Caster Marksmen: Why They're Impossible To Make | League of Legends



Decided to revisit the Marksman class and talk about a subgroup of ad carries which focus more on casting abilities rather than auto attacks: Caster Marksman! I want to explain why it seems impossible to make true caster ADCs in League of Legends 🙂

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32 thoughts on “Caster Marksmen: Why They're Impossible To Make | League of Legends”

  1. …. ill give it a shot.
    Passive: each time champion dashes he places a shade that last 12 seconds. If in range shades also autoattack.
    q: You dash a distance.
    w: you fire a distance in front of you a aoe projectile that marks them with an on hit effect for some amount of time.
    e: you dash towards another shade.
    R: your shades now have infinite range and you can dash to them 3 times.

    Like. I'm not sure if its a caster really but its something.

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  2. Here are my 3 ideas for a caster Marksmen.

    CONCEPT X
    Passive: Auto attacks refunds mana.

    Q: Tracker Shot
    1st Cast: Shoot a projectile forward
    2nd Cast: Change the trajectory of the projectile

    If this ability hits an enemy champion, the next attack within the next 5sec by X will automatically home in on the marked enemy champion.

    W: Pierce Shot
    Shoot a projectile that Pierce all enemies within its trajectory (Cait’s Q)

    E: Airstrike
    Kog’s Ult but smaller AoE, longer CD and can stun for a sec.

    R: Divine Blast
    Shoot a missile that had global range (Jinx ult without the explosion but higher damage).

    CONCEPT Y
    Passive: Power Overload
    For each connecting ability Y uses, increase the next auto attack damage by 130% in the next 5seconds. The timer refresh when another ability connects and this effect can stack up to 3 times.

    Q: Grenade Throw
    Throws a grenade that does AoE damage to an area and knockback all enemy inside of it. if used on self, propel self towards a direction (think of Zigg’s W but no second reactivation)

    W: Shotgun
    Release a cone damage in front while pushing Y backwards.

    E: Sniper Shot
    Shoot a projectile forward that Pierce through enemies.

    R: Electric Pulse (10sec CD)
    Releases an AoE electric shock around himself and damage to all nearby enemies.

    If ability is used when Y have 3 Overload stacks, grant a 4th stack and stun all nearby enemies for a second.

    CONCEPT Z
    Passive: Laser Gun
    Z’s auto attacks are replaced with a laser tether that locks onto her last selected target. The tether deals constant damage and will not break even when casting abilities. Tether will only break if Z is out of range.

    Z can also select ally target with her auto attack. If so, any regeneration or shield on the ally target will also be applied to Z.

    Q: Tainted Soil
    Victor’s E

    W: Overload
    Passive: The longer the laser stay on a target, the more damage it deals (up to 20% over 10sec).
    Active: Double laser damage for the next 3sec while increasing movement speed towards locked-on target.

    E: Tether
    Z pulls herself towards laser locked-on target.

    R: Omega Beam
    If no Target: Velkoz ult but can’t move laser

    If Locked on Enemy: Ult the enemy no matter how far they run afterwards and deal damage to all enemies and structures in between.

    If Locked on Ally: Heal targeted ally and all allies in between.

    So yea, X is like an artillery mage but focused on AD builds with it’s passive clearly made to allow him to spam spells. Y have a bit of gimmick in that it forces a condition on you to not use auto until a certain moment to maximise damage and then we have Z, essentially throws out the conventional mindset of what we know regarding an ADC

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  3. I actually try to design a Electric weapon user that has 3 autos that works like the new dragon after that he needs to recharge

    Now ability’s, Q would be point and click slow that works like old Fiddle E, W would convert all Ammo of his weapon into a powerful auto that is just a laser like Q Lucian and recharges a little faster, his E would be a Grenade that only deals damage because his an area ADC his R is the weirdest part but i Guess that a big Shock that pulls enemies away would be ok so you could go in, use Q to secure the E damage, Use the W to do a lot of damage and finish the job with R

    Now i really just see his shots as mini Volibear lightnings, they don’t do on hit effects but they can do a lot of damage, anyways, i would change the E for a little charge that can be casted for a period of time to charge in and do damage, I like Graves desing so i wanted to see another “melee ADC”

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  4. How about a sniper champion. This champ could have decent range on their abilities but then gain stupid bonus range when they stand still for a period of time or be standing in a bush. (Like how temmo goes invisible). They could have slow attack speed too. I think this could balance them out pretty well and of course the abilities would be skill shots. Q could be a poke like Caitlyn's but maybe stronger but thinner or something. W could be a 3x recastable grenade barrage. E could be a very quick but short burst of movement speed. The ult could be a single global artillery strike. In the lore this person could be a rival of Cait, someone she is hunting or learned from before this person became evil or something.

