Boards›Gameplay

ADCs with Massive Up Front Burst or All In should basically never exist

Charlie Loves U·11/26/2017, 12:01:46 PM·34 votes·2,911 views

Not without meaningful trade offs. ADC main here. And before people meme "but lel all adcs have massive up front burst" no they don't. Not inherently in their kits anyway. So I've been finding myself more and more banning champions that aren't necessarily "op" but really annoying and frustrating to deal with.

These champs I cycle through are Vayne Tristana and to a noticeably lesser extent Xayah

I couldn't really figure out why I hated these champs. Vayne and Trist both have relatively weak lane phases that are easy to abuse. So why do I despise them?

Well Vayne I realized it wasn't her raw sustained DPS, it wasn't the stealth or outplay potential. If anything thats why Vayne is cool. It is that Riot basically said "we are nerfing the Q's ability to crit so Vayne isn't bursting squishies" but here I am every time I'm against a Vayne and once she gets her IE/Shiv half my life is gone in a single auto. the 2nd auto does do nearly as much damage and then the 3rd one procs silver bolts AND press the attack and i explode again.

An ADC regardless of Range, mobility, etc. should never ever be able to have intense raw sustained damage AND up front burst. It's too much of the best of both worlds imo. Some mages I suppose its ok to have some good up front burst like Cassio/Azir because their sustained damage is not as reliable as adcs.

A champion who's class is the best at raw dps shouldn't also have burst damage. And it's not just an issue with Vayne's kit. It runs deeper than that. Because Tristana can also burst you from full health with her All in. Press The Attack may be overtuned but even with nerfs these two champs can still 100 to 0 you super quickly (hell trist can do it with just a BF sword a tiny bit of damage from her support).

Press The Attack is poorly designed. I'll say it. Its a cool idea in theory, but its literally what every ADC would want with no downsides and nothing a bruiser would ever meaningfully want compared to old Fervor. Bringing back old Fervor Gates ADCS an inability to burst or expose someone. Maybe the infinitely stacking AD was broken, sure, but this is more broken and THAT is saying something.

item 3087 is way overtuned for a class that primarily shouldn't have access to burst. The ability to combine it with RFC also means they can burst you from even SAFER range effectively giving the best DPS class in the game mage like poke occasionally on certain champs. (read: cait/trist/etc.)

The problem with Shiv is that no one bought it when it didnt give burst damage. It sucked dick. Sure it wave cleared, but Hurricane does that too and offered a lot more if Shiv didn't have burst. So how do u fix this if you can't just nerf its damage?

I suggest to combine item 3094 and item 3087 into ONE item. Remove the ability of Shiv to crit except on minions and lower its base damage to something similar of that to RFC. Basically allow Shiv to wave clear still, but lose its up front burst and also have the long range proc. Its a one stop shop now that gives an ADC more utility for wave clear/sieging but doesn't give them access to the one thing their class SHOULD lack. (burst)

Beyond that I really hope Vayne gets another look at making her healthier in design overall. She still suffers from a dreadful lane phase while scaling way too intensely vs all targets. Her niche is supposed to be a tank shredder, but she's an everyone shredder, but she's shit range and has no defense tools in lane. I personally would like to see some scaling removed on her Q and power shifted more into making her the mobile high dps adc she is supposed to be. I never feel bad if a Vayne is tumbling all over the place outplaying me and condemning me. I Feel bad when she blows me up in 3 autos before I can even get a chance to fight back.

As for Trist I think nerfing the E damage again is gonna be the way to go because that champ should not have as much burst as she does. Either that or please look at the 300 fucking rank 1 base damage of her ultimate. Perhaps give it significantly lower base damage but give it an AD ratio. I know its base damage was kept high to appease old ap trist players, but no one plays ap trist anymore because its garbage now. Hell if you nerf Trist's E and/or R up front burst you can probably compensate her by giving her better attack speed scaling which she lacks right now.

But ultimately I feel Press The Attack nerfs can't come soon enough (yes I know they are coming) and I really hope someone on the balance team at least considers that burst damage should be less or not accessible at all to the best dps class in the game.

13 Comments

Thefrostyviking11/26/2017, 5:39:09 PM10 votes

Trist is basically made and finished by her items looking at her history, if she has something to abuse she is OP, if not, weak.

Vayne's design seems a tad bit confused, she is a lategame hypercarry as her main role.

With assassin as her subclass, a role that excels at murdering the opponent in a flash early on.

The combination is a abomination, for even though her role as a hypercarry delays her assassinations she becomes a monster the moment that delay has passed, a champ that kills squishies and tanks in a few hits equally.

And can build to kill specialize as she needs to, and she goes invisible, and hurts a metric ton from the end of her weak time to the end of the game.

She can also not really be kited most of the time, and she is a exceptional duelist around walls.

Me and other marksmen enthusiasts (yes, enthusiasts, not mains) always felt that the static buffs were ridiculous and unneeded, and OP.

Like, 500+ in the lategame? Added with syngergy from RFC for faster procs?

Whose ideas was this? CertainlyT??? ( I just really don't like his champions <.<)

And press the attack is..pretty balanced on the balanced marksmen and really busted on the OP ones.

It just widened the rift between the two even more.

However fervor was much too strong to be kept, at least on a number of champions.

And yet some could only use that to try and stay viable in comparison.

The marksman role is pretty messed up, because of OP items, because vayne and twitch with their confused identities and because of how difficult it is to play all the non OP ones and how easy it can be to play the OP ones.

PrinceOfStorms11/26/2017, 11:26:56 PM6 votes

The other problem is that once you pass a certain point in the game, ADCs have the same problem as old Ryze - since their damage is 100% pointclick there's no counterplay to it, and once they get two items you simply can't enter their range without getting slaughtered anymore.

Either ADC damage across the board needs to go down by a lot, or their damage needs to become conditional, like Azir or Cassio.

Buzzkillington011/26/2017, 6:45:48 PM3 votes

Honest question, what do people hate about Xayah? Yeah her ult is fairly annoying but I don't get why she gets so much hate.

FlameHalbrdOkido11/26/2017, 8:24:33 PM2 votes

I think that they need to do more work on defining the marksmen class strengths and weaknesses, and then I think that they need to define each markmen's own strengths and weaknesses, and possibly split them into 2 or more subclasses the possibly most obvious choices would be bursters and sustainers (other options would be much appreciated as long as they create SOME subclasses)

for tristana, its obvious that she's one of the safest marksmen, with her ult and Rocket Jump, i think that they ought to make that one of her strengths and tone down either her burst or sustained a lil, and pretty much nerf the other one a lot.

Sett a trap11/26/2017, 10:59:04 PM1 votes

But then as a Vayne player, basically that means anyone can assassinate me. Even a support, because you want my time to kill to be the 2nd slowest, besides say a tank.

Honestly if that were the case, I'd just pack my bags and move onto another game.

  • ADC/Support player
FCJAAAAGOOOO11/27/2017, 7:03:32 AM1 votes

I agree so long as it's noted that they're entirely designed to scale into lategame and do exactly that with Precision keystones. But they're kind of doing absolutely everything anyone else could do right now but from 550+ range which is super obnoxious. Longer teamfights helped with this but now those are entirely gone.

I wouldn't mind them being even more memey (a bit more range, +25 or so) at the cost of burst potential in general (less base AD; a serious amount removed from both flat and scaling). It'll make it less likely for one to have "ranged AoE burst dps" every single game.