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Marksman Item Exploration: Diversifying Right-Clicking

ModThe Djinn·1/3/2019, 10:00:54 PM·5 votes·1,846 views

Hey all!

I've been doing some thinking on the design of Marksmen itemization, and I've been wondering lately if the relative always-useful, "glorified cannon minion" state of Marksmen is a feature of their out-sized auto-attack budget combined with the relative passive effects of their itemization. Compared with other roles Marksmen have few actives, few circumstantial itemization options, and a lot of just +power.

##Edit Just a point of clarity-- this is not intended as a be-all, end-all solution to the issue of the Marksman Attack/Spell power balance situation. Merely an experiment at approaching the problem from the angle of itemization, which could be combined with other adjustments. The goal would be that items would carry less raw stats, and those gaps would be filled by more interesting output modifiers.

Enter this experiment. The items suggested below don't have stats yet (or cooldowns/durations, in many cases), but each is designed to add some depth to the auto-attack, timing, and positioning choices of the Marksman role, making their high and low moments a little more strategic and focused and adding some extra engagement. Some favor strategic attack management, some reading the fight, some sticking to a single target, some swapping targets, and some seizing moments of opportunity.

Do note that I'm well aware some of these may be failures, and that the game almost certainly couldn't support all of them existing, as a carry with 2-4 of these would be trying to do too many things simultaneously. I'm more curious if this sort of itemization pattern feels interesting, and if the ability to pick what way you wanted to express yourself in auto-attack form feels intriguing.

#Sheriff's Longarm [Ranged Only] Unique Active: Create a zone in a rectangle centered at your current location, with the longer side in the direction of the ability activation. The zone lasts for a medium duration, and while you are within the zone you deal additional bonus damage and have slightly increased range.

#Lucky Arrow [Ranged Only] Unique Passive: Every 8 seconds, your next attack is a critical strike that deals X% damage instead of normal critical strike damage and leaves an arrow which bounces to a nearby location (similar to Poppy). Picking up the arrow refreshes the cooldown of this effect.

#Bilgewater's Finest [Ranged Only] Unique Passive: The first attack on a new target deals bonus damage, doubled if the previous target was a champion. Damage dealt is reduced by 50% against minions.

#Zaunite Disintegration Ray [Ranged Only] Unique Passive: Every third auto-attack grants X charge, quadrupled against enemy champions. When fully charged, you unlock the Disintegration Protocol active. Unique Active [Disintegration Protocol]: Fire a beam in the target direction, dealing damage to all targets it strikes and marking them for 8 seconds. Marked targets take bonus damage from additional beams.

#Fang of the Spider Queen Unique Active: Fire a blast of ghostly poison in the target direction, marking all champions struck with accursed and dealing damage over time for two seconds. Unique Passive: Attacks against accursed targets extend the duration of the damage over time effect by 1.5 seconds. Further attacks refresh this 1.5 second addition, with no maximum duration.

#Kandahar’s Reaper Unique Passive: Ghostly spirits will occasionally appear in your proximity, and after every champion or large minion death. Walking over one will charge the weapon, making your next successful attack deal bonus damage and heal you for a small amount, increased against enemy champions.

#Celestial Lens [Ranged Only] Unique Active: Place a marker at the target location after a brief delay, gaining vision while it persists. For a short duration you have unlimited range when attacking targets inside that area, and deal bonus damage to them.

#Thoughts and comments appreciated!

12 Comments

Lhuhz1/3/2019, 10:15:57 PM4 votes

If you think that the concept of marksmans as aa based champs is something that needs to be changed you should understand that what causes it it's not their items but the designs of their kits.

And that's why Riot wont change them any time soon, because for what ppl like you is asking they need to completely rework around 19 marksmans, markswomans and markschildrens and ALL at the same time.

