The State of Marksmen and the Rework Explained, part 2 (Why this Rework isn't it, Yet)

In part 1 of this post, Why they Need the Rework, I detailed the current state of marksmen, and why they are in that state. While this post more or less stands alone, it will make far more sense after reading the first part.

My first post made 5 main points :

1. Teams need a marksmen to take contested objectives
2. Teams need a marksmen to force their opponents to spend gold and item slots on armor
3. Marksmen scale just as strong or stronger with gold as anyone else, but the least with XP, so a Marksmen + support is the ideal duo lane.
4. Marksmen are uniquely similar and uninteresting, due to the nature of their strategic purposes and necessity
5. All of these detract from making Marksmen fun

Now I'm going to address how each of these is, and could be, addressed in the Marksmen rework.

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**Teams need a marksmen to take contested objectives. **- This is mostly about towers and inhibitors. Currently, Marksmen are the only class that can take defended towers, especially when good waveclear makes it too risky for melee champs to attack them. The rework address this in two ways - They increased the AP ratio on auto attacks against structures from .4 to .5, and they shifted Marksman itemization away from AD and AS into crit, effectively making them slightly worse against towers. They also slightly less than doubled tower HP while removing their armor and MR. This change makes the Armor and MR they get while no minions are present more significant (if anything a buff to marksmen), but as pen never worked against towers it's otherwise a completely agnostic change besides the slightly lower effective health - numbers are bigger, but a similar % of their hp.

Overall, these are good changes, but the extra utility and defenses marksmen items now gives will make defensive options less necessary on marksmen, so in the end I think they will end up taking towers as fast or faster. The removal of armor from towers should have happened a long time ago - when something always has the same effective health, it might as well have that as its actual health. Damage against towers is now much clearer - either 100% of your AD, or 100% of your base AD + 50% of your AP. It still punishes hybrid champs, as it only takes into account the higher of 1/2 of your AP, or your bonus AD.

There's two other thing I'd like to see to address the monopoly of Marksmen on tower siege; Ohmwrecker becoming a real item for sieging towers, oriented towards mid to late game 5 man dives under towers defended with ranged waveclear, rather than "that item that junglers rush to dive towers early game", and another AP item with strong function against towers. Nashor's would be a good candidate. A way to acheive this on Ohmwrecker would be to make the item scale with nearby allies, and freeze the Armor and MR the tower has during its active, so that if supporting minions are killed during its active the tower won't suddenly get 66% damage reduction.

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Teams need a marksmen to force their opponents to spend gold and item slots on armor - HP can be purchased without seriously harming a champions offensive budget; RoA, Rylai's, Black Cleaver, Mallet, etc, while offensive armor items are left to Zhonya's, and to a lesser extent Sunfire Cape. HP alone is enough to survive the burst of assassin, or CD gated combo from most bruiser and fighters, yet the high sustained damage of marksmen forced large chunks of the champion pool to build some form of armor. This in turn enabled magic damage based champions to remain effective, especially against champions with a large defense budget (tanks).

Juggernauts, including the likes of Olaf, have actually addressed this fairly well. Melee carries can't typically fill this role, as squishy melees have much greater vulnerability and lower reliability. Coordination and CC is much more valid against a melee than a ranged back liner. Juggernauts, on the other hand, can survive a reasonable level of CC and focus, while still putting out enough DPS that health stacking can't negate them. Mordkaiser simply works in reverse - he forces the building of MR, as he has high sustained damage and % hp magic damage, enabling AD burst on his team to function.

Some improvements to DPS options for AD assassins and bruisers would help, but the items changes on PBE accomplish this to some extent. Ghostblade will be a much better option for bruisers, while crit builds with a bit of AS will be better for assassins, thanks to two high AD items, as well as trinity force, offering 20% crit.

Among all the issues with marksmen, this is the one Riot has been doing the best at address. Things aren't perfect, but since 5.16 this alone no longer necessitates marksmen in a team comp.

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**Marksmen scale just as strong or stronger with gold as anyone else, but the least with XP, so a Marksmen + Support is the ideal duo lane. **- This the elephant in the room for the marksmen rework. Marksmen have been given the variety and versatility needed to play outside of bot lane, while nothing has been done to make them less optimal in the duo lane. In fact, they've had their scaling per level reduced even further while their level 1 AD was buffed, making XP even less of an issue. I threw out some idea's on how to fix this here. Relic shield give 2 gp 10 on the pbe, which makes it a slightly better option for carries bot lane, but ultimately it's nearly as good for marksmen as it is melees. Mordekaiser has a gimmick on his W to get around this, but that's a gimmick, not a systemic or itemization change that would result in real variety. It just got nerfed, and the item changes screw him pretty hard anyway.

Until this is changed, marksmen will only see play outside of duo lanes when they are overpowered enough that teams can't successfully pick or itemize against multiple marksmen, even after the opportunity cost of what they replaced is paid. At the very least, we need some changes to make melee's either more reliable or more rewarding bot lane, with reliability the healthiest option._ Edit - this has been done to some extent, see part 3._

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Marksmen are uniquely similar and uninteresting, due to the nature of their strategic purposes and necessity - The reworks on PBE makes ADC's far more diverse and fun to play. By and large they now have enjoyable game play and diversity. There's now multiple build paths available to each marksmen, and noticeably different builds between marksmen, due to multiple items that give noticeable defenses while still being quite offensive, and good CDR options.

Riot did a fairly good job addressing the monotony of playing ADC's, and the homogeneity between them, without addressing the systemic changes that resulted in them being balanced into the state they are in in the first place.

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All of these detract from making Marksmen fun - If I were to give a number, I'd say that riot has dealt with half the balancing issue that have resulted in Marksmen being unfun to play in the first place. They then made them fun, without regard to the remaining balance issues holding them back on live. This is an early iteration of the PBE; I still have high hopes they will begin to address the remaining issue soon. Otherwise, expect a minimum of 4 marksmen a game.

Part 3, What, Why, and How the Preseason Changes the Game, is up! It goes in depth into all the systemic preseason changes, and their effect on the game. Please leave feedback, I'll try to address any questions.