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Why I like ability power marksmen over critical strike marksmen

Stacona··23 votes·1,810 views

First of all I like them more because they feel more balanced to me over critical strike dealers since their damage is about consistent sustain damage rather than hoping to burst out targets, especially with Infinity Edge crits, leaving no room for counter play. This is not to say ability power marksmen do not have burst of their own, but their burst is predictable and has some kind of unique gameplay element to that champions. ~ For example Kai'Sa either has to land her W which is a single target skill shot and/or go for the 5th stack proc, while Varus need to stack up his blight and then needs to land a skill shot to detonate for the burst damage, both scenarios lead to some kind of predictable element for the opponent to play around and make them more unique than simply basic attackers, while crit marksmen either crit or do not crit when below 100% chance which means no control over the opponent to try to live (and then there are huge flaws in the system once you get 80%+ crit chance where crit marksmen become long ranged assassins that can also destroy tanks).

Ability power marksmen I also feel are more unique in the way they play, Kog'Maw will play around his W cooldown (AD Kog'Maw less true), Teemo utilizes his poisons (he can use a gameplay update, NOT A REWORK, just a modernization of abilities similar to Warwick where he is brought up to current standards while having similar esq feeling kit like having a blind, poison damage, and mushroom for vision and map control), Kai'Sa plays around her 5th stack procs, and Varus plays around stacking up Blight and procing it with his skill shots. Meanwhile in crit land, you deal steady damage to burst damage depending on whether you crit or not, absolutely no consistency or ability to allow the opponent to properly react to what is going on unless you are a tank or Malphite (assassins have the same issue where there is no counterplay to them and they are only about being super mobile, dealing heavy burst damage, and all within a window that offers no counter play or fairness from the opponent).

Despite lacking items that support ability power marksmen (aka we need more items to grant more options of what to build, like more omni-vamp options for one thing [omni-vamp would become a named unique passive to remove the option of stacking for insane healing]), they still feel more unique in the way they build since crit marksmen feel static in their builds since the only decision making feels like in the completed Zeal items - Hurricane for AoE, Shiv for some burst and wave clear, RFC for range, PD for dueling... followed by IE (sometimes ER), LW, Blade or BT, and GA (not necessarily in this order).

Builds aside, crit marksmen end up all feeling very much the same without any proper unique elements, and even if they do have an unique element the power of the IE crits and crits in general offer so much burst that you never see them which means the crit marksman that does the best job in that patch is the one that gets played the most, going down the line from there. With ability power there is more control over balance so you can make the champion more unique than just basic attacking, even as their primary focus as basic attackers, allowing the user to play around THAT CHAMPION'S unique elements rather than whoever has the best steroids for basic attacks. Maybe one day we can allow for an ability power marksman that can heal allies and/or have other utility effects like ally enchantments, do this by having the scaling ratio based rather than level based and gets these ally utility effects by playing like a marksman (aka basic attacking), just putting ideas out there.

Not a whole lot of point to this post. Other than pointing out that crit marksmen are flawed right now (have been for years) while pointing out that ability power marksmen play more uniquely to each other since there is a lot more control about how they play since you adjust values easier and make things clear of when the ability power marksman will deal a ton of damage and mediocre damage. This clarity is what makes them different to each other, allowing for champion uniqueness like how mages are different to each other, rather than picking whoever does their job the best since their gameplay varies based on the champion that you pick.

24 Comments

TeCoolMage7 votes

no one listened to me when I said that making champions based around purely basic auto damage (and not situational damage applied on autos, or damage dependent on autos) was terrible design. (lmfao instead I got caught by the New police and downvoted)

Simply being able to right click someone and do a ton of damage that way (without any help of the kit) takes out too much of a champ's power budget and makes them all have the same strategies playing as and against them (burst them down before they get into range, play around their AA ranges, etc).

Champ abilities should always be the main contributor of damage, even if it's passives like Vayne W. Not the inherent 100% total AD, (100% crit chance)% chance to deal 200%+(100% crit damage) damage.

