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Here, have an incomplete post about Sivir

Tolinar··6 votes·2,410 views

Here. I was going to write up a massive post on Sivir and where she needs work...

but then I decided,

"you know what? Who's gonna read this? The forumgoers. Will it get a red response? Nah. Do I care? not really."

So I'll give you the benefit of what I already got done, but I'm quite finished hammering on this. It IS still pretty massive. Enjoy or ridicule, depending which forumgoer you are

**WARNING: this will be LONG. HEAVY MATH ahead. **

There has always been a wide range of speculation as to why Sivir is unpopular. The most common reason given is, Sivir has a poor range - but I think this is rather far from the truth. I will show you -exactly- where Sivir's true issue lies - and what might be done to fix it.

  • PROBLEM 1: Not very good starting damage.

First, Boomerang Blade. This move sounds good on paper, but it under-performs in the lane. Each point grants 10% more AD ratio, and 20 more flat damage. This basically equates to about +30 damage until you recall to buy better items. I want to note, for comparison:

Ashe's Volley

  • 1200 Range
  • Cone skillshot (120, 138, 156, 174, 192) damage per volley with just 80 starting AD + level up AD.
  • Damage is dealt to up to 7 targets in the cone, fully.
  • Targets are frosted (slowed) as well. Useful for chase and escape.
  • This skill has a flat cost of 60 mana.

Sivir's Boomerang Blade

  • 1250 Range. Not that much further than Ashe's Volley.
  • Straightline skillshot (a bit wide) (80, 115, 151, 189, 228) damage to the first target only, with 80 AD + level up AD. Only stronger after lv. 6.
  • Can inflict 185% skill damage by striking only a single target, twice. (148 to 421) Especially lethal at lv. 9.
  • Past early game, gains 10% more damage than Volley per AD, on that first target.
  • But deals less damage than volley to every target other than the first. Can reliably penetrate minions but will deal far less damage than a 'leaked' Volley arrow, down to a minimum of 80% listed damage on a clean double hit.
  • And of course does not slow.
  • This skill costs from 70 to 110 mana increasing with rank.

Second, there's Ricochet. It deals a very large amount of total damage, but over a wide area. The actual single target damage increase, for Ricochet? Is pathetic. If you make the mistake of leveling it hard, you will inflict 40/48/57/67/78 damage per bounce, up to three times every 5 seconds. If you hit your enemy with ALL THREE bounces, this skill ramps in damage, per invested rank, about 15 damage total.

And that, really is just pathetic. It would be more useful for its long range, but your opponent can avoid the damage by moving away from his minions. You can make the cooldown quite low, but this threatens to spend all your mana.

Sivir's last 2 skills don't inflict damage. So, Sivir's early game is quite weak. And, it only gets worse.

..

  • PROBLEM 2: Not very good last hitting.

Experienced last hitters know - *you don't ever want to 'graze' minions. *

You don't want to lock yourself into a skill animation - or far worse, an auto attack - to ALMOST kill a minion. You want to KILL it, to get the last hit. The more damage you do in one hit, the more likely you're going to get that gold. Think of auto-attacking a minion, like a game of roulette. (Particularly with lower-skilled players, this is close to true.) Your attacks are thrown into the mix with those of your minions. The bigger your attack damage, the more slots on the wheel you can claim...

If you graze a minion ... That is, if you attack a minion, fail to kill, and leave it with a tiny sliver of health, you just lost a minion kill, because an allied minion will kill it before you can attack it again. You should avoid attacking too early, to prevent this and ensure your CS - but the less damage your attacks do, the harder it gets to time. In fact, some supports, like Nami, cannot reliably last-hit later on if they buy too much support items, because their damage is just too low. This is mostly a support problem... but...

Throwing Boomerang Blade through the minions will deal a decent amount of damage to the first - and increasingly poor damage to every other minion struck. 60 damage (40% x2) is not good for last hitting. Minions that are struck only once on the way back, due to weird motion, could take as little as 30 damage. It's a great way to GRAZE a bunch of minions at once, putting them all too low to last hit before they die. A Sivir that is focused around harassing a squishier lane opponent will probably cost themselves a few minions through Boomerang Blade grazing them.

But it's not even the worst skill.

