The Black Cleaver - A support item?

Lost R··1 votes·760 views

Spoilers: No, it isn't, though it might as well be, since it seems to have that same degree of stigma as any support-related item.

In this AD assassin-heavy meta, the worst thing you can encounter is a smart tank vs. four or five assassins, and no Ignites. Now imagine if there are one or two more tank or off-tank enemy champions, and they all are smart enough to build a Thornmail or Omen; hell, even both! Most players' immediate response is to build a Last Whisper, but let's think about this for a moment.

The Last Whisper has 40 Attack damage and ignores 35% of the enemy's armor.

The Black Cleaver has 50 Attack damage, 200 HP, 10% CDR, 10 Armor Penetration and applies a debuff when dealing physical damage that damages the enemy's armor by 5% up to a maximum of 25%.

Depending on how many AD champions are on your team, getting a Black Cleaver might be a wiser decision. The Last Whisper ignores armor; it doesn't strip their armor away as a debuff. The Black Cleaver benefits the rest of your team. If you deal damage through sheer volume (Tristana, Vayne, Vi, Garen, Corki, Wukong, Pantheon, Jax, Trundle, etc.), a Black Cleaver opens up the enemy to additional damage from your team, and its effect is more far reaching than the Last Whisper. If you deal damage through nuking power (Kha'Zix, Nocturne, Rengar, Tryndamere, Yasuo, Draven) and you aren't a mage, then the Last Whisper is possibly more viable. Granted, there is no true AD nuke outside of Darius' ult, and even the listed AD nukers will also benefit their team more from the Black Cleaver, especially if most of the team is composed of AD champions.

So why doesn't anyone build it?

4 Comments

Enraged Piglet1 votes

there's just better things for a support to build. Even building straight ap could possibly be better since you can stun them as a support and since they have all armor you will still hurt them and building straight ap would probably be better for your laning phase then a black cleaver. If anything build a zekes since it would give your adc some lifesteal so hitting thornmail wouldn't be as bad.

Lost R1 votes

I didn't say that it was a support item. I said it was being treated, in my experience, as a support item, even when we're an all AD-assassin team vs. three tanks. Everyone simply refuses to build it, even when it's the most logical and reasonable thing to do.

KMannnnn11 votes

As a support, people don't build it, for fairly obvious reasons. However, according to:

http://www.elophant.com/league-of-legends/items/most-purchased

it is the 25th most purchased item across all regions and all tiers this past week, including stuff like boots 1 and health pots. People build it, and yeah, it's pretty dang strong.

Lost R1 votes

Maybe I'm the anomaly here, and I end up getting teamed up with the most pig-headed people. I tend to see everyone build the exact same thing; Berserker's Greaves, Bloodthirster, Youmuu, Infinity Edge, BoRK, and Last Whisper.

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