Guinsoo's Rageblade, Devourer, and Bloodrazor

Hi folks,

As part of the Midseason patch, we’re doing some work on a couple of items that have been problematic through the first half of the season: Guinsoo’s Rageblade and Enchantment: Devourer.

Enchantment: Devourer As of the 6.9 patch, Devourer is being removed from the game. In order to provide support to attack speed-oriented junglers, we’re replacing it with a new item:

Enchantment: Bloodrazor

• Recipe: Jungle Item + Recurve Bow + 625 gold (2625 total gold)
• +40% Attack Speed
• UNIQUE Passive: Basic attacks deal 3% of the target’s maximum Health in bonus physical damage (max 75 vs. monsters and minions) on hit.

Attack speed junglers break down into two different audiences, and this item is supposed to serve both. Tanky on-hit junglers like Shyvana and Warwick who want one or two non-scaling offensive items appreciate the % maximum health damage on Bloodrazor. Meanwhile, on-hit scaling offense champions like Master Yi and Kindred should be able to pair it with other attack speed items like Blade of the Ruined King plus physical damage modifiers like Youmuu’s Ghostblade or Lord Dominik’s Regards for scaling builds.

We needed to make this change because, frankly, farm jungle items weren’t having good effects on the game. Devourer and Sated Devourer both represent incremental improvements in game health over previous farm jungle items – Devourer removed the sustain and warding that allowed a farm jungler guaranteed ‘do not disturb’ farming, while Sated Devourer kicks farm junglers out of the jungle with a clear call to action. This wasn’t enough, however. The biggest problem farm jungle items create for the game is the initial 10-15 minutes, not their effects on the mid-game.

There will still be junglers who prioritize farming more than others, there will still be junglers who you rarely see ganking your lane, and there will still be junglers who defer power to later in the game, but that will be left to the kits now – the systems won’t be forcing it.

Guinsoo’s Rageblade Guinsoo’s Rageblade has a few problems on Live. We’re pretty confident that it’s not actually overpowered – it’s sufficiently situational, providing the kind of power that a certain set of champions needs without heavily bleeding over onto other champions. When it does see play on other champions (looking at you, Tristana), it’s picked for specific reasons to fill a niche, not because it is generically powerful.

That said, the item is balanced around a couple of different elements that can feel very bad – both to play as and play against. It has one of the worst build paths in the game, creating a low point in champion power immediately before you finish. This is counterbalanced by a very high power spike immediately after – it provides more power than an item usually gives for 2800 gold because it needs to offset that artificial weakness.

There are a couple other, smaller issues – because it causes an AOE on hit, it has an inappropriate interaction with Runaan’s Hurricane, hard-binding ranged Rageblade users to that item. Additionally, melee users simply don’t need to double stack on hit. Hitting 8 stacks is prohibitively too difficult for a champion like Jax to rely on, but that doesn’t mean 4 stacks is the right number.

We’re looking to smooth the item out with both a better build path and with a more appropriate gold cost for the power it gives. Without further ado:

Guinsoo’s Rageblade

• Recipe: Blasting Wand + Recurve Bow + Pickaxe + 875 gold (3600 total gold)
• +35 Attack Damage
• +50 Ability Power
• Passive: Basic attacks deal an additional 15 magic damage on hit.
• UNIQUE Passive: Basic attacks grant +8% Attack Speed, +3 Attack Damage, and +4 Ability Power for 5 seconds (stacks up to 6 times). While you have 6 stacks, gain Guinsoo’s Rage.
• Guinsoo’s Rage: Every other basic attack will trigger on hit effects an additional time.

A quick note on the Phantom Hit passive: we’re trying that passive here because it fits the item well and is very cool - it drives different styles of builds while presenting a cool visual and a cool fantasy. We’re comfortable putting it here because the additional gating of needing to stack Rageblade removes a lot of the problematic use cases Phantom Hit caused on Devourer. For example, where Devourer makes Xin Zhao’s knockup a 2-hit combo for the rest of the game, this Rageblade makes it a 2-hit combo only if Xin has been able to basic attack for a while.