Level 1 Ricochet goes so far as to halve your damage - effectively HALVING your last hit power - and graze every single (?) minion in the wave... AND it locks you into a 1.4 second autoattack pause. In the sensitive early levels, using Ricochet carelessly will cause you to miss GOBS and GOBS of last hits. It will wound your farming if you try to harass the enemy with it, unless you are extremely frugal with its use. If you make the mistake of actually trying to FARM, with Ricochet? You will CRIPPLE your CS. And due to the Katarina-style bouncing, if you target a minion in the middle, you might not hit them all (hence, maybe NOT every single minion is hit. On V-shapes, hitting as few as 2 on a bad bounce is common.) You have to hit the minion on the outer edge to strike all the targets, and hope they don't space out into a weird shape.

And it will absolutely push the lane, every time. If that's what you are going for, great. But with no CC, no dashes or escapes, and spellshield on a long cooldown so early, Sivir doesn't have the best tools to slip out of ganks pre-6.

But, there is still one more problem.

..

  • PROBLEM 3: Weak item synergy

Sivir's high-potential ratios and low initial stats, make her a very item-dependent champion. Sivir's attack damage at 18, between 84 and 129 maximums, is a despondent 103. Her health is poor and her attack range is anemic. She's got to have items, or she simply can not fight... You would think such a gold-dependent, item-hungry champion would have a wide variety of effective purchases to augment her skills.

However... the actual range of effective items for Sivir is shockingly poor.

Boomerang Blade is decent enough. But Sivir's Ricochet is nothing less than the single worst-affinity skill in the game. As a result, all of Sivir's strongest, most effective builds, basically ignore her Ricochet skill altogether, and focus around dealing damage to a single standard auto attack target from her 550 range, and/or clipping distant enemies with Boomerang Blade.

Why is Ricochet the worst-affinity skill in League? Because, it is nearly impossible to itemize for Ricochet effectiveness. And the few items that would appear to improve it, often do not. As a result, Ricochet's primary use, aside from siege relief or pushing, is for the short, 3-attack increase to attack speed when running down an enemy. It's really that bad.

Ricochet:

  • Cannot Crit (No infinity edge)
  • Doesn't benefit from lifesteal (No bloodthirster)
  • or spellvamp (No revolver)
  • Doesn't count as skill damage (No Liandry's Torment)
  • OR magic damage (No Deathfire Grasp cheese)
  • Applies no On-Hit effects. (No Wit's End, Bork, nothing.)

** People willing to take my word for it, can skip down. ** Let me get really thorough, to show how bad it really is.

Sivir's Ricochet is only affected by Cooldown Reduction items, and so-called "NON-HIT" items - items that apply on-hit affects that are not currently classified as on-hit effects, but trigger when a champion deals ANY kind of physical damage. These are limited to exactly 2 stats and 3 item cases:

  • Added Attack Damage Stat (at weakened, 50-70% efficiency. This is built into the skill.)

  • Added Armor Penetration Stat (at 100% efficiency)

  • The True Damage effect from the Blessing of Elder Lizard

  • The Furor Enchantment on Tier 2 boots

  • The Armor Shred from The Black Cleaver

  • In a unique and interesting twist, the True Damage from Spirit of the Elder Lizard.

Let me bring that item up for a moment. This item, Spirit of the Elder Lizard, illustrates Ricochet's problems, it's a good example.

It actually can significantly improve the damage of Ricochet - the Incinerate damage contributes from 16 to 32 True Damage over 3 seconds. When Triggered, the Ricochet buff does in-fact last for 6 seconds; meaning, you CAN activate Richochet, land 1 hit, wait 3 seconds, land another, wait 3 more, and land a third. This will apply and fully tick the debuff, to every foe struck, 3 times.

The result of this waiting, is 45-90 more damage per use of Ricochet. That isn't too bad in the midgame, especially when compared with potential AD increases. It's also worth noting that Spirit of Elder Lizard will proc from Boomerang Blade hits as well. This approach also reduces Sivir's mana expenditure on spamming Ricochet, and give her pretty good extreme-range poking; a single tap pays off nicely for the cost. There are other benefits too.

But even THIS item is counter-intuitive in its effect: To get full use, Sivir must delay her normal attack speed all the way down to 1 autoattack per 3 seconds. (1/3rd an attack per second). Compared to her near-1.5 attacks per second when proccing ricochet at level 18, her base damage output is reduced to less than a quarter of what it should be. Add in the fact that Ricochet's cooldown goes from minimum 4.2 seconds to 10.2, and you are throwing away a colossal chunk of your single target DPS by waiting for Spirit of the Elder Lizard to tick on your targets.

