For some champions...yes. An example would be ryze as he relies on his cooldowns and can spam more spells with his passive.

the question really becomes, how fast can you cast your spells. and do you have the mana/regen to support that speed.

if you have a champion who needs to constantly cast spells, such as annie who gets a stun every 4th cast, then you might wanna invest into some CDR such as frozen heart and unholy grail, the grail will garentee you'll have the regen to support the constant spaming

the other question is can you use all the stat from those items, if you cant then theres no real point in getting them, if you can, then theres no reason why you have to think about not getting it. simple as that

It also depends on what sort of cooldowns you speak of. Paradoxically champions with pretty short cooldowns often benefit more from cdr than long cooldown champions. The reduction of a 20 second ability to a 14 second ability might be the difference between 1 and 2 casts in a protracted fight but that isn't a sure bet. It could just mean the same 1 cast you had before. A champion who has an 8 second ability going down to five can be certain that that he is going to get at least 1 or more casts, and a 4 second cooldown becomes a spam ability.

Likewise if you can reduce an ult with a 3 minute cooldown to a 2 or so, that doesn't really matter much. But a minute down to 30 or so seconds means that you can use your ult trivially.

For example, CDR is very powerful on yorick as he has all small cooldowns and benefits from being able to have all abilities active at all times. Cdr is powerful on Ziggs because he has abilities that become spammable and an ult that can be used reliably every fight.

Generally speaking you want to ask what am I hoping to achieve with CDR. If the answer is 'kill someone' then ask is it going to make a difference in ONE fight that lasts less than 10 seconds. Otherwise you might want to invest in buffing the damage of each of your spells instead of making them faster recharging.

I run full cdr on my Lux, it makes her an insane poker with skills at 6.6cd at most, and her ult drops to 24secs.

pew pew!

I'd say it depends on your strategy. If you're looking to create a strong lockdown with your abilities then CDR is imperative as the lower the time, even if it's Soraka or Evelynn, the better. Otherwise it may not be useful.

When trying to figure out whether CDR is valuable or not, consider the following:

a) Do I have a skill that is short enough cooldown to be used multiple times in a fight? Reducing a bunch of 15 CD skills to 9 just isn't super helpful as they tend to be once-per-fight skills anyways.

b) Am I a burst caster or sustained damage? A burst champ would rather boost their damage they can drop at once, vs trying to boost sustained dmg thru CDR.

c) Note that the more CDR you have, the benefit INCREASES PER POINT. 10% CDR = 11% more spamming per unit time period. 40% CDR = 67% more spam per time period.

d) A tougher champ benefits more from CDR since they are more likely to live long enough to use their skills more often.

e) An autoattacker usually avoids cooldown reduction as it just isnt' as helpful. Their skills are usually longer cooldown once per battle ones.

f) Looking at Scaling ratios is helpful too. For example a Soroka would need like 7000+gold worth of AP to increase her Starfall by 67%. But 40% CDR which costs around 1600-2000g worth increases her Starfall DPS by 67% too! Due to lower AP ratio and relatively high base damage, a spammable skill like this is more helped by CDR.

g) If the champ has an Ult that is really key with a long CD, some CDR can be really beneficial. Malphite for example, or Malzahar. Having Ult available at every fight is really important! Even though Mal doesnt super benefit from CDR for his other spells, the CDR is tempting just for his ult availability.


You really have to look at CDR on a PER-CHAMP-BASIS, but hopefully these general tips are helpful.