AD Bruiser New Build and Playstyle Theory Crafting
I have been testing on practice tool and theory crafting since the patch and I think I might have found a few decent build options. I might do a similar deep dive into AP if I have time and if this is recieved well enough. (Bruiser and/or Burst Mage as a different post probably)
I also should mention I am an emerald player so most of my suggestions are what works in my elo, which I also think might apply accross the board universally.
We are maxing Q > W > E with the new patch. Our early game is now weaker due to not being able to get Qs back fast enough and lacking AD scaling on W and E damage. So we need to focus on power farming until level 6 minimum with first item completed.
Our ideal first item is Experimental Hexplate. It allows us to charge our ultimate faster and gives us a nice steroid during ultimate. Once it is completed, our next goal should be completing the new Omnivamp boots and looking for skirmishes to stack it to max value. So our gameplay evolves from power farming to farming until ult is up and then looking for some trades. Hexplate is a great first item because it gives us sticking power we desperately need at early levels while also giving us more agency by filling our fury bar faster. Unlike popular belief, we do not actually need ability haste as a priority just yet until we had the chance to put in some extra ranks in W. Even if we rushed Haste items, chances are we are not able to benefit from it at rank 1-2 W and rank 1 E until we get more ranks in them anyway.
Now, at this point, we should be looking to get some ability haste once we have our Hexplate and Boots are completed. Spear of Shojin is the best option here. By level 13, when W is maxed, we should have around 40 ability haste minimum. Spear of Shojin is the most gold efficient way of doing that (when combined with a fully stacked Legend:Haste) while also giving us a pretty decent damage boost on our Q3. If we also took Transcendence, we are looking at 50 ability haste for our basic abilities. This makes our maxed out Q and W at 4 and 6 second CD respectively. Q being 4 seconds cooldown is that if you cast Q2 in human form and Q3 in dragon form, but you were not able to release the auto due to not having a target, the new background ticking CD allows you to have Q1 ready back up as soon as the currently activated one expires. Anything more is kind of an overkill for Q. With Hexplate passive steroid, red jungle item slow ans smite slow; 40-50 basic ability haste is usually enough for W movement speed and E slow upkeep (reducing them to 6-5 seconds respectively at full rank, allowing us to rotate one full Q combo with both W and E to make it easier to land every 6-7 seconds)
Now for our next item, we have 3 generic options based on enemy team compositions. If the enemy team is packing some heavy CC, we go Steraks. If the enemy team is packing some mobility and slows to easily kite us, or CC like knock ups that cant be reduced by tenacity, we go for Stridebreaker. If the enemy does not have either but has some strong picks that has to be bursted down as a priority, we go for Titanic. Ideally in most games we will be going for Steraks. If we are super ahead, we may skip this bit and go straigtht to Bloodmail and Jaksho as earlier picks, but their value usually comes up in late game much more
We also have some situational options for this slot here. If the enemy is heavily AP, we can go for Spirit Vissage. If they are heavily crit oriented, we can go for Randuin. If they have a lot of max HP shred, we can go for Maw of Malmortius or Deaths Dance depending on their teams damage type composition.
Now, the last 2 items. If we have our passive stacked enough and we have enough damage to carry fights, we go Jaksho here. It makes us very difficult to kill. Then we top it off with a Bloodmail as our last slot to make every bit of bonus HP we have built thus far scake even more.
If we are lacking damage and our passive stacks are not high enough, this is when we swap the last 2 items order around and build Bloodmail first and make Jaksho the last item.
For runes, Conqueror/Triumph/Legend: Haste and Last Stand for main page is quite literally fixed along with Attack Spees, Adaptive Force and Scaling Max HP shards. Where we get our creative freedom is our secondary rune page. I like Overgrowth + Conditioning quite a bit due to how sturdy it makes Shyvana and the way it synergizes with Bloodmail, Jaksho and our passive. If the enemy is CC heavy, Unflinching is also a good option.
For a more offensive secondary page option, Transcendence + Nimbus Cloak gives us a pretty good chasing power while allowing us to reach 50 haste breaking point for our build, but we will be considerably squishier.
Items I dislike for her that can work are Trinity Force and Sundered Sky. Due to spamming all abilities together, we are losing too many Sheen procs for Trinity Force to feel good. It is still solid and gives a lot fo damage, but it makes me feel like I must to wait 1.5 seconds between Q casts to make the most it and thats a lot of time wasted. Sundered Sky just feels like it does not synergize well with her. You cant make your Q3 crit and you ideally want to be able to keep focusing on a single target instead of trying to attack everyone once to get your crit triggers. New boots also makes sustain part of its unique passive not as necessary. If they made it so that we did not waste so mant castings/spellblade procs by spamming things off CD or if we could make our Q3 a big nuke on squishies with Sundered Sky, I would be much happier with these items.