Can the crit items rework make them more interesting ? Maybe, but only with items you can only change a bit.

woodvsmurph1/3/2019, 10:41:07 PM2 votes

Like LHUHZ said, it's more a flaw with their kits. Phreak actually made a pair of vids saying the same thing. Jhin, graves, etc. were changed and given more unique kits with reload mechanics. Kog has to make decisions around w being active or not and does he wait for it to come up again or risk fighting w/o it. But many marksmen basically don't use their abilities come later game because they are a dps loss.

You don't need to give adc's more burst which is what most of your items appear to do. Their problem is mostly that mid game if the enemy melee top has flash, they get jumped on and deleted before they can do damage... no counterplay available other than "don't be there". But they HAVE to be there for the teamfight, so that's not an option or reasonable counterplay.

If you look at crit compared to non-crit items adc's buy... crit items just amp your dps so much that you can't really afford to stop off for a bloodthirster, maw, or ga because your dps loss will be too high and the other team's adc will just do way more work than you while you do no damage. But if you can't buy one of those items for mid game teamfights, you end up being nuked by a jax, irelia, syndra, zed, etc. jumping on you and popping you before you have a chance to fight back. That's why I'd argue the smartest thing to do is not to buff crit, but to improve the ability to buy a "durability" item like bt, maw, ga for mid game based on the enemy team comp. So to do this and have it be viable option, the dps loss must be matched or outweighed by the gain in safety vs enemies trying to nuke you. Currently that's not the case, so it should be fixed. This then enables adc's to have a chance to outplay/counterplay the enemy team, kite properly, and win a teamfight without dying every time the enemy melee top has flash. Secondly and going along with this is that I'd change crit to be more like it is for ashe. With each additional item improving the damage you do with crit rather than the CHANCE of crit. This would further help adc's to feel ok about stopping off from their crit build path for some survivability mid game while still reaping good benefits from the crit they have bought rather than praying to rng gods that they get lucky with their crit this fight.

Stepping back for a second though... I'd like to see some reworked kits. Phreak said he'd like more damage thrown into adc's abilities at the expense/balance of losing some "right click" dps so that the damage gained and lost would be a net-neutral or thereabouts. But do make that really work, I think some adc's would need a new basic ability or two to emphasize this. To get a good idea of how this would look, just think of how grave's q does meaningful damage and matters to his kit or how his ult matters. With stuff like trist, jump and ult are only used for safety and your e is mostly good for towers. But if it were adjusted, it could play out more like a graves... with her e being more deadly if proc'd (like maybe shredding some armor of her opponent for awhile) but losing a bit of dps if she's not proc'ing her e on a target.

Combined the two approaches would make adc's have to be smarter in order to maximize their dps while giving smoother power curves because their ability damage would always be relevant and crit would scale better w/o needing full build to make use of it AND it would free them up to better itemize against enemy team comps rather than have to be defenseless glass cannons mid game that can be nuked with no counterplay.

GinoSoldier1/3/2019, 10:51:00 PM1 votes

Some of these ideas would be awesome additions to the marksman arsenal, but echoing the guy above, diversifying marksmen needs to be done via their kits rather than their items or you get the same result as supports in S7/8 where their item builds mattered more than the actual champion picks (ewwww).

I would far prefer we took one of each of those effects and slapped them into ADC kits as core mechanics instead.

As an example just for kicks, turn Jinx's Q into Celestial Lens with rockets for the duration. Or Kindred's W into Kandahar's Reaper.

*Edit: Welp, more people made the same point. I'd still much rather they fixed the Marksman issue once and for all rather than band-aid-ing it over and over again.

FemalesAreLesser1/3/2019, 11:31:02 PM1 votes

why isnt this in Gameplay+?

DrCyanide1/4/2019, 1:24:00 AM1 votes

Sheriff's Longarm

Interesting idea. Without further restrictions it would likely be a seige heavy item. While that's ok, I think it'd be far more interesting if it couldn't be cast close enough to enemy turrets where you could attack them.

