So... Apparently getting Cull as your first item is "wrong"

darkdill·Nov 30, 2015·60 votes·8,876 views

Apparently you're only supposed to get the item if you're behind? Where's the logic in that? If you get a pure farming item while behind, you'll just get bullied.

Wasn't it supposed to be the "Doran's Blade alternative"? So why is Doran's Blade still mandatory? Why does Cull have to suck so much since not even your teammates will let you use it properly?

Might've been okay in concept, Riot, but I think it's proven useless in practice. So what do you plan to do to make it worthwhile (if anything)?

120 Comments

MimyNov 30, 201521 votes

I get cull when Im Kennen against Darius

Because although I can safely poke him.. it's a lot harder than you think to kill him and I've tried going on in it doesn't work.. So what I do is, i just farm... Because I know I aint gonna beat him.. So I'm gonna try and CS from a distance if I get bullied out..

It really depends on who you're playing.. and what your match up is.. how comfortable do you feel about it..

Honestly if you take it on someone who HARD counters someone else and can abuse that extra gold... WHY NOT?

It just gives you a bigger advantage..

People are like "Why get cull? It doesn't build into anything and you don't get much from reselling it."

But you get like 400 extra gold as soon as you get 100 (300 from the bonus and the 100 1 golds from each individual minion) item 1083 (450) item 1055 Whereas... this costs the exact same and... doesn't give you 400 gold... lol

Like It's good for the extra power... but... idk..

All in all dude.. If cull works for you... Just do what you do..

CipseNov 30, 20155 votes

Don't forget that you will eventually sell Cull, which sells for 180 gold. So, after farming 100 minions, you gain 130 gold.

darkdillNov 30, 201514 votes

Yeah, not enough of a gain.

UltraboomerNov 30, 20153 votes

okay, on top of the 130 gold gain where dorans gives you aproximatly 270 gold loss, cull also offers better early sustain for most champions that would buy it and can allow you to reach your first item spike before your opponent.

darkdillNov 30, 20153 votes

That's provided your opponent doesn't kill you with a Doran's Blade, which is better for Champion vs. Champion combat.

AnidanNov 30, 20153 votes

Not every champion can mystically kill another champion just by having a Doran's Blade. If they bought a Doran's Blade that doesn't guarantee a kill against you with Cull because you still have your kit to work with - this game is more complicated than stats alone. If they don't get that kill then you come out ahead.

UltraboomerNov 30, 20152 votes

I recognise that, which is why I take doran on people who want to fight early like graves, vayne, and um... probably caitlyn too, but people who really want to farm like sivir, ashe, and kog'maw I will take cull on because it lets me reach their first item faster and outsustain my oponent once our potions are used. On the defensive side of the fight though, I think I'd rather have the 3 health on-hit effect than the 3% lifesteal and 70 health simply because the 70 hp is maybe one or two more basic attacks I can survive, and lifesteal is applied to the number left after damage reduction meaning if you start with a 50% reduction from your base armor your opponent won't be getting the 3 hp that you get from the first moment until they reach roughly 200 damage. I say roughly because I'm not accounting for any armor penetration and am not including vampirism or runic armor because both sides have probably taken both masteries making them semi-irrelevant to the argument.

LlaniteNov 30, 201516 votes

Which is why people buy Cull to farm.

If you want to fight, buy Doran. It's that simple.

If Cull is better in both scenarios, what's the point of Doran then?

ThryaleNov 30, 20155 votes

I think the point is that in bot lane, ppl won't let you farm. (both the enemy and your own support half the time)

IMO I think cull needs an extra passive that gives it +10 dmg on hit to minions, letting you last hit more easily than the person with d blade. And to compensate d blade, give it an extra 5% life steal when hitting enemy champions.

Sona PingNov 30, 20157 votes

{quoted}

IMO I think cull needs an extra passive that gives it +10 dmg on hit to minions, letting you last hit more easily than the person with d blade. And to compensate d blade, give it an extra 5% life steal when hitting enemy champions.