But nah, the main argument I got back was "Marksmen will haz n0 iden-titties they must d0 m0st damegz but low3st defenz ps. d0wnvot cuz u can influens ppl if they read ur stuff"

Stacona2 votes

Ability Power Marksmen do deal damage heavy damage and primarily from basic attacks, but of course needs to use their kit to deal that damage. If we learn of what AP Marksmen are doing right then we can fix the other marksmen, which is being reliant on gold / items before they get scary strong and have to rely on elements of their kit in some form which offers a way to play around them. Right now it is Caitlyn and Tristana maxing out crit chance with IE and abusing their range to 3 shot or less everyone which is not interactive or fair gameplay, nor are the using their kits effectively (also those two have the most toxic kits in the game and need hard reworks, neither of them have a proper identity at all).

TeCoolMage2 votes

Exactly. When you have an AP marksman they can do heavy damage but they are in cooldowns, three-five hit passives, traps, missing health damage, and more. This sort of stuff leads to fun and interactive gameplay. The secret is AP does nothing without these effects

AD-crit is like, without even having any abilities you can build these items and still use them effectively. Then your kit adds extra noise. Having a three hit passive doesn't give you something to play with, it's just like "yeah I'm autoing them, free damage! Oh look my three hit passive procced for more damage, not that it matters that much". Even AD casters like Varus give damage on Q poke, but in the end it's just free stuff for the main show where you shoot them down

Stacona2 votes

Well AP is based on your attack speed value too, but I get what you mean, where there is a window and clarity for the damage whether it is landing skill shots (Varus) or every 5th stack (Kai'Sa), the power of the damage is very obvious and allows the opponent to play around that since the flat damage is not going to deal some insane burst damage (even though you get some chunks with Rageblade, but you need to stack it up at the start of the fight and even that is consistent once the double on-hit damage kicks in (which is a 50% damage multiplier for on-hits), so even then there is a moment to react to what is going on).

It is weird, where I think the game might be better off if everything was ability power based that way you can control balance a lot better since ratios can be fine tuned on a per champion basis, do not need to worry about buffing basic attacks and ratios if you do not want to with specific items or abilities that scale with ability power. And you could still have armour pen and magic pen in this world since ability power scaling has nothing to do with damage type, but for clarity sake it might be best to turn attack damage into the same formula as ability power that way people know Attack Damage is primarily physical damage and Ability Power is primarily magical damage (and AP is also for enhancing the power of utility abilities like movement speed, healing, shielding, enchanting, etc.)

Yes, turning attack damage into an AP-like system might be the best way to do things, where you remove the ability for attack damage to enhance basic attack damage without specific ratios to do so - it will still be focused around an attack enhancing system that does not involve bonus on-hit damage, but everything will be assigned a ratio to control the balance better rather than always 100%AD for basic attacks, while AP will do what it always has done.

TeCoolMage3 votes

Well AP is based on your attack speed value too

I didn't mean to say that AP is not reliant on other stats, I agree with that as well (AS, mana and CDR), but that it all goes back to the ability that gives the ratio.

100% agree with changing AD to only work off ratios in kits like AP. I've been suggesting that for a very long time and for crit to be changed into something like a 'skill' based multiplier where it only increases things like Vayne W proc, twitch E and Xayah E

Stacona1 votes

I wonder what Vayne would look like if she had slightly less attack range (525 instead of 550), but with only AP ratios and less base values and her passive scaled with ability power so she can chase baddies better and her ultimate was a toggle that enhances Tumble for invisibility for a short duration slightly scaling on rank up and her autos applied 1 additional on-hit every 3/2/1 basic attacks (so Rageblade proc she applies 3 on-hits, not 4, which is a full silver bolt proc) - while toggles on every time she procs the additional on-hit effect it costs mana and tumble's mana cost goes up quite a bit based on the stealth duration.

With that the Final Hour (R) cooldown by something like 25/20/15 seconds upon turning it off which is long for a toggle, but still short enough to always be ready, while still long enough to punish misuse. Also it would no longer give direct bonus damage, just that on-hit multiplier for her on-hit effects and applying silver bolt procs which has its base damage cut in half for a really good AP ratio (or even just make it her passive and her chase potential becomes her W scaling with rank and AP passively and gain an active that enhances the effect for a short duration).

