What if there was a trade off for building Crit?
One of the main underlying qualities of Marksmen that make them a required part of most any team is that they are fantastic siegers, being able to do a high amount of damage to towers and trade poke with the safety of being ranged. Critical Strike Chance on the other hand is largely a tool designed to fight other champions and DPS them down, offering another factor to multiply and outscale tanks and an emphasis in their utilities being combat focused. Well, what if we can tackle the Marksman dependency issue and the odd balance of Marksman combat power both at once by separating them?
One example could be to lower secondary stats of Crit items while enhancing the Critical Strike Chance they offer. For example, Infinity Edge with less AD but around 30% Crit Chance. This could also offer a good reason to break the stat homogeny of Zeal upgrades, trading in their varying attack speed for more specific Critical Chance.
This could be taken a step further by introducing items or reintroducing passives designed around sieging and Marksman Utility. Some examples include
- A slight healing bonus in the presence of a turret
- Moving Shiv and RFC's waveclear and poke passives over to new items and statlines
- Separating combat Armor Pen (Last Whisper) and Turret/Maybe Dragon and Baron Armor Pen (A new item specifically for shredding objective armor)
- A lifesteal item that either grants increased Life Steal when you're alone for a small movement speed penalty
This could help change the state of Marksmen from the penultimate siege machines AND the strongest DPSers in the game to a more strategic model where you have to balance the pros and cons of combat suppremacy or objective control.
Yeah about that