Reign of Gaming

Gentleman Gustaf here today to give my opinions on some of the new items for Season 3. Note that these are my own opinions and preferences, and will inevitably be biased by the playstyles I find most appealing. I think a lot of the new items are flops (they either don't quite do what they intend, or they are just underwhelming), but a good number are steals (and should end up common purchases).

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Offensive Items

Blade of the Ruined King - situational

+40 AD
+10% lifesteal
Passive: Your attacks deal 4% of the target's current health in physical damage and heal you for half the amount.
Active: Drains target champion, dealing 150 physical damage plus 50% of your attack damage and healing you by the same amount. Additionally, you steal 30% of their movement speed for 2 seconds.

Ok, so bruisers are obviously going to love this item: its damage doesn't require scaling (scales off of enemy health), so you can get it as a sole offensive item. The slow will also be quite strong against AD Carries. But two things worry me about this item. One, it suffers from the same problem as Madred's Bloodrazor: tanks stack resistances not health. Two, it's current, not max health.

The first problem might not be a problem in season 3; the changes to penetration may make stacking health more appealing at least on bruisers. The second is really just a question of numbers, and I don't think it will beat out Trinity Force (and neither should it, given the cost difference).

I also wonder if AD Carries might not pick up this item for its active, to help with kiting. If so, it would replace Bloodthirster. My intuition says that it won't really pay off, as you sacrifice 60 AD and 8% lifesteal for the passive and the active. If this item turns out to be very strong on AD Caries, I'm going to chalk it up to the active, because the rest of the item just doesn't quite compare to Bloodthirster.

New Last Whisper - the only math I'm doing tonight, I swear.

New Last Whisper now ignores 35% of armor, down from 40%. However, given that it applies before flat pen, how much of a difference does that make? Essentially, Last Whisper has lost 5% of an opponent's total armor, but gained 35% of their own flat pen. So as long as their flat pen was equal to 1/7th of the opponent's armor, this is (overall) a gain. Given that most AD Carries did not previously run Armor Pen (just 6 from masteries), this is a nerf above 42 Armor. However, on champions who ran an additional 25 from Runes, this is a buff, so long as the enemy champion has below 227 Armor. And anybody who took my advice and got Brutalizer will now benefit from the Pen changes below 332 Armor. So this is actually a small nerf if you don't get any flat armor penetration, but if you do get armor penetration, you'll benefit. This should also help AD Casters and Bruisers somewhat, given their love of Brutalizer.

New Malady - I hope it's good

+25 AP
+45% AS
Passive: Your basic attacks deal 15 + 10% of your AP as bonus magic damage
Passive: Your basic attacks reduce enemy MR by 4 for 8 seconds (stacks up to 7 times).

I really like new Malady; it solved part of the problem old Malady had, which was that it felt like it scaled with on-hit effects, not AP, and the major strength of on-hit builds was tankiness, which made Malady scary to get. Now, Malady essentially adds more AP scaling in for champions who can take advantage of it. It will probably not be bought much, but I hope this buff will bump it up out of 'worst item in the game' territory.

New Spirit Visage - unsure

Spirit Visage got a buff to give it 50 MR. Maybe that will help it as a late game item? It still seems underwhelming, to me.

New Wit's End - flop

Nobody tell Hashinshin, but they nerfed another bruiser item. Wit's End now gives 10 less MR. People will probably still buy it on champions like Irelia, but we'll see how the pen changes affect this item. If defenses are all about health, why buy this item? And if defenses are still about resistances, why buy this item? Overall, I'm not optimistic.

Ravenous Hydra - steal

+75 AD
+15 Health Regen
+10% Lifesteal
Passive: your attacks deal 60% of your AD to units around your target.
Active: Deals physical damage up to 100% of your AD to units around you.

