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"Having all your team fight, late game, DPS, objective control, and siege on one class isn't fun."

Hyrum Graff··89 votes·6,832 views

[{quoted}](name=Jelly Mac,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=EAN501sz,comment-id=00040001000000000000,timestamp=2015-09-28T21:16:45.998+0000)

In the end, having all your team fight, late game, DPS, objective control, and siege loaded on a single class just isn't fun.

tl;dr, #notallmarksmen need to be good at all of these things. Making each of them weaker in some areas lets you make them stronger and more interesting in other areas, which makes them more unique and hopefully increases the diversity of marksmen who see play.

#Why do adcs in their current form exist?

There's really 3 parts:

Seige:

  • League absolutely needs a class which takes towers quickly.
    • Otherwise we get an endless stall-fest.
  • This class probably needs to be ranged, otherwise taking towers becomes way too risky, and again we get a stall-fest.
  • This class needs to have good single-target dps.
    • The alternative would be, they can deal burst damage to towers.
      • This is not really a healthy mechanic because you get the same amount of damage off whether or not the enemy is defending. It might be able to work on a melee tower-taking champ, but as mentioned before, melee cannot take towers *reliably*, so they're out.

Objective Control

  • Any class with good single-target dps will naturally be good at taking neutral objectives.
  • Autoattacks are naturally made to deal good single-target dps.
    • If you change that, you're pretty much making a new game.

DPS to champs / teamfight / late game:

I'll be frank. I see no reason why every marksman is REQUIRED to have insane late-game scaling. The reason why they DO have it is because AA damage is 100% tied to items.

  • This seems to be a place where marksmen could differentiate themselves.
    • Champs like MF, Graves can get their damage moved out of insane AA scaling and into their damaging abilities. Less dps, but still cooler.
    • Champs like Vayne, Kog'Maw can keep their insane AA scaling, because that's who they are as champs.

#How to do this

  • Look at Kalista: Her AAs scale with 90% of her AD. Combine this with carefully controlling different adcs' base stats and you can give them all unique scalings
    • ex: graves AAs now scale 200% with AD, but his base AS is now shit. This gives him an incentive to stack AD, arpen, and crit, but avoid AS. It pushes him away from dps builds and into burst builds.

edit: people are saying how this would add too much complexity to the game.

  • An alternative is: nerf all AD items, then give marksmen who are supposed to deal more dps stronger steroids in their kits.

#Benefits

  • More marksman variety.
    • When every marksman is good at exactly the same things, there's no incentive to pick anything but whoever happens to be the strongest marksman at the moment.
    • When all marksmen scale exactly the same, because near-100% of their scaling is based off of their items, every marksman builds the exact same items and brings the exact same thing to a team.
  • More interesting kits on marksmen.
    • Taking power out of marksmen's raw AA scaling with items, you can put that power back into their abilities and make them more interesting.
    • You can't deny that Kalista is interesting, both from where they've put power in her kit (whether or not you think that's a good idea) and her itemization choices.

#Thoughts?

131 Comments

Zok729 votes

I like your points here, I think it's a very thoughtful analysis of the situation. I'm not sure I like your solution though. The biggest reason I dislike the idea of changing base stats is that it makes item behavior inconsistent. Though this doesn't really hurt invested players like you and me, it makes is very hard for newer players to learn things about the game, which hurts the growth of the game. Imagine for example a player who starts by learning the marksman role on graves (without knowing about his base stats). If our hypothetical newbie buys attack speed he hampers himself significantly but if they buy AD they succeed. This isn't inherently bad because it's why we don't see AP graves, but it leads to a problem. When our player switches to vayne the basic mechanics switch over, but the item decisions do not. Suddenly buying BT and IE is a terrible build, and there's no clear reason why. Each marksman now has a set of items that have to be learned, despite the fact that they all theoretically are the same class of champions. Right now any marksman can build the default IE, PD, LW build and it will work okay (the same is true of mages with deathcap, void, zhonyas and the various tanks with randuins, visage, warmogs). Losing out on that will make the skills of itemization transfer poorly which will make it harder for new players to learn the game.

The second reason I disagree is a balance reason. Imagine for example that the best ADC in a hypothetical metagame is Graves who builds a BT and IE every game (under your system) and that the other marksmen build those items only rarely. How do we go about nerfing graves (assuming a nerf is better than a set of buffs for fixing the problem)? We can nerf his inherent scaling, but that just brings us back towards the current system. Alternately we can nerf BT and/or IE, but then those items become even worse on the other marksmen so that only graves will ever build them, and next time graves is on top of the meta the problem is only worse. This problem already exists in the form of hybrid items, in order for them to be usable on the champions that are meant to scale with them they have to be completely useless on everyone else.

