Reign of Gaming

By now, I hope you guys have begun to assume the obvious for damage calculation assumptions but I'll restate them anyways because I'm nice.  As a sample AD carry, I will be using Caitlyn (typical AD bases and scaling, no steroid) with AD marks and quintessences and all offensive masteries except for Frenzy (bonus attack speed after crit) versus a Cho'Gath with all defensive masteries on, plus flat armor runes and no stacks on his ultimate.  Originally, I thought about including stacks but that would change the results if this was applied to other tanky champions without bonus health scaling.  Health regeneration will not be calculated, and all calculations are made with my AD Carry Interactive Spreadsheet.

There are also several considerations you should take in mind when reading my graph.  Damage over time is based on champion autoattack speed, so if two different item builds kill an enemy at the exact same time, you should check the last damage point to see which item combination actually does more damage.  Statikk Shiv is not in this analysis because its more of a poke-oriented item than pure DPS, which is what I'm focusing on today.  Finally, BotRK's active damage has not been included because I forgot (as hashinshin pointed out to me, everyone forgets it has an active).

For this example, I have used a two level difference between champions to show the difference between an ADC and a solo lane, as well as a Ninja Tabi to represent a champion that will eventually be itemizing against physical damage.  Note that I am using a filled Bloodthirster in this calculation, so kill time may be a little longer than the graph shows if you don't have full stacks.  I have also added extra damage items to the BotRK/BT lines to even out the gold costs.

As a rush item, Blade of the Ruined King has some interesting health interactions.  Versus an enemy with few hundred bonus health, the first major item you buy doesn't make a huge amount of difference in the speed it takes to kill.  While Blade of the Ruined King is actually much more effective than the standard rush items (Infinity Edge and Bloodthirster) while the target is above 50% health, it becomes less effective as the target drops to lower HP levels.  At this price point, your choice of first major offensive item should depend on what you are planning to build, not for early game damage.

As we prepare to buy our second major damage item, we should assume that we have gained a few levels between our first major item purchase and the second.  Both our ADC and solo lane have gained a few levels here and there, and the enemy Cho'Gath has also picked up an extra Runic Bulwark to negate some of the burst from your team's AP carry.  At this point, stacking defensive items in the midgame is still an effective barrier to AD carry kill time, and a properly itemizing tank should take just as long to kill as with the previous price point.

As opposed to the first offensive item choice, which barely changed the kill time on the Cho'Gath, building an additional Phantom Dancer begins to separate the strong offensive choices from the weak.  Bloodthirster starts to fall off here as it is a more sustain-oriented item.  Interestingly enough, Blade of the Ruined King, despite having heavy lifesteal stats, still has the same damage output as Infinity Edge -- which is a purely offensive item.

Note that with this example, Cho'Gath has an extra 1050 health from items.  Depending on the game situation, Infinity Edge may prove to be stronger than BotRK even if you include the active in damage calculations; however, against a tank that is itemizing health (Warmog's!) BotRK may prove to be a superior choice.

The third major offensive item is where the real fun begins!  By this point in the game, any items that the enemy tank itemizes begins to decrease in effective against offensive gains -- now, you should be able to increase kill time on tanks by building additional items.  We'll assume in this example that Cho'Gath hasn't been getting too many kills in teamfights, but has managed to buy a new Glacial Shroud for himself.  Additionally, both Caitlyn and Cho have managed to reach level 18.

As you can see above, the IE-PD-BotRK combination gets you decently strong stats -- not as strong as a pure offensive Last Whisper build, but enough to justify the slightly reduced damage for extra sustain through lifesteal.  Now, let's take a step back.  If we take a Blade of the Ruined King as our first item, it stays relevant in damage to an Infinity Edge up to the 10k price point despite the fact that it gives lifesteal.  It creates some interesting possibilities -- if there are multiple tanks that are stacking Warmog's to stay tanky in teamfights, it might actually be worth it if you can anticipate this and rush BotRK.  Take what you will from this graph, but to me, BotRK is definitely looking a hell of a lot more viable as an AD Carry item rather than being the noob trap it was last patch.

Since I am Captain Hindsight: Gentleman Gustaf would like to point out that the IE-PD-BT combination will give you a kill time of 12.63s, which is approximately the same time as the IE-PD-BotRK combination.

In the rare scenario that the game lasts long enough to build a fourth offensive item, we will assume that Cho'Gath is actively trying to shut down the AD Carry and has upgraded the Glacial Shroud to a Frozen Heart.  Meanwhile, we will be assuming we are making a final offensive choice to round out our damage output.  Since IE-PD was the dominant build in the previous graph, I have included derivation builds from this base below.  Note that kill time is increased from the last graph because of Frozen Heart's passive aura.

At this point in time, the best offensive item, hands down, is an extra Phantom Dancer.  Adding a Last Whisper to the IE-PD-BotRK build or a BotRK to the IE-PD-LW build will get you close to the previous damage point but at this point, it'll probably be more useful to have that extra attack speed and mobility.  A combination of IE/PD/LW/BotRK is the worst choice of all -- by this point, extra AD doesn't help too much and the time-to-kill is much higher than combinations shown in this graph.

Is this the new counter to the Warmog's meta? Intended or not, the new buff to Blade of the Ruined King seems a tiny bit too strong to me.  Previously, this was an item with optimal use limited to bruisers, but now, its decently strong on an AD carry to chunk down tanks while keeping sustain.  While it still doesn't provide quite as much damage as Infinity Edge-based builds on tanks, the damage loss is more than made up by lifesteal -- and don't forget, these graphs don't even include damage from BotRK's active, which will add another 200-odd damage up front.  In cases where you're fighting low health targets, BotRK gives you a sustain and damage point in between that of Bloodthirster-based builds and Infinity Edge-based builds.

Note that all calculations made here were made against a tank who was actively building health items and had a Ninja Tabi, which all happens to help out Blade of the Ruined King.  Against lower health targets, the item obviously isn't as effective, but at the same time, it's still very strong against non-tanks.  The buff to Blade of the Ruined King has made a huge difference in making the item viable -- perhaps, it might even be too strong.  Compare this graph of the 40 AD/4% damage iteration of BotRK to the same graph above.  Damage output has increased by a huge amount and has even made it viable for AD carries.  In the future, if you see one or more Warmog's being built against your team, you should know what to do.