Marksmen are just too reliable

This is, in my opinion, what separates marksmen from all other carry-type champions; their reliability. Not the fact that supports+support items are OP because they'd be just as busted for a good melee carry, not that they can siege, just because they are more reliable than their competitors. Unlike more modern designs, even newer or reworked marksmen still have a majority of their damage in rightclicking, with no need for setting up or having a condition they need to meet, etc. For most marksmen their 'unreliability' is in their items, namely crit and the % chance that'll give them strong damage output. But even this isn't really unreliable; it's not a matter of 'if' an ADC will get items, because they're put in a safe lane with a support to protect them while they farm. Keep in mind that this reliability issue isn't just marksman; old-style melee carries are very guilty of this, too, but Riot and the community have recognized them as having design flaws for the direction League is heading in.

Compare them to many newer/reworked melee carries for instance--

as a DPS threat is backloaded on his stacking passive requires either enough time (at least half a minute) to set up tentacles or to catch one person and their spirit minimum in her ult. is also extremely telegraphed in all her attacks has a pseudo RNG passive that dictates how much damage she'll do to you needs to be able to consistently land his Q to max his output, his mobility is tied to enemies so he has to be careful about where he fights and when he dashes has barrels, which can be taken out by ranged opponents (low counterplay for melees, admittedly, particularly after level 7 when the barrel timer shortens)

All of these champions have a condition or need to build up to become a major threat, in addition to having things crucial to their kit that can be stopped or avoided. ADCs, for the most part, do not have this problem. They require little-to-no ramp-up (or they are much easier to ramp up due to their range, like Ashe), don't usually have delayed attacks, and are constantly a threat for as long as they're alive. For the most part, this makes their design very stagnant, too; once you learn one, your experience isn't gonna differ across most of the marksman roster. This also plays against marksman because much of their strength is not in their kit, but their items. Because of this ADCs constantly push each other out of viability and you end up only seeing a small handful of them being good at any given time, because they use the strongest items better than the rest.

The exception to this is Jhin, who's more bursty than DPS with his right clicks but still has a condition in the form of his reloading. Jhin ramps up to his fourth shot at the start of a fight, hits you very hard at the end of his rotation, and then he has down-time where he can't fight back if you decide to extend the fight. In addition, all but one of his spells are skillshots; two can be body blocked, two are delayed and one tells you the area he can hit you in. In addition, he has more build options than other marksmen, since he can swap between lethality and crit builds on a game-by-game basis. This is good design; ADCs should have more of these traits. Ramping up in a fight, having a window of meaningful downtime, and being more avoidable would make them better.

Some ADCs have "unreliable" burst. But it's not really unreliable, as much as delayed. Their DPS is still strong, or top tier ahem twitch, but they're rewarded for pure rightclicking by gaining a sudden burst of damage. Twitch, Kalista, Xayah and Tristana all have this. But, aside from Xayah, there's not really much you can do about this delayed burst because it's attached to auto attacks, except the usual "counterplay" marksmen usually have: kill them before they kill you. I don't think this is healthy gameplay for any party involved.

My takeaway is this. ADCs should be brought up to par with the direction that melee carries have been heading in. This means

• DPS or burst that requires a setup or has a downtime
• Interactions more complex than right clicking and enhancing their rightclicking with button-press steroids
• Spells that can be blocked or dodged; telegraphs, too
• If they are meant to have reliable and strong late games, they should have much more punishing early games to compensate (make them unreliable in getting to their most powerful)
• Stronger strength profiles that better separate them from each other. Objective control, pushing power, burst, DPS, range, utility, damage type -- all of these can be done better than they are currently to give ADCs proper distinctions.
• Less pressure on building crit; it's fine for some marksmen but not all should be made to build the same

And with these added features, we can make marksman more self-sufficient once they're given more room to outplay and be outplayed, even if some should still remain team reliant for protection. There would also be much more wiggle room to actually clarify between what stage of the game a particular marksman should shine at; currently, with crit builds as the most powerful for all marksman except maybe Kog'maw and Ezreal, even lane bully marksman are very powerful at a point in the game that they're supposed to fall off.

This isn't to say that every marksman needs to embody all of these traits simultaneously, or that they should; some reliability is necessary, and I think it's core to certain champions, but they should pay for that reliability somewhere else in their kit.

let me know what you think