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An idea on how to split the Marksmen role into two subclasses.

Blitzidious·5/2/2016, 10:46:12 PM·2 votes·463 views

Emphasis on split, meaning just two. Marksmen have some of the most diverse kits, but they all do relatively the same thing. Deal damage, take objectives, and Carry. It's how they do it that changes between each champion, which is why we only need two subclasses.

To start it off, we'll go with the iconic Marksmen, The Sniper. Snipers Specialize in long range, position based combat. These Marksmen tend to stay behind their Vanguards, Wardens, Battle mages, and Juggernauts. Snipers for the most part are immobile, but bring high ranged auto attacks, and tend to have more utility than their counterpart.

Now, for the Sniper counterpart, Ranger. Rangers tend to favor closer combat than the Sniper, as they have naturally shorter range. To make up for this however, they have significant survivability, whether it be through amazing mobility, outright tankiness, or astonishing scaling with Life-steal. Rangers will always survive longer than Snipers. Where Snipers want to stay behind their beefier teammates, Rangers want to fight with or around them.

Marksmen that fall under Sniper. Caitlyn, Varus, Jhin, Ashe, MissFortune, Jinx, KogMaw, and Twitch.

Marksmen that fall under Ranger. Graves, Draven, Kindred, Vayne, Lucian, Sivir, Kalista, Urgot, and Quinn.

Outcasts/Outliers Tristana, Ezreal, and Corki.

EDIT: Moved Tristana, Corki, and Ezreal into the Outcast/Outliers, and added Quinn to Rangers(whoops, I thought I included her!)

11 Comments

Auto Attacks5/2/2016, 10:52:39 PM2 votes

You could do Caster vs. Auto Attack based.

Caster. Corki Ezreal Lucian Graves and sorta Sivir Jhin MissFortune Quinn

Auto Based. Ashe Caitlyn Draven Jinx Kalista Vayne KogMaw Tristana Twitch Varus

ModWulf Helhammer5/2/2016, 10:53:09 PM2 votes

You forgot Quinn, who is litterally a ranger

Dehitay5/2/2016, 11:11:15 PM1 votes

What makes you want to split them into two subclasses? In reality, there's a bunch of subclasses for marksmen and the reasons I can think of for trying to limit it to two would backfire because of the multiple subclasses.

ModThe Djinn5/2/2016, 11:13:09 PM1 votes

Problem here is that Tristana and Corki are both pretty mobile, while Ezreal is both mobile AND very long-range. Those guys cause some issues. Twitch is almost certainly a Sniper, as he has low survivability, long range abilities, and only one mobility / utility spell.

That said...I don't think this categorization helps them much. We CAN divide them this way (or into caster/non-caster categories), but I don't think it gains us much. It's not like they itemize hugely differently (crit-based / caster / AD-based / AS-based sees more distinct itemization), nor do they really fill different roles on a team.

Sona Ping5/3/2016, 12:11:33 AM1 votes

Serious question: Why bother? Seriously. The intended function was to split up and classify champions based upon gameplay and "deeper nuances" but the Riot post demonstrated how non-useful and what an exercise in pointlessness that is. Because the categories don't have anything to do with the mechanics of champions, and that is what is supposed to be important here.

{quoted}

Marksmen that fall under Sniper. Caitlyn, Varus, Jhin, Ashe, MissFortune, Jinx, KogMaw, Tristana. and Corki.

Marksmen that fall under Ranger. Graves, Draven, Kindred, Ezreal, Vayne, Lucian, Sivir, Kalista, and Urgot.

Outliers/Outcasts. Twitch.

These are split entirely based on range but there's more than that. Ezreal has a very famous off build that is based around his long range poke. Twitch has an ability that increases his range to one of the longest in the game but he also has the mobility and capability to set up close-range 1v1s and win. Despite the range, in mechanics Vayne has more in common with Ashe than she does with Graves , and in turn Graves has more in common with burst mages than he does with other "Marksmen". Just look at Urgot , he's more of a ranged tank than one of these guys (and to make it worse, he hits them with an ability to do targeted, long range damage, which would make him a Sniper as well.)

The game is more complex than this reductive Vanguards, Controller stuff Riot has been pushing despite their own efforts to get away from such generic interchangeability.