Cut Down nerf:

• Damage Threshold: Above 50% Maximum Health ⇒ Above 60% Maximum Health

Absorb Life nerf:

• Level 1-5: 1-5 (based on level) ⇒ 1-2 (based on level)

Blade of the Ruined King

• Attack Damage: 55 ⇒ 50
• Attack Speed: 30% ⇒ 25%
• On-Hit Damage: 9% (melee) / 6% (ranged) ⇒ 10% (melee) / 6% (ranged)
• I cant believe they made it even worse. Its tremendously weaker than previous seasons.

Kraken Slayer

• Move Speed: 7% ⇒ 5%
• Bring it Down: 140-310 ⇒ 80% effectiveness for ranged champions (112-248)
• Wasnt good enough to build previously, and its even worse now.

Lord Domniks Regards

• Armor Penetration: 40% ⇒ 35%
• This is pretty painful, but LDR/MR is still the most powerful item in the game for MF.

Mortal Reminder

• Attack Damage: 40 ⇒ 35
• Grevious wounds is much more powerful than LDR’s +10ad against almost any kind of healing.

Berserker’s Greaves

• Attack Speed: 35% ⇒ 30%
• Even less reason to build it now.

Wit’s End

• Fray: 15-80 ⇒ 40-80
• We dont really build this now, but it was situationally good in previous seasons.

Dark Harvest

• Cooldown: 40 ⇒ 35
• On-takedown reset timer: 1.5s ⇒ 1s
• Probably doesnt matter. DH cant proc multiple times per ult, and without the stealth passive on Duskblade Mythic the DH playstyle is dead

Fleet Footwork

• Heal: 8-110 (linear) (+10% Bonus AD) (+5% AP) ⇒ 5-120 (following stat progression multiplier) (+10% Bonus AD) (+5% AP)
• Not relevant for MF.

Death’s Dance

• Armor: 40 ⇒ 50
• I dont think this makes it good enough to buy. Stacking HP/Shields (Shieldbow) is more effective because with only 1 armor item, lethality stacking assasins still reduce our armor value to 0

Absorb Life

• Healing: 2-20 (linear scaling) ⇒ 1-23 (following base stat progression) ( Note: This is a nerf levels 1-12 and a buff levels 13-18.)
• This is a nerf. Late game we can heal fine with BT, we only benefit from this rune before making the scepter component.

MF got a buff,

• you can absolutely feel its easier to last hit under tower thanks to the +3 base AD.
• The “Strut Damage Lock-out” and “initial bonus” move speed buff is nice but its difficult to gauge how much of an impact this has, because we can W active to get the full max move speed immediately.
• The +5 to max bonus move speed is actually noticable, its possible to chase down champs more easily now.

overall we can last hit slightly easier with the +3 AD, and we can chase better because the initial bonus move speed was substantially increased.

Miss Fortune

• Base Attack Damage: 52 ⇒ 55
• Strut Damage Lock-out: 5 seconds ⇒ 4 seconds
• Strut Upgraded Move speed delay: 5 seconds ⇒ 3 seconds
• Strut Max bonus move speed: 55/65/75/85/95 ⇒ 60/70/80/90/100
• Strut Initial Bonus move speed: 25 ⇒ 30/35/40/45/50

Dark Harvest

• Damage: 20-80 (+5 per Soul) ⇒ 20 (+9 per Soul) (bonus ratios unchanged)
• Cooldown: 45 ⇒ 40

Electrocute

• Damage: 30-220 ⇒ 50-190 (bonus ratios unchanged)
• Cooldown: 25-20 (based on level) ⇒ 20

The main change is that IE got severely nerfed to the point its no longer a good early game rush item… and Shieldbow got an enormous buff.

• Looking at the AA only dataset, ER / Axiom kills draven the fastest at 1 item, but these items not what we want mid game….
• For this reason playing for autos early game seems to be dead because we dont have a strong 1st and 2nd item to support it. We really need to play for ult damage and short trades (aa q aa & q2) instead

Build Idea #

The build idea here is to optimize for 2 parameters:

• If someone jumps on us, we want to blow them up in the least possible time
• I also want good ult damage, so even if rageblade/kraken/BOTRK does kill someone faster in an all-in, I avoid them because they greatly impact ult damage.

Early game we want to take trades with aa>q>aa or Q2 and back off to heal back using lifesteal. Late game, we wait for our team to CC and then press R to get a couple of kills.

14.17: Note that compared to just making BT first, I am trying to squeeze out as much damage as possible here. The nerfs to LDR and Cut Down means that damage is a bit lacking these days.

Step 1: Make Core Items #

• Boots: make it when you have an extra 300g
• Scepter: rush it if you need sustain against a poke lane, otherwise it can be delayed indefinitely because it weakens your all-in if you are not in a poke lane
• Bloodthirster: If you have scepter and need even more sustain, you can rush this. The build then becomes BT > IE > LW item > Collector.

Step 2: Complete LW item #

• Note that after the LDR nerf, seryldas is “viable” but it seems to be bad early, then suddenly becomes decent in 2 situations:
  • at 6 items with zeal item replacing boots.
  • at 6 items vs squishies with this build: IE, Collector, Seryldas, BT, Cyclosword, Yoummus
  • I dont like this because its not optimal before 6 items.

Step 3: Lifesteal Item #

• At this point your inventory is full, so scepter has to be made into a full item. If you did not build scepter yet, you can continue to delay the lifesteal item.
• Most of the time BT is a good Idea
• Mercurial Scimitar may be needed if mordekaiser keeps ulting you
• BOTRK is a desperation item for when HP stacking tanks are your responsibility to take down.

Step : choose 1 #

• ER is for the CDR, so ult can be up more reliably in teamfights. I think this is more important than the small damage increase from YunTals.
• Shieldbow is important if surviving burst damage is the win condition
• Maw is better than shieldbow specifically into to full AP enemy compositions

Boots Replacement Item #

• Besides shieldbow, other Zeal items can be used. Note that making a zeal item shifts us from more ult centric to more reliant on autos. Personally I would stick to yoummus, unless ult can not be used well.

Notes #

Note that following the build exactly is difficult because of high item component costs. We may have bought some longswords before getting the BFS needed for BT for instance. Collector can be built before IE to absorb some longswords too.

• Make Maw or Shieldbow.

• Make Shieldbow