For a long time now, there's been a vast percentage of the playerbase that felt the marksman role left a lot to be desired. With the revamping of tanks and their itemization, junglers and their itemization, mages (and assassins) and their itemization, and even supports, the marksmen were left behind because after all these changes, they still do what they needed to do. But ever since everyone else got new items to benefit from, marksmen have gotten squat, and even if they did get anything, they wouldn't be able to put it to use, and this is because they suffer from a special disorder, namely Tunnel Itemization.

Marksmen are generally characterized by their high consistent damage output over a prolonged amount of time, utilizing autoattacks above anything else to deal damage. These autoattacks are modified by a few things. First and foremost is AD, short for Attack Damage, which does exactly as it's supposed to do. Attack Speed comes next, which allows the wielder to get in more autoattacks within the same time frame and essentially lower the cooldown of their damage. The third and probably strongest modifier is Critical Strike Chance, which gives its wielder a chance to deal double (or more, depending on their Critical Strike Damage) damage on an autoattack. Lastly, there's Life Steal, which regenerates the HP of the wielder by a percentage of the damage an autoattack would deal before resistances.

Something to keep in mind, is that there's a theoretical triangle in League of Legends, which serves as a general outline so as to indicate what type of champion should work best against another. Marksmen, for all intents and purposes, have the least trouble breaking through tanks, utilizing Life Steal to keep themselves healthy and critical strikes to break through the enemies' Armor and HP stats. These tanks serve as a primary wall against mages, who have a lot harder time breaking through this HP and Magic Resist, and these mages then have the purpose of taking out marksmen in the relative safety of their backline by utilizing burst and long range. The big problem is that critical strikes don't exactly fulfill their purpose of breaking tanks - it does far more than that.

Recently, Faker made frontpage Reddit by having his Diana play showcased against KT Rolster, when he repeatedly ate Arrow for lunch. This raises several questions about Diana as a champion, as her all-in potential seems overwhelming when looking at this dominating performance (note that I'm not one to praise Faker). When looking a bit more in-depth at this, we can see that several times, Faker utilizes the combo of Q-R-W-E and a few autoattacks to proc his passive. When unable to finish Arrow, he would use another Lunar Rush to seal the deal. This uses 355 mana (assuming a kill after Faker maxes his Pale Cascade), and puts his abilities on differing cooldowns, as well as place him behind the victim of the assassination.

Now this sounds rather out-of-position when writing an article about marksman itemization, but when Rekkles got his pentakill in his Fnatic versus Origen game for the Summer Split Finals, he finishes off Mithy with a 355 damage crit, Soaz with a 621 crit, xPeke with Buster shot, Amazing with 3 autoattacks, one of which is a 373 crit, and Niels goes down after taking a 548 crit, some damage from Huni, and two more autoattacks. Without all his crits, Rekkles would have had a far harder time getting his pentakill, as his crits alone amounted a total of 1897 damage. These crits came from Rekkles pressing right click on consecutive targets and being blessed by RNGesus, nothing else. Especially against champions with little to no bonus resistances, the triangle of champion counters crumbles to dust when marksmen are no longer countered by mages, and instead these mages get bursted by crits that can deal over 1000 damage come late game.

Imaqtpie made a bold statement recently by saying that "ADCs are trash right now and unsatisfying to play", which might be true. I would be so free as to attribute a lot of this sentiment to having very few build options. This because critical strikes are by far the strongest statistic an ADC can buy. Any marksman, come late game, will have an Infinity Edge tucked somewhere in their build - unless you're me, that is. Even champions like Corki and Kog'maw, who generally get Trinity Force and Blade of the Ruined King before their Last Whisper, will eventually get an Infinity Edge in their build, simply because it provides the chance at getting the highest possible damage from a single autoattack the game has to offer them. This leaves very little to the wielder's imagination, as with every build, a high number of items will be predetermined. A Vayne, for example, will get a BoRK, Statikk Shiv or Phantom Dance, Last Whisper, Infinity Edge and some boots. This leaves one slot open to build according to the game. Dravens used to get Infinity Edge, The Bloodthirster, Phantom Dancer, Last Whisper and boots; one item slot yet again open.

