An updated take on ADC build paths, 1 year later
Obviously, some of this stuff is dated. Crit items now give 25% Crit instead of 30% (thank god), and Infinity Edge is back to dealing extra damage instead of percentage true damage.
But I think it's cool that I predicted a number of other things.
For a start, Stormrazor is now an energized item (I noted that it's a little weird how it was almost an energized item but not quite). Additionally, I predicted an energized item that gave a small slow - current Stormrazor. I also said that they should remove Rapidfire increasing energized charge rates, and instead suggested that all energized items make all other energized items charge faster; I got that almost right. They did indeed remove Rapidfire's increased charge rate, but instead made it so that energized items help each other by stacking the damage instead of increasing charge speed.
Not only that, but they also acknowledged that energized vs. crit was a strange distinction to have when there was already so much overlap, so they made all energized items give crit. In my opinion, this is the exact opposite of what Riot should be doing.
Crits are, supposedly, a way to differentiate AD build paths between early/middle/late. We don't really have dedicated early-game AD items besides lethality (which is funny because, as you may remember, the entire reason lethality was created was to mitigate the earlygame power of old armor penetration items). But you know what, let's count them as early game. Okay, so what do ADCs do for lategame power? Presumably, this is the area of crits. The entire point of critical strike was that it wasn't that strong while you had only 25% or so - but as you got more crit chance and hit 3-4 items, it would all come together. [1]
Except, that's not really how it works. Riot has realized that forcing players to forego a significant amount of power early for some eventual lategame isn't really workable when many games are decided so quickly. So they buffed the early game power of crit items. Essence Reaver and Infinity Edge don't feel significantly worse to rush than BotRK on most champions, despite them presumably offering more lategame power. Crit items now are just generally strong at most points in the game, and especially strong if you hit 100% crit chance. Before we talk about how I would change this, let's also look at midgame. According to the 9.23 patch notes:
This time, we're embracing the overlap and the goal of our changes is to make Energized a slightly more mid-game-oriented flavor of crit, rather than its own thing entirely.
Energized is presumably supposed to be the king of midgame in terms of AD build paths. And this kind of makes sense given what the items do. Super early game, they're somewhat underpowered. In the midgame, your energized attacks are gonna be huge. In the lategame, because you're focused on single attacks, you'll have less DPS than a regular crit build. In general, I also like that energized attacks also have more special effects (slows/speeds ups/range/waveclear).
So, what do I believe should be done now with ADC itemization? A year ago, I wanted to remove crit completely. Now, I acknowledge that differentiating between a midgame and lategame build path isn't a horrible idea, so I'm fine with crit - provided there's a greater differentiation between it and energized.
To begin, I'd separate energized/crit completely. You could probably increase energized damage or the raw stats on energized items to compensate the loss of crit rate. There should also be another energized item or two added, maybe for health/mana regen on hit (to compensate the loss of Essence Reaver for champs that want it). [2]
As for crit, I'd move more of the item power towards the lategame. As a general rule, I'd lower base stats and increase crit payoffs. Infinity Edge could have its AD nerfed, but its crit damage increase buffed. Essence Reaver and Phantom Dancer could either have their passives moved over to only apply on crits, or changed so their weaker on non-crits and stronger on crits. For example, maybe PD gives only 5% movespeed on a regular hit, but gives 10% after critting. There's a decent diversity of crit items at the moment, but maybe it wouldn't be out of the question to add one or two more.
And so that's what I'd like to see for Season 10 with regards to ADC build paths. Separate energized/crit, add another energized item or two, and change around crit items so they're weaker early game and not an automatic safe and consistent rush.
[1] The effectiveness of crit items doesn't depend on how much crit you have This exodia concept is also ridiculous because crit items increase your expected damage by the same amount regardless of how much crit you have. I'm going to make up some names and numbers so calculations are easy. Let's say there's an item in the game called Infedge that gives 100 AD, 25% crit, and has no other effects. Let's also take two champions: Bait with 100 AD and 0% crit chance, and Cait with 100 AD and 75% crit chance. They have the same AD, but Cait has 75% more crit chance.
- Bait attacking without Infedge: (100 x 1.00) + (200 x 0.00) = 100 damage expected
- Bait attacking with Indfedge (200 AD, 25% crit): (200 x 0.75) + (400 x 0.25) = 250 damage, an increase in 150 damage
- Cait attacking without Infedge: (100 x 0.25) + (200 x 0.75) = 250 damage expected
- Cait attacking with Infedge (200 AD, 100% crit): (200 x 0.00) + (400 x 1.00) = 400 damage, an increase in 150 damage
As long as you don't go over 100% crit, any amount of crit + AD will always add the same amount of expected damage, regardless of your current stats. You're not really assembling Exodia. The exception to this is effects which trigger exclusively off crits, such as Infinity Edge's increased crit damage. In the above example, let's pretend Infedge increases crit damage by 50%, to 250%. Therefore, a crit with 200 AD and Infedge will deal 500 damage. Let's look at this again:
- Bait attacking without Infedge: (100 x 1.00) + (200 x 0.00) = 100 damage expected
- Bait attacking with Indfedge (200 AD, 25% crit): (200 x 0.75) + (500 x 0.25) = 275 damage, an increase in 175 damage
- Cait attacking without Infedge: (100 x 0.25) + (200 x 0.75) = 250 damage expected
- Cait attacking with Infedge (200 AD, 100% crit): (200 x 0.00) + (500 x 1.00) = 500 damage, an increase in 250 damage
So effects which trigger off your crit chance actually do scale off crit chance. It is important to note that this is dependent on Infedge giviving the increased crit damage. So if we removed its passive, Infinity Edge would always give you the same damage, regardless of if you first built crit or lifesteal.
[2] Some weirder energized changes I went into this a little on my old discussion about runes, but I also think Fleet Footwork should have either the healing or the movespeed removed and then be moved down to a minor rune. Energized items could get a new item which fulfills the missing piece of the puzzle and offer stats.