How would people feel if we remove items that give ADCs their AoE?

abdul569··110 votes·4,933 views

By that I mean item 3087 item 3085

and before you go downvoting me, hear me out.

IMO I think that in general, an ADC's identity is strong single target DPS. They ARE the best at taking objectives as they should be. By having this added AoE to cover their weakness with obvious abuse cases, you make them over bearing. It also provides a much larger variety identity to the roster that would come out of this and much more decision making in champ select instead of just picking the best ADC. For example:

Need waveclear? Sivir Jinx Need team fight AoE? Graves Xayah MissFortune Need Poke? Ashe Varus etc. Although I do know that they already have this strength, their niche becomes even more highlighted with the removal of these AoE items.

We could also rework Kalista who abused Hurricane so that her ghosts act as a mini hurricane providing counterplay (kill the ghosts to reduce her teamfight damage considerably)

My final arguement for this change is that it frees up the bot lane a bit more (not by much). We could see the return of ziggs with his AoE that ADCs now lose etc.

ofc we can buff the ADCs who used these items and would go in the trash upon their removals or create a some new crit items but this post is just my opinion so let's have a meaningful discussion instead of downvoting it to the abyss.

143 Comments

Shadow Hazard58 votes

I think a massive mistake was making hurricane into a crit+AS item.

bloom1 votes

but b4 this change only **2 **champions (Caitlyn Kalista) in game used to buy it.

WoonStruck23 votes

Teemo Kayle Graves (pre-rework E dash; very situational)Varus KogMaw Twitch

No, they didn't buy it every game, but no item SHOULD be 100% mandatory every single game in any meta. There are supposed to be reasons you are getting that item.

IcyPepper24 votes

but no item SHOULD be 100% mandatory every single game in any meta.

item 2049 item 3070

OyddAWqJ5r12 votes

"See: Tear of the Goddess"? Idk man I don't think anyone builds that but Ezreal now.

Infernape5 votes

Cassio and Ryze do. Basically they are the only three champions build Tear nowadays.

IcyPepper5 votes

Okay, props to you for that

+1

flibitydoo7 votes

all 10 champions kinda need to buy item 1001 though

except, y'know

[cass-cry]

bloom16 votes

item 3085 is viable choice only for Ashe Kalista TwitchJinxKogMaw just due to strong synergy with certain parts of their kits, other adcs just cant derive any signicifient advantage from it (in my opinion this item is in quite good spot right now). Bro literally nobody buying item 3087 in purpose to obtain AoE damage, rather single target burst dmg against squishy targets (shiv's dmg is magic, so it works well only vs papers, that item simply cant be really harmfull against anything with +100 mr). Maybe we should consider stattik's removal and replacing it with other item 3086 upgrade.

Kokua6 votes

{quoted}

item 3085 is viable choice item only for Ashe Kalista TwitchJinxKogMaw just due to strong synergy with certain parts of their kits, other adcs just cant derive any signicifient advantage from it (in my opinion this item is in quite good spot right now). Bro literally no1 buying item 3087 in purpose to obtain AoE damage, rather single target burst dmg against squishy targets (shiv's dmg is magic, so it works well only vs papers, that item simply cant be really harmfull against anything with +100 mr). Maybe we should consider stattik's removal and replacing it with other item 3086 upgrade.

Hurricane is very useful for Cait and Varus passives. It also pairs up nicely with lifesteal in general to bolster your sustain. I would probably pick attack speed and crit items over hurricane though for 1v1 or 2v2 situations. I personally prefer shiv over hurricane for the extra damage spike on hit in fights, but I can see hurricane being of more use if you're constantly grouped up. The fact that it can chain and clear a wave faster later in the game is just a slight benefit.

bloom7 votes
  1. cait's passive do not stack with item 3085 anymore just saying (core items for her right now are item 3031 +item 3087 +item 3094)
  2. item 3085 i dont get it on varus. you apply these stacks, wich is fine for him, but u simply cant detonate it, also since its scalling with ad its not the best choice for him (im talkin' about Current as bulid with item 3153 +item 3124 as core. Also later in game any adc (excluding jhin) can clean minion wave in just 2 seconds so imo its nothing special. edit: i forgot to mention that varus seriously need rework because his kit is just wrong you can bulid lethality (Q based poke) and your W and Passive are just something you cant use properly or you can bulid attack speed bulid (W and Passive based) and your other skills are considered as W detonators or just slow (E) or root (R), something between is crit bulid but its not satisfying anyway.
Kokua2 votes

Ah, I was unaware of the Cait change, I'll stand corrected there.

