Some really dumb things I noticed about Blade of the Ruined King

Oh cool, this article got a Riot employee's attention

Looking at the Blade of the Ruined King, the %Health Shred clearly screams that it is an item you invest into to combat opponents with high health, right? If this is the case, why is it so effective against enemies with low health?

Let's just say, as an example, you rush the Blade of the Ruined King as your first item. If you are primarily an auto attack based champion, the % health shred on hit might as well be AD in this specific example. The wiki page states that for the Blade of the Ruined King to be 100% gold efficient is if the active and passive effects have a gold value of 550 gold. % Shred might as well be AD for this example, AD has a gold value, let's figure this out. Basic math tells us that 550 gold worth of AD is about ~15 AD. Okay, how much health must your target have in order for the % shred to do 15 damage? Once again, basic math brings us to the answer: about ~191 Health.

I'd just like to point out at this point that the on hit % health shred calculates on current health. In other words, if you are to 100 to 0 somebody by auto attacking them over and over, on average the % current health shred would be calculating 50% of the enemy's total health. What this means is that the ~191 health thing is almost entirely inaccurate; we need to double that value to find out how much total health the opponent has for the Blade of the Ruined King to be gold efficient. In other words, we're actually looking at ~382 health. What this means is, if we treat the Blade of the Ruined King's passive as AD for auto attack based champions, your opponent only needs to have 382 health in order for the item to be 100% gold efficient.

...wait what. 382 health? Anivia doesn't even have that little health at level 1. Why is the health threshold to make the Blade of the Ruined King gold efficient so low?!

It's really dumb to be frank. If we're looking at the Blade of the Ruined King's combat stats all alone and remove the Life Steal from its gold value, the target only needs 764 health to make the Blade of the Ruined King gold efficient disregarding the Life Steal. That's right folks, the Blade of the Ruined King pays for itself as a combat item, and gives you Life Steal to top yourself off.

Now anybody who has a basic understanding how Auto Attack DPS really works will know something's totally off with these calculations: Critical Chance. The Blade of the Ruined King's passive does not interact with Critical Chance the same way that actual AD works. "Well looks like these calculations are pointless then, I'm an AD Carry, I'm going to be investing in a buttload of Crit Chance anyway". Well, let's stop to think about it for a moment. Let's just say, even though it's kind of unlikely to achieve this without the most skewed Crit Chance builds, you have 100% Critical Chance. What this means is that the value of AD essentially doubles. Remember how it took the target having ~382 health to make the passive worth 550 gold's worth of AD? Doubling this means that in order for the Blade of the Ruined King's passive to be gold efficient (based off AD) even when you're at 100% critical chance is that your target needs at least 764 health. Now, let's say you also have the Infinity Edge. Multiply ~382 by 2.5 to find out how much health the target needs to have to make the passive gold efficient, and you get a grand total of...~955 health.

What.

If you have 100% Crit Chance with the Infinity Edge's extra 50% modifier, your target only needs to have about 955 health in order for the Blade of the Ruined King to remain cost efficient. Dumbly enough, your opponent only needs 1910 health to make the item cost efficient if we disregard the lifesteal. That's right folks, by the late game, not only is your Blade of the Ruined King going to be cost efficient as fuck even if you have 100% Crit Chance and an Infinity Edge, but because many champions go well above 1910 health by level 18 without buying a single Health item, you also get 10% Life Steal essentially for free.

Ugh. Look, I understand the point of having an anti health item in general. It tones down the fabled League of Warmogs scenario I've been told about, it gives AD Carries something decisive to build in order to combat tanks, and in theory, it creates a niche pick item that invites strategic building. In execution though, this anti health item is gold efficient against targets who do not build health. No, wait, that's putting it too lightly. This anti health item is gold efficient against targets who aren't even anywhere near their maximum potential health, in some situations being super gold efficient even when champions aren't even level 1. All this does is phenomenally screw Tanks over the moment they do decide to invest into building health even harder than usual, and make a generic item with virtually no weaknesses and thus no reason not to buy it because it's still decidedly powerful even when it is at its weakest.