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Talk about the changes of Youmuu's and Duskblade being made melee only

Loco Mot1ves·8/12/2016, 5:08:04 PM·11 votes·2,588 views

At first, the korean Lucian build came out that revolved around Youmuu's into Black Cleaver and everything was ok. Then Miss Fortune saw this build and thought, why not add the ol' Duskblade to that combo? People were salty, but overall, it wasn't any different than a fed ADC with a crit build if they got ahead. Then Jhin comes along and says, "Hell, I can do this even better! It'll be a freaking masterpiece!" - and then everything was ruined and Youmuu's and Duskblade are being taken away from ADC's craving alternate builds because they begin to suffer in different areas as the meta changes.

Personally, I don't completely understand the logic behind this change. ADC's, even Jhin, who don't have the greatest escape capabilities compared to pretty much any assassin are being penalized for using "THEIR" items with success because of what? Killing someone too fast on a 40 second cooldown which is your counterplay window to the burst? Using a coveted movement speed active to escape, chase, maneuver in a team fight for position?

Miss Fortune sacrifices a crit build for the armor penetration, shred and duskblade proc when two of her abilities synergize with critical strike and each option has their own pros and cons.

What would it take for them to create alternate items that accomplish the same goals that can be ranged carry specific? I feel like my options are going to be dwindling with this kind of change and every ADC is going to be building nearly the same thing again which is bland. I've tried playing around with other builds without using crit, youmuu's or duskblade and it just feels weak in comparison.

In the end, just want to hear both sides of this debate and understand why this is on thei to-do list i've been seeing. Am I missing something in what i've said?

38 Comments

420 grams8/12/2016, 5:13:00 PM6 votes

I think it's more they want adcs to stick to one build path because having options makes the game too diverse and unpredictable, which turns the game into a skilled tug of war instead of the one sided stomp every game that league likes right now

ActivatingEMP8/12/2016, 5:49:28 PM5 votes

But if cleaver is made melee only it will hurt Gnar greatly :(

Ravenhale8/12/2016, 5:25:22 PM3 votes

Duskblade is a "new" item that should have been Melee only when it was introduced.

Cleaver and Mallet should have been changed to Melee only a long time ago. The concept of Health + AD should be fixed for Melee AD Bruisers.

Ghostblade is fine. I don't know why it is being argued to be Melee only. If Duskblade and Cleaver are both gone from the equation, Ghostblade doesn't have a whole lot going for it by itself. You can still combine it with a Last Whisper item and Maw of Malmortius for an Armor Pen build.

If I'm not mistaken, I thought Last Whisper got nerfed because of abuse by AD assassins. I wouldn't mind seeing the Last Whisper line becoming ranged only.

redfeenix8/12/2016, 6:23:12 PM3 votes

I think having melee/ranged weaponry is great.

But then ADCs shouldnt be able to buy IE, BT since they dont use swords. But Garen can [slayer-pantheon-thumbs]

I honestly think its awesome that build variety exists, especially from back in the day there was really only 1 viable ADC Build (IE, PD, LW) So yeah if its too OP, just nerf them but let ADCs (and koreans) experiement and discover new builds in the future.

I think build variety is very important to league

Sire Hippington8/12/2016, 7:22:12 PM3 votes

I really don't get the fuzz about those 'korean adc builts'. The champs in question are all ad-casters, they scale mostly off ad and due to beeing nearly 100% physical damage also with pen, and they have next to no AS scaleing. So how wold anyone get upset about them getting the items that grant the stats they use the most? Why would anyone be suprised if they don't go for crit if that basically means you need to pray to RNGsus because 40% crit max or get a zeal item, that gives no AD but AS that they hardly use(compared to AD)? Also, why are people upset when they go for a more earlygame focused built rather than the scaleing crit when the game is so focused on early-mnid game? Similar builts did work on ad-casters in previous seasons aswell, just that the weaker llate compared to crit was more noticable(the difference is still about the same, the impact of it is lower though for various reasons)

The flatpen builts are a natural result of their kits+the current state of the game, and that's good. Imo it's more odd that those champs are supposed to go crit...

ModWulf Helhammer8/12/2016, 5:31:40 PM2 votes

I'm pretty certain his wording was referring to making Duskblade melee only, as that was something they said they would do before it was released if ADCs started using it too much with too much success.