I personally don't get hurricane on Varus either, nor do I get either of those 2 items. I personally lean towards the full AD and lethality build, with shiv as a 5th item and leaning on crit for the endgame. I find that his slow is good for preventing potential ganks, taking away from your opponents cs and securing kills, and his snare is very useful for getting another kill. Lots of times people get snared and instantly go into panic mode, and are still trying to escape rather than shooting back at you while snared, and are often killed because of it.

However, I've seen people successfully play AP Varus, something I've never cared to try personally, as I really do enjoy his high damage long range skill. I could see those 2 items being useful for that type of build though.

Linna Excel10 votes

Riot nerfed Hurricane's interaction with cait's passive. Now she's the second worst ADC in the game.

Thefrostyviking21 votes

It wasn't just because of hurricane nerfs that she got bad though, she got a number of nerfs aftewards too that slowly pushed her to the bottom-

Think the worst ones were to her attackspeed growth?

Linna Excel8 votes

It's really hard to say which the worst one was, but the lack of AS growth certainly didn't help her. I'm starting to think riot made a mistake by making her too reliant on traps to get headshots instead of autos.

ABlueQuaker10 votes

Hurricane not interacting with Caitlyn's Passive wasn't that bad - people quickly switched to the item 3031 item 3087 item 3094 80% Crit Build. The follow-up nerfs, however, were Riot's way of deliberately forcing her out of the meta.

Riot double-tapped her W. Lowered her Base Attack Speed. Halved her Attack Speed Growth. Reduced the pass-through damage on her Q by 17%.

Riot deliberately and maliciously nerfed the living shit out of Caitlyn in the two months following the release of her Legendary Skin.

Riot can go to hell.

Thefrostyviking8 votes

That's probably not wrong, a marksman having so much power in a ability along with the "normal" things a marksman got is too much.

But it's very, very strange that they chose to gut her normal kit rather than the ability that was causing issue´s. And i particularly disagree with it :(

It didn't need to be some super long range mega crit of instant death, just making it so the target took a bit more damage from her normal auto attacks or giving them a small slow after the root ended would have been fine too.

Instead she lost her auto attack power and became a trap bot.....that doesn't even work well.

Feels bad-

BØLT6 votes

Yea the attackspeed nerf is when I slowly started saying goodbye to cait.... she already had garbage base attackspeed after that was nerfed a very long time ago and now her attk speed per level is nearing the level of tristana but without ANY atk speed steroids (Tristana's 1.5% is close because of Tristana having a high base atk speed).. Cait is just a cupcake dropping gimmick right now and then they nerfed the damage on those early too so shes got literally nothing right now early mid or late except 650 range. Problem with picking her just for a 650 range right click is that she no longer has her old base .668 atk speed from release, which means she doesnt scale very well with atk speed items (bonus %AS works off champ base to determine the amount given, this is why when a high base like Vayne buys a PD her attk speed increase is so tremendous). Being stuck with a perma low atk speed Cait makes me feel like she is a hollow shell of the 2.5as PD stacking late game monster she was on release. I feel like atk speed scaling is the heart of ANY adc and nerfing this is usually the worst thing they can do. Like when they made Kalista's animation only lower by .66% instead of the 1% of every other adc and other nerfs like jinx's rocket speed etc etc. If it makes them more balanced at the end then its w/e. But graves and cait reached the point of not being fun for me to adc with anymore since they are so slow

Champion Skin2 votes

item 3085 also work with item 3504 if the support builds it

Poske6 votes

Xayah builds it to

bloom5 votes

but its uneffetcive for her, she has only 550 range and runan's bolts do not applying her passive so its actually worst choice.