The bottom line is, despite being one of the only items affecting her Ricochet, this trick doesn't work especially well. One of the only 2 stats that affect Ricochet 1-to-1, is Cooldown Reduction, and stalling Spirit of Elder Lizard proc, adds 6 un-reduceable seconds to that cooldown needlessly. It's a neat trick early-to-midgame, but just doesn't work in the lategame. NOTHING works.

Let's check out the only other example of note. Ricochet benefits from Cooldown at a high rate, Armor Penetration at a high rate, and AD at a middling one, but actually does very quietly, and COUNTER-INTUITIVELY, benefit from one other stat:

Of all things, ATTACK SPEED. Ricochet doesn't actually benefit very much from attackspeed: At first glance you would think it doesn't benefit at all. After all, no matter how much attackspeed you stack, you will still get only 3 Ricochets per cooldown cycle. Stacking attackspeed doesn't actually increase the total number of ricochets - or total ricochet damage - you get.

Therein lies the secret, though. Maxing your attack speed will cause your Ricochet to completely discharge in just 0.6 seconds, instead of 1.25 seconds without.

Because Ricochet only starts to cool down once the last stack has been used, this actually grants 0.65 seconds of hidden cooldown reduction. With a core 3-second cooldown on Ricochet from full 40% CDR, the actual cooldown goes from 4.25 seconds to 3.6. This means, maxing your attackspeed secretly grants you up to 15% extra DPS increase on Ricochet.

And it only takes 172% Attackspeed to get! ... I did say it doesn't benefit very much. The added scaling is very poor. Worst of all, Boomerang Blade does NOT scale with Attack Speed. If you itemize for Ricochet with high attackspeed, you wound your Boomerang Blade's damage.

So in the end, the only item, in the entire game, that benefits Ricochet directly without crippling something else, is the Black Cleaver. Ricochet benefits from Cooldown and Armor Penetration, and that's it.

..

If you believed me that Ricochet was Worst-Affinity Skill in League, and skipped down, stop here.

  • SOLUTIONS: So, what kind of items ARE effective on Sivir?

The best approach, as I mentioned earlier, is to swear off Ricochet altogether aside from its attackspeed bonus. Naturally Sivir scales pretty well with attack damage. This amplifies Boomerang Blade quite a bit (especially on a double hit!) But the other stat Sivir really benefits from, is Cooldown Reduction. All her skills - BB, Ricochet, Spell Shield and On The Hunt - benefit a great deal from higher cooldown. It is in Sivir's interest to maximize her cooldown as soon as possible.

This runs us into another problem, though: Sivir is Mana-Hungry. Raising her skill use by 40%, also raises her mana expenditure by 40%. While Sivir could play chicken with Spellshield to fix her mana, that's not the safest or most reliable approach for an ADC. A mana-fix item like Chalice of Harmony or Tear of the Goddess, or a Jungle item, can go a long way towards repairing her mana problems. Spirit of the Elder Lizard makes a second appeal here - occasionally nabbing jungle creeps with Conservation can supplement her gold-lust and repair her woeful mana, the damage gain is decent, and it grants Cooldown as well. This time, the quality of the total gain, makes it a reasonable item choice. (You also get that stalled-richochet trick in the early-to-midgame as an added bonus. But let's ignore that for now.)

Then there's spell shield. The effectiveness of this skill can be improved with banshee's veil (if you properly let it absorb a skill), and cooldown reduction. However spellshield represents something very interesting for Sivir. At max cooldown, Spellshield will activate and protect Sivir from one skill use, for 1.5 seconds, as frequently as 6 seconds. Assuming you activate this skill as often as you can, Sivir can nullify as much as 25% skill damage posed against her.

-- and that's where work stopped

17 Comments

BlazingSalvo4 votes

I wish Ricochet's mana cost went down with rank. They only nerfed it because of the level 1 shove. Why should it still cost more at level 18. l0l

Every other champion's steroid is free or was recently buffed (Lucian's E, tho reverted, Graves E, and MF W costs were all reduced after Sivir's was nerfed).

It doesn't make sense.

