are all using Duskblade, I'm not sure about draven cause i dont see him often, but remember when riot talked about the item coming out and everyone was worried ADCs would abuse their Assassin made item? yes those adc's can play like assassins because of their burst but they still weren't mean't to build it. When are you going to make it melee only like you said you would if it became popular on ADCs.
RiotRiot Axes47 votesIt'll likely be changed at preseason. May or may not be Melee Only - we're exploring larger changes that might not require us to make it melee only.
Earl Eulrich59 votesand while you´re at terms that adcs seem to be doing fine with straight reliable dmg - might you want to consider finally getting rid of that stupid RNG on crit to finally make the game somewhat competitive?
Bonipherus22 votesIdk why you're getting downvoted because this is an important factor in the prevalence of armor pen vs crit chance we are seeing
Irelia Bot28 votesSome of us have been saying winning or lossing based on RNG is bad for a competive game and even Doublelift has said it is a problem to some degree.
The counter arguments tend to be:
if you are really that much better it doesn't matter which sounds great until you get triple crited by a Trynda at level 2 and he then to snowballs out of control because RNG was on his side.
the general effective damage in theory is the same. Which actually is more of a argument against it since it is no longer RNG if it is changed to a % of total AD boost.
Dessem9 votesSome of us have been saying winning or lossing based on RNG is bad for a competive game and even Doublelift has said it is a problem to some degree.
Playing devil's advocate here, but DOTA2 has pseudo-random crit and pseudo-random dodge, though. And DOTA2 is certainly not doing bad for itself, if TI is any indication of the absolutely stupidly high prize pool they're able to award. So that at least shows that there are games in which RNG in a competitive environment doesn't immediately indicate the game is problematic.
World of Tanks is a(n) (fledgling) e-sport that relies completely on RNG to decide whether a shot lands and if it does, whether it does damage and if it does, how much damage. But there are people playing it competitively, so it indicates that the RNG is acknowledged but accepted.
Of course, I think Ashe has got a good argument for how ADCs whose damage output isn't subject to RNG can look like, while still building Crit and Attack Speed. Certainly sucks when some battles come down to "I didn't crit enough" more than "My damage wasn't sufficient" (which is only a direct result of the former).
Flitchee3 votesThe actual difference here, is dota is completely balanced around items much more than the kits of the heroes. There is an item that counters everything the game can throw at you. Sure crit isn't exactly perfect, but that is what dodge and blademail is for, and to counter dodge so that P.A. isn't obnoxious there is MKB. I can go on and on with examples, but you should get the gist of it.
Tobias Brackner1 votesYou mean Black King Bar?
Because that's the one counter to everything and LoL has that too.
Korend Slicks2 votesI mean, not the person you're replying to, but I do know that there are quite a number of spells that can bypass BKB and its spell immunity. It also lowers its active timer and cooldown every use to a certain point, so BKB might be a great counter in some situations, but completely worthless in others. Like, you shouldn't buy a BKB if their entire team consists of people whose spells bypass BKB and autoattack you to death, you would be silly.
Tobias Brackner1 votesYeah, I just remember seeing every tournament game having at least 1 BKB on each team, and sometimes upwards of everyone has BKB
Atanchan2 votesActually, given that this conversation is about crit and stuff, BKB is absolutely worthless - about all it's going to give you against attack-based stuff is the 200 health from the strength and immunity to a few attack abilities.
You almost always see it, though, because as much as there's stuff that goes through BKB there's still tons of stuff that don't, and being able to DPS or especially channel without being interrupted can be such a big deal.
Irelia Bot2 votesI think I would rather learn how to count cards since that sounds effectively like competitive gambling.
Hinagiku334 votesGiven that Critical Strike is pseudo-RNG and controlled by algorithms it baffles me that Riot doesn't just disallow back-to-back criticals below a certain Critical Chance threshold.
I'd really hate to see Critical Strike be replaced by something as bland as % AD boost. I was here for the days of Bloodthirster rush, where whoever farmed slightly better or got a better gank got ahead and stayed ahead. AD DPS needs something besides bonus flat damage on every hit or it is just completely oppressive (see: everyone complaining about Marksmen that just build AD and flat Armor Penetration).
Critical Strike does need some definite changes: Crit runes have to go, and Critical Chance should really be removed from component items and only added to completed items (similar to how Riot removed Spellvamp from Revolver but let Gunblade keep its omnivamp passive). For champions meant to rely on Crit I'd like to see more kits with abilities that interact with Crits (i.e. do something cool when you Crit) but not just giving Critical Chance for nothing (i.e. Tryndamere needs a rework).