All that said, I still think we need some solution to the issue of all the marksmen feeling the same after the laning phase. I would suggest that the way to do this should focus on making each marksman's skills (especially the non-steroid skills) continue to be relevant into the late game. For example, you could make MF's make it rain and bullet time scale with attack speed (ticking more frequently for the same damage) similarly to the culling so that she would still be incentivized to use them for damage instead of just attacking. This would make MF uniquely output ADC damage in a large area of effect at the cost of not being able to fight as well as other ADC's when her spells are on cooldown. Graves could be given mage-like ratios on his spells so he could act like an assassin at the beginning of a fight (if he was willing to really get right in the opponent's face). A lot of marksmen already have something uniquely theirs (kogmaw with his long range, kalista with her rend objective control and kiting, ezreal's poke) so to really differentiate them I think it would be better to turn those skills up to 11 instead of trying to tune their base stats.

Nefas5 votes

The biggest reason I like these ideas is that it makes "item behavior inconsistent" in your words. Just because a champ is in the same class shouldn't mean they buy the same 6 items each game. You don't buy Rod of Ages on Xerath. You don't buy Liandrys on Viktor. You don't buy Lichbane on Swain. They are all mages but Xerath is a poke-siege Mage, Viktor is a control/burst Mage, and Swain is a bruiser-sustain Mage. I don't see why we shouldn't have the same thing with ADCs. It isn't just the core three items with ADCs - pretty much the whole 6 are fairly static throughout the class and as long as they are all primarily based around AAs it will pretty much remain that way with some minor variations with BotRK. Ensuring choices are meaningful is not a bad thing.

Zok721 votes

I'm not saying every champion of one class should always buy the same six items. I am trying to say that every champion of one class should be ABLE to buy the same six items and function acceptably. ROA on xerath will always make him harder to kill, always make his mana pool last longer, and always increase his damage. If graves were given terrible base attack speed but great AD scaling Phantom dancer wouldn't actually make him attack nearly as quickly as other marksmen and a BF sword would make him MUCH stronger. I still want certain champions to have synergy with certain items (botrk on vayne for example) but the synergy should not be in the form of raw scaling. Everyone should get 100 autoattack damage from 100 AD, but some champions will want that more than an activatible slow. Currently, these differences still exist at the high level (when was the last time you saw botrk on graves or ghostblade on jinx) but at the low level where there is less awareness of the inherent synergies present in marksmen kits the ADC item builds still translate acceptably.

Put another way, buying liandrys on viktor isn't really a great idea, but it still works okay. ROA on xerath provides the same numerical advantages as buying it on karthus, those advantages just happen to matter less to xerath. This doesn't necessarily mean you SHOULD buy those items on those champions, but those items will work well enough to play the game. It would be worse if, for example, xerath didn't get mana from rod of ages or Swain's autoattacks did only 25% of his magic damage with lich bane.

So yes, meaningful choices are VERY important, I agree. But the punishment for making the wrong choice should be smaller so new players can still be relevant to a game when making the wrong choice.

Hyrum Graff1 votes

{quoted}

I'm not saying every champion of one class should always buy the same six items. I am trying to say that every champion of one class should be ABLE to buy the same six items and function acceptably. ROA on xerath will always make him harder to kill, always make his mana pool last longer, and always increase his damage. If graves were given terrible base attack speed but great AD scaling Phantom dancer wouldn't actually make him attack nearly as quickly as other marksmen and a BF sword would make him MUCH stronger. I still want certain champions to have synergy with certain items (botrk on vayne for example) but the synergy should not be in the form of raw scaling. Everyone should get 100 autoattack damage from 100 AD, but some champions will want that more than an activatible slow. Currently, these differences still exist at the high level (when was the last time you saw botrk on graves or ghostblade on jinx) but at the low level where there is less awareness of the inherent synergies present in marksmen kits the ADC item builds still translate acceptably.

Put another way, buying liandrys on viktor isn't really a great idea, but it still works okay. ROA on xerath provides the same numerical advantages as buying it on karthus, those advantages just happen to matter less to xerath. This doesn't necessarily mean you SHOULD buy those items on those champions, but those items will work well enough to play the game. It would be worse if, for example, xerath didn't get mana from rod of ages or Swain's autoattacks did only 25% of his magic damage with lich bane.

So yes, meaningful choices are VERY important, I agree. But the punishment for making the wrong choice should be smaller so new players can still be relevant to a game when making the wrong choice.

The issue of Liandrys on Viktor is really the same issue as your hypothetical of IE/BT on Graves, just the tuning is different. Maybe doing the "50% base AS, 200% AD scaling" suggestion would create your hypothetical problem situation, but "75% base AS, 125% AD scaling" wouldn't (ie, PD would still be good on graves, and viable in games where he needs more dps, just not optimal -- just like roa on xerath).

