And by that I mostly mean nerfing infinity edge and buffing some other items. IE is the best item on practically every ad carry in the game, and is rushed on every one I can think of, except for maybe ezreal some of the time.

Almost every ad carry goes Boots > double doran's > Berserkers greaves > Infinity edge. For a while a few people took wriggles instead of double doran's, but I haven't seen that in a while.

Occasionally I've seen a few get phantom dancer first, but I doubt I'm alone in thinking this is kinda ridiculously limited in terms of build options.

Xypherous talks a lot about how important player expression is in a game like this, how someone can make his champion and playstyle feel like his own (think azingy's amumu), but riot has made this incredibly hard to do on an ad carry. I can't remember the last time I've seen a graves in tournament play go anything other than double doran's > IE

Just my 2 cents on that.

edit: I wanted to say that It really wouldn't take all that much to make things like bloodrazor, Nashor's tooth, black cleaver, malady, cloak and dagger, yoummus, and ionic spark into viable ad carry items if they didn't have to focus on this whole crit-centric build.

I also wanted to add that plenty of items have been nerfed because they were too good for bruisers and the like, atma's, wriggles, hog, wit's end, etc.

I agree. I think IE is just too centralizing to AD carries. AD carries literally never have to think about their build because all of their stats combo so well together.

No, ie doesnt need a nerf, the problem is adc only have around 6 items to choose from (pd ie lw bt tforce)

I agree. I hate to compare LoL to DotA 2 but that game has soooo many viable items for people of any role.

And yes, ADCs need more items.

Having core items that large groups of champions build is not an inherently bad thing.

I'd like to see Stinger and Bilgewater Cutlass get upgrades for AD carries, AP carries have upgrades off of Revolver and Codex, but there's nothing for Cutlass and Stinger to go towards except gunblade and tooth.

It is when literally every champion in the role gets it as their first large item.

Mids are in a similar situation with rabadon's, but because of how its passive works it's rarely taken as a first item which leads to a lot more build diversity among mids (You see lich bane on a lot, abyssal scepter, DFG, ROA, WOTA, and zhonyas first item, with rabadon's as 2nd or 3rd)

If every mid laner were rushing rabadon's deathcap I would want to see it nerfed as well, but as IE stands right now ad carries don't really have much of an option when it comes to their build, while mid laners do.

Why not? AD carries never have to think about their build, or counterbuild. Ability spamming AD carries should be able to use an item like Manamune, but they can't, because the bonus damage isn't worth giving up a standard AD carry item.

The problem is ad rely on auto attacks to do their job, and there really just isn't the level of itemizational "depth" to it.

You do x damage every y interval with z chance to amplify.

Items can either increase x, y, or z... And that's pretty much it.

Think about the role of an adc too - they are rarely there for their utility, since even small utilities can over power a ranged ad. They pretty much can only be their for their damage. Their damage is what wins many games, it is their defining characteristic.

edits -

As Ahri I often build rylias first because that means 1 ability leads to a full combo, and it also means aoe slows for team fights. But then the damage on Ahri's abilities are high enough on their bases that she can get away with this early, and come back for rabbadons late to spike her damage. Meanwhile the base damage amounts on adc are so ridic that without items for damage they just don't do any significant amount...

and I DO see ppl build thirster first and there are of course the ones that will build sheen or manamune

Thing about doing sheen or manamune, or mbr / malady / ionic spark, is that crits actually are the best counter for armor in the game. When you bust out the math, there is a very strong senergy between adc and crits. It's better than getting a black cleaver or dividing your damage to magic with mbr.