Hey everyone, I'm Amras, and this is my first Mobafire guide, A Build of Ice and Fire (with apologies to George R.R. Martin). This build is good on a number of champions and exploits the synergy and utility of Rylai's Crystal Scepter and Liandry's Torment. The % health / second burn on Liandry's Torment is doubled when the target is afflicted by any movement impairment, and Rylai's Crystal Scepter provides that movement impairment in the form of a light slow. This slow also provides great utility in team fights, which makes this an all-around excellent combination.

Building these items works best with AP Offtank champions that do consistent, sustained spell damage throughout a fight, preferably as an area of effect, such as Amumu, Rammus, Rumble or Singed. It can also work somewhat on AP casters such as Zyra to an extent with her plants, but there are probably better itemization options. Nukers and assassins like Ahri or Fizz are poor choices to use this build with because if your target isn't dead before the slow and burn of Rylai's Crystal Scepter and Liandry's Torment have had a chance to take much effect, you're probably using those champions incorrectly.

The goal of building these items is to be a huge annoyance to the enemy team during a fight, burning away their health while slowing them and letting your carries clean up.

Constructive feedback, suggestions, and stories of success and failure with this build are greatly appreciated!

Pros That ice and fire synergy A good balance of health and damage Nice utility from the slow Synergizes with DoT spells Burn doesn't steal kills you're trying to feed to an ally Works beautifully with Amumu's lore (but wait...come back...be my friend...*runs beside enemy champion burning them, freezing them and crying on them*)

Cons Neither optimized for damage Nor optimized for tankiness % current health burn diminishes in effect throughout a fight. You need your team to clean up behind you. If you aren't consistently doing spell damage, these items are mostly wasted

Liandry's Torment and Rylai's Crystal Scepter strike a good balance between dealing good damage over time, having good utility, and providing good tankiness. However, unlike Shen, Akali and Kennen would have you believe, balance is not always the best choice. If you're a primary damage dealer for your team, building both of these items means you might be missing out on better damage items such as Rabadon's Deathcap or Void Staff. Conversely, if you're the primary tank/initiator for your team, these items may leave you too squishy to get the maximum value out of these items in a team fight before you get blown up.

Before settling on this build, it's very important to look at the enemy team composition, and more importantly your own team composition, and decide if going for an AP offtank build like this makes sense.

For marks, I almost always take Greater Mark of Magic Penetration. You're trying to be tanky and do magic damage, and marks are much better at providing magic damage in the form of magic penetration than they are at providing tankiness.

Seals and glyphs are up to you based on the champion you're playing. If you're an AP offtank, you're probably in top lane or the jungle, so Greater Seal of Armor makes a lot of sense, and it's pretty hard to argue against these runes generally. And to complement your tankiness, Greater Glyph of Magic Resist or Greater Glyph of Scaling Magic Resist is also a great choice. I could also see Greater Glyph of Cooldown Reduction or Greater Glyph of Scaling Cooldown Reduction if you're not as worried about enemy magic damage.

There are also a lot of interesting options for quintessences. Greater Quintessence of Health is a good choice for increased tankiness. Greater Quintessence of Ability Power is a great choice for extra damage. I also find Greater Quintessence of Spell Vamp to be very strong since you're fairly tanky and doing consistent, sustained magic damage to their team throughout a fight.

The only mastery I think is particularly important to include in your choices is Arcane Knowledge for the magic penetration. I also rarely use this build without some amount of defensive masteries. The masteries you take will depend greatly on the champion you're playing and the specific role you want to play with them. For example, with Fiddlesticks or Rumble, you might be looking to be more on the damage dealer side of AP offtank, and 21/9/0 makes a lot of sense. If you're playing Amumu or Rammus, you'll probably be building more tanky, so 9/21/0 makes a lot of sense. I also think 9/12/9 could work very well in a lot of cases, especially as a jungler where Runic Affinity will be very effective.

Obviously, the core of this build is Rylai's Crystal Scepter and Liandry's Torment. To fill out your build, consider some of the following options that synergize well with the ice and fire combo.

Sunfire Aegis is almost always a good choice with this build. It provides a lot of tankiness with the 45 armor and 450 health, and the 45 magic damage per second AOE works really well since your goal is to be in the middle of their team dealing consistent, sustained magic damage. Zhonya's Hourglass is a good AP-focused replacement (or addition), giving you a lot of extra damage and the ability to survive for a couple seconds in the middle of the enemy team with its active.

Spell Vamp items such as Spirit of the Spectral Wraith and Will of the Ancients are excellent choices with this build because again, your goal is to do consistent, sustained magic damage throughout a fight. For the same reason life steal is great on an AD Carry, whose goal is to do consistent, sustained physical damage throughout a fight, spell vamp is great on you. You'll constantly be regaining a good chunk of health, which combined with your status as an offtank, will make you very hard to kill. These items also work very well with Spirit Visage, which not only provides a lot of tankiness, but also improves your spell vamp by 20%. Will of the Ancients is an especially strong choice when you have a diving AP carry such as Diana, Katarina or Akali who will be joining you in the fray and receiving the benefits of your aura.

AOE Debuff items such as Abyssal Mask, Randuin's Omen and Frozen Heart also work very well to provide tankiness to you and annoying problems for the enemy team, since you'll be right in the middle of them and able to apply the debuffs to many of them. Abyssal Mask works particularly well with this build because the MR reduction increases the burn damage from Liandry's Torment as well as your own spell damage and the damage from Sunfire Aegis if you got it.

Pure Damage items such as Rabadon's Deathcap are a little less useful in this build because Rylai's Crystal Scepter and Liandry's Torment don't give you that much AP-based damage. Void Staff could be useful if the enemy team is stacking a lot of MR, but going for these pure damage items leaves you much more vulnerable, and as an AP Offtank, you should prioritize not being vulnerable over pure damage.

Your goal in a team fight is to be as obnoxious as possible to the enemy team. You want to be in the middle of the fray, freezing and burning as many people as possible. If your carry needs peel, see if you can hit a single-target spell to proc the heavier slow on Rylai's Crystal Scepter. Everyone should want to run away from you. Scatter. Disrupt. Freeze. Burn. Give your carries the best chance to plow through the remaining health of their team.

If you are your team's initiator, you want to make absolutely sure your team can follow up if you go in for a fight. Unlike tankier builds that involve items like Randuin's Omen and Warmog's Armor, you are not invincible when you use this build. If your team needs a couple seconds to follow you, there's a decent chance you'll get blown up before they can make much use of your AOE slow and disruption.

I find this build to be extremely effective, and more importantly, extremely fun under the right conditions--those being when you've avoided the cons above by having the right champion with the right team composition. As well-known Starcraft commentator Day[9] once said about competitive games, if something you do is REALLY annoying to your opponent, it's probably a pretty good strategy. When done right, this build will be really annoying to your opponents.

Again, please leave constructive feedback. Like any other guide, this is a work in progress, and the best ideas are those built by the whole community. Hopefully you'll enjoy using A Build of Ice and Fire!

~Amras