Am I the only one who thinks AD itemisation is in a bad spot right now?

Okay, I understand that a lot of people on Boards hate assassins with a passion but please do hear me out. First off, as I'm sure you all know, AD assassins and casters enjoy four stats the most. The first is AD because they scale off of AD, that's a no brainer. The second is Armour Penetration, that way the AD that they do have goes further as it's mitigated less by armour. The third is Cool Down Reduction, this is so that they will be able to use their abilities more often and thus get more use out of their AD and ARPen. The last is movement speed, this is to aid with gap closing and escape, and also makes them stickier than they already are.

Preseason however, while being somewhat generous to AD (65 AD on Ghostblade is gorgeous) has completely fucked Armour Penetration, and to a lesser extent Cooldown Reduction. The biggest slap in the face was the changes to Last Whisper, which went from offering 35% armour penetration to now granting 30/40% BONUS armour penetration. Long story short, it means that Last Whisper, which was an item that was core on many AD casters and assassins no longer works well on squishes, because it's now only effective against enemies that build armour, and they really have to stack it quite hard for it to be anywhere near as effective as the old LW. TLDR; Last Whisper no longer gives the Squishy Busting potential that it once did.

The second slap in the face is the removal of Brutalizer. (If anyone could tell me why Brutalizer was removed I'd be very grateful, I haven't been keeping up with announcements recently so I genuinely do not know.) Brutalizer gave three of the four stats that are essential for AD Casters/Assassins. Attack Damage, Armour Pen and Cool Down reduction. Instead of the Brutalizer we now have Serrated Dirk. Dirk gives less AD than the Brutalizer did, and instead of CDR which was one of the major appeals of the Brutalizer it instead gives some passive which imo is pretty crappy and underwhelming. Not only that, but we're now forced to choose between Caulfield's Warhammer and Serrated Dirk. Do we go for CDR? Or do we go for ARPen? It's a bit of a dilemma and picking up both costs a whopping 2200 gold! Personally I tend to go for Warhammer first regardless of who I'm playing since it gives more AD and CDR. Imo they should remove the passive from Dirk and drop it's price to 800-850 gold, that or bring back Brutalizer. =/

Another kick was Tiamat's AD reduction and cleave nerf, but you know what? I can deal. It's price was reduced by quite a bit and I feel that it compensates for it's nerf, unless I'm playing Kha Zhix I'm honestly okay with, if not even a little happy with the change. What I don't like however is that Ghostblade and Maw are currently the only complete armour penetration items in the game. I feel that with the changes to LW more ARPen items should have been added, instead there's less than there was a year ago. RIP being able to stack Warriors + GB + Cleaver along with ARPen runes for 59 flat pen. T__T First off while Maw seems to have shifted more from being a Tank/Bruiser Item to being an Assassin item, and it is a great pickup if you're laning against an AP champion, I feel that for Junglers/ those laning against AD champions it can be quite underwhelming until later in the game, except that later on in the game it's defensive stats aren't going to go as far to keep you alive as they would have earlier. Which imo makes it a very situational item. I think it's great to build Maw + Mercurial, and similarly great to rush against AP champs, but outside of that it's a bit of an odd buy imo. Plus, even if Maw was core on everything and anything, it still doesn't make up for that missing 35% armour pen.

Another problem is that the Warrior + Lucid + Brutallizer build is gone. Those three items together would give you 35% CDR, 20 armour pen and 65/70 Attack Damage and were popular jungle builds on Rengar + Kha Zhix, hell I even saw Pantheons and Vi's with it sometimes. (Again, gives all four stats that an AD champ wants. AD, Pen, CDR and Move Speed - The Holy AD Quad) However now CDR and Armour pen have largely been separated and a true alternative to that build doesn't really exist, anything that even comes close requires a ton more gold to be invested. Instead champions like Rengar are just bum rushing crit, meanwhile Kha Zhix is just =/.

I can understand why LW was changed, while it was great for busting squishes it also gave AD champs the potential to bust tanks just as well. I get that, it had to be changed so that it would be focused more on it's true purpose - hammering those who stack armour, and not be an all around great penetrate you bloody core item. However I think that flat armour pen should definitely get some more love in return. A really obvious place to add it into would be Death's Dance IMO. The item currently competes with Hydra/Merc/BT for it's slot, and I feel like adding AR Pen to it could really solidify it's position as a worthwhile and potentially core AD item. Another thing that I think could be cool is if Serrated Dirk's current passive was removed, and instead add something along the lines of; Unique Passive: Serrated Claw: Possessing two Serrated Dirk's grants the user an additional +15 Armour Penetration. - Price 850 gold

Why? Gives AD casters the potential to add some more umph-squishy busting potential to their early-mid game. Futhermore if Dirk's going to just offer AD and Ar Pen it should give something that really makes it unique and worthwhile. Finally the passive will disappear once the user upgrades the item, so it's a trade of that sort of counterbalances itself.

TLDR; Changes to LW have created a void in the penetration available to Casters/AD Assassins against squishes. Currently AD Casters/AD Assassins are have weaker build paths due to the removal of Brutalizer. Currently AD Casters/Assassins are forced to choose between ARPen and CDR early on, whereas before they could get both. No compensation has been given to make up for the removal of Last Whispers -penetrate you bloody- potential against squishies and bruisers. Dirk Passive kinda sucks? Death Dance could be a lot better if it had some penetration stuck in, and doing so would build towards giving back AD/Casters/Assassins their much needed penetration. (If we can't have % because it let's us fuck over both squishies and tanks, then at least give us flat so that we can do our job and piss on squishies. CDR isn't as abundant early on for AD champions as it used to be, which sucks eggs. I don't like building crit. =/