    Reply
  5. Not too long ago my friends and I were talking about what we would make as a character in LoL if we could. I imagined a knife thrower with a passive to general extra gold, their Q being a skill shot with charges, they would throw a special knife and it would stick in the first thing it collides with and they move faster towards the knife. if they touch it then they reduce some of the charge and if its in a champion or minion they do an enhanced auto to retrieve the knife. Their W would be a rock they threw and caused a short stun. E being a slide and hit if it collides. Their R allowing them to throw another knife and then blink to it and cause a small AOE.

    Reply
  6. Here is my caster adc concept:
    Kindred but instead of the W being boring and passive it works like orianna Q moving the wolf around. Autos, Q and E near wolf causes wolf to bite the hit enemy like lucians extra shot.

    Final proc of E automatically moves wolf to the target for a guaranteed bonus strike. Passive stacks increase wolfs bonus attack radius.

    How caster it ends up being depends on how heavily you tune the damage between kindred and the wolf. All wolf is ad azir with one soldier, all kindred is just a lucian sidegrade. Somewhere in the middle could be really interesting imo and make a champion thats already fun even more fun. If youre riot and like overloading kits you could even add an interaction with the R

    Reply
  7. I mean, there's a lot more "caster marksmen" that this video just kinda blows off to pick out 4 for pretty weak reasons. Kaisa, Jhin, Akshan, Miss Fortune, and Varus are all perfectly valid "caster marksmen". Defining Jhin as a "hybrid" because he fits into the on hit category is far too pedantic. Every ADC technically could abuse on-hit items. To such great success actually, that wits end got nerfed. Because they were all building the damn thing.

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  8. What about an ad caster that is pretty much forced into building typically Marksmen items but their basic attacks gain little to no benefit from them and give those benefits to their abilities.

    For example if they build crit it doesn't give their attacks a chance to crit but their abilities. Or if they build attack speed their AS stays the same but makes the channel time or speed of their missle abilities faster, or maybe it gets converted into ability haste if their CDs are long.

    Reply
  9. Ashe shouldn't be exclusive an on-hit marksmen, her passive needs crit to work best. If you have crit then if she attacks a target you've recently hit before she does extra damage, with 100% crit (and IE) this bonus damage is 220%. Hit W, auto once for over double damage. Ashe is a crit and on-hit marksmen.

    Also the thing about mages is that they are much easier to nullify, most mage abilities can simply be dodged and then for the next 5+ seconds not have that ability to use, nearly all mages should find a way to put void staff in their builds because if someone gets at least 100 MR then even if you have 1000 AP, and an ability that hits for 1000 damage, they will only receive 500 damage as 100 MR gives 50% damage reduction. There is a lot more armour pen than magic pen because mages can quickly become broken so leaving them weaker is actually more balanced. This is also why there is more Armor items than MR items because even though 300 to 500 AD is the max, nearly every AD person can get a pen item that suits them well. Even black cleaver counts. You don't actually need 800 AP to be strong. If you have Void Staff you'll deal great damage with just 300 to 600 AP and if you go the magic pen boots you might even be able to stop getting AP after reaching 500. Mages are either OP or UP, I guess league of legends prefers UP. Also, Void Staff is the legendary item that doesn't have a passive, that's how strong %magic pen is. This is why full AP (4 or more) teams are bad because until they get void staff if the enemy has at least 90 MR you can't kill them.

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  10. New caster ADC: a soldier/general from piltover that uses a assault rifle and his gimmick would be a gameplay that reminds games like hotline miami (btw according to the devblog the upcoming ADC will be just that)
    His auto attacks would actually be melee but he wouldn't have any bonus with them like Samira does and would also be considered ranged to avoid bullshit with Botrk and sterak's.
    His Q would be his main ability: you can hold Q to be slowed and quickly fire multiple extremely low damage skillshots in the cursor direction, with much shorter range than typical skillshots (maybe around 700 units). The shots CANNOT strike but apply on-hit and on-attack effects at 100% effectiveness, while having reduced healing from lifesteal/omnivamp, and work on a ammo system just like jhin/graves, but you should be able to reload manually with W.
    Every single ADC in the game has at least one self peel ability/gimmick so his E could be a target melee stun or something
    Can't think much about the rest of the kit but he would need some kind of movement speed buff or dash. We already have a caster adc with a skillshot that benefits from crit (samira) and the only worthwhile on-hit effect for ezreal is spellblade so we don't truly have a on-hit based caster ADC.

