Infinity Edge



So What's The Big Deal Anyway - IE's Popularity Amongst ADCs
There are two reasons that nearly every ADC rushes this item and those are 1) It builds out of BF Swords meaning you get a huge spike of AD very early in the game. 2)Crits dealing 150% more damage is an insane late game spike in damage.

But Epigee, nobody gets IE late game, they always rush it!

Oh voice in my head right you are. The "Carry" part of the role (Attack Damage Carry) has a two-fold meaning; your team carries YOU in the early game and you carry the TEAM in the late game. The ADC's entire game therefore is focused on being able to shred people late game and their builds are a refelction of this.* Aside from the starting Doran's Blade (which provide sustain to get through the super weak early game of ADCs) every item is building towards that late game power that ADC's bring and each subsequent item is just another limb of Exodia.

Epigee, how does buying IE first make you do more damage in the late game? It just dont make sense!

Well voice in my head, IE's passive is super unique in how it scales. By increasing the damage critical strikes do, it changes how you prioritize stats in the ways I will describe.
  • Your crits now deal 150% more damage, which means crit chance is now approximately 150% more valuable because every time you crit you'll be doing THAT much more damage.
  • Attack Speed is now more valuable. Your crit chance (hopefully) will never be 100% meaning that crits are NOT guaranteed. Because they're random when you'll get them, you need to get more auto attacks off to "fish" for your crits and put the IE passive to work.
    This is the reason Zeal based items (PD and Shiv) synergize insanely well with IE.
  • AD is slightly more valuable, but is slightly less valued. wwhhaatt?? Well let's think about it. Because your crit's now deal 150% more damage, every time you crit your AD is now worth 1.5 more than it would be without IE. However, the priority on this AD is very little in comparison to crit chance or Attack Speed.

*of course this excludes champs such as Lucian or Draven who more early game focused than a traditional ADC

Well, How come you're only talking about ADC? There are more roles in the game Epigee...


Oh really voice in my head? Who else would you build IE on?

Oh Shut up, Tryndamere doesn't count.

The reason that we only see IE being built on ADCs is because it deals damage. Granted, it's good at dealing damage but all IE does is deal damage. Not many team comps can sacrifice the super tank top or the utility-off-tank jungler to put an IE on someone. We already talked about crit so we know that if you are buying IE you should be buying other items that give more crit chance; when you buy IE you're not only sinking the 3800 cost of IE into PURE DAMAGE, you are also sinking another 2-5 THOUSAND gold into more damage items in order to justify your IE. (Kinda like how tryndamere does....)
[*] Current shop prices show us its cheaper to be tanky and harder to deal damage. IE provides no utility so only ADCs build it.

Flaws

  • Well we covered problem 1 already. Only ADC's can build this item. granted, it think this is more a problem with other items in the game being cheaper/better/more-gold-efficient so you're put farther behind when you get IE but nevermind that. How do we get IE to be more inline with what we want it to do? Well let's ask "What do we like about IE?" - Damaging build path, BF into Pickaxe means no low point, always building useful items. Passive increases gold value for all other crit items you have. No better options.*

    *If you're building Crit and want to deal damage. It's pretty straightforward.

    Okay so how do we maintain those core values while increases it's usefullness?

    Proposals
  • Drop the bass BF Sword - (Maybe swap avarice blade for Crit Cloak Idk..) Taking out the BF sword is going to gut a lot of the damage and you might not even see this item on ADC's anymore, almost certainly not rushed because of its lack of damage. However this cheapens the item making it less of an investment and more of a Build Enhancer. Think of this fix like a more damage focused Last Whisper buy. For instance you would buy last whisper but the other team doesn't have the armor to justify it. You don't want to go IE because you just want another damage boost without dumping 4k into an item (gota get tanky sometime) so you get this new IE. It'll buff the TriForce you already have while not wasting X gold on the armor pen of Last Whisper.
  • Overhaulin' - Compelete change the passive and dump its current passive onto Phantom Dancer. Moving through units is a lame passive and it makes more sense having a Crit buff on something people buy for the crit chance. (Prolly have to rebalance PD then... but that's another post.) Give IE a cool damagey passive that isn't so reliant on your build and more reliant on how well you've been pressing your buttons. (E.g. of passives = "Every X consecutive AA causes the target to bleed for 50% of the damage you've to that champ." ^V^V^V^V^ "Auto Attacks on Champions build up stacks of Damage Thing at 100 stacks, IE can be activated to consume your stacks of Damage Thing and increase damage dealt to targeted champion by X% for X seconds. Leaving combat resets your stacks of Damage Thing." ^V^V^V^V^ "Active: Jam your sword into the ground increasing damage you deal to nearby targets by X% for X seconds withing X radius of the sword. Don't ask us how giving up your weapon makes you hit harder"
    If anyone wants me to go into strengths and weaknesses of these faux-posed abilities I can. I was just being clever.
  • Get rid of crit. Make every X auto deal X more damage based on things like crit chance and crit multipliers. IE then makes every X auto hit harder or makes all autos inbetween those autos hit harder. Something like "Every AA you don't crit hits for 120% its damage instead of 100$. Crit multipliers remain unaffacted.* This makes it the opposite of crit reliant; you don't want to build this if you're building crit and can act as a BOTRK on top laners that don't really like botrk. (Gnar, Garen, Aatrox(?)

    That's my thoughts on IE. Doing something tanky next.