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Dominance for consistency
Bloodforge for survivability
This build has been what most pro adc players have been using, the build is extremely good and is the main reason adc's are saying they feel stronger this season.
Leather Cowl gives insane atk spd% and lifesteal for early game clear, its movement speed really helps with getting fed and into the team fight faster and sometimes can actually save you from assassin ganks (sometimes not even needing to outplay).
Transcendence is insanely powerful due to most adc starters giving not much mp5 or mana, personally I would always build devourers gauntlet over this, but you gain so much lifesteal from Leather Cowl and that it becomes obsolete.
Wind Demon is insane this season due to having 5% more crit and the extra atk spd% lets you pop off early game.
Fail-Not is a core item for winning 1v1's and setting up the entire kit by mainly giving 20%cdr and 20-35% crit and 10% pen.
Shadowsteel Shuriken is pretty much required for ADC's to give anti-heal and for some reason this season got buffed to be even more powerful.
Hunter's Cowl is just a generic upgrade that makes you EVEN MORE POWERFULLLL!!!
Lastly, Pick either Dominance for the final nail in the coffin to nuke tanky gods or pick Bloodforge if the enemy team has nobody building protections and have insane survivability (usually against bad players for padding stats).
In Conclusion, I was kinda bummed out that this was the only really working adc build this season. From my research, I found that there was no real reason to drift away from using other items than in the ones listed in the build. When you're the main damage dealer the only thing that is important when it comes to surviving is eliminating the threats (and lifestealing like a mf)..
For Season 8, you will want to typically help Red Buff with Middle, then rotate to Purple buff, then into your lane. For Early game, you should always focus minions, and work on getting fed as possible. Make sure to get wards for the scorpion and enemy jungle after you return to the fountain.
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You can argue that Xbal has more reliance on abilities compared to Hachi, which would be true, but he's still mainly played as an AA ADC. This is Panda w/ Cowl + Trans + Ninja + Zerk + Qin's...
Chiron game (of course Chiron is much more ability-based, but Panda's title here is AA Chiron.
Same thing with Ullr, where he's talking about an AA-based build.
Zapman picking up Cowl + Trans in a mostly AA-based Danza build.
And in an AMC build. This one partially mirrors this Hachi build in question...Cowl, Trans, Ninja, Exe, Fail, Wind.
Main thing I want to point out here is that Trans isn't dead...it's still functional, it's still being picked up, and works for builds that are otherwise focused on basic attack function.
The other things to point out here, most of these are not crit builds, and many of these starts skip both Trans and Devo's, with an early build into Dom, which is the other option I mentioned in one of my comments below.
So I probably need to point out that I'm not saying I would go Trans on Hachi; I don't think that's his best direction. I personally would go Cowl, Devo's or Dom, Ninja, and then Rage+Wind+situational or Zerk+Qin's+situational. At the same time, I don't see why we need to shoehorn a role into a single build type...I've seen a variety of builds being used, and people are making a variety of things work. Like always, skill, comp/matchup, and various other factors will always come into play. I'm sure you guys can absolutely make a Trans-based Hachi work. Again, not the best IMO, but it's not like this build is far gone, has 0 pen, blasts past 2.5 AS without Silver, etc.
On the flipside, I don't like this build claiming it's the staple ADC build / the main one the pros have been using.
Trans stopped being a viable item when it was nerfed and shortly after, if not the same patch, devos was buffed. Trans hunters either fell off (if they didn’t work well with devos) or they started building devos instead because it’s a much stronger item. You can even see it now with Danza going devos for most of his games although he feels better with trans.
Which gets me to the next point, this build is the exact same on pretty much every hunter, and that's not okay. I could partially argue it wasn't too bad earlier, but seeing it over and over when the build isn't optimal to begin makes it really tough to defend any further.
If you go with a Trans / Fail crit build, you should be getting Fail after boots and WD or Exe after that. And again, Shadow is NOT a core item. It doesn't matter if it's a crit build and it has good power...it's a situational item at best to counter tons of healing...otherwise you just skip because your DPS will out-perform any healing.
Also the blink should be shell. There isn’t really many hunters that you want to ever run blink on over Aegis / shell except for possibly Artemis and maybe Ullr.
Berserker tends to overcap atk% and has no crit, while executioner is just weird to use. why would you want one of your main dps being the role of a support without tankiness.. Usually you want the adc to kill fast as possible, not make a meal out of it.
I tend to get more use out of blink since its less situational and can be used in a aggressive and defensive manner. I've never really used shell for adc, but I can definitely see it being useful against an AA team, but that's more of a wildcard.
40% with potion or mana buff
I don't understand your point about Executioner. Each auto you hit does more damage than the last, it definitely takes more than 4 autos to hit an enemy. Once fully stacked everyone CAN do more damage to that target but that doesn't mean it's the whole point of the item. It's also great at shredding FG and Gold for your team to do more damage. It is nothing alike to playing "a support without tankiness".
