Reign of Gaming

I don't like how riot pushed the whole ADC thing more towards AD casters. AD casters already were stronger early game, now, at least speaking for Ez, he can stay an AD caster all game long, just get The Black Cleaver and Zephyr and you can spam your spells all day long, the CDR pretty much makes up for missing crit. Not to mention: You only got 3 (BC, Zephyr, Boots) items so far, so there's still room to itemize more for late game,  you can even get Iceborn Gauntlet and get a 100% aoe phage procc more or less on every Q. And 15% extra CDR. Finish with Mercurial Scimitar and BT, and you got:

35% Tenacity
10% MS
35% CDR (Q: 2.6s CD, W: 6s (minus Q CDR), E: 7s (minus Q CDR) )
45 MR
60 Armor
Cleanse
35% Slow on every Q
Armor Pen (15 flat + 5% per stack)
230 AD
250 HP
16% Lifesteal
70% + passive ATS

So what do we get? An Ezreal jumping around and kiting all day, with pretty much awesome build paths. Of course this is exaggerated and there are way better builds probably, but this is how it looks to me. And I'm not a fan of pure ADC(aster) meta for botlane, I'd like to be able to play Kog and Ashe sometimes too, without getting destroyed by game balance which is heavily favoring AD casters. It's just almost impossible to get to the point when you get useful as a lategame carry. Well, enough QQ for now.

hi Eyebrows,

do you think shiv could still be viable when combined with hurricane? take cogmaw for example. with a team that can protect you taking hurricane seems very tempting, and from what I can tell each missile hit increases the shiv count by 10, so you would be closer to 1 lightning bolt every 3 and a half attack than every 10, assuming enemies are close enough together and you get both extra missiles, of course.

i'm not exactly sure about the build order, you might want to get the avarice blade early, but wait untill end of laning phase till you finish the shiv, as it will most likely push your lane hard.

I don't get how the AS nerf affects ADC. Their typical build is IE BT PD LW, which features exactly 1 AS item, amounting to a total of 5% AS nerf (no change to runes, base AS, and AS scalings). How is that supposed to be significant in terms of AS?!

I'm not talking about MS or crit here. They also get the AD for cheaper, which concerns 3 of their typical items.

The AS nerf effects ADC's in the exact way that you described, which part do you not understand? They lose 150 gold worth of AS from PD, and 150 gold worth of AS from Beserker's Greaves, 10% AS in total

Oh right the boots nerf, i forgot about it. so, 10%AS nerf on full standard build, aka a Dagger... Also 10 less AD on IE.

When i look at AP's who lost 5 Mpen on Sorc, same on Guise, 20AP and 5% of total AP on Rabadon's, don't have a new boot enchant as awesome as Furor is for ADC (totally makes up for PD's move speed nerf when chasing) and can no longer stack Archangels for pure burst damage builds, i deduce that they're overall further pushed towards utility. Even Seraph's Embrace gets a shield active instead of damage.

The only new damaging things for them are what... Manamune which is pretty much for Ryze or AD's, Liandry's which softens tanks but isn't able to kill anything, Twin Shadows is mostly utility/support, Iceborn gauntlet: tanky/cc, Banner of command: pushing/support. Oh right DFG! So now, unless you're a DFG mage, you're not supposed to get kills apparently. And even DFG actually increases damage dealt by other people too (increasing their chance to get the kill).

So yeah, now AD carries as just as damaging as before and look like the only ones still supposed to kill things. Are APs slowly sliding towards the 3rd support role after bot and jungler? Is everyone already a support except the AD and i didn't get the note?

EDIT: the serious things to remember of this post are: ADCs aren't nearly as nerfed as people think; APs have their damage nerfed and utility increased; the AS nerf is overrated. rest is rant.

That's hardly a nerf at all, considering that at end game ADCs get that 10% AS back through the Frenzy mastery.

Let's not forget that the crit damage mastery for carries now only gives 5% bonus, IE lost 10 attack damage,and the changes to last whisper mean that if your carry is running Arpen Reds, they're reducing 2 less armor than before. Doesn't sound like much, but stacking ArPen is now rewarded on bruisers and AD casters, so relative to AD carries, they got buffed more by that change and the other small changes are hit on stuff that only ranged carries have. 3% less lifesteal that bruisers also used but not to the same extent in the lane phase. Doran's blade heals 5 damage per hit now, which is stronger early, but 2x Dorans + lifesteal mastery gave 10 health per hit at 111 damage dealt, so anything beyond that hits their lane sustain.