Zok721 votes

I disagree. Remember that the NUMERICAL advantages of liandrys are champion independent. It always provides the same amount of magic penetration, ability power, and health, as well as the passive burn. Some champions can utilize it better than others (high base damages to take advantage of the penetration or a DOT to trigger the burn more often) but no champion gets a different benefit. The proposed scaling change makes it so that different champions get different benefits from the same item. Phantom Dancer for example would only meaningfully increase attack speed on some marksmen and on others would only meaningfully increase critical chance. This is of course the whole point of the change, different marksmen play differently, but the problem is that a new player won't really know what to expect when buying a phantom dancer, which makes the game much harder for them to learn.

Hyrum Graff1 votes

{quoted}

I disagree. Remember that the NUMERICAL advantages of liandrys are champion independent. It always provides the same amount of magic penetration, ability power, and health, as well as the passive burn. Some champions can utilize it better than others (high base damages to take advantage of the penetration or a DOT to trigger the burn more often) but no champion gets a different benefit. The proposed scaling change makes it so that different champions get different benefits from the same item. Phantom Dancer for example would only meaningfully increase attack speed on some marksmen and on others would only meaningfully increase critical chance. This is of course the whole point of the change, different marksmen play differently, but the problem is that a new player won't really know what to expect when buying a phantom dancer, which makes the game much harder for them to learn.

First off, different scalings are a NUMERICAL advantage. 100 AP on Alistar means a lot less than 100 AP on Cassiopeia. Or if you'd like to take a less extreme example, 100 AP means more on Orianna than Lulu. Either way, though, more AP makes their abilities scale better.

I think if:

  • Building AD always makes your autoattacks do more damage.
  • Building PD always makes you do more dps
  • Building Armor Pen is always good against targets stacking armor
  • etc

As long as those values always hold then I don't think it really matters much.

That being said, I do still think there is a burden of knowledge associated with learning each champion's aa scaling. See the edit to my original post.

Zok721 votes

You are correct, due to AP scaling AP functions differently on different champions. A more clear statement of what I meant is that within mages as a class AP items function basically identically even if the exact benefit is different (deathcap and void staff always increase damage significantly and so on), but you are correct that AP right now functions rather similarly to the proposed change to AD and Attack Speed etc. so in that context I can see some support for this change.

I think that there is something to be said for the universality of autoattacks compared to spells but that's hardly a definitive argument.

Hyrum Graff1 votes

{quoted}

I think that there is something to be said for the universality of autoattacks compared to spells but that's hardly a definitive argument.

I disagree with this from a purely gameplay standpoint, but agree from the standpoint of "how do we present this information to players?"

Like, I think it's much more intuitive if all aa scaling is identical and then graves has a passive (kind of like corki's) that says he does +100% total ad bonus damage on each aa.

Zok721 votes

Yes, exactly that. That's what I was trying to say but failing.

Nefas1 votes

Building straight AP on a champ with bad scalings doesn't meaningfully increase their Magic damage even for some mages, see velkoz. He doesn't scale well at all with straight AP but does with CD and Magic Pen. This already exists elsewhere in the game and it functions fine.

Zok721 votes

You have failed to differentiate between meaningful and optimal. Deathcap MEANINGFULLY increases damage on every champion who can be used as a mage including Karma, Velkoz, and even Alistair. It is not necessarily the OPTIMAL choice for increasing damage but it always works. And that is my point. Sub optimal choices should still have meaningful impact on the game. The choice shouldn't be between best and unusable, it should be between best and okay. If you build seraphs and deathcap on velkoz you will still do damage just fine. The items do exactly what is expected. Sure you'll lose the mirror match to a velkoz with morellos and void staff but you still get the expected benefit from the items. The problem is when buying an items does not do what you expect. If deathcap randomly didn't increase the damage of a mage's spells that would be bad and would make it harder to learn that mage. Similarly, if phantom dancer didn't meaningfully increase attack speed (such as because attack the base attack speed of a hypothetical graves was half that of other marksmen) then it would mean that learning graves was significantly harder. Furthermore it would make it impossible for marksmen to alter their builds to fit the needs of a game (a marksman that doesn't scale well with AD couldn't build a bloodthirster defensively for example).

Nefas1 votes

What is expected benefit? In your hypothetical world, you play a champ like Xerath and buy death cap, your damage goes through the roof. You then play Velkoz and think hey I'll buy death cap. You do so and then get confused because you don't do all that much more in damage, just a bit, because his ratios are bad. You really haven't gotten the supposed 'expected benefit' of death cap's mega damage boost. All because the player couldn't be bothered to read ratios and figure out how to actually play the champ. It's the exact same thing. You buy AS on hypothetical graves, you will still attack faster, just not that much faster. You buy AP and mana on velkoz, you'll do a bit of damage but not very much and will likely lose not just against a mirror match better build velkoz but against any competently built opponent.

