Scouts - A new subclass in LoL?

Prior to the release of Kindred I had thought of the concept of marksman supports/junglers and how they could fit in to the current meta. This led to the ideation of new items and various champion changes to support the viability of this subclass. The only question at the time being was would this even work in game? Riot certainly seems to think so. Kindred is a mobile marksman that can fill a number of roles and provides both DPS and utility to a team. In addition this is an excerpt from riot's own insight into Kindred;

Kindred’s introduction brings the possibility of fancy new team comps built around a second jungling marksman. With two marksmen, the rest of the team might look for peel-heavy champions who can keep enemy assassins and fighters at bay, or pick up items like Black Cleaver to help both marksmen deal decent damage. Maybe they’ll focus instead on tanky frontline characters who pack a decent amount of magic damage - champs like Malphite or Amumu - to mix up their team’s damage output. The point is that a ranged marksmen jungler hasn’t really been reliably seen before, and we’re super excited to see the kinds of teams you guys build around one.

So what exactly is a 'Scout'? A scout is a mobile marksman champion that offers a variety of utility to it's team while retaining the squishy aspect of most 'ADCs'. They can be played both as the main ADC or as another role in your team composition, allowing for more variety. Champions that I believe would make good scouts are , , , and to a lesser extent champions like or . These are champions that currently display a lot of the characteristics I would like to see in a 'Scout' champion. What's lacking in many of them, however, is the utility that a 'Scout' would bring to the table. Additionally to further their identity as a subclass their mobility would be jacked up a notch through itemisation just as we saw Juggernauts 'buffed' through their increase in item diversity.

WARNING: All of these item ideas are obviously up for discussion and debate. I have spoken to others about them and I don't think any are too outrageous but of course I am open to constructive criticism

Items

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Conniver's Knife 365G 6 AD

Passive: Auto attacks on a target generate stacks of Swindle. For every stack of Swindle you gain 5% of the targets gold value if an ally gets the kill on it. Max 20% Gold value gain.

Swindler's Shiv 865G (Conniver's Knife + 500G) 10 AD 10% AS

Passive: Auto attacks on a target generate stacks of Swindle. For every stack of Swindle you gain 5% of the targets gold value if an ally gets the kill on it. Max 30% Gold value gain.

Goldtooth 2200G (Swindler's Shiv + Avarice Blade + 535G) 20 AD 20% AS 10% CSC

Passive: Auto attacks on a target generate stacks of Swindle. For every stack of Swindle you gain 5% of the targets gold value if an ally gets the kill on it. Max 40% Gold value gain. Passive: Gain 25% increased assist gold

Zephyr (Reworked) (Same price and build)

25 AD 45% AS 5% MS 10% CDR

UNIQUE Passive - Tenacity: Reduces the duration of stuns, slows, taunts, fears, silences, blinds, polymorphs, and immobilizes by 35%. UNIQUE Passive - Windrunner: Auto attacks against targets increase the MS of you and allies within 550 range of your target by 5%

Cognisance 2800G (Stinger + Zeal + 550G)

60% AS 10% CSC 7% MS 10% CDR

UNIQUE Passive - Keen eye: Produce Blue wards through movement, can hold a maximum of 3 blue wards at a time. UNIQUE Active: Place a Blue ward (Cast range 600). Internal cooldown of 20 seconds.

Kaladoun Guard 2550G (Quicksilver Sash + Raptor Cloak + 200G)

40 AR 35 MR 150% HPregen

UNIQUE Active - Forbidden land: On activation create a zone around you (range 450) which prevents champion movement towards you and allies within or through the area for 1 second and grant yourself a bonus 30% MS for 2 seconds. (100 second cooldown) (Ranged Only) UNIQUE Passive - Point Runner: Grants +10% bonus movement speed that build up over 2 seconds when near turrets and Dragon or Baron pit (including fallen turrets).

The Viper 2500G (The Brutalizer + Cloak of Agility + 433G)

30 AD 20% CSC 10% CDR 10 ARpen

UNIQUE Passive - Mortal strike: Critical strikes reduce the targets armour by 20 for 3 seconds

Argent Blade 2650G (Bilgewater Cutlass + Cloak of Agility + 500G)

30 AD 20% CSC 10% Life Steal

UNIQUE Active: Deal 150 (+50% AD) Magic damage to target and slow them by 30% UNIQUE Passive - Mortal strike: Critical strikes grant you and your nearest ally 50% increased healing for 2 seconds and reduced the cooldown of the this items active by 1 second (60 second cooldown, 550 Range)(Ranged only)

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Okay so just going to quickly summarise the items and the ideas behind them. The support item provides a lot of gold income and not a lot of useful stats. No CDR or HP regen makes it harder to peel for your ADC (or whatever carry you're supporting) if you have any in your kit and just makes laning in general a little tough. On the other hand however it does provide you with stats for your scalings and a good amount of gold if used properly. The last item in the support 'tree' ought to give equivalent gold to a kill for assists in a number of situations and so it is a very high risk- high reward item.