Buffing Cull is a fine idea, it does seem on the weak-side; I'm not opposed to the idea. But you proposed changes don't work. +10 dmg to minions doesn't buff Cull and make the item stronger, it buffs players who don't know how to last hit; it's a change that is mostly useless on a significant amount of players and doesn't make it actually stronger in comparison to Doran's Blade. The buff to Doran's Blade doesn't compensate it versus Cull, it just flat-out buffs ADCs and aggressive fighters.

ThryaleNov 30, 20154 votes

never claimed to have a phd in game balance. was just spit balling ideas out there seein what sounded good.

you got any ideas to throw into the mix?

AbodyHUN666Nov 30, 20154 votes

Little more resell value, little more sustain, little more gold gain, any of these could work well.

It Hertz When IPNov 30, 20155 votes

Maybe a passive gold gain, since they removed Avarice Blade?

AbodyHUN666Nov 30, 20152 votes

It might destroy it's purpose. Generally you want to sell Cull for earlier core item, but if it gives gold passively you will feel bad for selling it.

dr lichdeathNov 30, 20153 votes

how about instead of 300 gold it becomes a vampiric scepter cuz lets face it only ad champs buy cull thus u 450 at the start get 100 back (making it cost the same as a long sword) then after 100 stacks it becomes a vampiric scepter( like muramane and archangel staff) which is worth more in my opinion

AbodyHUN666Nov 30, 20152 votes

I like the idea but it might make it too universal purcashe for some champions and destroy it's purpose on those who need other core items first.

delonixNov 30, 20152 votes

It is if you look at the opportunity cost. Compared to Doran's Blade, you get 400 gold, not just 130.

If you can CS normally with Cull, you should always get Cull. Let's say you are playing ADC. You get Cull, the enemy ADC gets Doran's Blade. They come into lane with 80 more health and 3 extra AD, but Cull's on-hit healing is better than lifesteal until your opponent gets another item. After 100 cs, you are 400 gold ahead of your opponent. 400 gold isn't enough to get any big item, but it means that you are backing and getting a BF Sword if they are getting a Pickax.

UltraboomerNov 30, 20151 votes

in all from cull you get 580 gold and some stats that don't scale particularly well later in the game, where from dorans you get 180 gold and a much better scaling item into the mid-late game. which is why you remove the item's cost from the gain when you consider cull's value. it's gold generation passive is only worth 130 gold in the end. in my opinion this can make it worth it compared to a doran's blade if you aren't going to be super aggressive to where you need the extra AD right away. And while you're right that you have 400 gold your oponent does not have, I think he probably works out to having at least 400 gold worth of stats more than you do on cull if not more.

delonixNov 30, 20154 votes

I agree with your math, but not your analysis.

In the late game, both Cull and Doran's Blade are going to be sold. It's not uncommon to sell Doran's Blade well before starting a 6th item so that you can hold multiple components of a 3rd, 4th, or 5th item, as well as potions or a pink ward.

This means that the stat advantage is only active during the period between the selling of Cull and the selling of Doran's Blade, which also means that you actually have 580 gold that your opponent doesn't have. Doran's Blade gives a total of around 600 gold in stats, so whether the Cull user is ahead in the mid game depends on what the 580 gold is spent on.

Rapid Firecannon has a combine cost of 550 gold. The value of the passive is difficult to evaluate, but I'd much rather have a Rapid Firecannon than a Kircheis Shard, a Zeal, and a Doran's Blade.

Youmuu's Ghostblade has a combine cost of 1000 gold, so it's possible to be 580 gold ahead of your lane opponent and not be able to complete it. In this case, I'd rather have Caulfield's Warhammer, Serrated Dirk, and Doran's Blade than just the Warhammer and Dirk.

In the end, it depends on timing. In the mid game, it's possible for the Doran's Blade user to be stronger in lane/teamfights because of the extra stats, but it's also possible that the 580 gold from selling a completed Cull is enough to finish an item and the Cull user is stronger in lane/teamfights.

In the end game, both Doran's Blade and Cull are sold, but assuming everything else is equal, the Cull user has 400 extra gold over the Doran's Blade user.

Hello I am BirdNov 30, 20158 votes

This bugs me to no end. I want to be able to use cull as a starting item on characters besides Nasus without being flamed.

