Revisiting Jax's Blade of the Ruined King and Hextech Gunblade

A while ago, I did made a thread analyzing the pros and cons of Blade of the Ruined King versus Hextech Gunblade on Jax. Since some LCS players have recently had success on Jax in professional games and both items have been changed since I made that thread, I decided I would revisit the subject and redo my math. For reference, here are the stats of the two items:

Blade of the Ruined King (3200 Gold): +25 Attack Damage +10% Life Steal +40% Attack Speed

Unique (Passive): Your attacks deal 8% of the target's current health in physical damage (60 max vs minions and monsters)

Unique (Active): Drains target champion, dealing 10% of the target's maximum health in physical damage (min. 100) and healing you for the damage dealt. Additionally, you steal 25% of their movement speed for 3 seconds - 90 second cooldown. (450 range)

Hextech Gunblade (3400 Gold): +40 Attack Damage +80 Ability Power +10% Lifesteal +20% Spell Vamp

Unique(Passive): Your basic attacks (on hit) and single target spells against champions reduce the cooldown of this item by 3 seconds.

Unique (Active): Deals 150 (+40% AP) magic damage and slows the target champion's movement speed by 40% for 2 seconds. 60 second cooldown. (700 range)

These are Jax's stats with each of the items as well as the difference if Jax has a Gunblade instead of BoRK. This assumes that Jax is level 18 and already has a Trinity Force (a core item on Jax) and that he has 21/9/0 masteries and runes that give him 14 Physical Damage and no other offensive stats of any kind. Level 18 Jax with Trinity Force and BoRK:

Attack Damage: 206 Ability Power: 30 Attack Speed (0 Stacks): 1.48 Attack Speed (6 Stacks): 2.02 Q Damage: 334 Physical W Damage: 198 Magical E Damage: 193 Physical Ultimate Passive Damage: 241 Magical Average Ultimate Passive Damage Per Attack: 80.33 Ultimate Armor Increase: 93 Ultimate MR Increase: 56

Level 18 Jax with Trinity Force and Gunblade:

Attack Damage: 221 Ability Power: 110 Attack Speed (0 Stacks): 1.23 Attack Speed (6 Stacks): 1.77 Q Damage: 398 Physical W Damage: 244 Magical E Damage: 201 Physical Ultimate Passive Damage: 297 Magical Average Ultimate Passive Damage Per Attack: 99 Magical Ultimate Armor Increase: 101 ULtimate MR Increase: 72

Stat Difference (With Gunblade):

Attack Damage: +15 Ability Power: +80 Attack Speed (0 Stacks): -.25 Attack Speed (6 Stacks): -.25 Q Damage: +64 Physical W Damage: +46 Magical E Damage: +8 Physical Ultimate Passive Damage: +56 Magical Average Ultimate Passive Damage Per Attack: +18.67 Magical Ultimate Armor Increase: +8 Ultimate MR Increase: +16

I'll be going into detail later about the items' passive and active effects. For now, let's look at what these numbers mean for a Jax who is in a fight using his basic attacks and abilities. The most obvious stats to look at are of course his Attack Damage and Attack speed. We will assume that the Jax in question has all six stacks of his passive, as a Jax in any fight lasting long enough for basic attacks to matter would.

The Jax with Blade of the Ruined King will attack 2.02 times per second, and with 206 attack damage this means he will be doing 416.12 physical damage per second. Add in his ultimate's passive's magic damage on every third hit, and you get an average of approximately 578.39 damage per second.

The Jax with Hextech Gunblade will attack 1.77 times per second, and he has 221 attack damage, so he will do 391.17 physical damage per second. With his ultimate's passive, this becomes 566.4 damage per second.

Next, let's add in damage from abilities. First the numbers on his ability cooldowns. Assuming no Cooldown Reduction, a level 18 Jax will have a 6 second cooldown on his Q, a 3 second cooldown on his W, and an 8 second cooldown on his E. We will also assume that Trinity Force's Spellblade will be activated every 3 seconds, since Jax's generally use their W to proc it. Spellblade's damage will not change depending on Jax's items as it scales with base damage, so it's damage will be 238 physical damage for both Jax's. Since his E does more damage the more he is hit while it's active, we will assume that he's been enough times for it to reach it's maximum damage, which is plausible if the Jax is fighting his opponent in a wave of enemy minions. We will not be factoring in his ultimate's passive for the total ability damage since it was added to his damage per second with basic attacks, but we will include it for later use.

Using this information, we can determine that a Jax with either item will do the following damage per second with their abilities: Blade of the Ruined King: Q: 55.67 Physical damage per second W: 66 Magical damage per second E: 48.25 Physical damage per second R*: 162.27 Magical damage per second Spellblade: 79.33 Physical damage per second Total: 249.25 damage per second

Hextech Gunblade: Q: 66.33 Physical damage per second W: 81.33 Magical damage per second E: 50.25 Physical damage per second R*: 175.23 Magical damage per second Spellblade: 79.33 Physical damage per second Total: 277.24 damage per second

A small difference, to be sure, but enough to cause a Jax with Gunblade to deal about 20 damage per second more than a Jax with BoRK. The next thing we must investigate is the effects of each item's passives and actives. Here they are again so you don't have to scroll up:

Blade of the Ruined King:

Unique (Passive): Your attacks deal 8% of the target's current health in physical damage (60 max vs minions and monsters)

Unique (Active): Drains target champion, dealing 10% of the target's maximum health in physical damage (min. 100) and healing you for the damage dealt. Additionally, you steal 25% of their movement speed for 3 seconds - 90 second cooldown. (450 range)

Hextech Gunblade:

Unique(Passive): Your basic attacks (on hit) and single target spells against champions reduce the cooldown of this item by 3 seconds.