It's a melee Hurricane. This could actually be a little bit better, because bruisers and AD Casters don't care about AS/Crit as much, and as such, don't care about the loss of multiplicativity. I ignored this item in my article about AD Casters, and perhaps that was a mistake, as I like it a lot (it gives AD Casters another spell, much like Deathfire Grasp does for AP Casters). Combined with Sword of the Divine, we're talking a lot of actives that can add to AD Caster burst.

Runaan's Hurricane - flop (but still potentially really OP)

I hyped this item a lot here, because it buffs your damage a lot, just not really on the champions it's aimed at. For that alone, I'm calling it a flop. I expect to see it have a LOT of viability in cheese mid-game comps, but its late game scaling leaves some to be desired, because its bolts don't take advantage of stat multiplicativity as well (no crit). Watch for Azubu Frost to pick it up if they ever decide to run Kog. But I guess my question is why you'd run a mid-game cheese strategy with a Kog'Maw pick. It may be viable on other champions as well (Varus/MF), so we'll see.

Statikk Shiv - depends

+40% AS
+20% Crit Chance
+6% MS

I guess this is cool on ad carries. It's a bit light on stats and heavy on the passive, but the passive is kind of cool, at least. I'd be curious about the synergy between this item and Runaan's Hurricane, but I feel like it would put the crit chance to waste. I could see buying this item, I guess. Depends how quickly it builds charges. I think this item concept does what Runaan's Hurricane intends to do (give AD Carries AoE damage) much better. I'm just not so sure about the numbers yet.

Sword of the Divine - Situational

Sword of the Divine gives + 45% Attack Speed, but can be activated to give 100% Attack Speed and 100% Crit Chance for 3 crit strikes or 3 seconds, whichever comes first. In addition, kills reduce its cooldown (60 seconds) by half. Finally, when the active is on cooldown, it looks like you lose the +45% Attack Speed. You may look at this item and see 'oh, it's just a gimmick, why bother?'. And to an I look at this item and see 'gimmick, how can it be abused?'

First, as commented elsewhere, it will be good burst auto-attack damage on AD Casters, who can build all AD for their spells, yet use this as a 3rd or 4th damage item. Essentially, it becomes a Hextech Gunblade or Deathfire Grasp, and offers another pseudo-spell for you to use, that spell doing damage equal to 4 extra attacks (if you crit 3 times, when you would probably only have attacked twice in that time).

However, I think it opens itself up to abuse in combination with Runaan's Hurricane. Let's say you decide to go for IE + BT + Runaan's Hurricane (or any other low crit chance build) for some strange reason. If you really do need single target damage, you can turn on its active and spam out three 2.6 damage crits, for about 2340 damage. So if you do decide for a cheese mid-game build with RH, your late game can still have single target damage with this item.

All in all, I say SotD is a situational item which may have surprising power.

Zephyr - flop

+20 AD
+50% AS
+10% MS
+10% CDR

I'm also not really sure who this item is for. It seems scary on bruisers because it has no tank stats and you need to not die. It seems lackluster on AD Casters because it's mostly AS. So that leaves AD Carries. The CDR makes me think it's for the spell heavy AD Carries, but the AS makes me think it's for the pure AD Carries, but they prefer crit. I guess it would be good with Runaan's Hurricane, because of the lack of crit, but the CDR is really only good on Varus (of the AD carries who like Runaan's Hurricane). I'm mostly unimpressed with this item.

Defensive Items

Mercurial Scimitar - Steal

AD, MR, and a cleanse ability. This item threatens to make all bruisers into mini-Olafs, so of course it's good. I'd rather have this item than Maw of Malmortius on a lot of champions. It's nothing gamebreaking, but it does seem pretty strong to me.

Ohmwrecker - Flop

+350 Health
+300 Mana
+55 Armor
Active: Prevents the closest enemy tower from attacking for 2.5 seconds

I'm not sure I understand this item's purpose. You end up paying a good amount of gold just for the passive. And while the passive is interesting, why not just use that money to get more armor or health? You'll be tankier against that tower, but you'll also be tankier against other things. The only thing that worries me is this item's ability to make late game comebacks even harder, because towers will become harder to hide behind, but that would be just as true if you just bought more defensive stats.