Erockandroll8/12/2016, 9:08:24 PM2 votes

I can see a multitude of problems for adding the "Melee Only" tag to these items. Some people have Already brought them up, But I want to summarize them a bit.

Suggesting that ADC's break the item, is far too generalized. Using these items on Lucian, Jhin, or MF will make you a meta sheep sure, but using them on just about anyone, makes you a bad meta sheep. Armor pen works well with their kit's because their AD Casters. And it's far easier to balance 3 champions, than it is to rebalance everyone over an item change.
Assuming that Lucian, Jhin, MF are broken with those items, is suggesting that they are without weakness. Which actually isn't the case, since trading crit chance for Flat pen, gives you more early game pressure at the cost of late game damage. A sivir will out damage Lucian late game, A crit focused Lucain will have more late game that the GB/BC lucian. Which begs the question, why is the Early game build so popular? It could be that the meta simply favors it. (League of snowball) But it could also mean that those champs define said meta. (and that really would mean their broken.)
Asking Ghost blade to be "melee only" because it's suppose to be an "Assassin item," is way to restrictive. Flat Armor pen =/= Assassin item. Really Flat Armor pen means "I'm an AD Caster, who does damage with spells. Lucian might not be an Assassin, but Neither is Gangplank, but he still makes use of GB because he's a caster.

An Assassin item should have something that says Assassin on it. Like the execute passive on Duskblade. Which makes it a far better Assassin item than Ghost blade. Which begs the Question "Should Duskblade be Melee only?" My answer to that is "Only if it makes any ADC an Assassin." (In the same manor that any mage could pick up Death Fire Grasp (R.I.P) and become an Assassin) Yet I don't see that being the case. Right at the moment, Only Jhin really makes use of that build, and to an extent, that's actually Okay and it leads into my next point.

Asking Assassin items to be "melee only" completely eliminates the Possibility space of a ranged AD Assassin. And that's an issue in a game that already has Marksman/Assassin hybrids. And a much bigger problem for a potential Ranged Assassin who wouldn't otherwise synergize with ADC itemization or even fill the ADC role. And the reason I bring up Jhin is, he's effectively a Ranged Assassin. He's has an execute in his kit, that makes him good at assassination. (Much more reliable than Jinx rocket execute.) F.Y.I. for anyone who said that Jhin fits the sniper fantasy better than Cait, you were absolutely right, because snipers are ranged assassins.

Last point I'm going to make, how do you reconcile Ranged with Assassin.

Those requesting the Melee only tags, are not exploring any soft restrictions. For example look at ghost blade. Way back when, the 6 second duration on Ghost blade, was only 4 seconds for ranged users. And while Ghost blade has changes since then in function and build, there's no reason why we can't go back to that soft restriction. Even the like of Frozen Mallet, still has a stronger slow for Melee than it does for ranged.

Those soft restricts can easily balance Melee and ranged seperately, without completely eliminating the crossover.

warpenguin5558/12/2016, 6:26:50 PM2 votes

ill be happy to see this happen. Ghostblade is the new IE, except almost every AD champion rushes it. and duskblade should never have been usable on ranged champions to begin with

Loco Mot1ves8/13/2016, 3:20:09 PM1 votes

After having read through the comments to see what's been added to the conversation as a whole, what i've gathered is that Rito is taking the easy path here by simply removing the two items in question from the marksman repertoire all together without any compensation.

When they did the marksman rework, adding different styles of crit builds in the form of Phantom Dancer, Rapid Fire Cannon, Statikk Shiv, and Ruinnans Hurricane was a job well done on their part. Youmuu's branched off on its own to create another path all together that diverged from a pure crit/AS build, and with that being removed, we're back to square one. The melee only item pool remains the same and the ranged pool is dwindling. If changing items is the easiest route for them to take in balancing champions who supposedly "abused" these assassin items, they should compensate the ranged class and give them a couple new items to play with.

Before, melee had the hydra items and ranged had the hurricane, which essentially is a 50/50 split (i'm not torn about the separation of a tank and carry form originating from the same build path essentially). Now it's a 3:1 ratio and marksman aren't the only ones affected by the loss of these items.