Also, Mages came off relatively unscathed. Sure, Rab's got nerfed but there's a lot of fun new cantrips they can use. Gunblade has an AP ratio now? It rewards autoattacks? Spellblade? Sure, they're niche little pieces of shit, but the variety of things you can do with mages just blew up. It's pretty awesome. And hell, you don't have to get a DFG but if you're a burst mage instead of a sustained DPS mage (like Ryze, Karthus, or Cassiopaeia) it's a nice little addition. In addition, CDR opened up on new items considerably. Burst mage? DFG! DPS mage? Liandry's Torment! Autoattacks?! Malady! Tank? Iceborn Gauntlet! Seraph's is also a great touch for champions that want a strong initiate but can't afford to immediately zhonya or would get blown up after a Zhonya. In addition, magic penetration, while slightly weaker per-item, got an interesting change in hybrid penetration buffs. It's actually feasible to run hybrid pen on long-range or autoattack AP champions. These aren't great changes to these roles (nor were they meant to be), but they are baby steps, and considering that they have a bunch of other things changing right now, it's probably nice that they have a control.

It's not like they were looking to shake things up incredibly with ADCs. They just wanted to scale them back a little bit. I'd say it worked. The counterargument would be that resistances got nerfed too, but health got buffed and that's really a win for assassins more than carries, since magi and bruisers benefit the same if not more.

Edit: morellonomicon is going to be hilariously good in use against Nunu, Volibear, Vladimir, Dr. Mundo, and other healy types. Is upports your utility argument but I find that INFINITELY more interesting than an ADC's stand there and don't die while you autoattack practice.

The variety offered to APs is clearly entertaining, however it sort of shoots itself in the foot by removing the 1000 AP burst build possibility (DC+3 AAS+VS+Sorc) which was awesome on long range carry mages. The mobility creep started by Ahri killed Xerath (probably Ziggs too), now season 3 buried them, or made them supports with more swagg. "Look i slow enemies for you in 2 different ways! i can shield myself and be invul! kill? what is a kill?" I guess only medium- or low-range mages who can use a DFG and have high enough base damages *coughdianacough* will be able to carry if that trend keeps going...

Anyways i'm glad they nerfed ADC earlygame at least, even though they still 4-hit everyone late. SotD is one of the most interesting new things i've seen for them btw. I know it's meant for assassins, but AD casters like Graves/Draven can also use them to change their playstyle into something more bursty and less right-click-to-win, and that's a trend i like. Statikk Shiv and Runaan's are nice variety additions too, hope things like this will eventually kill the brain-afk IEPDBTLW build we've been eating all S2 long, and maybe watching tournaments will get less boring (not the plays, the predictability of every item).

The -5% AS on Berserker's Graves and PD and the 10 less damage on IE are quite noticeable, even though as not as much remarkable as the movement speed nerf to PD and TF. Still, to be honest, lategame AD carries are gonna benefit from Mercurial Scimitar as much as bruisers and AD assassin. A defensive item that can even remove suppression and gives AD?: hooray for slot efficiency and even more damage, granted you get that over the nerfed GA. That darn item is borderline OP on the most currently dominant ADCs (gapclose/escape ones like Ezreal, Corki, Graves, and is as much solid also on Tristana and Vayne). Also, as PMilkos has already mentioned, Frenzy mastery makes up for 5% that AS lost, if and when you get to the point when your items grant you consistent crit chances.

Zephyr is perfectly fine on a handful of carries. Jax, in particular jungle Jax, will want it to get him tenacity so he can use zerker greaves, and he cares not about crit as much as all the AS he can muster, the MS is just a boon. Additionally it's good on Twitch or Kog'maw builds focused around Runaan's, where crit isn't as desirable to pure AD and AS.

Yeah it will be amazing on jax.

Yes Zephyr is borderline OP on Jax.

It's also very good on Irelia, if you skip Mercs+Wit's End combo for something more creative (like Tabi+Trinity+GA+Zephyr+Scimitar+whatever).

Really worth reading the whole thing this time, very interesting.

I've been counteracting this change with AS Marks and MS Quints. Seems to make enough of a difference and feels really strong if you start Doran's or Longsword and rush BT. Currently also saving up for AS Glyphs too, some lanes / champs can probably get away with this now. I'll be honest though, I've been sticking more to ADCs with AS buffs in their kit and rushing BT/LW. Then diversifying into either an AoE build of Runaan's, BotRK and IE/Defensive item or single target with PD, IE and BotRK/Defensive item/Youmou's Ghostblade/Zephyr (basically something that gives you a fighting chance if you get dived on).