BotRK is still in an awful place, the nerf backfired.

FistOfSharkiesha·Dec 25, 2015·7 votes·713 views

As most of you know, BotRK is now a piece of shit. Riot pre-emptively nerfed it because of Kog'Maw's new 5.00 AS potential, and other ranged champions like Vayne and Kalista getting way too much use out of it. All this did was cause bruisers and assassins to not get it. It still has huge synergy with Vayne and Kog'Maw, and Kalista doesn't have a fantastic build option so you still see it on her quite a bit.

tl;dr BotRK was nerfed because of ranged champions, yet now ranged champions are the only ones buying it while it sucks for melee champions.

All you have to do is treat it like Rageblade acts for ranged champions. Revert the nerf and give ranged champions half of the % current health damage passive. Then it will be balanced for ranged champions and usable for melee champions once again.

16 Comments

Critmaster GarenDec 25, 20152 votes

please stop. bork was retarded before the nerf to the passive.

someone could build bork into an opponent with frozen heart and still win trades. this literally happened to me. one item on my lane opponent that should get completely countered by the frozen heart in my inventory suddenly won him trades.

its an item designed to counter health stacking and was strong enough to beat an armor rush. the item by itself was far too strong. at least now youre foced to stack it with giant slayer to get the same effect.

its still bullshit that its passive applies lifesteal. it doesnt just devalue health as a defensive stat, youre literally giving the bork carry ammunition against yourself by stacking health, as he gets more health sustain off your larger hp pool.

the point where building a defensive stat benefits the guy whos attacking you more than yourself, should be a hint that the item is broken in concept.

disregardableDec 25, 20152 votes

You realize that frozen heart is a cheaper item than bork, right....

Like honestly the things you post ...

Critmaster GarenDec 25, 20153 votes

[{quoted}](name=Very Toxic Jinx,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=16n0hWaN,comment-id=00020000,timestamp=2015-12-25T09:34:55.831+0000)

You realize that frozen heart is a cheaper item than bork, right....

Like honestly the things you post ...

i do realize that. and you realize that bork is supposed to be an item specifically made to deal with health stacking?

this 1 item alone shouldnt beat someone who rushes a frozen heart without stacking actual health.

in fact an armor rush instead of a hp rush, combined with the fact that frozen hearts attack speed slow should counter bork as an attack speed/on hit item should guarantee you to win a fight vs. someone with nothing but a bork. well it didnt.

on many champions bork was way too good as a general pick. it got nerfed by 2%. instead you got giant slayer to stack with it. you can still counter health. but now you have to commit to it.

disregardableDec 25, 20152 votes

Items don't "beat" other players or other items. When an item is more expensive than another item, it gives you more stats. When you have more stats than your opponent, you're better able to fight them and win trades. And then, besides the fact that bork is more expensive and has more stats, ALL of its stats are related to winning trades. AD, attack speed, lifesteal. Frozen heart's aren't. The mana isn't going to help you win trades, it's going to help you stay in the lane.

So not only are you 600 gold behind when you have a frozen heart into their bork, you've got another 600 gold sunk into mana, so really you're 1200 gold behind. To compare stats, that means you're 35 AD or 350 health behind.

This is ignoring the passives, obviously.

Critmaster GarenDec 25, 20152 votes

[{quoted}](name=Very Toxic Jinx,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=16n0hWaN,comment-id=0002000000000000,timestamp=2015-12-25T09:50:12.242+0000)

Items don't "beat" other players or other items. When an item is more expensive than another item, it gives you more stats. When you have more stats than your opponent, you're better able to fight them and win trades. And then, besides the fact that bork is more expensive and has more stats, ALL of its stats are related to winning trades. AD, attack speed, lifesteal, percent health. Frozen heart's aren't. The mana isn't going to help you win trades, it's going to help you stay in the lane.