Unique (Active): Deals 150 (+40% AP) magic damage and slows the target champion's movement speed by 40% for 2 seconds. 60 second cooldown. (700 range)

First, we'll deal with Blade of the Ruined King's passive, and calculate overall damage per second. Assuming the Jax is bringing the tank from full health to zero over the course of the fight, BoRK's passive will deal an average of 4% of the target's maximum health per hit. Assuming the target has around 3400 health, which is around what most tanky champions would have at the late game, the passive would deal an average of 136 damage on hit. Adding up all the damage the BoRK Jax does per second gives us 881.7 damage per second. The Jax with Gunblade would deal 767.41, meaning the Jax with BoRK would deal 114.29 more damage per second than the Jax with Gunblade. This would seem to show that Blade of the Ruined King is a better item on Jax, even against squishy targets since even they would take significant damage from Blade of the Ruined King's passive. However, there are a few other things that must be looked into. First, the two items' actives.

The advantages and disadvantages Blade of the Ruined King's active effect has are:

1 second longer slow Approximate 25% movespeed boost -15% slow amount

Gunblade's active's damage will always deal 194 damage, and to match that the Health of BoRK's target would need to be 1940 to match that, which fits the bill for most squishy champions late game. So against a squishy the active damage is comparable, but what about a tank? Well we figured earlier that the tank has around 3400 health, which is pretty close to twice 1940, meaning that the BoRK active is about twice as good as Gunblade's against a tanky target. However, as I discovered last time I calculated these figures, if Jax continuously attacked and used his Q and W, which he would against a tankier target, he could reduce the cooldown to a measly fifteen seconds. Hypothetically, Gunblade's active could be used around five times as much as that of BoRK, but that's not very realistic. However, fights that last fifteen seconds are not out of the question for tanks, and so the damage Gunblade's active does is comparable to BoRK's. This doesn't do much for overall damage per second for either item, but I will now look at the healing of each.

Both items now have the same amount of lifesteal at 10%, and Gunblade gives 20% spell vamp. For those that do not know, Spellblade counts towards lifesteal, and Spell vamp counts for all ability damage, of course. The Jax with BoRK will heal about 49.55 health per second through lifesteal, while the Jax with Gunblade will heal about 47.05 health per second. The amount of healing is roughly the same. The Jax with Gunblade will heal an additional 74.63 health per second through spell vamp, however, for a total of 121.68 health per second. This means that the Jax with Gunblade will heal 72.13 more health per second than the Jax with BoRK.

This fails to take into account the healing from either item's active, however. Gunblade's deals 194 damage per hit, so that would be 38.8 health per activation. Against a 3400 health target, BoRK would heal 340 health on a single activation. If Gunblade's active were used twice it would heal for 77.6, so BoRK's active would heal for 262.4 health more. This means that over fifteen seconds of fighting, the Jax with BoRK would heal 1083.25 health, and the Jax with Gunblade would heal 1902.8 health, or 819.55 health more. This is not factoring in armor or magic resistance, and both would decrease healing. The Jax with Gunblade would generally have his healing decreased less, though, as magic resistance is less common than armor, especially if his opponent is building specifically to counter him.

Another thing to note is the amount of burst damage each Jax would deal, since Jax functions as more of an assassin than as someone who does sustained damage against squishy targets. We know the actives deal about the same damage to squishy targets (194), so let's add up the amount of damage he can do in one short burst to a squishy. For the purposes of this, we will assume that the Jax uses his Q on the target, then he uses his respective item's active and pops his counterstrike. He then attacks the target twice, resetting his attack timer with his W for the third strike that procs his Ultimate's Passive. We will also assume the target is at full health when this begins and that he dodges no attacks while his E is active.

Blade of the Ruined King: Q: 334 Active: 180 Attack: 206 BoRK Passive: 77.6 Spellblade: 238 Attack: 206 BoRK Passive: 77.6 W: 198 Ultimate: 241 Attack: 206 BoRK Passive: 77.6 E: 193 Total: 2234.6

Hextech Gunblade: Q: 398 Active: 180 Attack: 221 Spellblade: 238 Attack: 206 W: 244 Ultimate: 297 Attack: 221 E: 201 Total: 2206

This is of course not factoring in armor and magic resistance, so neither Jax will actually kill the target with just this combo. However, we can see that they do almost the exact same amount of damage. The higher the target's health is, the more damage the Jax with BoRK will do. The lower it is, the more the Jax with Gunblade will do. Unfortunately for both Jax's, actually pulling off this combo can be very difficult due to the mobility of most squishy targets and the peel of the enemy team. Due to this, the Jax with BoRK will have an advantage against the squishy target because his slow lasts longer, and he gets a speed boost to make up for his slow not being as strong.

As a side note, In my previous thread I ran the numbers for tower pushing and build-up time of Jax's passive, and I found that both items take towers at almost the same rate and BoRK builds up .5 seconds faster, which means basically nothing.

In summary: both items are very strong, and are about the same in most situations. The Jax with Blade of the Ruined King will deal about 15% more damage in a sustained fight against a tanky target, but the Jax with Hextech Gunblade will heal about 2.5 times as much as the Jax with Bork will in that fight. This means that a Jax with Gunblade will have longer fights, but he is a bit more likely to win them. Against squishies, if they have low peel and their mobility is low enough that the Jax with Gunblade can stay in range of them after using his item's active, then Gunblade will be about as good as BoRK. BoRK will be good against targets with a lot of peel or very good mobility.

TL;DR: If you want to split push a lot then you should probably take Gunblade, but if you plan to teamfight and the enemy team has a lot of peel or their ADC/Midlaner is mobile, then go with Blade of the Ruined King.

Thanks to everyone who actually read the whole thing. No hard feelings if you didn't though, it's pretty long.