Runic Bulwark - Steal

+400 health
+20 armor
+30 MR
Aura
+10 Armor
+30 MR
+10 Health Regen

This item is so good, it might make Aegis into a lane item, if junglers aren't able to afford Runic Bulwark. Because magic damage is typically burst damage, it relies very much on being able to combo people. Giving 30 MR to your whole team means that your carries go from ignoring 33% of magic damage (49 MR) to ignoring 44% (79 MR). It also gives you enough MR that you never need another MR item again, allowing you to stack health and armor to your hearts content. The only reason I could see this item not being crazy OP is if the pen changes make building resistances futile.

Iceborn Gauntlet - Steal

Discussed at length here, this item gives you tankiness, consistent damage, and disruption, the same combination that makes champions like Irelia and Jarvan incredibly scary. I'd look to see this item on any team which has two champions who want Glacial Shroud, especially when one of the champions could use more disruption.

Jungler items

Spirit of the Ancient Golem - steal

+500 Health
+30 Armor
+14 Health Regen
+7 Mana Regen
Passive - Butcher: Damage dealt to neutral monsters increased by 25%
Passive - Tenacity

This is the tanky jungler item, and I think it's incredibly promising, if only because it lets you go for Boots of Mobility on champions who want them for ganking, while still leaving you with somewhere to get Tenacity. Skarner is a pretty strong pick for this item, even if he doesn't much like the health. Maokai and Nautilus will also probably like this item.

Spirit of the Spectral Wraith - steal

+40 AP
+10 Mana Regen
+20% Spell Vamp
+10% CDR
Passive - Butcher: Damage dealt to neutral monsters increased by 25%

This should help make AP junglers a little more viable. Unfortunately it only really helps the AP Carries who had trouble jungling. Those who could already jungle fine (Fiddlestick/Diana) won't need the Spell Vamp. But even having a jungling item will help those junglers out. I'm excited to test this out, as Fiddlesticks is one of my favorite junglers.

Spirit of the Elder Lizard - a bit underpowered

+50 AD
+14 Health Regen
+7 Mana Regen
Passive - Butcher: Damage dealt to neutral monsters increased by 25%
Passive - Incinerate: Basic attacks and damaging abilities burn the target for 15-66 true damage over 3 seconds.

This really helps out those bruiser junglers who wanted Wriggle's to clear but relied on Philo for Mana regen; in the old jungle, they were filling two slots with items they needed just to jungle. It was bad enough that I (and I think many other junglers) were cutting out Wriggle's and just running Philo and HoG. Don't underestimate the burn; that's 22 true dps. Unfortunately, its lack of tankiness worries me a little bit. I think it's a much needed improvement for mana hungry AD junglers, but it still feels a bit weak for me, just because of the lack of tankiness.

Support Items

Shard of True Ice - just sort of ok

+45 AP
Nearby allied champions gain 6 mana regen per 5 seconds.
Gain an additional 4 gold every 10 seconds
Active: Surrounds an ally with a blizzard for 4 seconds that slows nearby enemy movement speed by 30%

Not the greatest peel, but at least it adds a support useful upgrade for Kage's Lucky Pick (and with HoG gone, this will be a more common purchase, I'd imagine).

Mikael's Crucible - steal

This item has stats, but really all you need to know is that it lets you cleanse and heal (% health missing) somebody on your team. AD Carries everywhere rejoice.

Other

Tear item upgrades - bad design

Balance aside, I really don't like the two new Tear items. When fully charged on mana, they gain very strong active abilities. It just seems like a lot of power ramp up very suddenly that will be very hard to feel good about, in my opinion.

Overall

Riot has done a lot of work revamping old items and bringing out a lot of new items, and I like a lot of what they've done. Some items don't really fill a clear role, and I'm not sure we'll see much of them, but I expect many of the items to start seeing play once the changes roll around, and I'm excited to test them out in real gamesch.

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