Five overlooked ways to stay relevant as marksman on 3.15



IMAGE: mc3du13rap

1. Build Blade of the Ruined King early



Arrow and Zefa both using BotRK, despite being high-scaling AD champions, a preference of Score as well.

I'll be honest and say I wasn't a huge fan of this item. Outside of Vayne, I'm rarely playing marksman that I feel should get it early, and you definitely want huge AD items on champions with AD scaling as soon as possible, right? That's what I thought too, until I started watching OGN, and saw players like Score and Arrow getting it first or second item on champions like Ezreal and Lucian.

To me, this was a big eye opener in the sense that Koreans have figured out that marskman have to play differently to be useful, while most other regions are still going for the greedy BF-rush items. Ultimately, even if you'd theoretically lose some potential DPS, you receive a wonderful safety-net of self peel. Since the threat of bruisers largely outweighs assassins now, an early cutlass into Blade of the Ruined King gives you all the sustain you need, a good chunk of damage, and allows you to auto attack inbetween steps more often.

Basically, you're going to lose more games to getting caught early and being zoned than you are by not getting a big BF item fast enough. BotRK offers a nice early-mid game spike while also staying relevant in the late game, only really being countered by Randuin's Omen rushes. Although the nerfs made this item statistically weaker than in Season 3, it is conceptually stronger in Season 4 because of how the current meta plays out. Games last longer, so relax, and think about being relevant early instead of rushing to late game.

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2. Make Last Whisper your second or third item always

Sometimes I feel like when I'm suggesting this to players, I'm beating a dead horse; however, it still remains a problem that plagues all elo ranges. If there's anything in common when scouting out the lolking of a fellow summoner who may be expressing his complications in dealing with tanky bruisers in teamfights, it's that their inventory looks something like this when transitioning into lategame:





Stop it.



Your mentality should never be "I will begin building it when they start building armor." Remember, armor is a lot cheaper than attack damage to purchase, so you'll want to have it done before the big armor items come out (and let's not forget how absurdly effective ninja tabi is before a big armor item is built anyway.) No matter what, you should have a Last Whisper as your third item at the latest.

The reason for this is because even without building major armor items, Last Whisper becomes incredibly efficient due to the base armor of champions as they level (which typically will be hovering around 100 for tanks). If the enemy team is building armor early, you may want to start building your last whisper as your second item. You won't be punished for building armor penetration too early.

The one and only exception to this rule is strictly for split pushing and tower demolishing purposes, where you get marginally more damage with flat AD against towers. For the sake of randomness and unpredictability in solo queue, just go with the last whisper. Towers will take an extra two seconds to down, but if a teamfight randomly commences, you'll be much better off. Just...please build your Last Whisper in a reasonable amount of time.



3. Respect your new level of impact in bottom lane

A lot of the reason marskmen have a problem making a difference in the bottom lane is they continue to play it like it's season 3. Against strong supports, you're not going to be able to make plays, and you're going to have to accept that. You have to understand that you can't go rambo and secure a bottom lane win by yourself anymore (even more so than you couldn't in high level play in season 3), and should just sit back and farm, poking safely when an enemy last hits and only going in when your support engages.





No going ham solo.



Consider yourself the support of your support. You're there to "support" his decision-making while he leads the charge. Your arsenal is most likely not stronger than a support's early and you will get punished if you get greedy and attempt to take charge. If you're winning and the lane is pushing against their tower, push hard and get some tower damage, otherwise try to freeze it so you can farm in a comfortable spot yourself and wait for the engage.

With that said, you have to strike a balance with your aggressive play too. Sure, you won't be initiating a full-out engage, but it's usually easy to tell if it's worth poking the support or not. Previously, unless it was of little to no loss for you, you'd almost never poke support in season 3 with abilities. Now, you can pretty easily do it unless the enemy support starts Doran's Shield. Starting Coin is an investment and easily punishable, so use that to your advantage. Punish greed and respect powerful openings that are meant to give an advantage in lane.

As a final note in this category, don't try to duel supports without lifesteal, at all, if you aren't confident in winning. You'll get upset and you'll go on tilt, guaranteed, pitying yourself on how Riot has forsaken you and your role as you sit there baffled at the fact that you've been felled by a measly "support".



