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[Lord_lemonpie]

Spot the odd thing's

First blood: soraka executed by a minion

Also: 22 min and nobody has more than 66 cs 0_o

[baruk]

What's unusual about RoA on Azir anyway?

[Arcvasti]

Azir benefits more from getting something like Athene's or Morello's for his first item, so he can get CDR and mana regen. And RoA is sub-par if it isn't your very first item. Its not BAD, its just other items are better.

[Flying Dice]

Yeah, like... there are some champions for whom RoA is a good early pickup (Singed, Ryze, Maokai, Annie all come to mind). But it's definitely not a powerspike item, and it's also not something for a long ranged harasser like Azir. Like most things it's not bad per se, but it's eating gold that could have gone to more useful things.

[IronyOwl]

-jungle-

Do you start golems and take W second on Yi? Also, attackspeed runes go a long way to helping him stay healthy.

Blue, and yeah. Maybe I should start golems, though; I'm definitely not acclimated to the new jungle.

I'll keep the AS thing in mind.

Spot the odd thing's

RoA on Azir? Whoa.

Carry Cow MVP though.

[Flying Dice]

Actually, question: if you're using an AA-based jungler and are on Blue side starting at bottom jungle, is it better to smite golems or red? I mean, is the health saved by the stuns greater or less than the health regained from red?

[frostshotgg]

Greater by a significant margin if you don't immediately gank a couple times after going b from 3rd camp and waste most of the buff. The rushed level 2 is also a huge jump.

[baruk]

Yeah, like... there are some champions for whom RoA is a good early pickup (Singed, Ryze, Maokai, Annie all come to mind). But it's definitely not a powerspike item, and it's also not something for a long ranged harasser like Azir. Like most things it's not bad per se, but it's eating gold that could have gone to more useful things.

RoA says I want to just farm for the next 10 minutes and not die - why not build it on a squishy champ with late game scalings like Azir? Especially if you're going top lane with teleport (and perhaps you're not that confident on the champ - I'm assuming this was a Nemesis draft).

Actually, question: if you're using an AA-based jungler and are on Blue side starting at bottom jungle, is it better to smite golems or red? I mean, is the health saved by the stuns greater or less than the health regained from red?

According to one of Riot's LCS casters, the krug smite saves more health just from clearing the red camp than the smite on red. I'm trying to get the best of both worlds at the moment, smiting krugs, clearing raptors then smiting red.

[defeeca]

Spot the odd thing's

First blood: soraka executed by a minion

Also: 22 min and nobody has more than 66 cs 0_o

Not only did soraka get executed by minion before game start she repeated it 5 times succesfully (total kills and deaths doesnt match).
Azir was in botlane with urgot
nami was in toplane
Naut and amumu were double junglin without jungle items.
amumu was building trinity force.
and soraka did most dmg on team .

[Flying Dice]

Yeah, like... there are some champions for whom RoA is a good early pickup (Singed, Ryze, Maokai, Annie all come to mind). But it's definitely not a powerspike item, and it's also not something for a long ranged harasser like Azir. Like most things it's not bad per se, but it's eating gold that could have gone to more useful things.

RoA says I want to just farm for the next 10 minutes and not die - why not build it on a squishy champ with late game scalings like Azir? Especially if you're going top lane with teleport (and perhaps you're not that confident on the champ - I'm assuming this was a Nemesis draft).

1. A large part of the gold value of RoA goes into non-combat stats. And, again, Azir shouldn't be getting into places in lane where he's going to need a big stack of health; he's also easy to play safe with, which means that you're likely to get less use out of the Catalyst passive.

2. For 100g less you could get Athene's, which offers the same AP as a new RoA, plus MR, plus 20% CDR (which synergizes with his passive), plus mana regen, plus its passives. For 500g less you could get Morello, which is much the same story. Both are better items for a mage; RoA is more for tanky types who happen to scale off of AP and/or mana.

3. The better Azir builds already include things like Rylai's, Athene's, Zhonya's, and Liandry's, you don't need the health from RoA (and you don't need flat mana, you need MP regen -- flat mana stacking just means that it takes you longer to run OOM without actually making it more difficult to do so and easier to recover from).

Basically ONLY get RoA on Azir if you're going to rush RoA and then rush Nashor's. Which, despite what people on Mobafire would have you believe, is not a good idea. Nashor's is a noob trap on Azir. Thus, in order to hit max CDR, you need to build either Athene's or Morello (the latter is almost always better). If you build either, you don't need the flat mana, the AP is sub-par for a 2700g item, and the health is redundant since you'll be building items which make you a bit beefier already without having useless stats tacked on.