Just blabbering on, something I thought about with Vayne to force her to play around her Silver Bolts and be this brutal tank melting marksman when focuses as an ability power marksman since there is more control over balance, and going AD just really gimps those steroids since your attacks are naturally strong (even less attack range surprisingly encourages more unique builds like ability power, since we control how powerful someone is even better), the trade-off for the build is balances her out to not be so dominant against squishies and with % max health true damage procs ensures she can melt tanks late game, especially with a high AP ratio for a near 20% health damage per proc (or more if you can squeeze in more ability power late game; still deal physical-true damage, but since your tank busting is already true damage she doesn't need penetration at all).

Make champions more unique, properly use their ability kit, and give them a proper identity I feel would be a good thing for the game - though most marksmen would still have the main goal of tank busting - you can still make this unique; turn Vayne AP and she becomes the the super chasing down AP Marksman all about melting tanks, but struggles vs squishier targets since roughly about the same amount of attacks are acquired to kill the squishy as the tank.

VoraciousX4 votes

I feel like Jhin is a really fair crit user as well. I've never really felt like one of those gods who just destroys everyone playing Jhin(although I've heard tell of this new Rageblade Jhin build) by building crit with Jhin. If I play him though I like to go 100% crit(with IE and not Essence Reaver, cuz I like the kiting + passives from RFC>Shiv>PD) if I can, but I've never really felt omg amazing until late game, and then, while I am really really strong, it's still possible to kill me.

Over all though, I do prefer AP Ezreal/Kogmaw/Varus/MF(God I miss AP MF), etc.

As for Ashe, whenever she's meta she's oppressive af if you can't one shot her. I hate any time Ashe is meta. But yeah, if crit was reworked to be more about crit damage than crit chance(but also still having crit chance, but more like IE's passive changing from increasing your crit damage by 50% to increasing your crit chance the more crit damage you had, while having most crit items increase crit damage instead of crit chance), it'd be a bit better, but they'd be stronger faster most likely and that wouldn't be any more fun than the current predicament.

Stacona1 votes

Jhin is the most bursty. His issue is that he cannot kill tanks, which is the sole purpose to pick a marksman so him being the game is very weird and you need to pick something else on the team that can kill tanks, at least AP Kog'Maw can play mid so that is an option if you go a Nashor's Tooth and Rageblade route for less poke and more tank busting.

VoraciousX5 votes

{quoted}

Jhin is the most bursty. His issue is that he cannot kill tanks, which is the sole purpose to pick a marksman so him being the game is very weird and you need to pick something else on the team that can kill tanks, at least AP Kog'Maw can play mid so that is an option if you go a Nashor's Tooth and Rageblade route for less poke and more tank busting.

Jhin actually can kill tanks quite well with my build. Lethal Tempo gives him like 100-160(can't remember exact numbers) extra AD with the way I build. I've killed tanks without an LDR before late game, while running around like a madman being unable to be hit practically. 2 auto squishies, 4-5 auto tanks. Hard to escape, etc. Another thing that I've always found weird about Jhin players is they prefer swifties for some reason. Berserker's greaves probably gives more move speed(although on crits, not base, but you should be kiting anyways), AND more AD for only 10 less move speed overall(but again, more when you kite).

747 with item 3031 item 3508 item 3009 item 3094 item 3036 item 3072 with meh kiting(even with fleet). Vs training dummies you do between 3.3k and 3.8k damage. 581 with item 3031 item 3094 item 3006 item 3087 item 3046 item 3036 without lethal tempo proc, and with it you get 659 and with a full 4 shot lethal tempo proc you get about 4.2k(this is obviously a best case scenario, worst case scenario would be about 3.6k damage). With this build you get godlike kiting, damage reduction with phantom dancer, and more damage+waveclear with shiv.

item 3031 item 3006 item 3094 item 3087 item 3046 item 3072 = 648 without lethal tempo proc, and with it's about 732 AD and can do around 3.6-3.9k damage. Though with the Lethal Tempo builds you could take about 350 damage off from each because I used Q to proc lethal tempo.

