Hey guys, Fox here again, with a follow up to my article from last week. I ended up discussing item builds with various people and talking about item builds. In my last post I mentioned how much better Infinity Edge is looking this patch, and someone posed the question as to when to buy Bloodthirster over Blade of the Ruined King now.

I've always been a big fan of builds including Bloodthirster and Infinity Edge, scaling up your AD with lots of crit. But with the nerfs to Bloodthirster and huge buff to Blade of the Ruined King, I thought it'd be best to calculate the damage to find out for myself. Since every ADC has different AD scalings for abilities, the graphs below represent only auto attack damage.

I felt the graph became somewhat misleading and at just a glance it looks like Bork is clearly superior. But because Bork does % of current life, in the first graph we see if the enemy has 600 health, Bork does more damage. As soon as you hurt them and they're at 500 life, BT starts becoming the superior damage item. For this reason I've added a third feature to the graph.

The Green Dot, I've labeled Bork Superiority is the point at which Bork becomes overall a better damage item, when attacking the same enemy from 100% health to 0% health. If the enemy's maximum health is at or above the green dot, Bork will give a higher overall damage output. If it is below, Bloodthirster will.

The graph does account for the attack speed on Blade of the Ruined King. It's also worth mentioning that Bloodthirster costs 300 more gold than Bork.

To start I'll compare the two items alone, without any crit scaling.

Bork looking very strong here, not that surprising since the passive of Bork doesn't scale with crit, it only scales with enemy health. Bloodthirster will start to look a little better once you calculate some critical strike chance in the build.

I chose the 30% crit because that's how much Phantom Dancer gives, and to be fair many ADCs who want Bloodthirster won't want Phantom Dancer and will have much less crit. It honestly looks pretty bad for Bloodthirster, as 1375 is all the health your enemies need to justify having a Bork over a Bloodthirster.

And if Bloodthirster is going to outshine Bork anywhere in these simulations, it's here. Infinity Edge, lots of crit, a late game build with tons of ADC scaling. But to be honest, I'm left underwhelmed. The average glass-cannon carry has just short of 2000 health from base stats alone, if they have any health in their build they easily pass the line of Bork Superiority.

Conclusions and Thoughts

So for pure auto attack champions, Bloodthirster is now an item you should never buy. The shield passive for Bloodthirster is neat, and it does give a little bit more lifesteal, but if you're having trouble getting bursted buying a Banshee's Veil or Guardian's Angel will be much more reliable defenisve option. The damage and the active from Blade of the Ruined King are just too good to pass up.

And as for AD Caster type ADCs who need the high Attack Damage from Bloodthirster, they're going to be in a weak state. My initial thoughts were that the Bloodthirster change was a nerf for them (it gives 20 less AD and costs 300 more gold) but these champions would overall still be okay after the patch (Randuins getting nerfed etc, it's not only nerfs). But with Auto Attack focused Carries getting this huge buff in the form of Bork buffs, AD Caster champs won't be able to compete.

Why play an AD Caster-style ADC when auto attack focused carries are going to get the super-charged Blade of the Ruined King and Bloodthirster gets nerfed? And I'd say I predict a drop of these champions from competitive play... but most aren't in competitive play. Miss Fortune? Varus? These champions are going to be noticibly weaker this patch. Top Tier ADCs like Lucian, Graves, and Corki will take a hit, and I don't know how it will all play out, but I don't think we'll be seeing Graves or Corki in competitive this patch.

Watch out for Jinx, Vayne, Twitch, Tristana, and all the Marksmen who can effectively use Bork, because I feel the Marksmen metagame will have a definite shift towards auto attacking and away from AD heavy ability based builds.

Thanks for reading, and if you liked this article and want to see more like it, or didn't like it and have some feedback, hit me on up Twitter @fox_nicholas.