Marksmen class/Crit/Lifesteal Rebalance discussion

I want to have a discussion on how to make this class less binary and broken

Not all of them are always broken but and that isn't the point but how can we keep this class around with actual strengths and weaknesses

I'm going to be honest if we want to really make the situation better we will have to look at other classes too and some of their items and interactions

The quickest way to balance things right now is to look at item costs some items are terribly cheap or stack too efficiently

Generally speaking my main problem with the class is their lack of counterplay and how similar they still are to each other, sure there are some differences but most of these differences are not very big overall and many are simply taken away due to itemization Hence why we always see only a handful of marksmen even when they as a class are strong.

I have to admit i don't play ADC role that often, mostly when auto filled or in arams.

I am actually curious how you guys would change the marksmen role over time here are some of my idea's

One idea would be to do another Marksmen class update, aimed at giving them windows of power you can play around and loading some of their damage and power into their spells

I think mobility and CC should be limited in scale for this class unless this is a specific niche for a certain champion The better option would be to give them the melee carry treatment and provide a limited use defensive tool instead of mobility options

Different strengths between the marksmen like waveclear for example as a unique strength or burst or extreme range abilties things like that to make them play more differently Some of the marksmen i currently like the best are jhin graves and ezreal, since these have weaker moments you can capitalize on or rely more on skill shots compared to say a Vayne who right clicks non stop and is otherwise a ball of roids

Changing the class to stay a reliable source of dps with moments of strength due to loading more of their powerbudget into spells and less mobility and cc but better defensive tools, not saying here i want adc's with wind walls or parry but something appropriate to their innate safety think of something like a good personal defense option, the first thing coming to mind here would be something like Garen's Courage ability which helps defend vs cc and damage for a marksmen something like that could only last a second but have it's cooldown reduced every time you basic attack an enemy both damage and cc reduction would scale with ranks It could even have a fancy passive which i will call retaliate which gives a temporary buff depending on how much damage and cc you blocked after the ability ends like movement for blocking cc and attack speed for blocking damage

Reason behind this personal defense over excess mobility and cc is that the main counterplay towards Marksmen is to close the distance they have to kite you, by giving them the same tools most fighters use to get to them you can almost nullify these against each other which leaves the range advantage

Well enough about that because it would be such a huge amount of work that this would be more suited towards a preseason update.

But what then can we do before that?

Smaller updates to crit and lifesteal

You see we can get rid of the last whisper items, perhaps change them into different AD utility like changing some of your damage to magic damage and the grievous wounds one which would not need much change

But crit itself could be made to not actually deal a lot of damage but instead penetrates a portion of bonus armor that way it would be strong stat vs tanks and fighters but not be so oppressive vs squishier targets it would get rid of the Burst Per Second situation without overly gutting the DPS and keeping the strength vs beefy enemies

But then what about ?? Say crit was to deal only 30% more damage instead of 100% but also penetrates 30% bonus armor I.E. passive could simply be changed to increase crit effectiveness by 50% scaling up both damage and penetration to 45%

A change like this does open up some doors for the future as well like on critical strike effects, which aren't really a new concept i like wicked hatchet's passive in particular since it does give the damage but it's delayed changing it from burst to dps

As for lifesteal

it might not even need much changes if we did the crit update, one of my main problems right now is how crit + IE makes it almost 150% more effective It would be better if it only worked on how much AD you have and not utilize the additional damage from crit it would be a lot more manageable and a lot more fair towards other lifesteal users. if this leaves the items weakened small buffs to the defensive parts can be done to compensate

I do like the lifesteal items we have right now, well at least most of them because they follow a pretty good concept imho AD + lifesteal + some form of additional defense like the overheal shield or magic resist or delayed damage taken.

Which leaves the zeal items

Most of these are not fine imho

Because they nullify a lot of adc weaknesses They are cheap They provide waveclear They provide excess mobility They stack too well, with the odd one out being phantom dancer

Imho Shiv truly needs a change, a simple one which doesn't entirely take away from the aoe nature would be to have it do area damage similar to instead of jumping to up to 5 targets which would make it harder to do brainless minionwave oneshots or hit every enemy champion in a teamfight for maximum damage

Another option is to get rid of the aoe entirely and let the energize proc damage bypass shields

Beyond that there is a few other options we have for the zeal items in general Make the % movement unique with the strongest one counting ofc which makes stacking them less cost effective and removes excess mobility, imho the best option Make the items a lot more expensive around 3000 gold Make them not stack well, which is the most lame option imho

or a combination of the above options

And that is pretty much my take on how to change the class for the better, but enough about my idea's i want to see some of my fellow board members idea's

[slayer-pantheon-popcorn]