Quote from Skymin_Flower »
With the recent changes to a few of these items, along with Nono purchasing Ezreal with Spirit of the Elder Lizard in the LCS, I feel this is an area that needs to be explored. I will mainly be referring to top lane, but I will talk about others as well.
Spirit of the Ancient Golem:
500 HP, 14 Health Regen per 5, 7 Mana Regen per 5, 10% CDr, 35% Tenacity.
I will start this thread by talking about my favourite of the three Spirit Stone items, Spirit of the Ancient Golem. This item, in my opinion, is flat out OP. It is absolutely perfect for many top laners. 500 HP is incredibly significant, more than Sunfire Cape (but no armour of course). Health regen is a great stat, mana regen is ok, but I will still buy this item on Renekton for example, because the item is that gold-efficient without the mana regen component. You get all these stats for 2000 gold.
The main reason I feel this item is so strong, is because of how much build diversity it gives you. It allows you to start with Faerie Charm + 6 pots (or whatever, as potions will soon be limited to 5 per character) + ward, or you can replace Faerie Charm with a Rejuvenation Bead. The Tenacity means that you can start Cloth Armour and 5 potions against a tough AD match up, build that into Ninja Tabi, and you will still have CC reduction. Basically it reduces your reliance on Mercury Treads, and allows you to look at other boots as potential options. Lastly, Kindlegem is a great item for almost any top laner, and it builds into Spirit of the Ancient Golem. Overall, this item is amazing, even though it was meant for junglers. Top laners especially benefit so much from that stats that it gives, along with some very flexible build paths, and the fact that it is only 2000 Gold, and very easy to build into (no big leaps where you need to save ~1000 gold).
Spirit of the Elder Lizard:
45 AD, 14 Health Regen, 7 Mana Regen, 10% CDR, and a passive that deals a true damage "burn" on all your damaging spells.
This item has been nerfed a couple of times, but with good reason. True damage is always strong, because there is no way to counter it except to "build more HP". This aside, this item is quite strong as well. Most top laners are AD based, and this item gives a B.F. Sword worth of AD, along with all the other stats for only 450 more gold. Yeah, this item is INCREDIBLY gold efficient. Since the removal of the Pickaxe from the recipe, it now builds out of two Long Swords and Spirit Stone. Much like SotAG (Spirit of the Ancient Golem), this means you can buy it in small pieces, not having to save 800 gold until your next power spike, while your opponent is getting smaller items and gradually getting stronger than you are.
This item can also be bought on AD Carries, but I would not recommend it on characters such as Vayne or Kog'Maw, who are straight out DPS characters. It does, however, work on Ezreal, and it would probably work on any ADC that relies heavily on abilities. Corki, for example, comes to mind, as the true damage burn would apply to every person hit by his missiles, and his Gatling Gun would refresh the burn with every tick. Situational maybe, but nevertheless it is an option.
Spirit of the Spectral Wraith:
50 AP, 10 Mana Regen, 10% CDR, 20% Spell Vamp, and lowers the cooldown of Smite by 20%
Sadly, I feel this item belongs on junglers only, or POSSIBLY supports who need some cheap AP. Spell Vamp is a situational stat, and if you are a character that needs Spell Vamp, then there are other options (Hextech Gunblade and Will of the Ancients). The main problem is that both of the other Spirit Stone items have a unique passive that is useful outside of the jungle (Tenacity and a true damage burn), while this one is much more jungle oriented. Overall, I feel it belongs on AP Junglers only.
In General: These items are great because of their gold efficiency, their effective build paths, and the options they open up for your build. Building Spirit Stone gives some wonderful lane sustain, for only 700 gold. From there you can choose what you will build into. I have tried building both SotAG and SotEL on my top laners. It is really cheap, only ~100 more gold than buying a Trinity Force, and infinitely easier to build into, and quite effective. As the game goes on and players begin to approach 6 item builds, I think I would replace SotEL, but I would keep SotAG for the HP, CDR and Tenacity. I think these items are completely viable outside of the jungle.
Spectral wrath is one of the best items for Vlad
