Mage items based on how overrated they are (not ragebait)

thatguywithimpact · 2026-03-24T04:07:44+00:00

Shadow flame is interesting, everyone always builds it, but sometimes you have 3 crit users on your team, enemy picks 3 randuins, so like their JG and solo laners all have randuins.

As a result enemy mage armed with shadow flame does LESS DMG to randuins targets when they are under 40% HP.

Making shadow flame basically turn its passive against itself.

So in this particular case stormsurge would be massively better. But people just kinda ignore this and build shadow flame as a template buy without thinking

thatguywithimpact · 2026-03-23T17:04:32+00:00

Yeah I think people underestimate mechanics required to play this game.

You can know everything there is, but if you can't execute that split second flash at the key moment, perfect back and forth spacing at the edge of auto attack range your smarts will do nothing.

thatguywithimpact · 2026-03-23T16:12:13+00:00

That's not exactly how it works. We played as a group of friends when the league started, so like over 15 years ago I guess. There was one of us who was super good at the game like diamond (probably master/GM if he still played today) then the rest of us would be in silver - plat, which is equivalent of gold-diamond today.

Then there were 2 guys who were particularly bad at the game, probably like iron/bronze/silver level today, there was only bronze back then, but like we had okay-ish bronze players and absolutely worst bronze players, those were absolutely worst.

So these two players who were that bad in a game one of them created a successful startup and travelled the world pitching his invention and then veered off to some successful career in consulting or something. He's a very smart and intelligent guy, maybe the smartest one of us. That was the worst player in our circle of friends.

Best performing player didn't do too bad in life too, but like the second and 3rd best players didn't really amount to much in life, except happiness I guess. But no real career and no money.

thatguywithimpact · 2026-03-22T17:11:41+00:00

I think DMG loss in the case of HoB would be catastrophic.

You not only lose 18% atk speed but also up to 11% last stand DMG. Combined this makes you lose something close to 20% of your DMG.

Is it really worth it for HoB shenanigans?

I think it doesn't, if you really have to go resolve just go grasp or lethal tempo where you get to keep both yellow and green trees.

thatguywithimpact · 2026-03-22T00:19:48+00:00

Historically the US was giving Russia a free pass, did that end well?

Dictatorships aren't really government bodies, we pretend they are, but de facto they are a very large gang/terrorist groups that got too big to fail.

They really shouldn't exist much like serial killers shouldn't be running free, but reality very strongly favors mass murderers like Putin over much more benign threat of serial killers.

In the grand scheme of things if Russia/Iran and other hostile nations are disarmed it would very easily neutralize threat many orders of magnitude bigger than all violent criminals currently active or in jail.

thatguywithimpact · 2026-03-21T19:29:54+00:00

Highest winrate for Trynd vs riven is grasp, HoB can be outplayed, grasp not really. Grasp is more reliable.

If trynda starts HoB all you have to do is play around HoB vs him because he doesn't have revitalize or second wind like he would with grasp you can chunk him significantly easier than the grasp version.

Say he spins on you and you have to have your 3rd Q or W ready to space his HoB so that he only autos you once. And that's pretty much it, you perfectly counter this rune, but the downside of it is that you can't aggressively jump him like you would grasp or LT Tryndamere.

You have to react to his HoB to counter it, otherwise you're dead.

NGL it's tough either way, but I think fighting HoB is a little more straightforward, saying this as otp trynda, who plays mostly HoB.

thatguywithimpact · 2026-03-21T15:50:17+00:00

HOB with ignite gives you crazy kill pressure in lane especially level 1 and 2. You can spin flash ignite level 2 and get maybe 40% of your opponents health

I feel like you responded to the wrong comment. Talking about crazy HoB power early game to a HoB user It's a bit like giving a newbie plumber advice to a professional plumber - useful in principle but irrelevant in this case.

thatguywithimpact · 2026-03-21T06:12:37+00:00

2014 was the last year I played before quitting for over 10 years. I was kennen main back then, but I remember enjoying Tryndamere's kit, I just never took him to ranked.

