Suggestions for Fixing Marksmen Itemization
The Problem Auto-attack based marksmen have their late-game hyper scaling fantasy fulfilled perfectly, but ratio carries who are supposed to bully them early have no items to build effectively. The reason for this is because all items for marksmen are designed to be used by the entire class (and therefore, late game items). But ratio marksmen do not utilize attack speed or critical strike effectively, so when the items are designed to synergize with each other in that way, ratio marksmen either get wasted stats or the stats they do get are too low because they synergize too well with auto-attack marksmen if they are good.
TLDR: Marksmen items are based on the idea that all marksmen need multiple stats to scale together, but not all marksmen do this.
The Solution If a game gets to late game, the ratio marksman has already lost. He cannot make good use of multiplicative scalings because his kit is not designed for this. So...we just need better items for mid-game power spikes that are designed specifically for Ezreal, Graves, Varus, Caitlyn and Lucian.
These items will have lots of restraints on them to prevent abuse. Deal with it.
The Bloodthirster Recipe: Vampiric Scepter + Brutalizer + 63 gp (Total 2200 gp) Ranged Only +100 AD +10% Physical Vamp (Heals off all physical damage) +10% Cooldown Reduction Unique Passive: +20 Armor Penetration Passive - Crushing Spells: The AD and Armor Penetration of this item apply only to spells. This item does not enhance a champion's auto attacks at all.
Essence Reaver Recipe: Cutlass + Tear of the Goddess + 80 GP (Total 2300 GP) Ranged Only +100 AD +10% Physical Vamp (Heals off all physical damage) +10% Cooldown Reduction +250 Mana +50% Base Mana Regeneration
Unique Passive: Dealing physical damage to a target gives you 4 maximum mana. Dealing physical damage with a spell gives you 8 maximum mana instead. Maximum of 750 mana. (This item has no cap on how fast you can stack it, unlike other Tear items, since you actually have to deal damage to proc it instead of just spamming abilities while you walk to lane)
Passive - Crushing Spells: The AD of this item applies only to spells. This item does not enhance a champion's auto attacks at all.
Combine these items with Last Whisper, Ionian Boots of Lucidity, Infinity Edge and Phantom Dancer (for taking towers after mid-game) and you'll have a strong early and mid game bully who has enough damage late to be a threat to objectives while still being pretty useless in fights outside of poke.
As long as Riot continues to try and make ratio marksmen have a late-game fantasy, they will have terrible early games and no lane pressure, and that will ruin their chances of being good at all. Just accept that they fall off hard late game and we can actually have a balanced bot lane again.
