adding a longsword into cleavers build path is a dumb idea, and here is why

Critmaster Garen··1 votes·674 views

the entire point of the change to cleaver and its build path is to make it feel better on bruisers, than squishier adc, skirmishers and assassins.

  • fighters like Renekton Darius Garen Illaoi have the highest base ad and base ad/lvl scaling in the game. this means stacking health early on by building item 3044 + item 3067 into cleaver and getting + 100 health and - 10 ad is just as good as stacking ad into the item for them.

  • assassins, adc and skirmishers are among the champions with the lowest base ad. most of their abilities scale with high bonus ad ratios, while diver/juggernauts abilities usually scale with** total ad** (base ad + bonus ad) and often with health. this is why squishy types have an easy time building into cleaver by stacking item 1036 item 1036 item 1036 right now.

think about what this means. if a squishy bonus ad scaling champion who wants to rush cleaver, has to sit on a health build until he has the 1000 gold for the combine cost of the item, he will feel like shit about it. his abilities deal no damage and lasthitting is a pain. the build is incredibly ineffective for them until the item is finished.

meanwhile juggernauts with their health scalings, high base ad and less bonus ad scalings will still deal overall decent damage and are more than fine sitting on the extra health over the same duration.

adding a longsword to the recipe only benefits the champions who are not supposed to benefit from the new build path.

13 Comments

ValyrianBlade2 votes

[{quoted}](name=Critmaster Garen,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=IaA9mgeA,comment-id=,timestamp=2017-02-13T12:50:02.942+0000)

the entire point of the change to cleaver and its build path is to make it feel better on bruisers, than squishier adc, skirmishers and assassins.

  • fighters like Renekton Darius Garen Illaoi have the highest base ad and base ad/lvl scaling in the game. this means stacking health early on by building item 3044 + item 3067 into cleaver and getting + 100 health and - 10 ad is just as good as stacking ad into the item for them.

  • assassins, adc and skirmishers are among the champions with the lowest base ad. most of their abilities scale with high bonus ad ratios, while diver/juggernauts abilities usually scale with** total ad** (base ad + bonus ad) and often with health. this is why squishy types have an easy time building into cleaver by stacking item 1036 item 1036 item 1036 right now.

think about what this means. if a squishy bonus ad scaling champion who wants to rush cleaver, has to sit on a health build until he has the 1000 gold for the combine cost of the item, he will feel like shit about it. his abilities deal no damage and lasthitting is a pain. the build is incredibly ineffective for them until the item is finished.

meanwhile juggernauts with their health scalings, high base ad and less bonus ad scalings will still deal overall decent damage and are more than fine sitting on the extra health over the same duration.

adding a longsword to the recipe only benefits the champions who are not supposed to benefit from the new build path.

As the guy who made the post originally about adding a long sword, your argument is dumb and here's why: Adding a longsword to cleavers pbe build path is still down one longsword (10 bonus ad) from its current state. While simultaneously nerfing damage masteries, lethality items, and the top Lane meta being super tanks already, a change that hurts people who beat tanks while all other changes in the cycle hurt them too is going too far in one patch.

Remember that cleaver used to have the pbe build path and was changed towards damage because it was too weak on damage dealers and too strong on juggernauts.

So what's wrong with going halfway? There's no harm in trying it - no one says it can't be moved the rest of the way if it isn't enough, there isn't a huge problem with its current state anyways beyond stacking with lethality too well (when lethality items are seeing nerfs), and at the current state we're hopping back to an iteration of the item that has already failed.

Critmaster Garen1 votes

{quoted}

Remember that cleaver used to have the pbe build path and was changed towards damage because it was too weak on damage dealers and too strong on juggernauts.

i dont see how it was too strong on juggernauts, when juggernauts with cleaver were previously balanced. and i dont believe that it was changed because of them.

as far as damage going down and top lane becoming more tanky, juggernauts have no issue with taking extended fights. a darius vs. a maokai or a nautilus will win the fight in the long run.

again. the goal was making the build path way better for fighters than squishy bonus ad scaling champions. adding an additional longsword benefits those squishies more than bruisers. i dont see the appeal.

with the kindlegem build path, between a Riven and a Darius , a cleaver rush became much less feasable for the riven than it is now, while the item is still a good rush for the darius. it means the riven is forced to go back to item 3074 as her first item or to a lethality item like item 3142 , and push the cleaver back to her second or third item instead.

