Boards›Gameplay

Focused Update: Marksmen Itemization and Crit Work.

Muzét·9/26/2017, 8:58:33 AM·14 votes·1,522 views

Hi everyone,

Maybe some of the view might have seen my old topic. I decided - follow Teridax68's comment - to go for something smoother and cleaner to explain my point. Please feel free to talk about it and specially give me your thoughts about it particularly if you disliked it. I'd like to know why. Thanks beforehand.

 I want to do some changes about Marksmen as you already know. It won't be something like what we saw for Season 6. But rather a **focused update** on items. The objective is to **emphasive the constant damage criteria of a Marksman** which allows him to takedown objectives and so **without being able to burst down a squishy**.  

• Some of you might think: "They're building full damage why shouldn't they be able to kill other squishies?". In this case you may have the idea of the typical glass cannon. But League of Legends is more about **specialisation according to your class/subclass**. And Marksmen are right now definitely "jacks-of-all-trade" with a tweak since they're good - if not best - at almost anything. 
→ We can take a close look at that since they're killing tanks and taking down objectives **faster than any other classes**. The fact that they are able to kill other squishies (i.e., Assassins and Mages) when they should be killed by them in a straight 1v1 - except if ahead - and they're doing so faster than them. Most mages can't take down objectives like them and assassin don't build AS as Marksmen do.

○ I know that Assassins and Mages can build items to allow us to takedown objectives faster (e.g., item 3100 item 3115) but they're standalone items, synergize more or less togther and are only effective on a few cases (i.e. Diana). Whereas Annie - a burst mage - or Xerath - an artillery mage - picking this up would alter greatly their playstyle which wasn't made around auto-attacking. ○ I won't develop much about Assassins - I'm mostly playing Kayn - but picking AS over AD would reduce their burst drastically and make their counterplay window even bigger. And we all know that some Marksmen are way more assassin-oriented just by building Marksman build. (e.g., Vayne Twitch )

Now let's get to the point: Nota Bene: I don't want to throw out many numbers not only because I don't want my post to be depreciated for numbers. Specially when I did think a lot about how it could work. So - once again - I'd really like to read your thoughts.

• No more Last Whisper itemline We won't need it with what follows.

• Critical Strike damage reduced to 150%, Critical Strikes now ignore 40% Bonus Armor Crits now ignore bonus armor naturally. I thought about item 3031 wouldn't change much it will give an additive 25% to the number (175%) rather than multiplicative.

• Reduced AD for Marksmen itemization item 3153 item 3031 item 3072 item 3508 item 3139. The objective there is to reduce burst.

** Increase Attack Speed Cap ** AND ** Attack Speed across marksmen itemization** The idea here with both those changes is to emphasive the constant damage aspect. → The damage output will be average but dps-er while not being able to burst as much.

○ I know they can go for Lethality if we nerf AD on those items. But afterall, some of them are already doing it. In fact, they should go for lethality if they want to go bursty. And, if they do so they loose constant damage (for most of them) and won't be able to take down tanks - since they won't be building as much crits. ○ To talk about Death's dance, it wasn't made for Marksmen in the first place but rather for Casters. So we could clear things up like Increase healing on spellcast (both single targeted and aoe) but reduced on auto-attacks. Some marksmen could still make use of it but at least, less than nowadays.

• Add a Grievous Wounds and Giant Slayer item With the deletion of Last Whisper itemline, they would lost both those unique passives. That's why we need to create new items. I thought about something like item 1038 + item 3034 and item 3086 + item 3123 [because the passive synergize well with Attack speed]

Last but not least.

• ** Balancing champions **

Most of them wouldn't be hurt except one who would: Ezreal. With those changes - and maybe by reducing Q ratio and allows it to crit - he'll be able to make a strong item 3508 user without denying the Muramana since he doesn't require as much AS as other Marksmen.

