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My personal count of where CDR should be and shouldn't. (Further discussion would be appreciated!)

SzGamer227·Aug 23, 2017·2 votes·302 views

These are my opinions item-to-item on the current state of CDR. If you could share your own thoughts and opinions, I'd love to see what other people think about this.

These items are core to classes that need CDR to thrive. Juggernauts and bruisers double as close range AD casters and rely on CDR. Champs that spam aa resets live for this item. Gotta spam that spellblade. CDR is an important part of a high-AP-scaling mage. Essential item for AD/crit caster carries. Healers gotta heal. Peelers gotta peel. Mage supports want CDR too.

These items synergize with CDR in some way, so it makes sense not to remove it. Appeals to AD casters because of its physical damage vamp (rather than just lifesteal). CDR makes sense for champs whose self-healing is ability dependent. Some tanks and mages wanna spam that spellblade too. More frequent ults means more frequent benefits from passive.

There is no great reason for these items to have CDR, other than "champs who buy it might want more CDR". CDR can be taken away from these items to tune the abundance of CDR.

By my count, about half the items that are giving CDR right now are actually justified in giving CDR, while the other half have it seemingly just as a filler stat.

15 Comments

RalanrAug 23, 20173 votes

So you don't think tank items should have CDR?

Why exactly should FH not have CDR but IBG should?

SzGamer227Aug 23, 20171 votes

First, FH is a defensive aura whereas IBG is a spellblade item. Spellblade synergizes with CDR.

Second, I don't think every item on the third list should have their CDR removed. I'm just making a point that there are a lot of items we could potentially take CDR off of, since those items have CDR purely as a filler stat.

RalanrAug 23, 20172 votes

I see.

About IBG, it's not an item that a tank player is going to build every game. Tanks don't really have a "core" item like other classes, rather their first item in top lane (because I mainly mean top lane tanks. Junglers and supports have their core items) is going to be a direct counter to their laner with preferably health.

This used to be sunfire.

Later on, smart tank purchases are based around enemy team comp. If they have a lot of AP then you're building MR, your first choice being on what kind of AP damage they are doing. If the enemy ADC is getting fed, start counterbuilding them early to weaken them before they pop off.

This is probably why so many tank items have CDR because their builds are not as stable as other champions. They have no BC Or morello to rush (a tank version of that would have health, armor, MR, and 20% CDR. There's a reason it doesn't exist). And since CDR is very important for tanks, they want a lot of it.

Now that being said I do find it odd when items that have CDR don't have it in their components. Abyssal and Adaptive helm are guilty of this, providing 10% CDR despite not having any CDR in the components. It feels odd and I wouldn't mind one of those losing that CDR in exchange for more health or MR.

SzGamer227Aug 23, 20171 votes

One thing I've noticed is that there are no options for a tank or juggernaut to build MR + health items that don't give you CDR. If you're building defensively into an all magic-damage team, you're going to br hard pressed not to overcap your CDR.

RalanrAug 23, 20172 votes

Sure, but there is no real downside on overcaping on CDR unless you're stuck buying a component item with CDR when you're already at cap.

And as a juggernaut, that should never happen. There's no reason for a juggernaut to be building a kindle gem for visage if he has capped CDR because visage should already be in his build by then.

Plus that new rune which converts extra CDR to AD and AP makes this actually beneficial.

SzGamer227Aug 23, 20171 votes

If you're a juggernaut and you've already built Cleaver/Triforce, you're only left with 20% CDR to build before you reach the cap. item 3065 item 3001 item 3194 item 3156 are all items you might want to build into an AP-heavy comp, but you can only build two before you start wasting gold on an overcapped stat.

RalanrAug 23, 20172 votes

And out of those, only Maw and Visage would be wasting the CDR stat because you build CDR items to build them.

Helm and mask don't have CDR in their components, just their final product. You can complain about wasting gold but that hardly matters by that point.

SzGamer227Aug 23, 20171 votes

When it comes to late game, the amount of gold's worth of stats you have in your final build matters. If everyone has purchased 15k gold in items but you've spent 1k on a stat you don't use, you're at a disadvantage.

Ornn is going to be a late-game god for the same reason: If his team reaches full build, they're going to be sitting on a few thousand gold in stats that the enemy team can't access.

Back to the main point, if you can't reach full build without purchasing stats that you can't use, you can't access the same amount of power as other people can, which is not ideal in a late game situation.

I will admit this exact scenario is very rarely impactful, but it's still uncomfortable to know that I can never build more than 2 solid MR items without wasting gold.

RalanrAug 23, 20173 votes

Sure, and Riot is going to add a rube that converts extra CDR to damage stats to reduce this.

ProfDrDeathAug 23, 20171 votes

If you have two of these items and item 3111 , you already have 135 bonus MR. With runes and base stats, you should have at least 200 MR. If you really need more tankiness against an AP comp, you should invest in some HP - like item 3053 (great for Juggs, especially if you already have a lot of HP items) or item 3742 (good MS boost) or item 3075 (covers your weakness to AD).