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  11. I love playing as Ezreal, he was the only reason why i came back to play league (after enjoying playing as him, and suffering from playing adc, I'm not coming back to league xd. I'm gonna wait for league of legends single player, especially since ezreal would definitely be there), it feels so rewarding landing your skill shot instead of right-clicking someone until it dies. I think that's one of the main reasons people like playing as him.

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  12. I think Ullr from smite would be an interesting decision in league but he has too much design overlap with other characters already. Being a stance dancing adc with a heavy emphasis on his ability combos. His kit already has too much overlap with Xerath and Tristana in terms of what the abilities do and too similar to jayce in what niche he occupies. At that point he'd just be a ranged assassin like LeBlanc but AD.

    Now In terms of A proper caster adc I would make.

    Passive movement speed could be decent, would let you kite fairly decently to allow aggressive use of your mobility skill.
    Casting abilites grants 5-20% Bonus movement speed for .5 seconds. Hitting enemy champions with abilities Grants 10-25% bonus movement speed for .5 seconds. ( Based on level) Or can have this be a flat amount, that scales with bonus ad per level.

    I think Something Like Camille's double auto reset Q would actually be pretty interesting on a ranged character. As it stands I think Vayne is the only ADC with a proper auto reset enhancement. Could be just and auto reset button, and the next empowered one that it becomes Longer range with bonus damage attached. I think keeping the design space of Camille's Q having a fixed delay would work out well to prevent instant oneshots. (Gotta make it 800 Years so % health magic damage that also benefits from crit). So a majority of the dps would come from getting those out.
    Empowers your next auto attack to deal 20% bonus Damage on hit, after a 1 second delay can recast for 0 mana to empower your next auto attack with 100 bonus range and on hit magic damage based on the target's current health. Both autos can Critically strike. 10-6 Second Cooldown

    Marking Skillshots/abilites are pretty common among ADC's from what I've seen, Jhin's E, Ezreal's W, Lucian W, Jinx W Twitch W Kindred E ect. So lets make something similar.
    A line skill shot that marks the target for 5 seconds granting YOU vision of that target for the duration, stopping on the first enemy champion hit. For every auto attack you land on the target you gain 5-10% bonus attack speed and 1-5% bonus AD (stacking up to 5 times) that lasts for 5 seconds after the mark ends. Killing the target refreshes the bonus attack speed and damage duration. 15-10 second cooldown

    E Is a tough one. I think something similar to Fiora's Q would be decent.
    A free targeted dash that rewards you with more damage if you use it aggressively. Using E to dash within a specific range of your marked target would then empower your Q autos to both deal the bonus damage. Killing the Marked target would reset the dash.
    Dash in targeted direction for 400 units. If you dash within 500 units of a marked target your Q gains the bonus magic damage on the first cast, the second cast gains 50% increased damage. Using Passive reduces this cooldown by .5 seconds per use.(Or just increase the damage dealt of the second cast) 18-14 second cooldown. (I think there should be a reward for risking dashing at someone you marked, but one as well for getting that close to someone in general.The risk reward should be appropriate, but I cant think of one for just dashing at anyone)

    And now for the ult. Now raw damage could be fun but Sicko mode ults are also a lot of fun while retaining the core play style of the characters. No need for a lower damage spam move since Q fills that role already. Honestly Something Like Ashe or Aphelios' ults in terms of a projectile wouldn't be too bad. Impossible to miss pointblank but still possible at further ranges.
    Fires a projectile that stops on the first enemy hit dealing physical damage and applying the W mark to the target and all enemies within 300 units. Killing one of these marked targets refreshes the mark duration on all other targets. (As well as the other benefits from breaking the normal W mark)

    I think this conceptually would be really interesting. Allowing for counterplay with long cooldowns and peak damage being behind those skillshots. All things considered this should be a lower range marksman similar to vayne or kaisa due to the large amount of damage and mobility it would have. And very very low base auto attack speed and damage due to how often you could empower them with Q and the ramping from W.

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  13. A timing based gattling gun caster.

    Passive: Hot Chamber: When this campion uses abilities or auto attacks gain stacks of "Hot". More stacks of hot = benefits to each ability. When the champion spends time not autoing or using abilities loose stacks of hot. For each stack of hot lost gain 1 stack of "Cooled". "Cooled" is a resource consumed by abilities.

