Thought: The Future of AD Carries

As discussed yesterday, AD carries are in a bit of a bind. The many changes in Season 3, combined with the proliferation of assassins and AD casters, has made running away the hallmark of their role in team fights. The problem is large and important enough to draw the attention of players across the globe, and many notable voices are weighing in.

For my part, I see two solutions to the issue:

1. Build tankier on AD carries, allowing them to survive burst and contribute to the fight.
2. Replace AD carries with another champion, and approach the problems of taking towers/objectives another way.

Obviously #2 is a little more drastic than #1, but we'll be discussing both.

Building tankier on AD carries seems problematic in that it will cut into the multiplicative scaling which makes them so prized. With fewer items dedicated to offense, the AD carry won't reach the ridiculous levels of damage that allow them to win team fights later in the game. In the end, can AD carries still be effective if they aren't able to dedicate four items to offense?

The problem is actually very similar to one that occasionally pops up in MMORPGs with raiding and dungeons as a core part of gameplay. There are often unavoidable damage sources in a fight, and if you don't have sufficient defenses to survive them it doesn't matter how good of a healer or damage dealer you are, you can't do much while you're dead. The same principle applies here, all that multiplicative damage scaling is useless if you don't survive long enough to make use of it.

A lot does depends on the carry in question. Carries with good AD scaling and built-in steroids will do inherently better with fewer offensive items. Graves, Vayne, and Kog'maw are excellent examples of this. Those who rely on achieving a critical mass of items won't do quite so well. The list of popular carries is bound to shift and change, as damage increases in importance versus mobility.

However, it's also true that multiplicative scaling is heavily reliant on having all factors represented. To drop one item in favor of defenses is to dramatically reduce a carry's late game damage. If their damage doesn't end up being significant better than that of another champion, why not simply have another champion?

Aside from multiplicative damage, the primary reason for having an AD carry is to siege turrets. To replace them requires having an alternative strategy. It might be split-pushing, diving, or simply overwhelming the opponent through jungle/objective control, but a strategy must be present. AD carries, however, have shone as the safest method of pushing a turret for some time.

There are reasonably close alternatives. A number of bruiser champions have sufficient range to siege turrets as well. Jayce, Nidalee, and Kayle have the range and the item builds for the job. Quite a few AP champions also have a good deal of range, and with a lot of AP and/or Lich Bane can do significant damage to turrets. If teams fail to find a consistent answer to assassins, these are alternatives that don't demand a radical change in how towers are taken late-game.

As things stands, AD carries are certainly still viable, especially if the enemy team lacks assassins or AD casters, so it's unlikely they'll disappear entirely. At the same time, the likelihood that we will see compositions with no AD carry at all is the highest it may ever be.

Thought: Of Assassins and Carries

The game is still in a state of flux following the massive Season 3 changes, and will remain so for some time. Black Cleaver stacking was just the tip of the iceberg, the first shot in what will be a long series of metas, overpowered champions, and heretofore unheard of item builds.

Murky as the future may be, there is at least one clear trend in the present which deserves attention. Assassins and AD casters have exploded in popularity, to the detriment of AD carries. Unless a coordinated team is prepared to peel for an AD carry, they can expect to spend most of a team fight running for their life with death the punishment for the smallest misstep. This isn't limited to the NA servers either; players and publications in Korea have been discussing the issue. The usefulness and necessity of the AD carry role is, for the first time since before Season 1, seriously being called into question.

So what, exactly, happened in Season 3 to make AD carries so vulnerable?

First and foremost, the vast majority of AD carry items received significant nerfs. Phantom Dancer's movement speed was made identical to Zeal and it costs more than before. Bloodthirster's Life Steal was reduced. Infinity Edge lost Attack Damage. Guardian Angel's defenses and passive were heavily nerfed. Overall, AD carries do less damage than before, have less defense, and are less mobile.

At the same time, the new itemization isn't sufficient to make up the difference. Runaan's Hurricane, as interesting an item as it may seem, isn't useful if you can't kite your opponents long enough to do damage. Statikk Shiv is a worse version of Phantom Dancer. Sword of the Divine has limited usefulness if you can't kill your target outright with it. The only light in the tunnel is the new Mercurial Scimitar, except it actually helps assassins and AD casters as much or more. In short, the Season 3 itemization changes did little except nerf AD carries.