Edit:
We've all been complaining about builds like this; this does not need even more flat bonus damage.
Flitchee2 votesI actually don't have a problem with a build like that, to me that is sort of what the game should look like, at least it is consistent in the damage it can dish out. The problem is, is how the game currently functions that makes this seem over bearing. (see thunderlords) Without the masteries, this build probably wouldnt be so effective, as this is mostly an early game build, as crit will outscale the damage of this build.
Hinagiku334 votesHowever, Marksmen are inherently late game champions.
In order to replace Critical Strike, a flat damage/consistent DPS build would have to out-scale the current Crit-less build to become the default late game build.
You may be fine with builds like this now, at their current power level, but Crit builds are the required late game DPS that Riot balances Marksmen around. I don't see that level of power, with perfect absolute consistency, being in any way not oppressive on right-click champions.
Critical Hits at least give Marksmen something to play around with and could be better integrated into kits to make more interesting gameplay. "Just build flat damage" on the least interactive class in the game sounds awful.
I remember when 
: 
was the default Riven build, and people despised it FAR more than they hate Riven now. And Riven at least requires more mechanical input that just right-clicks.
If Critical Strike goes, then the entire Marksmen class needs another class overhaul.
Flitchee2 votesMarksman in it self would not really need a complete overhaul, for this kind of thing to work, the game itself needs to be re-evaluated. Also, crits on adcs are not an ideal way of having the game work. People will either suddenly win fights, or look like they are smacking people with a wet napkin. I'm fine with crit, but not in the amount it is in the game. Almost every AS item has crit tacked to it in some degree. Crit should be exactly what it is, a critical hit, it should not occur every auto, and it definitely should not never occur. The main reason you see these consistent damage builds, is with the current state of the game, adcs can't afford to not crit. There is just damage coming from every which direction, and if they dont crit on first auto they usually get f--ked six ways to sunday. And on the note that building flat damage, when in all actuality that is all they do is kind of silly. The game needs more interesting items, but when it boils down to it, all they build is damage. However, when you start implementing crit into kits, you wind up with things like yasuo and jinx, jinx is not that awful, but aoe crits that don't have reduced damage is kind of absurd. Don't even get me going with yasuo. Also on the Riven topic, people don't necessarily hate riven now, but that is because there is more things that are way more frustrating to deal with than riven. and people that usually built 5 bt on riven were trolling.
GayFluffyUnicorn3 votesExcept noone is taking thunderlords except maybe MF. Fervor is a huge problem on everyone who can capitalise on it
Pale Pirate2 votesRNJesus is hate, RNJesus is death.
BLACK REALM GOD3 votesi think criticals should come out x number of times per 10 shots where x is critical rating divided by 10 always.
so if you have 30% critical rating every 10 shots you get 3 criticals on number 8 9 and 10. at 35% you get the same. at 20% you get 10 shots with number 9 and 10 being a critical. upon hitting 10 shots it refreshes. very similar to caitlyn's headshot system. at 90% critcal you get all criticals except your first hit. at 100% all of your hits will be criticals forever and always. at 10% critical you will have your final hit in a 10 hit sequence be a critical. no more randomness. upon stepping foot back onto the summoner platform you will lose your basic attack chain.
Depárt8 votesSorry but this is all around a terrible balance idea.
Crit does not need a "window of power".
Bonipherus14 votesThat level of predictability just means you'll save your last crits to use on your opponent instead of creeps. It would then create less spontaneous plays and bring even more information you need to keep track of by constantly counting marksmen shots. Riot discussed crits before and said that's why they wouldn't like your system. They should just make crit interact like Ashe's passive.
Akali is SO HOT5 votesAt this point in the game there really isn't a good way to remove or drastically change crit without having to completely overhaul a ton of champions and items.
Dengeden1 votesA Rioter listed at least 5 reasons why the crit RNG is good for the game. Google it.
And something that's so often glossed over is that it's a pseudo RNG, i.e. (not) getting a crit (increases/) decreases the chance of getting another one.
FoW also leaves you guessing to some extent, that isn't competitive either then?