SzGamer227Aug 23, 20171 votes

Against an all magic comp you want as much MR and health as possible so that you can absorb as much damage as possible. There are alternative ways to achieve this, but the most direct ones (building health + MR items and building Warmog's) are heavily saturated with CDR.

In standard games, I tend towards buying two armor items and one MR one just because it offers the most defensive flexibility when keeping the CDR cap in mind.

HammermancerAug 23, 20172 votes

I almost feel like cdr is a bad stat, but dknt take it to heart

Champs who build cdr are balanced aroubd tgat 40-45% which could easily be thrown into leveling abilities with item stats adjusted accordingly

FireDrizzleAug 23, 20171 votes

They should take cdr from adaptive helm and give it compensation too differntiate the hp mr items a little more but old abbysal had cdr.

ProfDrDeathAug 23, 20171 votes

Currently, almost all support items have CdR, and ALL CdR-possessing support items have 10% CdR. This is good, as CdR is support's core stat - their contribution is not based around scaling numbers (be it with AP or AD), but around using their abilities for their non-scaling effects. As such, they want (and benefit) from having as much uptime on them as possible - which is where CdR comes in. And with 10% CdR on virtually each of their items, they are able to choose their items for their other benefits, without having to worry about CdR. A similar thing goes for tanks, btw.

Beyond supports, there is another upside of having plenty of CdR in the game: It makes balancing easier. With a lot of CdR in a variety of items, the balance team can reasonably expect that a given champion will have at least 20% CdR in the mid-to-late-game. This enables them to tune ability cooldowns so the abilities are not used overbearing early (when champions don't have much CdR), but also not too long for the later-stage fights. A good example for this is Shen: Before CdR became abundant, Shen's ult cooldown was shorter (180-120 seconds, back in S2, down to 162-108 with 10% CdR (which was what conventional Shen builds could get back then)). Nowadays, his cooldown is longer, but he has more access to CdR (200-160, but down to 140-112 with 30% CdR). Now, Shen doesn't start with 30% CdR - in fact, he starts with 10% at most, making his early ults more infrequent than they used to be, and lessening his early impact on other lane. However, with him purchasing 2-3 CdR items, his ult's cooldown will scale back to its previous, late-stage appropriate value.

Also, on your items:

Warmog's is hardly bought right now, even with the CdR. Swap the CdR for HP, and you'll see it being bought even less - most champions are not interested in a pure HP stat stick, even with Warmog's passive. Frozen Heart had always had high CdR, and should keep it. It is barely build right now, anyways. Knight's Vow, Zeke's, Glory, Banner are support items, see above. Abyssal and Adaptive have CdR, so that the presence of CdR is not a decision point for deciding between the two and Spirit Visage. Remove CdR from them, and you'll see that their purchase rates pummel, especially for early purchases. Remember, tanks are also based around the utilty impact of their abilities, like supports. They are a class that should have easier access to CdR. Banshee's could lose its CdR, true. Same for Protobelt. Zhonya's cannot lose its CdR, as it serves as a padding stat to prevent the item being to efficient in either offense (if replaced by AP, see old Zhonya's) or defense (if replaced with Armor). Maw is in the same boat as Zhonya's. Duskblade got specifically changed to have CdR. Why? To have it become a more viable first item for ability-based assassins, instead of auto-attack based carries. And Youmuu's always had CdR.

SzGamer227Aug 23, 20171 votes

Ever since the midseason changes to tank itemization, I've put more value in Warmog's than before, because with a majority of tank items being made resistance heavy and provide less health, a pure health stick scales those resistances further than it used to. It's also still a great buy against flat true damage, since health is the only way to counter that, especially since you have less health building resistance items now than before.

Frozen Heart is rarely bought because tanks prefer Randuin's and Thornmail, and this because they prefer health to mana (you only need so much mana before you never run out, but you can never have enough health). Unless you've got another tanky champion on your team, the 15% AS reduction aura isn't really benefiting anyone besides you anyways, and the Cold Steel passive is cheaper to buy and comes with a secondary defensive stat. As an early buy, IBG beats out Frozen Heart because it delivers the same type of stats but gives tanks a passive they can take advantage of immediately (especially in the jungle), whereas AS slow only really begins to kick in once the enemy AS carry has a few items. If they gave Frozen Heart health by reducing or removing its CDR or mana I could see it being able to compete with Randuin's and Thornmail by being a more team-oriented alternative, but reducing incoming attack speed and stats that let you spam spells just don't go together.

Finally, I don't think every item on the third list should have their CDR removed. I'm just making a point that there are a lot of items we could potentially take CDR off of, since those items have CDR purely as a filler stat. For support items, there is already an abundance of items with CDR for enchanters that also benefit their healing and shielding power, and for warden supports, there is plenty of CDR in tank itemization to take advantage of, so shaving some CDR off of the odd ones out wouldn't hurt their access to this stat. In the case of Adaptive and Abyssal, one or the other could have it's CDR removed and you would still have two other options for building health + mana + CDR.

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