Damage was tested on training dummies.

Honestly all of the builds seem fine, but the 100% crit builds feel better for me because of the movement speed you get when kiting, and you CAN get more damage out of it potentially. JUST replacing the build I posted with berserker's greaves instead of swifties ALONE changes the AD from 747 to 781.

SEKAI2 votes

{quoted}

Jhin is the most bursty. His issue is that he cannot kill tanks, which is the sole purpose to pick a marksman so him being the game is very weird and you need to pick something else on the team that can kill tanks, at least AP Kog'Maw can play mid so that is an option if you go a Nashor's Tooth and Rageblade route for less poke and more tank busting.

Jhin can actually kill tank with crit build, and or lethal tempo AS stack build, mostly because the damage in the game is so extreme, with so much catering towards auto-attack at the expense of spell-users almost entirely, as well as how some of the interactions in Jhin work. He is fully capable of killing tanks within a couple shots if he is fed; though that also means his damage also kills squishy champs even faster, given his damage is mostly raw. Again, damage creep, and mostly about crit itemisation.

Also, sole purpose of marksmen is not to kill tank, I shudder at the prospect that people completely forgot the mechanical reasons why meta was formed. Marksmen are, or at least were, ranged DPS champs who are equipped with the sustain damage (more AA focused) while sporting the advantage of range; that's it, there is nowhere in the class definition that specifically means they are to kill tanks, none. Any champion who has good sustained dueling power (which marksmen do not have the "dueling" part outside of a couple examples, but they can cushion it with their range) and/or being able to abuse anti-tank items are good tank busters, it is NOT exclusively to marksmen.

Jhin's kit is like MF's, cast-based, and not good in dealing with targets who beefs up their defence stats a lot of time (outside of when arm pen or lethality is straight up broken, and assuming if the crit itemisation in this game isn't completely and utterly gamebreaking as it has been for the last several years). Again, killing tanks is never supposed to only be accessible by marksmen; Riot may have said that because a lot of times they completely forgot why things in the game is as it is, and that they are also busy making marksmen the 1-man army class literally capable of doing everything outside of tanking, so I won't put too much money on it.

VoraciousX3 votes

{quoted}

Jhin can actually kill tank with crit build, and or lethal tempo AS stack build, mostly because the damage in the game is so extreme, with so much catering towards auto-attack at the expense of spell-users almost entirely, as well as how some of the interactions in Jhin work. He is fully capable of killing tanks within a couple shots if he is fed; though that also means his damage also kills squishy champs even faster, given his damage is mostly raw. Again, damage creep, and mostly about crit itemisation.

Also, sole purpose of marksmen is not to kill tank, I shudder at the prospect that people completely forgot the mechanical reasons why meta was formed. Marksmen are, or at least were, ranged DPS champs who are equipped with the sustain damage (more AA focused) while sporting the advantage of range; that's it, there is nowhere in the class definition that specifically means they are to kill tanks, none. Any champion who has good sustained dueling power (which marksmen do not have the "dueling" part outside of a couple examples, but they can cushion it with their range) and/or being able to abuse anti-tank items are good tank busters, it is NOT exclusively to marksmen.

Jhin's kit is like MF's, cast-based, and not good in dealing with targets who beefs up their defence stats a lot of time (outside of when arm pen or lethality is straight up broken, and assuming if the crit itemisation in this game isn't completely and utterly gamebreaking as it has been for the last several years). Again, killing tanks is never supposed to only be accessible by marksmen; Riot may have said that because a lot of times they completely forgot why things in the game is as it is, and that they are also busy making marksmen the 1-man army class literally capable of doing everything outside of tanking, so I won't put too much money on it.

The 25% missing health damage helps a lot considering 3 shots should bring a tank decently low. Jhin's always had extremely high AD if built properly(he was meant to because he's extremely slow in his attacks), that high AD can outscale a tank's armor if he's got enough items. Jhin's actually mostly weak to champions who use attack speed, because he can only attack so fast. It's kind of odd that his main weakness is other ADCs(or at least attack speed based ADCs).