TotalJerk5 votesNot so much "why it's good" but more "why its a bandaid"
Battlecast Sona1 votesI think the problem most people have is that while yes, it is psuedo-random (which is great as the player critting) it's still random (which has the potential to be worse for the person you're playing against). Psuedo-random RNG actually hurts this game in a lot of ways because I don't believe that they implemented it as harshly as they should have - in DotA2 for example, you have a LOWER than average chance to crit on your first attack but it increases with every hit, with the first critical taking you to the reduced first rate. With the number of double/triple crits that I see happen in LoL I have a hard time believing this is the case. It also really sucks because psuedo-random RNG at anything higher than 50% crit basically guarantees every other auto crits, which seems nice until you get 3-4 in a row thanks to the RNG that's mixed in there.
Basically, in a vacuum where everyone only ever gets like 25% crit chance crit doesn't need any changes, but with higher crit values psuedo-random RNG actually starts to work against "health" at least from a feel perspective (because it can create multiple crits in a row, as LoL's RNG doesn't seem to force non-crits after a crit appropriately based on crit chance).
Dengeden1 votesWhy doesn't DotA remove the RNG entirely if they want crit chance to stack up?
Yeah you'll see triple-quadra crits in LoL ... you'll never notice if you didn't get crit.
Atanchan2 votesBecause true RNG means that a 20% chance to occur means it's just as likely for something to happen 10 times in a row than it is to never occur in a set of 10 triggers.
Through PRNG, it assures that on a string of really bad luck, an action will be forced to occur when the true chance reached 100%. Additionally, it reduces ( but doesn't nullify ) the chance for a low-chance proc to occur three times in a row, because you're actually working with a far lower chance.
Plus there's the fact that randomness doesn't feel random to us. Critting 5 times in a row might seem to fit 10% crit chance because over a hundred attacks, that was half of our crits, but it certainly doesn't seem like it's actually 10% when it happens.
BeatzBoyFTW6 votesBut why are you still concerned of whether having it melee only or not since the item is meant for Assassin champs like 
only?
BLACK REALM GOD3 votestoo bad you cant do to it what you did with smite to keep other players from buying machete.
make the penetration in the game all unique passives that dont stack. then make the damage magical instead of physical from dustblades passive. increase the time required for the passive to activate by doing a stacking mechanic that refreshes the timer and prevents the passive from activating. then put the cooldown on a massive 200 second timer and increase the damage inflicted upon activation of the passive by more % missing hp. BOOM works as intended by granting a second ultimate on a low life opponent upon them running away guaranteed kill and cant be used effectively by marksmen due to their high attack speed during basic attacks. put a marker above the enemies head to show they have been marked by the duskblade for execution such as a symbol similar to kalistas passive that marks enemies for her tethered ally to attack, but make it red and sword shaped and slowly drain the red away leaving a black sword that signifies the timer of dusk blades passive. that way players who are effected will be able to use zhonya or heal to lower the damage recieved or some other form of debuff negation to remove it.
does that sound like a good idea? someone reply.
Kiharon3 votesThese changes would make the items worse for their intended users and possibly better for marksmen that are abusing it.
BLACK REALM GOD2 votes:P marksmen buy assassin items because assassin items give them more attack damage, but they cant buy 6 assassin items without sacrificing their role so really if you take all of the assassin items and remove penetration and attack damage and movement speed and start over new there'd still be players who value assassin items over marksman items on a ranged champion. league is set up to where anyone can buy anything in the game and i like that about it
smite for example is so nit-picky about what a player can and cannot buy that it could be played by lee sin in the dark without turtle beaches. that game separates every character into magic or physical and ranged or melee. then from there you can buy only items of your 2 classes.
league on the other hand doesnt do that and im glad it doesnt because that stifles creativity and makes every game feel the same.
champions are created in league so far with just ranged vs melee to determine their items. with hydra and runaans being the only locked item besides smite sticks that build from machete.
i think the real problem is that while this one item is made specifically for assassin's the fact is that this game promotes free will and as long as an item has more damage than another item with 6 item slots to fill it's going to show up on players builds. a really good way to fix this issue would be to offer items that marksmen would rather buy over this item. currently many of the stats in game dont feel as powerful as "deleting" an enemy with a single basic attack or Q. if the stats on our masteries could somehow end up on items like putting fervor on a new item that grants 20% attack speed or something and we lowered base attack speed on all items overall so that 2.5 was harder to hit for marksmen we could start dropping base numbers on a lot of items and marksmen physical damage scalings to make attack speed and critical be more important on their builds. then assassin's could buy their high damage items and marksmen could buy their high attack speed items and some of the players who like hybrid assassin marksmen would pick from both trees.
