A few Ideas for Black Cleaver

Black Cleaver is a core item for quite a few of the top lane skirmishers, divers and juggernauts - who are colloquially referred to as bruisers and are claimed to be somewhat struggling in the early stages of season 8. Now, most of them are better off after Riot changed the Resolve stat split, and will be even better off next patch when all other trees also include a stat split between primary and secondary and the PtA small-trade buffs.

Still, I think that there is room in the game for a few careful buffs to good ol' Cleaver. Here are my ideas for that:

First, a build path extension:

= + + + 250 gold (3400 gold total)

This would allow building towards the completed item in smaller, piece-by-piece increments. Even without stat increases (see below), Cleaver's current statline allows for all these components (40 = 15 + 25 AD, 400 = 200 + 200 HP, 20% = 10% + 10% CdR).

Second, another unique passive:

Unique Passive - Last Whisper: Get 10-15% Bonus Armor Penetration against targets with full Cleaver stacks.

This effect is there to play up on its sustained fight focus. It rewards people who use the Rage passive to stick to their targets and deal continous damage, and improves Cleaver's performance against tanky champions without contributing too much against squishies (who seldomly have a lot of bonus Armor and are highly likely to be already dead by the time full Cleaver stacks are applied. This should discourage its use on assassins. *Also, it penalizes ADCs who opt into Cleaver by making it less cost-efficient when stacked with Last Whisper upgrades (who are giving unconditional Bonus Armor Penetration and would thus overwrite this passive). If this not enough, this effect could be penalized for ranged champions with less Armor Pen or even made melee-only.

Third, stat adjustments:

400 Hp -> 450-500 HP

Again, a buff for its intended users. This stat adjustment is there to compensate for the 400 gold cost increase, along with the new passive effect.