Boards›Gameplay

I don't know why Riot chose the Individual Buff Approach, rather than fixing crit items as a whole.

Aimléss·7/7/2018, 7:15:19 PM·8 votes·4,361 views

Crit champions went down in the dumps, not before, but after the item changes. The safest and best way to fix it would be to pump power back into the items themselves, and not item 3095. It's a burst item, and unless it's insanely overtuned on them, it'll never be a reliable rush item on a class centered around dps. Instead, Riot did the exact opposite, they really only buffed SR, which just doesn't synergize well with crit marksmen, and tried to buff the weak champions individually. Now we find ourselves with new problems...

The one's that were bad like Trist, Cait, and Varus, are still bad and that's after multiple buffs. Now Riot has to either leave them garbage and hope the meta shifts at the expense of their playerbase, or risk buffing them even more; and if the meta shifts to favor them, they will wreck havoc on the bot lane meta.

Crit/dps marksmen are only going to be balanced if they have a core of items that do 3 things.

  1. A rush item that gives AD and allows for them to utilize their abilities to do moderate damage in the early game.

  2. A secondary item that synergizes with the rush item, and begins to transition their damage into AA DPS, and away from abilities. Allowing them meh impact in bursty early-mid game team fights, but thrive in longer drawn out engages where they can take advantage of their dps. Giving them opportunities to contribute in mid game fights when the right conditions are met, but not all the time.

  3. A 3rd item that gives them a big power spike, and transitions their damage fully into DPS. IE may very well fill this niche already it's the first two's synergy that is the problem.

Honestly, Riot should just rework stormrazor, it is unhealthy when combined with lethality, and is just not a good item to give crit marksmen. And change it's passive to an item that does.

AD AS Passive: Gain 5% crit chance with every auto-attack. (Max 6 stacks) At maximum stacks, every third crit will do 50% more damage.

This one item in place of SR would give crit marksmen early AD and synergize with a zeal item second. It would be bad if they're initially jumped on, but if they stay safe in the fight they can eventually ramp up enough to contribute to a 2 item mid game team fight. And IE third will transition into a smooth 3 item power-spike.

Then see how it does, and revert the buffs afterwards cause crit marksmen would likely be fine afterwards. It doesn't make sense how crit itemization is half Burst with item 3095 item 3087 item 3094, but then half dps with AS and Crit. If we chose a side Riot, this would be a lot easier to balance.

2 Comments

OtterlyLost7/7/2018, 8:00:53 PM5 votes

See, my thing is why did they go for individual buffs to champions instead of fixing items or giving buffs that were actually meaningful? Tapping on Tristana's abilities, particularly her E, does nothing to help with the fact that they pretty much ruined her with nerfs given to her patches ago. Honestly, the same can be said of both Varus and Caitlyn as well. These three champions are the trifecta of ADCs that, when certain items were strong, were also strong because of it. And instead of nerfing these items(for example, nerfing the RFC/Shiv combo; that's what was making Tristana strong or the Lethality items that were making Varus strong), they just specifically targetted said champions instead. Honestly, I never understood why they nerfed Cait in the first place. She had a 50% win rate, even with a 30% play rate. That just sounds like Ezreal to me, who I feel is far more toxic than Cait ever could or was.

My question is why were they so goddamn lazy when they changed the ADC items? They were SO lazy about it and no one can honestly make me believe otherwise. Its like their thought process was,"Boards think ADC itemization might be a little too cheap? Better go through and blanket nerf all of the ADC's base stats regardless of whether or not we previously touched them up individually, kill their only keystone, change IE, and, sure, we'll address the initial issue too of their items being cheap."

Just like, what? You couldn't take time out to look at the ADCs that you'd previously nerfed and decide on if you should give them compensation buffs at the time of their big group nerf? You nerfed Duskblade and when you did that, you gave every AD Assassin some kind of bullshit compensation buff to make it up to them. But ADCs you can't compensate buff by reverting some of the harsher individual nerfs you gave them before gutting everything they use? There's no feasible way, in my mind, that they couldn't tell these were over nerfs and harshly unfair and alienating to the people that main marksmen.

And now, they're buffing the ADCs hurt the worst by their heavy handed, take a sledgehammer to the problem method but they're doing it in the worst way ever.

Tristana's abilities have minimal affect on her mid to late game; she uses them, sure, but they're generally long CD and require a certain amount of commitment on her end to actually successful do damage. One of them is a bomb that literally requires her to AA the same target four times. In mid game skirmishes, that just isn't happening, which is why her midgame has always been weak but her laning phase was actually good. Because in laning phase, in a 2v2, her support can hold someone down long enough for her to apply at least three stacks of her E on someone, if not four, meaning that, sure, the extra AD Ratio is great then. But she doesn't even have access to that in the laning phase; you gave it to her at a point where her bomb isn't going to be used half as much.

What they could have done is literally revert the nerfs that they gave Tristana in patch 8.5; this would have given her 550 range so she could have a chance in laning phase, it would revert her Passive to its original Iteration so she was still scaling well into the late game, and it would remove the extra damage from her W. Which was honestly a shit compensation buff at the time anyway; she doesn't even use it for damage outside of laning phase and she maxes it last. .-.;

As for Cait, good job riot. You adjusted the crit scaling on her head shot while she doesn't even have a good Crit/AD item to rush. .-. There's Stormrazor but we've already talked about how that's a terrible item for ADC's; You have to literally wait between AA's if you want to continually proc it and it doesn't even stack or get bonus damage with Shiv or RFC, which feels like a horrendously missed opportunity.

You've mostly reverted a lot of the nerfs that hurt her but I think the ones that really dented her were the ones from 7.11. You removed the interaction between her and Runaan's; at this point, she should have that back if nothing else. You have Runaan's and PD as items, Riot. You overbuffed Shiv/RFC ages ago making it so that no one has any reason to build the other two Zeal items. Shiv/RFC should have been the items you specifically addressed instead of changing IE into whatever it is now. Or maybe even buffed Runaan's and PD to the same point as Shiv/RFC since you're deadset on over charging for Crit items. Or, hell, even add some kind of fun interaction between all of the zeal items(while lowering their Crit by 5%; please stop making ADC's waste gold on two zeal items by keeping them all at 30%), making the ADC builds feel interesting and strategic.

As for Varus, just lower the CD on his Q; you upped his ratio on it and honestly, whoo. That's great. But its still like 12 second CD and only gets reduced CD for hitting champions with it full charged and with blight stacks on them. Its incredibly telegraphed and easy to dodge; it shouldn't have a ridiculous cooldown.