Analysis of Cleaver versus Sunfire

Edit: One good point the comments have made is that in the matchup, Cleaver is in its best scenario while Sunfire is in its worst. But that's exactly the problem. In game, Cleaver is always in its best scenario when fighting a tank, and the tank has no option for an item to improve the situation. And it's in a large part because their starting options are drastically worse in gold efficiency. That's what makes it unfair, not the counter.

I'd be a different situation if I were comparing Cleaver to Stormrazer or Luden's, since those aren't usually pitted against each other. But Cleaver and Sunfire, despite being in direct opposition, are for two different classes that mainly lane against each other. And the unfair cost exacerbates an advantage Cleaver and its champions already have against tanks.

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(Additions to an old thread) The total cost of Sunfire is 100g less than Black Cleaver, but that ignores their gold efficiency. If you factor in the gold efficiency of the items' base stats, then Sunfire actually costs 500g more. In a matchup Cleaver's shred passive reduces the armor of Sunfire by up to 15, so it loses an additional 10% gold efficiency, widening the difference to 800g.

• Sunfire's passive at level 9 grants 425g worth of damage.
• Cleaver's Rage passive grants either 340g worth of MS, or 1020g.

So at minimum, the overall difference between Sunfire (LV9) and Cleaver is 415g in Cleaver's favor. At maximum, the difference is 1,395g in Cleaver's favor.

Coincidentally, the gold cost of that 20% CDR is 533g. That's only 33 shy of exactly evening out the difference from base stats. So that's an easy way to make it a more balanced matchup. One problem solved.

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Alternatively since Cleaver was never intended to have the same amount of health as pure tank items while also countering armor directly it could have its health reduced down to 300, (which still higher than the 200 it was before it was changed). Several ADCs and all AD Assassins still abuse it for the HP and armor shred, so reducing the health would hopefully work towards preventing this as well as balancing it out against tanks without having to buff Sunfire or Deadman's.

There should be some cost or risk in there, but there's none at all with its current stats. It gives you every stat you could want with an unreasonably high base gold efficiency for its relatively low cost, while the champions who buy it have low enough (or no) resource costs and high enough base stats to not pay any price for it not having armor, mr, or mana.