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Saturday, January 29, 2011

Common Misconceptions About Items - Madred's Bloodrazor

Hey, everyone who's reading this. I'm Jebus McAzn. Some of you may know me from the MOBAFire community, while some of you may know me from in-game. A little about me before we begin: I've been playing LoL since around June 2010. Regardless, I feel that I've watched a lot more videos and read a lot more guides than the average LoL player. You can add me in-game as JebusMcAzn, and go check out mine and Hypershatter's guides over on MOBAFire as well!


Anyway, enough of my rambling. This is just going to be a small guide, the type that makes you just a little better at the game. Read enough of these, and it'll really help you raise your ELO. As Phreak says, it's the little things that add up that really end up affecting your total performance.


I'll be talking today about Madred's Bloodrazor. For those of you who don't know, Madred's Bloodrazor is a fairly pricey item, but has fantastic stats. It's a common item for junglers and DPS champs with decent to high attack speed.


Cost: 3800
-Recipe Price: 775
-Recipe: Madred's Razors+Pickaxe+Recurve Bow
Stats:
+30 Attack Damage
+40% Attack Speed
+25 Armor
Passive: UNIQUE: On hit, deals Magic Damage equal to 4% of the target's maximum health.


This obviously is a great item for DPS champions. It increases attack speed, damage, and gives you a little bit of armor to survive a bit better. Indeed, this is an item you'll be seeing a lot - but in what situations? First, we need to clear up some basics of the item.


One thing that you REALLY need to know about the Bloodrazor that several players are unaware of - it has a "UNIQUE" passive. That means that it only applies once, no matter how many copies of it you've purchased. Buying 5 Bloodrazors will NOT let you chop off 20% of an enemy's health bar every hit. This also applies to every other item with a "UNIQUE" passive in the game, like Rabadon's Deathcap or The Brutalizer.


However, the stat bonuses it gives aren't unique, meaning that if you do buy two Bloodrazors, the second one will give you another 30 AD, 40% AS, and 25 armor.


The second thing you should know is that the Bloodrazor deals magic damage, meaning that it is affected by magic resist and not armor, and is also affected by magic penetration. Pretty much common sense, right?


"But Jebus," you complain, "we already know all of this stuff! We're good players!"


Yes, yes, but it's always important to have your basics down. Here we get into the more advanced nuances of the item.


Now the first thing that a lot of people say when dealing with Madred's Bloodrazor is "It's a great item for taking down tanks with a lot of health." Intuitively, this is correct. Against a champion with lots and lots of health and little armor/magic resist, such as Vladimir, Madred's Bloodrazor will rip him/her apart.


The most common argument I've seen against this - and let me tell you, this is aggravating - "You're wrong! If I attack a champion with 100 health, I'm doing 4 damage per hit. I take him down in 20 hits. But if I attack a champion with 10000 health, I'm doing 400 damage per hit, and I still only take him down in 20 hits! Madred's doesn't let you kill tanks at all!"


So many damn times, I've seen people type this on a forum, a wiki, or in-game. So what's the right answer? Neither. There's a method that you have to go around in order to calculate exactly how good Bloodrazor is in a certain scenario. You also have to consider its cost per gold effectiveness.


Another part of the argument is that you can save money and get a better item, like The Bloodthirster. The problem is, it's not always the best item to get. Let's have some example scenarios.


Say you're facing off against a Rammus who has decided to get Warmog's, Thornmail, and a Randuin's Omen, but has neglected to get any magic resist. Let's assume he reaches 3,000 health and 300 armor, just for the sake of convenience. Say you deal a base 200 damage with your attacks, which is normal for a ranged DPS in the beginning of late-game. You want to know if it would be better to get a Bloodrazor or a Bloodthirster. Let's calculate.


Say you buy a Bloodrazor. That's 3,800 gold for 30 AD, 40 AS, 25 armor, and the passive. With the passive, you're dealing 4% of 3,000 or 120 magic damage a pop. Your base AD is 230. With his 300 armor, your basic autoattacks deal 57.5 damage to him. Ouch. But with only 30 magic resist, your Madred's still pops for 92.3 damage a hit. That translates to around 150 damage per hit, meaning you'll take him down in 20 shots, more or less. Again, for convenience, assume he doesn't use any abilities.


Now let's get that Bloodthirster. 3200 gold. And you know what, because I'm a generous guy, I'll say it's fully stacked. 100 whopping attack damage and 25% lifesteal. It's often considered the attack damage item with the largest amount of raw power (although Infinity Edge beats it out - I'll explain that in a blog I'll write after this one :P). Your attack damage is 300. Pretty damn good. With Rammus's 300 armor though, you're only dealing 75 damage a hit. Ouch. Half as much damage as the build with Madred's does, yet costs only 400 gold less. You're also losing out on 40% attack speed and 25 armor. So in reality, against this particular Rammus, Madred's Bloodrazor wins out.


Obviously this isn't always the case. What if you attack a Galio with 300 magic resist but only 100 armor? Obviously flat attack damage items would win out there. The general questions that you should ALWAYS, ALWAYS ASK YOURSELF when using Madred's Bloodrazor is:


Does the tank I want to kill have lots of armor or lots of magic resist? Does he have enough health to merit me getting Bloodrazor?

If the answer is yes, then Bloodrazor is a good item to get. You need to remember to take into account attack damage and magic damage, along with armor and magic resist when using this item to truly turn it into the "tank shredder" it is meant to be.

Well, now, you've reached the end of this cute little mini-blog. Next week I'll be talking about a common item dilemma for carries - Infinity Edge or The Bloodthirster? Stay tuned, and I'll see you guys next time!

6 comments:

  1. excellent first post jebus! loved it :)

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  2. Sorry dude but I cannot agree with your example. First of all I hope that you know about Rammus and his skill to gain 150 armor and magic resist. So try to recalculate the damage output of the Bloodrazor. Second, you will NOT face good tanks that have less than 100 mr when you got your Bloodrazor ready. Third, getting the Wriggle's Lantern is the better choice in most cases than waiting for that (good for its price but tbh still pretty expensive) item.

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  3. The examples are, obviously, exaggerated. You'll never find a champion with 0 magic resist, obviously. The point of the example is to demonstrate that Bloodrazor becomes more effective the less magic resist your opponents have, and vice-versa. Rammus, in hind-sight, may have been a bad choice to use as an example. Sorry if there was any confusion there.

    Regardless, it's used to demonstrate how radically huge of an impact that MR makes on Bloodrazor.

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  4. I actually thought this would contain something useful for experienced players. Seems I was wrong ;(

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  5. Thanks for posting this! Ignore the haters.

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  6. Awesome post! don't care about what the mean ppls say to yous.. i wuv yopououou

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