When is phantom dancer a good pick over statikk shiv?

Critkeeper·Feb 19, 2014·4 votes·1,051 views

My gut tells me never.

The fact is that the +10% critical strike chance and +10% attack speed doesn't provide as much damage as shiv procs do. I have done the math myself, and shiv is better in any of the following circumstances for damage output:

You are fighting someone with a ton of armor, so that the worth of the magic damage increases far beyond the worth of a slight % increase in your physical damage per second, despite accounting for last whisper.
You are chasing someone and only manage to land one hit every so often, so that the shiv procs on every other auto attack.
You are in a team fight where the shiv can chain to 3 other people.

Any one of these might be a niche circumstance, but taken together it pretty much exhaustively covers every circumstance you would be fighting in.

You pay 300 gold and lose 1% movement speed to gain the ability to move through units. So you are able to chase through enemy minion waves, and enemy champions to stick to a target, essentially. The problem is that ghost also gives you the ability to move through units.

You might be thinking "You could take shiv and ghost, or you could take dancer and something else, so thats a choice".

Its not really though. The movement speed you lose by not taking ghost and shiv makes diving without it pretty much impossible, so the fact you can move through units passively is moot.

Phantom dancer should just grant more movement speed than statikk shiv. Or maybe Phantom dancer should have an active that grants movement speed, or maybe even a stack system that works the same way shiv does that grants you a huge very short lived burst of movement speed on your next auto attack. Or maybe something else. Just make it worth buying sometimes; the alternative is currently superior in any practical circumstance, and not having a choice isn't a good thing.

14 Comments

pwndrasFeb 19, 20145 votes

for me I prefer getting pd over shiv for most of my adcs. I just like having the ability to ghost through units and having the extra crit % is very nice for my single target focus.

in my head I like to think of it like I can either A) get a chance for 200 bonus magic damage every 10 attacks (charging without moving) or 2) possibly be getting more AA's off/crits off over the time it takes to get 10 attacks.

also nice on draven so I can catch my axes Draven

CritkeeperFeb 19, 20141 votes

suppose you have no bonus attack speed whatsoever. You attack 10 times over a time period. Now you go back and buy 10% bonus attack speed. Now you can attack 11 times over the same time period. Before that time period COMPLETELY elapses, you have made exactly the same number of auto attacks-- you have only made them slightly sooner tending towards much sooner as the total number of auto attacks made thus far increases. So the amount of damage you have done is no better with or without the 10% bonus attack speed until you make quite a few auto attacks, because attacks are quantized.

Furthermore, bonus attack speed works off of a percentage of your base, rather than the total. That means if you already have 100% bonus attack speed, and then you buy 10% more for a total of 110% bonus attack speed, you would need to make 20 attacks before you are able to squeeze in one more attack by merit of the 10% bonus attack speed.

The 10% critical strike chance won't show its value until you have a large sample size, a large number of attacks-- before then the 10% crit could be worth nothing if you don't crit at all, or it could be worth 9000 gold if you crit 5 times in a row. The system is set up to prevent you from making excessive successive crits or successive non-crits, but the point remains. You need a lot of time.

Over the time it takes you to get 10 attacks, phantom dancer may barely outshine statikk shiv, but on that 11nth attack when you proc the shiv for the second time (and thats assuming you aren't moving at all to build stacks), the shiv will all of a sudden be worth far more than the phantom dancer.

The very thing you would buy to shorten the time frame and increase the samples per second to make phantom dancer more attractive-- attack speed and critical strike chance, the phantom dancer already gives large amounts of. The moment you buy phantom dancer, you are going to be in a deficit for attack damage and armor penetration, the other two offensive stats in the quartet of multiplicative scaling for carries. If you insist on minmaxing a couple over the others, you will not be maximizing your damage output.

Furthermore, even after you finally have enough of the other offensive stats to invest in more critical strike chance and attack speed to make the 10% attack speed and critical strike chance more appealing from a practical point of view, those same stats would also make the statikk shiv more appealing because shiv can crit and the stacks build more quickly with attack speed.

ValentenFeb 19, 20144 votes

The big trade off comes from PDs passive unit collision ignoring.

If you are on Draven you are solely autos and trying to catch axes so you can keep up your extra damage so the ignore unit collision is great on him. PD is better on adcs without escapes since you can just go through minion waves instead of going around them or pathing in between each one trying to escape.

KosmicosisFeb 19, 20143 votes

I see your point. I have long wondered why the 2 items coexist even though they are so similar.

My preference comes from this question, "do you want an item 3031 ?"

If yes, then I get a item 3046 , because every crit is that much more potent, and 10% more crit/aspd add up for the enhance crit damage.

If no, then I'd get a item 3087 , because now I am not trying to abuse crit; I just want the ball of stats + the proc.

Also, Sivir gets amazing use of item 3046 's no unit collision passive, when you take On the Hunt and her passive into account. Ashe also likes it while perma-slowing people and not having to worry about minion block for herself.

CritkeeperFeb 19, 20142 votes

That would be a no brainer if it weren't for the fact that the magic damage from shiv is increased with crit damage multipliers like infinity edge.

Its a systemic problem. Any time you might say "Phantom dancer could be more useful here", you get a big fat "Nope" in your face from shiv. Phantom dancer needs a little extra something, to make it more appealing. Like having +12% movement speed while moving through an allied hitbox or something. Just a little niche something to make it a good pick sometimes.

LetlerFeb 20, 20141 votes

But what about enemy magic resist? If you have an ad heavy team perhaps shiv is worthwhile because the enemy will have bought a lot of armor.

I think my issue with shiv is that magic resist lowers the damage a lot and the last whisper you just bought isn't making shiv any more powerful like it would with pd.

LetlerFeb 20, 20142 votes

I disagree with your conclusion. Pd synergizes better with last whisper because of the armor penetration. Pd passive is worth more than you think and shiv damage output is lessened quite a bit by magic resist.

I think if the enemy team is building any kind of Mr shiv is a waste. So maybe you get 200 magic bonus damage but if the enemy has Mr that damage is dropping fast.

I almost always favor pd.

ShakeNBake EUWFeb 20, 20142 votes

10% extra crit chance is great on ADC's, especially coupled with the "Frenzy" mastery + IE + LW.

but yeah I would totally welcome some buffs to PD, especially if they were to movement speed.

LogrosFeb 19, 20141 votes

I think it's better on Ashe. Passive and slow are so good with both of those stats.

Kira OnimeFeb 19, 20141 votes

I find shiv better early game to help wave clear and eventually get a PD once I'm 6 items, selling my shiv.

Galactus BaitsFeb 19, 20141 votes

when i play adc i have a basic build that works on aot of them that with runes gives 100% crit with item 3046 item 3031 u need another item to reach this with shiv so i perfer it in this situation but shiv beter in all others

Hirok0Feb 20, 20141 votes

2 PD is never the way to go. having 1 and a shiv, even if it puts you at 90% crit chance is way better. Theres rarely ever a time where I would even take PD when I already have shiv.