Since Riot Axes mentioned the two hydra items, let's talk about them

Last night Riot Axes was talking about AD item changes when he mentioned that Titanic Hydra was gotten far more often than Ravenous Hydra.

I'd like to talk a little bit more on why Ravenous Hydra is just plain worse than Titanic in most cases.

1. More HP > Sustain Basically HP protects you from burst while sustain (life steal) is better between fights. I mean if I'm healing for 50 HP per auto attack and like most melee champs I'm not getting much attack speed, it's going to take about 8 seconds for me to recover that health. That's a long time, my champ could be dead by then.

2. Titanic has a damage steroid The damage ravenous hydra gets is fixed. Once you get it, there's nothing that you can do to increase the damage. Titanic hydra scales with health. Once you cross the 3,000 HP range it does more damage. So the upside to titanic is better.

3. Titanic works with other bruiser/tank items Titanic hydra is a great item because it works so well with black cleaver and bruiser/tank items in general. It gives me the little bit of damage I need to kill things, it applies BC stacks all over the place, and it makes the armor and MR I'm buying work better. So this item is a win/win for me. Ravenous hydra on the other hand wants me to build a lot of damage items.

4. Melee only Melee champs are at a bit of a disadvantage if they buy too many of the things as they have to survive the initial damage to get in ranged to do damage themselves and they have to survive the trading that happens after that. Titanic hydra helps me get close, and its AoE is more able to hit someone out of my range under the right circumstances. Ravenous hydra needs me to get in closer before I can even apply the splash damage and it gives me no tools to get in closer.

I think that if riot wants to get Ravenous Hydra right (and I like the item and think that they should improve it) then they need to take these 4 things into account.

Solutions A. Ravenous hydra needs to enable my damage better. I need to survive burst better and/or I need to get on top of the guy damaging me quicker.

B. Ravenous hydra needs something to overcome Titanic's better potential damage. Perhaps shifting some AD to % max health of target on hit? Maybe % max health life steal on hit?

C. It needs better synergy with the items it is built with and the champions it is build on. It's got to offer something to a melee champ, and if it's not going to be the bruiser/tank item then it needs to work better with fighter builds. Titanic is so good right now because it is so well tuned to the needs of bruisers. While ravenous hydra does give a bunch of stats, that's all it does.