EndlessSorcererNov 30, 20154 votes

Why would you get it on Nasus? It doesn't really provide combat stats or durability to help him survive through his early laning phase.

If you had to choose between the two, Doran's Blade would be a far superior choice on Nasus due to the increased health and lifesteal (since lifesteal scales with your Qs damage and the extra AD from your ultimate while Cull's on-hit heal doesn't.

Admittedly, Ruby Crystal or Cloth Armor are still probably your best starting options depending on the lane matchup, but Doran's Blade is still a better options than Cull.

darkdillNov 30, 20158 votes

Because Nasus isn't supposed to get into fights early on, and wants to farm like crazy until his Q hits like a truck.

I am PewdiePieNov 30, 20151 votes

{quoted}

Because Nasus isn't supposed to get into fights early on, and wants to farm like crazy until his Q hits like a truck.

Yeah. It's just cull puts a big bullseye on your head that says "HEY COME FIGHT ME I WANT TO BE PASSIVE AND HAVE NOTHING TO HELP ME WIN THE TRADE"

RikoZerameNov 30, 201512 votes

So does playing Nasus.

UltraboomerNov 30, 20151 votes

idk, nasus gets double stacks if he last hits champions. and between his wither's AS reduction and his spirit fire or whatever it's called armor reduction, he can do some pretty big damage to squishies like a early game mini gnar. My point beign that playing passive is good and all, but you can play somewhat aggressively depending on who your opponent is as long as you don't miss cs for it.

Kuroi86Nov 30, 20153 votes

He is severely lacking in damage and bulk early game though. He's got great sustain and utility, but you're likely to get your skull caved in if you pick an early fight. It's rare for a nasus player to be good enough to pull out a win early game.

ayNigerianPrinceNov 30, 20151 votes

Idk talk to my fellow bronzie Darius who died at lvl 2 against Nasus.

I will never forget that motherfucker.

Kuroi86Nov 30, 20152 votes

Just because it's rare doesn't mean it can't happen.

AbodyHUN666Nov 30, 20151 votes

It's more on the Darius's side then. Probably pushed Nasus under his tower, tried to dive him or fought in the middle of a minion wave.

EndlessSorcererNov 30, 20152 votes

He probably traded with Nasus in the middle of Nasus' minion wave. If he fought in Spirit Fire (armor reduction) or was Withered (slow and DPS reduction), the minions would murder him horribly at low levels.

EndlessSorcererNov 30, 20152 votes

You don't want to get into fights, but people want to fight you.

In most laning matchups, your opponent is going to try and fight you early while you are weak. While you can often avoid them and farm safely (especially if you freeze near tower), you will occasionally have to fight your opponent so that you can farm or survive.

Extra survivability early-game is essential since that's your weakest point (where you have no damage, durability, little sustain, and high mana costs inhibit defensive use of your abilities).

Purchasing Cull as your initial item causes you to miss out on a significant amount of sustain (only 1 Health Potion and a weak on-hit heal) and durability (no extra health or armor). It doesn't even help you much gold-wise since you only gain 130G after selling it, which is not worth risking a weak early-game.

ahferroin7Nov 30, 20151 votes

I find that a Corrupting Potion works just as well if not better in many cases as a starting item for him, although I do sometimes get Cull as a second item if I have to go AD.

EndlessSorcererNov 30, 20151 votes

While I would commonly purchase Crystalline Flask on Nasus, that was simply due to how much more sustain it provided than any other option.

Corrupting Potion doesn't provide much more sustain than the alternatives until you have backed a couple times. However, I find that I don't usually have any issues by that point since I have bought mana (either Sheen or Glacial Shroud) and I have enough health sustain through my passive and/or Spirit Visage to survive.

However, I will admit that I've never really tried Corrupting Potion. I've typically either bought Doran's Blade, Doran's Ring, Ruby Crystal, Cloth Armor, or Sapphire Crystal (Yorick) with several Health Potions. I rarely find myself using more than 4 Health Potions in a given game, so I don't think Corrupting Potion is really necessary for me; I would rather have the raw stats than the additional sustain.

ahferroin7Dec 1, 20151 votes

The big advantage for me of corrupting potion is that it gives both sustain and a bit more damage when I fight back (most people don't notice the burn from it, but it has helped me push people out of lane faster on multiple occasions).

