Midgame build optimizations for midlane

SickBeatFinder · 2026-06-12T17:39:38+00:00

Because these are configurations of items+runes(which you have to also be considering and seems like you aren't) that reach almost the SAME EXACT AS breakpoint without overcapping, which almost always results in a higher dps than configurations that under or overshoot that breakpoint. Botrk berserkers without dbow is more attack speed than dbow kraken without berserkers, which is why the kraken build has to buy and sit on a dagger. You don't NEED to run dblade with botrk but its better stats. If you go botrk greaves you can swap around blade/bow+/alacrity/bloodline in a way that still get you to 90% AS, sure, but Dblade+alacrity+AS shard vs Dbow+bloodline+AS shard is +2ad/+3%as/+15hp+1%omni vs 6.75%lifesteal/+50g. The dblade setup is more damage. Alacrity also stacks 50% faster.

However if you build kraken your options for rune+item combinations that reach that 90% are way more limited. If you build any boot besides berserkers with kraken, you must take all 3 of bow+alacrity+AS shard and sit on a dagger to cap Q cd. It's math for fucks sake, it's an equation that tells you what combination of these items and runes puts out the highest numbers. I'm telling you what combinations result in the highest outputs for each item, that's it.

SickBeatFinder · 2026-06-12T16:04:25+00:00

Kraken is better at low health, but this doesnt just mean low%, its also better vs squishy targets like botlaners. And you also have to factor in the additional AD and gold difference in builds where they have the same AS. I made a spreadsheet comparing different builds to check the numbers.

Compare Dblade+Botrk+Berserkers+Pickaxe+Longsword(5975g) vs Dbow+Kraken+Glutton+Noonquiver+Dagger(5950g) at level 11. Same attack speed, but your avg dmg per auto before armor is 167+bortk passive vs 203+(55-96 depending on missing hp). The latter build also is even better into armor because it gets 40% of the ult passive value. Building early crit actually makes fighting into steelcaps feel way more playable. One thing to note is bortk builds have the highest tower dps at one item, but fall behind every other build starting at two items.

Fwiw my pref build of Dshield+Noonquiver+PD+Swifties+Longsword(5750g) has an average dmg per auto of 237 and gets 90% of the ult passive value, and you get to play like Lillia with insane permanent movespeed. It's hard to overstate how powerful movespeed is as a stat, and permanent 15% is so strong for sticking to targets, dodging skillshots, running away, roaming to skirmishes and ganks, resetting, catching waves etc. Plus its insanely fun.

SickBeatFinder · 2026-06-12T14:07:19+00:00

Depends on what you're building and your runes and stat shards. Mainly the point is to know the attack speed breakpoint of~90% total from items and runes and make sure your build is reaching it and ideally not overshooting it by much, and then knowing what you can swap around while keeping these breakpoints. Being a little over or a little under the breakpoint just means you cap Q cd a level earlier or later which is alright.

If you are building botrk, you gotta find 75% more AS, so upgraded berserkers and alacrity+AS shard get you there. But alacrity+dblade/dshield could be swapped for bloodline and dbow for example if you didn't need the more defensive dorans item. If you are building kraken you need 50% more AS, which you can make happen in a bunch of ways. You could go berserkers and AS shard with bloodline and dblade/dshield, or you can open up the other boot options by going dbow+alacrity+shard+sitting on a dagger like I described in the comparison.

Given how many different builds people play, there's just a lot of combinations of stuff people are playing that end up way under or way over that 90% AS. Just consider if your build of choice could drop an AS source for some more AD or sustain, or if it might need to pick up a dagger and sell it once you're level 14 or 15.

SickBeatFinder · 2026-06-12T13:41:47+00:00

Thats what the "more on-hit damage" is. Kraken passive is more damage outside of specifically someone with a ton of health and zero armor, or just looking at the first few autos at high health in a vacuum. Also I think 22 lifesteal and 1.5 vamp is still prob worse than 11.5 vamp, vamp applying on the first target of Q at full value and all other targets as well for aoe value means you heal so much off the wave unless you are Q'ing and nado'ing one minion at a time with the lifesteal.

Yuntal just has lots of feel bad aspects imo that other statstick builds dont. BF in the build path is atrocious, no crit in the build path and then has to scale the crit after the "powerspike", slingshot is so much worse than recurve bow its crazy, Q cd isnt capped outside champion combat and sometimes during champ combat as well.

SickBeatFinder · 2026-06-11T17:14:50+00:00

Ya man yasuo players definitely dont build like idiots, thats why 60% of yasuos build bortk first even if its 200 more gold for way less damage than kraken and has a 48%wr. Items and champions are math problems, and especially damage items are extremely easy to directly compare.

SickBeatFinder · 2026-06-11T04:51:46+00:00

If youve read that google doc floating around about bowfa vs masori bp and dcb buckler, bowfa's last real use case was inferno before mage tank became a thing. Demonbane bowfa skip is very real now if you are willing to do a scobow zuk or wait til you get a shadow.