i'll give you a chart of items and stats and show you what i mean. this is going to seem like a wall of text but i hope it helps me express my views.
what marksmen are expected to want - attack speed, critical, attack damage, movement speed. what assassins are expected to want - damage, penetration, cooldown reduction, movement speed.
see the problem? let me elaborate.
attack speed 
critical 
attack damage 
movement 
now just looking at those items minus boots in movement - we can see what would be on a marksman's to buy list. if an item shows up more than once it's probably got more chance of being on multiple builds. do you see an item that shows up more than once? (waits like dora the explorer) where?! (waits like dora the explorer) that's right! dusk blade has both damage and movement! good job! lol jk but for reals though let me do the assassin one
physical damage -
magical damage - 
physical penetration -
magical penetration - 
cooldown reduction - 
movement speed -
now if the same thing applies here as does with marksmen having an item in more than one place would seem appealing to an assassin. however because the assassin needs such basic stats (everyone wants cooldown and everyone wants damage and everyone wants movement speed and everyone wants penetration) almost all of the items in the game would give something to an assassin so the choices are a bit more convoluted - for example what assassin buys ardent censor? nidalee maybe? idk.
my point is that there arent enough items to keep the marksmen from wanting damage. basic stats are too commonly distributed in items. in theory if you have 2.5 attack speed at 100 damage you're doing the same amount of damage as someone who has 250 damage at 1.0 attack speed (i think unless there's a hidden variable in the math formula like there is with resistances). critical strikes are convoluted in their efficiency so many players wont even use them since armor penetration and damage are on the same items usually and it guarantees more damage per shot. i recommend changing all marksmen from physical damage scaling to critical and attack speed scaling for their abilities or substantially dropping their power on their abilities to compensate for the spike of basic attack damage they get. now of course this is all depending upon how each individual champion plays, but for the most part i think this is a good explanation of player item choice. if you take a look at the items you'll see that duskblade has the highest physical damage available because of the physical damage at 75 damage and 10 penetration the next runner ups would be
until critical/attack speed is changed or duskblade is changed to be less of an offensive item and more of a passive item i dont think it's going to change who buys if riot wants it to be bought at all.
there are ranged assassin's who'd be missing out if it were to be made into a melee only weapon. that would then cause problems with those specific champs and their roles in the game.
Kiharon1 votesOk, so it seems like we're moving the discussion off Duskblade in particular and onto assassin vs marksman itemization overall.
Your post included a glut of items, many of which will never be considered by Marksmen or the AD/physical Assassins that are the intended buyers of Duskblade, so I'll ignore those. I think the general itemization goals of the classes are:
Marksman
Assassin
With those in mind, you can see why the normal builds are supposed to be something like (in no particular order):
Marksmen
or one of the flat penetration items if there is not much armor being built. If a further defensive item is needed, it can fill the last slot. Otherwise expect two of one of the above. Obviously, this is a generalization that applies to Marksmen with little to no ability damage. The flat armor penetration comes in where there starts to be a higher percentage of non-scaling ability damage compared to basic attack damage.
To your point about wanting to build flat damage items, I think there are a lot of factors to consider. In theory, the 2.5 AS 100 AD and 1.0 AS 250 AD builds have the same DPS, but the issue is how reliably you can get each of those attacks off. In reality, AS has very non-linear effects on your damage, where you either get another attack off or you don't. Also, team comps must be considered. If you have to be too wary of an assassin or mage, you will have less opportunity to get attacks off, so you need to make each one count. Big damage numbers are also funner to see, regardless of if they give the optimal DPS. Crit as a stat has a reliability issue until you can build a lot of it, which makes it a weaker stat early.
Assassin (I don't play assassins, so I could be way off, but these are what I would expect.)
or 
but could see a defensive boot, if needed There are alternative builds where assassins take and/or for the extra burst from the criticals, but these are risky, because your burst now partly relies on RNG, and less effective since the removal of crit from Ghostblade.
Personally, I think truly ranged assassins, as opposed to the similar burst mages, would be a bad idea and thus do not need to be considered in this discussion. I feel most assassins (AP and AD) are too safe already, but that's less itemization and more kit and probably my general distaste for playing against them.
