A Quick Hopefully Good Post about Marksmen versus Fighters

I've never really made a post before, but I'll give it a shot. I normally just lurk and read what other people say to gather information and see multiple sides to things. There's been a huge debate about fighters/toplane being bad, and marksmen being strong. Whether you agree or not, I hope that providing these links and numbers shows some insight. This is a comment I made earlier on a separate post, which I'll link HERE.

Let's use these 3 common core items for the two classes.

for fighters

and for marksmen

Keep in mind these are NOT perfect representations, not all fighters build the same and same goes for marksmen. But we've been using these for a while now, so might as well use them for this, too.

Let's first look at Marksmen items. A typical, generic start usually is Infinity Edge for their core build. Taking a look at the LoL Wiki (http://leagueoflegends.wikia.com/wiki/Infinity_Edge), we can see without its passive, Infinity Edge has about 96% cost efficiency. Not bad, actually. With its crit damage passive, it gets to 107%. Solid for an item, not bad in my opinion. Next is Statikk Shiv (http://leagueoflegends.wikia.com/wiki/Statikk_shiv). Shiv on its own, without its passive, is about 87%. That's okay, not amazing. With its passive, (assuming each point of magic damage is similar to AP, correct me if I'm wrong here, but I'm trying my best), it can reach gold efficiency at ~300 magic damage. Now, at first look, you might look at it's damage and see it only scales up to 160 versus champs (264 vs minions). This lightning effect can critically strike, doubling it's damage. At approximately level 17, a champion will reach full cost efficiency with Statikk Shiv... that's still not beyond broken. However, to minions, this item reaches full efficiency at level 9. That's about what I expected, a waveclear item doing waveclear things. But there's one more factor... Infinity Edge. With Infinity Edge, Statikk Shiv reaches full efficiency at level 13 versus champions. And finally, we look at RFC (http://leagueoflegends.wikia.com/wiki/Rapid_Firecannon). On its own, about 83% efficiency. Its damage is also lower than its counterpart. To reach full efficiency, your passive must deal a whole 415 damage. Damn, that's... really high for RFC. Actually, RFC can't reach that, since unlike Shiv it cannot critically strike, and the damage in total reaches only 120. This item is rather lackluster on its own, that use is pretty pitiful to be honest. Although, this item is made to synergize with Shiv. It lowers the charge time by 25%, increases the proc's range, and makes it apply to structures.

In conclusion for marksmen, the only standalone item that's poor is RFC when looked at mathematically. Shiv relies on RNG tho without Infinity Edge and more crit, so I leave that up to you to analyze critical strikes in general.

For fighters, the cost analysis is as follows. Trinity Force (http://leagueoflegends.wikia.com/wiki/Trinity_Force) is 97% efficient without its passives, but increases a solid amount when looking at the Phage passive (up to 116%). Spellblade differs for every champion, but the flat gold value (regarding an Illaoi, level 18, with Sterak's Gage to increase base ad, to make for 459 total damage) which equals a whopping ~1600 gold value (because Attack Damage is worth more than Magic). That's quite a lot of stats. For Sterak's Gage (http://leagueoflegends.wikia.com/wiki/Sterak%27s_Gage), it is... 38% gold efficient without its passives. Wait... what. Hey, you know what? Maybe we can take a look at this items passives. At full efficiency with its passive on Illaoi (again), we get 121% cost efficiency. However... this is at level 18. A typical Gage user such as Irelia, Camille, Jax, will get 60-63 base AD bonus at level 18, making for a still somewhat inefficient item. The passive shield is pretty powerful, but to it is only bonus health... and well, with only Gage as your HP item... you'll be getting in the 300s for your shield... wait that matches Shiv's damage at full efficiency... but hey at least you have tenacity for knockups in that teamfight! That was a bit depressing, but we'll look at Titanic Hydra (http://leagueoflegends.wikia.com/wiki/Titanic_Hydra) next. This item is 86% efficient without its passive and active. Not bad. It's active by itself deals about 45 damage, and with the 3 items together here it can do about 115. Pretty solid. On its own, the maximum cost efficiency we can gather is about 104% on Galio at level 18 without other items. That'd be okay and all... except that this means the item requires other items to be useful, and not only that but it's most efficient on a champion that doesn't even build the item.

In complete conclusion, it does seem that Marksmen spike harder (more dps than the fighters have both dps and durability) with items compared to fighters along with the fact it takes fighters more gold to buy all 3 AND more levels to reach a proper effect. Is that a problem? I leave it up to you. Champion kits can provide some different point of views, and I've provided you with some facts, and my own math. There are links if you feel like I did a shotty job (I probably did, I'm not a genius). This is from an Ekko main's point of view, one that doesn't build ad fighter nor crit. Thank you for attempting to read the text wall.

TL;DR Marksmen items do spike harder and it takes fighters more gold and experience to reach a proper potential, but what you do with these is up to you as champion kits still exist and meta impacts. Hope you all have a nice rest of your day/night and I mean to take no sides in this argument (except for Gage oh my god that item makes me sad you literally only buy it for the bonus base AD)