RexSaur1 votes

[{quoted}](name=Critmaster Garen,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=IaA9mgeA,comment-id=00010000,timestamp=2017-02-13T16:52:30.938+0000)

i dont see how it was too strong on juggernauts, when juggernauts with cleaver were previously balanced. and i dont believe that it was changed because of them.

as far as damage going down and top lane becoming more tanky, juggernauts have no issue with taking extended fights. a darius vs. a maokai or a nautilus will win the fight in the long run.

again. the goal was making the build path way better for fighters than squishy bonus ad scaling champions. adding an additional longsword benefits those squishies more than bruisers. i dont see the appeal.

with the kindlegem build path, between a Riven and a Darius , a cleaver rush became much less feasable for the riven than it is now, while the item is still a good rush for the darius. it means the riven is forced to go back to item 3074 as her first item or to a lethality item like item 3142 , and push the cleaver back to her second or third item instead.

Hydra is a terrible item for riven to rush.

No cdr, active doesnt do that much without other AD items, expensive as hell.

Riven would rather rush deaths dance over it, but she'll just rush cleaver because nothing else can deal with tanks.

Critmaster Garen1 votes

{quoted}

Hydra is a terrible item for riven to rush.

No cdr, active doesnt do that much without other AD items, expensive as hell.

Riven would rather rush deaths dance over it, but she'll just rush cleaver because nothing else can deal with tanks.

hydra is fine for riven. it has other benefits like granting sustain, increasing her wave clear without having to burn her cooldowns, and the auto attack reset to weave into trades.

it was her rush item when cleaver was first built from kindlegem, and riven mains didnt complain back then. theyre just gonna fall back to this option again.

Big Lincoln1 votes

it's actually a negative change for illaoi overall; she has huge scalings and needs a large amount of AD asap before she needs to get tanky

not being able to grab 3 longswords means it's probably not going to be her first item anymore. probably item 3142 or item 3812 in most matchups now

Critmaster Garen1 votes

[{quoted}](name=Big Lincoln,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=IaA9mgeA,comment-id=0000,timestamp=2017-02-13T12:53:12.798+0000)

it's actually a negative change for illaoi overall; she has huge scalings and needs a large amount of AD asap before she needs to get tanky

not being able to grab 3 longswords means it's probably not going to be her first item anymore. probably item 3142 or item 3812 in most matchups now

illaoi has other issues imo.

her entire power curve is fucked up. shes way too strong early game and way too useless mid to lategame.

if they want to fix illaoi, they need to partially go back on the visibility change of her tentacles. they need to make them visible from outside bushes, but not targetable for auto attacks. this would at least balance her strength vs. melee/ranged matchups out.

then they need to balance her early game around that (probably tune it down) and do something for her midgame at the least.

imo what illaoi needs is

  • tune down the spawn rate of her tentacles early game, so taking the risk of getting pulled to kill them is more rewarding
  • change tentacles to be visible but not targetable from outside bushes, so ranged champions have to walk up to them and its not like 100 times easier for them to take them out than for melee champs
  • massively increase the spawn rate of tentacles by lategame, when the game is all about roaming and movement around the map. nobody got time for that shit to sit 30 sec in one place to build up tentacles, like you do in the lane phase.
Big Lincoln1 votes

her midgame is where she's strongest tho. from playing her for about 2 weeks now, her lane bully doesn't really kick in til level 3, and it doesn't REALLY kick in until 6. mid-game is all about where you are relative to your tentacles; if you've managed them good and you have a nest of 3 before ult then you can very easily pull off a multikill without your team's help

being a nest fighter just lends herself to a poor late game as far as reliability goes, the same way Heimerdinger falls off in that she can't build a nest quickly and it's easily destroyed if she's forced away from it. she's not even terrible late; it's just that tentacles take a while to spawn, and when it comes to 50 minute fights she doesn't have that sort of time.

