With the conversion of flat Armor Penetration to Lethality, there have been several changes to the AD Carry meta going into Season 7. The problem with flat armor penetration builds on the ADC role stemmed from the overwhelming lane dominance by marksmen who excelled with flat armor penetration such as Draven, Jhin, Miss Fortune, and Lucian. Now that flat armor penetration has been replaced with lethality, let’s look at how these four marksmen have been affected in the new bot-lane meta.

Before we take a look at the aforementioned marksmen, it is important to understand why the changes from armor penetration to lethality are so impactful and how they affect itemization. Essentially, lethality is a scaling version of armor penetration where you do not receive the full value of lethality until your opponent is level 18. For example, if you purchase an item with 10 lethality, you will receive a guaranteed minimum of 4 armor penetration against a level 1 opponent which will then increase to 6 armor pen against a level 6 opponent, 8 against a level 12 opponent, and a 10 armor pen cap against a level 18 opponent which gives you the full lethality value. One of the main reasons for the lethality change was the snowball potential for champions that could take full advantage of an armor penetration build, as the old armor penetration items were cost efficient, had solid unique passives and actives, all on top of the percent damage increase by ignoring a certain amount of armor, particularly in the early game. Furthermore, the lethality changes were catered primarily for the assassins which were updated in the 6.22 patch, however, the changes also heavily impacted several marksmen in a way that now requires them to build differently, or in some cases, phase out of the current meta.

As far as itemization goes, the changes made to two items completely revamped the way in which some marksmen build, or, reduced their overall viability. First is Youmuu’s Ghostblade, a common first buy for the ADCs we will be looking at. The greatest change to Youmuu’s was the removal of the Attack Speed steroid where, when activated, Youmuu’s would grant your champion +40% Attack speed. While this change substantially affected all ADCs who built it, the champions who suffered from this change the most were Jhin and Lucian since Jhin can no longer receive additional AD when activating Youmuu’s and Lucian can no longer get the additional shots added to his ultimate. Next, the changes to Duskblade of Draktharr really hurt the likes of Jhin and Miss Fortune, as the new passive does not provide the same kind of burst damage that the old passive did. DoD’s old passive, Nightfall, marked enemies for 2 seconds following a basic attack onto them, similar to Zed’s ultimate, dealing 90 + 25% of your target’s missing health as physical damage. Now, DoD’s current passive, Nightstalker, also procs on an enemy champion, but it only procs on your next basic attack after being unseen for at least 1 second, dealing 50 + (200% Lethality) bonus true damage. Now, there are two issues here, the first being that the new DoD passive requires you to build lethality to be effective, which we already discussed is not a viable option for marksmen. Second, the amount of damage done by DoD’s new passive is both much weaker in terms of damage, plus more inconvenient for marksmen like Jhin and Miss Fortune since they no longer get the added security of a kill if they could not immediately burst an opponent down with their initial combos. Aside from Draven (who still took a hit from the removal of the Attack Speed buff on Youmuu’s), all of the marksmen we will be discussing saw changes to their itemization, and for some, their place in the meta, so let's take a look at where these four marksmen are right now starting with Jhin.

Jhin is the only champion of the four to make it out of patch 6.22 relatively unchanged. Instead of going for the old Youmuu’s->Duskblade build, Jhin can now do a critical strike build and still be a high impact ADC. An example build path for Jhin is: Doran’s Blade + potion to start, followed by B.F. sword->Zeal->Rapidfire Cannon->Infinity Edge->Essence Reaver, and finishing with whatever items you feel would be most advantageous in your situation (just do not forget to buy Swifties!). The reason that Jhin is able to succeed with this build path stems from his passive which makes critical strike chance is the most important stat for increasing his ability to dish out large amounts of burst damage with the added benefit of enabling him to kite safely due to the added movement speed he gets whenever he crits. Moreover, this build was never a bad build choice for Jhin, it was just overshadowed by the strength of the old armor penetration build that put him at the front of the ADC meta. With this crit build, you can still output high damage auto-attacks, and you will even get more consistent movement speed boosts, just be mindful that Jhin's early game is not as strong as before now that his damage is more reliant on critical chance.

