Reign of Gaming

Hello again Summoners. Continuing from my initial discussion here of upcoming itemization changes for the preseason, I’d like to talk about a current item to which we’re making changes, as well as its new and exciting upgrade.

It’s Tuesday. You know what’s coming.

For a very long time, Tiamat has been sitting in this quasi-state of ‘Is this a good item? Is this a terrible item?’ No longer. We’ve cleaned up Tiamat to be far more streamlined in the new item set, giving it a larger cleave range (at the cost of reduced damage near the edge) and greater synergy with other items by removing the restriction of dealing damage based on the damage of the original attack.

So what’s different?

1. It has a Unique Passive. Tiamats no longer stack to form odd cases where you deal more damage to a secondary target than the primary target.
2. Tiamat no longer cares about the damage you deal with your main attack; thus, Tiamat procs don’t need you to itemize heavy critical strike in order to take advantage of dealing crazy damage. You will always deal a set amount of splash damage based on your Attack Damage.
3. It has a short-cooldown active that allows you to perform a stronger version of the passive Cleave at any time.
4. It is Melee Only, meaning it is no longer a trap item on ranged characters. The active and passive components will literally turn off and be unusable for ranged characters, with the same effect kicking in for dual form characters such as Jayce or Nidalee when they’re in ranged form.
5. It has a much larger cleave radius, at the expense of damage falloff.
6. It no longer has mana regeneration.
7. It has an upgrade.

Let’s examine how this might affect your use of Tiamat:

1. It lets you clear minion waves more quickly

Having a larger passive cleave and an active cleave allows melee fighters or carries who pick up Tiamat to farm waves more efficiently, granting decent wave-clear ability to characters who lack it. Characters like Poppy, for example, can now clear a wave with Tiamat in a relatively short amount of time through a combination of passive and active procs.

2. It makes your burst combo more flexible

Having the active Crescent ability means an additional AoE physical spell that you can weave in to your burst combos. A Riven, for example, might take the time to use the Crescent active in between her dashes – while a Fiora would want to use Crescent as soon as she descends upon a target with Lunge.

3. It can be used effectively by a wider variety of characters and be useful in more situations

Being built out of high Health Regeneration and Attack Damage gives Tiamat a very smooth build up path for the early game. With the ability to itemize both heavy regeneration and attack damage early in the game you can gain a very strong staying presence in lane.

The Upgrade

Introducing Ravenous Hydra, a life steal upgrade for Tiamat. While it doesn’t enhance any of the damaging aspects of Tiamat, Ravenous Hydra allows you to drain from surrounding enemies via your life steal statistic. This can grant melee fighters incredible staying power when outnumbered or assaulting the front lines. While Hydra won’t decimate teams on its own without a huge amount of Attack Damage, the combination of the active ability and life steal will allow experienced players to gain a burst of healing by using Crescent to attack and drain multiple enemy champions.

But wait! I’m a Ranged Carry type of player. What do I get in order to do AoE damage?

Stay Tuned.

-Xypherous

• Preseason Itemization Preview
• Item Preview – Tons of Mana, just one Tear
• Item Preview – Dust Sweeping

Tiamat + R, Fiora basically hits a larger area in exchange for not triggering the 500 damage in the splash at level 18. While this is kind of a trade-off - it also means that stacking Tiamats and hoping the enemy team is grouped up is no longer a thing.

If you're in a ranged form, Tiamat's active and passive will not work. This applies to Jayce/Nidalee/Elise/Kayle/X.

Parley will still trigger Tiamat, as Gangplank himself is Melee.

Yes, but only if you're melee. Kayle becomes ranged - so Tiamat will no longer work during her ranged form.

It will still work on Fiora's ultimate - but it will no longer inherit the base damage from Fiora's ultimate - so you don't get silly instant-gib cases. It splashes for a % of your total attack damage.

Yes. Malphite and Tiamat would still stack in the way you've described.

Hm. I'm not sure how Sion's ultimate is coded come to think of it.

If it actually gives you true lifesteal, then it will work with the hydra. (As in, your character statistics page shows you have more lifesteal)

For example, Nasus' passive is actual lifesteal so his passive will work with Hydra.

I tried. I still don't know if it's all that great.

It currently does not work with critical strikes - it only inherits your base attack damage.

Essentially Hydra --> BT is a very powerful combination while Hydra --> IE is far less so.

1. Riven is still Melee.
2. If you shapeshift, the flying spear will splash right now - as you are currently melee. Yes, this is kind of a weird edge-case that I should probably fix but I mean.. it's the literal functional wording of the mechanic. I'll probably go back and clean this up when I get the chance, thanks for the reminder.

Tiamat has an internal proc limiter against different targets of 0.05 seconds - so Shyvana's Dragon form isn't going to Tiamat Proc 6 billion times any more and we might be able to add AoE on-hit abilities now. :P

Warwick's ultimate will apply the new BC. It'll still do magic though. We have so few cases on magic on-hit effects that it's cleaner for the BC tooltip to read 'dealing physical damage.' New BC is basically on-hit + on-physical.

(Yes, that does mean JIV applies two stacks of the new BC with his passive.)

AE range is much larger than the old Tiamat - but you run into damage falloff there.

Basically, around old Tiamat range you get 60% damage. 100 units past old Tiamat range, you get 40% damage and 200 units past old Tiamat range, you get 20% damage.

The Active Cleave is even larger than the passive cleave - and gets to about 400 units.

I believe so - based on how Nasus' Q is hooked up. We might need to revisit this in the future but for now, let's see how it goes.

If you're in cannon mode, you're ranged. No Tiamat procs for you.

Tiamat is currently double regen items + long sword + pickaxe - but we've been pondering whether it should be a Health + AD item rather than a HP Regen + AD item and seeing what would be better.

Nope - note that their unique passives are both named 'Cleave' - this is part of our new tooltip terminology to basically state that if you have a unique passive named Cleave, you don't benefit from any other unique passives named Cleave.

Although Parley is a ranged spell, Gangplank himself is Melee, so Parley will trigger Tiamat.

Yes.

It will also proc three times in the rage-empowered form.

The active is a separate spell with a short cast time. You can use it in between attacks - but not during a cast.

Tiamat will always do a percentage of your total attack damage - it doesn't really care what attack applies it at all.

Yes.

Ezreal is ranged, thus Tiamat doesn't work on him.

It doesn't build out of Faerie Charm. It only provides health regeneration.

Oh yes, if he's in hammer form, he will rapidly attack them three times, cleaving each time.