What if there was a trade off for building Crit?

TehNACHO··6 votes·318 views

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.

4 Comments

ModWulf Helhammer3 votes

You mean like devoting half of your build to a stat, making it so you can't build durability without sacrificing some other necessary parts of your build?

TehNACHO1 votes

item 3046 Yeah about that

Also, given the common logic that one of a Marksman's best defenses is their range, item 3094

Not to mention, the whole reason that Marksman don't typically build defense is BECAUSE they're ranged.

Erockandroll1 votes

{quoted}

You mean like devoting half of your build to a stat, making it so you can't build durability without sacrificing some other necessary parts of your build?

Necessary part of the build. This is why build diversity is a fallacy when it comes the ADCs. You only (Suppose to anyway) care about one thing. Your DPS. So you are pretty much going to end up with a build that optimizes your DPS. And because balance pretty much has to assume that your building optimally, anything outside the optimal build, never really works.

The only real exceptions to this are a few Utility ADC like Ashe, who might opt in for a build with more CDR, Trading raw dps for utility. But those are exception, and very few ADC's really have good tradeoffs to make.

Asayake 5150glow1 votes

Um, I don't get the increased lifesteal when alone at cost of mobility.

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