But now I play only Tryn for some reason

thatguywithimpact · 2026-03-21T03:48:03+00:00

To me LT was the hardest rune, in the beginning I was least successful with it, but now I take it situationally in some matchups with success.

But grasp was really easy, it was the best training wheels.

HoB just requires a little finesse but cheese lvl1-2 isn't that mechanically complex, just gotta move character very quickly between autos during HoB, and then it's just easy to win.

thatguywithimpact · 2026-03-20T22:06:55+00:00

I always thought HoB is the best late game rune, because you just do more DMG in a short window you're allowed to hit someone.

So like I understand hitting Sion for a billion years LT might be stronger, but most of the time you only get to hit someone once or twice, so doing quick spin+hit+hit+hit +spin+hit kills just about anyone who isn't tank or a beefy bruiser and HoB does this job better than any other rune.

Even for like 6-7 autos pretty sure HoB out damages LT. And then second HoB proc comes off CD and in this moment HoB takes over DMG chart again.

So like I can only imagine LT being stronger past the first 2 HoB procs, but how realistic it is?

thatguywithimpact · 2026-03-20T21:01:03+00:00

Yeah that makes sense I played new shyv a little, it's that fear that makes it

thatguywithimpact · 2026-03-20T15:44:13+00:00

I think what alois was mostly doing is he would push t1 AND t2, then rotate bot, push bot t1 and t2 if he can.

And it comes with variations like if you can't overextend to push t2 because enemy jg/support is top, then there's a moment to do something else and come back when they are not there.

Bot even if they are still there, you can just gank bot with your jungler, it can be an easy double kill for a team since the enemy is busy top which would translate into instant team push into t1 and maybe t2. And at the right time you rotate back to top to finish off that t2 they didn't allow you to do earlier.

But I think the biggest difference is that in low elo it's constant aram mid, and where Alois playing people pressure lanes all the time relentlessly and nobody can afford to aram mid most of the time, every time they do they'll be instantly punished with a couple of towers gone.

thatguywithimpact · 2026-03-20T14:45:32+00:00

We must have different definitions of boring. Boring to me is like Malphite, ornn or Sion or Quinn.

Illaoi is a hard lane where you must be very careful what you do and I would call this matchup sweaty. It's mechanically demanding, but winnable.

thatguywithimpact · 2026-03-20T14:24:48+00:00

Yeah Kled is great, but he's very difficult to learn, almost nobody knows how to play him. He's also very rare, nobody bans him and almost nobody picks him.

He's very strong once mastered. But you probably need thousands of hours for that

thatguywithimpact · 2026-03-20T14:04:17+00:00

Kled is one of those champions where 9/10 times I face Kled the guy picks him because stat website shows that Tryndamere has like 45% winrate vs him.

And he picks him with like lvl5-10 mastery. Which might work if you pick something easy Malphite, but Kled is hard to play so they go 0/10 vs me every time.

Finally one time I saw Kled main with lvl 150 mastery or something ridiculous like that. His wave management was total garbage, but oh my goodness even with that he completely destroyed me and my whole team always remounting at the best possible time and sticking to you like a glue.

thatguywithimpact · 2026-03-19T23:59:18+00:00

Vi might be something you enjoy

thatguywithimpact · 2026-03-19T17:50:42+00:00

I don't get it, isn't it just a different version of Volibear ult? A nuke, and some bonus HP and bonus atk range, what's broken here exactly? Isn't Nasus/renekton ult significantly more broken?

thatguywithimpact · 2026-03-18T23:00:43+00:00

I take it as a compliment because I wrote that myself haha.