So not only are you 600 gold behind when you have a frozen heart into their bork, you've got another 600 gold sunk into mana, so really you're 1200 gold behind. To compare stats, that means you're 35 AD or 350 health behind.

thats not how any of it works.

no matter how much gold you invest into certain stats, a wrong build is a wrong build. you could invest 10k gold into pure armor. dont be surprised that you get beaten by someone who just has a cleaver and a last whisper in his inventory since 5k gold in stats in your inventory are now useless.

it doesnt matter that bork is more expensive than frozen heart. the frozen heart rush should still beat the bork rush due to being the complete opposite of what benefits the bork.

the bork rush beats a warmorgs rush.

the cleaver rush beats the armor rush.

the health rush beats the last whisper rush.

the obvious solution would be to not continue rushing a fucking bork when you see your opponent stack armor without health. the fact that this was still possible before the item was nerfed, was plain stupid.

otherwise youre completely removing a strategical part from the game that is called "counterbuild". and the champions that scale best with the most expensive items would automatically win.

"oh look, that guy is building a bork. looks like im fucked, since even building the complete opposite of what hes building against wouldnt help me here. too bad, maybe next game"

disregardableDec 25, 20152 votes

Like, have you ever considered here

that

instead of an item being "busted" because it doesn't work the way you think it should

that

the way you're thinking is wrong

Critmaster GarenDec 25, 20152 votes

[{quoted}](name=Very Toxic Jinx,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=16n0hWaN,comment-id=000200000000000000000000,timestamp=2015-12-25T10:20:57.661+0000)

Like, have you ever considered here

that

instead of an item being "busted" because it doesn't work the way you think it should

that

the way you're thinking is wrong

have you?

please tell me how with just two items compared to each other, an item that slows attack speed and grants a large amount of armor shouldnt outperform an item that is specialized on health scaling physical damage and scales with attack speed.

if bork wasnt too good on its own like youre saying, then why was it nerfed and giant slayer added instead?

the truth is, your opponent didnt even need to stack health for bork to be effective most of the time. it was overtuned. it was nerfed. learn to live with it.

its not even that they reduced the damage against health stackers. its really just that the item by itself is now less effective. dominiks and bork still create the same effect as pre nerf bork. if the combination isnt even stronger, due to the 15% bonus damage applying to the base damage of your auto attack plus the on hit damage.

disregardableDec 25, 20152 votes

We've been over this twice now. Frozen heart is worth less than Bork. It gives you armor and as slow, yes, but bork gives you MORE offensive stats than frozen heart gives you defensive stats. That doesn't mean it's broken, that just means that it costs more. I don't know what your mental block with value is.

SasogwaDec 25, 20151 votes

[{quoted}](name=Very Toxic Jinx,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=16n0hWaN,comment-id=0002000000000000,timestamp=2015-12-25T09:50:12.242+0000)

Items don't "beat" other players or other items. When an item is more expensive than another item, it gives you more stats. When you have more stats than your opponent, you're better able to fight them and win trades. And then, besides the fact that bork is more expensive and has more stats, ALL of its stats are related to winning trades. AD, attack speed, lifesteal. Frozen heart's aren't. The mana isn't going to help you win trades, it's going to help you stay in the lane.

So not only are you 600 gold behind when you have a frozen heart into their bork, you've got another 600 gold sunk into mana, so really you're 1200 gold behind. To compare stats, that means you're 35 AD or 350 health behind.

This is ignoring the passives, obviously.

Have you considered the fact that a tanky champion should be able to itemize against 2 kinds of damage dealers (physical + magical) without being overly punished by it?

The fact the offensive items usually are weaker as a rush and scale together better than defensive items do should mean defensive items should be better as a rush, and the fact that you should build 2 types of defense should make defensive items 2 times more gold-efficient. But luckily, champions who synergize with defensive items have strong base damage/ low offensive scaling/ good defensive scalings favourising a defensive build (or they'd simply be trash). Still.

The fact that one single offensive items beats a powerspike defensive item which design specifically has great stats against it (armor vs physical damage, no health vs %health damage, attack speed reduction VS an on-hit effect item), is wrong. And 400 gold difference isn't supposed to make much difference anyway.

Botrk looks weak now, because it's balanced. The item just gave too much of everything, it's too versatile. Damage powerspike? Insane. Attack speed? Check Lifesteal? Check Lategame scaling? %health and lifesteal based off that, also there's the attack speed -> check Active helping kite? Check

Right now it still gives that, but with balanced values. Oh and I'm still kinda sad it's been nerfed, it was absolutely insanely good on Yi which is one of my mains, yet it deserved it.

disregardableDec 25, 20151 votes

I mean I personally just liked having a counter to tanks that was actually effective. One of the goals of these itemization changes was to give us more things to build, but now I don't change a single item in my build order per game. I just can't build bork instead of BT anymore. It's not good enough. They nerfed it when it needed a buff to stay viable.

