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Increase marksman diversity: exe., make Jinx minigun work like lucian ult

Great Ozymandius·7/9/2017, 3:01:22 PM·1 votes·322 views

ADC's all revolve around auto-attacking. Auto-attacking is incredibly similar whatever champion is doing it. To create diversity in adc's, the mechanics of auto-attacking need to vary.

Similar auto-attacks To see how similar marksmen are, let's discuss their (minute) differences. How do marksmen auto-attacks vary currently?

  1. range - on the one hand, we have trist, cait, kog. On the other hand we have Quinn, kindred, and Lucian. Most adc's have very similar range (from 500-600).
  2. damage - different marksmen have different steroids. Corki converts physical damage to magic damage. Kog does %max health magic damage when 'w' is up. Trist gets to buff her attack speed. Vayne gets %max health true damage. While in theory, variability in the type of damage should make for composition-appropriate picks (vayne and kogmaw versus tanks, corki when he is with a high ad team, etc), in practice marksmen are picked irrespective of team comps. Maybe the choice of marksmen is adjusted to help deal with the laning phase.
  3. minigames -- draven has to catch axes. Lucian needs to spell-weave to increase his auto-attack dps. 4~) Grave's auto's can be blocked (this is the only auto-attack that is substantively different from the others).

Auto-attacks are the primary source of damage for marksmen's and these auto-attacks are extremely similar for all marksmen. Some marksmen need to play what amount to mini-games to access the full power of their dps (draven, Lucian), but this doesn't change the fundamental nature of point-and-click dps. Range varies among marksmen but only by a little bit. There are some outliers on the low end (kindred, Lucian) and there are some outliers on the high end (cait). Those with short range usually have good mobility to work around their short range. Range only differentiates three champions from the pack: Cait, Kog'maw, and Trist.

What else do marksmen's bring to a game other than auto-attacks?

  1. Some marksmen bring substantial team utility (ashe arrow, varus ult, kindred ult)
  2. Some are especially safe due to mobility (ezreal, kallista)
  3. some can jungle (graves/kindred)

Over several seasons, which marksmen are regularly flavor-of-the month in ranked and in the LCS?

  1. Ashe/varus (because they are the adc's that bring real cc)
  2. Cait (because she has the longest range early game and 3rd longest range late game (after kog and trist))
  3. Graves or kindred (because they can jungle)
  4. Ezreal/kallista (because extreme mobility grants extreme safety)
  5. Whoever does the most damage early/mid/or late in the given patch.

What stands out here is that the most unusual marksmen (longest range, AOE CC, jungling, extreme safety) often surge to prominence depending on the patch. As for the other marksmen, its just a question who has the most DPS.

RIOT needs to make auto-attacks different for different champions. Graves should be a role-model here -- he is the only champion whose auto-attacks are substantively different from those of all other marksmen.

Why not do something similar with Cait? Extend her range further, but allow minions and champions to block it. Now playing around her laning is fundamentally different and so is her teamfighting. She's not a generic marksman with long range and traps; she's a fundamentally different marksman to play as or against.

What if we made a champion whose auto-attacks are all skill-shots? Maybe this would be a good option for kog'maw: when he presses w, then for the next 6 seconds, holding 'w' and clicking on terrain or a champion will send the auto-attack at that location with (small-radius) aoe damage. These autos would grant the standard 'w' steroids. Otherwise these autos would function the same as normal autos, with animation cancelling and with attack speed increasing the rate of fire.

What if we made jinx's minigun work like Lucian's ultimate -- when activated, shoots in one direction, is blocked by creeps, and keeps firing as she's moving? Lucian's ult doesn't change his fundamental playstyle because of its long cooldown. But if that were a champion's primary source of damage, it would completely change how the champion is played as and against.

What if we made a champion whose auto-attacks attacks always work like MF's q, richoteting to a target in a cone behind the first target and doing relatively more damage to the second target?

These are just some ideas. But the point is that unless auto-attacks are different between marksmen, the in-meta marksmen will be those who do the most damage (plus maybe a utility marksman, a safe marksman, a jungling marksman, and a long-range marksman (cait)).

2 Comments

Avarist7/9/2017, 4:38:59 PM1 votes

That is a -massive- oversimplification of current ADC's, their auto attacks are all -very- different and have different interactions with their kit. Corki's are changed primarily to magic damage, Xayah's leave feathers that interact with her kit, Tristana's cause explosions on enemies they kill, Lucian's has a double-shot mechanic after he uses a spell, Ashe has slowing arrows for kiting, jhin has the 1-2-3-FOURRR thing, Kog'maws basically an absurdly fast attacking artilery void-dog that shreds through everything, Sivir's AA's can bounce all across the fight... I could go on.

The concept of rightclicking on an enemy to attack is the same between all characters. Much like how every character can press R and something happens. Their similarities end at that quite frankly.

I honestly don't understand this at all, there are very few characters who I could consider to feel similar in terms of what their auto attacks do in the bot lane, the only marksman I can think of off the top of my head who doesn't have a unique auto attack related interaction is Miss Fortune, and that's because her kit makes her play like a caster half the time.

It sounds to me as if what you want is more extreme gimmicks relating to auto attacks, like Graves / Draven, but quite frankly there already are a fair amount of them, and if you altered them to make them more severe it would likely destroy the characters for their existing playerbases. Maybe in the future we will see more unusual auto-attack play patterns, but right now I honestly think every ADC is unique and plays/feels very different.