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[Pandarsenic]

Keeping your mana at full with drainspam is easy. Are you not getting blue or something?

[umiman]

What on earth is Eerr talking about? We're talking about spellvamp right? How does spellvamp help with mana efficiency? =|

[eerr]

Once you hit level five you don't rely on the blue if you want to farm and then gank.

Before, you needed blue if you wanted to farm and then gank.

Now you don't.

[Ahra]

eer, if they removed dodge, dont that mean jaxs counter-strike is useless?

[ECrownofFire]

eer, if they removed dodge, dont that mean jaxs counter-strike is useless?

Reworking Jax. Hasn't been removed yet anyway, but it will be soon.

[eerr]

Whatever he gets is gonna be stronger and more consistent.

[Pandarsenic]

Once you hit level five you don't rely on the blue if you want to farm and then gank.

Before, you needed blue if you wanted to farm and then gank.

Now you don't.

I... what?

[Ahra]

Whatever he gets is gonna be stronger and more consistent.

if i can play him and have an blast doing so again im happy.

[webadict]

Whatever he gets is gonna be stronger and more consistent.

if i can play him and have an blast doing so again im happy.

If you haven't noticed, this game is not about having fun.

[Bordellimies]

Whatever he gets is gonna be stronger and more consistent.

if i can play him and have an blast doing so again im happy.

If you haven't noticed, this game is not about having fun.

To me, it is. To others, it is about making me not have fun.

[umiman]

Don't get too excited yet. No one knows what exactly Riot is going to do to these champions and remakes tend to be very off the wall.


------


Anyway, let's talk about something controversial. Cooldown reduction.

If you think about it, theoretically, cooldown reduction is an awesome stat on everybody, especially if you have very long cooldowns right? I propose that this is not actually the case, and that champions with shorter cooldowns actually benefit more from CDR than champions with longer cooldowns. I also think that even if building CDR is very natural to a certain champion (like Lux), you might want to reconsider and go straight up damage instead. In layman's terms, I think in the lategame when everyone has oodles of mana, blue buff is more useful on Morde than it is on Morgana.

Now, before I explain why, I'll put it out that this is my personal opinion, so it's not gospel truth. You're free to think otherwise, but hear me out.

How long is the average fight?

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Let's think about the reasoning for CDR. It's pretty obvious isn't it? You want to use your skills more in a fight. Now, let's think about this. Generally speaking, a teamfight, skirmish, or any other conflict in LoL other than a standoff lasts about 10 seconds. If you have a lot of burst, it can be even faster. A fight that lasts longer than this is really rare and would probably only happen if there was an absurd amount of tankiness at play. After these 10 seconds it's all cleanup.

If you think this number is too short, think about the length of channeled spells in LoL. Nunu's ult has to be channeled for 3 seconds. Now, imagine a fight that lasted longer than 10 seconds. It would be as if Nunu channeled more than 3 ultimates. Doesn't that seem ridiculously long for a teamfight? You can imagine most fights are over waaaaay before even the second Nunu ultimate would have finished channeling.

So we'll go with 10 seconds since it's a conservative estimate. =D

Anyway, with 10 seconds in mind, let's look at the benefits of 40% CDR on two different champions: Lux and Vlad. Lux has ridiculously long cooldowns whereas Vlad spams everything till kingdom come. Both of them also do about the same amount of damage on each of their skills.

Lux:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Without CDR, all of Lux's skills are on 11 second cooldowns. Her ult on a 40 second cooldown. In the 10 second timeframe, she can use everything once. Then she's either dead, running away, or chasing someone down. With 40% CDR, everything is on a 7 second cooldown and her ult is on a 24 second cooldown. Now she can use everything twice, except her ult. So she basically gets 3 extra skills.

Result: 3 extra skills

Vlad:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Without CDR, Vlad's skills are on a 4 second and 14 second cooldown. His ultimate is obviously too long to be spammed twice so let's ignore that. This means in 10 seconds he can Q and E three times and pool once. With 40% CDR, his CDs are now 2.4 seconds and 8.4 seconds. Now he can Q and E 5 times and pool twice. So he gets 5 more skills in.

Result: 5 extra skills

Conclusion:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

As you can see, in actual practice, Vlad got a lot more use out of CDR than Lux did in a 10 second fight. This would be the same for champions like Morgana, Veigar, Heimerdinger, etc. And this was with our very conservative teamfight length. This was a teamfight that lasted longer than three full Nunu ultimates. How often exactly would you see such a long fight? If anything most fights are decided within the time it takes for one Nunu ultimate to complete. It's why I propose that if your team is going to be doing a lot of teamfighting, you're far better off maxing out your damage compared to trying to get 40% CDR. Because you'd really never be able to use your skills more than once when it really matters most.

