What if ADCs/marksmen had less reliable damage? (pretty long post)
Now before I get into anything, I'm not going to suggest we re-introduce Dodge. And yes I'm aware Crit theoretically makes their damage less reliable because RNG, but when every ADC is building 80-100% crit I don't think "rng" is enough of a limiting factor. The problem I think is that their damage comes from ranged, point-and-click, generally unavoidable auto attacks. As it is right now, they get to sit back relatively safely behind their big ol' support/top/jungle/etc and dish out HUGE DPS that you can't juke or dodge, this makes their damage easily the most reliable on any team and while I see value in that there can also be a lot of frustration that comes from that. Not to mention, because of their relative safety and reliability they can abuse items meant for entirely different roles and often enough even get those items nerfed (did someone say Sterak's Gage? Lethality?)
Taking everything into consideration, I came up with two possible solutions to the frustration that is playing against ADCs. I don't know that they're the best options but I figure they're interesting enough to put out there. What I suggest are the following:
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Give them predictable low points. One way I'd think to do this is to give all marksmen an ammo system like Jhin or Graves. And before anyone jumps down my throat, I don't mean they should have a measly 4 or 5 shots before reloading. What I was thinking is all ADCs could be given ammo with a generic clip size, one big enough to still do a fair bit of damage in a fight before having to reload and perhaps special clip sizes and interactions for certain ADCs. For example, most ADCs could have a clip size of 10-15 shots or so, but then Draven might have just two shots but recieves a free ammo whenever he catches an axe.
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Turn ranged auto attacks into skillshots that only hit the auto-attack target. And I don't mean something slow like Ahri's Q or whatever, think more like Twitch's ult but single-target. The shots would ignore anything between the ADC and their target (except obvious things like Wind Wall or Braum's shield) like normal, but now they would be dodge-able with blinks, dashes, EXTREME speed, etc.
Personally I think my second suggestion of turning ranged auto-attacks into a sort of pseudo-skillshot might be the better way to go because it maintains more or less the same ADC gameplay but adds just enough counterplay to potentially make them less frustrating to deal with. An issue with it however is it doesn't necessarily fix the issue of them abusing every other item that happens to have AD on it. What my ammo suggestion does in that regard is give you windows to jump on them without getting DPS burst down if you can't instantly appear on top of them. With ADCs having access to more and more defensive stats to go with their offensive stats, their usual weakness of being made of tissue paper is slowly fading and it's especially bad since assassins were made to have much slower burst, giving them a clear window of down-time could be a way to combat their increasing durability and potentially make teamfights more interesting for both sides.
I'd like to hear your guys' thoughts on these ideas and appreciate anyone taking the time to actually read this instead of skimming it over and getting mad because I dared suggest all ADCs be crippled with 2 ammo like Graves (I didn't, obviously). Let me know if anything I wrote is at all confusing, I'm not always the best at presenting my ideas.
R on a targeted auto with 0 CD, 0 cast time, 0 resources and can life steal is balanced to begin with, so when u nerf that shit u must get damage compensations !!!
is an example of an adc who has to consistently hit his q to maximize his dps.
although overtuned is gated by his ability to catch axes. if you can deny him by impairing his movement or displacing him, youll reduce his dps which creates counterplay.
who has absolutely no ability in her kit you can play around. her entire kit is a bundle of passive steroids.