would often trade that with an infernal,cloud,mountain,ocean down bot. obviously some balancing would need to be done to make this work that goes over my head but the idea is what should be considered.

tl;dr Give junglers an incentive to gank top side by replacing the old rift herald with a new neutral monster that gives global gold to the entire team, alleviating repeated pressure bot side and only bot side.

Weathered1/5/2017, 10:04:41 PM14 votes

PLEASE address jungle champions like Elise Nidalee when taking a look at jungle. They are physically painful to play.

MotherMango1/5/2017, 11:09:00 PM12 votes

Please try to consider the weaker Jungler's during these tweaks. I really like the idea of nerfing the stronger Jungler's, but hopefully that doesn't end up leaving already weak champions in an ever worse spot than they are now.

CPT CAPSLOK1/5/2017, 11:33:59 PM9 votes

I think it sounds pretty reasonable that junglers are a big reason why adcs feel so weak and

  • What sort of changes we might need to make to the item system to reduce tanky champions from getting too much damage or some damaging champions from getting too tanky to deal with for their damage.

this sounds like they got the problem with tanks. I dont think they are too tanky they just have to much damage for how much CC they also have. Also individual buffs makes sense because the strong ADC are acually pretty strong (Cait, Vayne, ...). I pretty much agree on all of these.

Sëkki1/6/2017, 2:27:00 AM8 votes

hey adc is actually fun man. I mean what other lane is 2 v 4? Maybe even 4 v 4 if your team follows.

Ars Arcánum1/5/2017, 10:11:25 PM7 votes

I read that lethality buffs are planned for the near future. Is that still the case and do you have any context?

Critkeeper1/5/2017, 10:40:54 PM7 votes

{quoted} Some other things we’re looking at:

  • General power level and agency of all positions in the game, bot in particular (both marksman and support). Meddler

I don't think you can give everyone more agency. I believe its pretty intuitive that agency is actually a conserved quantity, what you give to someone here you must take from someone there.

WisdomOfTheFooL1/5/2017, 10:47:52 PM7 votes

why's every comment being downvoted in this topic?

Vamprah1/5/2017, 11:21:00 PM5 votes

Give ALL Marksmen: +5 base dmg