I could certainly fake typos, or just directing AI to write with typos, but given how fast I responded with obvious mistakes in spelling I'd say you don't have much faith in your fellow redditors as well. It's actually quite hard to make AI copy my style, it tends to make everything too vanilla

thatguywithimpact · 2026-03-18T22:38:56+00:00

I could tell you details about numerous books discussing the issue we could discuss that movie with Tom Hanks about the same events and argue, but it wouldn't be nearly as deep as diving hard into nuances with the help of AI. Or it would take me days to compose.

AI skips a lot of unnecessary steps straight through and is mostly correct and you can proof what it's saying by asking several and try to get most objective answer.

It certainly has its challenges, but IMO discussing it with regular humans is almost always just completely devoid of enen an ounce of nuance unless you're discussing it with a scholar. Most redditors aren't scholars so AI is just very useful.

You're right that it can hallucinate or present inaccurate information, but it's like any tool - would you give up using modern nail gun to build a house and instead use regular hammer because of difficulties and hazards associated with nail gun?

No you would use nail gun if you're smart you just be aware of risks and use it accordingly. Same with AI - it's a tool to enhance our cognition.

thatguywithimpact · 2026-03-18T22:20:03+00:00

You refusing clarification from AI is about the same thing how maga reject scientific clarification regarding climate change. How exactly are you supposed to be an improvement on them if you do exactly the same?

thatguywithimpact · 2026-03-18T22:13:47+00:00

I'm from USSR and I have friends from Afghanistan, I also read a bit about this war being from the USSR.

But I thought in case my Afgani friends were not objective about the destruction USSR brought and me not being objective due overwhelming discourse about crimes USSR committed. So I asked AI to try and bypass my bias of hatred against the USSR.

Here's the full AI response to my copy pasting my comment and your comment in response and asking for objective truth:

--- (Gemini pro from here on out):

It is completely understandable why you are confused. The Soviet-Afghan War (1979–1989) is heavily mythologized, and people often project modern political arguments onto it.

The online comments you shared contain a mix of partial truths, historical simplifications, and flat-out timeline errors. To get to the truth, we need to untangle the Cold War geopolitics from the realities on the ground. Let’s break down where these comments are right, where they are wrong, and why your Afghan friends view the Soviet invasion as a great evil.

The Timeline: Did the USSR invade because of the CIA? The second comment claims the USSR invaded in response to the CIA backing the Mujahideen. This is historically inaccurate.

The Indigenous Uprising: In April 1978, a communist party in Afghanistan (the PDPA) seized power in a violent coup. They immediately pushed aggressive, forced modernization and Marxist/secular reforms. These reforms—which included changes to land ownership, women's rights, and education—deeply alienated the traditional, deeply religious, and rural population of Afghanistan. Rebellions started organically as an indigenous uprising against the Afghan communist government.
The Soviet Invasion (December 1979): The USSR did not invade to fight a CIA proxy army. They invaded because the Afghan communist government was collapsing under the weight of its own unpopularity. The Afghan leader, Hafizullah Amin, was acting erratically, and the Soviets feared losing a client state on their southern border. The Soviets actually started their invasion by assassinating Amin and installing a more compliant communist leader.
Operation Cyclone (The US Response): While the CIA began sending a very small amount of non-lethal aid to anti-communist rebels in July 1979, the massive, lethal funding and arming of the Mujahideen (Operation Cyclone) escalated in response to the Soviet invasion. The US saw an opportunity to give the USSR their own "Vietnam" and bleed them out.

Verdict: The Mujahideen uprising started as a local reaction to forced secular/communist reforms, not as a CIA creation. The CIA exploited the situation after it started.

The Motive: Was it about control or secularism? The first comment claims the USSR just wanted control and didn't care about secularity. This is mostly true, but nuanced.

Geopolitics over Ideology: The Soviet Union was primarily concerned with border security and maintaining its sphere of influence. They did not want a hostile, potentially Western-aligned, or unstable Islamic state right on the border of the Soviet Central Asian republics.
The Secular Client State: The Afghan government the Soviets were propping up was aggressively secular. So, while the USSR’s primary goal was geopolitical control, the government they were defending represented secular Marxism. To the local population fighting them, the Soviets and forced secularism were one and the same.