I'd rather they remove the mana refund on Spell Shield and just give her reasonable mana costs. Or I'd like them to remove spell shield entirely and just buff her kit.

It's obvious the only reason they have to keep her kit down, range low, and costs high is because of either spell shield or her ultimate. Yet time and time again instead of nerfing her ultimate or spell shield they nerf her Q base damage, her Q ratio at early ranks, her W mana cost, etc.

Why?

They have completely destroyed her as a fun marksman/caster pick because of her role as a movespeed-composition piece in e$ports. Fuck. That.

103percent3 votes

I'm glad to see other poster's standing up for Sivir. Because honestly she is in the worst position she has been in YEARS (pre-rework/VU sivir was/is better than the current state of sivir!).

I see her as having 2 specific problems:

  1. Extremely mana-reliant. To the point she blows every other ADC (even "caster" ones like ez/corki) out of the water with her mana costs and base mana stats.

To expand a little:

Sivir's Q does 25+.7atk(attack) at lvl 1 for 70 mana.** Cait gets 20 +1.3atk for 50 mana,** corki gets 80+.5 bAtk (bonus attack) for 60 mana, ez gets 35+1.1atk for 28, varus gets 10+1.0atk for 65 mana (10+1.6 max), lucian gets 80+.6bAtk for 50 mana, and graves gets 60+.8atk for 60 mana (102+1.36atk max!). Furthermore, her W uses 60 mana and the use of both of them cost 130 mana for a champ who only has 300 mana level 2. And yet she is considered an "AD caster"; I don't know any other casters that go OOM after 2 rotations of their spells.

Her 70 mana cost was fine pre-Q nerf when it actually did damage lvl 1 if you caught an ADC out in the open; now that it has been nerfed and all it's early game damage removed it NEEDS to have it's mana costs readjusted.

AND

  1. Is categorized as a marksman but does not have a single marksman ability.

Sivir is the only marksman that does not get at least one of two types of abilities (almost all ADCs get both though): an ability that scales with standard ADC stats (AS, DMG, and/or crit) and an AS steroid. This puts her into the unique position where she gets no benefit from buying ADC items and does no better with them than any other champ in the game. In fact, I'd go so far and say that supports like nami/janna (with +dmg on AA abilities) would scale better and perform the role of marksman better than Sivir!

She even has one of the lowest AS/lvl bases in the game; jinx is the only ADC that has lower than her. Of course jinx also gets 130% bonus AS on ALL ATTACKS (in mini-gun form). Sivir gets + 80% AS on 2 extra attacks, every so often. Totally a fair trade off.

Her "escape" ability is also the only ability that does not give a benefit if used offensively out of all the "marksman" champs. Ez can use his e to "dodge" a skill (aka "block the damage like spell shield would) and if he e's towards the enemy he does damage as well (and gets an AS boost from passive). Lucian gets an AA reset and his passive. Corki does AOE dot damage. Twitch slows, damages, and gets 3 stacks of passive. Trist does damage and slows. Etc. Sivir gets some mana back. Why does she not just have her abilities scale off AP and get moved to midlane again?

And none of this even goes into the problems she has with laning, power spikes, and all the other more "meta" things during a game. This is just in regards to her pure, basic math/stats.

Kowe The Ewok2 votes

Good post.

I especially agree on that Boomerange Blade part. It really is much better on paper than ingame. I just wished they gave it CDR / level instead of leveing it at 9... It's not scaling well enough into lategame to justify keeping it.. 10 / 9 / 7 / 6 /5 would be nice, considering that you won#t use it that often anyways since it's far inferior to crits.

Tolinar1 votes

Good post.

I aspecially agree on that Boomerange Blade part. It really is much better on paper than ingame. I just wished they gave it CDR / level instead of leveing it at 9... It's not scaling well enough into lategame to justify keeping it.. 10 / 9 / 7 / 6 /5 would be nice, considering that you won#t use it that often anyways since it's far inferior to crits.

If you were curious where I was going to go next, it was to suggest that Sivir build more bruiser-ish... since there are a lot of really good CDR items (Frozen heart or icefist, in particular, could maybe be very good for toughness, CDR and mana) and her reduced attack range and 25% skill damage blocking might make her more useful wading in rather than trying to snipe.

But, proving that would take a LOT of work... and it could just as well turn out to be untrue... I didn't want to contest such an idea as "Bruiser Sivir" without putting in the testing (I've won with it, but that's not proof of anything), and I just lost interest.