SasogwaDec 25, 20151 votes

[{quoted}](name=Very Toxic Jinx,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=16n0hWaN,comment-id=000200000000000000010000,timestamp=2015-12-25T11:29:42.623+0000)

I mean I personally just liked having a counter to tanks that was actually effective. One of the goals of these itemization changes was to give us more things to build, but now I don't change a single item in my build order per game. I just can't build bork instead of BT anymore. It's not good enough. They nerfed it when it needed a buff to stay viable.

Tbh it never really fitted the niche it was supposed to. %health was good against tanks, but it was also good against everyone else. It was like, a rush item for powerspikes. And lategame, it was hard to say if it was better than BT, because you want to overcome the thornmail and sustain a lot, you've got the damages and tools against armor (crit,as,arpen) and you really need lifesteal from there on.

It was more of a midgame thing (that was still very relevant late) and combined with item 3142 gave awesome midgame with slightly worse late (arguably not against big tanks). The fact youmuu's doesnt give crit anymore also kinda butchered the lategame potential if you wanted to transition a bit into crit ( item 3153 item 3031 , old item 3035 )

If they wanted botrk to be fill more of a "lategame item against tanks" niche, they should let the passive crit. They already let it lifesteal, which was pretty huge. But it would lead to some problematic cases (hello Yasuo )

Critmaster GarenDec 25, 20151 votes

[{quoted}](name=Very Toxic Jinx,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=16n0hWaN,comment-id=000200000000000000010000,timestamp=2015-12-25T11:29:42.623+0000)

I mean I personally just liked having a counter to tanks that was actually effective. One of the goals of these itemization changes was to give us more things to build, but now I don't change a single item in my build order per game. I just can't build bork instead of BT anymore. It's not good enough. They nerfed it when it needed a buff to stay viable.

you still have this counter with dominiks.

the combination of the current bork and dominiks isnt even less slot efficient than the old bork and last whisper. they just moved some power of bork over to another item that most adc get anyways.

it just lowered the powerspike the old bork granted on its own. bork isnt suppsoed to be a general purpose item thats good against everyone. its not even an item that in priciple you should just be able to rush. its there in the game to put a limit on massive health stacking builds.

and the difference in cost is really not large enough to justify bork outperforming frozen heart on a base health pool. again. its supposed to be a specialized, supplementary item that is cost effective under certain conditions. it shouldnt be already cost effective when these conditions arent met.

youre saying that bork is 3400 gold invested into offensive stats. but it shouldnt even be worth that much against an opponent who deosnt stack health. it should be worth significantly less than those 3400 gold against someone who doesnt stack health, and become more cost effective against beefier opponents.

and thats exactly the problem the old bork had. and imo the lifesteal on the passive is still wrong. it creates a situation where building health doesnt just make you not any more resilient against the guy with the bork, but also causes him to deal more absolute damage to you and lifestealing more health off you. buying health is not just doing nothing, but effectively benefiting the guy with the bork more than the guy who stacks health. and thats really fucked up.

a lot of champs are deliberately geared towards health stacking and dont have much option of taking other routes if they want to be effective. people get the illusion of being able to take more punishment by building health, when what it actually does is help the guy with bork.

of course health still helps you against everyone who doesnt have a bork in his inventory. but if a defensive stat becomes beneficial for the attacker, instead of the defender it goes too far.

AyRe CoNteMpTDec 25, 20151 votes

also, the cost

MLDzXnRRRDec 25, 20151 votes

It's too expensive now.

Ale non è maleDec 25, 20151 votes

BoTRK must also have a scaling on max health, not only on current one That's the core problem As anti-tank item, it should be picked against the tank thats that can build super high health and have super high health regen (hello DrMundo of the latest patches). It make no sense that it deals more damage to a 2000 hp squishy than what it does to a tank that has yet been shred from max health to 2000 hp because the tank at least has the resistence to absorb the damage from that point on, you have built that item TO COUNTER HP STACKING, damn