Crit ADCs are strongest bc non-crit ADCs and builds kept getting nerfed. (also midseason fears)

Basically, the way I see it, crit was always second string, but Riot kept playing whack a mole until crit was king. ...And now we're looking at a class rework that doesn't address any of the underlying reasons we got to the state bot lane is in now, even if it superficially addresses some of the issues. Anyways, I'll explain. This is mad tl;dr, but I'll try to provide an outline now: first, I'm going to talk about the desirability of crit ADs vs. non-crit ADs over the past year, and how most buildpaths that aren't IE+double zeal or ER+rfc+IE have gotten nerfed or currently lack support. Then I'll talk a little bit about what I feel is making bot lane influential at current, and how the incoming rework doesn't fix this at all. As a warning, this is a pretty lazy overview, just hitting what I feel are key points; it's not particularly exhaustive or academic. Anyways..

Desirability of crit vs non-crit ADs, and how we got to the state where crit is king

The biggest outliers in the past year have actually been non-crit ADs (Kalista, Varus, Kog, Kai'sa, Klepto Ez), and those are the ones that typically rose to 100% pick/ban in pro. Crit has always sat a little lower on the desirability tree because it takes more time to turn on, and teams would rather have the reliability of a one or two item spike than wait for IE or ER users to turn on. While there have been a few major offenders in the crit camp (Trist/Cait, Xayah if you also had Rakan), they were usually nowhere near the same priority as, say, LCK summer 2017 Kalista. Crit is good, but teams (particularly LCK teams, who weren't so hot on the tristana hype train) have shown us over the past year that if there's an early game non-crit AD, they'll gladly take it over the harder-scaling crit AD every time.

However, Rito seemed to not like one item spike ADs very much. Kog and Varus were changed (both of them have had their w's nerfed now), and their buildpaths were nerfed too (Rageblade and Wit's End changes). Meanwhile, the other non-crit ADs were nerfed for being too strong (Kalista was the total package for pro teams with her strong objective control, Kai'sa was overtuned as hell, and early Klepto Ez just got gold way too damn fast). So what got left? Crit, and sometimes Varus and Ezreal.

Buildpaths were pretty much the same. BoRK out of line? Gut it so hard it drops to 45% winrate as a first item on its core users. Rageblade making Kog/Varus spike too fast? Rework time (but we'll still make it kinda busted good for a patch, nerf the cost, and leave it pretty good but not as good for the ADs that used to love it). All that really got left were weaker onhit builds for varus and kog, a busted kai'sa, and an abundance of IE+zeal users because their other buildpaths were gutted. (Remember when Vayne and Twitch liked to rush BoRK? Well, certainly been a while, so can't blame you if you don't).

Meanwhile, Fleet was and is the best crit-scaling precision keystone, and the other keystones provide basically nothing in comparison to the survivability and utility of fleet unless you're already a really good champion.

So Riot pretty much nerfed everything until crit was best, and then they decided everything was fucked because crit builds turned on too fast (oh oops, looks like we made IE and Zeal too cheap in 7.9 and now we're seeing the aftermath).

Re: the Rework

And now we're staring down the barrel of a REALLY questionable class rework.

So, what do I see as the major issues that need addressing?

The first is the some of the damage progressively done by the itemization changes. Putting more power into BoRK and upping IE/zeal's cost again would go a long way. Technically, these issues ARE being addressed with the current rework plan---and I'm also a fan of arpen going back to total pen---but I'm not sure the package as a whole is a good idea, since, well... we're also getting things like the IE passive rework and Stormrazor, both of which seem pretty left field. IE crit being 250% has been the baseline for AD damage scaling for the lifetime of the game, and changing that seems dangerous at best. Meanwhile, stormrazor's design has a slew of awkward game health concerns about the desirability of upfront burst on ads, interactions with Duskblade etc. I'd rather just see the current itemization retuned again than potentially introduce new problems. (Also, I'm still pretty baffled by the choices on base stat changes, but that's a different can of worms---ADs are not only nerfed relative to themselves, but also to their lane partners, who did not receive the same changes, and hp5 is being changed instead of dshield. I have other issues, but again, this isn't really the time.) All in all, I'd rather just see things tuned back to before IE was the sole best choice, and see what happens.

The other is issue is the current tower gold system, and current support income. ADCs benefit disproportionately from the local gold on outer turrets and first tower gold, because their job is to take towers, and first brick is most often grabbed in bot lane. So ADCs just get more gold from objectives than the rest of their team on average, and are sometimes even HANDED more gold from those objectives too -- I'm sure we've all seen an AD be given sole local gold for bot tower. And when supports were freed from sightstone and their gold income changed from it, ADs were one of the primary beneficiaries, because now their ardents, vows, and convergences were online faster.

To me, the ADC rework feels like patching a leaky hull by replacing it with boards that leak in different places. We've all seen the comment that the ADC rework seems to be exacerbating the problems with bot lane (lane is exactly as valuable but now it's hard to come back from losing in bot), so I'm very worried we're giving most of the same problems a fresh coat of paint. And hell, it's not like ADC mains are even particularly happy with the current state of affairs: they're pivotal to their team's success, sure, but at the same time, they're often just a passenger in winning or losing lane because lane is typically decided by a bot lane minion crash dive and not so much how they play the lane themselves.

Don't get me wrong, though: RNG deciding early fights sucks. I hate winning by a crit or losing by a crit. Fixing that is good. And IE does turn on too early relative to the gold income of ADCs and supports, and BoRK and other alternate buildpaths are starved out by IE. But I don't think these itemization changes are really fixing the more fundamental problems. They look like band-aids for issues Riot that has nerfed and buffed their way into patch after patch. And I'd rather see those more fundamental problems addressed than continue this very odd cycle of bandaiding symptoms while not fixing any of the underlying problems with how gold gain is balanced across roles and how non-crit buildpaths were basically nuked out of viability. = /

So yeah. Crit became god because the other gods were slammed down, and bot lane became god because their gold income was too high relative to everyone else's and also to the prices of their items; and, honestly, I don't feel like either of those issues is being addressed very well with the upcoming changes. I'd rather see changes to stifle bot's gold income, and more price and stat shuffles on the current first buys (and zeal) without the introduction of new and potentially worrying items like stormrazor, or finicky changes like the change to IE's passives, or awkward universal base stat changes.