That, and I use my abilities a bit more than most other people I see playing Nasus. Wither has some serious psychological impact on some people (I've had junglers jump on me, and then run the moment I wither them, it's kind of sad really).

GrReaper96Nov 30, 20155 votes

Cause this is snowbally season not outfarm season

FantasySniperNov 30, 20154 votes

I think Cull is designed to be used by carries for a mid-game spike, or just ones that don't care about their early game. This is usually AS carries, given the nature of the on-hit passive.

The thing is that it's too cost-inefficient to be worth that function, because the stats you're sacrificing can't really be compared to a gold drop even if it were to be more efficient than Doran's Blade.

They should probably make it the AS starter item and straight up buff it with some AS. Maybe give health-on-kill, too.

DaxterrNov 30, 20153 votes

{quoted}

I think Cull is designed to be used by carries for a mid-game spike, or just ones that don't care about their early game. This is usually AS carries, given the nature of the on-hit passive.

The thing is that it's too cost-inefficient to be worth that function, because the stats you're sacrificing can't really be compared to a gold drop even if it were to be more efficient than Doran's Blade.

They should probably make it the AS starter item and straight up buff it with some AS. Maybe give health-on-kill, too.

This is the best suggestion I've seen so far.

ahferroin7Nov 30, 20151 votes

If you farm it fully, you net over 100G when you sell it... How is that not gold efficient?

FantasySniperDec 1, 20152 votes

Doran's is 134.63% gold efficient. Cull is initially 38.89% based only on its stats (excluding the on-hit passive), then reaching 127.78% efficiency only after the minimum 8 minutes of 100% CS.

So not only is it terribly inefficient to start out with, the rest of its "efficiency" is devoted to gold gain that has an ambiguous worth compared to having actual stats in the first place.

I am PewdiePieNov 30, 20152 votes

The problem with cull is aside from the gold, it is a useless item. It gives you no way to fight back people who are bullying you because they know you have a weaker item for fighting.

The item doesn't give you its full worth until you hit 100 cs. The average person takes what, like 10 - 15 minutes to get to 100 cs? That's a long time to get bullied because you're basically missing an item. And buying a doran's to counteract that defeats the purpose.

The gold it gives you isn't worth the lack of dueling potential and the danger it puts you in since also the jungler may be thinking "hm I want to stop them from farming that cull to max."

DrCyanideNov 30, 20152 votes

{quoted}

The item doesn't give you its full worth until you hit 100 cs. The average person takes what, like 10 - 15 minutes to get to 100 cs?

Highly dependant on the player:

A Bronze 4 player I ran stats on earlier barely makes it to 100 CS on ADC by the time the game ends.
I take 20 minutes to get 100 CS on ADC, and I'm Silver 2 (made it to Silver 1, fell back down the last day of the season).
You, a Plat 4, average 100 CS at 15 minutes into the game on ADC.

It's worth pointing out that both myself and the Bronze 4 are mid mage mains, while you're an ADC main, so that may skew our numbers a little.

88.42% of players are below Plat, so the vast majority of players will take between 15 to 45 minutes to get an extra 400 gold. At best pace, that averages to an extra 2.2 gold/5 seconds. At worse pace, that averages to 0.7 gold/5 seconds. Keep in mind that those average gold values are counting the bonus 300 gold, so if you sell it early you get even less than that.

ahferroin7Nov 30, 20152 votes

It's not supposed to be something you use to fight, it's a item for farming with.

lightdragoon88Nov 30, 20152 votes

I think increasing the life gain from on hit increases from 3 HP to 5 HP. that can really make a difference.

darkdillNov 30, 20153 votes

Or maybe make it even higher, but doesn't work against Champions. Clear drawback.

