Let's talk about AD carries.
Is it just me or is there room for improvement for the beloved marksmen we have in the game right now?
Every role has a lot of depth and a lot of champions and item combinations are viable, every role except ad carry that is. AD carries are stuck in a very stale state right now where only a few champions are really played and viable and most of them build the same things. The exception is pretty much Ezreal, the blue build is very interesting. In order for an ADC to be effective you need damage (duh), attack speed, crit damage, crit chance, life steal and armor penetration. Every other role has the luxury of skipping a stat or replacing one with something else, can adjust their build to the opponent. Ad carries are stuck building the same thing every game and you can't afford to deviate from that build. If you were to buy the quicksilver sash to block the Zed ultimate or not get instakilled from Annie your damage would fall behind A LOT. As an ADC you can't go semi tanky, build health, mana regen or CDR, i mean of course you could if you wanted to but your damage would lack and your team would probably flame you because of it.
AD carries also lack interesting spells which is understandable, if their abilities were too powerful they would be too strong. But it also makes playing an AD carry somewhat boring. The typical ad carry skillset looks like this, Q = Something to increase dps (attack speed or damage spell etc) , W = Some half useful skill (smoke granade, essence flux etc), E = Something mildly defensive (traps or mobility etc), R = Something global or pure damage (and in rare cases CC).
So, what is the reason AD carries are stuck with somewhat lame abilities and a stale build path? Well if you ask me i'd say it's the crit. Crit is the only reason why they are auto attack carries, without crit their spells would have to be better, without crit there would be a lot more options for items, you could go off-tank, get cdr, get movement speed. I have no idea if you can remove crit or even if it is a good idea to do so, but i would have more fun making sweet moves with my abilities rather than just right clicking and watching them die.
Kalista was in the right direction though, unique and interesting and has item variety. (Good job Riot)
Maybe you reading this LOVE the adc as it is, maybe you hate them, or maybe you are like me who thinks they are okay but could use some improvement. Whatever your feelings may be, leave your thoughts on the matter.
, 
), or that are mandatory regardless of who you're playing, who you're against and what strategies are being used (
). It's difficult to suggest alternatives to these items because anything that trades raw power for more situational bonuses will likely not get picked, unless they're just flat-out better than the other options (this was the big problem with 
when it was first released against the stat-heavy 
). Crit also feels like a wasted opportunity right now, for a lot of reasons: it's the only stat that needs to be stacked in order to function properly, which locks everyone else out of it; it's a major source of power, yet has no real gameplay attached to it, and it feels wrong that such a core game mechanic in League is still dependent on random chance. If crit were a mechanic with genuine gameplay that everyone could opt into, and that marksmen could specialize in, it would add a lot more to the game.
feels like she'd be an amazing utility machine with a full CDR build, but in most cases full-on autoattack builds just outclass that, and consequently she doesn't feel as awesome as she could be. On a bigger scale, I dislike how marksmen as a class are always meant to be this gold-hungry, hard-scaling fixture in every team that is necessary to close out games: I feel it would be a lot more interesting if they were treated as a class like any other, with the ability to be really strong at different stages of the game (and not just late-game, though we do have champions like 
and 
who tend to dominate the early game), the ability to thrive in solo lanes and more options at all stages of the game besides farming and pushing. Objective control and heavy DPS should both be key features of marksmen, but not to a degree where they're mandatory in every game. At this point, only marksmen have remained constant trhoughout every game in League (we have mages and tanks taking up the support role even now), and I feel it would allow for more diversity if they were allowed to keep their core strengths, but not to a degree that makes them mandatory. Damage should still be a focus for marksmen, but it would be nice to see more diversity in that too: some marksmen, like 
and 
, have amazing utility and crowd control, and marksmen like 
and 
(does he even really count as a marksman?) feel like they could work well with a bit of tankiness in their build, but until we shift to a state of itemization that doesn't place damage above all other effects on ADCs, we're not going to have as much variety as there could be.
