We need a new AD item to replace the old Bloodthirster
Long story short, I think a late game AD item with a high Attack Damage to cost ratio, and no other combat stats that affect or are affected by auto attacks, is needed for this game. This is aimed at the range of ADC champions of the game, as heavily auto attack based hyper scalers like Tristana have become just a little too rampant in my opinion.
To explain, it should be noted that if you are specifically optimizing auto-attack DPS, you generally only need at most 200 bonus AD or even less before you start maxing out your damage multipliers, Attack Speed and Critical Strike Chance. Just as an example, between the Infinity Edge, Last Whisper, and the Blade of the Ruined King, you're already looking at some 145 AD, and you're already prompted to start buying more Attack Speed as per the Blade of the Ruined King and Critical Strike Chance as per the Infinity Edge. While this may not be the absolute most optimal setup on all auto-attack based ADCs, I hope it already establishes the precedent we're faced here as far as the auto attackers are concerned. Highly valuable AD items optimized for auto attacks already bring you up to the necessary amount before prompting you to invest in damage multipliers just for auto attacks.
This is also where the problem starts however. This is optimization for auto attacks, but not all ADCs express themselves purely through auto attacks. Think champions like Graves, Sivir, and Varus, champions who absolutely revel in Bonus AD as they use their abilities. Back when the Bloodthirster stacked all the way up to 100 AD, these were the champions that were absolutely certain to rush it first (okay I only know Graves and Sivir, not sure about Varus). Now however, they lost their straight up AD item, and without all that bonus AD to fuel their abilities, all of them had a good chunk of their strength knocked out of them. From what I observe, this is a rather large factor as to why auto attack crazy Tristana and Hybrid based Kog'Maw are so dominant in the current meta. They don't require straight up bonus AD to function, they rely more on their auto attack multipliers or roundabout items like the Trinity Force to maximize their damage since the forefront of it comes from multipliers and effects that don't require high amounts of bonus AD. Without a high AD item in the item pool however, this has pushed the bonus AD reliant champions out of the metagame.
What do you think on the issue? Would a new dedicated Attack Damage item help the game, and more importantly, do you think it's necessary to help bring back ability based AD champions who need the bonus AD? Do you think there are more underlying problems with auto attackers that can't simply be solved with a new item? Do you have other (and hopefully better) ideas to help replace the niche the old Bloothirster left behind?