Lucky Arrow

I don't think this would work. It's an item that encourages running down your opponent - which assumes you're ahead - but also has a reverse synergy with critical strikes since you'd always do less than full crit damage. Good if you're winning and don't want crit I guess, but that feels kinda niche.

Bilgewater's Finest

Attack speed focus, but feels like it would warp balance around it. If you can auto back and forth between two champions then you're dealing insane damage (although likely giving up a kill to a teammate), but if you can't then your power plummets.

Zaunite Disintegration Ray

I feel like this was the All For One or ARAM item choice. If you can auto attack fast enough to build up multiple charges on your own it could be interesting... If I was a Dev I'd give this one a whirl.

Fang of the Spider Queen

I don't see anyone buying this unless the poison is broken. You'd need the DoT to deal more than you could deal in auto attacks empowered by a different item to make it tempting, but once it's tempting it'll be everywhere.

Kandahar’s Reaper

Eh... map clutter but with a description that doesn't seem tempting. A tiny bit of up front damage and life steal almost rewards you more for being the second one to fire rather than the first.

Celestial Lens

LOL, the Baron snipes! This would be bought, no questions asked. I think it'd be very interesting to play around and with too.

ModKnightsKemplar1/4/2019, 5:15:31 PM1 votes

Neat ideas! I'll place my thoughts on each:

Sheriff's Longarm: Definitely interesting. Would be really hard to pick something like this into champions that have AoE zones, though, as they could just hold it until you placed this and cover it up. That might lead to some really interesting patterns, though, so I don't think it's a killer. Item has clear use cases and clear counters.

Lucky Arrow: Potentially strong on champions like Vayne and Lucian. I would really appreciate an item like this that catered to the more "in your face" style of marksman. I think it's a neat thought that wold help with itemization in the marksman space.

Bilgewater's Finest: Not as big a fan of this one as the first two. It's a neat concept, but already exists on MF's passive. Worth noting the interaction there, as she may become balanced around this item if it went live.

Zaunite Disintegration Ray: This idea is stupendous. A lot of how well it would implement depends on how the beam firing animation and size, but I think the base idea is pure gold. This is my top pick out of the ones that you put here. I think the main decision to make, other than beam size/speed, is how the damage on this weapon scales. Is it raw AD, to help caster marksmen? Or does it maybe scale with crit/attack speed, to fit into crit builds? Really interesting options here.

Fang of the Spider Queen: Cool thought, but I think less good than some of your more adventurous options. This boils down to "moar damage." With the right stat line and damage scaling, they could push this in an interesting direction, but it doesn't enchant me with new mechanics. Adding DoT to a class that it already designed as a sustained damage class seems like it could flunk hard if it was even slightly over- or under-tuned.

Khandahar's Reaper: Cool concept, but I actually see this working on another class better than marksmen. Has a similar problem to Fang, in that it's doubling down on the lifesteal that marksmen are already kinda supposed to get in their full builds. Same conclusion: if done carefully and playtested rigorously, I think it could balance, but I don't think it's your best suggestion.

Celestial Lens: This is the other flash of brilliance on this list. New mechanic, adds utility, and creates an interesting game state with consequences for both sides. I love it. Like the Disintegration Ray, I think figuring out which stats to put on this to encourage the right users would be fun. This really plays into the "scout" fantasy of marksmen, and allows some people other than Ashe and Quinn to fit into that mold. Really love it.

So, just to recap, I think your strongest suiggestions are: Disintegration Ray Celestial Lens Lucky Arrow

Possible, but I feel less good about it: Sheriff's Longarm Khandahar's Reaper

Not a fan: Fang of the Spider Queen Bilgewater's Finest

The pattern emerging here for me is that I strongly prefer mechanics that are new to the marksman class. Things that double down on already existing mechanics read as less interesting or possible dangers to game health (or both). Excellent thoughts overall, though! This is some wonderful brainstorming.