Building a Better Deathcap

With 120 AP + 40% AP, Rabadon's Deathcap is one of the strongest items a mage or any other AP champ can buy. It's typically bought as a late game item (fourth or fifth completed item), but I've noticed it's also one of the best early to mid game items (second or third completed item) in terms of win rate. After you get your first AP item, the raw AP and scaling of deathcap on your current and future AP makes it a better buy than almost anything else.

If you want to rush a deathcap earlier than normal, you do trade off other important stats you could be getting from other AP items such as health, CDR, and magic penetration. But I think one of the biggest deterrents to an early deathcap is the clunky build path. Right now, you need two Needlessly Large Rods that cost 1250 gold each + 1100 gold. While this build isn't much of an issue in the late game, it's tougher to swing earlier because you may not have the necessary gold for the rods when you back or die. The problem is very much analogous to the problem ADCs were facing after patch 8.11 when the reworked IE required two B.F. Swords. It was really annoying to be unable to make progress in your build just because you didn't have enough gold.

With that in mind, I would like to propose two possible solutions that would make the build for deathcap easier.

Solution 1: Make Needlessly Large Rods Advanced Items

= + + 380 gold.

If rods could be built by combining two Amplifying Tomes + 380 gold, that would provide a very smooth build path into deathcap.You can get some additional AP from tomes even if you can't afford an entire rod. And the tomes can be converted into rods when you have enough gold so they don't take up all your item slots. This change would also positively impact Spellbinder, the only other item on SR that has a rod in its recipe.

Solution 2: Bring Back the Old Deathcap Recipe

= + + + 1065 gold.

Prior to patch 8.4, the recipe for deathcap was a rod, a Blasting Wand, and a tome, plus the combine cost. I looked for the explanation for the change to two rods in patch 8.4, but unfortunately, like many of the recent patch notes, there isn't really a reason provided. The cost and passive for deathcap were slightly tweaked, but it didn't really necessitate a change to two rods. Going back to the old build would make a lot of sense.

Personally, I would go for #1. I think it's ridiculous to have basic items that cost 1250 gold. In a similar spirit, I would change B.F. Swords to advanced items where you could combine three Long Swords with 250 gold and do the same for pickaxes so you could combine two Long Swords with 175 gold. It's a rant for another day, but I think expensive basic items are a big factor as to why games can quickly snowball into lopsided stomps when there's so much damage in the game.