Bottom line, up front:

BotRK increases your autoattack without increasing your AD. Therefore, it will always suck on AD casters, and will only be usable on autoattackers.

Damage autoattackers ALWAYS build crit. Over half their scaling is based on it, and Infinity Edge is core.

Blade of the Ruined King's damage is applied AFTER crits (e.g., instead of (base auto + proc) * 2, you get (base auto * 2) + proc). That is, it doesn't benefit from crits at all. It's scaling is therefore spectacularly ****ty even for autoattackers: the 0 crit breakeven point on enemy health over an entire fight vs Bloodthirster is already a pretty high 3k. Factor in the crits from even just an IE and the breakeven point suddenly is damn close to 4k. Factor in PD as well, 5k+.

In other words, because it doesn't scale with crits, BotRK is spectacularly bad compared to Bloodthirster for autoattackers who build crit: that is to say, all of them.

If you try to make BotRK competitive with BT for damage autoattackers without making it scale with crit, it will have to be insanely strong base. This means it will be rushed by autoattacking tanks and bruisers and just make them even better at outputting great damage without ever dieing.

Therefore, Riot, please, just ****ing make the BotRK proc calculated BEFORE crits so that it can be built by autoattackers. You say you hate trap items? BotRK right now is the ultimate trap item: you feel good building it midgame because it's about as strong as BT then, factoring in the active. Then it gets lategame, and the enemy carry with BT just does so much more damage than you and you can't figure out why. It's therefore also the perfect example of a hidden variable greatly influencing gameplay - burden of ****ing knowledge.

PS: Could you fix it on Shaco's clone while you're at it.

PPS: The true irony is that someone at Riot was obviously aware that for an on-hit item to be desirable for carries, it HAD to scale with crit: hence the excellently designed Statikk Shiv. Apparently they didn't decide to share this knowledge with whoever designed BotRK.

EDIT: I just want to make something clear: in the NO CRIT scenario, I think BotRK is perfectly well balanced against BT. Do the math and it's situationally stronger, situationally weaker, just right. But then you buy 30% crit. Your BT becomes 30% stronger, your BotRK becomes maybe 10% stronger because of the flat AD and lifesteal. Making BotRK proc scale with crit just makes it scale like other damage items! It merely MAINTAINS the nocrit comparison case!

inb4 10% of their HP without including your base damage on first hit is insane on the level of old J4 passive.

If we assume the enemy is at max HP and you have infinity edge and you crit, you have 10% of their health added to your damage before mitigation. Let's say they have 3k health, the classic BotRK breakeven point. So that's 300 damage from BotRK proc, and 100 damage from its flat AD (being multipled by crit) for a grand total of 400 damage.

Meanwhile, our full stack Bloodthirster adds 250 damage to our IE crit.

Keep in mind, BotRK gets linearly worse as the enemy is injured, to a floor of 100 damage being added on a crit. Meanwhile, BT is ALWAYS adding 250 damage on crits.

In other words: if you let BotRK crit... it would be competitive with Bloodthirster - situationally worse and situationally better. AKA: exactly as you might expect it to be, given that it costs a whopping 25 gold less.

Critting for 8-10% of someone's current hp at the start of a fight and healing for half that would be op and make BT obsolete due to the sustain difference.

Except, and you really need to understand this, the BT is already critting for 10% or more of someone's max hp (if they have less than 2500 health). And it does this no matter how low their health it.

If BotRK NEVER does more damage than BT, which is, practically speaking, the current situation, then it's NEVER worth buying.

Do you want me to do the math showing how the lifegain from BT having literally double the lifesteal of BotRK absolutely trounces the BotRK proc lifegain?