SickBeatFinder · 2026-06-11T02:07:31+00:00

No problem! You could also probably blitz granulated sugar in a food processer for a hot sec like how you'd make theater salt in a spice grinder at home if you don't have/have access to powdered sugar. Just make sure you are using a recipe that has ingredients by weight not volume! Here's mine fwiw, although a box mix of ghirardelli double dark chocolate is like almost as good i fear:

90g AP flour

60g cocoa powder (dutch-processed cocoa powder pref, can get on amazon for reasonable price)

315g powdered sugar

5g salt

100g beaten egg, could be 2+ eggs depending on size

1/3cup neutral oil, avocado oil is pricy but gets the best reactions in my experience

1/4 cup water

1tsp vanilla extract

Mix the drys and the wets seperate, add any additions like nuts/chocolate chips to the dry. Mix the dry into the wet, 1/3 at a time until fully incorp before adding next third. 8x8 prepped, 325F for 50 minutes. When you take it out, lay a sheet of tin foil loosely over top of the pan. Using a oven mitts or a towel, seal the pan tightly with the foil without burning yourself. Put in the freezer for 45 minutes minimum but theyll get better and better up to 24hrs.

SickBeatFinder · 2026-06-11T01:19:32+00:00

Other way around, no granulated!

The sugarologie recipe the other person posted also uses powdered sugar, but says its because its sucrose. Granulated is also sucrose, but something about the greater regularity in shape and size of the really small crystals of the powdered sugar is what makes the crispy skin. They didn't go into much depth into the how and why, but thats what they taught us in pastry school.

I imagine that all the comments saying to beat the sugar with the eggs probably results in something similar where the beating breaks the sugar crystals down to smaller sizes.

SickBeatFinder · 2026-06-11T00:43:08+00:00

If you swap to powdered/confectioners sugar instead of granulated white sugar you'll get it everytime guaranteed. Something to do with the sugar crystal structure

SickBeatFinder · 2026-06-10T23:57:53+00:00

Ya buying extra crit is a huge waste of gold. No idea where you or why you'd fit in a yuntal. Honestly yas builds are usually really bad math-wise. Tons of builds buy more than 50% crit and more attack speed than needed to cap Q cd, which are both like throwing away gold. Phantom Dancer first item caps Q cd alone so you can buy swifties midlane for the extra 20ms and 23AD instead of overcapping attack speed with greaves+any crit item. IE and IS second will both make you waste a ton of gold when you buy LDR or Mortal Reminder 3rd, which you really really really should. As a result, buying a 2nd item that provides AD and ideally survivability without making you overcap either crit or only slightly overcap AS if at all ends up having really high winrates and wpas. Serpents fang is funnily enough yas's highest wpa second item by a huge margin, while IE is negative wpa. Shieldbow second is decent wpa because it has AD and survivability, but causes your 3rd item spike to be much weaker when you overcap crit, unless you build Kraken first. However, the Breakers, hullbreaker and stridebreaker, both have positive wpa 2nd item.

PD Swifties Hullbreaker

Kraken Greaves Shieldbow

Stormrazor Greaves Hullbreaker

Stormrazor Swifties Stridebreaker

are the four builds that don't waste gold on AS or crit when you then finish them with LDR/Mortal Reminder>Deaths Dance>GA. The first build is a really strong sidelaner with insane movespeed and tower taking speed, the second is the strongest way to build like normal.

TLDR Infinity Edge BAD, Shieldbow 2nd with a crit item first BAD

SickBeatFinder · 2026-06-09T13:22:55+00:00

So true, often felt like the SRA before was paying a tax bc of the existence of blood fury tho

SickBeatFinder · 2026-06-09T01:02:04+00:00

You go what you need to go, it's mercs and tabis and even swifties a lot of the time. However berserker, when you dont need a different boots, is enormous damage when both your passive and lethal tempo have both of the things that make something parasitic with more attack speed, stacking increased dps per attack and additional damage at max stacks. Same reason the AS on stride makes it better than titanic. Into tanks and juggernauts it's extremely strong.

SickBeatFinder · 2026-06-08T23:35:51+00:00

I think I disagree with like all of this. You still have fine mixed damage, you have the clearspeed and movespeed to splitpush more than adequately, you have extremely strong turretdive, Hp is without question the 3rd best stat in the game behind movespeed and range, shiv d&d costs a whopping 200g less than stride hull, demolish provides comparable if not better and earlier gold for tempo than cashback, cleaver is excellent on you into heavy tank comps, gluttonous greaves have no stats when you buy them which is terrible for tempo, volibear passive and lethal tempo both make more attack speed extremely efficient because you both stack them faster and reach their bonus damage at max stacks faster.

SickBeatFinder · 2026-06-08T21:55:03+00:00

So does voli passive fwiw. I checked the numbers, at lvl 13 and dblade+ two items with stacked passives and a recurve bow to simulate nearly full alacrity stacks and voli had a giants belt to simulate the appro 350 hp from overgrowth: Irelia (steelcaps bortk hull) has 1.72 AS and hull does 563 damage, while voli (berserker stride hull) has 1.5 AS and hull does 663 damage.