4. Treat your summoner spells as the most important thing you possess

This one is especially important in Season 4 and I feel that current struggling marksman are way too overzealous with their summoners. Do yourself a favor and discipline yourself in being conservative with your summoners. Do not, under any circumstances, flash for a kill unless you're absolutely certain it will land a killing blow. Do not, under any circumstances, blow barrier when you will not sustain the entire value of damage it provides as shielding. Far too few players put the emphasis on correct summoner usage they should.

Summoners are far more important to squishies than anyone else, and for marksman, the importance is further amplified. Flash, Cleanse, and Barrier are your holy triumvirate in staying alive late game. The correct usage of these will be the difference between getting demolished and mopping up a teamfight and winning the game. Try making this one of your primary focuses when practicing marksman: saving your barrier, cleanse, or flash and using them when it's absolutely essential and when you'll get the most out of them. Do your best to not panic and blow them early.

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Lastly, it's important to know which summoners you want to pick. 90% of the time, you'll want to go Flash, Barrier, but there's certain compositions you can face where I'd consider barrier to be greed. You may not be as strong in lane, but against champions like Rammus, Fiddlesticks, Leona, and other very CC intensive champions, it's a worthy pick up. Remember, you aren't doing damage if you're CC'd..or dead. It's okay to go Flash, Barrier in most other situations because you can often rely on Quicksilver Sash to do the job for you.

5. Pick the correct champions and defenses for the situation

Since marskmen are so similar in playstyle comparative to other roles, it's not very difficult to learn a plethora of champions. With that said, you have two picks that will always be safe -- Lucian and Jinx. Anything else is a risk to pick, including Sivir since you risk being destroyed by champions like Draven or a well played Caitlyn.

Speaking of Caitlyn, she's getting a lot of flack lately, but she's still very strong against lanes where the support is capable of single handedly winning the lane. In other words, it's a good counter-pick to Annie and Leona. Picking any other marksman is a luxury if your primary focus is winning because it's such a huge risk. Unfortunately right now, some carries are strictly better than other ones. I'd recommend against primarily poke or utility oriented carries unless you're absolutely remarkable with them. Primary offenders include Ezreal (his laning is awful and easily punishable), Varus (too easy to stick to), and Ashe (too easy to stick to).

This is going to be a controversial opinion, but hold off on a defensive item as long as you can. It takes you longer to get relevant damage because of how multiplicative marskman builds are, so sometimes it's best to train your mechanics rather than rely on defensive stats. With that said, you'll still have a choice to make when you begin to build your defensive item, and a large amount of the population does not choose correctly.



IMAGE - Flonia



Firstly, do not buy Guardian Angel without thinking. In other words, if bruisers are giving you trouble, stop building it, they are going to stick to you and you're going to die and waste 1300 (250 short of a BF sword) in gold on the combine cost. Buy Guardian Angel if they are running double assassin compositions, otherwise go for Quicksilver Sash into Mercurial Scimitar. More damage is more lifesteal, and the cleanse will save you more than defensive stats typically.

If you absolutely don't know what to build and you're in a tight spot, go for Banshee's Veil. It's the "safe" pick of the bunch and will help protect you against pretty much anything. However, I wouldn't say it's ideal in any given situation. Lastly, don't underestimate Randuin's Omen against teams where the only threats are physical, especially on champions like Draven or Graves. It offers the absolute best stats available for protection against physical damage. To close this out, please for the love of all that is sacred, do not build a Thornmail.

Final thoughts

In Season one through three, the primarily role of an Marksman (or then, AD Carry) was to scale into the late game and do the most sustained damage on the team. In Season 4, the primarily role of a Marksman is...to still scale into the late game and do the most sustained damage on the team. It is undeniably harder than it was to the seasons prior (because now you're not the only role with hyper-carry potential after 45 minutes), but it's still better for a team to have a marksman than not.

Considering the best players in the world still have a marksmen on either team, clearly the role is still doing something productive, contrary to recent belief from community and certain pros alike. Adapt and play the game like a fresh season rather than pretending it's season three and things will become a lot easier. If you follow this advice and still have trouble, try playing the bruisers that are giving you trouble extensively so you can do your research from enemy lines and see what opposing marksmen are doing to protect themselves. Farm up and carry on!