I find it extremely bizarre for Phreak to say that Pantheon cares about CDR as much as Ashe...

Phreak, I feel like you are muddling the term "AD Caster" with "AD Assassin." Pantheon and Talon are AD Assassins. Assassins jump into the fray, deal all their damage upfront, and leave. AD casters use abilities as their primary damage source but are able to autoattack as well. Renekton and Varus are AD casters, not Talon or Pantheon.

Well it is at least a step in the right direction, Talon can grab a brutalizer and at least have something more useful to turn it into then a Youmuu's.

Not for AD casters, good for Riven.

I..what?

And Kha'zix? I run Gunblade for sustain (not all the time) and find it quite useful, just because of my high damage output and the 20% spell vamp to go with it. Any AD caster item must have spell vamp integrated somewhere, just because it can really help, especially if you have a low cooldown, high damage ability.

The other alternative is to make many of these abilities apply on-hit effects, but due to the easy availability of Life Steal and the high damage to these abilities, makes this change potentially overpowering to some AD casters/assassins

This item will be good for Talon if he gets counter-picked after counter-picking their mid. It will allow you to farm with Rake and get healed up.

Combine that with a mana regen item(Philos/Chalice <----- Leblanc).

Life leech is still good on those types of characters because it goes well with their high damage output. See: lifesteal on every AD carry.

Veigar might build spellvamp if he had the cooldowns to make use of it. It's not just because he's a burst caster. Compare to characters like Pantheon and Akali, who have both burst and low cooldowns, so lifeleech makes more sense on them.

Riven is closer to Talon/Pantheon than she is to Darius. If you make an item good for them, it'll be nice for her too. Build like Darius and you're an expensive, ineffectual support character.

Yup
Honestly assassins and AD carries want pretty similar things: More damage at (almost) all costs.

Now, AD Carries are more or less "built" to kill bruisers, and assassins are more or less "built" to kill ADCarries and Mages, but the tenet still holds true: Their goal is to kill things before they can fight back. ADC's do this by melting things from out of range, and Assassins do this by killing things extremely quickly under a Silence/Stun/Stealth. In either case, HP and Spell Vamp don't do much.

Your point about assassins and bruisers is kind of saying what I'm saying here... Talon players are getting super excited for the item, but it's just going to exacerbate how good bruisers are. Now bruisers get to build Brutalizer and use it while still gaining defensive stats. If anything, your lives just got worse.

What I can say, though, is that Season 3 has a lot of changes in store for assassins. Armor penetration is going to play nice with itself: % pen is going back before flat pen, meaning Brutalizer + Last Whisper just got a lot sexier, and overall, Pantheon and Talon are getting a lot happier. Flat resists got a bit more expensive, so they're going to do a better job against armor-splashing adc/mage/supports as well. Overall, it's going to be a nice change for the assassin role.
That's fair. You're right, Pantheon is sort of Renekton-esque. Very ability based. Wants low cooldowns. Pantheon probably does want this item, actually. But he probably wants it 3rd or 4th. His early game is still assassin-ey. He still has Mandrop -> Q/W/E/Auto/Q. He's still going to eviscerate someone squishy. His teamfighting, I'll give you. He's gonna want to be a bit more durable there, and CDR gets his passive back up, etc. He'll even want to spell vamp. But he does have burst. That's just a lie to say he doesn't.

Talon not so much though. Talon deals his first half of his damage while you're silenced, and he deals the second half while invisible. For him, your damage threats had already better be dead or chasing other targets, because he is all about the burst, extremely high AD ratios, and killing things. When you have something like a 5.0 AD ratio on your combo, not building a BFSword is pretty much throwing away what you're supposed to do on that champion.

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Overall, I guess I did sort of mis-speak. You're right that someone like Renekton can easily be likened to AD-Caster, while not AD-Assassin. This is a Renekton item. It's just not a Talon item for sure. My main point is that ultimately, HP/Spellvamp are misleading. You're not going to get much out of them unless you actually commit and go a bit tanky. Spell Vamp is good on someone like Vladimir or Ryze because you're going to be absorbing blows and will build around that, surviving initial burst, and then building back up afterward. But it takes a committed build to do that. You can't just be Talon, buy this item, and go "K problem solved, I'll live in team fights now." It throws your build off. But, if you're Renekton, yeah it works there. Fair point.

fizz

in

my pants

I REALLY don't think bruiser's need more items. They're pretty set.