Now, this doesn't mean CDR is useless. Far from it. CDR's main uses are for laning and poking the enemy. Having 40% CDR makes harassing an enemy away from their tower so much easier. It allows healers to heal much better between fights. Etc. If you're going to be doing a lot of poking, then getting lots of CDR is the way to go.

But now let's look at an enemy team that just adores forcing teamfights. Say the enemy has an Ashe and an Alistar and an Amumu. How would having 40% CDR help you in that case? You can't poke when the enemy can initiate at will. Now you're at a severe disadvantage. All that CDR wasted because you're only going to be able to use your skills once anyway. In such a situation, you're going to want to go straight AP.

For better or worse, most LoL games are like the second example. Everything is decided by teamfighting. Poking is almost nonexistent unless you explicitly geared your team to poke and avoid actual conflict. This is why I propose ignoring CDR on long cooldown champions. If you're going to only be doing one combo per fight, better make it worth it.

TL;DR: If getting 40% CDR still leaves your cooldowns longer than 5 seconds, you're better off just stacking damage instead unless you're planning on poking the enemy and avoiding teamfights.

[Bordellimies]

Umiman's post on CDR

I've always thought that CDR is good on everyone pretty equally, but your post brings a good point. Whenever I play chumps like Morde, and I take blue buff someone is whining "Morde wtf why u take blue you have no mana", it is really odd that the guys don't know that it gives CDR too.

But although you gave a fair point on long CD abilities and low cooldown abilities, you left out abilities like Lay Waste (1 second CD) or Acid Hunter (2 second CD). For Urgot CDR is really useful, as with 0% CDR he can lock up to 3 Acid Hunters to an enemy coated in acid. With about 20% CDR he can lock 4, and with full 40% CDR he may lock 5 acid hunters. But on Karthus, CDR isn't all that useful for Lay Waste. 0.4 seconds off the bomb isn't all that much when you take casting animation into account: With no CDR, Karthus can bomb an enemy, throw 1 autoattack and then bomb again. Getting CDR so that he can skip the autoattack does increase his damage output, but often it would still be better to get damage. For Urgot as well, although with no CDR you get less lock-ons, you still can have more DPS by stacking damage.


TL;DR: CDR is more useful for champs with low cooldown abilities, but on very low cooldown abilities CDR loses it's edge over stacking damage.

_{Of course this is just my opinion.}

[Rebecca Black]

Too bad the game is more than short teamfights. Include using those skills to kill creeps, poke others, maybe even to proc lichbane, ect.

[ThtblovesDF]

As support Blitzkrank high CDR is one of my top targets, cause my dmg isen't all that important, but knocking the enemy up with my E every 2 sec is. So imo, morgana for example can profit a lot from higher CDR, to spam her shield and Q, taking a bit of a support/CC role, while karthus/vlad/malz/anny or other mostly dmg focused casters might actually be better off with raw damage.

Imo, fights last longer then 10 sec. Yes, the "hot" part, where all champs go all in, might be just that long, but most of the time it is a swooping in (blowing your abilitys) and then swooping back out, for casters at least - high cdr can reduce that "hover" time a bit and increase poke speed, just as non-hot-helps.

[Vactor]

So we'll go with 10 seconds since it's a conservative estimate. =D[/spoiler]

Anyway, with 10 seconds in mind, let's look at the benefits of 40% CDR on two different champions: Lux and Vlad. Lux has ridiculously long cooldowns whereas Vlad spams everything till kingdom come. Both of them also do about the same amount of damage on each of their skills.

Lux:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Without CDR, all of Lux's skills are on 11 second cooldowns. Her ult on a 40 second cooldown. In the 10 second timeframe, she can use everything once. Then she's either dead, running away, or chasing someone down. With 40% CDR, everything is on a 7 second cooldown and her ult is on a 24 second cooldown. Now she can use everything twice, except her ult. So she basically gets 3 extra skills.

Result: 3 extra skills

As someone who mains Lux, I can tell you I very rarely build CDR in items.  This is for a couple reasons, firstly being pure AP/magic pen, you can have a huge demoralizing effect when you unload your spells into a team fight and evaporate half of everyones HP.  If you can cause a rout, you have won the team fight.  Secondly with this build you need to take blue buff for the mana regen, and coupled with an elixir you'll have enough CDR to be able to get your spells off as you need them.  You rarely get a situation where you can stand still and unload spells for 11 seconds.  You need to reposition, and with a lichbane work in auto attacks.