Cheers.

103percent2 votes

I've tried just about every build possible; but the bottom line is this: As the ADC for the team, you must be able to do damage and help carry/scale into late game. Given the fact she has ZERO abilities that help her scale into the late game like traditional carries. It's more important than ever to only buy ADC items that scale off themselves (like IE, shiv, TF, LW, Yomm, etc). If you were to go ice fist/frozen heart you would be severely impacting your damage to the point you should have just played another role/champ. I'd say it might be a viable strat top/mid; just not bot in the ADC role.

disregardable2 votes

I really don't understand this. Her Q is so strong levels 1-3 that you can guarantee first blood with a not-horrible support. Then you treat Sivir as any other ADC- buid AA damage. Build CDR? No. She's an ADC. Build mana-regen? No. She's only mana hungry early game, when literally every ADC is mana hungry. Playing ADC is ABOUT being weak in the early game and scaling into something epic, aka making long term decisions. Once you hit level 12ish, your w can knock out entire waves of minions. The spell shield is really great vs bot lane supports. I honestly think her kit was OP before they nerfed her ult. Now her kit is just really good.

103percent2 votes

I really don't understand this. Her Q is so strong levels 1-3 that you can guarantee first blood with a not-horrible support. Then you treat Sivir as any other ADC- buid AA damage. Build CDR? No. She's an ADC. Build mana-regen? No. She's only mana hungry early game, when literally every ADC is mana hungry. Playing ADC is ABOUT being weak in the early game and scaling into something epic, aka making long term decisions. Once you hit level 12ish, your w can knock out entire waves of minions. The spell shield is really great vs bot lane supports. I honestly think her kit was OP before they nerfed her ult. Now her kit is just really good.

You do realize, that statistically you are wrong? Let's do some math here assuming they take no AD runes so +11 AD from doran's and masteries:

Level 1 Sivir (Just 1 hit, no minions): 25 + 44.1 = 69.1 dmg for 70 mana. 0.99 dmg per mana. Sivir (Both hit, no minions): 46.25 + 81.59 = 127.86 dmg for 70 mana. 1.83 dmg/mana. Varus (no channel): 10 + 60 = 70 dmg for 70 mana. 1.00 dmg/mana. Varus (full channel): 15 + 96 = 111 dmg for 70 mana. 1.59 dmg/mana. Cait: 20 + 79.3 = 99.3 for 50 mana. 1.99 dmg/mana. Graves (1 hit): 60 + 8.8 = 68.8 dmg for 60 mana. 1.15 dmg/mana Graves (3 hits): 108 + 15.84 = 123.84 dmg for 60 mana. 2.064 dmg/mana. Corki: 80 + 5.5 = 85.5 for 60 mana. 1.43 dmg/mana. Lucian: 80 + 6.6 = 86.6 for 50 mana. 1.732 dmg/mana.

Rankings By Straight Damage: Best Case (see below) Sivir, Graves, Varus, Cait, Lucian, Corki

Rankings by Dmg/Mana: Best Case Graves, Cait, Sivir, Lucian, Varus, Corki

Level 3 (Rank 2 skills) Sivir (Just 1 hit, no minions): 45 + 55.2 = 100.2 dmg for 80 mana. 1.25 dmg/mana. Sivir (Both hit, no minions): 83.25 + 102.12 = 185.37 dmg for 80 mana. 2.32 dmg/mana. Varus (no channel): 47 + 66 = 113 dmg for 75 mana. 1.51 dmg/mana. Varus (full channel): 70 + 105.6 = 175.6 dmg for 75 mana. 2.21 dmg/mana. Cait: 60 + 87.1 = 147.1 for 60 mana. 2.45 dmg/mana. Graves (1 hit): 95 + 8.8 = 103.8 dmg for 70 mana. 1.48 dmg/mana. Graves (3 hits): 171 + 15.84 = 186.84 dmg for 70 mana. 2.67 dmg/mana. Corki: 130 + 5.5 = 135.5 for 70 mana. 1.94 dmg/mana. Lucian: 110 + 8.25 = 118.25 for 55 mana. 2.15 dmg/mana.

