Maintaining Sivir's Unique Niche

Sivir is unique due to her incredible waveclear, movement speed, split pushing/pushing power, and her spell shield.

How items prevent her niche role. Her waveclear as an ADC is primarily achieved by building Cooldown Reduction (CDR) with her skills scaling off of raw damage. However, the only items that provide lots of raw Atttack Damage with Cooldown Reduction are , , , , . The essence reaver synergizes well with Sivir's kit, but is not efficient enough to rush as a first item and does not provide enough mana per hit in the early game to compensate for her overwhelming mana needs. The Black Cleaver, although it synergizes extremely well with her kit, does not do enough damage to tanks compared to the Last Whisperer. This forces an entire team comp to be built around Sivir to compensate with lots of Attack Damage from other champions to take full advantage of Black Cleaver. This often does not work well because unless you are in a 5 man team, in solo Q you have no control over what others pick. Youmoo's Ghostblade works well with her kit like black cleaver because it allows her to run down opponents being she has no crowd control abilities, but it simply isn't efficient enough to get to kill one squishy when there are two tanks (last whisper needed). The Spirit of the Elder Lizard is a jungling item and simply isn't enough damage and utility for an ADC. The Zephyr is a great item on Sivir that Gives her most everything she needs except large raw damage. Also, the Zephyr is typically only bought end game when you have tons of gold and feel like replacing Berserker's Greaves.

Other items that provide CDR that work well with her kit are , but these all are defensive items. Iceborn Gauntlet gives AP instead of AD. Spirit Visage synergizes best with life steal and is a viable item but Guardian Angel and Banshies Veil are often better choices due to their utility in teamfights.

This forces her to opt for the standard adc build mention in other posts that do not synergize with her kit. So the question is does one revamp the items which affect 100 other characters, OR change her kit to bring out the usefulness of the items mentioned above.

*The obvious answer is change her kit because then you are working with her kit as really the only variable. *

The emphasis of Sivir's kit. Currently her kit is built around movement speed, waveclear, and split pushing. The passive gives you extra mov't speed after dealing damage to a champion, and her ult is a whole team and/or minions mov't speed steroid. Mov't speed is extremely important for her because she has no crowd controls, low attack range, and no dodge ability. I say no dodge because her spell shield does not re-position her, it simply blocks ONE incoming ability. That is why her boomerang blade has long range and her rickochet damages from a distance.

The faults of her kit. She requires raw AD items but is most effective with CDR forcing players to either play her like almost every other ADC or sacrifice the ADC role of being the main source of attack damage output for her team for CDR. Her Spell Shield has an extremely long cooldown at low levels forcing her to waste rickochet on minions to damage champs at a safe distance ( which is half damage on bounces) or use a lot of mana to possibly land a boomerang blade (which has been improved in terms of its hitbox recently). When her spell sheild is down she is forced to flash or ult to escape abilities unlike other adc's who have a Q, W, E, crowd control, or slow to kite especially at low levels. If she falls behind just a little she has very little chance to catch back up in terms of outplaying an opponent simply with her kit. Also as a side note, one oddity is that her ults passive gives ricochets active % attack speed. Shouldn't it simply be that ricochets active grants % attack speed and causes autoattacks to bounce for 3 auto attacks??

Interesting ways to improve her kit without altering items!! Her ults passive could be to give CDR based on current movement speed value (with ricochet retaining the 80% attack speed but as an active of ricochet itself). This would encourage actually building giving 10% CDR AND Tenacity which is important to counter incoming crowd control being she doesn't have some crowd control of her own. Also, depending on the amount of CDR given by the passive, the becomes more viable to rush because it would also synergize with Sivir's passive. By using her Ult, with the right %CDR scaling, she could easily reach 40% CDR later in the game allowing her to really have damage output in teamfights. The downfall of this is that it does not synergize well with her waveclear/split push niche but instead turns her more to teamfighting. On the other hand this might allow her to make incredible moves to dodge and duel an opponent(s) that comes to stop her while split pushing. It really depends on how great an effect is has on her.

Perhaps alter her spell shield. In all honesty what separates the quick and the dead Sivir's is her spell shield so I have quite a few ideas around it.

Successfully blocking an ability with spell shield could grant CDR in some way temporarily or permanently. This would encourage Sivir's to engage after already blocking a lot of incoming damage by increasing her damage output.

Another spell shield idea is that successfully blocking and ability grants the next ability cast to stun the opponent. This would give her crowd control and really allow her to have a chance in a duel by really punishing the opponent for engaging. This works well with the zoning ability of her boomerang blade.

Yet another spell shield idea is to have it synergize with her passive by granting her rewards for different numbers of successful blocks. For instance, with arbitrary numbers for ease, the first five blocks grant additional movement speed for each block much like her passive is now based on level from my understanding. Blocks 6-15 could grant %CDR. Reaching 30 blocks adds another bounce to richochet or perhaps adds on hit effects to both the first and second targets hit (prioritizing Champions). Reaching 50 blocks grants her the ability to recast spellsheild while on cooldown after a successful block but with the recast not as a spell shield but rather to add a stun to her next ability that lands. If Rengar gets trophies that grant him abilities, why cant spell shield ownage grant Sivir new abilities. Another option for 50 blocks is to increase the range or damage of her boomerang blade. Keep in mind that these are arbitrary numbers that may or may not be realistic in a game and could be scaled to be realistic.

*Now I must admit I tried to incorporate a lot of ideas into one, but the main purpose is the individual ideas. *

The one I like the most is granting CDR based on Movement Speed as a passive for her ult (keeping % attack speed with ricochet still but as an active on ricochet). This would greatly improve her role to split push/waveclear. I find this a very interesting idea and is the one I like the most because it is simple and doesn't really involve lots of theoretical complications from item sets. Ironically if Azir's attack speed can scale with his CDR, why can't Sivir's CDR scale with her movement speed? After all, they are synergistic and of the same blood line aren't they!!!

I would like to hear any constructive thoughts of yours on the post and really hope that Riot considers changing her just a little more to allow us to play her the exciting way they intended us to!