With that being said, they already have incoming nerfs planned for Jhin which I believed was the answer to his build, but with the build obsolete, are the nerfs even necessary anymore? You nerf him to balance his power, and then you take away the items that make him powerful and it starts snowballing. Sure, he's still strong with a high AD crit build, but this goes from swinging a bat at someone to running him over with some heavy machinery.

Miss Fortune is going to suffer even more because when you restrict her to the same build as other ADC's, most of them are all going to do their specific job better with the tools available to them because of their kits.

Now you have two champions who are going to have to go through the testing process to see what kind of impact this is going to have and find brand new solutions to address everything that's going down. In what started out like an easy solution, it's adding up to be a lot of work later on. Later on, they might look back in hindsight and think, "Maybe we should have handled this differently?" Of course, some of this is based off of hypothesis, because we don't know what kind of changes are going to be made to Jhin in the first place, but Rito is well known for wielding a strong nerf bat.

Others who enjoy youmuu's like Lucian and Twitch don't suffer as much in the end which is part of the reason I haven't talked about them before. I have plenty of experience with Lucian in particular and I personally prefer the crit build on him because of the late game power and having a near endless supply of mana from Essence Reaver for spamming minion waves. I only play Twitch the odd time here or there, and from what i've tried, Youmuu's is just 'good' on him. Quinn on the off hand benefits from the active a lot, but she plays more like an assassin than anything these days to begin with. This will hit her pretty hard as well when she's already behind in the meta. That and Trinity Force no longer has crit factor for one of the few champs who benefit from that stat.

If there's anything i've missed, please point it out, but that's my nickel and dime for now. [zombie-brand-clap]

Punchtown Hero8/12/2016, 8:06:11 PM1 votes

There are too many armor penetration items in this to stack currently, I think this is the real problem and I believe these two examples prove it. First, I was playing against a Darius the other day (who I found out was a Diamond 2 smurf boosting his friend) who built nothing but armor pen. items and berserker greaves for the attack speed, he ended the game one shotting our nexus towers from full health at 18 minutes in. The second example was the game I just finished playing and the reason i'm currently at the boards to discuss this; I was against nearly a full AD team (Lucian, Wukong, Talon, Lee Sin, and Blitzcrank) and we had 3 tanks on our team with over 300 armor and 3k-4.5k hp (Malphite, Volibear, , Anivia, Ashe, Tanksadin (Kassadin)) in my oppinion we should have won this, but we ended up losing... The tanks got melted in about 2-4 seconds because everyone on the opposing team had 3-4 Armor Pen Items (Duskblade, Youmouus, Lord Dominiks, Black Cleaver). When does a full ad team ever beat 300-400 armor 3-4k hp???

Critmaster Garen8/12/2016, 8:10:33 PM1 votes

[{quoted}](name=Loco Mot1ves,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=tdIWOwAA,comment-id=,timestamp=2016-08-12T17:08:04.696+0000)

At first, the korean Lucian build came out that revolved around Youmuu's into Black Cleaver and everything was ok.

no. everything was not ok. he was op with that build and got nerfed as a result of it. there is no way around that.

Bârd8/12/2016, 8:42:48 PM1 votes

item 3147 should definately be melee only.

item 3142 should be open to everyone.

Sincerely, a guy who plays Twitch and buys item 3142 on Urgot

Seenan8/13/2016, 1:48:04 AM1 votes

Just as Ezreal breaks many onspell items such as Runeglaive, Korean adcs broke the Duskblade/Youmou for ranged champs (eventually extending to NA/EU). I'm glad on it either way. ADCs are given too much anyway, let them be shoe-horned into only ADC-made items.

LoL Ergo Urgot8/13/2016, 3:54:56 AM1 votes

So a champion Urgot with an already small item pool gets even smaller.

Irelia Bot8/13/2016, 4:04:28 AM1 votes

These 2 items were intended to be assassin items not marksmen items when they were last reworked in the case of ghostblade and when added in the case of duskblade.

When groups of champs start making too good of use if an item that they were never intended to there are 2 options.

Nerf the items or nerf the champs.

In this suggestion the idea is to nerf the power of the items on champs who they were never intended for in the first place.

They have changed IBG to make it less oppressive on Ezreal.

Moesnd8/12/2016, 5:12:04 PM1 votes

If they do this they better give some small compensation buffs to Quinn Lucian Twitch Miss fortune

Small, just to make up for the lack of youmuus