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Should we get some sort of changes to black cleaver?

Tahminatrix ·5/18/2019, 6:32:58 AM·4 votes·4,081 views

Black cleaver is in a weird spot right now, champions that it was intended for (such as juggernauts like Darius / Garen ) are starting to drop it due to anti synergy and lack of armor stackers to counter.

But assassins on the other hand are starting to abuse it, even ones that might have trouble stacking its passive Khazix / Rengar are having a decent time with it, the only draw back is they are mostly just stacking it on the single enemy they are trying to kill rather than having any aoe...

Worse yet, its being built against non tanks/champions that dont tend to build armor at all due to the way it benefits lethality (reduce enemy armor by a % THEN a flat amount reduction via lethality)

You could argue that it requires subsequent hits to actually start shredding an enemy, but most assassins kill their target by applying many damage sources in a short amount of time (khazix e w q auto, rengar r q e auto, zed and his shadows, etc)

Even without the passive, the stats on it alone are amazing for an assassin to get ahold of.

item 3071 400 health 40 attack damage 20% cdr.

Note that this can easily make an assassin go over the cdr limit, especially if they have transcendence which will convert that massive 20% cdr into ad.

The passive shred on black cleaver only gets more important as the game goes on while the user gets more lethality to synergize with it and due to armor per level.

400 health...is MASSIVE for an assassin to get ahold of, it only costs 100 more gold than item 3147 yet (provided there is only one duskblade proc so depends on the champions fighting) an assassin with item 3142 item 3071 can go toe to toe with an identical champion, with item 3142 item 3147 and will likely win.

13 Comments

Tahminatrix 5/18/2019, 6:34:39 AM3 votes

Also had an idea of simply making lethality calculate armor penetration as if it was ignoring the armor shred debuff. (So it would be as if the user had lord dom instead, and the % armor reduction would go last in the damage calculation with lethality)

Or just making it so you cant buy it with lethality and must rely on teammates to use black cleaver for you. (its a team game...and this might push black cleaver into its intended role for front line tanky physical damage dealers)

Sire Hippington5/18/2019, 2:46:09 PM2 votes

BC always was a good choice for assasins as mid-late option. Ever since S3, %pen works great with flat pen at the later changes when base armor grows high enough, and the stats it gives are quite nice for any ad champ, and a bit extra mobillity is also always wanted. The only way to get BC from assasins is by creating a better alternative, aka buffing item 3036 to S4 status, but i'm not sure if that's a good idea.

%bonus pen is a bad stat and there is a reason why they changed LW back to total pen. For %bonus pen to feel relevant, it has to be tuned in a way that then makes armor feel irelevant(which already is the case to some extend even without an even more spefici counter like bonus pen)

The main reason why it's intendet users switch to trinity is because most of them have ways to deal with defstats in their kit already, and defstats just are in a weak spot so there is no need to itemize around them atm. Also, trinity is just a rather overtuned item ever since it gives 20%cdr, while cleaver is just 'fine'.

The thigh guy5/18/2019, 8:32:31 AM1 votes

Nah we should delete it. It’s part of the reasons tanks are unplayable.