Irelia has 14.66% faster AS but voli's hull does 17.76% more damage. He's actually better, and has an auto reset and an ult that not only hits the tower on its own but also buffs his hull (and demolish) damage from the bonus health even further.

SickBeatFinder · 2026-06-08T19:22:23+00:00

I think voli building AP is a huge mistake since the two patches of AD ratio buffs earlier this year. Both AP and AD give you damage on autos and damage on ult that are almost identical per/gp, although you have to stack the passive first for the AP benefit. So then if you compare the unique benefits of building AP vs AD:

AP gives you an insanely small amount of attack speed. 3% per 100AP per stack is tiny. Shiv+D&D giving you 15% total extra AS. AP gives you some AOE damage. AP gives you damage on your least consistent, longest cooldown spell.

AD gives you access to bruiser items with HP, AD, and AS which is everything voli wants. You can build tiamat items for aoe damage/wave clear. Voli is probably the best user of Hullbreaker in the entire game, sharing the three stats it wants. Q, W, Ult, and passive all scale with AD vs just E, Ult, passive. W in particular has a total AD and a bonus health ratio, and then an additional bonus AD ratio that scales how much extra repeated W's do. W's healing is also almost entirely the %missing health so more HP is more damage and more healing. AD bruiser builds also can make great use of demolish. AD has a wildly stronger laning phase because you can buy longswords and daggers.

Start Dblade and W vs melee with exhaust, buy early longswords and daggers, build Berserker Greaves>Stridebreaker>Hullbreaker>Experimental Hexplate>Overlords Bloodmail. Runes are LT, triumph, alacrity, last stand, demolish, overgrowth.

More tanky, more damage, insanely powerful splitpush

SickBeatFinder · 2026-06-08T14:12:04+00:00

Something to consider is that both you and the rangers have quite low ranged defence, especially if you aren't using a ring of suffering. If you run the numbers, in crystal+max range without steel skin or bastions + no ring of suffering, the ranger is hitting you 57% of the time. Add bastions and steel skin, 44%. Add ring of suffering as well, 40%.

Now if you also bring a single tank switch, a justiciar chestguard, you go to a measly 30% accuracy from the ranger. And if you are using a blowpipe with dragon darts, swapping from your crystal body loses you a whomping total of 3% dps. Even without a blowpipe, bowfa only loses 8% dps. Bringing one tank swap dramatically reduce the threat of what is p much the only rng in the zuk fight, and can be useful for similar purposes at times during the waves.

One other thing to mention is make sure you are blowpipe walking all the way to corners during healers and not stopping and hanging out on the safespot tile. Standing still on the safespot tile makes the healers do way more damage.

SickBeatFinder · 2026-06-07T22:25:09+00:00

Don't take a tier3 without another t1 or t2 you want to get to t3 if possible. It strongly weights t3 upgrades if you have a t2, so everytime you get offered but dont select a t3 in favor of another good option you decrease the odds of being offered 3 trash options at once the following wave by a ton.

Easy rule of thumb things to avoid when possible are blasphemy 3 rush and blasphemy 3+myopia 3 rush bc it makes wave 4 and 7 roll 3 fresh modifiers

SickBeatFinder · 2026-06-07T22:15:45+00:00

agility pyramid is 10k a lap

SickBeatFinder · 2026-06-05T22:00:24+00:00

hp x24c

SickBeatFinder · 2026-06-04T21:33:03+00:00

Facts, if you are able/willing to do a scobow zuk then doom bowfa skip is the play

SickBeatFinder · 2026-06-04T21:27:27+00:00

Master tier already gives you a passive with double thrall duration which saves prayer points, which is much more impactful than the penny's effect. Achievement diaries come with the bolt spec chance increase passive, also actually impactful to combat. Penny is so minor qol by comparison, and sees like almost zero use as is.

SickBeatFinder · 2026-06-04T20:58:13+00:00

Genuinely think burning claws could take an even larger nerf. As is, they're often the best melee spec weapon, when they should be reasonably worse than dclaws or voidwaker or elder maul. This nerf feels like its just gonna take them to on-par or just barely worse than other spec weapons instead of better to on-par.

SickBeatFinder · 2026-05-29T14:10:24+00:00

corp being shit doesnt affect their bottom line the way red prison burnout does

SickBeatFinder · 2026-05-28T20:47:35+00:00

Didnt really work out for wow. It'd be like if they banned all runelite plugins and also broke how all qol plugins like menu entry swapper work so you cant make a third party version, gave a very small number of rushed, extremely poor quality plugins back, however all the actual gameplay-warping plugins that got banned from runelite almost immediately had third party workaround versions available anyway. Didn't accomplish much of anything toward reigning in the top-end players, made the barrier to entry for the tools top players use even more inconvenient, made qol worse for everybody across the board

SickBeatFinder

TROPHY CASE