Poske6 votes

I guess those challenger Xayahs I saw with hurricane had no idea what they were doing

Its effective on her for 2 reasons

  1. Hurricane does 40% of her AD to other 2 targets
  2. Additionally, her basic attacks hurl lesser bolts from the storm, dealing 20% bonus physical damage (works with hurricane Additional info he lesser bolts from Runaan's Hurricane item.png Runaan's Hurricane will also deal 20% increased damage

This bonus works with hurricane

On top of that she can easly gain 50% bonus attackspeed for 4 seconds

DunkinNoobs9 votes

item 3085 singlehandedly breaks KogMaw and that alone is enough reason to get rid of the item. It should not be possible to rapidly apply %hp damage to multiple targets at once, and yet that is exactly what Runaans Kog does, and at very long range to boot. Kayle may be a Runaans rageblade abuser but at least she has the decency to do flat damage and be short ranged.

Ahris8 votes

I agree both should be removed. Mages are supposed to be the one to provide the main source of AOE damage. Right now ADCs do it too well.

bloom2 votes

they are both carries so i dont see any problem with it (sigh.. ahri mains..)

Ahris5 votes

{quoted}

they are both carries so i dont see any problem with it (sigh.. ahri mains..)

Adc requires a lot less skills than a mage will need to burst. One may argue syndra can miss everything and still burst, but adc doesnt need to hit anything and they can also burst hard. Consistently as well. All they got to do is right click. Also, there are very mobile adc's as well which makes them very safe(vayne) but they are allowed to have extremely strong late game as well which should not be the case.

bloom3 votes

bro have you ever played as adc? Adcs themselves are most skillfull and mechanicaly difficult class in the game (excluding kog'maw). Ofc if you have 3 tanks in team to cover and enemies havnt anything that can reach you it may seem like "adc is braindead class" Also your shitty main ahri dont even have to lock her charm/2nd Q on any squishy to kill him easly wth just first Q, R & W mr. hypocrite. In addition: vayne always were bullshit-tier champion, riot never tried to balance or rework her and you shouldnt assume every adc are ultra safe because she is.

Ahris3 votes

{quoted}

bro have you ever played as adc? Adcs themselves are most skillfull and mechanicaly difficult class in the game (excluding kog'maw). Ofc if you have 3 tanks in team to cover and enemies havnt anything that can reach you it may seem like "adc is braindead class" Also your shitty main ahri dont even have to lock her charm/2nd Q on any squishy to kill him easly wth just first Q, R & W mr. hypocrite. In addition: vayne always were bullshit-tier champion, riot never tried to balance or rework her and you shouldnt assume every adc are ultra safe because she is.

I play adc often and they are really broken. And what you said about Ahri is a lie. ADC is not at all mechanically difficult to play. What makes rightclicking role a difficult role to play? You dont need to land anything skillful and have much more impact than an APC will ever have.

thefance3 votes

What makes rightclicking role a difficult role to play?

Have you ever played Osu?

The skill isn't in landing skillshots, the skill is in positioning.

LXII6 votes

"I stood behind all of my tanks and right clicked, I'm soooo much better than that Ahri that hasn't missed a charm all game!"

makkii8 votes

{quoted}

bro have you ever played as adc? Adcs themselves are most skillfull and mechanicaly difficult class in the game (excluding kog'maw). Ofc if you have 3 tanks in team to cover and enemies havnt anything that can reach you it may seem like "adc is braindead class" Also your shitty main ahri dont even have to lock her charm/2nd Q on any squishy to kill him easly wth just first Q, R & W mr. hypocrite. In addition: vayne always were bullshit-tier champion, riot never tried to balance or rework her and you shouldnt assume every adc are ultra safe because she is.

People make ranged positioning out to be this rediculously hard to master skill, it definitely has a high ceiling, but the skill floor for proper positioning has always been pretty low, furthermore with adc's 3 shotting non tanks and 8-9 shotting tanks with a 2+ attack speed and shields out the wazoo, positioning as an adc has become comparatively irrelevant compared to s1-5.