But hey, if you feel important shredding what little prots the FG and Gold Fury have, buy it. I'm sure the enemy team would appreciate finishing it off.
Also in terms of shredding the objectives, posting the numbers means nothing. You should know first hand that without an ADC with %pen it is difficult to take gold or FG quickly.
And if we want to see what we're doing with full stacks of Exe on the FG, the FG has a base 90 phys prots. The base 90 prots blocks 47% of incoming physical damage.
With Fail + Wind (but only when you crit due to Wind's passive), you get down to 41.86% (72 prots), so the damage you apply is getting through an additional 5%. Sure, that's not a huge amount.
Add in Exe at full stacks, and that value drops to 31.5%, which is an additional 10% damage. That's like a self-applied Belt of Frenzy.
And then you consider that you're increasing damage for your physical teammates. Not calculating their own pen, your Exe stacks should also be giving them roughly the same damage increase, so in fact you're likely increasing your speed of finishing objectives, GF, FG, and Titan included.
Personally I had thought executioner capped at your god's penetration %, I was wrong. The crit build I showed did not need transcendence, especially on a god that doesn't get much damage out of his abilities in a fight.
I've played a lot with the crit build and feel that it's really good against squishy compositions and is the only way adc can apply anti-heal (toxic blade doesn't really fit imo).
That being said, I made an additional build that is Leather Cowl, Devourer Gauntlet, Ninja Tabi, Berserker Shield, Executioner, Qins, and Silverbranch for Boot Replacement.
Shadowsteel Shuriken sees slightly less use mostly because in a lot of cases a reliable crit % can outburst most of the healing abilities.
The reason a 30-40% pen (or having exe) is important during teamfight has mostly to do that a lot of teamfights can be decided by who goes through the front line the fastest as usually a solo laner and jungle will be trying to kill/zone you out. pen can easily make a difference between you surviving the, for example, w-keying King Arthur or dying. Or killing him quick enough to make sure you can help kill the opponents' backline with the extra protection of your front line.
Penetration is a personal stat. It's like, instead of magically reducing an enemy's protections, you're just making your weapon stronger, allowing you to get through their protections more easily...but it does nothing for your teammates.
Trans isn't a bad idea for an ADC that wants to use abilities more often, and as you've sort of stated, pairs well with Fail-Not. I like that combination quite a bit for gods that rely partially on abilities and have good teamfight ults, like Cupid and Medusa. Doesn't hurt on Hachiman either, since that cone is large. Additionally, when going Leather Cowl, your mana sustain is basically nil, so having Trans as a mana source means you never have to worry about it.
I've watched some vids of pros like Panda and Zap, and when they pick up Cowl and don't get Dom or Trans early, I've seen where they have 0 mana, and they straight up have to watch their ability use. To me, that reduces your potential effectiveness.
If you're not using abilities like crazy but still don't want to run out, Dominance is sometimes picked up early, for the MP5. You could go Cowl -> Morningstar start, finish Ninja and then complete Dom. From there you can go into Fail for crit builds, or Zerk for Qin's builds.
All options, and all have seen play.
Major pen (Dom or Exe) definitely needs to be one of the first 6 items, not as a situational 7th item / Tabi replacement. And while I can see Shadow being a situational pickup (vs. Anubis, Herc, multiple healers), it's not a core item.
I fixed the mana pot issue with a multi (Morningstar + his passive should be plenty).
Wind demon and Fail-Not get 20% pen, which I feel is enough pen for early-midgame adc, since tanky gods will usually be getting more prots towards the end, it will only dominance last scale higher.
I picked shadowsteel because it gives the next most power, atk% and crit out of all crit items and the antiheal is just so strong against every god. Even if you die in the team fight it contributes so much.
I used to use Qins a bit for front liner damage, but the nerf to it's price is not worth this season compared to other items (unless the match is a 50 minute clown fiesta).
So 40% chance, while okay, isn't fully in the reliable range to me, which is more like 50-60% IMO.
I do feel Qin's isn't needed; it's always been known as the tank-killer, but consistent crit chance provides plenty of DPS. The passive and crits are also not synergistic so I usually don't add Qin's when I invest in crits. But breaking through the prots is also important to get the most out of that damage potential, so for me, I've always considered significant pen to be core.
In my experience, you're not dueling so much against the enemy DPSer by the late game in a teamfight, at least not initially. Your initial engagement is likely to be a back-line diving bruiser (e.g. Solo), and with higher prots and strong base damage, they can pressure. Cutting through their prots is going to be nice to get them to back off, and then the enemy team loses a front-line presence.
In any case, that's my pref, but not saying going Fail/Wind/Shadow with a late pen item (situationally) isn't viable.