What changes caused them to be so strong together?
Why does it work on assassins and why does people claim that the combination is powerful on basically anyone?
I really don't get how new itemization trends emerges when there's no apparent changes to the items (unless there was a huge change in sunfire/iceborn that I was not aware of)
For fuck sake, people, OP is genuinely curious and they gets downvoted. Educate them
grasp of the undying helped make those items stronger.
Between Sunfire / Iceborn / Grasp of the Undyne, tanks get respectable damage output, AOE, and minor CC while building pure tank. People started to realize just how broken tank itemization was. If an assassin can survive on bases alone, then get minor DPS increases through tank items, why not. It's not incredibly OP, assassins with this build do lose out on mid-late game damage/assassination potential, but they don't lose much early.
Not to mention, Iceborn is a cheaper Trinity Force, and better utility then Frozen Heart.
Sunfire has repeatedly been getting buffed recently and it helps traditionally low-waveclear assassins split-push effectively. Also, the stats on Iceborn just got sexier: 10% CDR and 5 armor is a lot better than 30 AP.
The combo of getting repeated buffs minor and some bigger ones have combined to make these 2 items insane in the way they provide wave clear, dmg, resists.
The waveclear. Shove your opponent to their tower for practically free and gives you enough armor to towerdive them without any problem.
Iceborn: bursty trades with slow for chase or hit n run, off/def hybrid, mana+cdr(mandatory assets for any tanky dude that uses mana), some waveclear and solid damage vs towers, physic damage. Sunfire: strong all-ins due sustained dps, great wavecöear, off/def hybrid, magicdamage
Each on it's own is by the waveclear+off/def combo a great item to rush in lane. However, if combined: Mixed damage, good short trades and disengage potential, awsome waveclear, good sustained damage and stickiness, great mix of overall damage(though the damage isn't as high as most people make it up to be) and tankiness, mandatory mana+cdr is covered aswell while providing decent damage vs towers. The two items are just jack of all trades for tanks while helping greatly with waveclear.
And yes, there were some changes: Iceborns aoe was changed to scale with armor in preseason aswell as more cdr and armor in exchange for 30 ap, and the scaleing has been increased recently, so if you get sunfire on top of it the slow-proc already gets a quite big aoe, and sunfires damage vs minions was buffed by 50%, so you can applie equal lanepressure to agressive builts like hydra with it. Sunfires stats also have been slightly buffed.
The main reason though is the waveclear. tank items are generally more cost efficient than off items because if you go tanky you have a harder time cleaing waves and farming up, so usually you'd gain less gold and the items have been balanced around the slightly lower gold income. Also, the lack of waveclear and low tower damage and resulting low map presure was a big weakness for many of the current 'abusers' if going tanky that fully gets covered by thos two items. Aditionally, tank items allways have been more gold efficient and thus stronger early-mid while falling of later, and thx to gamepace changes early and midgame are more important now, so items that work well early-mid are obviously a good idea. Also, the damagecreep .Raw damage has increased this season, meaning that if you go squishy, any mistake most likely leads to your death. Jump in as glasscannon ekko and eat a random hard cc - your 101% dead now. So for melees, goin tanky is more a neccesity as squishy builts are to risky right now. Last but not least, the %pen changes and the SV buffs. With LW no longer beeing an unuversally powerfull off item but only a counter vs tanks, it has become alot less valid as an early item, cause your overall damage would crouble to much even though it helps alot vs tanks. As a result, armor stacking early on is rather powerfull as the enemie carry rarly will get %pen befor his 4th item+boots, while SV is just so powerfull that it is sufficient as single item vs magic damage, even with voidstaff.
Also, the only assasins it really works on is Ekko, because he has the utillity of a damn tank and beyond...
well. the combination of damage plus tankiness is strong.