    Q: Suppressing fire : choose a direction to fire a stream of projectiles. This is not a channel and will continue to fire in the same direction for 3s (+0.5s for each stack of "cooled" consumed).
    The more stacks of "hot" you have the wider the arc the projectiles shoot in, the higher crit damage they can inflict and the more projectiles shot per second. The projectiles cannot apply on hit and you can auto attack as normal while using this ability.

    W: BFG (Railgun) : Slow yourself and charge up your shoulder mounted railgun, this is a channeled action that is not interrupted by Q or R. The longer the charge the higher the AD scaling on the free aim projectile this abilities fires, up to 100%. For every stack of "Cooled" consumed increase the charge duration by +0.5s, the abilities range by 700, and the AD scaling by 10%. Enemies in range of this ability hear an audio cue when its being charged.

    E: Bugout/Smokebomb : When "bugout" is used dash in a chosen direction. You can use "bugout" to dash again at the cost of all "hot" stacks. If "Liquid Cooled" is currently active this ability upgrades into "smokebomb". When "smokebomb" is used blink to a chosen location in range. You can use "smokebomb" again to put yourself into stasis for 3 seconds at the cost of all "cooled" stacks.

    R: Liquid Cooled : You get this at lvl 6 and it is a toggled ability. When toggled on all your abilities will consume stacks of "cooled" to increase their effects.

    This character would use mana for all these abilities (to allow for lethality manamune builds) and the cooldowns and base damages would be adjusted for balance but I think this would be a p damn good idea for a caster marksman. I came up with this in like 15mins too so it could be Hella refined from here.

    I also have some vague lore ideas for this character too, especially with the blink on E actually being a shuriman artifact similar to Ezreals gauntlet and a bunch of other unrelated ideas too. I think this kind of kit is really flexible lore wise. You could even have an ionian character who uses Rage and calm as resources and has magic, wind or the power of nature or something as the theme. Q is a slicing maelstrom, W as a crack of lighting, E just a cool dash and R toggle being representation of the anger at ionias invasion and the peace of ionias origins. All kindsa shit you can do with this.

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  14. AD casters r broken cuz their aa's do too much dmg. Why not make a passive similar to how jhin's caps atk speed just for capping the dmg on an aa so then u can focus more on ability dmg? idk just an idea

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  15. many caster marksmen use projectiles and linear projectiles that originate from them, so one way to make a unique caster marksman have ground targeted abilities that lack a projectile.
    Also many caster marksmen are defined by ability to take quick shots over and over and keep moving, so if you made a caster that was all about setting up zones and dedicating time to build up zones of threat, that would differentiate them
    Another way is to allow them some method of detaching the source of their damage from their own position while still maintaining an importance on positioning. For instance if they could craft a puppet of sorts that they can cast their abilities from. Perhaps the puppet is their shadow or their spirit (which would help keep the concept falling into the "my pet is more important than me" trap) and has free movement by has less range like 300, but u can have it dash to ur targets, and ofc cast abilities from it.
    Another method is to give them very short range, but landing abilities gives them stacks to increase their basic attack range
    Ive made quite a few kits, and 1 features a voodoo archer who can push out her spirit and attack from different angles with it. Once they have landed enough cursed attacks on the enemy they can pull the ENEMY spirit which is connected via a tether. If they shoot a projectile thru any tether it deals damage. Additionally they can set traps which apply hard CC to enemies and their Spirits, and they can make any spirit they wish dash to a target point.

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  16. My own classification of all marksmen:
    Crit: Caitlyn, Draven, Jinx, Kindred, Quinn*, Tristana, Twitch, Xayah
    On-hit: Ashe, Kalista, Kog'maw, Teemo*, Vayne
    Hybrid: Aphelios, Jhin, Kai'sa, Miss Fortune, Senna, Sivir, Varus
    Caster: Corki, Ezreal, Graves*, Lucian, Samira
    * bot it's not its primary role

    It may look like there are almost no caster, but that's not because they design so few, it's because bot lane is the role with the smallest champion pool in general. Only problem I see is that they would feel like Corki or Ezreal. But honestly, playing any auto ADC feels equally the same except 2 or 3 mechanics.

    The best for me are hybrids, it's a good mix between both. I also enjoy making some auto attack ones into hybrids with some buikds, like Kog'maw or Twitch. Although those are more like AD/AP hybrids

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