A solution I've been thinking long and hard about is to remove critical strikes from the game. Not only does the damage allow a marksman to exploit the ability to ignore the balance triangle, the concept of critical strike chance makes trading with your direct enemy unreliable. A Draven with an Infinity Edge could lose a trade against a Draven with merely a Pickaxe and a Cloak of Agility, if the latter Draven becomes a direct descendant of the RNG Gods themselves and is blessed with 5 back-to-back crits, whereas the former Draven scrapes the barrel and gets none. It is based on luck and nothing but luck, whether the damage you have spent all that money on will actually pay off or not.

Removing crits will obviously leave a hole in the itemization of marksmen, as they are now nigh unable to penetrate any tanks, and tanks will immediately rise to the top of the food chain (welcome back to early season 5). One way to counter this, is to add the following effect to, say, Infinity Edge: "Your basic attacks deal 1% increased damage for each Bonus Armor the target has." This makes the Infinity Edge an amazing buy against tanks (against which critical strikes is intended to be strong), and the lousy amount of armor mages (and the non-tank supports) tend to get will in fact do them more harm than good, as this will increase your damage substantially when you get your Last Whisper. A side note would be that AD items then in turn need a slight damage tweak (maybe +20%?) because of the lost damage from the lack of double damage crits. A few mathematical examples assuming three champions: a Lucian with an Infinity Edge (100AD), a Bloodthirster (100AD), Last Whisper (48AD), a Mercurial Scimitar (100AD) and Blade of the Ruined King (30AD) will have 481AD at level 18 excluding runes and masteries. A Malphite with second maxed Brutal Strikes with a Randuin's Omen, Frozen Heart, Warmog's Armor, Banshee's Veil and Spirit Visage, and a LeBlanc with Athene's Unholy Grail, Luden's Echo, Rabadon's Deathcap, Void Staff and Zhonya's Hourglass.

This graph shows what the changes to the critical strike itemization would do to damage reduction by armor. We assume a champion with 70 armor (this because aside from Thresh, 70 armor is the rounded point on which Gnar and Orianna land), and an attacking target with 400 damage.

The aforementioned Malphite will have about 290 armor at level 13 with Randuin's and Frozen Heart finished. This would equate into a damage reduction of a little over 75%. A two-item marksman with no armor penetration will deal roughly 300 damage per autoattack before resistances, and, after reduction, will be whittled down to a measly 75 damage. This then is increased by 1% for each bonus armor Malphite has (which would be 220), for a total of 220% bonus damage, which means the marksman would deal 246 damage per autoattack onto a 290 armor tank. A level 13 LeBlanc with a Zhonya's Hourglass will have about 110 armor, 50 of which are bonus armor thanks to said Zhonya's. They would take 52% less damage, which would leave 142 damage per autoattack. The 50 bonus armor would provide 50% bonus damage, dealing 214 damage per autoattack. This would require 7 autoattacks to kill a level 13 LeBlanc.

A late-game example with an added Last Whisper would mean the marksman ignores an additional 35% of the target's armor. This 290 armor Malphite has become a level 18 Malphite with 313 armor. Last Whisper kicking in, he remains with 203 armor, a 67% damage reduction. The Lucian with 481AD will be left with 159 damage per autoattack. The Malphite then has 221 bonus armor, which equates to 221% bonus damage, meaning autoattacks deal 321% damage, which would come down to 510 damage per autoattack. Malphite has a grand total of 4154HP excluding his shield (which would give him 10% bonus HP briefly for a total of 4569HP). Lucian would need 9 autoattacks in rapid succession to kill this Malphite. The LeBlanc has 131 armor at level 18, 50 of which are bonus armor. 85 of these armors remain after Last Whisper, reducing damage by 46%. This 481AD gives Lucian 221 damage on his autoattacks, and after the increment from Infinity Edge, this would equate to 332 damage per autoattack. LeBlanc would have 1791HP at level 18, which means Lucian would need 6 auto attacks to kill her.

Now I know it might seem a bit weird, looking at the graph and seeing that the more armor you get, the less effective the armor becomes. Going from a 72% damage reduction to a just-under-20% damage reduction makes no sense coming from a tank perspective, but keep in mind that there is no longer the ability to crit for over 1000 damage (before resistances), and this makes a big difference. The effectiveness of armor is highly dependant on critical strikes, because blocking 72% of a 400 damage auto attack or 72% of a 1400 crit makes a world of difference.

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