Rankings By Straight Damage: Best Case (see below) Graves, Sivir, Varus, Cait, Corki, Lucian

Rankings by Dmg/Mana: Best Case Graves, Cait, Sivir, Varus, Lucian, Corki

And this is assuming the perfect scenario for all involved (and honestly, it's really easy to dodge the comeback of Q even given best-case no minions/other champs around to reduce damage); which really only applies to cait, varus, and sivir as they are the only champs that lose damage by having their ability hit other champs/creeps. Which still gives the benefit to cait/varus as they don't also lose more damage on the way back through minions/champs like Sivir does (in other words Sivir is almost always going to be at min damage on the return of the blade while cait/varus can get closer to "max" damage by only having to lose damage 1-way). BTW, you don't want to see how bad sivir does at "worst case" scenario.

And this doesn't even get into the mana issues and lack of any scaling from any of her abilities. Her kit was anything but OP before they nerfed her ult; and now her kit is the worst kit of any ADC in the game.

Kowe The Ewok1 votes

Personally I'm less into the bruiser Sivir idea than rather into the AD caster as a counter vs mages in mid. Lower CD shield and or Q could do the trick.

7ha7guy7771 votes

has anyone tried manamune on sivir? i haven't play much of her since s3, but it was a decent item on her back then. i also could have sworn her range was 500, not 550

103percent2 votes

It is 500. The problem with manamune (IMO) is that it's a late game item; and requires a lot of skill spamming to farm it. So basically, if you buy it in lane then you get destroyed in lane against every single other ADC. If you wait to buy it until after your first item then you are really far behind in stacking it, and are forced to spam all your spells off CD to try and makeup; which leads to you constantly being oom until you get significant stacks on it.

The Fast1 votes

This runs us into another problem, though: Sivir is Mana-Hungry. Raising her skill use by 40%, also raises her mana expenditure by 40%. While Sivir could play chicken with Spellshield to fix her mana, that's not the safest or most reliable approach for an ADC. A mana-fix item like Chalice of Harmony or Tear of the Goddess, or a Jungle item, can go a long way towards repairing her mana problems. Spirit of the Elder Lizard makes a second appeal here - occasionally nabbing jungle creeps with Conservation can supplement her gold-lust and repair her woeful mana, the damage gain is decent, and it grants Cooldown as well. This time, the quality of the total gain, makes it a reasonable item choice. (You also get that stalled-richochet trick in the early-to-midgame as an added bonus. But let's ignore that for now.)

You are saying Sivir needs CDR, AD, and Mana. You literally just described Essence Reaver.

I don't know if it didn't occur to you, or if Riot successfully made an item so bad that a laner would rather build the 30 AD + DoT jungle item over it. Essence Reaver would be MUCH better in lane. Like, elder lizard has such limited use in lane, especially when Essence Reaver gives the added benefit of more AD and more actual in-lane sustain, of both mana and HP.

Also Riot did say they were working on the Essence Reaver sub-component, so you can have that mana restore earlier.

103percent1 votes

The problem is essence reaver has a terrible build path. By the time you can build it you are basically out of the laning phase and the mana-on-hit of it becomes mostly moot. Sure, in extended fights it will help you from going oom; but that's not a certain thing. Also, because Sivir has 0 scaling, it is more important than ever to build items that scale with each other. ER doesn't scale near as well as IE/BT/LW/Yom does. She needs Dmg/Crit/AS/ArPen to stay relevant into the late game.

Tolinar1 votes

You are saying Sivir needs CDR, AD, and Mana. You literally just described Essence Reaver.

I don't know if it didn't occur to you, or if Riot successfully made an item so bad that a laner would rather build the 30 AD + DoT jungle item over it. Essence Reaver would be MUCH better in lane. Like, elder lizard has such limited use in lane, especially when Essence Reaver gives the added benefit of more AD and more actual in-lane sustain, of both mana and HP.

Also Riot did say they were working on the Essence Reaver sub-component, so you can have that mana restore earlier.

I tried out Essence Reaver on Sivir. It seems to work O.K, but because all its components are so costly right now, you have to wait too long to get it.

But, there's also another little problem hidden in the math. Damage dealt by basic attacks is what triggers Essence Reaver's mana regen property. Sivir doesn't use basic attacks to poke - she uses Boomerang Blade. And then there's Ricochet, the ever-incompatible Ricochet. It's bad enough that Ricochet does not proc lifesteal, but it also doesn't proc mana-steal.