Critmaster Garen1 votes

[{quoted}](name=Big Lincoln,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=IaA9mgeA,comment-id=000000000000,timestamp=2017-02-13T13:00:39.809+0000)

her midgame is where she's strongest tho.

http://champion.gg/champion/Illaoi

look at winrate per game time.

her lane phase is the strongest, because she just sits in lane bullying her opponent, and litters the area with tentacles.

as soon as the game moves to a phase that is more about roaming around the map to get picks and objectives, her usefulness falls off. because she has absolutely 0 time to sit in one place and set up tentacles. if she does, the enemy team just pressures a lane shes not sitting in.

not to mention, when teams are grouped, shes suddenly faced with 2 or 3 ranged champions who take out her tentacles like nothing.

if she doesnt move out of top lane, just send a single ranged champion against her, and her pressure is 0.

imo illaoi needs larger changes to her tentacle mechanics first. and only then can her actual strength be assessed, and her scalings changed around to just scale more off base ad like other juggs.

FireDrizzle1 votes

[{quoted}](name=Critmaster Garen,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=IaA9mgeA,comment-id=0000000000000000,timestamp=2017-02-13T13:06:13.527+0000)

http://champion.gg/champion/Illaoi

look at winrate per game time.

her lane phase is the strongest, because she just sits in lane bullying her opponent, and litters the area with tentacles.

as soon as the game moves to a phase that is more about roaming around the map to get picks and objectives, her usefulness falls off. because she has absolutely 0 time to sit in one place and set up tentacles. if she does, the enemy team just pressures a lane shes not sitting in.

not to mention, when teams are grouped, shes suddenly faced with 2 or 3 ranged champions who take out her tentacles like nothing.

if she doesnt move out of top lane, just send a single ranged champion against her, and her pressure is 0.

imo illaoi needs larger changes to her tentacle mechanics first. and only then can her actual strength be assessed, and her scalings changed around to just scale more off base ad like other juggs.

I think Illoais cast times are too long for her to be strong lategame, unless lategame damage drops a LOT.

Big Lincoln1 votes

change how ranged champs can interact with them then. make them require more time, or let tentacles regen HP if Illaoi keeps them alive (i don't know why this doesn't already happen)

i made a thread the other day about making her E proximity based instead of damage, so that ranged champs or champs with heavy DoT can't just throw shit at her from complete safety and minimize their damage.

it would be nice, too, if the Vessel debuff's time scaled down from tentacles swinging every 10 seconds. it's fair in lane but not nearly enough pressure late game.

that being said im fine with no changes, she's fair champ who can snowball but offers way more interaction than p much any other lane bully

Big Lincoln1 votes

I think the only real problem with juggernauts is that meta tanks also do enough damage to kill priority targets making them redundant.

I wouldn't find Maokai lockdown so unbearable if he wasn't also chunking me despite having visage and treads

so nerf tanks

RexSaur1 votes

Why does darius need help again?

Why fuck ad casters/assassins in favor of 3 champions?

Black cleaver is one of the few ways ad champions can deal with tanks early to mid game and in the laning phase, and it WILL still be bought on them just because nothing else they can rush can deal with sunfire tabi tanks.

This change is basically just a tank buff nothing else because they are making it worse to build.

Critmaster Garen1 votes

{quoted}

Why does darius need help again?

Why fuck ad casters/assassins in favor of 3 champions?

Black cleaver is one of the few ways ad champions can deal with tanks early to mid game and in the laning phase, and it WILL still be bought on them just because nothing else they can rush can deal with sunfire tabi tanks.

This change is basically just a tank buff nothing else because they are making it worse to build.

darius isnt being buffed with this change. juggs still get the same benefit out of cleaver as before.

the idea is to make the item suck on everybody else to prevent these ridiculous lethality builds stacked with cleaver on adc and assassins.

fuck mf hitting r, and melting your team in half a second. if she wants to build cleaver now, she better sit on that 15 ad build for the next 5 to 10 minutes.

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