On top of all of that almost every Season 3 change buffed assassins and AD casters. Deathfire Grasp is now an incredible asset to assassins like Akali, Fizz, or LeBlanc. Black Cleaver is an insanely strong item for AD assassins and casters like Pantheon, Talon, Zed, and Kha'zix. Combined with the penetration changes and nerfs to defense, these champions are able to assassinate any carry who comes in range.

It is because of these circumstances that the usefulness of AD carries is being questioned. Is it worth babysitting them for so much of the game if, in the end, they don't do significantly more damage than a champion who requires half as much attention and care? Are AD carries really necessary for pushing/sieging turrets, or can we find a way to do it without them? Couldn't champions who become powerful much quicker be advantageous? These are the thoughts that have started crossing the minds of many players, and in the coming months we'll begin to harvest what these seeds have planted.

Tomorrow I'll write down my thoughts about how one might alter the role of the AD, or replace them outright. Stay tuned.

PBE: Thresh Math Mk. II

Not long after I completed yesterday's math on Thresh's passive a PBE update went out. This removed the Magic Resistance from Thresh's passive (at least in the tooltip), which obviously changes the math.

So with the recent update we must modify our equation for value:

Gold Value = (# of Souls / 2 + 12.75) * (18 + 20) - 1296g

With the factors representing MR removed, this gives us the following numbers:

• 50: 138.5g
• 100: 1088.5g
• 150: 2038.5g
• 200: 2988.5g
• 250: 3938.5g

So the value of Thresh's passive is roughly one-half to two-thirds what it was previously.

Beyond curbing the absurd value of Thresh's passive, this change serves an important function. Before it was incredibly easy for Thresh to become impossible for AP carries to kill. Being able to exceed 100 Magic Resistance without any items or runes was silly. With the Magic Resistance removed from his passive, he'll no longer be the most abusive mid champion since LeBlanc's release.

PBE: Thresh Math

Thresh has hit the PBE, and he brings an interesting new mechanic, soul collection.

Every time a minion or jungle monster dies near Thresh it has a chance to drop a soul, with larger minions/monsters having a near 100% chance. Each soul Thresh collects gives him permanent Armor, Magic Resistance, and Ability Power, and also increases the damage of his auto-attacks through Q. The first handful of souls are worth more than later ones. For most numbers (beyond 30 or so) the math is simple:

Bonus Armor/MR/AP = Souls / 2 + 12.75

At 100 souls Thresh has 62.75 bonus Armor/MR/AP. That's a lot, and as a result Thresh's base Armor and Magic Resistance do not increase with level.

So how valuable is this passive anyway? To understand that we first must understand what Thresh has lost by losing out on level-based Armor and Magic Resistance.

All champions that have scaling Magic Resistance gain 1.25 per level, resulting in an additional 21.25 Magic Resistance at level 18 which Thresh misses out on. Magic Resistance costs 18 gold per point, so we'll have to subtract 382.5 gold when calculating the value of Thresh's passive.

The highest Armor scaling in the game is 4 per level and the lowest is 2.7, meaning 48.6 - 72 Armor that Thresh will not have at level 18. Armor also costs 18 gold per point, so that means another 1296 gold (to make the harshest assumption) subtracted from the value of Thresh's passive.

Finally, Ability Power costs 20 gold per point (based on Needlessly Large Rod). So the math for the gold value of Thresh's passive is fairly simple:

Gold Value = (# of Souls / 2 + 12.75) * (18 + 18 + 20) - 382.5g - 1296g

That gives us the following values at various soul numbers:

• 50: 435.5g
• 100: 1835.5g
• 150: 3235.5g
• 200: 4635.5g
• 250: 6035.5g

Generally speaking, 100 souls is what I would expect an average player performing normally to collect by the mid-game. 200 souls would be fairly typical for the late game. Expert players might collect as many as 150 or 300 souls (or more) at those same points respectively.

