Interesting Ivern Decision
I was playing some ARAMs yesterday, and I was given Ivern on a team that was primarily magic damage (
)
Apparently it's always the enemy team, and never mine, that notices things like "Hey, they all deal magic damage. Maybe we should just take some early MR and gg"
So I decided in champion select that I was going to do something different. I'm going AD!
AD Ivern? Wtf? .. Right
The thing that I did that I think really made this interesting was never putting a point into my W, Bushmaker. ... well, I accidentally did at the very end.
The reason for this was so I would always stay melee. Yes, I am losing out on the bonus magic damage, but I could get a Tiamat, and I would never lose the cleave passive from walking into a bush.
Using my Q to root, I drop my not-too-impressive-shield on myself, click on the rooted enemy to engage, and go to work.
Sadly, .... we lost ... BUT, I think I did a pretty good job filling the role that was missing from my team.
My end build was 
and I was working on 
by the time it ended.
The Tiamat turned into Titanic Hydra because Ivern has a decent sized health pool and I needed to be the front line for my team. The active also works as an attack reset, and the AOE was very useful, .. and again, more physical damage.
They also had mostly magic damage 
, so I figured Wits End would help me with some MR and attack speed, more on-hit damage (more magic damage though :/ ) and the sustain below 50% health, which further supports the need to stay in melee form.
Blade of the Ruined King was really helpful because Yorick and Maokai were beefing up. Even Lissandra was building some health. Plus the % health physical damage on-hit was very useful for my team, and the active helps with engage.
The boots of speed were sort of a gut decision. I was engaging and disengaging again and again (lots of 'g's in that sentence) so the extra movement speed was useful in zoning and kiting. The enemy really didn't like dealing with my root, slows, and Daisy's knockups, so I could just walk at them and get some respect for my back line.
Speaking of Daisy, she was incredibly useful in tanking. As I mentioned, her cc, tankiness, and damage was still very useful despite not getting buffed by AP ratios.
I think Righteous Glory would have been helpful because I was occasionally having some mana issues and I had no CDR in the build. Plus Yoric was starting to deal a decent amount of physical damage despite building tank, .. and towers still hurt. And that would give me yet another engage / cc tool.
I feel like I've got a little more detailed that I intended. I don't expect many people to try this. I am certainly not trying to say that it is "good" .. but for the situation that I was in, I think it worked pretty well. I think there could be other situations where it might be useful.
I just like to try new things, and this was a great opportunity that I might pull out again sometime.
