Boots are like nuclear bombs.

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ez adc gets lucidity

and luc as well sometimes

1. Sick double post.

2. I was not saying and never said that all adcs get the same boot or even that all adcs but corki get the same boot. Just pointing out that statement that adcs like corki buy sorcs is categorically false. Corki is the ONLY adc who gets sorcs. And tbh labelling corki as an ADC doesn't make sense and is the reason why he gets sorcs and also part the reason why rito have reclassified the role to marksman, NOT adc. In corki's case he's a mixed damage (he deals all three types of damage naturally and afaik he's the only champ who does) poke champ with reasonably strong sustained damage. The label ADC doesn't fit what he does or how he builds.

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for example, my Viktor build drops boots because he can kit well with a Rylai's and his Q augment, and without boots he easily hits +850 AP). Tanks without boots would not be that much harder to kill than now, unless of course you were all AD and they were able to build an extra 100 armor item to ruin your day.

if not having boots in a six item situation on viktor and relying on your Aug Q for mobility is something you can actually pull of in a 6 item situation, you're playing against people who are way below your skill level. Auto attacking on viktor on a remotely frequent basis that late in the game is a dicy prospect at best. Good players will punish you hard. And lethally. Also having low base MS on vik makes all of your skills harder to land. (q and E moreso than the others but your other two spells as well).

Your tanks example is also not too great for two reasons.

1. The point of a tank is not just to be a damage sponge. Its to apply pressure (engage, cc, peel, etc) while not getting melted. Most tanks are vulnerable to being kited already. It's the main way you counterplay against them. By not having boots on a tank (no item except for boots are even capable of giving you tank stats and %MS unless you count zephyr's tenacity) you will often eliminate your own ability to exert pressure on crucial targets.

2. In most cases where 100 more armor on a 6 item tank would ruin your day, ninja tabis grant a similiar level of protection to aforementioned armor.

So those are the specific reasons why your arguments against OPs interpretation of of the nuclear boots situation are not so great.

Here's the more general and frankly more damning one. You're talking about situations where people would get rid of their boots which implies they did or had to buy them at some point. And the reason they had to is because their targets or the people they had to stay away from had them. Mutually assured boots purchase already happened in the scenarios that you are describing. The OP isn't saying that no one can sell boots or that selling boots is never ok. The OP is saying that the reason why everyone has to buy boots is because everyone else buys boots.

If you're a six item Cassiopeia and your team is dedicated to protecting you and your adc you can sell your boots for more damage. At that point you've gone beyoned the mutually assured movespeed/nuclear itemization level and you are now a deathstar. That doesn't mean you didn't have to make a boring boots aquisition because everyone else did. It means that you reached a late enough fully grouped phase of the game where you can sell your nuke because instead of being able to blow a small country you can blow up a planet and arriving at this analogical planet quickly is a reduced concern at that point.

You get what I'm getting at?

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I don't entirely agree, since more DPS essentially gives them a certain degree of burst which can rival even that of mages, so marksmen end up having the equivalent of mage nukes on every autoattack, especially with 6 items.

That really depends heavily on both the mage and the marksman in question. A 6 item MM with boots and say a mercurial as a defensive is gonna be hitting for 4-600 on noncrits and critting for around 1-1.3k. These numbers obviously change upward for say, draven and downward for say ezreal or corki or urgot. But they are approximately accurate across the board

TF for example is capable of throwing a card for 1.2k damage whilst also having boots and a say a zhonyas which is more or less the mage equivalent of mercurial. And on top of that he is also capable of providing fairly relable hard CC and a powerful, long range AoE nuke while having great utility. TF gains a higher spike on his nuke from another AP item than a MM typically would from +80 ad. And TF is a far cry from the hardest nuking mage in the game. He effectively has 2.5 damaging abilities

A comparision between APCs and marksmen like this doesn't even make sense TBH, but there are plenty of APCS who can deal both similiar amounts of practical DPS to marksman and also plenty who nuke harder than marksman crits. There's even a few who do both! (karthus anyone?)

The strong parts of marksman late game isn't their nuking from high crit damage btw. It is the quadratic scaling. AD AS CC CD. They scale offensively off of 4 stats allowing them to put out substantial sustained dps as long as they can stay safe.

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Boots exist to help with kiting and skill-shot avoidance. Annie vs Xerath for instance, skewed heavily into Annie once both get their boots. Even Xerath gets their boots, he barely gets extra advantage over Annie who doesn't. These choices benefit diversity and strategic builds.

Are you seriously suggesting that once annie gets boots xerath is gonna have a hard time landing his skillshots? Because it's still pretty easy outside of really long rage/bad angles and quite frankly xerath has an easy time with annie in general. Let's do a brief analysis on this matchup.

Since we're talking about mobility here Xerath has higher base MS than annie naturally so that's already in his favor. His shortest range spell (an uncharged Q) is already longer range than ALL of annies spells and a charged Q and ALL of xerath's other spells has a considerable range advantage on annies entire kit. So Xerath has a pretty solid kit for poking annie (and her team) at all stages of the game. Xerath also has a fantastic kit for stopping annie from closing distance on him which she must do to deal any damage at all. And to further exacerbate his lane advantage he also has some of the best mana sustain of any midlaner. So its pretty heavily in Xeraths favor with what we've covered so far. But there is one major factor that we have yet to cover. Summoner spells. When Annie has flash VS Xerath and is capable of all inning him or at least getting him caught out with some kind of flash stun, she has a decent edge. BUT a xerath into annie lane played even remotely well/correctly should result in xerath getting an advantage off the laning phase. And Annies window of opportunity on Xerath that is granted by flash (a 300 second CD) is severely diminished when there is any sort of zoning being done by xerath's team. I think you need to play this matchup a few more times.

The way people in this thread come up with examples reminds me of the way a slinky climbs a staircase.

Also fear my wall of text. Fear it.

Except as Junglerboy16 already said, it wouldnt be ADCs that would be a problem. They already can reach critical mass with only 5 items, they dont need any more power to kill things.

But another item for mages is a HUGE damage increase. Another item for tanks is a big toughness boost. Another item for bruisers is either even more toughness or more damage, neither of which is a good thing.

ADC being the only class that can viably switch out boots makes them the worst example to use when talking about the removal of boots.

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then that is two item slots and i dont know if they stack honestly. still dunno if 20% is more then a tier 2 boot.

Oh it wouldnt matter if you had the extra ats ap and other stats :P