I'm not the biggest fan of the comparison because AD would still be fairly core stat on ADCs just as AP for the most part is the core stat for mages (yes some like velkoz function far better off of magic pen and cd reduction). AS is more of an area where there can be major difference between champs like between mana and mana regen.

Some of these differences could be emphasized on the passive tool tip - eg about how much AAs will do or could be added to an ability as a passive.

So what if phantom dancer doesn't increase attack speed all that much on hypothetical graves? It still increases attack speed. It doesn't mean that the learning curve on graves is much harder. In your hypothetical, the player can't be bothered to either look at the champion's stats or look at recommended items which would not include attack speed items. You might as well say that every champ should be the same otherwise new players would get confused about the difference between tanks and mages.

That there would be itemization problems is not an argument against this - it's an argument for updating the very limited number of items that ADCs currently use.

We've been at this for a while and I won't convince you and you won't convince me, and that's fine. But it's been a good debate.

Zok721 votes

I agree, it's been a pretty good back and forth and it's been interesting. Thanks for keeping it civil. And I don't entirely disagree, the more I think about it the more I think it could work so long as the differences weren't too dramatic (e.g. 90% instead of 100 on kalista). I still don't like the idea for the same reasons I started out with, but it would definitely be functional.

Nefas1 votes

And honestly I'm saying that no you shouldn't be able to just mindlessly buy 6 items without care to the champ you are playing and do alright.

Maybe this is a function of me playing mostly mid and different types of mages in mid that require very different builds, but I don't think you will ever see meaningful difference among ADCs until their item choices really mean something. And their item choices won't really mean something until they have real distinctions beyond AS - AA faster, AD - AA harder. There is no real room for differentiation there unless you change up the AA paradigm.

If you buy rod of ages on Xerath, you are very likely going to lose. Same with buying Liandrys on Annie. And that's okay. It's okay for the game to require you to think about what items are best. Recommended items would need to be updated of course, but I think your fears are very overblown. I don't grab a new Mage and just assume that I can slap a certain build on and be fine.

Certain mages can't utilize Liandrys as well as others. I don't see how that's any different from this with Phantom dancer. Same with the choice of mana items (RoA or Seraph) vs regen items. Some function way better with one, way better with the other. You can try and play swain with Athenes instead of RoA and you will lose.

Zok721 votes

Don't forget, I'm talking about NEW players. You and I should be and are heavily punished if we itemize wrong, but that's because everyone who's at our MMR is skilled enough to itemize properly and get the associated power boost. Good players should be able to make the power count in a way bad players cannot.

Imagine four theoretical players. One who has neither knowledge or skills (the newb), one who has knowledge but not skills (the nerd), one who has skills but not knowledge (the gamer) and one who has both (the pro). We both agree that the pro should be able to win and the newb should lose, that's fine. I would like it to be possible that the gamer and the nerd be competitive with each other so that knowledge can compensate for some lack of skill, and skill can compensate for some lack of knowledge. The more itemization slants towards perfectly locked builds determined by inherent synergy, the less skill can compensate for a lack of knowledge.

Nefas1 votes

Dislike the example because I think it is way too extreme - everyone has skill and knowledge to some degree. I don't think they are particularly equal - does skill really have a limit? Arguably no, you can always get better in aiming, predicting enemy champ and team actions, Does knowledge really have a limit? Arguably yes, there are a finite number of stats, numbers, timers, cool downs, etc that are in the game.

Especially in this case, the knowledge we are talking about is not that difficult to acquire. This just requires basic thinking about what the champ does, how it behaves. Its really not that hard nor does it take that long to figure out that certain items are flat out better than others - especially in the extreme cases that are being discussed where graves basically would scale with AD and Armor Pen and not with AS. This isn't a high level type of knowledge such as internalizing enemy champ cool downs and being able to play off of that, this is reading your own tooltips. If a player is too lazy to do that, then I honestly don't see the need to cater to them. Call that elitist whatever if you want, but this is not asking that much.

Zok721 votes

The example doesn't attack any magnitude to the differences, it isn't extreme, just categorical. Also, you have arbitrarily asserted a limit to skill without proof (though I will cede that there is a limit to game knowledge).

