On giving ADCs interesting and interactive items, consider this change to Phantom Dancer
EDIT: Yeah I'm done responding to comments here. Nobody wants to make a single reference to the content of the original post. Everyone would rather argue about how ADCs are fine and don't need to be changed {Funny considering that Riot has already revealed they're reworking the ADC class}
As it turns out, we'll be getting item changes this next pre-season for ADCs. Hopefully these changes tone down or even remove raw stats items like Infinity Edge to make room for interesting and interactive ADC items, for instance items that reward stutter steppers like Shiv, Furor's, Phage. I'm hoping that Riot will consider creating some sort of item with an interactive active that will be useful for ADCs with less-interactive, immobile kits (Kits like Twitch's and Kog's are pretty straight-forward and both are highly immobile).
A decent starting point I've seen mentioned on the reddit was an item with an active that allowed you to warp to a unit, similar to flash but requiring a target. A concern I've had with such an idea is, unless marked "ranged champions only" which I feel like is an easy way out for item design rather than an intuitive one, is that melee champions would build the item to gap close. I then propose the active wording:
On use, warp to target non-neutral unit that is within your attack range (or even half attack range). (with some long cooldown like 2-3+ minutes)
Obviously with such wording, only ranged champions would build such an item. Even then, how often would an ADC want to gap close to a target they'd most likely rather be kiting? This item would not save bad ADCs from their bad map awareness, but WOULD award smart ADCs and teams that always ensure there is a target the ADC can warp to for safety mid-fight and reward the ADC who didn't need to reposition with it midfight with a powerful clean-up gapcloser. This item would allow champions like Twitch and Kog'maw to make some crazy outplays, for instance imagine using this passive to dodge an Ezreal ult by warping to a minion behind him at just the right time? And giving it a long cooldown means smart use of it could easily be distinguished from a waste of it to make up for bad positioning in the first place. Finally, players attempting to kill an ADC with such an active would be rewarded for smart positioning and predicting where the ADC would warp to.
Then to ensure it's only used by ranged AD champions rather than ranged mages, you put stats that only ADC champs would want. Things like AD, attack speed, crit chance etc. But let's be fair, that passive would be pretty killer in the early game. You'd have ADCs closing crazy gaps against enemy ADCs in lane, or ADCs using it to escape crazy distances in early game lane fights where they should have died for poor play. In a 35 minute game, even getting something like this as early as 12 minutes with a 2 minute cooldown will get a lot of value over the game duration. So we need to make sure such an active is only really available to the ADC in mid to late game. Making the item expensive is one thing, which is fine because ADCs build to prioritize slot-efficiency, but making the item too expensive means it will probably lose out to raw damage items, as utility is meaningless to an ADC that doesn't have damage to begin with (this is why ADCs who build a full defense item before finishing their core damage items are guaranteed to fail). So let's make this item somewhat expensive but not IE expensive, and give it stats that are useless unless you already have damage in the first place. Wait, this is starting to sound like another item already in the game, isn't it?
The phantom dancer is usually the go-to attack speed+crit item for ADCs that can live without the shiv passive, and let's be fair: while its passive (Can walk through units) is only situationally useful for ADCs, it is ALWAYS useful for melee champions trying to close a gap. This passive doesn't quite fit on an ADC item, so what if we gave Phantom Dancer this new active instead? It fits the theming of a "dancing phantom", gives stats that only benefit its owner if another damage item is purchased first, and would require at least 7.5k farmed gold (IE+boots+PD) before having access to such a useful active with outplay potential.
Lastly we can't ignore that champions that already have free escapes like Corki and Ezreal would be likely to buy such an item, giving them a free escape, a target unit warp, and their flash. I would not even recommend adding such an item to the current state of the game, unless it is accompanied with the entire ADC itemization overhaul. The new items should give champions like Ezreal at least 5 options that could be much more beneficial than another repositioning tool. I could write an entire book on possible new ADC items such as items with a small turret DoT on-hit, items that gain power when allied champions are nearby, etc, but here I want to just focus on what I've already mentioned.
tl;dr with the ADC item rework give Phantom Dancer an interactive repositioning active that allows smart players to stand out even on ADCs with non-interactive kits
