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Players who often play the Development Lane should have noticed this trend: almost 80% of mainstream marksman playstyles have shifted from Orb flow to Critical Hit flow. That means early game prioritizes items like Lightning Dagger and Doomsday that trigger orb effects on basic attacks, while late game switches to items like Endless Blade and Benevolent Dawn that enhance critical hits. What's the reason for this?

Orb flow transitioning to Critical Hit flow

Most marksmen are actually quite weak in the early game, so they must find ways to develop as quickly as possible to reach their stronger mid-to-late game phase. Orb flow significantly boosts early-game farming speed, perfectly meeting this need.

The first characteristic of Orb flow is its attack speed bonus. Items like Lightning Dagger and Doomsday provide attack speed stats. Faster attack speed means more basic attacks, allowing marksmen to naturally output more damage—this is much more reliable than relying on chance-based critical hits. Additionally, another notable point is that marksmen often heavily depend on basic attacks, and Orb flow improves the feel of basic attacks, making operations smoother and gameplay more enjoyable.

The second characteristic of Orb flow is its damage. Critical hit item damage is calculated based on the player's current damage, while Orb flow damage is completely different. For example, Lightning Dagger's orb damage is actually fixed, and Doomsday's orb damage is calculated based on the target's health. So even if a marksman has low attack power early on, orb damage still has decent effectiveness.

As for transitioning to Critical Hit flow later, naturally because critical hits yield higher returns. After gaining higher attack power in late game, a single basic attack can deal thousands of damage, while fixed magic damage like Lightning Dagger becomes somewhat insufficient.

Marksmen deeply tied to Critical Hit flow

Although this playstyle is indeed quite good—even marksmen like Yu Ji, who previously focused on high physical penetration, have developed this approach—there are always some marksmen who aren't well-suited. For example, Sun Shangxiang and Bai Li Shou Yue remain deeply bound to critical hit items.

Sun Shangxiang's incompatibility is simple: her main damage comes from the empowered basic attack after her first skill's dash. This single-hit damage is indeed very high, especially after applying the effect of her second skill, Crimson Lotus Bomb, allowing her to instantly burst squishy targets. But the problem is her attack frequency is too low, so chance-based critical hits are more suitable.

Bai Li Shou Yue is determined by his own mechanics: critical hit rate converts into damage. In other words, higher critical hit rate means higher damage, so Bai Li Shou Yue must maximize his critical hit rate as much as possible. The minor early-game advantages from other items hardly compare.

Coincidentally, Sun Shangxiang and Bai Li Shou Yue's current win rates aren't very high. Bai Li Shou Yue can still stabilize around 50%, while Sun Shangxiang's win rate is even lower, almost at the bottom of the marksman win rate rankings across all tiers.

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