Next up is Miss Fortune, whose name is even more appropriate with the changes to Youmuu’s and Duskblade. Sadly, Miss Fortune is not able to pull off the critical strike build nearly as effectively as Jhin, and has ultimately seen a drop in play and win rate following the 6.22 patch changes. Nothing was more satisfying than seeing the “pop” from Duskblade following a good Double Up, and if that did not put your enemy down, then a follow-up Bullet Time was sure to shred whatever remaining health they may have had. Miss Fortune is an example of an ADC that succeeds when being able to get off quick burst damage with her passive and active skills as opposed to extended fights which favor hyper-carry champions like Caitlyn and Jinx. The idea around Miss Fortune is to be able to quickly assassinate squishy targets with an auto-attack and swift rotation of her abilities, which were amplified greatly in the early to mid stages of the game by armor penetration. The change to lethality has impacted her win rate by about 4% as well as her overall ability to impact the game with her burst-damage kit, but do not let this deter you from playing her. Miss Fortune is still a fun, burst-damage champion who is enjoyable to play as, especially by those who like smacking their opponents around with a well-timed Double Up and fully channeled Bullet Time; just don’t think you will be outputting the same amount of damage as before patch 6.22.

Draven, the glorified axe juggler, is the next marksmen we will be discussing, as the armor penetration changes affected him greatly at all stages of the game. Being able to do ~200 damage to your opposing ADC at 12 minutes into the game with Draven’s empowered auto-attacks coupled with masterful axe juggling is still satisfying; however, flat armor pen was a pretty significant reason as to why Draven can hit so hard. With Lethality being sub-optimal on marksmen, Draven is seeing changes to his build path and viability since the old armor pen build was much more devastating than his current critical strike build. Draven capitalizes on his punishing early game, especially against the likes of Vayne, Jinx, as well as most other hyper carries who cannot trade with him during the laning phase. An early Serrated Dirk really propelled Draven into ruining his lane opponent’s day by significantly increasing the percent of damage he dealt to them while providing a flat damage boost on his next auto following a minion execution. As explained, the early armor penetration build is not nearly as effective, and now Draven is shifting towards an itemization change similar to Jhin where critical strike chance takes precedent over lethality. While Draven is not nearly as oppressive as he once was, and has certainly taken a large hit to his late game viability, he is still a hard-hitting lane bully and can teach players how to better micro-manage their champions with his axe catching while placing emphasis on not dying with his passive. So don’t worry Draven mains, you’ll still be the early game nightmare of the bottom lane, just know that your damage is more dependent on critical strikes than having the consistent damage benefits of old armor penetration.

Lastly, let us take a look at Lucian, who of the other marksmen has seen the biggest drop in viability with the patch 6.22 changes. Unlike the other marksmen we have looked at, one of, if not the biggest reason behind Lucian’s drop in success is related to the changes to the Fervor of Battle mastery as opposed to the lethality change (although lethality still lowers Lucian’s viability). For a more comprehensive look at the Fervor of Battle changes, feel free to check out this Lolking guide by user Shakarez. In short, Fervor of Battle now gives flat AD instead of damage added to auto-attacks, and it no longer stacks off abilities. These Fervor changes compounded with the changes to Youmuu’s and armor penetration have resulted in a large drop in Lucian play as well as success, as his win rate now sits at a lowly 45%. There are simply no other builds available for Lucian that can make him a competitive pick at the moment, but if you still love dashing around as The Purifier and Culling down your enemies, try experimenting with some heavy damage and crit builds similar to Draven. Unless you are just trying to have fun in a Normal game or have a lot of confidence with your ability to outplay your opponent, it is pretty safe to say that Lucian is not the contested pick that he once was and it would be wise to look for another marksmen to play.

Pre-Season is normally a gloomy time for ADC mains, but thankfully, most marksmen survived this offseason. For those who saw some of their favorite marksmen plummet in priority or are not comfortable with the itemization changes, do not worry. Even though some of the marksmen we discussed have fallen in favor to the now dominant hyper-carry picks, not a single one of these champions are deemed “unplayable”. Just because your main might not be flavor of the month anymore is no reason to give up on him or her entirely; pre-season is a time to experiment with different champions and builds and it may just take a while to find what works for your favorite champ.

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