As we can see, this passive is worth a ridiculous amount of gold even once we've accounted for the loss of per-level stats, and that's without considering that all of these souls add to the damage of his Q's passive. Thresh gains so much without gold that he makes an ideal support. So long as he carefully times his warding excursions he'll easily stack hundreds of souls and be ridiculously tanky for a support.

Thought: Neophobia

The League of Legends community is a complicated amalgamation of players, and any generalizations regarding it are typically of limited value. There are, however, some truths which can be firmly stated, one of which being the certainty of hostile resistance to that which is different.

Before I harp heavily on the problems that result, let me be clear that there are understandable reasons for this common attitude. League of Legends is a complicated game, and it's difficult enough as it is to play to the meta, let alone trying to play against it. When a player makes an unfamiliar choice for a role, build, or lane it's just as common for them to be trolling, selfish, or ill-prepared as to be carefully and methodically innovating. It's not simply fear of the unknown, but experience with abject failures that effects this viewpoint.

For the innovators, this means intense and unforgiving scrutiny. Every game where you jungle Akali, play Caitlyn mid, or test support Maokai is a game where the slightest failure, misstep, or questionable statement can bring a torrent of disparaging remarks and threats. Even in games where you have been effective and positive you remain a convenient target for blame. It's not enough to be as good as everyone else, you must be better.

As innocent and understandable as it may seem, this cultural hostility enforces and reinforces the rigid, unadaptable thinking which plagues many players. Players seek set build orders, the "best" champion picks, and "correct" strategies because they are conditioned to do so by the harsh, derisive judgement of their peers. Taught to mimic rather than to think, these players struggle to fill in the blanks whenever they encounter a unfamiliar problems and situations.

This often results in the common fixation on winning over learning. When you believe in an unambiguously right way to play there isn't much use in doing anything other than pursuing that one righteous path. From that perspective if you aren't playing to win, then you're trolling or messing around or otherwise being a burden on your team rather than an asset. While victory is obviously the objective of the game, this mindset is a quick ticket to getting stuck and looking at every patch as a punishment rather than an opportunity.

The slow-to-change meta also has its routes in communal neophobia. It takes tournaments, sweeping balance changes, or particularly intrepid players to alter the meta because the community is actively hostile to all but the most irrefutably potent ideas. Unless convincingly demonstrated, and even then, the community is content to sit on what worked historically even though the conditions in which those ideas prospered are long past.

Curing neophobia on a community level is likely impossible. While it's demonstrably better for everyone to experiment, learn, and improve, the convenience and mental effortlessness of sticking with the known is powerful. All that innovation nonsense is work; there are champions to be killed, creeps to be farmed, and towers to be pushed. The best we can do is work on the individual level, starting with ourselves.

Update: Streaming Plans

The online S3 qualifiers for NA and EU are tomorrow. Riot is going to be streaming the games sans commentary, leaving people like myself to fill in the gaps.

The EU qualifiers start at 4 AM my time, so between sleep and work casting those is out of the question. However, if the NA qualifiers have started by the time I get home (Riot has yet to give details) I'll be casting them with TeamLiquid veteran Scip.

These may not be big name teams (yet!) but if you're trying to get your head in the game and learn a few things this should be a great opportunity. Be sure to tune in.

Update: Resolutions 2013

Before anything else, I apologize for the technical problems with Mondays with Monte on New Year's Eve. I know what happened, but because of the nature of the problem there was nothing I could have done to fix the problem remotely. It will never happened again.

That said, here are my League of Legends resolutions for 2013:

• I will figure out what is causing LoL to freeze for 10 seconds once per game and fix it so that I don't end up dying and costing my team the game.
• I will jungle Akali in ranked regardless of Elo.
• I will make jungle guides for other, less obvious champions as I encounter and jungle them.
• I will not rest on my laurels and continue to make predictions regarding the jungle viability and/or dominance of new champions, potentially marring my heretofore nearly spotless record.
• I will update this blog every weekday, unless otherwise noted beforehand.
• I will reach Diamond Elo.

 That's a lot of resolutions. We'll see how many of them I fulfill and how many of them, like so many other resolutions, are left to rot in the garbage dump of good intentions.