While the Black Cleaver change is nice, Brutalizer could use some love

Visigoth··9 votes·1,743 views

With the new Cleaver change, Brutalizer now would only have one build path outside of the jungle item. So laners cannot get early armor pen unless they want Youmou's, which wouldn't be optimal on some champions like Pantheon and Olaf, who penefit much harder from Cleaver, but also benefit from early armor pen.

And besides, one build path is pretty boring. Especially if the item with one build path is the poster child of early armor penetration, but only builds into an item better for ADCs or assassins, not the bruisers and bullies more likely to want the penetration.

A pretty popular idea has been to incorporate Brutalizer into item 3508, taking BF off its build path, adding in a mini ER to replace the Vamp Scepter, and then you have a small amount of armor pen, maybe 20% cdr now, the mana passive, lifesteal, and maybe tone damage to like 60. This would be really good on champions like Jayce and Pantheon who can eat through mana and benefit from armor pen.

9 Comments

The5lacker5 votes

I'd much rather we just phase out flat Pen in its entirety. It's a mechanic that's only good at punishing people NOT building defenses. Which...makes no sense. People without defenses are punished by taking lots of damage.

Visigoth1 votes

{quoted}

I'd much rather we just phase out flat Pen in its entirety. It's a mechanic that's only good at punishing people NOT building defenses. Which...makes no sense. People without defenses are punished by taking lots of damage.

that would require the entire removal of sorcerers shoes and would mess up item 3136 item 3151. unless you meant just armor pen

The5lacker1 votes

All flat pen, and yes, some items would have to be changed. Ninja Tabi had to be changed when they removed Dodge Chance as well. "Things would have to be changed" is not a valid reason not to fix things that are broken.

Teridax681 votes

I feel Liandry's Torment is in the same situation as the Black Cleaver now, though: the burn effect is good for whittling down tanks, especially on poke champions who'd otherwise have trouble dealing with regen on tanky opponents, but the flat penetration means the wielder deals more damage especially to squishies, who tend to have an even bigger difference in MR than in armor with tanks, due to how a lot of champions don't naturally gain MR at all. On top of this, it has terrible stats for a max-tier item (50 AP and 300 health isn't spectacular), which makes it not as good as it could be. The fact that it's also the only upgrade for Haunting Guise, which is much more oriented towards squishy-killing, also looks like an opportunity to remove that component altogether and optimize Liandry's towards tank-busting.

I also agree with The5lacker that raw damage is already a means of killing squishies better than tanks, since the latter can innately mitigate that extra damage a lot better. In the worst-case scenario, you could replace the bonus on item 3020 with a percent damage increase (e.g. "Deal 10% extra magic damage), which would allow even poorly scaling magic damage-dealers to substantially increase their output.

WhereTheNamesAt1 votes

{quoted}

I'd much rather we just phase out flat Pen in its entirety. It's a mechanic that's only good at punishing people NOT building defenses. Which...makes no sense. People without defenses are punished by taking lots of damage.

all I'm reading in this is "I want tanks to be buffed more than what they just were"

MrSlowDie2 votes

{quoted}

all I'm reading in this is "I want tanks to be buffed more than what they just were"

deleting flat pen will buff squishy more than tanks. just saying.

IllumanatiObama1 votes

Back in the day, I remember people building item 3078 on Jayce so the addition of item 3044 in item 3071 along with the added CDR should actually help him end game more than not.

67chrome1 votes

So laners cannot get early armor pen unless they want Youmou's,

Brutalizer is crazy cost-efficient by itself, rocking the same cost efficiency as several late-game items.

Prior to season 3, a lot of champions in top lane actually rushed the Beat Stick with no intention of upgrading it ever.

The main reason to avoid low-cost items is more expensive items tend to be much more cost-efficient than less expensive items. That isn't the case for Brutalizer, so there's no reason to not grab it due to lack of upgrade potential.

Durzaka1 votes

I made a similar post in General Discussion, i agree.

Funnily enough, my post got upvoted in General Discussion, but got almost exclusively negative comments people telling me off and saying that Brutalizer was already oppressive enough.

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