League of Legends ADC/Marksman Rework

It is become clear to me now, Riot has a bias towards AD carrys or should I say Marksmans. Of all the roles, what has changed the least? Of all the roles what has gotten the fewest straight nerfs? Of all the roles, what is almost REQUIRED in order to win a match? The answer is ADCs. I’ve offered means by which we weaken their snowballing, there damage presence and those ideas where good at the core but where thought to be too harsh by some. Here I’m going to talk about what changes should be made to ADCs.

Let me be clear I would love if ADCs where optional like every other role, but it will likely be some time before that happens; at the short term we can at least address the most glaring issues with them. I’ll be talking about them in pieces for your benefit, readers.

Crit Chance:

Critcal strikes, or more accurately random critical strike chance, Is a big problem that is in numerous games. It is an idea that propped up in RPGs which is where LoLs roots are from. LoL has become very competitive and RPGs where never meant to play that role, so random elements are present in RPGs. When you have random elements in a competitive game with no ability to control their outcome, that seriously damages the game because you are taking away a player’s ability to control the outcome of a game by making outcome based on a lucky dice roll.

Make no mistake; crit chance is bad for the game because of what crit is. It drastically will amplify the damage dealt by more than double which in a close fight can sink or save you. As a result when you have less than 100% or more than 0% crit chance the outcome of a match can be decided by a diceroll, which no offense to the pros, this seriously undermines any measure of a player’s skill.

Crit is integral to some extent to ADCs so doing away with it entirely is a mistake, rather we need to make it not something random. My suggestion is simple, remove the crit chance stat from all items except for items that grant you 100% chance to crit (Looking at Sword of the Divine). After this is done add a new passive to the former crit chance items called something like “Blood-reaver”. The Blood-reaver passive would cause basic attacks to deal a percentage of extra damage dealt alongside the base physical damage, this is dealt separately to prevent double dipping from certain champions or SotD and having them crit for massive amounts. The approximate percent damage would have to be unique to each crit chance item equal to the dps gain the item gets from the crit chance. I saw a similar idea from a different post and I must say it’s a good one. Let us say an item gets a 20% dps increase from its crit chance, instead the new passive would cause basic attacks to deal an additional 20% bonus damage so with 200 AD it would +40 bonus damage dealt. The passive would be stackable to get the most damage increase possible.

Remember, the key idea with this change is consistency. Crit is now a special event that only certain items and champions can do; The Blood-reaver concept in the previous paragraph is a new consistent method of damage that can be calculated and therefore are much more competitively friendly. Random crits are also a source of toxicity in the game so by making them consistent we help address and lingering toxicity towards either ADCs or crit in general.

Scaling:

Another issue with Marksman/ADCs is the fact that despite them being historically designed to be a late game damage dealer, with the proper set of circumstances they can be powerful early or mid game too. Part of this issue is the fact they scale based on their total Attack Damage; the ones who scale with bonus AD are considered “unviable” in comparison. If we where to switch all their AD scaling to exclusively bonus AD, their odd early game power spikes would disappear and only the strongest of them would be deadly mid game. At the moment we have a situation where ADCs can reach unholy levels of damage in a very short span of time and continue to scale at a ludicrous rate. The idea of them being a late game damage dealer needs to be reinforced, or Riot needs to make a new type of Marksman role that focuses on early game.

On another note, with the buff to AD items, ADCs start scaling too quickly. While it did help other classes ADCs got such a massive benefit that one could say it was not a wise act. If we do make them scale with bonus AD only from items or do something drastic like give them a base amount of AD of say 60 and give their AD no level scaling only scaling from items, this could address the damage spikes and further reinforce their role as a late game damage dealer.

I made a post previously about nerfing the gold gained from kills by making it occur overtime as a buff that could be lost upon dying. This would still provide the same amount of as previous but have an option to negate someone’s “oopsie” by killing the player who killed their ally. I still think this is a good idea, a possible method of addressing snowballing in general.

Resource–Usage:

Most Marksman/ADCs, if not all, use mana as a resource but mana is not something they seem to worry to much about. It is meant to be a “shackle” of sorts that prevents them from spamming all day long, but with Blue buff or very low mana costs this is almost a non-issue. Riot recently introduced an AD- based mana restoration item called the Essence Reaver which restores mana from basic attacks. Most have written this off as not as effective as something like Infinity Edge, that is because mana is not a huge issue for ADCs. Increasing their mana costs to say AP carry levels would make a strategically viable option and would also make ADCs have to be more aware of their mana usage. Picking their fights based on their mana pool would become a thing and as a result it would raise the skill ceiling of the “ranged right-clicker” a small amount.

Role:

As it stands ADCs are almost required in every match which usually means there is a support in every match. Lets not lie, a hefty chunk of community doesn’t like to play support but because ADCs are in every match these days, you need a support in every match and likely there is not a support main in every match. So hostility and toxicity prop up and the community in general grows more unfriendly. If a player forced to play support doesn’t play one, instead tries to play a different champion that normally would be considered acceptable, the ADC and the team panics and they can get very hostile towards the would be support.

All of this hostility comes back to the idea that ADCs are basically required in every match. The cure to this aliment is to introduce mechanics that make other strategies just as viable if not more so. Every role except for ADCs can be switched out in a game for another, it is only fair we introduce a similar system for ADCs. My idea comes in the form of an item:

Warden’s Badge of Command

+10 Health per5 +10 Mana per5

Unique Passive Aura: United Assault – Basic attacks and single target abilities apply 12/14/16/18/20 (number of ally champions nearby) Stacks of “assault”, at 100 Stacks does 100 true damage to the target (damage dealt has a 2 second internal cooldown). Consecutive basic attacks by a single player to a target applies the “Divided we Fall” debuff, reducing “assault” stacks applied by 5 per stack; when allied players attack the target remove 1 stack of “Divided we Fall”.

And an upgrade to this item for late game:

Forward Commander’s Badge of Endless Conquest

+200 Health +10 Health per5 +10 Mana per5

Unique Passive Aura: United Assault – Basic attacks and single target abilities apply 12/14/16/18/20 (number of ally champions nearby) Stacks of “assault”, at 100 Stacks does 200 true damage to the target (damage dealt has a 2 second internal cooldown). Consecutive basic attacks to a target applies the “Divided we Fall” debuff, reducing stacks applied by 5 per stack; when allied players attack the target remove 1 stack of “Divided we Fall”.

These two items are still rough, yes but the passive is where it matters. The damage dealt as a team places less reliance on a single player and punishes players who fight alone by robbing them of the extra true damage. Now some people will say this item is OP, ADC teams would get it anyway. You’re not wrong about ADC teams getting it however because of its design; a full tanky team or a team of assassins could get this item and dominate in a different fashion. A tank team could nullify most of an ADC’s damage and with this item, collectively still dish out a lot of damage though in a roundabout fashion. The whole purpose of an item like this is to make League of Legends, League of Legends; not League of ADCs.

Final Thoughts:

I hope Riot gives this a full read, I do mean well and despite my directness on certain parts I still believe Riot is one of the better game companies out there, you do right by your customers mostly and up to this point I haven’t seen some of the greediness so prevalent in the big gaming corporations.

Few things to remember, The Marksmans are but one role and if we talk about lane positions, they’re 20% of the team in Summoner’s Rift. Catering to mostly them and nerfing champions that are a threat to their survival is not wise. There aew other people that play LoL and I ask that in the future Riot, you pay attention to everyone as best you can.

Thoughts? Comments? Keep it PG-13 please.

PS. I'm expecting to get downvoted by all the ADC mains so yeah that may explain a bit :P