A pretty standard build for him would be Morello/CDR boots/Deathcap/Voidstaff/Rylai's/Zhonya's, not necessarily in that order.

It's sort of like how, while you can build Tear on Nidalee and get use out of it, there are plenty of better things to do with the gold.

As far as those two items go, you see them being built a lot on all sorts of things by people who don't know what they're doing. There are, incidentally, only two champions who should be building RoA+Tear->Archangel's: Singed and Ryze. It's 100% core on the latter and core on the best build for the former.

[Jiokuy]

To add one more champions that RoA is pretty good on,

Suport Zilean, with Ancient Coin -> Nomads -> Chalace -> Catalyst -> RoA

The extra Health from RoA lets you eat skill shots for your adc safer, and the extra max mana from RoA boosts your Chalance mana regen (with seals) just past the point where you can cast E every time it's up to maximize R usage. The AP is just a bonus. Also Zilean can make up for not having coin passive with his speed boost.

It's a pretty strong midgame build, especially if the enemy team has 2 assassins. Admitably, I only use it when I'm in a duo, because not getting sightstone means your entire team has to pick up the slack, but if your team can adapt it pays off nicely.

[baruk]

Yeah, like... there are some champions for whom RoA is a good early pickup (Singed, Ryze, Maokai, Annie all come to mind). But it's definitely not a powerspike item, and it's also not something for a long ranged harasser like Azir. Like most things it's not bad per se, but it's eating gold that could have gone to more useful things.

RoA says I want to just farm for the next 10 minutes and not die - why not build it on a squishy champ with late game scalings like Azir? Especially if you're going top lane with teleport (and perhaps you're not that confident on the champ - I'm assuming this was a Nemesis draft).

3. The better Azir builds already include things like Rylai's, Athene's, Zhonya's, and Liandry's, you don't need the health from RoA (and you don't need flat mana, you need MP regen -- flat mana stacking just means that it takes you longer to run OOM without actually making it more difficult to do so and easier to recover from).

 Fine if you're a mid lane Azir running ignite - but we're discussing a side lane Azir with teleport, he'll benefit more from that big mana pool. Rod of Ages' unique selling point over the other options is that it gives you the best combination of survivability and sustain. You can't do damage if you're dead, after all.

 Anyway, we're not really talking about the optimal build here (2 x Morellonomicon if you're Bjergsen), just something viable that will let you hold your own in a Nemesis draft - but it's got me thinking about tank azir with RoA, frozen heart and spirit's visage...

[Flying Dice]

That's the thing, though, going for a strong AP build is even more important in something like Nemesis, where anyone with a champion that can hard carry needs to. Once again, RoA isn't bad, but it's also nowhere near the best for an APC.

If you get RoA, that leaves you with two options:

1. Don't get a MP regen item. Congrats, you just stopped yourself from hitting the CDR cap on a champion that has CDR as a core stat.

2. Get a MP regen item. Congrats, you just made your build needlessly redundant.

As well as:

1a: Don't pick up Rylai's. Congrats, you just stopped yourself from getting an item with excellent synergy with your soldiers and a big chunk of AP in exchange for a mediocre chunk of AP and non-combat stats.

2a: Pick up Rylai's. Congrats, you're now spending a substantial portion of your gold stacking HP on an APC.

Do you understand the concept of opportunity cost? I'm normally one for looking into alternate builds, but between Azir being so absurdly strong with a good build and Nemesis mode ensuring that you've got a dearth of carries, I'd almost be tempted to call turning a carry into a knockoff Maokai in that context trolling. When they give you Karma or Morgana do you pick up a support item and go for Sightstone second item?

I mean, I get that it's sort of meant for fucking around, but when you're even getting to the point of talking about stacking mana on Azir and NOT picking up an Archangel's to at least make that mana worth something... if you're going to build random shit, at least try to synergize it. I mean, hell, I've built tank support Sona in Ranked and made it work, but this is still sort of WTF-worthy for me. o.0

Tank Azir doesn't work terribly well because of his lack of effective CC and base damage. He's got his knockup on the dash, and he's got his ult. The former requires him to already have soldiers out behind the enemy, or else to be almost in melee range, and the latter requires him to dash or burn flash for an Insec which is a really bad idea, since it has a shorter range and isn't single-target, meaning you've likely just dumped the enemy frontline into your team. The peel he can perform can be done just as well by an AP Azir.