But to address the meat of your point, the knowledge of what scales well on graves is easy enough to acquire, but the knowledge of base scaling is not. There is no tooltip, guilde, etc. IN GAME which indicates that IE and PD together will out damage botrk and LW over the course of a long fight, just experimental evidence, the kind new players have to acquire slowly. Sure, our hypothetical graves could read tooltips and then buy AD but not attack speed, but then when he switched to ashe (whose tooltip mentions critical strikes) how would he know to buy attack speed? So yes, you could create tooltips which tell every player what to buy, or very concise recommended items (buy these items in this order), but then you're basically not even making it knowledge so much as checking a player's ability to read. If everyone has perfect item orders because every champion has only one viable item set, then there's no knowledge or ingenuity or skill to itemization, it's just reading a chart and the only thing that matters is the presentation of that chart.

Or put more succinctly, if there is only one right option, and the knowledge is easy to acquire, why bother having options? On the other hand, if knowledge is not trivial to acquire but instead must be learned with time and experience then the decisions in itemization remain a meaningful way of differentiating between players and in this scenario it is important that the "wrong" options still be functional. You don't win a game just for building the right items, but it should help some.

Hyrum Graff1 votes

{quoted}

I like your points here, I think it's a very thoughtful analysis of the situation. I'm not sure I like your solution though. The biggest reason I dislike the idea of changing base stats is that it makes item behavior inconsistent. Though this doesn't really hurt invested players like you and me, it makes is very hard for newer players to learn things about the game, which hurts the growth of the game. Imagine for example a player who starts by learning the marksman role on graves (without knowing about his base stats). If our hypothetical newbie buys attack speed he hampers himself significantly but if they buy AD they succeed. This isn't inherently bad because it's why we don't see AP graves, but it leads to a problem. When our player switches to vayne the basic mechanics switch over, but the item decisions do not. Suddenly buying BT and IE is a terrible build, and there's no clear reason why. Each marksman now has a set of items that have to be learned, despite the fact that they all theoretically are the same class of champions. Right now any marksman can build the default IE, PD, LW build and it will work okay (the same is true of mages with deathcap, void, zhonyas and the various tanks with randuins, visage, warmogs). Losing out on that will make the skills of itemization transfer poorly which will make it harder for new players to learn the game.

The second reason I disagree is a balance reason. Imagine for example that the best ADC in a hypothetical metagame is Graves who builds a BT and IE every game (under your system) and that the other marksmen build those items only rarely. How do we go about nerfing graves (assuming a nerf is better than a set of buffs for fixing the problem)? We can nerf his inherent scaling, but that just brings us back towards the current system. Alternately we can nerf BT and/or IE, but then those items become even worse on the other marksmen so that only graves will ever build them, and next time graves is on top of the meta the problem is only worse. This problem already exists in the form of hybrid items, in order for them to be usable on the champions that are meant to scale with them they have to be completely useless on everyone else.

All that said, I still think we need some solution to the issue of all the marksmen feeling the same after the laning phase. I would suggest that the way to do this should focus on making each marksman's skills (especially the non-steroid skills) continue to be relevant into the late game. For example, you could make MF's make it rain and bullet time scale with attack speed (ticking more frequently for the same damage) similarly to the culling so that she would still be incentivized to use them for damage instead of just attacking. This would make MF uniquely output ADC damage in a large area of effect at the cost of not being able to fight as well as other ADC's when her spells are on cooldown. Graves could be given mage-like ratios on his spells so he could act like an assassin at the beginning of a fight (if he was willing to really get right in the opponent's face). A lot of marksmen already have something uniquely theirs (kogmaw with his long range, kalista with her rend objective control and kiting, ezreal's poke) so to really differentiate them I think it would be better to turn those skills up to 11 instead of trying to tune their base stats.

See the OP, I think the edit is a much better solution.

The problem right now is that AD itemization gives insane scaling. It doesn't matter whether you're MF or Vel'Koz, if you have a full 6-item build you will shit physical damage (does vel'koz shit?). Since all adcs have access to that scaling, the amount of places elsewhere that you can add power to their kit is much smaller than, say, mages. If you nerf AD itemization so all AD champs don't automatically hyperscale, then you can, as you say, "turn their skills up to 11."

Zok721 votes

Post was made before the edit. I like the idea of the edit a lot, especially because I circumvents both of the problems I presented while still accomplishing the proposed goal of giving the marksman role more meaningful differences.

Hellioning6 votes

The problem with giving every ADC new and unique scalings means that different items work differently on each champ, which makes learning the game much harder. Making Kalista's autos only do 90% AD is the stupidest change Riot ever made, and I am counting Cass' rework.

Verandure29 votes

Except all AP items already work differently on each champ. Most of the time, they work differently on each individual ability on each champ.

Attack Speed items already work differently on each ADC.

Hellioning5 votes

Abilities are different from basic attacks.

