User blog comment:Care Level/Underlying Systems Rework: Differentiation between Attacks and Spells/@comment-24204000-20140105233345/@comment-9593635-20140106214456

Which spells do you think aren't clearly attack-like? What's "iffy" to you? This directly links to your second paragraph.

Cait doesn't use peacemaker when she can AA (the majority of the time) because her AAs do more damage for less time and less mana. She uses Peacemaker when there's a low target that she can't AA or for poke before real fights, but that's a huge shift from her earlygame paradigm of "Use this whenever possible because it's the most damage I can do". Sivir still throws boomerangs because there is no associated time cost; she doesn't have to stop AAing (her primary damage source) to do it. Again, it's the same shift from her strong poke being primary damage to it taking a backseat.

It's not hard to fill out a 6-item build as an AD caster, but the issue is that it's always the same 6 items: LW, BC, Hydra, BT, BT/GA, boots. There is no "The other team's AD is really strong, let's get Hourglass" option, or "their AP is strong and I have mana problems, let's get Athene's" or "They have a ton of health, let's go for Liandry's" (BotRK is the closest item, and botrk on Riven or Jayce is kind of silly). AP champs have really strong itemization options; AD champs should be similarly versatile. Anyone can build pure defensive items, so that's not really a counterpoint.