If you need to build Hourglass as your first or second item, you've probably already lost

Yenn·Jul 1, 2018·2 votes·776 views

Can someone on the balance team actually look at this statistic?

It's pretty absurd. No matter how well you're doing, if the enemy team has a champion that forces you to build an Hourglass as one of your first two items, you're probably going to lose. Most AP carries' win rates drop significantly when they build this, by as much as 10%.

Considering most games end at 2-3 items, this should be a pretty major red flag.

4 Comments

KhristophorosJul 1, 20181 votes

Just don't build it unless it's core to your champ tbh. The idea that it counters assassins is false and a noob trap.

YennJul 1, 20181 votes

{quoted}

Just don't build it unless it's core to your champ tbh. The idea that it counters assassins is false and a noob trap.

But you're worse off without it, because something is going to kill you in 1-2 seconds; if you need to build it, your champion is probably completely countered and there's nothing you can do to deal with it, which shows a major design/balance issue

BLACK REALM GODJul 1, 20181 votes

{quoted}

But you're worse off without it, because something is going to kill you in 1-2 seconds; if you need to build it, your champion is probably completely countered and there's nothing you can do to deal with it, which shows a major design/balance issue

nah. you're worse off trying to force something that wont work regardless. hour glass is for champions like karthus to use and to be countered by. it's not meant for countering assassins. it's meant for DOT damage.

even with the added cooldown reduction from inspiration and domination you're looking at a 30 second timer. that's a lot longer than an assassin's cooldowns and you're more than likely not going to get to use it anyway if they've built duskblade.

the 2.5 seconds of invulnerability is primarily for preventing things like poison, ignite, etc. if you cancel out that dot you can reduce total damage output. especially with things like twitch's passive, katarinas R, fiddlesticks R, and so much more.

you shouldnt build it against most mids when you're playing as a mage. instead you should build rod of ages or rylais since they grant you max hp. if an assassin is building penetration like youmuus then you'd better have enough damage to one shot them and enough health to not get one shotted.

KhristophorosJul 1, 20181 votes

Get a stopwatch and otherwise build normally. Group with team asap. The stopwatch is just to give you slightly longer to farm before grouping. It's not ideal but basically, staying in lane in a bad matchup is a losing strategy no matter which items you build.