And the difference in attack speed is minor compared to 'Graves gets significantly slower attack speed but hits like a truck', etc.

Verandure23 votes

There is no inherent reason why auto attacks shouldn't be varied.

Hellioning12 votes

Because they're the only consistent thing between champions.

Abilities always change, but every champion has an autoattack. It's something you learn to expect as a player. If they begin changing it up, it's simply adding in complexity for minor gain.

It doesn't even get into weird stuff like 'how does this interact with other stats?' For example, if the Graves in the OP were to have 50% crit, a large portion of any fight he gets in to would be decided by luck, more so than most ADCs. Less attacks means less chance for streaks to even out.

Oysteroth7 votes

That's why we change crit. Ashe already has a weird mechanic, Kalista already has a weird mechanic. Why can't we make the one class that relies on aa'ing more than anyone to have something interesting with their aa's?

Old Man Teeto12 votes

They are. Some are melee, some are short ranged, some are long ranged, some vary inside the game itself.

Some are missiles, some are instant, some are fast, some are slow, some have huge wind ups, some are never used (Karthus), some scale better with attack speed.

Oh look, that's a lot of variation on auto-attacks.

Lady Hammerlock2 votes

was it really a stupid change? her early game was just flat out annoying,she had a good mid game so they had to make her fall out of place somewhere which is late game allows tanks to 1.get closer 2.make sure she doesn't get 30 stacks of her E while dealing full auto dmg 3.ninja tabi counterplay this is a bane of a kalistas existence only 80% of aa dmg per hit

Champion Skin6 votes

Ninja tabi actually probably affects Kalista and caster ADC's the least As while yes Kalista is an auto attack reliant ADC a lot of her damage isn't from the AA itself it is from rend which isn't reduced by Ninja tabi (also 90% reduced by 10% gives you 81%)

Without Crits Kalistas damage is 3/5 in her AA's and 2/5 in her rend (this is not counting for the base damage on rend which will push it much higher when Kalista have low AD)

ahferroin72 votes

No, it was a stupid choice, the truly OP part about her is rend because:

  1. There is no cap on the stacks. This gives her both better objective control than anyone else in game, and higher potential burst damage than most champs (and yes, this can and will out damage any built-in smite equivalent late game).
  2. It resets on every kill, including minions and monsters.
  3. Even if it doesn't kill you rend has a significant slow, which makes kalista even better at kiting.
  4. All of the above mean that a good kalista with proper positioning can out-trade almost anyone and clear a minion wave at the same time.

What they should have done to fix kalista:

  1. Cap the stacks for rend on non-champion targets at some reasonable value (i don't remember the scaling so I can't provide a good example value)
  2. Make it reset only on champion kills (and possibly also on baron and dragon).

This would make her a manageable opponent for anyone with some common sense, and still keep her on a similar tier to vayne and jinx.

Lady Hammerlock1 votes

why i hate kalista they literally just gave her a buffed up version of twitches E

Karn Bishop1 votes

If there is an enemy kali i know imust kill her if i'm trying to secure dragon from her because past a few spears you cannot outsmite that idiotic rending ability.

Photos of Ghosts1 votes

The cap just needs to be on monsters.

disregardable4 votes

This is something that actually used to already exist, to a small extent, in Season 4 with AD Casters. No one liked it. People thought there wasn't enough opportunity for counterplay, because when you have early game ADCs (that are actually effective, mind you), late game ADCs fall out of the meta almost completely. Then when early game ADCs get nerfed, late game ADCs dominate the meta again.

It's quite literally impossible to make them both just as good as each other if they're both going to be focused on objective control, which is also inevitable.

If you disagree, please explain why.

Olath Quortek4 votes

I love the idea of all of Graves' auto attacks being super slow mini-Qs! :D

Only Play Darius3 votes

Holy shit I got quoted?

LaserDeathBlade2 votes

When I read the title I thought you were talking about Mages lol

In the current state of the game I'm not sure there's too much that can be done because without a significantly stronger source of DPS which I'd imagine is why ADC diversity is pretty low. Without ADC scaling, tanky-DPS or long range high utility Mages will be the go-to choice for pretty much every team because it'd be a no brainer; It's always better to have more survivability on the team, except for when you absolutely need more DPS.

IDK if anyone's familiar with Heroes of the Storm but I'd imagine that's how League would be without ADCs and their multiplicative damage scaling. I was high diamond in HoTS and the high level meta (at least back when I played it) was to have 2 tanks, 1 'bruiser' or high survivability melee Assassin, 1-2 supports, or a Mage instead of the second support. Ranged AA classes, although they were beefier than their LoL equivalents in exchange for having lower damage, were almost all unplayable against good teams because they didn't do enough damage to justify how long they needed to stay in the fray to maximize their contribution. I'm not gunna say if that was good or bad, but HoTS team fights lasted a looooongg time because nobody ever died which cut down on the opportunity for play-making because a single player has almost 0 chance to 'gib' someone, and of course it sucked for anyone who likes Marksmen because you didn't get to play them if you wanted to win.