All I play is mid because I enjoy it, but I played adc for a short period due to frustration over how OP they were and I instantly felt more successful and powerful than I ever had as a mid, but it was boring AF so I switched back.

Jerry SeinfeId7 votes

They can remove any item from this game but stay the fuck away from my item 3085 (and item 3027) .

If you don't want Runaans as adc item revert it. When i first started this game i only played jinx and always built it, then everyone kept complaining it was thrash on adc. Still didn't stop me from buying it on twitch.

And here's some other champs that use Runaans in some of their builds: Teemo Kayle Bard

Snake Prince5 votes

mobafire bard's build guide ahah

Lux Is Mai Waifu7 votes

Jinx is teamclear and waveclear.

FCJAAAAGOOOO6 votes

IMO Shiv items should be reworked/straight-up removed. Burst magic damage, whether it be AoE or single target, has no place in an adc's item pool. If adc's want waveclear they can invest in heavy ad for their abilities, or IBG, or Ruunan's. Shiv items do not need to be in the game at all.

Remove those, and replace them with ONE new crit item that DOESN'T give additional burst damage, let alone burst magic damage, as an effect and call it a day.

Mens Hair Club5 votes

i'd say just rework them, I've always been of the opinion ADC items should emphasize safety rather than damage, especially bursty damage

so imo it'd be neat if the charge effect was changed to an active where, for RFC, you get some extra range for a couple of hits, and shiv adds a few seconds of doing extra magic damage as an on-hit (basically a voli ult) rather than being some cheesy magic-crit burst. possibly share cds like the hextech items if you want to prevent stacking them.

Kloqdq4 votes

100% this. ADCs as a class are the DPS class, not the DPS with massive burst class. In other games these guys would build lifesteal and ways to dish out loads of damage overtime while someone like an assassin would be building the Crit for max burst power.

hhaavviikk4 votes

I'm all for it, remove hurricane, statik shiv and while you're at it also remove rapid fire cannon, ADC's shouldn't get burst from items

StairCasexd5 votes

{quoted}

I'm all for it, remove hurricane, statik shiv and while you're at it also remove rapid fire cannon, ADC's shouldn't get burst from items

Yeah Make the only zeal item Phantom dancer so that adcs can feel tanky when you fight them and Phantom dancer + death dances can become the new meta and then you'll say "omg adc to hard to kill wtf rito"

Like come on man.

thefance4 votes

Season 2 Bloodthirster/Phantom Dancer meta was far less cancerous.

AlienPrimate8 votes

Bloodthirster didin't give a shield and phantom dancer didn't give damage reduction back then.

bloom5 votes

{quoted}

Season 2 Bloodthirster/Phantom Dancer meta was far less cancerous.

maybe but every adc had exactly same items.

thefance4 votes

Therefore... what, item diversity would suffer if we removed Energized Zeal items? Even after Mortal Reminder, DD, ER, GA, and Bork?

This comment strikes me as pedantic, in the sense of "complaining about minutia for the sake of complaining".

bloom3 votes

{quoted}

Therefore... what, item diversity would suffer if we removed Energized Zeal items? Even after Mortal Reminder, DD, ER, GA, and Bork?

This comment strikes me as pedantic, in the sense of "complaining about minutia for the sake of complaining".

i mentioned somewhere above i'd remove stattik because this item is simply unhealthly (as far as i remember it was either shitty or broken) and replacing it with other zeal upgrade. cmon stop pretending item 3094 is broken itself (i wouldnt consider 50-120 based on lvl dmg as something strong) its just shiv also item 3094 without shiv would be viable only for Caitlyn Jinx Jhin Tristana

hhaavviikk1 votes

{quoted}

Yeah Make the only zeal item Phantom dancer so that adcs can feel tanky when you fight them and Phantom dancer + death dances can become the new meta and then you'll say "omg adc to hard to kill wtf rito"

Like come on man.

you're right my bad I forgot, also remove DR passive on phantom dancer and limit death's dance to melee, problem solved

bloom3 votes

{quoted}

you're right my bad I forgot, also remove DR passive on phantom dancer and limit death's dance to melee, problem solved

you mad bruh? actuall problem is shiv and his ability to stack with firecannon. PD and runan are fine.

