@Xypherous Everything is so backwards

If marksmen are supposed to be better at damaging burly targets than other classes and critical strike is supposed to be "the marksmen stat", then why does a crit do double damage? Why can't it instead just ignore a very large amount of resistances? Hear me out:

I mean, crits aren't really helping the marksmen do the thing they are supposed to do well, it just helps them do more damage to everything except towers. Which is confusing. Because marksmen are supposedly the go-to class for melting towers.

Now I don't think any class should be defacto absolute best at two categories, and I don't think marksmen should be the only class to do significant damage to towers. We have zz-rot and ap scaling on autos against towers now, so lots of people can melt towers. I'm just trying to point out some of the inconsistencies in the way people have traditionally thought about marskmen and marksmen stats.

Everyone complains about marksmen not doing anything until late game. I'd like to point out that the last whisper derivatives ignore 45% of bonus armor, not 45% of total armor. That means a target with 160 armor (60 base + 100 bonus) will lose 48 armor vs a stacked black cleaver, while any last whisper upgrade will only ignore 45. Hell, void staff would ignore 56 magic resist if it were 160 magic resist instead. On top of that, mages can stack magic pen boots, runes and liandry's for an additional 50 pen, bringing the target from 160 to a measly 54.

The enemy has to have hundreds of bonus armor and well over a hundred magic resist before marksmen damage starts to outshine mage damage. But why even bother? The difference isn't that great, so you might as well take a spammy mage bot and deal more damage in mid game despite the enemy stacking magic resist than a marksmen could hope to do.

I'd also like to throw something else out there: randuins omen, and frozen heart. The attack speed slows stack, reducing damage specifically from auto attackers by 27.75%. On top of that, since critical strike is supposed to be the stat bound to marksmen (and perhaps melee carries), randuin's omen crit reduction passive specifically reduces damage from them, pushing the total damage reduction well over 30%. On top of all that, ninja tabi reduces damage from auto attacks by another 12%.

All this seems kind of backwards to me. I thought that marksmen are supposed to be "the class" for dealing with burly guys. And yet, there is a cornucopia of burly guy items that specifically gimps the damage of marksmen. Ideally, the marksmen damage type should be something burly guys are weak to, not something they are strong against.

In other words, attack speed reduction on an armor item is backwards. Frozen heart should be a support item that doesn't provide a ton of armor, if anything. Burly guy items should specifically make them able to shrug off spells and burst damage, not continuous damage, and certainly not auto attacks, and most certainly not critical strikes.

So you tell me, are marksmen supposed to be the "kill burly guy" class, or are spammy mages like ryze, cassio, and ziggs supposed to be?

I don't think there is really anything wrong with mage itemization by the way, and I think cassio doing lots of damage to tankier dudes is perfecly fine. I think there is something wrong with marksmen itemization-- it tries to do too many things. Critical strike for burst damage, last whisper for target agnostic damage, lifesteal for drain tanking, hurricane for spreading damage around, items for damage reduction of all things, I mean its just a bunch of stuff that doesn't really help to do The Marksmen Job.

Last whisper and its derivatives don't really care if you have crit chance or not, as long as you can do some decent physical damage. So you end up seeing assassins and fighters take it against really burly guys, but that seems kind of backwards. I thought burly guys were supposed to be hard to assassinate, hard to blow up, and strong in a tavern brawl against scrawny fighters, so why the hell do all their items make them specifically tankier vs the heavy sustained damage of marksmen and why are there hardly any burly guy items for making them durable against burst? Steraks gauge and banshees veil are pretty much the only tank items that actually help the tanky guy do what they are supposed to do; items like randuins omen and frozen heart are helping burly guys do the wrong job.

I mean really, last whisper shouldn't even exist, it just helps physical damage assassins shore up their weakness versus tanks. Critical strike chance should be the "anti burly guy" stat, and crits shouldn't deal double damage they should just ignore a tremendous percentage of armor.

Everything is so backwards.