GelsominoKiller2 votes

To be fair, i dont dislike adcs in their current state, but I think those gamplay elements should be better distributed among classes, roles and champions. Having siege, DPS, lategame and objective control tied to specific champ niches, items and team strategy creates a lot of opportunities, interactions and variety. ADCs could still perform well and good, without being mandatory every game; they could even benefit from those changes, finding new and unique individual identity.

Just think at a support class free to support who they prefer, switching lane as the situati on calls for it.

Nightshade172 votes

Is it bad that I see "Siege champion" and automatically think "But we have Heimerdinger ?"

ProfDrDeath2 votes

The things you describe are one side to the coin.

The other, equally important side has to do with League's set-up: In this game, there are four major sources for gold and XP, but constraints in time and space make equal distribution of these resources onto five players impossible. Thus, two players need to share one of these sources.

Fortunately, the set-up allows for channeling all the gold into only one of the two players, while sharing XP. Thus, the ideal champion for the gold-getting part of a duo is one who scales well with gold, but is not too dependent on XP.

This description generally fits ranged, auto-attack-based champions like a glove:

  • Range is an inherent form of safety and does usually not scale with XP. Contrast melee champions, who need every ounce of tankiness they can get from leveling up.
  • Auto-attack damage scales way harder with gold than XP. For example, on almost every ranged AD champion, a single BF sword more or less equals the amount of AD said champion gets from leveling. In comparison, to get an equal damage increase as another rank in base damage for an ability, you usually need more than a NLR in AP.

Thus, ideal duo lane champions = ranged, AA-based champion + support.

HokagesDisciple2 votes

I agree with you in most of your points, but I would also argue that most ADC's don't succeed at all of these roles. For instance Corki has great team fights but does not bring much damage late game, doesn't take turrets fast, and even is more burst then dps. Or another example is that vayne, while being a great split pusher, doesn't siege that well but has to rely on her team to peel enemies off while she aa. The only adc I can think of that truly succeeds at all of these roles is jinx, who I would argue is the the strongest adc in the game right now, but it's balanced by her wretched early game that can be punished hard. More distinction would be nice don't get me wrong, and I think what your talking about here are some of the strengths and weaknesses are just the sort of topics the adc rework will almost definitely focus on.

Sire Hippington2 votes

League absolutely needs a class which takes towers quickly.

Why do we need a class for that? Why not give different champs from different classes tools to deal with towers? Put a more focuse on that aspect for like Ziggs, Rammus, Alistar and who ever...

You say melees aren't save enough for doing so, but alistars Ult is the ultimate towertanking tool, so mabye increase the duration on it lategame, increase the damage reduction vs towers, lower the damage reduction vs champs, and let him be a behemoth that has a certain window to tear down towers, needing his team to defenf him vs the enemie team.

I think there are ways to get healthy gameplay on takeing down towers without haveing it tied to a ranged singletarget dps class.

Hyrum Graff2 votes

[{quoted}](name=Don Pavoni,realm=EUW,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=BjO3WHwR,comment-id=002b,timestamp=2015-09-30T21:15:41.521+0000)

Why do we need a class for that? Why not give different champs from different classes tools to deal with towers?

Actually, you're totally right about this -- good on you for challenging my assumptions.

Really what I should have said was that we need a subset of champions who are good at taking towers uncontested quickly (so if you ace the enemy team you can get more than half a tower taken) and a subset of champions who can get damage on a tower even if it is being defended. There's no reason that these both have to be marksmen. I think subdividing the marksmen up based on what they should be good at (the way we've made bruisers into juggernauts, light fighters, divers, etc) will be a good first step towards bringing diversity to the class.

You say melees aren't save enough for doing so, but alistars Ult is the ultimate towertanking tool, so mabye increase the duration on it lategame. increase the damage reduction vs towers, lower the damage reduction vs champs, and let him be a behemoth that has a certain window to tear down towers, needing his team to defenf him vs the enemie team.

Thing is, if ali's ult is strong enough to just take out a tower even if there is opposition, he's going to be super OP and you'll need to either nerf his ult or nerf him somewhere else.

I think there are ways to get healthy gameplay on takeing down towers without haveing it tied to a ranged singletarget dps class.

Perhaps, but I don't agree that the above would be an example of healthy gameplay.