EDIT: Ok I will, since it's actually easy. Let's say you have 300 AD with BotRK and IE among your items and then crit some 3k HP guy. So you do 600 damage from base, 300 damage from BotRK proc. You lifesteal 90 health from the 10% lifesteal on BotRK, and 150 health from the proc for a grand total of 240 health. Meanwhile, in BT land, you have 360 AD (because you replaced BotRK with BT), do 720 damage, and lifesteal 144 damage. So yes, indeed, the BotRK does more damage and steals more health now that it scales with crit... WHEN THE ENEMY IS AT FULL HEALTH. But if we assume their average health over a fight is half their max (it's actually even less, because damage is frontloaded in fights and healing/shields tend to be backloaded), the average lifesteal on crit for BotRK is 165, slightly higher than BT. hich is EXACTLY what it should be, against someone with high HP who you actually engaged on while he had high HP! Again, if the average performance of BotRK is never better than BT, even when the enemy has a lot of health and you have ideal engage conditions for BotRK to work well, then there's no point to BotRK. For BotRK to be viable, it has to be better than BT AT LEAST SOME TIMES. Actually, the crit doesn't even matter: the situation with 0 crit is the same. Which is exactly my point: right now, BotRK is competitive with BT in the 0 crit scenario. All adding the ability to crit does it keep it equally viable later on.

Look at it this way. Say you have IE, and say you crit. Bloodthirster is contributing 250 damage to that attack (100 AD * 2.5). Ol' BotRK meanwhile is adding 100 damage from its flat AD, plus its proc, unmultipled by crit. Now, let's see how much health someone would need to have when you hit them to make up that 150 damage gap. That is, 150 is 4% of what number? 3750. So if someone has 3750 health, you will do as much damage on a crit with BotRK as with BT. If they have ANY LESS HEALTH, you will do less damage on a crit.

"But you don't crit every attack!"

No, and they don't have full health every attack either.

But let's see how the breakeven point is really affected by crit over a long fight, with IE and PD. That's 55% crit chance at 250% crit damage. Obviously, if you have even more crit or crit damage modifiers the BotRK becomes even worse - but IE + PD + BT (or BotRK, hypothetically) is a fairly common occurrence even in mid-late game so let's go with that.

If you assume your damage output is approximately constant (with crit, it won't be - remember the more crits you have the WORSE BotRK is compared to BT), the average health someone has over a whole fight is half their max. Also, the contribution from BT to your average attack is simply 100 * 1.55 * 1.25 (crit enhancement factor of IE) = 193.75. Meanwhile, the flat AD of BotRK contributes 77.5 damage. So, for BotRK to break even with the BT over a whole fight, the average proc from BotRK has to contribute the difference of 116.25 damage. So 116.25 damage has to be 4% of their average health over the fight - assumed to be half their max health (in truth, it's typically less, and often FAR less - that is your first half of your HP bar tends to last less long then your second half, since damage is frontloaded and mitigation - heals and shields, are backloaded). The breakeven point is 5812.5 health.

To reiterate: in the BEST CASE SCENARIO for BotRK, your opponent has to be stacking almost 6k HP to make it a cost effective purchase. In the real world, where AoE abilities and poke and other people's damage tends to knock off half of someone's HP before you even start on them? 12k hp. No, that's not an exaggeration. That's just why people get mad at you when you build BotRK on carries, and why they're friggen RIGHT.

"Buh-buh-but muh active", no your 350 damage with 400 AD active changes the results by the same amount of health, at best. Which is to say, it changes it not at all. Yes, I am aware it slows too, which could save you from death. But you know what else saves you from death? Killing people quickly. And I haven't even talked about how the 10% additional lifesteal on BT ****s on BotRK proc lifesteal OR how even autoattacking champions typically have SOME AD scaling abilities

Botrk isnt for ad carry's
has noone got this yet
its for duelists as an alternative to bt

BotRK is for Jax, Udyr and Warwick.
Pretty much everyone else should ignore it...

^ this guy gets it

its meant to be a bt
for dualists
as they have abilities/ passive / both that make up for the loss in burst from not going bt.
and the active makes them exceptional at catching people out and allowing them to stick in teamfights.

Fixed that for you.

If you're building it on anyone like Udyr, who has an exceptionally good 1.5 AD ratio on his spammable Q over the BT...that's just bad...

But TBH, I rately build a BT on Udyr unless its a long game and I'm doing well.

Build a scimitar on him for your BF Sword item and then build tanky.

Scimitar is a rediculously good item on him...instead of being stopped, he goes faster and mauls you...