The Zephyr rework, yes in a sense is a reverse Janna passive but also is a reverse frozen mallet. In addition the range over which the speed boost persists is quite a dangerous range to be in. Overall it provides extra mobility for allies in tight situations and gives you some extra tenacity which may help both you and allies survive slightly stickier situations.

Cognisance is the sightstone 'replacement' for the scouts. While it does provide more 'relevant' combat stats it also gives you no raw damage. In addition to this the wards it creates are blue wards - visible and easily destroyed. The idea behind the item is to grant more mobility to you and the ability to take advantage of the support item's passive or perhaps an on-hit or crit based build, whilst also giving you temporary vision to increase your team's own tactical awareness of the map.

Kaladoun Guard is probably the most controversial item idea in the set. The raw stats aren't that great and it is pretty gold inefficient on its own. It however provides a new kind of protection not seen before in the game. As a marksman keeping your range is one of the most important things you can do. This item provides a brief moment of protection from melees or dashing/blinking champions that would otherwise eat you and your team for breakfast. You are still vulnerable to skill shots/pulls/tethers/targeted abilites/Auto attacks, however enemy champions cannot walk/dash/blink into the range of the active. Not sure how this would be implemented code-wise. Enemies already within the range are unaffected. It's purpose is to protect you when solo roaming into enemy territory or to protect you and allies from champions like Irelia or Katerina in team fights while you reposition.

The Viper and Argent Blade I'll talk about as one because the main thing they bring to the table is their passive. Riot has long been looking at ways to positively change the way champions interact with crits. Idk if the passives I've given are too strong or too weak as they are, perhaps they could be strengthened if they also removed the crit bonus damage. I think it's worth looking into. As items they just introduce a new mechanic and build path to marksmen as a whole. Perhaps the passive should be ranged only on both.

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Champion reworks?

Honestly this is where I am a little stuck. I want these champions to be functional as ADCs and also to be able to fill in other roles just as Kindred does. I, however, do not have enough experience with all of these champions to be able to fully know where their identity lies, what their current strengths are and how they can be tweaked. That being said I do have some ideas/opinons.

Twitch His Q is great and has been recently buffed, his W has utility in it's slow and temporary and his E does give 'vision' on enemies expunged in brush. Perhaps his Q can give vision in an area around him (even into brushes?) and maybe make his E do more damage based on the targets' current health so that it functions less as an execute and better as poke.

Quinn I play a good amount of Quinn and I can say that her ult (the damaging portion) isn't the most satisfying. Despite being an execute, it's damage really only spikes late game when she's much weaker in team fights. I feel like the R should become a transformation and maybe when she transforms from bird to human enemies in an area around her gain her harrier strike mark. In addition the E ought to have separate cooldowns. The Q and W I think can stay as they are.

Miss Fortune MF is a lane bully as she is now and as a support she'd bring a lot of damage to a lane, I think for one her Q needs to better target champions or maybe allow her E to make champions susceptible to the Q or even apply impure shots over the duration. Also, obviously, her impure shots do need some sort of indicator and I believe rioters have said they were working on this. Her ult doesn't really need the damage buff if this change was implemented to the E as targets would already have some stacks on them. Perhaps the only major change to be made is an increase in the damage impure shots does and axe the current PBE buff to her ultimate. Her is grants vision and applies a heavy slow, her movespeed allows her to roam effectively if only to increase her utility I'd like to see some sort of interaction with her allies in either the W or E (small AS buff/MS buff in the E/impure shots targets take extra damage from allies etc)

Sivir As she is she actually fills the role really well. She'd be an aggressive support soaking up CC for the ADC and would play a roaming ADC role otherwise. Perhaps something to help her jungling ability would be nice as I know she's quite weak in comparison to these other champions when it comes to jungle clear ability. An easy change would be her W bounces deal full damage to monsters in the jungle and maybe a base armor or attack speed increase.

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That's pretty much it. No Tl;dr here if that's what you were hoping for. I really just wanted to get this out there because it seemed like an interesting idea and I like the way the LoL meta has been shifting in the past season. There have been a lot of changes and giving players the ability to play the game their way and perhaps explore more types of team compositions, I feel, has only added to the LoL experience. I'd really appreciate any feedback and if you like the idea of course upvote it. Maybe it'll get spotted by a red :)

• edit: reduced gold gain from support item's passive at it's first two stages.