His Goatliness2 votes

Seeing as it's the most unfun class to play +1 to this. I wouldn't mind getting crit for 1.5k by graves as long as he only got to do it once a second as opposed to 800 crits every 2.1-2.5 seconds.

Ralantha2 votes

I really love the idea of pinpointing certain Marksmen/ADC's. I feel the game has pigeonholed itself in very black and white situations and over the last four years of playing it gets wee bit boring. We need diversity and some better item pathing; having 98% of all ADC's go for IE first is boring. There's no choice involved. The current juggernaut situation gives me ants; I can't believe the amount of abuse they can take while dishing out just as much, or more, pain. We definitely need some fine tuning for a couple supports (Sona's shield should last longer, Janna's shield needs to cost less mana) and some ADC's. Thanks for posting this =) I really hope Riot reads this with an open mind. They would open the doors wide open to some really fun times!

Hyrum Graff1 votes

{quoted}

I really love the idea of pinpointing certain Marksmen/ADC's. I feel the game has pigeonholed itself in very black and white situations and over the last four years of playing it gets wee bit boring. We need diversity and some better item pathing; having 98% of all ADC's go for IE first is boring. There's no choice involved. The current juggernaut situation gives me ants; I can't believe the amount of abuse they can take while dishing out just as much, or more, pain. We definitely need some fine tuning for a couple supports (Sona's shield should last longer, Janna's shield needs to cost less mana) and some ADC's. Thanks for posting this =) I really hope Riot reads this with an open mind. They would open the doors wide open to some really fun times!

tbh, I think people just undervalue cc, and cc rather invalidates juggernauts.

People will respond to this argument by saying "but if you're ccing juggs, you're not cc'ing squishies!"

Thing is, juggs are vulnerable to slows. Slows are plentiful. If you're using your hard cc on the juggs, yeah, there's a problem, but you can toss slows at them and cc them just fine without handicapping your ability to hard cc and deal with the enemy team's carries.

Anyway, that's not really the point of this discussion. Agreed that supports could also use a bit of work.

Ralantha1 votes

[{quoted}](name=Hyrum Graff,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=BjO3WHwR,comment-id=002d0000,timestamp=2015-10-01T15:55:54.274+0000)

tbh, I think people just undervalue cc, and cc rather invalidates juggernauts.

People will respond to this argument by saying "but if you're ccing juggs, you're not cc'ing squishies!"

Thing is, juggs are vulnerable to slows. Slows are plentiful. If you're using your hard cc on the juggs, yeah, there's a problem, but you can toss slows at them and cc them just fine without handicapping your ability to hard cc and deal with the enemy team's carries.

Anyway, that's not really the point of this discussion. Agreed that supports could also use a bit of work.

You're right, good CC can lock someone down and help with kiting. There's a two fold issue that you pointed out- if you don't have enough innate (champion given cc) then you have to build it and then they took out slow stacking (because juggernauts would be a thing shortly after that patch) and the slow items to allow for CC and extremely expensive. I love Sej and Zac as junglers, they can be so fun, but let's face it- a level 2 Yi gank can snowball a lane quicker than a level 6 Sej ult :/

Trylobyte1 votes

Once you hit late late game, mages with Lichbane are probably even more of a threat to towers than ADCs are simply because of the burst factor Lichbane provides and the very high AP totals they get. This allows them to reliably take towers as long as they can get close enough to autoattack it once, whereas ADCs can't crit towers and have to hit it a couple times to damage it. Other than that, though, you're right that ADCs are generally the primary threat to everything late-game.

Champion Skin2 votes

ADC's can possibly take down the tower faster if uncontested because of attack speed However "mages" who get/build attack speed (Kayle, Azir) or have inflated AP (Cassiopeia) does have the potential to kill towers quite quickly

Trylobyte1 votes

[{quoted}](name=Champion Skin,realm=EUW,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=BjO3WHwR,comment-id=00040000,timestamp=2015-09-29T11:33:32.438+0000)

ADC's can possibly take down the tower faster if uncontested because of attack speed However "mages" who get/build attack speed (Kayle, Azir) or have inflated AP (Cassiopeia) does have the potential to kill towers quite quickly

I was thinking more in terms of taking contested towers. While an ADC has to put themselves at some risk to take a contested tower a Lichbane mage does not - They can activate one ability, zip in, attack once and take off a huge chunk of the tower's health, then back off, wait a few seconds, and do it again. They're much harder to pick off or catch then an ADC trying the same thing, especially if it's someone fast like Lulu, Kayle, or LeBlanc.

Champion Skin1 votes

Some ADC's do have decent safety while taking towers thanks to high range or because of mobility

And well some ADC's demolish towers like Jinx with her attack speed (Q) (or she is decent at taking contested towers at well with her range) And Tristana with her attack speed (Q) + her E

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