Marksmen: Inherent Dissatisfaction

The ADC role creates dissatisfaction for marksmen players and other players depending on the meta. This problem is more pronounced in crit marksmen, but some of it can be found across the class as a whole. Basically, the class' identity screams dissatisfaction. Let me use an example to explain what I mean here.

Now this isn't necessarily a balance post, so these examples aren't really meant to make a point about balance. I'm just explaining the topic.

Let's start off with the polar opposite of a scaling marksmen with . Talon's goal every game is to use his superior early game abilities to create a snowball for himself and his team in order to close out the game before 30 minutes. Now Talon may not always achieve his goal, matchups, teammates, junglers, etc. can all put a damper on that, but for the most part these are what they are. Now for a marksmen like Jinx, who is Talon's polar opposite, she would rather farm safely through the laning phase, attempt to be of some use in the 20 minute team fights, then come online at the 30 minute mark to carry the game.

This brings us to our first problem. Talon has the early game to attempt to reach his win condition and Jinx has the late game. The dissatisfaction here is simple, every single game, Talon will at least have an opportunity to try to carry. He may not always succeed, but even when he doesn't, he still gets 20-30 minutes to give it a shot almost every single game. In Jinx's case, she may not always get to the point where she can try to carry, and in this meta, that is even more the case. Problem 1: Whether they fail or not, early game champions will "always" be relevant at some point in the game, while for scaling marksmen, reaching a relevant point can feel like a coin toss.

The second problem is time. In previous seasons the time was pretty evenly split. Marksmen had about 25-40 minutes, while an assassin would have about 10-25 minutes to attempt to carry. Now, marksmen have been pushed back to 30 minutes, while simultaneously game length has been shortened as well. Problem 2: The 25-40 minute window of relevance for marksmen has shrunk to what some could argue half of what it once was.

The final problem is dependency. Now take the other two problems with Jinx and add the fact that her ability to get to the late game and her success when getting there is also half dependent on another person(s), her support and/or front line. So not only is the majority of her game play experience just a build up to an end goal that may never happen, but she also heavily relies on others in order to do anything throughout the game. Problem 3: Dependent on support and front line.

The only time marksmen satisfaction is high is when they come online early or their late game vastly outshines everyone else's. When these things collide, you get the ardent meta and these problems become what other roles are faced with. At the moment, neither of these are true, so they are in a pretty bad spot. I think the best way to address marksmen satisfaction is to lower the discrepancy between their early, mid, and late games more; so a champion like Talon would be only slightly more effective than Jinx early, they'd be even in the mid game, and Jinx would be slightly more effective late.. Based on how their kits work, the only way to do this would be to buff Jinx's defensive itemization while nerfing her damage, so she can survive early even when she's weak. That would ruin her and the class though because marksmen only play this role for its ranged glass-cannon gameplay and that would take that away.

With that being the case, the answer would have to lie not only in marksmen itemization, but in the support's as well. The meta supports are all aggressive catchers and carries in their own right like Pyke and Brand. These guys can get you a lead and when played alongside an ADC like Lucian it is a win for both them and their marksmen, but when paired with a passive marksmen like Ashe, they only weaken their early game and her late game. You're never going to get people to match their picks in solo que so you have to give them options in game to make it work. What I mean is Riot needs to make aggressive support items that give these supports ways to protect their ADCs while still allowing them to play their carry support style.

Examples for this could be an item that speeds up nearby allies when a support lands cc, or something similar to knight's vow where a support's attacks steal an opponents resistances and grants them to their chosen partner. The goal here is to give marksmen some level of "obligatory peel", so they don't have to rely so heavily on others. Especially when those others are literally designed to leave the ADC in order to make a play. This should solve problem 3 as best we can. Then by making things like Maw and BT rushable, as mentioned by Meddler, marksmen will compete early and items like IE would give bonuses purely for tank shredding, so they don't melt everyone late.

With that we'd have hopefully solved all the problems and can make progress towards a more satisfactory marksmen experience.