Teridax684 votes

I can agree to this: out of all the game's DPS classes, if there is one group meant to specialize in AoE damage, it's juggernauts. Marksmen already have excellent target access, and so do not need to be able to purchase the option of heavily damaging multiple enemies at once, at least not without making severe tradeoffs. This is not to say that no marksman at all should be able to deal good AoE damage, and I think there are quite a few who definitely have that as an asset (e.g. Miss Fortune, Sivir, Twitch, etc.), but that additional strength needs to come at an equally steep cost, which isn't always the case: MF has less single-target damage than most marksmen, and Sivir tends to have less overall raw damage and range, but Twitch is an excellent duelist with a ton of burst, in addition to great DPS and AoE, which makes it difficult to identify a true weakness on him.

The issue I have with Runaan's Hurricane is that, while it's definitely more functional than its previous iteration, it's an effect that provides a lot of power without real gameplay, effectively allowing the marksman to deal a ton of collateral damage while focusing a single target. In the case of on-hit marksmen like Kalista, Kog'Maw, Twitch, etc. it also removes a portion of their counterplay by making them a threat against multiple enemies at once, instead of allowing a single champion to approach and soak up focus while others attack them. In addition, it gives a ton of additional waveclear to a class that already dominates in pushing power, and when coupled with crit and life steal it adds yet another multiplicative scaling effect that makes their damage and sustain go even more over the top: Hurricane alone, for example, increases the power of a marksman's life steal by 80%, which I think is largely responsible for their self-healing being as excessive as it is right now.

I also have become less of a fan of the Kircheis Shard line over time, not just because of Statikk Shiv's AoE (like Runaan's, it gives good waveclear to a class with top-tier waveclear already, and lets them deal a ton of AoE damage with little risk or effort involved), but also because of the item's innate upfront burst: while I think it's okay to charge up for an empowered attack over time in a fight, it's that initial amount of extra damage, coupled with crit, that causes marksmen to go way overboard and deal those ridiculous 1k+ damage autoattacks right off the bat: with Infinity Edge, Statikk Shiv's proc deals 400 bonus damage to 5 targets at once, which in itself resembles a lot of mage nukes (Orianna needs 267 AP to deal just that much damage with her W). It basically gives marksmen an extra nuke ability that members of other classes would normally have to pay a mana cost and aim to apply, without interrupting their attack pattern.

Considering how these items are all crit + AS items, I think this also raises the question of how we want to implement crit in the game: this is probably a topic for another discussion, but a major issue with marksmen right now, imo, is that they get to kill squishy targets too fast, in addition to being able to kill multiple targets at the same time without much of a risk or tradeoff. While the Marksman Update added some much-needed diversity to the class's itemization, I think it also failed to address many core issues with the class, namely their reliance on an RNG stat and the lack of strong differentiation between members of the class (there are still no official marksman subclasses, for example). Drawing a harsher line between marksmen capable of dueling, and marksmen capable of AoE/teamfight damage could be one step towards allowing those differences to express themselves better.

DaNinad4 votes

To be honest the real problem is the shiv/rfc/bloodlust combo being so good. Twitch and kog'maw are just busted.

Ðeath XIII4 votes

Hurricane isn't an issue. They overbuffed Statikk Shiv.

Having things like Hurricane for Varus, Kayle, Kog'maw are necessary so you can have actual diversity in style.

Kaeblen2 votes

Yorick would give just about ANYTHING to remove item 3085 from the game. Yorick isn't a top tier champion, but once hurricane is purchased, he'll never have Ghouls/ Mist-Walkers again.

Frankly, I don't see an up side to item 3085 even existing. It makes games shorter, because Marksmen x3 waveclear and don't really have to pick their targets carefully at all.

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