** Item changes **

• Rapidfire Cannon & Statik Shiv.

item 3087 now deals 60-120 damage and deals bonus damage to minions for 120%.** No longer crit.**

The changes is made to give it back its waveclear while not being oppressive to champions (specially squishier targets) through crit. Furthermore it's also allows it to be more distinguishable from Runaan's Hurricane which can crit.

item 3094 now can crit. Its empowered shot inflicts 40% bonus damage to towers if it's a crit.

This change gives it a burstier pattern but on a single target which is better. I also choose to give it some additional damage to towers if a crit is made.

Thanks for you who read me until the end. Don't hesitate to give your thoughts and give an upvote so I can get more visibility (and even more thoughts about it). Share it with your friends and Marksmen mains!

Thanks again.

EDIT -

(Thanks Shahamut) • Take a look at on-hit builds Enhancing Attack Speed/AS Cap might give more power to On-hit builds. It might need a nerf then.

Update 03.21.18 ▬ Adding item changes section.

31 Comments

Teridax689/26/2017, 10:25:57 AM4 votes

I'm very sad to see this thread get so many downvotes but not even one comment yet, and I think as a community we can easily do far better, just as Muzét has made the effort to write this thread and explain their thought process. I commented on the previous thread already, but here is my response to this one:

One of the main issues with marksman damage right now, in my opinion, is that marksmen are supposed to be DPS-focused, which should naturally predispose them towards taking down tanks, who have static health pools, but not so much squishies, who usually have access to burst damage capable of killing them faster. Currently, however, marksman damage is far too bursty, mainly because crit, a stat intended to enable tank-busting, operates by piling on raw damage. As a result, the damage output of marksmen ends up becoming naturally quite bursty, which causes them to kill squishies far too quickly and reliably. Shifting the power of crit away from raw damage, and onto bonus armor penetration, would be the perfect means of giving marksmen anti-tank power without giving them too much anti-squishy damage, and would also allow for a much better balance level, where the power of crit could be shifted along its damage increase or armor pen in order to adjust the damage of marksmen versus squishies and tanks independently of each other.

The other main idea I really like here is that of increasing attack speed on marksman builds: as mentioned above, too often the emphasis on marksman damage is on individual attacks, particularly since items like Statikk Shiv grant a huge first-strike bonus. This merely compounds the class's issues of excess burstiness, when they should be excelling in DPS. Shifting the power of marksmen towards higher attack speed, and presumably individually weaker autoattacks, would guarantee that they would keep having top-tier DPS, while allowing their AD to be reduced without compromising on this strength.

Overall, I think these changes would be a direct and significant improvement over the state of marksmen right now, who irrespective of their overall strength currently have much of their power distributed in the wrong areas. Shifting their power onto DPS and specific tank-busting mechanics, rather than just raw AD and multiplicative damage, would reinforce the role of marksmen as premier DPS and anti-tank champions, while allowing for much better control if they ever do spill over into excessive anti-squishy damage.

Wildlife110/7/2017, 7:17:31 PM3 votes

I think the ideas are great, cause it does fix the problems we currently have with their burst, I hope more people will be able to look and say hey I have an idea to make things better, such as what some people been doing with the AP itemization in the recent months.

Muzét10/3/2017, 11:02:19 PM1 votes

I'd like to receive thoughts about it guys please.

Shahamut10/7/2017, 5:37:12 PM1 votes

My only thought, is by making it auto penatrate bonus armor, wouldn't that simply make heath stacking tanks counter marksman? Although, I guess the greater attack speeds could even it out.

Shahamut10/7/2017, 5:38:37 PM1 votes

Also, how do you feel this would affect melee crit dps champs like Yasuo?

Rebonack10/20/2017, 3:03:30 PM1 votes

I've been pitching the idea of 'crit as armor pen' for quite a while and I would personally lean more toward having it ignore some (large) amount of total armor with no damage multiplier to speak of. That would give it a VERY clear function- kill hard targets. This would help to better preserve the DPS < Burst < Tank < DPS equation that Riot has thrown out of whack by spreading out (or broadcasting) burst, making it easier to out DPS it or get healed to full again.

By reducing a Marksmen's damage against Mages and Assassins while maintaining it against hard targets I suspect it would be much easier to bring the various archetypes back into alignment with each other.