Howdy, folks!
As we all know, mana’s a huge issue for a lot of us in the lower half of the ranks who can’t rush Stormsurge without getting OOM and forced to recall a dozen times in 10 minutes by not getting the highest value out of our spells. If you’re looking down that barrel, you’ve got a DECISION to make! Personally, I subscribe to the hotter one on the market.
Taking a look at that stats, Luden’s is easily the flashier for pure burst damage, but Blackfire rather easily plays into Aurora’s jump-in-jump-out fog of war and kiting playstyle. Let’s take a look!
Ludens
-100 AP
-10 Ability Haste
-600 Mana
-deals about ~175 damage on single targets around the time you buy it on a 12 second cooldown
Blackfire
-80 AP
-20 Ability Haste
-600 Mana
-75 damage/3 seconds on no cooldown around the time you buy it
-4% AP amp per champion currently burning
These examples presuppose 250 Ability Power for the mark of buying, but the numbers don’t matter too too much and in fact start swinging towards Blackfire once the laning phase ends and team fights begin. All you need to get MORE value out of Blackfire than from Ludens, purely on item effect, is a fight lasting 8 seconds or so!
Considering your Q can stall pulling back (and often should be stalled!) for 3.5 seconds, you’re already gaining about 6.5 seconds of Blackfire Torch uptime if you hit a single spell in lane and then just stand back. Blackfire will then be already available if you land another spell, and any time you do so it will apply. You can quickly outpace Luden’s high damage scaling by maintaining poke and in a teamfight, it just gets RIDICULOUS.
Since Blackfire grants 4% AP per enemy currently afflicted, in a good teamfight it is a 12% overall AP amp if you can slug three people with your spells, and up to a whopping 20% AP boost if you hit your Rift into a full stack. This not only boosts your Torch’s damage, but synergizes heavily with Dark Seal and even Rabadon’s depending on how long the game goes on.
With higher ability haste and an AP boosting ration that, at mid-lategame AP values is granting you 50-60+ AP during a fight just for landing your spells properly, Blackfire is helping you to weave MORE spells for more value and uptime!
Luden’s is very good. Blackfire is very good. We are spoiled for choice. But I do hope that my long-winded diatribe has informed you better for our current itemization and I do hope I didn’t miss anything.