Think of the incoming minions like a total pool of health. Without a siege minion, you're looking at about 2500-2700 health coming up the lane, with one, maybe 3300-3600. Now Ricochet doesn't proc lifesteal or mana steal, but it DOES damage health. In fact, a good proc deals from 750% to 1250% your base damage total to the wave... while your autoattacks inflict just 300%. That's as much as 3 times. This means for every 100 health you life/mana steal, up to 300 health is getting destroyed with no benefit. Ricochet as much as QUARTERS your possible recovery from Essence Reaver, if you use it on a minion wave. Instead of lifestealing 3600 health for 360 HP and decent mana recovery, you get as little as 100 HP and 6% mana returned. It's a serious problem... That skill just doesn't work with anything. You get much better performance out of Reaver if you don't use any skills on the wave... but really, what needs fixing?

What REALLY needs fixing? Is Richochet.

103percent2 votes

It's a serious problem... That skill just doesn't work with anything. You get much better performance out of Reaver if you don't use any skills on the wave... but really, what needs fixing?

What REALLY needs fixing? Is Richochet.

Honestly, I'd be 110% happy if they just reverted her kit to pre-rework and kept some of the QoL fixes on her (the VU of course, the smoothing of her animations, the proc of her passive on Q and W damage, and no cast time on R). I'd even rather have that and a mana cost back on her E than what she has now.

In an ideal world she'd have her old kit back, no cast time on any of her skills, the QoL changes I mentioned, an E that went down to 0 mana cost (like lucian), and her E changed to give some sort of offensive benefit for successfully blocking a spell (AS/Dmg/Ar Pen/debuff on enemy/something).

ItsStout1 votes

Sivir's issue (which you addressed) is that she scales horribly with any ADC build, and prefers to get a Black Cleaver because all Sivir is is a ranged bruiser. (Her toplane is pretty scary, and her poke is OK. Her short range is actually great in toplane anyway, so she can easily rape any toplaner and help initiate with R. Her E is useful against people like Jax or Maokai top who have a specific delayed ability they want to hit you with. Her pushing is great and her buildpath in top (Cleaver, Zeke's Herald, tanky shit, maybe the new MS item they're gonna release in S5...) is wonderful. But she isn't an ADC at all.)

NoMonku1 votes

What about changing her ricochet to something like an auto reset with the AS buff at 6, but let it proc on hits but not bounce as much. I mean, her current W is okay and all, but I never really ever get harass off with it or its so abysmal it kind of doesn't do much. I sort of use it as a psuedo wave clear to push faster when my Q is down, but thats about it besides trying to trade and as an auto reset. Also it needlessly draws aggro from towers if you hit a champion with it(though this could have been an intended feature). I feel her E is fine as long as it refunds mana still, so she shouldn't have too many issues. If she does, she could be one of the few ADC's that could maybe pull off ER(though I doubt it).

Drunk Rummate1 votes

Hey OP I disagree with a lot of your points, especially the bit about last hitting. Sivir has, hands down, the best minion wave clear of any ADC in the game. Ricochet is actually an AA reset if you time it right, so you can auto and then ricochet immediately after if you use it properly. Early on Sivir has incredible lane control and can beat even a caitlyn in lane by shoving her tower and then walking back to the relative safety of her side of the lane while caitlyn tries furiously to CS under tower with less than 100 AD. Late game Sivir has probably the highest teamfight damage of any ADC, including lucian, due to her richochet hitting all grouped targets and her boomerang blade potentially hitting several as well. She can also kite and reposition better than many ADCs due to her spellshield and ultimate.

If you think Sivir is bad I believe you're probably just playing her wrong. You don't want to 1v1 against an AD, or even 2v2 with this champion. I once lost a 1v1 to an 0-6 draven with my 6-0 sivir because I got cocky and thought I could beat him. I was wrong. But in teamfights I did so much damage that we went 5-0 and aced them. To play sivir you have to just clear waves and wait for a teamfight. It's a relatively passive playstyle but it's fantastic if your team is a bunch of late scaling heroes such as Mundo and Xerath.

That said, there are lots of AP mages that you can 1v1 with relative success with Sivir (Ziggs, Xerath, Syndra, Orianna, etc). Long range mages in particular are very vulnerable, but also anyone with a must hit spell in their rotation can be taken down by Sivir. You can spell shield anything. Even a Zed ult!

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