Hello again Summoners. Continuing from my initial discussion here of upcoming itemization changes for the preseason, I’d like to talk about a current item to which we’re making changes, as well as its new and exciting upgrade.

It’s Tuesday. You know what’s coming.

For a very long time, Tiamat has been sitting in this quasi-state of ‘Is this a good item? Is this a terrible item?’ No longer. We’ve cleaned up Tiamat to be far more streamlined in the new item set, giving it a larger cleave range (at the cost of reduced damage near the edge) and greater synergy with other items by removing the restriction of dealing damage based on the damage of the original attack.

So what’s different?

1. It has a Unique Passive. Tiamats no longer stack to form odd cases where you deal more damage to a secondary target than the primary target.
2. Tiamat no longer cares about the damage you deal with your main attack; thus, Tiamat procs don’t need you to itemize heavy critical strike in order to take advantage of dealing crazy damage. You will always deal a set amount of splash damage based on your Attack Damage.
3. It has a short-cooldown active that allows you to perform a stronger version of the passive Cleave at any time.
4. It is Melee Only, meaning it is no longer a trap item on ranged characters. The active and passive components will literally turn off and be unusable for ranged characters, with the same effect kicking in for dual form characters such as Jayce or Nidalee when they’re in ranged form.
5. It has a much larger cleave radius, at the expense of damage falloff.
6. It no longer has mana regeneration.
7. It has an upgrade.

Let’s examine how this might affect your use of Tiamat:

1. It lets you clear minion waves more quickly

Having a larger passive cleave and an active cleave allows melee fighters or carries who pick up Tiamat to farm waves more efficiently, granting decent wave-clear ability to characters who lack it. Characters like Poppy, for example, can now clear a wave with Tiamat in a relatively short amount of time through a combination of passive and active procs.

2. It makes your burst combo more flexible

Having the active Crescent ability means an additional AoE physical spell that you can weave in to your burst combos. A Riven, for example, might take the time to use the Crescent active in between her dashes – while a Fiora would want to use Crescent as soon as she descends upon a target with Lunge.

3. It can be used effectively by a wider variety of characters and be useful in more situations

Being built out of high Health Regeneration and Attack Damage gives Tiamat a very smooth build up path for the early game. With the ability to itemize both heavy regeneration and attack damage early in the game you can gain a very strong staying presence in lane.

The Upgrade

Introducing Ravenous Hydra, a life steal upgrade for Tiamat. While it doesn’t enhance any of the damaging aspects of Tiamat, Ravenous Hydra allows you to drain from surrounding enemies via your life steal statistic. This can grant melee fighters incredible staying power when outnumbered or assaulting the front lines. While Hydra won’t decimate teams on its own without a huge amount of Attack Damage, the combination of the active ability and life steal will allow experienced players to gain a burst of healing by using Crescent to attack and drain multiple enemy champions.

But wait! I’m a Ranged Carry type of player. What do I get in order to do AoE damage?

Stay Tuned.

-Xypherous

• Season 3 Itemization Preview
• Item Preview – Tons of Mana, just one Tear
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GP says hi

R.I.P Ionic spark

So when are we getting the changes? I mean jungle, masteries, itemization? When?

GP new FOTM in ARAM - IE, GHOSTBLADE, 31ARP from runes/masteries, new tiamat, 1 crit, 3 kills

Items that have similar effects with different outcomes can't be easily made in multiplies - because you have to balance them to the stacked case.

Which basically means that if you introduce a competitive version of Tiamat - both tiamats have to be nerfed to accommodate for their stacked potential being too strong.

In addition, the existence of non-serious items in a competitive mode doesn't exactly hold. While some people may enjoy having a non-serious items in their mode - I would strongly argue that it doesn't make a lot of sense for it to stand along-side other competitive items because the 'fun' it generates also creates a lot of trap-builds and a lot of frustrations for learning what is a good item, what isn't a good item. It inhibits learning of what items are for - when they should be bought and generally being able to master the mechanics of the game.

The fun here comes at the expense of Clarity and the quality of a lot of lower level games as people try to learn the items.

Is there going to be some weird interaction with Kha's and Wuko's bonus range?

I have a solution:

Tiamat
blah blah blah
Unique passive: Cleave does not stack with [new item name]

Now neither need to be nerfed. Tiamat stacks with itself but not the new item.
In fact, introducing that would make some interesting choices. You could add things like alternatives to IE or Rabadons with this mechanic to make people choose between 2 viable routes.

Also, I would argue that the point of a game is to be fun, therefore removing any aspect of fun from the game is a bad idea.
A game that is not fun is not fulfilling it's purpose so maximising fun should be your number one priority. I guarantee that absolutely no-one would care if you had fun items along side your competitive items.

Compromise: Ask the community.
Make a poll and let your customers decide what they would enjoy most.
I bet your bosses would approve of that idea because as the number one rule of business states: "The customer is always right"

Not particularly. Since Tiamat cleaves around the target that you hit - the epicenter of the cleave will just be farther out than usual.

Would people care if I had trap items alongside competitive items? The answer to this is almost always 'yes, why are trap items even in the game?' If the current Tiamat was removed, more people would have less bad games due to the non-existence of a troll with Tiamat, thus increasing net overall fun - mostly because the portion of serious games dwarfs in magnitudes the amount of non-serious games.

You can make the utilitarian argument for 'fun' in a lot of ways - but non-serious items, at their core, always come with a negative fun cost for existing strictly by the nature of their non-viability. If not for the person using it, then for your teammates that suffer when you choose to build a joke item.