M00ndanc32 votes

I agree with your post about ability power marksmen versus crit marksman. There is one crit marksman who handles crit well. And that is Ashe . I feel that if crit worked the way Ashe's passive works than it would feel a whole lot better.

For those who don't know exactly what Ashe's passive is beyond the slow on auto's. Ashes passive causes her to deal +110% damage to champions inflicted with her slow passive (also procs on w and r). This %increase scales off crit until you reach max crit of +200% damage (250% with IE). Also when ever Ashe crits instead of an increase in damage it insted just triples the amount of slow and makes the slow last longer (up to a max of 60% slow).

Stacona2 votes

Yes, especially since her first auto can never apply the amplified damage meaning it offers more room for the opponent to react to what is happening unless she lands her ultimate (Enchanted Crystal Arrow) or uses Volley, and her Q requires ramp-up time like with Rageblade. So Ashe's rework is handled pretty well, especially since she is very unique and different to the other marksmen, so you always pick Ashe for Ashe specific things like being able to engage as a marksman with her global hawk shots to scout out areas and perma-slow.

Ashe basically functions similar to ability power marksmen, without being AP based, and there is control to her power since you can always adjust her passive's bonus damage (as well as ability damage).

M00ndanc31 votes

Also with the rune changes you can actually play her as a support (which is her secondary making her the only marksman, support). when I feel like playing Ashe but not ADC I can always go for a support ashe that is more shred based and buy ardent censor while bringing font of life and rejuvination in the secondary part of my rune tree.

Stacona2 votes

That is because she is a CC heavy, utility marksman, not actually a support - she just plays a supportive role for her team every game.

xxxMadLionxxx1 votes

I love AP luc tho

Stacona1 votes

You need something that scales with AP on your attacks.

oortoomeebreesuu1 votes

I had a similar rundown in my head when it was basically "who got trist" meta. Champions like Ezreal, Ashe and Corki have such clear identities, and are actually somewhat weak when behind.

On the other end of the spectrum, Varus players had** foregone his identity entirely** when it became obvious he was just an on-hit machine with grievous wounds and a cc.

bf sword into shiv has been the literal only build for champions who dont buy essence reaver for what, 18 months now? Seems legit.

Stacona3 votes

It is how Varus gets played as AP, you stack up Blight and then you need to detonate it with an ability, it actually ends up being a healthier play style because there is some kind of counter play to that rather than his AD build which involves super safe long range poke and burst damage from crits. That stacking and detonating with a skill shot gameplay makes him very unique and different than every other marksman, Kai'Sa AP needs to land her W to help with passive stacking otherwise it is a lot harder to get the 5 stacks, but even the 5 stack mechanic makes her more balanced because it is something the opponent can watch and try to play around, crits do not do that and makes every marksman the same.

Also I noticed the ability power marksmen do scale very well, but they need at least two items (Nashor's Tooth and Guinsoo's Rageblade) before they take off, and then get Gunblade because it is the only option for their health sustain (we need more omni-vamp options). So turning on later before they take over the game is another point of balance as well.

Corki still can suffer from the crit samey, but the unique way of playing him is like a poke-mage rather than marksman. Ezreal's Q does not crit so you can go with other builds, I am surprised no one is building Gunblade on Ezreal with his hybrid ratios and then can heal from his abilities as well, plus the burst and slow of the active.

Daunt1 votes

Hell yeah, i love when Varus 1 shots me with R and E cause he built AP and now has better damage output than any other ADCs that run crit currently.

sverike1 votes

i could see this as the way away from rng that riot has been looking for for all these years! then i remembered they added a 100% rng based keystone rune and they aren't removing stattikk shiv whose crit is about 3 times more impactful than if you crit with a normal auto.

SweedishGunner1 votes

AP marksman? What?

Do you mean spell reliant ADC's vs auto based ADC's?

CasterGilgamesh1 votes

you mean caster adcs vs auto attacking adc?

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