Spacesuit SpiffNov 30, 20152 votes

Lets see how it goes after this snowball meta ends. I can see uses for it, just not right now

WolfessNov 30, 20152 votes

{quoted}

Wasn't it supposed to be the "Doran's Blade alternative"? So why is Doran's Blade still mandatory? Why does Cull have to suck so much since not even your teammates will let you use it properly?

remember that it's the preseason. These things aren't final, they're all experimental things that were released to test the waters and eventually get adjusted and tweaked to where they feel like they belong, even if that means completely removing the item or not even change it at all.

Doran's isn't mandatory, it's still just the recommended item because it's user friendly. It gives hp, ad, and lifesteal that make it a bit safer than most initial item buys. Also remember guys that, I believe in season 3, Doran's used to have flat hp heal on hit, not % hp heal, and I believe it was 5 hp on hit. they changed it because the 5hp on hit for that price felt strong early but useless late so they made it 5% lifesteal and then toned it down to 3% lifesteal later on so that it wasn't too strong early game, but could scale into late game because the 3% lifesteal could just as well scale with your higher AD items and other lifesteal items.

Now, Cull is definitely a different purpose item than doran's blade. Let's say your adc/marksman champ starts the game with 80 ad. 3% ifesteam would be 2.5 hp on hit at that point in the game. Taking minion armor into account or rounding, we can probably call it 2 hp whereas the flat amount from culling will heal 3 on hit regardless of their armor or how much AD you have. The main thing gating the heal is atk speed. Cull doesn't have the hp that dorans offers and lower ad now, but that is because cull's passive offers a trade off from the hp safety and higher ad that can net you a 400 gold profit.

It's up to the players to decide if that 400 gold profit is a worth trade off. 400 gold is almost 1/3 the price of a bf sword. 400 gold is also 8 hp pots worth, or a dagger a 2 hp pots, or boots and 2 hp pots, or a sword and 1 hp pot, etc. Sure it might take you a bit to farm up that 100 cs but I call it an investment. If you play it right, you can buy other things earlier game and count on a chunky 400 gold a bit later to make up the difference you're missing for bigger items, remember that 300 gold is the base kill's worth, and with cull you get 400 if you can play your cards right.

ALSO according to lolwiki, Cull's on-hit heal works on turrets.

The on-hit heal effect triggers when attacking towers, unlike most on-hit effects in the game. http://leagueoflegends.wikia.com/wiki/Cull

EcchiOtakuTMNov 30, 20152 votes

You get cull if you know you can't win lane vs the person so you safely attempt to farm as much as possible

Never would get it if behind though.

Hyrum GraffNov 30, 20152 votes

Buy cull when you're on a lane bully / harass champ who has a hard time closing out kills. You get them low, maybe deny them some cs, but can't kill them, and you know eventually they're gonna outscale you.

Cull says, "Hey, I know right now you're content to sit back and farm. But if you do that, I'm just gonna sit back and farm too, and I'm gonna come out with more gold than you."

Nunya BezwacksNov 30, 20152 votes

cull was their way of making Avarice blade worthless.

junglerboy16Dec 1, 20152 votes

You set yourself 320 gold behind anyone who builds Doran's blade based purely on stats. Now, if the game went long enough that people could consistently get to the point where they have to sell their starter item because they're hitting max build, then Cull's investment just might be worth it (assuming you are in a strong enough matchup to forgo 320 gold worth of stats early game in the first place). Since you aren't reliably hitting that point in most games, instead of the late game net value of Cull being 400 higher than Doran's blade (the comparative bonus it offers once both are sold), it is instead a pathetic 80 gold value, and only once stacked. That doesn't even consider that Cull's sustain function is flat, while Doran's blade scales effectively throughout the game, often serving as enough sustain to not need a lifesteal item until your 4th-5th item.

Challenger players call it a trap item for a reason. You go in thinking you are getting 400 extra gold from the passive, when in actuality you are paying back a stat deficit (because the stats you pay for are only worth at best (and I'm being generous here with the flat sustain) 280 gold, which means you come into lane having spent 170 gold on a gold generation passive). It is a false reward, and unless they boost the gold per minion kill and the gold bonus for reaching 100 CS, it is gonna stay that way.