[MEGATHREAD] Let's Discuss: ADCs and Counterplay

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Now onto the post.

THE PROBLEM

The class of ADC (Attack Damage Carry) or more specifically Marksman, seem to have grown too powerful where the impact of other roles on the outcome of a game seem significantly less than it should be. Or it has become the case where feeling impactful as a non-marksman champion relies on dedicating oneself to making the marksman on your team stronger or keeping the other marksman shut down. This trait can be seen in the change in meta for Supports as well as Top lane and Jungle. Supports are seen going for whatever the highest method of gold generation is and rushing items like and dedicating the use of those items solely to the Marksman rather to the team as a whole, and Marksman are seen supporting this play style by starting to funnel more gold into the Support early on. Meanwhile with Top and Jungle, the meta has focused around high utility tanks that excel at peeling and locking down enemies which by itself wouldn't be so bad, but even these tanks can be seen buying items such as for the main purpose of peeling for the Marksman only. Other champions have started to crop up in the meta for top and jungle that are very powerful early game and focus on weakening the tanks so that they don't get the gold for those items. Again, while actual impact of roles has not necessarily lowered, the feel of impact for other roles have gone down due to the need to cater towards the Marksmen.

WHAT LED TO THE PROBLEM

There are numerous aspects which have led up to this problem. There's the accessible survivability of marksmen through means of items, masteries, and other players. Some of the biggest offenders in this character, in my opinion, are lifesteal, excess power in enchanter supports, and the items available to enchanters and tanks. These aspects, combined with the next point, make killing marksmen much more difficult. Following survivability of marksmen comes the overall weakened state of champions designed to burst. Back in the assassin update, a majority of the changes focused on delaying the burst of Assassins either to be on a timed delay ( ) or to be focused more around being at the very end of a combo that is delayed through animations ( ). The problem that came with these delays is that methods of peel for their targets such as sustain, shielding, and crowd control, are not typically delayed and can be used to prevent that telegraphed burst damage and effectively have nerfed these burst-focused champions in terms of reliability. Speaking of reliability, that is the third point. Marksmen are designed to be a reliable source of damage through the use of basic attacks and steroids within their kits. Within the season items tailored towards marksmen have been buffed either through lower cost or higher stats, making the potential power of marksmen higher and faster to access. One common theme seen in a lot of posts is that these changes have led to marksmen dealing "burst per second" through critical strikes, whether this is true or not is based on perspective of what "burst" is defined as. These buffs, as well as use of and supports that increase stats in ways beneficial to Marksmen that they overall damage output of Marksmen compared to previous seasons have undoubtedly increased.

WHAT CAN BE DONE ABOUT THE PROBLEM

This is where discussion comes in.

There are multiple avenues which could be taken to bring Marksmen back down to a reasonable state without making them irrelevant. Could nerf enchanters to not have such powerful peeling capabilities or offer strong steroids typically only desirable on Marksmen. Could nerf the items tailored for marksmen to make their powerspikes more later in the game. Could change how crit works to not be such high burst potential early on. Could just nerf the marksmen themselves. Could make the damage of marksmen potentially less reliable. Could buff other classes up to the same power of marksmen. Could make some systematic change to the game itself to make marksmen less needed as a damage source towards objectives. I'll put my own opinion down below, but I encourage everyone in the comments to focus on this aspect. Some people may even see no problem with the state of Marksmen and in that case I'd encourage you to express that opinion and explain why you think there's no issue.

MY OWN OPINION

I personally believe the reliability of sustain/shielding from supports as well as access to steroids for Marksmen should be changed. What do I mean by this? How do you make healing/shielding allies less reliable? Well, while making the spells into skillshots wouldn't help much (see Lux), one thing that can be done is gate the power of the shield/heal through interactions.

Here's an example: Recently Riot made a change to Janna to give her power through basic attacks based on her bonus movement speed, all while reducing power elsewhere in her kit. The changes were aimed at encouraging Janna players to interact in lane more in order to access the full power of her kit. However, when late game approaches a big part of Janna's playstyle is to spam E and utilize Q and R whenever necessary without much else interaction. My personal suggestion would be to change Janna's E to work similar to Athene's Unholy Grail's passive. I'll explain more: The flat value of Janna's E would be cut down drastically from what it currently is; however, any damage Janna deals to champions through her passive (before resistances) will increase the shield value up to a cap similar to or higher than live values. This type of change would require Janna to interact directly with enemies in order to access the full power of her shielding abilities being a nerf to reliability but not necessarily nerf to power. Off the top of my head, another easy change to make would be changing Soraka to gain far more healing when landing Q's but reducing flat healing value off of her W, to make the power in healing through transferring the Q healing over to allies rather than just spamming W off cd.

And what about the steroids in Marksmen's kits? Well, could easily make those gated through forms of interaction rather than simply pressing a button. A good example right now is Jinx, she's a marksman that has the potential for huge power in teamfights due to the power in her passive, but those are gated completely by the requirement to participate in a kill on champion or tower first. How does this apply to other marksmen though? Well, here's an example on how to change Twitch for this.

Twitch currently has two steroids in his kit, one on his Q and the other on his R, giving attack speed and attack damage + range respectively. For his Q, the attack speed bonus is given immediately on live, but could be changed to only give the steroid when coming out of stealth only after being stealthed for X seconds. As for the bonus AD on R, that could be moved over to E where AD is given to Twitch for a period of time based on the number of passive stacks he pulled from champions (X AD per stack pulled, up to Y stacks, lasting Z seconds). This would make the power through steroids gated in ways where it's not available at the start of teamfights from the click of a button but are still able to be accessed should teamfights last long enough.

CONCLUSION

Those are my thoughts on the state of Marksmen currently and how to deal with it. But I'd like to see an open discussion come into the comments section about your own thoughts on the state of Marksmen and (if you believe there is a problem) what needs to be done. While we may not be able to come up with exact numbers perfect for rebalancing the game, we can help give Riot ideas on things to change! See you in the comments.