MunchCrunchLunch6 votes[{quoted}](name=Riot Axes,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=9EfQG6zR,comment-id=0000,timestamp=2016-09-12T02:09:31.904+0000)
It'll likely be changed at preseason. May or may not be Melee Only - we're exploring larger changes that might not require us to make it melee only.
even for melees. the item is already shitter than it is for ranged. if you nerf it in general. well. its gonna be never bought on melee assassins. why should they buy it when they can get ravenous hydra and do the same damage pretty much instantaneously .
Shadow Hazard9 votesThe mistake was making an AD version of DFG.
WarWork1 votesWhen does the season end again?
RiotMeddler5 votesSometime in November most likely.
WoonStruck7 votesI can't wait for this season to be over, personally.
Hopefully you guys have a LOT of changes in store for pre-season, otherwise a lot of people are giving up hope.
Not changes for the sake of change, mind you, we're talking changes that fix all of the fundamental problems very large groups of players have issues with.
Oh, and you should probably stop shitting all over the meta at every opportunity so your pro scene can actually grow, find counters, etc. A game whose meta only changes from balance adjustments is a sign of near-perfect balance, or horrible balance. League is definitely nowhere close to where Brood Wars was, balance-wise.
Only make hotfix changes that are necessary; save all minor non-hotfix patch content for mid-year, and any relatively large changes for preseason. Its time to start treating the people who make a career out of your game decently, even if that's probably not really up to you.
NineTailedMystic17 votesI'd rather not have the same picks/bans for 6 months, thanks.
WoonStruck3 votesYou do realize that small tweaks to numbers would still be done, right?
I'm talking about champion reworks, mechanical changes, new items, etc. Things that significantly affect the competitive scene.
Sakaru5 votesYou do realize in a game like this, not having sweeping and frequent balance changes would cause the game to die within a year right? Kind of hard for them to make a career out of it if the game dies out.
WoonStruck6 votesWonder why it did better when it didn't have sweeping and frequent balance changes, then. lol
Change for the sake of change isn't what made this game popular.
Xeruon3 votesNormally you come off as a condescending dickbag, but you usually have a point.
Now, you just come off as a dickbag.
Battlecast Sona2 votesit helps that he's totally and completely wrong. The biggest growth point for League of Legends (seasons 1 and 2) are also the parts of the game that were most frequently patched (a new champ was released every 2 weeks without fail, whether they broke the game or not). Hilariously enough, they stopped doing it because of things like the super buggy 
and some pretty lackluster champion releases/balance changes. It's so easy to look at the early stage of the game with rose tinted glasses, but Riot was a young company and made a ton of mistakes during that time.
Battlecast Sona1 votesyou mean back in season 1 and 2 when they released a new champ every 2 weeks regardless of whether they were good/balanced or not? Kappa
I mean shit, that era of the game was what gave us . Let's not pretend it was some kind of golden age for League of Legends, lol.
WoonStruck2 votesAnd this one gave us Ekko.
I never said it was a golden age. I said they should let the pro scene stabilize a bit.
The pros hate the current balance regime. That's why they only last 2-3 years, as opposed to 5+, sometimes upwards of 10 for many other competitive games.
There are too many massive meta shifts in LoL due to balance. Its simply not worth the effort for pros to keep up.
Sakaru3 votesIt did better because it was newer. It's an online game, they get less popular over time. Changes are the only thing keeping people interested. If the change wasn't there, people would leave a lot quicker.
Also, it's ALWAYS had frequent balance changes. Only difference now is the number of champions requires more changes per patch, but it's roughly the same overall change relative to the amount of content.
WoonStruck2 votesAnd yet DotA is several years old now and surging in popularity.
Sakaru3 votesYou really don't understand how these things work, do you? DotA was officially released 3 years ago. It was in various levels of beta for 2 years prior. LoL is TEN years old.
Look at how popular LoL was 5~7 years ago and you'll see the answer to your own question. Games become more popular over time up to a point, then trail off. This is true for all games.
Many games receive a following that'll last 20+ years and so they seem like they're still popular.. But in reality, most of those people barely ever play said games. They just like to look back and reminisce.
You're literally comparing a 3~5 year old game's popularity to a 10 year old game.
In any case, this'll be my last post on the matter. So let me add in one more fact:
LoL's still making $1.6 billion a year. That's hardly a failing game, or one that's "doing worse." You're just upset because you don't like changes. Which is normal. But the fact is they work, and they need to keep coming.
Kinetika5 votesPlease, please add Frozen Mallet into that "Melee Only" bucket while you're at it.
