I mean it feels like an almost different champ, and I get so paranoid that if I don't get my NLR item completed by the end of the laning phase, it slows down significantly before I can finally pick it up (because everyone starts wandering around and sharing farm/exp). I can see the idea behind it, it really makes Xerath a drastically differing champ where his ult immediately becomes a semi-sustained artillery fire to keep putting damage constantly over sustained fights by rushing to the 40% CDR cap w/ blue + Morellonomicon, but I really also love my ult to nuke people down completely and snowball harder, and letting CDR become more relevant as I get to the rank 3 ult when it gets veeeeery low in cooldown and letting blue buff supply me with cooldown enough, while I let ult become more of a big mid-game skirmish swinger.
I'm no pro though, and I definitely want to try this out some more and see how it works.
morellonomicon does some interesting things for ap carry itemization due to its components being easy pick-ups early game—even if you want the same 4 items as a core (e.g., morello, sorc shoes, deathcap, void staff) you might not build them the same way every game—it's a good thing to keep in mind every game since you'll start to pick up on how fluctuations in your power curve affect your performance, and when it's a good idea to deviate from what you might consider your default.
if you specifically want to get a taste of 40% cdr early on, but want to preserve a hard ap rush, you could always try early codex + blue elixir(s) + blue buff. you won't set yourself back much at all from the power curve you'd hit from pure damage pathing, but you will get the strong farm/harass/objective control you know from builds that allow for a little more in the way of 'utility stats' like cdr.
or just runes+masteries, blue potion and blue buff. Do you guys ever wonder if perhaps there is too much cooldown reduction on blue buff?
that's more of a 'big picture' question for the live design team—i don't know how they feel about it, tbh. personally i think it strikes a nice balance of being a point of contention (i.e., it creates conflict between teams) while not specifically paralyzing one team if they miss out on them. like, if my team steals blue i feel great. if our blue gets stolen, i don't feel vulnerable in most cases.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Selomorbos
Also if your still posting, Is there many situations where you should go straight for last whisper? I know i've tried last whisper and phantom dancer instead of going for a BF sword item. I thought it was fine, but i know that teams just flame you outright for doing so.
early last whisper is pretty good, but it depends on your champion, runes, masteries, and items as well as your opponents. for example, if you're doing a kill lane with graves and 24 a.pen at level 1, you probably want that brutalizer + last whisper rush (assuming that you're doing well).
in any case, i'd probably never want to do last whisper + phantom dancer as my first two items. i think last whisper + youmuu's ghostblade is a stronger setup into infinity edge if you want to 'try to leave a dent' on the champs/builds that push for mid-game resilience. it's often too risky to buy into the amount of crit chance phantom dancer has without having a lot more attack damage first.
I'm not sure if I like the Morellonomicon Rush on Xerath
I'm no pro though, and I definitely want to try this out some more and see how it works.
if you specifically want to get a taste of 40% cdr early on, but want to preserve a hard ap rush, you could always try early codex + blue elixir(s) + blue buff. you won't set yourself back much at all from the power curve you'd hit from pure damage pathing, but you will get the strong farm/harass/objective control you know from builds that allow for a little more in the way of 'utility stats' like cdr.
in any case, i'd probably never want to do last whisper + phantom dancer as my first two items. i think last whisper + youmuu's ghostblade is a stronger setup into infinity edge if you want to 'try to leave a dent' on the champs/builds that push for mid-game resilience. it's often too risky to buy into the amount of crit chance phantom dancer has without having a lot more attack damage first.