Likewise, he's got nothing to really make people care about him. Bruisers and tanks tend to be what they are because once they're in the enemy team, they can do enough damage that they can't be ignored; some are like Jax and Irelia and are pretty much carries as well, others are like Renekton, Mundo, or Nasus and have good damage and AoE even when building full tank, &c. &c., and what all of those have in common is that they have at least two of a) reliable damage in their kit (rather than from items), b) reliable CC, c) gapclosers or inbuilt tenacity or both.

What does tank Azir offer that makes him a better choice than the normal hypercarry Azir, or than the other champions your team is likely to get who can build tanky? A Braum or Thresh is already kitted out to tank, and (with the exception of a handful of good players) cannot be built to hypercarry in the same way that Azir can. Take that match you linked specifically: Your team already had a good AP Tank (Maokai), as well as Urgot (who is naturally a sort of off-tank anti-carry, though he probably didn't know what he was doing, given that he build Tabi against an AP team) and two weaker mid-range mages with heals. Your team had nobody except him (and Urgot if he landed Es) for long-ranged harass and poke. Instead of that random shit he build, he could have had Morello and a good chunk of Deathcap. Though perhaps I'm expecting too much, given that he only had 33 CS at 21 minutes. 

Though in the end it didn't really matter, given that you had superior poke anyways (and judging by the tracker, were shoving every lane hard for the first half of the game). Meh. To each their own, I suppose. I'll agree to disagree.

[baruk]

 All the build talk misses the point: we're talking about the line between viable and unviable, not optimal and suboptimal. What is so especially noteworthy about a Rod of Ages being built on a mana hungry ap champion?

Take that match you linked specifically: Your team already had a good AP Tank (Maokai), as well as Urgot (who is naturally a sort of off-tank anti-carry, though he probably didn't know what he was doing, given that he build Tabi against an AP team) and two weaker mid-range mages with heals. Your team had nobody except him (and Urgot if he landed Es) for long-ranged harass and poke. Instead of that random shit he build, he could have had Morello and a good chunk of Deathcap. Though perhaps I'm expecting too much, given that he only had 33 CS at 21 minutes. 

The link was defeeca's - a few posts up he told us that Azir was in botlane with urgot, sharing the farm, so a total 85 cs between them. He still managed to finish the RoA by 16m30 - to put it another way, it seems like a pragmatic choice in a low farm game when you're on an unfamiliar champion.

[Flying Dice]

Yeah, my bad.

But that sort of underlines my point: RoA is also fuckin' expensive for a first item intended to give you sustain. And the guy especially shouldn't have been taking lots of damage duo-laning with Urgot.

All the build talk misses the point: we're talking about the line between viable and unviable, not optimal and suboptimal. What is so especially noteworthy about a Rod of Ages being built on a mana hungry ap champion?

I said it before: stacking mana makes it take longer to run OOM. Building MP regen makes it take longer to run OOM, makes it easier to avoid doing so, and makes it easier to recover from if you do. So, in other words, even if you build mana, you're also going to need to build MP regen. Azir is a champion without a lot of room for diversity in his build; as an APC he basically needs Deathcap and Voidstaff, and he'll of course get boots. That leaves three slots, one of which must go to mana regen.

With two slots left for 'free' choices, let's look at the options:

RoA:
60 AP -> 80 AP (after 10 minutes)
450 HP -> 650 HP (ditto)
450 MP -> 650 MP (ditto)

Zhonya's:
120 AP (instantly)
50 Armor (instantly)
2.5s invulnerability active (90s cooldown, ditto)

Rylai's:
100 AP (instantly)
400 HP (ditto)
35% slow on spell damage (15% for AoE/multitarget)

The two other easy-to-see options give more AP while also providing a modicum of defensive stats as a bit of cream on top. Zhonya's is also the ultimate defense for mages, and will usually let you survive just about anything if you don't get caught out and the fight isn't already lost. Likewise, Rylai's not only has better offensive stats, but also synergizes brilliantly with Azir's soldiers.

That's not to say that RoA is bad (it's not, quite the opposite).

However, it's explicitly a bad idea on Azir, for two reasons:

1. He is a long-ranged siege/poke caster. Gold spent on non-combat stats is largely wasted. All he needs is a spot of MP regen. Sort of like Xerath, in a way; you don't build defensive on Xerath because you shouldn't be getting hit, you just stack AP and MPen and blast people from half a mile away.

2. RoA is almost always (though there are a handful of exceptions) built alongside Tear -> Archangel's, because that combo makes for insanely good gold efficiency. Azir cannot build Tear because he needs 40% CDR, and building two MP regen items would reduce his flat AP too much (as well as being redundant in its own right -- it's bad for the same reason that building Morello + Athene's is bad on most champions).

Get what I'm saying?