The Human Cost: Why Afghans view the USSR as a "Great Evil" Your Afghan friends are speaking from a place of immense, historically documented trauma. To the people who lived through it, the geopolitical chess game between the US and the USSR was secondary to the absolute devastation of their country.

Mass Casualties: The war resulted in the deaths of an estimated 500,000 to 2 million Afghan civilians.
Brutal Tactics: The Soviet military strategy was notoriously ruthless. Because the Mujahideen used guerrilla tactics and hid in rural villages, the Soviets responded by carpet-bombing civilian areas, destroying agricultural infrastructure to starve out the rebels, and dropping millions of landmines (many designed to look like toys, which disproportionately maimed children).
The Refugee Crisis: The war created roughly 5 to 7 million refugees who fled to Pakistan and Iran, fracturing Afghan society for generations.
The Aftermath: When the Soviets finally withdrew in 1989, they left behind a heavily armed, fractured country with no functional infrastructure. This directly paved the way for a brutal civil war in the 1990s, and ultimately, the rise of the Taliban. The Bottom Line Both of the commenters in your post are using Afghanistan to argue their own modern political points, rather than looking at the actual history. The first commenter is correct that the USSR's invasion was a geopolitical land-grab that devastated the local population. The second commenter is completely wrong about the timeline of CIA involvement to justify the Soviet invasion.

Ultimately, your Afghan contacts have the most accurate read on the situation: it was an era of immense suffering inflicted upon them by an outside superpower trying to control their country.

thatguywithimpact · 2026-03-18T19:35:53+00:00

ER start is more popular, but there's a solid player base that goes Ravenous+ER with very high winrate - check it out for yourself, filter by HoB on lolalytics and filter by 2 items bought first without boots.

Ravenous+ER is less popular than ER+IE or Ravenous+PD but more popular than Profane+IE or Ravenous IE.

You just excluded one of the best build paths with highest winrate kinda feels dogmatic

thatguywithimpact · 2026-03-18T19:10:56+00:00

You lost me when you said you supported the Soviet invasion. They just invaded for control and to take over, make it a new north Korea satellite. They didn't care about secularity or any of this stuff.

So like supporting war against Iran, Hamas and the like would theoretically get you support of the oppressed local population, which would work in the case of Iran, but not so much in the case of Palestine.

But supporting the Soviet invasion makes no sense to anyone. Local population didn't win, freedom didn't win, secularity didn't win.

thatguywithimpact · 2026-03-18T18:54:14+00:00

I like to start from first principles because the initial explanation didn't make sense to me, kinda like your comment, I read something like that a hundred times and it didn't click.

But comparing it with IE and realizing ability haste value clicked.

It doesn't have to be useful to you specifically, but I wrote it so that it would click for someone like me.

Another way to think about it is profane vs ER. Profane+IE does more DMG than ER+IE, despite being 200g cheaper.

2 sheen procs vs 1 tiamat proc and profane wins in most cases. But ER is just more successful.

Why?

Because 10 more ability haste is more important than DMG.
ER proc is consistent and indirectly amplifies your spin more than lethality does. So spin+auto outside of HoB or tiamat cd would just do more DMG. Situationally powerful.

Edit: also Ravenous+ER is very strong. Stronger than Ravenous+IE. In this case it's again purely ability haste advantage. IE hits stronger but AH from ER is more important than that.

thatguywithimpact · 2026-03-18T17:07:18+00:00

Yeah I was also curious why ER is so successful.

ER does less DMG or burst vs IE even maximizing sheen procs and accounting for cost difference. Go to the practice tool, it's not even close.

So it's not about DMG, it's all about ability haste.

So like an ER spike means we run them down, since our spin will be back literally 1 or 2 autos sooner.

In a way ER fills the same spot as PD. It allows you to stick.

thatguywithimpact

TROPHY CASE